In New York A Punch in the Mouth for the Poetry Man
February 14, 2018 scottcjones 1Comment

I had a girlfriend named Amy in 1993. Delicate features, pale skin, green eyes. Met her in Chicago, in a bar. I was starting graduate school in the fall soon. I asked her to come with me, to take a chance. Amy was an adventurous spirit. She agreed.

As soon as I got to the university, I realized that I’d made a terrible mistake bringing Amy here. I wanted to be single, wanted to be free. Still, I went through the motions for a few months. Amy and I found an apartment on Genesee Street. She took a job in a coffee shop. She fixed dinners for us. I wrote, attending classes, taught my own classes. Some nights, as the snow fell outside our apartment window, Amy and I would talk about the names we’d give our future children: Akhmatova, Elvis, and Mandelstam. Two Russian poets, and one absurdly popular American singer. Pretentious? Most definitely.

Within three months at the university, I had fallen in love unexpectedly with a beautiful Communist. I broke up with Amy. Told her that this wasn’t working for me. Did it in our apartment. I had no idea what I was doing. I looked out the window at the street lights, at the falling snow. Snow fell constantly that winter. I watched it fall. The oversized flakes, some as big as feathers. I listened to Amy cry in the shower, wailing like the brakes of a train.

Within a few weeks I had the apartment to myself. Amy was gone. The beautiful Communist? She retreated back into her old relationship. I didn’t see that coming. I was alone, alone, alone. I was angry at the beautiful Communist. Angry at myself for what I’d done to Amy. I felt guilty, horribly guilty. The apartment on Genesee Street was too big and too cold for me. I couldn’t afford to heat the place. I wore my parka in the house like a bathrobe. Around this time, there was a leak in the apartment upstairs. The leak made the panels on my kitchen ceiling turn a sinister brown color and swell. Each morning, I’d wake up, hungover, and stand in the kitchen to access the ever-swelling panels. How long would they hold? Tough to say. Within a week the swelling hung down like an infected udder or an oversized pod, like a thing from a science fiction movie. All the anger and guilt that I felt about Amy and the Communist was inside the udder/pod. One morning, as I did the dishes below the swelling, the udder/pod unexpectedly gave way. Pieces of rotten, water-swollen ceiling pelted my shoulders and head areas. I stood there with my winter jacket on, my hands submerged up to the wrist in lukewarm dish water, and I thought, This is what I deserve, oh this is most definitely what I deserve.

I memorized poems back then. Long poems. My brain was young, sharp. Memorizing was easy. Not so much now, 20 years later. One of the poems I remember from that time is Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. That’s Rilke’s poem about Orpheus’s trip to the Underworld to rescue his love, Eurydice. The only rule Orpheus must follow: Do not look back. He has to trust that Eurydice is behind him. But on the journey to the surface, Orpheus can’t help himself: he looks back. He breaks the rule. Now, Eurydice has to stay behind, in the Underworld. Orpheus must return to the surface alone.

Amy had moved to New York City. One of the writers at the university was heading down to NYC for the weekend. Did I want to come? I did. He dropped me in Chinatown, at the address where Amy said she was living. I hadn’t called Amy or let her know that I was coming. The downstairs buzzer didn’t work. I pressed it again and again. Nothing. I hadn’t expected this, hadn’t planned for this.

I didn’t know NYC then the way I know it now. The idea of spending the night on the street in NYC terrified me. Scared and desperate, I began to yell. At the top of my lungs, I shouted her name: AMY, AMY, AMY! I waited for a response. Nothing. I yelled again, waited, nothing. Then I heard a window lift on one of the floors above me. A voice yelled: SHE’S ON HER WAY DOWN.

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Family A Modest Display of Wealth
February 1, 2018 scottcjones 3Comments

I was a nostalgic little bastard, long before I was old enough to actually be nostalgic about anything. For example: evenings when there was nothing of interest on television—no Dukes, no Incredible Hulk—I would study my parents’ wedding album.

They were married in 1967, in a chapel the size of a boxcar. How young they were in the photos! Were those people in the photos the same sour pair I saw in the kitchen in the mornings, wearing bathrobes and bickering over coffee? They were. In the photos, they looked optimistic and hopeful; they looked simple, beautiful, unburdened; they looked like movie stars. They looked like two people in love—in love with each other, in love with that particular moment. They looked like people with great futures in front of them.

The wedding photos featured an absurdly oversized bottle of liquor. The bottle was at least two and a half feet tall. It was a novelty item, a symbol that said, Today is a day to indulge ourselves. Even as a kid I understood the role of the bottle. It sat at the front of the banquet hall, on the head table, as if it were a guest of honour.

The gargantuan bottle of Seagram’s 7—it was the size of a fire extinguisher—looked like an artifact from a fairy tale.

My mother and father had traveled from that glamorous day in 1967, all the way to this moment, to this trailer (yes, we lived in a trailer). And they’d brought the bottle of Seagram’s 7 with them. The bottle, now empty, sat in the corner of the living room. I dusted the bottle on Saturday mornings, which was cleaning day. While dusting, I pulled the cap from the top of the bottle and gave it a good sniff. I could smell 1967 on the underside of the cap. It was a sweet, forbidden, adult smell. It was a smell from a time before I was born.

My family got into the habit of depositing stray pennies in the bottle. Every night my father would come home and empty his pockets. He’d scatter his change across the coffee table. My mother would pick through the change, separating the pennies. Then she’d drop the pennies into the bottle one by one: plink, plink, plink. Down they fell through the neck of the bottle, coming to a rest on the bed of pennies below.

The bottle filled over the years. What were we going to do with all that money? I asked. (It seemed like a lot of money in 1978.) Once it was full, I was told, we’d take a grand trip together, maybe to Disney World. “We’ll really treat ourselves!” they promised. “We’ll go someplace magical! Because saving money,” they said, “is important. You have to save. You have to have goals. Otherwise, you’ll never get anywhere in life.”

I left for college when I was 18. I completely forgot about the bottle. I was struggling in the classroom, in part because I’d fallen hopelessly in love with a girl who wasn’t interested in me.

My father lost his job. I came home over the holidays and found him alone in the house. He sat on the floor in front of the TV watching gameshows. He wore Bermuda shorts, even though it was December. He had streaks of grey on the sides of his head which I didn’t remember him having before. Without ceremony, he had upended the Seagram’s 7 bottle. He spilled pennies across the braided living room rug.

Over the course of my father’s unemployment—eight weeks—he painstakingly rolled the pennies each day into thick paper tubes that he’d gotten from the bank.

A few weeks later, I called home from college one Sunday afternoon. My mother reported that the final total was $58.

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The Fall: 2018 Spdoom krrshhh boom: January is for falling
January 17, 2018 scottcjones 3Comments

January was off to a good start. Was moving in a fairly healthy direction. Felt optimistic that this year was going to be MY YEAR, FOOLS.

Then I fell on the steps in the TTC station at Broadview. Last Wednesday night, around 8:30 or so. Not down the steps, but up the steps. Defying laws of physics. Here’s what happened: I was climbing up the steps, out of the station. I was trying to get by this little annoying woman who, in my opinion, wasn’t moving fast enough. As I tried to pass her: spdoom krrshhh boom. Down goes Frazier.

The little annoying woman was the first to stop and ask if I was OK. “I did that about a week ago!” she said, empathizing with my newfound state, facedown on the steps. “Everyone falls in Toronto,” she added, leaning towards me. “Are you OK?”

This woman was little, yes. But she wasn’t annoying. She was kind. I thanked her for her kindness. I assured her that I was fine. Felt guilty for thinking she was little and annoying. I scrambled to my feet and exited the station as quickly as I could. I hopped on the waiting street car, as if I’d just pulled off a robbery or something. Maybe five or 10 people must have seen the fall back there. I needed to get away from those people fast as I possibly could. Sat in the idle street car silently saying the words “Go, go, go!” to the driver. Finally, the street car began to move.

Went to bed that night knowing I’d be sore the next morning. I grossly underestimated the damage. Been a week since the fall now. I’ve been to the ER. Been to the walk-in clinic. Still having trouble putting weight on the leg. My left leg looks like a regular leg. Right leg looks like a misshapen paper bag that’s holding two, maybe three casaba melons. That’s what it looks like. How does it feel? Feels like my right leg has been replaced with a 40-pound bag of dry dog food. And it feels like it’s on fire about 60-percent of the time.

A 40-pound bag of kibble, engulfed in flames. That’s what I have now.

Wonder, quite honestly, if it’s broken. Could be broken. Wouldn’t surprise me if it is. Who knows? Elevating the dog food bag today. And I’m down to my last Percocets. Which, in all honesty, are not as strong as I’d like them to be. Worse, they only last for about four hours. Not enough. More soon.

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Uncategorized Still here!
January 10, 2018 scottcjones 5Comments

Update: Apologies for not posting at all lately. Been busy tending to various things, etc. etc. Most of those things have been constructive things.

Honestly? I resent the site sometimes, the way a dutiful parent might resent a child who doesn’t quite turn out the way she expected him to turn out. I always thought he was going to be a doctor! Now he’s just a druggie who sits in a hot tub all day, says this imaginary parent. He never goes out! Just sits at home. Yes, in that hot tub! Doing his crazy drugs! And if he does go out, it’s only to buy food for his parrot. Yes, he has a parrot! I don’t know what the hell that’s all about….

  • Note: I do not have a hot tub or a parrot or a drug problem.

I always assumed that a literary agent or a publisher would magically find the site and reach out to me one of these days; I figured it was only a matter of time. You’re a terrific writer, Scott Jones, they would say. Why don’t you put all of these musings into a book for us? They’d send me a check the size of floor mat to my house. After that, my imaginary parrot and I (and the floor mat-sized check) would ride off into the sunset together. Roll credits.

But that obviously never happened.

Some of the things I’ve been busy with lately include,

  • completing a draft of the novel I tried to write 20 years ago,
  • finishing a proper full season of my podcast, instead of releasing episodes piecemeal,
  • being anxious about my career (He should have more money and stability than this at his age, shouldn’t he? said the imaginary parent.)

I also had a really bizarre holiday job in 2017, which I’ll tell you about soon.

Long story short: I’m still here. Train is still on the tracks. Season 1 of Heavily Pixelated will be out in the next couple weeks. And I’m coming back to the site. Because I like to write. And because I miss you.

Yes, you.

I really do.

Happy 2018.

Thanks for your patience.

 

Your friend,

Scott

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Uncategorized San Carlos, CA: Part 3
September 2, 2017 scottcjones 2Comments

The next morning I packed up. Gave the old room a final inspection. So long, crummy motel room. Ordered an Uber for the airport on the motel’s wifi. Then I headed outside.

The sun was coming up over the freeway. Hadn’t left yet, but I was already feeling nostalgic for California. So long, California! You beautiful, sun-baked hag, you.

There was a black car parked next to the motel’s front office. Was the Uber here already? As I walked towards it, I noticed that the car looked weirdly similar to Tony The Driver’s car from yesterday. Can’t be Tony, I thought. How can that be Tony? 

The driver waved at me through the windshield. Same upscale eyeglass frames. Same Bluetooth thing hanging from his ear. Fucking Tony.

He opened the door and stepped out. “Your ever-faithful driver, reporting for duty, sir!”

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Uncategorized San Carlos, CA: Tony the Driver
August 28, 2017 scottcjones 1Comment

Work was fine. I put in the hours, did what I’d been contracted to do. The job was in an anonymous business park. Big, blank buildings with manicured shrubs out front. The building I was working in was full of people, but I felt alone there. Once the last day was over, I handed in my badge, tried to find someone to say goodbye to. Then I took an Uber back to the hotel-motel. (more…)

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Uncategorized Our Man Tries to Get Himself Sorted
July 12, 2017 scottcjones 3Comments

I despise summer on the East Coast. I always have. The Herald Square subway station at 34th Street and Sixth Avenue is the real-world equivalent of the hubs of hell. It’s the epicenter of NYC’s savage summer heat. It’s claustrophobic and dark down there. It reeks of spoiled garbage and urine. You’re a hundred feet below ground, surrounded by trash and darkness, yet the temperature is still as warm as a witch’s oven. Even the track rats seem to openly sweat in the Herald Square station.

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Uncategorized Our Man Arrives in Vancouver: Day 1
June 28, 2017 scottcjones 11Comments

[This is a continuation of my account of my first days in Vancouver in May 2009. I think there’s one, maybe two parts left. Oh, and hey! Thanks for reading. I haven’t been posting consistently lately, which you may have noticed. Planning to post more in the coming days. Hope you come back. -Scott.]

As soon as I stepped off the plane in Vancouver, as soon as I set foot in the airport, I left some of the nagging 9/11 gloom behind. My shoulders, it seemed, were relieved of an invisible burden on this arrival. My posture began to automatically self-correct. I felt as if my skeleton was stretching itself out, expanding to its full height. Only minutes into my new life in Canada and already I stood taller, felt stronger.

I was not a visitor here this time. I was, presumably, here to stay. I had a job. And I had immigration paperwork, making it official.

Once I’d finished with immigration, I exited the Vancouver airport and stood on the curb with my two cats, still tucked safely inside their carriers. I filled my chest with Canadian air: inhale, exhale. Despite the nearby line of idling cabs, the air tasted cleaner and earthier to me. I could smell lilies blooming somewhere nearby. Only moments into my new life here and already things seemed less dangerous, less complicated, and more livable.

It was then that my eyes began to water. I didn’t expect this at all. I used the sleeve of my jacket to dry my face.

As I waited in the taxi line, my idle brain questioned why I was in Canada.

But wasn’t New York great? You loved it there!

Yeah, it was great. I loved it so much.

So why did we leave again?

Because it wasn’t safe there. We thought we were going to die there.

Oh. That’s right. Now I remember… 

If we went to pick up milk, we thought we were going to die. If we went to fetch dry cleaning, we thought we were going to die.

That was awful.

Yep. Pretty awful.

An eerily silent taxi (a Prius, of course) sped me and the cats to the new apartment, in a neighbourhood known as Gastown. I sat in the backseat and opened up the local map on my phone. With a series of finger-pinches and swipes, I found New York. I was 2,900 miles away from it now. I found a webcam on the Internet overlooking midtown Manhattan. Thanks to the time difference, it was almost dawn in New York.

The city looked lonely and gargantuan. Despite the pre-dawn hour, it was still twinkling like mad, as usual. New York, it seemed, could still twinkle without me.

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Uncategorized In Case of Emergency: Part 2
June 22, 2017 scottcjones 1Comment

I had a pretty serious girlfriend in New York. Her name was Jill. I was nuts about her.

Jill was a part-time teacher in the math department at NYU. She lived in New York but she was from Vancouver—the same city, coincidentally, where I was shooting a TV show every month or two. She’d grown up in Vancouver in the 70’s and 80’s. She’d been a snowboarding prodigy as a kid, which sounded terribly Canadian to me. She remembered her dad driving her down the icy mountain roads after her snowboarding meets. Her father always bought her a tuna sub from Subway on the way home—that was their ritual. As he steered the car and navigated the tricky curves of the mountain roads, guiding them both back to civilization, Jill sat in the passenger seat. She watched her father drive and ate the tuna sub.

Jill accompanied me on one of my TV trips to Vancouver. We stayed in the spare room at her parents’ apartment. It was at some point on that trip—probably over dinner with Jill’s parents at an oyster place in Gastown—that we decided to move to Vancouver together.

I phoned the producers of the Canadian TV show I worked on the next day. I asked if I could work for them full-time. They said yes. The wheels were in motion.

Jill and I returned to New York and began winding down our lives in NYC. We scheduled goodbye dinners with friends. We fantasized about our new life together in Canada. The vulture of gloom? The one that perched on my shoulders and made me flee subway stations in terror? The vulture’s days were numbered now.

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