Today is also the first day of Autumn in Australia and appropriately the first day of a new semester. I spent a good part of the summer herding failing nursing students through their first and second year subjects and most of the one week break between semesters listening to twice-failed nursing students beg for mercy. The new semester is going to be a bear. A grizzly. A kodiak. I’m involved in teaching six different courses. Those of you who teach secondary school will have little sympathy for me, but for a delicate university lecturer this is a crippling load. I’m also taking a couple of courses for my back up plan.

I recently started working toward a back up plan B, which involves me keeping the job I’m in by doing what the university wants me to do – produce research and research money. I’ve started tinkering around in an immunology lab, hoping to pull some quick publications out of my…hat. I’m not an immunologist. But I’m also not a pathologist and that hasn’t stopped me teaching pathology, nor has the fact that I’m not an anatomist stopped me teaching anatomy. Etc. My real enemy is the time, or lack therof, in the day to fit in all these back up plans as well as doing the job for which I was hired. I fear that things are going to start to suffer. Like this blog.

What the hell? This was supposed to be about Not Max and here I am blathering on about me. Shut up, Chris.

Happy un-birthday, boy #2, the neglected one, laughing boy. Keep working at it and you’re bound to get you father’s attention over the next six months.

Finally,  I couldn’t resist this photo of Boy Z. He’s learned to trust his cape.

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This is the second track from R.E.M.’s 2001 album “Reveal”. I’ve never thought of it a a great R.E.M. album, but it’s sounded pretty good this summer. As an aside, one of my students told me that R.E.M. was “old people’s music” last week, to which I responded with a suggestion that she could kiss my backside.  R.E.M.’s “Reveal” is available from .

Suck it, Northern Hemisphere losers.

February rocks!

Now when you manage to get out of your parkas and your fingers thaw, go and check out my post on The Greenists today. It’s an extension of our conversation about whaling.

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R.E.M.’s “Reveal” is available from .

I had hoped that they would recognize my state of emotional distress, but that was too optimistic.

I usually don’t respond to these trolls. I generally delete their comments and trash their e-mails. But seriously, what kind of person leaves me an anonymous comment telling me I “suck” for making what was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made in my life? What kind of person sends me an anonymous e-mail calling me a murderer? Go to hell, you cowards.

There is a dog shaped hole in my heart that doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. But I still don’t question my decision. If there was one thing I admired about the last American president it was his seeming ability to make a decision and stand by it. Maybe in the dead of night, he struggled to sleep while going over and over his choice to invade a random Middle Eastern country, but he certainly didn’t show any evidence of uncertainty. “The Decider” often came off pugnacious and unreasonable, but no matter what you thought of him, you’ve got to give him credit for his decisiveness.

I do the same thing, or try to do so. When I make a decision, the decision is made and I don’t lose any sleep thinking about it. Second guessing does no good, just leaves one mired in “what ifs”. When Timmins bit Boy Z, there was only one course of action. Perhaps the most important job I’ve got as a father is to protect my sons and when Timmins attacked, Timmins had to go.

That doesn’t mean I enjoyed it. It’s not that I’m callous or that I reacted in anger. I was never angry at the dog. Even right after he bit Boy Z, my response wasn’t out of anger it was instinct. There were a lot of emotions rattling around – sadness, guilt, regret, relief – but none of them were anger. I loved that dog. He was a part of my family. He was so much a part of the last eight and a half years, so much a part of my life. Omnipresent, often stiflingly so – always making travel and housing more of a challenge. But his presence, was a grounding influence in what had been a volatile time in my life. I dragged Timmins over three different continents to give me some sense of constancy. Wherever in the world I was, if Timmins was there, I was home. ‘Constant as a Northern star.’

Those of you who aren’t dog owners may not understand all this wringing of hands and rending of garments and that’s fair enough. If I see a blog post in which one of the main characters is a cat, I usually move on. But those of you who are dog owners and those of you who have lost a dog know what I’m going through. Now that my extended family has gone back to Florida and we’re back home and back into the regularity of normal life, everything evokes the dog. The house still smells of him. Every time I walk out on the porch, I expect to hear the scrabbling noise of Timmins galloping up the stairs to greet me. And a little part of me dies when I don’t hear it. I listen expectantly for his whining howl to be fed when we’re making the popcorn at night. I miss the required walks – morning and evening, rain or shine. I tear up when I see clots of white hair in the nooks and crannies of our life.

I was going to use this post to eulogize my dog, but then I realized that I’ve already done it. More than once:

• A New Parade of Faith and Sparks
• Into the Valley of Death
• About A Dog
• Don’t You Know What They Put In It?
• Timmins vs British Fauna

I’ve said it all before and I don’t have the heart to say it all again. I miss him. I miss him like I lost a member of my family. And I did. No matter how many times I wake up, stumble into the kitchen to make my coffee and listen I’m never going to hear him whining and howling excitedly for his morning walk again. I know the dog shaped hole will eventually close up, but until then maybe you horrible little trolls could stay away from my site.

Rest in peace, you damn good dog.

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R.E.M.’s “Reckoning” is available from .

This post is Part 2 of a story I started yesterday. I can’t tell you what to do, but you’d be advised to read the first part first.

I’ve been going over the end of this story in my mind since last night and I realized that I stepped into a trap of my own design. I’m setting up Zelda as a femme fatale, which she absolutely was, but I’m not going to come off  well myself without some major historical revision. I like to keep these things as close to reality as my memory allows, which probably isn’t that close.

Before carrying on, there are some details to address. During the months of Zelda’s absence I had moved out of the four square into the gun cottage – I don’t know how she found out where I was living. At the haranguing of my friends, I had begun to ‘get over it’. I started dating again, using my coffee shop job as a personal dating agency. At the time of her unannounced return, in fact, I was dating a 19 year old sorority girl from South Carolina who looked and sounded a lot like Zelda without all the mystery, misery and annoying tendency to vanish.

I was bored.

But when Zelda turned up that night on my porch, I was a wiser man. I wasn’t going to be sucked back into a disastrous relationship. I would have that proffered drink (who was I to say no to a drink?) but that was it.

Let me quote from my diary at the time…

Back in my life, my bed, my heart is [Zelda]. Tall and beautiful and cold, she’s found a way to open my heart again. On a balmy winter night my bourbon soaked mind broke apart and gushed into her listening ears. So far, she’s been sweet. Her cold steel eyes are soft and inviting. She’s sane and easy.

I made her breakfast in bed the next morning. But still, I didn’t want to give up a healthy, albeit dull, relationship with a robust young South Carolinian for what I knew (somewhere in my reptile brain) was going to be pain and melodrama. Instead, I decided not to tell them about each other.

This was a manageable arrangement for a while. With Zelda, I went to gay bars and smoky basement clubs. With the sorority girl I went to formals and tailgates. There was never any reason for paths to cross. It went this way all through the winter and early spring – dating two girls, having my cake and eating it too.

There were moments – when my razor-sharp brain forgot which night I was meant to be with which girl. There was a Saturday lunch with Zelda, some friends and vodka martinis that got way out of hand.  We stumbled back to my place at about in the afternoon and collapsed into bed. There was a niggling memory in the back of my brain that the sorority girl was coming over for dinner and I couldn’t quite remember whether or not I had run interference of some sort. Zelda was out cold and I was…

I came to early Sunday morning with the crucifying headache that can only be caused by six or more martinis and a sense of something ominous in the room. I looked over and saw a tangled mess of curly mahogany hair, which could mean one of two women. A gently shove, a soft moan and I saw the softer features of the sorority girl. To this day, I don’t know where Zelda went or when. I guess that habit of vanishing wasn’t all bad after all.

All through these months, my friends were spending equal amounts of time laughing at my stories and warning me that it was an unsustainable situation. They all said the same thing – get rid of Zelda.

‘Are you still dating that crazy bitch from south Georgia?’

‘She’s just using you for a good time for a while, she’ll be gone again in a few months.’

‘What does she do, Chris? She doesn’t have a job. She doesn’t go to school. She just spends your money.’

As the spring got older, I was getting tired. I was at UGa full time, working full time and holding down two relationships. So, I finally made a decision.

I broke up with the sorority girl and invited Zelda to Florida for Spring Break. She was thrilled – a real vacation and for a while things were good. We started intermittently co-habitating – she moved clothes and makeup and that White Diamonds into my cottage.

After this decision, I was talking to a friend – a sweet little punk pixie from Savannah – who rang me up asking if I wanted to go out in Atlanta that night.I said no, that “I need to save momey for Florida. I need more than usual, because of Zelda and all.”

“No wonder she likes hanging out with you, Chris”, she spat back at me and rung off.

A week before the trip, on a Friday night, she wanted to go dance at the gay bar. I didn’t. The gay bar wasn’t that interesting to me. But I indulged the request and we were away. I sat at the bar drinking poofy drinks and watched Zelda dance with the queens. About 2, I was ready to go home. But Zelda wanted to go to an after party.

‘Just for a bit’, she soothed.

It had been a hellish week – exams, overtime at work and I demurred. “But, you’ll come back to my place after. Right.”

She kissed me deeply, gave me the full brunt of her cold grey eyes and said, “Just give me an hour and I’m all yours.”

I sat up drinking expectantly for an hour. Then drinking worriedly for another hour. Finally, I drank angrily until the sun came up. I threw all of her clothes and makeup into a garbage bag and put it at the end of my drive.

I was awoken at noon by the sound of broken glass and screaming. Zelda was systematically smashing my windows with a tire iron and screaming obscenities. I suggested that she fuck off and not come back. She expressed that she was perfectly fine with that and – breaking one last window on the way – fucked off.

By nightfall, she was back – composed and bearing a full bottle of Maker’s Mark, some clear plastic sheeting, a roll of duct tape and a bucketful of abashed contrition.

We went to Florida anyway. Me seething resentment through endless miles of south Georgia. Her sleeping. We took the long way down, stopping in Albany for a night to pick up camping gear from her mother’s house. I had visions, largely painted by Zelda, of a southern manor – all stately oaks and Greek columns. Her Mom lived in a double-wide on a half acre pine thicket outside of Albany. She chain smoked Virginia Slims, washed down Valium with Old Crow and spoke of lost beaus and phantom illnesses. Looking at her, I saw Zelda in a couple of decades and the artifice of the relationship that I had created.

We camped on St. George Island for a couple of days and then skirted the swampy armpit of Florida on the way down to Ybor City. By the time we arrived, I was done with the trip. I’d been driving for three days without any help from my passenger. She spent most of her time sleeping or bitching and I spent most of my time drinking and driving. Somewhere along that drive I had an epiphany. Again, from my diary at the time…

After meeting her Mom, I can’t fathom a long term relationship with [Zelda]. After this trip, I can’t imagine much of a short term.

I’ve never been very good at breaking up with people. That night in Ybor City we scored some coke, which she didn’t want to do, and hit the bars. Out of my mind on cocaine and rum punch, I decided that what was good for the goose was good for the gander. That night, I treated her the way that I perceived she had treated me throughout our intermittent relationship. I was cold. I flirted with other women. I danced half the night with a Cuban woman that couldn’t speak any English. When Zelda was ready to go, I tossed her a rolled twenty and told her to take a cab.

The trip back was even longer and dead silent. I pulled an all day drive and got us back to Athens just before midnight. She fell asleep on my couch as soon as we walked in the door and I left her there and went to bed.

The next morning, she and all her meager belongings were gone. Except for a note, scrawled in her manic, looping script.

“I know you don’t believe it, but I loved you. As much as I could.”

I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash.

That wasn’t enough then and it’s never been enough since.

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Image credits:

Femme Fatale I, II and III are by Karen Dupré. Images from art.com.

R.E.M.’s “Chronic Town/Dead Letter Office” is available from Amazon.

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Image credit:

Covington cemetery from the very talented Chad Purser.

Buy R.E.M.’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” from Amazon.

Annie Savoy: What do you believe in, then?
Crash Davis: Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.

I had intended to start yesterday’s post with a  kind of statement of things I believe strongly in, the point being that I did not want to argue about the merits of evolution again. A sort of personal manifesto. The post was getting fairly unwieldy, though, so I killed it.

But I’ve been coming back to the list since then and I actually like it a lot. NPR listeners may be familiar with one of my favorite of their programs, “This I Believe”, on which average people read an essay about their core beliefs. One of these days I’m going to write a proper “This I Believe” essay. But until then and with apologies to Edward R Murrow, Michael Stipe and Crash Davis, here is what I believe.

1. I believe in Karma, The Golden Rule, reaping what you sow, however you label it. You get back what you give out.
2. I believe that a civilized society has an obligation to look after its poor, its weak, its sick. I believe that, unfortunately, government is the only entity that is imparial enough to be capable of doing so.
3. I believe that through some bizarre twist of fate I’ve ended up with the most wonderful woman on the planet as a life partner and the mother of my child.
4. I believe that we can explain the incredible diversity of life on this planet without invoking the supernatural. I believe in Muller’s Ratchet, Mendel’s Laws, Occam’s Razor and Darwinian Evolution.
5. I believe that I am as happy as I make up my mind to be.
6. I believe that my son is as close to a perfect expression of humanity as you’re likely to find.
7. I believe that a world without music would be a world in which I would rather not live.
8. I believe in a personal god of my own understanding.
9. I believe that every person has a fundamental right to choose their own path in life. To make their own choices about their bodies, about where, how and if they worship, about what they read and say, about what they do behind the four walls of their home. I believe that their right to choose their own destiny stops when their fist hits my face.
10. I believe that it’s getting better all the time. A little better all the time.

And…

I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract
Explain the change, the difference between
What you want and what you need, there’s the key…

I believe my humor’s wearing thin
And change is what I believe in
I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe in…

I believe in example
I believe my throat hurts…

What do you believe?

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R.E.M.’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” is available from .

What better way to start of a Friday than this. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing and seeing Z laugh. Here’s hoping it’s always this easy…

R.E.M.’s essential “Murmur” is available from .

-R.E.M. – “Beat A Drum”

Time for the announcement of the winners in my Happy Blog-day contest. Dr. O’C has again drawn names from a hat (and again I have prevented her from cheating).  A drum roll please, Z.

Right, could be waiting a while for that. Whithout further ado, the winners are:

NATUI

Jessica and…

Jason

I’ve decided, however, that even the losers should get lucky sometimes – it’s the socialist in me. I can’t afford the postage to send everyone a CD, but I’m going to upload the playlist and the album art to a special secret place here on afreeman.org. If you didn’t win but still want the tunes, then shoot me an e-mail and I’ll send you the link and you can make your own “Best of afreeman.org” CD.

Brad, the mysterious winner of the Mono in VCF contest, hasn’t turned up to collect his prize. The fascist in me has decided that he has lost his chance and the winner is now Angel. Congratulations, there’s nothing wrong with second place.

OK, that’s not exclusively true – this guy was one of the biggest rock stars on the planet at the time, so flattery is an understatement. As for my heterosexual roots, I’m not sure how far my protestations and denials would have stretched.

I used to get teased incessantly by friends and co-workers about this incessantly. They would call me Mrs. Rock Star X, they would turn on some of his more suggestive songs as soon as he walked into the coffee shop and so on. One late Friday night I had been drinking in the way I drank, immoderately, at the bar next door. I stumbled over to the coffee shop to try and straighten up a bit. I came up to the counter and asked one of my coffee-slinging colleagues for a perk me up. My barrista buddy started giving me the business about my rock star paramour and, in a fit of frustrated drunken rage, I loudly proclaimed: “I will not fuck Rock Star X!”

The rest happened in slow motion. My friend’s face dropped and his eyes focused on a point behind me. I knew before I turned, but I turned anyway and saw not only Rock Star X, but his manager, lawyer, and another well known chanteuse of the day, let’s call her “Ophelia”. I couldn’t actually tell you the expressions on their faces as I was sprinting in shame out of the shop.

From that point on whenever Rock Star X came into the shop, I would dart to the back and swap with whoever was doing the dishes so I didn’t have to deal with my shame. I did that for months.

There’s a happy ending. One day, whilst I was washing the dishes, Rock Star X poked his head around the corner and said in his inimitable voice, “Hi Chris, long time no see. You OK?” That’s why I still buy their albums even though they haven’t done a great one since 1996.

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There is no point to this story other than to say that “New Adventures in Hi Fi”* is one of the all time best albums for travelers. It was written and recorded on the road and that sense of moving while standing still pervades the record. It is the perfect soundtrack for this drawn out circumnavigation. This morning, I woke up dying – in pain, voiceless except for the muscular contractions that forced out mucus and tore the lining of my throat. My slightly weakened physical state made my defenses just porous enough for that little germ called anxiety to slip in.

And, while my immune system is busy with other matters, that niggling anxiety has multiplied to full borne fear. If the truth be told, I am scared shitless. I mean what kind of idiot moves his family half way around the world with no job and no house. What kind of pater familias am I? Is this all going to crumble around us like an illusion? More importantly can I keep it together? It was one thing when I was flitting around the U.S. in a pick-up truck with a steamer trunk. Wandering the world with a family in tow – well that a whole different box of spiders.

“These corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet
Phone, eat it, drink
Just another chink
Cuts and dents, they catch the light
Aluminum, the weakest link…”

-R.E.M.* – “E-Bow The Letter”

R.E.M.’s essential “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” is available from and Amazon.

* This should not necessarily be taken to imply that Michael Stipe was Rock Star X. The pictures, of course, are just gratuitous showing off of my new toy.

Nick Drake – “Northern Sky”

This was meant to be a kind of flippant Tuesday post about berry picking, but as it’s a gloomy August day – British specialty – and I’m feeling a bit maudlin. I fear I may veer towards the emotional and confessional posts which I generally try and avoid.

As you can see from the pictures below we spent part of this past weekend picking raspberries in the mild August sun. Nothing particularly special, but a nice way to spend part of a Saturday and a good way to get Vitamin D flowing. Doing this reminded me of picking berries with our friends Alex and Nichole back in Missouri about five years ago. That’s the balance of the pictures in this post – amazing how much we age in five years – more me than the rest of them! Apparently at some point in your 30’s you start aging exponentially instead of linearly or maybe it just feels that way. We followed that blueberry picking expedition with a themed dinner menu with all dishes involving blueberries. (This was the heyday of “Iron Chef“) Nichole actually remembers the menu which speaks well to her memory. I was impressed that I could remember the dinner. At any rate just a nice moment in time to remember.

But then, Alex posted this story for his daughter’s 2nd birthday and started me into this whole spiral. I got to thinking about good friends and how they are such a rare commodity and a relationship that takes time to grow. I’m such a private person generally that it takes me a few years to really establish a good friendship with someone. Five years in Missouri meant that I had made some really great friends ones that I hated to leave behind. I remember when Dr O’C first moved to Missouri in 2001 she struggled and was unhappy because she didn’t have many friends. By the time we left in 2004, I think even she shed a tear or two for some of the good friends we were having to leave behind.

Leaving friends behind has been kind of a pattern for me – I’ve spent most of my life moving from place to place within a few years, a pattern that I think got established from early childhood. I was talking to my Dad over the weekend about just that. With a baby on the way I was fretting about getting geographically settled. When I was younger, because of the nature of my Dad’s job, we moved every few years New York to Canada to California back to New York and finally to Florida. I remember when we moved to Florida I was 10 and I hated it. I had started school and had good friends in New York. The people in north Florida talked funny and it was hot and I didn’t have any friends. I wanted the contentment that I had established in my ten year old mind in upstate New York. I eventually settled and made friends and did just fine but from the time I hit adulthood I went back to the nomadic lifestyle – South Carolina back to Florida to Washington to Georgia to Missouri to Britain. Always looking for that place where everything is going to be perfect…

Oxford was the latest move and it’s been good for what it was supposed to be good for – moving on in careers for both Dr O’C and I. We’ll have been here three years in October and I’ve started to make some good friends now. But as is the pattern, our time here is coming to an end in the next six months or so and it will be time for the next place. Always looking for that place where everything is going to be perfect. It’s only recently that I’ve realized that place can be wherever I and the people I love are – you make your own home. With our own family on the way – 36 days at last count – I think its time to settle, maybe not here, but somewhere and soon.

“It’s easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my proud
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out…”

R.E.M. – “Leaving New York”