I breathed powdered concrete today. In an office where we were doing an install, the frugal doctor was upset that his stained concrete reception countertop was not as smooth as marble or granite. I figure that if you want marble or granite, buy marble or granite. I don’t bitch when a lower quality facsimile isn’t as good as the original, but I guess people have different expectations.

So the doctor had his countertop guys out today grinding down the concrete and buffing it. All day, grinding, buffing. One guy had either a dremel or a sander interchangeably while his helper followed him around with a shop vac. He had the hose right up against the tool slowly creeping behind the sander as it buzzed finely pulverized concrete into the air. Only some of it went into that bellowing mechanical elephant, and the bits that did were mostly just blowing out the exhaust of the vacuum.

In the last two years of doing this job, I’ve been in crawlspaces that haven’t seen action in thirty years. I’ve crawled around in the ceiling of a hotel right behind, where they do all the washing, drying and folding of all the towels, sheets and uniforms, where lint stood three inches thick on the ceiling tiles making the space look like a Christmas display. I’ve crawled under buildings where I talk to the colonies of spiders and other bugs living down there. I’ve been in a number of new buildings where sawdust, drywall and concrete dust linger in a haze throughout the whole building.

Taking a shower when I got home, I was actually wondering what color my boogers would be. See, when you breathe in this stuff most of it gets trapped by your mucus. Anyone who’s ever been to a big dusty outdoor concert or sat around a campfire all night has probably noticed this. I was wondering, there in the shower, if this stained concrete dust would be anything but plain old grey black.

I also thought about where I grew up. I grew up right in the middle of no less than a dozen refineries (probably twenty or more of different sizes). My Dad worked in one. Most of my friend’s dads worked in one. Everyone saw them. You couldn’t miss the towers full of lights standing tall across the low coastal plain. When I was a kid, I imagined they were skyscrapers of Martian cities. These towers burned these huge flares to release pressure from gas buildup or something, and the jet of flame looked like it was ten stories tall. The sunsets were in Technicolor. It was like a classic Southwestern sunset, or the pictures in the brochures for an island getaway, but filtered through such a copious amount of chemicals that the colors stood out a little differently. The purples I remember the best, and sometimes, on certain days, you could almost swear there was a greenish tint to it.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with me pondering what color my boogers might be after breathing stained concrete dust all day. It was then that I realized not everyone is used to seeing what they breathe.

Excerpt from It Went Like This: Memoirs from the Future



"For our honeymoon, we went to the gardens in Paris to see their collection of plants that survived. There were all sorts of cacti and succulents, orchids and bromeliads. In the far back of the dome where there is less traffic, there is even a section housing all the plants that people considered weeds.

I liked this part the best actually. There was much more diversity in these tenacious little plants. Some were creeping vines and others spread out across their bed like a puddle of rounded leaves and purple flowers bubbling up from the ground. Floating through the air in this section was feathery seedpods and specks of pollen doing loopty loops in the eddies of passing tourists. My mom told me how they used to pick dandelions in their backyard and make a wish on them as they blew the seeds away from the stem.

Children helping spread the next generation by blowing wishes at these ‘weeds’ and fathers across the old suburban sprawls admonishing them for making their lawn care that much more difficult. As hard as people tried for years to get rid of dandelions, it seems strange to seem them in a display these days."

Excerpt from It Went Like This: Memoirs from the Future




"I was working at a Dairy Queen in Port Arthur, Texas when that first satellite came down. I went outside for a smoke break and was sitting on a milk crate next to the grease trap when I saw something lighting up the clouds, like a refinery flare. I walked out into the parking lot to see what it was. In a little break in the clouds, I saw a ball of fire streaking across the sky. I raced to my car for my camera and was able to snap a picture after it went right over, racing towards the horizon."

Excerpt from It Went Like This: Memoirs from the Future




"I nearly died from wasp stings when I was a kid. My hands and arms swoll up so much that they looked like engorged firehoses, even poking up and away from my body as if under pressure. I didn't recognize myself in a mirror with the fat cheeks and pinched slits for eyes. My throat constricted so much they had to put a tube down there so I could breathe. Even after all that, I kind of miss them now that they are gone."

Photo from Expedition to the Backyard
Braving the Boggy Creek

Once, in those lovely times of the early 90’s, I captured a quite large cockroach in my family’s kitchen.  I carefully grabbed the spiky squirming insect and upturned my hand to cover the mouth of an old Bell canning jar, but the bug would not climb down into its new home.  With a shake, it dropped down into the cool glass jar and I capped it.

            I watched the critter for a little bit and dropped some foods I though it might enjoy, like breadcrumbs, some grains of sugar, a bit of an apple and a few drops of water.  The cockroach was not concerned with the food at all.  It only sought to avoid the bright light of the kitchen and climbed into the lid of the jar, safely hidden in the shadows.  I dimmed the lights and continued to watch.  It climbed down and immediately began cleaning itself.  Apparently, I am the filthy creature.  Who knew? 

            I carried the jar around with me for a couple hours when I went out with my friends, then felt guilty for my abduction and experimentation.  I opened the jar and laid it on its side in a parking lot.  Carefully sorting out its environment, the cockroach crawled out of the jar and wandered over to me sitting on a nearby parking block.  I put my hand down and it climbed up and into my palm.  Seems I wasn’t so filthy after all.  I set it loose behind a fast-food chicken joint and went on with my evening thinking if a tiny biological machine like that is even capable of a spark of reason.  Do bugs just follow a program?

            I’ve always liked bugs and creepy crawly critters.  Always having been a champion of the underdog, I love the power that such tiny and harmless creatures have over us – the kings of the world.  They certainly have us outnumbered and a few of their brethren can kill or injure with but a prick of the skin, but we have feet and brains that come up with all manner of chemicals, sticky starvation traps and mechanical extermination devices.

            Cockroaches instill a particularly strong sense of disgust and fear.  It is interesting to note that they solely subsist on decaying organic matter; something modern humans are unparalleled at creating.  They have been around longer, but cockroaches have found a friend in humans.  Despite our attempts at insecticide, our activities, habitats and movements across this most insecure of planets has only helped them.  Cockroaches, like humans, are ridiculously adaptive, so take time to think of all our tiny cohabiters every now and then and resist the power trip to swat and smash.  Do it for me