Cross

When the number of American deaths in Iraq reached 3,000, a horrible round number, the death toll in the debacle soundly and unquestionably outnumbered -- arithmetically -- the loss of American life on September 11, 2001.

Again: The regime of the political and moral Right has now and forever surrendered more innocent life than had already been stolen.

Like these numbers, Reason itself has doubled over upon itself. So, too, my mind and my body.

You look great!

Look at you, how've you been?

Finally, I'm in Roger Clemens' shoes. Writing here (if once) after I said I wouldn't. Goes to show: We're making this up as we go along here, folks.

So. Wow. Posting an entry here while reclining in my bed makes the last eight-plus months vanish in a flash. Shocked may you be, I'm at ease. For me, eyeing this accumulation of letters not unlike snow falls midway between looking through a yearbook, or at pictures of an ex before burning them in a pot in your backyard. Strangely familiar -- without the pathos of nostalgia -- but mostly akin to travelling through time, into the sweet plushness of the real past, gigawatts all nonsense now.

Why the post? Damn it all! I've hit the mainstream!

In a sense. In the sense that my writing is no longer obsessive self-satisfying pleasure but at last meets the standards of another publishing mind, willing to see me naked.

To business: An old howlingman essay published under my new pen name, "Dan Mooney," can be found right now at a website called The Subway Chronicles. The essay itself is here: "Screwball Dialogue."

Oh, and more: A poem of mine (that is this writer with the Social Security Number, not so much this howlingman) showed up in a journal called Iambs and Trochees this past Spring 2006. The poem's called, "Sonnet," and it's gloriously meta and your kids will read it one day in an anthology, if poetry or reading are still taught twenty years from now. For the poem, there's no link to be found but think of what that says about its old-school ideals. Savory.

So, as old lovers, we've bumped in the night and so to the future. We'll meet again. Don't know where. Not sure when.

--mushroom clouds--

On With The Show

Dear Friends,

It is with sadness and tempered joy that I make the following announcement:

This is my final blog entry.

I’ve felt for some time that today, December 21st, the first day of winter, would be a most appropriate day to tie this off. Though it is the longest night of the year, and the weather will get colder before it gets warmer, the days get longer and brighter every day for the foreseeable future. An optimist’s delight.

A few logistical notes:

-The domain name “howlingman.com” is set to expire at the end of January 2006 and I do not plan to renew it. Access this page, if you do, at howlingman.blogspot.com. If you’d like to maintain a bookmark of this page for sentimental reasons, click on the link near the top of the sidebar to the left.

-I’ve set up an email list registration form over there to the left also. Put down your email address if you’d like to be notified at some point in the near or faraway future when and if I publish my writing anywhere else.

Now, there are several reasons why I have decided to close the parenthesis on this project. I’ll explain some or all of them to you now.

A few weeks ago, before the epic blog-play, I was reposting entries from my earlier blog into this one. As I copied and pasted the past into the present, I reread many of these entries and found them to be quite different from my more recent entries, over the last four months or so.

The biggest difference being: They were funny. Recently, not so much with the funny.

The acerbic, ranting, dismissive “howling man” spawned from a restlessness in my mind, a fatigue of academia, an oppressive Manhattan apartment and an upswell of emotion that carried me through the last six weeks of 2004. The persona was a frenzied bastard, part of me but not entirely or only me.

By Spring 2005, my entries were almost daily and lengthy, tackling grand social issues and phenomena while leaving the personal mostly out of it, unless including it spoke to a higher, more widely relevant truth. howlingman found his voice then. For any newcomers reading this, I feel that March, April, and May 2005 contain the best writing here.

By the late Summer, though, the persona began to slip. It might have been my moving out of Manhattan, it might have been anything. But the incisive anger that defined my earlier writing was no longer partitioned into a clever online persona. Instead, my anger became forced and not safely quarantined online but thoroughly my own. As if singing from my throat instead of my stomach, howlingman’s voice became hoarse and weak. My own personal voice, silkier and slightly whiny, was unable at that point to fill in admirably enough.

There were other affecting personal issues I need not mention except in their mellowing influence on me. In short, it became difficult to find things to be horribly angry about while grateful just to be young and alive and entirely too blessed for words.

My style changed. All styles change, but my tone shifted and was less outlaw than it was quirky. My edges rounded over and could dissect nothing but mundanities and warm butter.

When I finally reposted those early entries, the difference in quality became too obvious to ignore. It satisfies me, however, to realize that through all my delusions and powerful, denying imagination, I can still pick up on things –- even if it’s months too late and those things are too broken to fix.

My standards dropped; so, too, my chin. I’m a young writer, I know it all won’t be gold. But the passion also has to be there, as well as the love of writing for writing rather than for any other reason. For me, it wasn’t, at least not in this forum. The tail began wagging the dog. I became too wary of my plateaued success and not enough concerned about putting out the best material I could.

I wasn’t giving it my all, in my writing, nor in supporting the writings of my fellow bloggers.

Over the last three weeks, my Reckless Driving story has served as an undeclared wave of the hand to all my faithful readers. It happened before I ever started blogging, about a month before, and I am grateful to have it written and read and for me serves as a nice closer.

Maybe vanity rears its ugly head, but my creative output now is no longer the screams of a madman at whom I dare not laugh. I’ve outgrown my persona. Right now the voice is mine, and I’ll put my name on what I write, and I’ll be accountable for it.

I was the howlingman, but now I’m Dan.

Thank you so much all for reading, some for over a year now. Some of you are people I didn’t know personally, which has done wonders for my confidence as a writer and as a person. I appreciate all the time you’ve put in when I know you have important things to do. Thank you for reading when times were tough, and thank you even more for hoping for better and coming back. It has meant the world to me, because a blog without an audience is like a tree falling in the woods or even a lone wolf howling at a moon –- with no one around to hear it, you have to wonder if it makes a sound.

I’ll end it humbly like the rockstar I’ve always wanted to be:

Thanks a lot! Take care of yourselves and we’ll see ya next time!!

Act Five, Scene the Second (and Last)

Sometimes you know something is right even if it’s the opposite of what you were originally expecting. Those are good times.

Elaine was a pale and dainty woman, a beige coat offsetting her blonde hair and declaring a green scarf her ensemble’s lone source of striking color. Perhaps the palette veered toward the humble rather than the provocative, and that would be good for both of us.

We introduced ourselves.

Elaine told me the first thing to do would be to check in with the Court Clerk, to put my name on the list of people the judge would see that day, even though I didn’t have an appointment –- and to see what the hell went wrong with my postponement.

The Clerk’s office was a small room off the main waiting room, a square area packed with people, and which had seats that looked too much like the pews in a church for my embedded preference of separation of church and state. A line of people stretched around the outside of the room, all waiting to sign in with the Clerk. As we waited, an officer would occasionally yell a person’s name -- “Johnson!“ –- and then Johnson would go to her and the officer would say, “Go home!” and hand him a piece of paper. Not sure what this was about, but I likened it to getting a call from the Governor when the needle’s in your arm at 11:58pm.

The Clerk, he of the mighty responsibility of signing people in and setting court dates, was a squat fellow in a Jets hat.

Elaine and I approached the counter behind which he sat and we got my name on the list to bang this whole procedure out today, for goodness’ sake. Then, my attorney found out what happened with my warrant. “I spoke with someone from this office,” she said, “who allowed me to reschedule my client’s appearance here. I called back for weeks but couldn’t get in touch with him again. Yesterday, another representative told me the postponement never went through, and I’d like to know why.”

“It never went through,” said the Clerk, “because you can’t do that. Not in the Bronx. If you don’t show up at the time on your ticket, that’s it.”

I thought this little interaction which highlighted a certain negligence of county policy may have waived any future lawyer’s fees on my behalf.

We left the office and took seats in one of the furthest pews back. There, Elaine explained that at least in Manhattan, postponements are legal and occur often. Reminding her of our location would have been tacky, so I didn’t. But I also didn’t doubt her expertise; I was too busy hoping not to go to pound-me-in-the-ass prison to point out anyone’s educational gaps.

There were fifteen or so pews on each side of the room, separated by a small aisle down which no bride would be bombing. At the front, where the altar would be, was a pair of doors that hid the courtroom itself; only a few defendants and their attorneys were allowed in at a time. The rest waited, patiently or not.

Elaine explained to me the three possible outcomes of our proceedings behind those closed doors: 1) The case would be thrown out immediately with the judge meting out no punishment whatsoever; if not, 2) I would receive a “disorderly conduct” which would be less severe than the 3) misdemeanor Reckless Driving charge that would be on my record, along with the insurance rate hike and perhaps suspension of my driver’s license, depending how the judge felt about my 15-month prior speeding ticket (only 19 miles over the limit).

To me, the idealist, this system of punishment was too subjective and placed too much power in the hands of the judge. I was surprised that so many permutations could stem from one incident.

To me, the well-off graduate student, I applauded the human element that would have allowed the judge to look into my soulful eyes and see that I could afford a lawyer and am thus no real threat to society.

Most of the people in the waiting room didn’t have attorneys. Most of the people in there reacted to this like a healthy person taking a physical.

Because I did have a lawyer, I was allowed to go earlier than later, since lawyers cost money and we all had better places to be. So not long after Elaine explained what might happen, she walked into the courtroom and told me to wait for my name to be called.

I hadn’t even taken off my jacket by the time it was.

I felt slightly drunk in the courtroom, but I don’t know why. I also felt 12 feet tall and saw the world as if through a fishbowl. My lawyer was standing behind a podium past the three or four rows of seats in the room itself. Her coat was still on as well. A bailiff with wide eyes and dreadlocks asked me to have a place next to Elaine. I walked over and promptly thrust my hands into my coat pockets. The bailiff promptly yelled at me to get my hands out of my pockets, apparently to prove I wasn’t clutching a handgun or shank. Probably a good suggestion.

My head pulsed with anxiety and optimism, and couldn’t hear let alone understand anything that the judge said. Apparently he had looked over the testimony written by the original officer, the one who gave me the summons, while I was making my way into the courtroom. When I arrived, he never raised his head nor made eye contact with me as he reeled off his decision.

I don’t know what he said.

But I remember Elaine turning to me and saying, “That’s good.”

I nodded in unknowing agreement.

After Elaine said, “My client accepts,” I signed a form indicating as such. The deed done, I put my hands back in my pockets and the bailiff scolded me again.

Elaine and I left the courtroom and went over to the service window. I paid the court fee that was to be charged independent of the ruling. I was able to use a credit card, which was a lovely modern convenience.

Speaking of money -- two cents each from several acquaintances added up to a reasonable conclusion: the fact that I had an attorney eased my predicament. In the end, I think this situation turned out as it did because of the certain amount of money I poured back into the legal system. As long as I paid in one way or another, whether time or money directed in some governmental direction, it would be resolved in a relatively painless fashion.

On the long cold walk and longer, warmer subway ride to Union Square, Elaine and I discussed graduate school, my agenda for the next few months, the preparation for her original bar exam.

I forgave her the misunderstanding about the warrant being out for my arrest, even though, as she explained, I could have been arrested if pulled over while driving for something as simple as a broken taillight. Those tense moments when you’re in your car and the officer’s in his? If I’d been pulled over, they’d have done a check in that time and seen my warrant and brought me in. But no matter.

I never saw her again, but I was later sent a bill at what I assumed to be a highly discounted rate for her services.

When I arrived at Union Square, the cool sunlight hit my newly unburdened shoulders. I breathed deep and exhaled, the ordeal done.

After three months, a few scares, a few more hundred dollars, a Red Sox championship, two orange parking tickets, a pink summons that I still keep in the doubly appropriate American Idiot sleeve, two lawyers, a lunar eclipse and a head full of negative possibilities, the verdict had arrived in the matter of the People of the State of New York versus little ol’ me.

Bottom line, I didn’t need a judge to inform me that I conduct my life in a disorderly fashion.

Anyone who’s met me could tell me that.

Act Five, Scene the First

January 21st.

I opened my eyes to the staggered atonal din of three separate alarm clocks set for three different times. And no snoozing. Not that day.

I was to meet Elaine, incidentally for the first time, at the Criminal Court in the Bronx at 10 am. A subway ride on the 4 would take roughly 45 minutes from Union Square. I left at 8.

There was something about my being a graduate student listening to a new iPod on a Bronx-bound subway car to face a misdemeanor reckless driving charge brought about in a vehicle not technically belong to me that, then as now, embarrassed me as I realize precisely how rottenly spoiled I am.

I arrived at 161st Street in plenty of time for a change, and rather awestruck at the area that unfolded towards the horizon. Freed from Manhattan’s skyline, the morning sun no longer needed to hide behind buildings for warmth or any other reason; it braved the elements and made its slow escalator ride as any dutiful party would.

The largest building in sight had no visible address but had the columns and carved noble aphorisms of a courthouse. The pride I felt in our American legal system was soon mashed into a pulp by the pink summons I held in gloved hand. Live by the sword, die like a fucking mosquito in a washing machine.

I walked as legally as possible through the revolving doors that kept the cold air out and the justice toasty and fresh.

Approaching the metal detector, the hundreds of dollars of electronics on me, the timekeeper that enslaves my day, the tunebox that fills my ears and subtracts a sense, all, all were tossed into a plastic shoebin that earlier had surely held the personal effects of criminals and judges alike.

I retrieved the summons and confirmed with a guard that this was indeed the Bronx Criminal Court.

Only it wasn’t.

I slouched across the street to the criminal courthouse that looked as if a public library in a strip mall or a dwarf stripper – you don’t quite believe your eyes but can only accept the reality of the situation.

The building, lacking the dignified columns of its neighbor, was an ordinary white box that inside held an array of ramps, glass partitions, staircases, velvet ropes, and criminals. As a white male with a maroon scarf, a brown imitation pea coat and a high center of gravity, I marveled at the calmness with which most of my counterparts approached their impending judgments. Perhaps some were repeat offenders and had grown accustomed to the procedure; some others were as disinterested in a courthouse as they were in the outside world, where citations are handed out for certain behaviors. Some just knew they did it and didn’t dwell like some overeducated occasional depressive might. Some knew each other.

I crossed through the metal detector once more – their safety ensured – and entered the waiting area at just a few minutes before 10.

A carnation in my lapel was the missing part that would have completed the blind date scenario. Elaine knew my description so she could spot me, but I didn’t really know hers. For no particular reason I imagined her with dark hair and a no-nonsense look, larger than not with a face slightly wrinkled from sternness, not smiles.

I knew it was her when I saw her.

Act Four, Scene the Third

January 20th is typically a shitty day for me.

Because if something shitty isn't happening, I'm remembering something shitty that has already happened.

Sobby backstory, I got my heart broke twice on that date over the years - once my own doing, once very not. I wasn't cynical before then, so maybe it's better this way.

Behold the power of the anniversary.

January 20th was a Thursday, towards the end of the month. I was expecting an update from my attorney about when we'd be movin' on up to the way way Upper East side, to the Criminal Court in the Bronx. The earlier possible court date, the 28th, was just over a week away; I was getting antsy to have this over with already before it really started to cripple my daily life.

My phone beeped a tuneless tune. Caller ID introduced Elaine Gillies and I was eager to find out what she knew.

"Dan, we have a bit of a problem."

Hip-hip. Hooray.

"Okay."

"I've been calling the Court Clerk every day for the last three weeks to get in touch with him, but haven't been able to. But I finally got through today, and I received some bad news."

Bad news? No biggy. It was January 20th. It was always January 20th. The nightmare of the day was self-created and therefore entirely justified and rationalized to the point of palatability. Bring it on.

"For whatever reason, the court dates I was originally told won't be acceptable..."

---here her words entered a legal haze through which only truly pertinent ones would shine---



"...there's a warrant out for your arrest."



I flashed back to October 27th:

"...giving you a summons...date at the top...go to court...show up or there will be a warrant out..."

and January 4th -- "I should have been in court today..."

until my daydreaming was curtailed by my attorney's final suggestion:

"We should go to the Bronx as soon as possible, early tomorrow morning, to get this taken care of."

Elaine, you read my mind.

Act Four, Scene the Second

Elaine did call me back.

She had heard from the Clerk.

She was able to postpone our -- my -- appearance until one of two dates: January 28th or February 4th. The long time waiting, which had already racked itself up to two and a half months, would be more than three when all was said and done. I could expect another expository phone call at the end of the month.

The original date on the summons was January 4th--

I suddenly remember and also appreciate what the officer might have done that synchronous night: Delayed the appearance from October until the semester break, since when he asked me what I was doing in the Bronx, I said I was a student at Fordham.

The 4th was a Tuesday. I think I slept in that day, probably went over to a diner to get a bacon omelette and as many cups of coffee as my jittery hands wouldn't spill. A little investigating has proven that I did blog early in the morning of the 4th, so my estimate of sleeping in is probably quite accurate.

I was able to take 'er easy because my graduate coursework was done; no more trips from the East Village to the Bronx would be called for. Preparation for the culminating comprehensive essay test could be done anywhere.

I would become an idler, a rebel without a cause for getting up in the morning. All that lay on my agenda for the next three months was a court date I didn't have to worry about, a new part-time gig scorekeeping basketball games, and a list of books, plays and poems that I would have to know frontwards and sideways by the first week of April.

I remember thinking to myself that night, "If things had turned out differently, I would have been in court today -- I should have been in court today. Funny."

Act Four, Scene the First

I had a name: Elaine Gillies.

It being the end of October, I also had just over two months until my January 4th, 9:30 am appearance at Criminal Court in the Bronx.

Criminal Court, you say? Why not Traffic Court, you ask? Well, Reckless Driving is not only a traffic offense but a criminal one and a misdemeanor, if I were convicted.

That last dependent clause there, "if I were convicted," and its absurdity succinctly summarizes my feelings towards the summons; that is, this whole situation is fucking nuts and I don't want to think about it.

So I didn't, until after Christmas.

I was still in graduate school at the time, so I was under a ton of feathers' worth of pressure to get my books read and papers done. By the time the semester finished, it was the week before Christmas, and like hell if I was going to be retaining attorneys when I should have been hanging stockings by fucking chimneys with goddamned care.

Right about a week before my hot court date, I looked up the lady's phone number on the Internet -- yet another phrase I'd gladly never type again. I knew she knew the suited lawyer, so I had an in. No need to be anxious. We're grownups, here.

I waited a day.

Two days later I girded up my loins and plunked her digits onto my cell phone. Like a breath of fresh air, her voicemail message wafted across my head.

"Ms. Gillies, my name is blah-blah and I was recommended to you by 'a guy in a suit' who I met at a bar..."

Silky smooth. But she actually called back, wanting to help a friend of a friend and also having sniffed out a paycheck. She asked me if I was from out of town, since I'd met her friend at a bar. I didn't know what she meant by that. Anyway, salutations aside, it was only a few days before my court date, but I didn't consider that maybe Elaine would have other plans...why didn't I call sooner?? Maybe she was waiting for me to call. I just don't know. And she didn't either, so she would have to call back.

When she did, she told me she had other plans. My heart sank.

BUT: Luckily, though, things COULD take care of themselves. In my case, since she, my attorney -- who I never actually retained but sort of retained herself to me -- would not be able to make it to court at my scheduled time, the entire ordeal could be pushed back to a later date when she would be available, allowing a stay of execution for our little white blogger originally from the suburbs.

She said she'd call me back again when she had received more information from the Court Clerk.

Act Three, Scene the Third

I must not have heard my phone ring while half the bar and I were swearing with teenage glee at the broken Curse.

I suppose I haven't yet mentioned that while not an outright Red Sox fan, rather a Mets fan, I did 1) go to school in Boston 2) regularly associate with Red Sox fans and 3) despise everything the Yankees stood for; so I rooted for the Sox in the playoffs and was happy for them when they won. Living vicariously through other people still counts as living, people. Remember that--

I got the voicemail when the message buzzed in my pocket. It was my dad calling to share the celebration.

So I called him back, and it was superb to behold.

I then called my friends "M" and "S" of earlier howlingman celebrity.

At that point in the night, I was ready just to experience some of the wonders of the universe, let them absorb into my cynical being, instead of conversing about them, deconstructing them, as I had with the lawyer earlier on.

Wow. Now, I could just have written, "the rest of evening was about appreciating rightness," but really, the entire evening was about that. Not getting into a car accident, staking a claim in future literary success, conversing with insightful strangers, having some beers and letting so much of the bullshit slide.

Appreciation and learning, and learning to appreciate.

In that vein -- I have a habit of asking successful people for advice. Sometimes more specific than others, depending on profession, but I always try to glean a proverb or a single nugget of wisdom that I can add to my cosmic brew to make it fantastic--

So: After the game, night winding down, I asked the lawyer two questions; one practical, one existential.

The first involved my summons for Reckless Driving. In narrative time, the summons was handed out five hours earlier. Since he was a lawyer, too oddly perfect in itself, I figured he'd have some information for me; I wasn't looking to retain him right then and there, but wanted to ask if a lawyer would be necessary even, and if so, if he could recommend one.

"Elaine Gillies"

Alrighty. Elaine Gillies (names have been changed). Easy enough.

"Tell her you met me at a bar, she'll be real surprised."

The lawyer was a self-deprecating wit.

But he was also wise.

Right before I left to get home, to enjoy the moment and then to get some sleep to sleep off the powerful emotions of the day, I asked him for a bit of wisdom.

He took my head in his hands -- I was drunk enough not to think he was attacking me -- and directed my sight upwards towards the sky. He pointed at the moon and I stared at it.

"Elves and dragons."

Act Three, Scene the Second

After the box of chicken, the first thing I noticed about this gentleman sitting next to me was his suit: It was a Wednesday night and I had him pegged as a businessman. He wouldn't have been out of place fifty years earlier, if he had a hat, I mean; one of the Nighthawks, maybe. He also drank beer out of a wine glass, and seemed to know the bartender. He was a local and a regular, and if he were an alcoholic, he'd be a classy one for sure.

I started making drunken conversation about how eventful that night could be, not even mentioning my traffic incident. What with the total eclipse and the closeness of the Red Sox, that's conversation enough for anyone. I may have leaned too hard on the magical components of the evening, getting too philosophical too soon -- I'm an emotional whore and you know it.

So the suit did me one better and took things up a notch:

"Do you believe in Elves and Dragons?"

Psshhht. Mayday! Can you read me? Over.

I thought about the question for a second and when I started my answer with "Well..." he summarily dismissed it. For that matter, I don't even think he cared that I took a class on J.R.R. Tolkien while in college.

Beers later, I was giving him my autograph and promising him I'd be famous. I'd send him the link for this blog if I knew his email address and wanted to humiliate myself.

We eventually introduced ourselves, but I won't share his name. Not important to you, I don't think.

Game Four continued and was less an exciting back-and-forth battle than a comfortably tense exercise where the Red Sox held the lead throughout.

No -- that's hindsight rubbing the edges off the memory. The buildup was enormous and all I could do was drink and converse and occasionally step outside to see the eclipse.

Which came full late in the evening. Beautiful.

The suit asked me what I did -- for a living, if you could call it that. I told him I was a graduate student. I asked him, too.

"By night, I'm an old drunk."

We laughed smilingly.

"As a day job, I'm a lawyer."

Now, I have to admit, I forget if it was before or after this statement that the lawyer asked me my biggest fear, I started bawling and then asked him if he were God. I should have kept better notes.

But in the grand, infinite scheme of things, it was only a moment later that the Red Sox finally won the World Series.

As Renteria grounded back to Foulke, who tossed to Mientkiewicz, who still hasn't let go of the ball, all I could do was forget my troubles and stand up and grab hold of my hair and repeat variations of:

"OH MY GOD! OH MY FUCKING GOD!"