Geiger Counter

The Lost World   When I lived in New Jersey, I worked seven-days-a-week at the Philadelphia Zoo. Each morning I would rise at 5, then scramble to be out the door by 5:30, so I could walk, take a train, and ride two busses and get to work on time. In our little, third-floor apartment, everything was miniature, and you could hear the strange neighbors living strange lives just a few feet away. Outside, I often met a one-legged duck, who I had named Herman, and we would enjoy a few shared moments and a little bread before I embarked on my morning trek.  Herman was great at flying, but absolutely terrible at landing. He wasn’t great at taking off, come to think of it. It’s difficult to pick up enough speed while hopping along on one leg. When he descended from the sky, he had to either land on the water, or simply crash into the ground. Popping up, like an old memory, a few moments later.  Before I headed out the door on those mornings, I used to turn on the TV while I was getting ready, throwing away beer cans and putting on my khaki pants, muck-crusted workbooks, purple zoo shirt and tan safari hat. On the screen would appear “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.” It was almost surely the worst program ever produced. Even saying it was produced seems overly generous. It seemed more like a van carrying the ingredients that usually make a TV show (cameras, makeup, props and beautiful, insecure people) had crashed on the side of a highway, someone had filmed it, and this show was the result.  It was loosely – I might even venture to say baggily – based upon a book of the same name by the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes, who incidentally looked like a Walrus, or in other words a slightly skinnier Andy Reid. It was loosely based on the book in the same sense that Spam is loosely based on a pig. A lot had transpired getting from the source material to the finished product.  I really enjoyed the show. It was vaguely steam-punkish. People wore lots of Khaki (just like me!) often flubbed their dialogue (just like me!) and seemed genuinely confused by their surroundings (again, just like me!). There were sometimes dinosaurs, often ape people, and the characters and plots seemed like they had been generated by a computer algorithm that spit out clichéd ideas at an impressive rate. The general idea was that these people had gone out into a strange world; a jungle that was wild and impossible to predict or understand. The sets didn’t look like something from an Indiana Jones movie – they looked like something from a budget-brand, unlicensed Indiana Jones theme park. Every rock was clearly made of paper mâché, which begged the question why it wasn’t cheaper to just film real rocks, which are usually free or at least very cheap to look at, rather than make their own.  It was a strange but enchanting world.  It was my favorite thing. Not because it was good. And not because I’m one of those hipsters who “like” bad things ironically. No. I liked it because I had to leave. I had to go to work. I liked it because all I really wanted was to pour a big bowl of cereal, plop down on the couch, and enjoy a terrible show that let my mind and legs rest.  I didn’t even dislike my job. I loved the animals and people I worked with, in that order, but it was the act of going out into the world that so often felt like a bit too much each morning. I had to make my way through a city of 1.5 million people, through stinky train cars and over gooey streets, between food carts, past the Rocky museum steps (they had other things inside the building, too) to a place where orangutans, lions and elephants lived. It was a jungle out there, wild and impossible to predict or understand.  A couple years later, I remember being asked to read something special at my friend’s wedding and working endlessly to craft something that would both move and amuse the motley assortment of friends and family there that day. I even practiced reading it ahead of time, and I’m someone who generally thinks practice and preparation are things done only by cowards.  When the big day came, and we all posed for photos then lined up on a bright summer lawn in Massachusetts, I walked up front and began reading. A few words in, a massive airplane began a very slow, very loud descent toward Logan Airport, seemingly five or six feet above my head. As the rumble of its engine waned, another took its place, and I watched as the audience looked on with blank faces as I stood before them and mouthed words that were completely washed from the face of the earth by the engines. I started frantically giving visual cues, like a sweaty-toothed madman playing a drunken game of charades in a tuxedo. I pointed at the various people about whom I had carefully prepared zingers, making a “gotcha” face and smiling good naturedly to indicate to them that my jests were all in good fun.  Things got weird when I told a joke about a pack of wolves and, very briefly, tried to indicate the subject matter to my audience through mimicry. Alas, even my howls were completely overshadowed by the airplanes.  The planes departed just as I finished, leaving a moment of silence during which I heard a feeble smattering of baffled claps. It was fine. I actually didn’t approve of the union, to begin with. I liked both the bride and the groom fine on their own, but I had previously lived with them for a time, and I found their bickering exasperating. I had been single, so it was easy for me to judge their squabbles.  “I never fight with anyone,” I had thought, not fully understanding that there was not, at the time, anyone in my life who cared about me enough to argue with me. It’s easy to do what you want without repercussions when you are profoundly unloved.   After the wedding, I flew home to Wisconsin. A few days later, the groom called me. “Hey, how’s married life?” I said.  “That’s what I called to tell you,” he replied. “We split up. I’m sleeping at a hotel. We’re getting the marriage annulled.” “Oh, good,” I said. “You two were all wrong for each other, anyway. You’ll be much happier apart.” “Matt!” he jumped in. “Things are fine. We’re still on our honeymoon. I was kidding!” Now, here was one of those thorny situations I sometimes find myself in, obviously through no fault of my own. It seems life sometimes thrusts me into tough conversational patches, where the wrong words or even the wrong interpretation of the right words can cause the ground to plummet from beneath my feet. “Matt, are you still there?” he said to me. “I said I was kidding.” “And so was I!” I replied. “So was I. You guys are great for each other. How’s the honeymoon going?” What’s strange about this memory is that it is from 10 years ago, and I hadn’t thought of it in nearly that long. Then, while driving on an icy road the other day, going from one interview to the next, it suddenly popped into my head. This happens a lot, these days. Old faces, names, events and feelings rise back up from the depths of my memory, leaping past current thoughts and experiences, and suddenly, for no discernable reason, confronting me.  A one-legged duck who probably long-ago died of old age or a particularly bad crash landing. Crowded city busses. Outdoor weddings and awkward phone conversations. It goes on and on. I’m starting to realize that memory is simply a numbers game. When you are very young, you have barely any memories, and no old ones. Everything you think of is fresh and new. But as time passes, the ideas, recollections and emotions that fill your mind grow in number, and eventually there are far more old ones than new. And on you go, flubbing dialogue, genuinely confused by your surroundings, as you flip on the TV and brace yourself for another day in a strange yet enchanting world.