It Fell Out of the Sky

This is a very short story about a personal mystery.
 Perhaps science or the fertile imagination of one our readers can propose a credible explanation...

This took place on Sunday afternoon (on the day that something important happened in the news & I don't know what it was) my wife was walking out of a coffee shop with a latte in her hand.

The weather was overcast, cold, and dreary.

Although it was hardly pleasant to be outdoors, this sort of weather was actually a welcome break from the high temperatures and the roaring wildfires we've seen ripping across the parched land all spring.

And my wife was thinking, "Oh, it's starting to rain again," and she thought she felt okay about it even as the wind was driving moisture into her face.

Then she looked down. At her cup of coffee. At her black shoes. She saw something that looked out of place.

Little pink dots.

She started running toward her parked car.

Our car and all the cars nearby were covered with it. Since our car is black it showed up very well, just as it did on her shoes. And on her jacket. And in her hair.

Little pink dots.

She looked down at her shoes. They looked like they had been
sprayed with this stuff...whatever it was.

Freak Occurrence?
So my wife called me and said, "Something creepy just happened." I quizzed her over the phone and I couldn't really understand.

I said, "Stay there. I'm coming." I was thinking she might have been caught up in a drifting cloud of paint. Some kind of industrial accident might have blown in with the wind.

I reached our car where it was parked in the lot. It looked absurd. From bumper to bumper it was confettied with the pink dots. (I wish I had taken a picture.) I looked around and I could see some other cars that were covered, but the phenomenon appeared to be localized.

It was too windy and cold to investigate further. Instead, I got inside and drove to a 24/7 car wash. Everything washed off and the pristine black paint surface returned.

I was left with a mystery.

The pink dots covered the lid of the cup containing my wife's latte.

What Was It? Someone Please Tell Me...
Strange things have been known to fall out of the sky. Parts of aircraft. Old space vehicles that have only partially burned up as they've fallen out of orbit and re-entered the atmosphere. Celestial objects like heavy, slaggish chunks of asteroids or meteors.

In this part of the world it has even at times rained mud.



Look at these dots closely. Does this look like mud?

That's right. High winds, of which we have plenty, stir the drought stricken fields (and we have plenty of drought, too) and they carry the top soil high into the air. Eventually the dirt mixes with a rain cloud.

A filthy rain then falls. I've seen this rare event a couple of times. Everything on the ground is covered with the splashes of mud.

But I've never seen pink mud. And I've never seen the muddy rain form itself into such tiny dots that look like they've been sprayed on rather than have fallen to the ground.

Even if one were to grant that dirt could be pink, the dots don't look like granules suspended in water. They're solid and have a semi-gloss sheen.

My wife used the word "creepy" and I have to concur. This stuff fell out of the sky, but one thing I'm sure of: it doesn't belong in the sky.

Does anyone have any idea what the pink dots could be? Do you want to share with me your best guess? - V.W.

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Sigmund Freud and Dreaming the News

One thing that has surprised me about this project was how initially it wasn't so difficult.
I turned off the TV, I kept newspapers at a distance, I drastically limited the websites I visited, and I began to live in blissful ignorance.

The key word in the last sentence is "initially."

Lately it's been extremely hard to go on this way. Not knowing can start to feel like not living.

Out in my garage there are two stacks which consist of saved copies of the local daily newspaper alongside the New York Times. These stacks are growing noticeably taller.



The unread newspapers archived in my garage are approaching 16" in height.


Standing there in with my feet on the concrete floor of the garage it occurs to me that most of the stories and facts embedded in that paper pile are also stored up in my fellow humans' minds in the form of memories. But not mine. Like an amnesiac, part of my brain is empty.

Well, that's not quite right. The amnesiac once knew, then his mind went blank. I'm more like someone who has been a castaway on an island and never received word of anything at all.

Not even a message in a bottle.

Not So Sweet Dreams Are Made of These...
As I've stated many times to various persons, the purpose of this project is for me to see if I can live a "normal" life while not knowing what's going on in the larger world. I'm starting to wonder these days.

Does it count as normal if I have disturbing dreams about the news?

Let me venture a guess. No.

What follows is probably not the kind of thing the rest of you are dreaming about. But just to make sure, I've brought along a special person, a notable expert in this field, to weigh in on the matter.

Introducing Our Mystery Guest
Having made his mark a long time ago in the practice of psychology, a branch of which he can be said to have invented, our guest at The Van Winkle Project today is a man who truly needs no introduction. So I won't take up much of our time or his with that.

It should be noted though, that at this point, he is 154 years old. For that reason he doesn't get around much these days, which is another reason for both of us to be brief. At that age he's a bit fragile and it's difficult for him to speak at length. Frankly, he'd rather sleep.

So, without further delay, I would like to introduce two of Van Winkle's recent dreams with a guest interpretation, which will be delivered by none other than Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, Austria.

Dream #1: The Weapons of War Run Amok

I don't know how I got here. Out in nature. In the woods. Crazy thing! I see an U.S. Army tank clanking along. It's not supposed to be here. This is American soil. No orders have been given. Somehow I know that the tank has been hijacked by a veteran of the Afghanistan war who upon returning home has gone berserk.

There seems to be an Army tank in my dream...

I find myself looking down. From a bird's-eye point of view...

The tank is going around and around  in circles and knocking over trees with insane abandon...

Eventually the tank crashes through the forest, toppling more trees than I can count and it emerges from the woods to be met by a crowd of irate citizens. As the soldier climbs out of the tank they are shouting at him angrily.

"Why don't you go back and fix the forest!"

What I Thought the Dream Meant:

What on earth is going on in Afghanistan? The last time I had news of the war it was September and things were not going well. Some might have said we were just going in circles, chasing the Taliban and the Taliban cleverly running away from us.

And there is the ongoing problem of the living casualties of that war, those who serve and then come home and find the emotional trauma of war keeps them from living the way they wish, as if the legacy of this war is some awful dark force has that has hijacked their lives...

Dr. Freud's Analysis:

Wrong! Clearly this dream has nothing to do with the country of Afghanistan or geopolitical events. It is about Mr. Van Winkle's own life and story. He feels he is going in circles. He believes himself to have a certain power, symbolized by the canon in the tank, but he is unable to take aim and ignite his powder so to speak.

He also feels that in his being lost in the woods that he is harming others. These are the trees that he knocks down. In the end he thinks he will be held accountable for his failures. He will receive the disapprobation of others who will demand that he go back and do the impossible, fix the forest, i.e., live his life over again without such gross mistakes.

Dream #2: The Doomsday Scenario

I am bicycling along leafy neighborhoods in Washington D.C. Eventually the street I am on leads to wider lanes, bustling traffic, the appearance of buildings set on city blocks. Up ahead of me many policemen are waving at cars and me that we cannot go ahead. We will have to turn right as part of a detour.

That's when I see it in the near distance.

The U.S. Capitol building. It looks like this.


I can't believe what I'm seeing...

My immediate feeling is that the burning Capitol is not the result of a terrorist attack. I have a disturbing sense that an angry mob is nearby. Possibly there has been some kind of coup d'etat and the U.S. Government has been overthrown.

Stunned, aghast, I pedal away. As fast as I can...

What I Thought the Dream Meant:

When I went to "sleep" the nation seemed very divided and many people were angry. All the talk was of the mid-term elections and the Tea Party movement.

This dream seems to take my uneasiness to a hyperbolic dimension in which the competing points of views and parties become so polarized that in their divisiveness they ultimately destroy our government. "A house divided cannot stand," said Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps I am imagining not the literal demise of the buildings and organs of government, but the government's eventual inability to function in anything resembling an effective fashion.

Dr. Freud's Analysis:

Das ist unglaublich falsch! You mustn't think of the U.S. Capitol building! The U.S. Government. Think of you!

What appears as stones in the dream is really flesh and blood. You are like that burning building, you follow? These days you feel uncomfortable, as if smoke is pouring out of you. Who has done this thing? You have no idea. All you know at your deepest level of the unconscious is that you are monumentally upset.


So Who is Right? Freud or V.W.?
What am I going to say? You ask an honest question, you get an honest answer. I believe my dreams are a direction reflection of how my lack of news weighs heavily on my mind, no matter how cavalier I may act about it during certain waking moments. This not knowing leads me to imagine the worst.

Ignorance, it turns out, dwells just the other side of nightmare.

Of course, that could be a surplus of paranoia in me speaking, a word that Dr. Freud had plenty to say about. The important thing is this: While I'm sure some dreams can be profitably re-narrated to conform to a symbolic interpretation of them, I don't think this is always appropriate. Sometimes as the good Doctor himself said, "A cigar is just a cigar" and I would add a tank is a tank and a Capitol building is a building.

I may find a way to stop going around in circles in my life, but I don't expect these kinds of dreams to cease until I "wake up" on Sept. 11, 2011. - V.W.

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Monsieur Van Winkle's Comedies


NEWS NOTE: This week, while driving our son to school, I've seen all the flags at half mast. In keeping with the goals of this project, I still do not know why. I can say, however, that it is disturbing. What exactly has someone done that leaves so many mourning? - V.W.

 





 

Buy these at Masks-Wigs-Costumes.com


In in lieu of keeping up with the news, I've lately been looking at the three-line news items that the Frenchman Felix Fénéon supplied to the Paris newspaper Le Matin in 1906. [See my post of January 11.]

These acts of brief reportage were called faits-divers and were collected in a volume, Novels in Three Lines, brought out by New York Review Books in 2007 .

I find Feneon's fait-divers not only historically interesting for what they reveal about early 20th Century life, but they are also prized specimens of a minimalist, modernist style in which a few, well chosen words are used to create maximum effect. At their best, they're like miniature poems in prose.

I noted, however, that what the newspaper considered newsworthy was (and this is still, for the most part, true today in our news media) invariably tragic. Sometimes the story told in ink is decidedly gruesome:

A corpse floated downstream. A sailor fished it out at Boulogne. No identification; a pearl-gray suit; about 65 years old.

Another Kind of Fait-Divers
Here at The Van Winkle Project, since we have no access to real news, we're not too shy to make up some of our own. In fact, we have decided it might be interesting to share a 21st Century version of faits-divers.

These updates of Fénéon's little three-line items are intended to deliberately reverse the original formulation. Instead of taking the view that the only news worth hearing about is tragic in nature, our fabricated news imagines a world in which sometimes things work out otherwise.

What follows then are possibly happy, maybe even dumbly sublime, outcomes, i.e., comedies, that likely will never be reported in either the print or electronic media if for no other reason than they never actually occurred.

But does this mean they're not worth reading? Perhaps even worth trying to believe in as we make our way through a world that too often seems darker than the one we wish for?

Without wanting to come off as a total naif, I dare to believe in the idea that because there are so many shadows, surely there must be shining somewhere a source of light. How else can the shadows we find all around us even be possible if there is not somewhere some semblance of light trying to break through?

Eight News Stories I'd Like to Read in Three* Lines
*or slightly more

1...


A father of four driving home on the Interstate. After midnight. An oncoming 18-wheeler drifting toward him, but then it moves back just in time and rushes on past.

2...

A little girl’s chocolate ice cream cone dripped onto her new sun dress. She laughed. Her mother would forgive her, wash the dress, and besides, the ice cream tasted so good on a hot day sitting outside on the porch with her bare feet touching concrete.

3...

The blind man did not receive sight. Instead he dressed up, attended a party where he met a beautiful woman. She took him by the hand onto the terrace and there, beside a terra cotta planter, she kissed him because she had always wanted her lips to touch those of a man who had no idea what she looked like.

4...

The woman made a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, then she lost herself in the living room reading a home decorating magazine. A half hour went by, fifteen minutes, another five, and she realized she had forgotten to set the oven timer. She ran to the kitchen, opened the oven door, and took out the tray of cookies, which somehow, some way, emerged perfectly golden, nothing short of a miracle, and like all such things utterly inexplicable and delicious.

5...

The wind blew the dark clouds in so that the rain fell on the northern part of our city but not the south. In the north they parted curtains and looked out spattered windows. In the south they stood barefoot in the streets, looking at dark hooves running over the sky and then they began playing music and dancing.

6...

Rostikof and Dewey argued about God endlessly, Rostikoff a believer in the glories of Jehovah, Dewey, a virulent atheist. One day Dewey burst out that the two of them were getting old, but he hoped to hell there was a heaven so that someday they might continue their argument which gave them such pleasure without ever quite coming to blows. Both men laughed at Dewey’s contradictory vision, praised the wine, opened another bottle, and set to arguing again.

7...

The next door neighbor's dog started barking at three a.m. awaking the middle-aged couple. They lay there in bed listening to the dog provoke another neighbor’s dog and another dog, each taking up the barking which soon became baying and howling around the block, an unrestrained canine symphony. Then he reached out, she reached out, they found each other, and as they filled the room with their own tactile music they heard the dogs no more.

8...

A man picked up an orange and held the fruit in his hand, offering it to his eyes and nose, and for a few moments he knew, as a poet knows, that he would never grasp anything more monumentally, convincingly, lavishly orange. Then he ate it and went on his way.


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So Sorry You're Sorry, My Dears

I’m trying to solve a major mystery. Why are so many women around here apologizing?

It’s been going on for years, I now realize, but only lately have I become aware. Perhaps because being Van Winkled means I’m not looking at the covers of People, US, O, and other entertainment and celebrity round-ups in the checkout line I find my thoughts lingering upon other aspects of ye olde supermarket.

Such as what happens back in the aisles whenever I move my steel cart along, flinging odds and ends into it.

I’ll pass a woman, with lots of room to spare, and she’ll look up, notice me rolling or walking past and say, softly, “Oh. Excuse me," or "Sorry."

Excuse you? Sorry? For what?

This even happens outside in the parking lot. The woman in question notices me, belatedly, passing a few feet leeward or starboard of her person.

“Oh. Sorry.”

I should observe that the people who ought to apologize never do. I'm thinking of the seniors who don’t seem to have any idea of what they’re doing except it must be done slo-ow-ly. Usually it’s a mating pair, with the male septuagenarian standing around to supposedly help, but he’s doing nothing but taking up space in the canned vegetable aisle and looking discomfited like a bird that forgot to fly south for the winter or like his wife definitely ought not buy him more pork and beans.

Then there are the other bothersome sorts.

They're talking loudly on cell phones in front of sliding glass doors or their cars are blocking the traffic flow in the parking lot while they keep it in Park, fuss around inside.

From them you'll win the lottery before you get an apology.

Which brings me back to the women in the grocery store (or Wal-Mart or wherever). Apologizing to me as if they've just run over and amputated my left foot. What's up with them?

Theory No. 1

This part of the U.S.A. features wide open spaces. If one leaves the borders of our city he/she will drive two hours in any direction before reaching the next metropolitan area of note. In between lie fields and the occasional town of a few thousand. When the sun sets it looks like it's sinking over a vast ocean, not a settled landscape.

I think it’s possible that being surrounded with so much open land gives our residents a larger sense of what is called  “personal space.”

Personal space is the name social psychologists have applied to the sense a person has of invisible boundaries around their individual body that separates it from the bodies of others. Any penetration of these boundaries may cause anxiety.

My personal space is bigger than your personal space!

When gauging the personal space of people in this part of the nation, it could be instructive to consider how they transport themselves. It’s not unusual to see the women driving pickups and SUVs. I don’t mean “cute” versions of such; I mean fearsome, roadblock busting F-350s, Rams, Titans, Tahoes, Navigators, and Expeditions. The women perch up high in the driver's seat, steering the veritable Conestoga wagons of our age. I also should mention Sierras, Silverados, and Yukons, the very names of which are intended to evoke wide open, unsettled spaces where a human is nearly as rare as a snowflake in the desert.

If one feels the need to surround oneself with such a large total cubic footage of metal and glass enclosure just to go down the road with a couple of kids in the back seat on the way to snagging some french fries and the drycleaning, this could be revelatory as far as declaring the driver's spacious sense of necessary space.

So is it any wonder that when they believe they’ve inadvertently intruded, oh, my gosh, within five feet of my personal space, an apology is tendered?

Theory No.2

This thought is a bit more sinister.

I live south of the Mason-Dixon line and a certain form of politeness is as set into the social fabric as a crease in a pair of pants. I'm thinking this might be another reason why multiple times a week in public settings I am receiving apologies when no offense istaken.

But beyond simple, commendable politeness, I think there may be something to fact that, as I've mentioned, those who apologize are always women; they're never men.  

Could it be the women are communicating a subtext to me as I make a six-inch course correction right-ward to get past where they are hovering in front of the Special K?

So who is this magazine for?

The women, while hardly ugly, are never noticeably made in the super model mode nor do they stand out because they dress with some kind of snap! or bejeweled sparkle. They appear to be among the meek and less noticed in a society that worships assertiveness and glamour. This is why I find myself guessing that I might not be the only person or entity they apologize to in a given day.

Their strong sense that they ought to accommodate even total strangers could reflect that they’re used to being trodden over. Perhaps by men. This thought is not pleasant to me. Especially when I see the women with children in tow. As I view the matter, they shouldn’t be deferring to me. It should be the other way around.

As those women battle the grocery aisles and their kids who have sticky hands and a gimme look in their eyes, we men should spread out coats on the floor and usher them past with all due honor. By necessity, not necessarily choice, some women have become 9-5 hunters, off-hours and weekend gatherers, and full-time mother nurturers all rolled into one. Little wonder they often look harried and like it’s been a long time since they’ve had the kind of life headlined on the Cosmo at the checkout stand. Bubble bath and lacy teddy? Are you kidding?

Looking Down the Wide Open Road

I’ve been thinking that I ought to stop being surprised by these retail apologies. Instead, knowing that such is going to occur, it’s entirely appropriate that I have a prepared response.

She (looking around vaguely, then noticing me going by…):

Oh! Sorry.

Me (smiling, stopping to acknowledge her):

Thank you for being so polite. That’s so rare these days.

She (staring at me): […?]

Or

She (looking around vaguely, then noticing me going by…):

Oh! Sorry.

Me (stopping, startled, then regaining control):

Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s an awfully big planet, but I don't actually need that much of it at one time.

She (staring at me): […?]

Or

She (looking around vaguely, then noticing me going by…):

Oh! Sorry.

Me (stopping long enough to get the metaphorical burden off my chest):

Sorry? Oh no, I'm the one who's sorry. That I interrupted your shopping and your busy life. Please don't worry even one second about me. You are a most worthy human being. Try to remember that and not be sorry for a single other thing for the rest of this day!

She (backing up and knocking over an entire end display of Triscuits): […?!!]

I don’t know. It's probably better to let people be people. I think I'll just keep my mouth shut. – V.W.

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Mystery in S, M, L, and XL

The "news," the way I've broadly defined it for this project, represents an open window on the world of human thought, activity, and cultural conversation. Once that window closes, as it has for me, there arises a very real danger.

I could slink off into a corner and start digging through my own dirty laundry and become...a navel gazer.

Actually, that's what about to happen here. Literally. I must confess that the other day I was gazing southward and my eye fell upon something and, as is my habit, I started asking that most tiresome of questions. Why, oh, why?

But this dirty laundry/navel gazing is not about the discovery of lint.

Private Investigations

It has been said about the world of blogging that "Never have so many written so much about so little for so few." Aware that, sans news of real import, I could fall into a blogger's trap of writing about my head cold or the dog's accumulated hair on the couch (and helpful tips on how to remove it), I decided to poll some of my students to see if I should write about the following. I asked:

- Are you aware of this problem? Yes! they said.

- Has there been a YouTube treatment of this problem? No, they said.

- Has there been a TV or movie episode where characters discuss the problem? No, once more.

Well, if you google what I'm about to discuss you will find many discussion threads and blog sites that have taken up the subject. [Example 1, Example 2,] However, I trust that this material is not yet exhausted and totally cliche or else my students would have yawned before my eyes or even laughed at my late discovery. And, it is important to note, that in my investigations I have yet to find anyone who has truly solved...

The mystery of the tiny hole appearing in the T-shirt or polo.

We Have a Situation...

Even though plenty of people have already been talking about this problem, therein lies one of my points. This is actually, in terms of scope, a BIG DEAL.

If the sheer quantity of an occurrence were a criteria to make the news, then we should have heard long ago in the media about an epidemic. Or about a conspiracy. Or about the need for a massive recall of defective apparel. But the powers that be ignore what seems to be a major problem for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

I want to know why with so many people out there in cyberspace writing about, speculating about, blogging about mystery holes in their cotton shirts no one as yet has begun a Congressional investigation? Why are no lawyers lining up for a class action lawsuit? Where are the National Science Foundation grants to allow people in white lab coats to peer over microscopes at the minute mayhem? And how come poets are failing to capitalize upon the opportunity to write best-selling chapbooks about the dazzling bizareness of it?

And bizarre it is.

Hard Evidence


Mama Bear has one...

On the day I broached this topic my wife said, "You mean a hole like this?" She pulled forward the lower edge of her T-shirt. She showed me. Very tiny. But plainly visible.




Baby Bear has one...

Our son walked into the room looked down at his polo. "Hey, Dad. I've got one, too."



My own shirt was fine, so I consulted my closet. Fourth T-shirt that I inspected, bingo!

And Daddy Bear makes three!

Some Common Theories  (see Internet for the raging debate)

- Laundering does it
- Tiny bugs in the laundry hamper eat cotton
- Belt buckles poke right at that point
- Bumping one's belly against kitchen counter wears a hole
- Hitting belly at end of a dumbbell rep at the gym is responsible
- Car seat belt rubs that exact spot and creates hole


My Alternate Theory

Each of the above theories has flaws, not the least of which is why does this hole, the way many of us have received it, appear down low and centered? The seat belt or belt buckle is a nice supposition, but what about those who don't wear belts often (some women) or who don't wear their seat belts (shame, shame) , but still have holes they can point to?

And my belly in its current state (thank heavens for weight lifting even though I don't work out with dumbbells) never bumps the kitchen counter.

I would like to propose a new theory.

First there was the infinity sign: ¥ .  It is deployed as a visible symbol of how vast the universe and time are. They are, as a non-poet might say, like forever.

Today there has come to the human race the entropy sign. Yes, I think this is what each hole is. It is a visible sign/symbol, as useful as ¥ , and it's given to us gratis by a higher power to remind us of the reality of entropy.

The best definition I ever heard of entropy came from Paul Simon who said on a tune on his first solo album a long, long time ago, "Everything put together sooner or later falls apart."

Including us.

So I'd like to posit that the these holes in shirts are a necessary reminder of the nature of reality. It's not all that pleasant to think of your things, including yourself and your loved ones, "falling apart," but at least I am thankful for the subtlety of the entropy sign. Because it's so small, it's merely a gentle nudge as opposed to confronting us with a yawning,  frightening abyss. A single T-shirt hole is enough, though, to make me remember that no one can stop all sorts of "holes" from eventually appearing in his or her life. Not me, not Donald Trump. I can keep replacing shirts, but that doesn't change the rather harsh rules of this game.

Everything put together, sooner or later falls apart.

And that's the hole truth, bad pun and all. - V.W.


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