-40 degrees

Floyd stared at the chart. "At -40 degrees, both Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same?" The consideration that two separate lines of measurement converge to meet and agree suddenly set Floyd back to t 5th grade, when he first understood that plants were technically living organisms. He spent afternoons during that spring, attempting to coerce an acknowledgment from a field of Dandelions. He couldn't foster a thought about how to validate Ms. Lavoie's claims that plants grow and reproduce and live. He needed to hear it from a plant itself, that its existence in the gardens and forests and yards of his neighborhood were actual community members and not decorations.

Floyd had done well at math in high school, and had passed with good grades Mr. Brown's physics. There must be, he thought, a mathematical formula which answers how this can be. The alarm clock in his roommate's room began buzzing, in a cycle of louder and softer electronic buzzes. Floyd stopped thinking about temperatures and turned to the paper that sat on the couch folded and crumpled to reveal the editorial page. A woman from Medford had written the Globe about the inadequacy of the city to manage the growing potholes. She had lost a tire to one on Maple avenue, a pothole known for its size and severity. Drivers along Maple avenue were being forced into oncoming lanes to avoid the unpleasant and destructive collision with rotting asphalt. Floyd chuckled at the thought of a pothole as a boil or lesion, oozing with tar, stinking of rotten flesh, and the good citizens of Medford, fearing the loss of property value, create a mob to destroy the pothole or simply run it out of town. Floyd couldn't help but wonder whether the potholes of Medford were living organisms and a right to exist and evolve along with noxious weeds, pine trees and Dandelions.

Bottle Caps

In the beginning, Floyd accumulated bottle caps from wherever he could find them. Along the sidewalks of Somerville, he would find different species, particularly around public garbage cans, he observed. Regardless of size, shape, or condition, Floyd anxiously grasped at the abandoned lids, as though they held a secret code or were meant to serve as the blocks in a construction. Perhaps a model or sculpture, representing the actual Prudential building, but subversively serving as a metaphor for something else. No one truly understood Floyd's fascination with bottle caps, and, despite routine questions, many of his closest allies (people like Floyd categorize people as acquaintances, allies, and potentials. Close friends and family typically fell into the ally category) turned away confused by his obscure answers and frustrated by the evolving mass of aluminum.

Floyd began collecting caps as an 8 year old, when soda companies started luring unsuspecting imbibers into believing they could win a new car or a dream trip to Jamaica. Hidden under a cap, somewhere in the freezers of American mini-marts stood the code that would launch a life of happiness. Floyd started drinking copious amounts of soda, which began to affect his sleep. His teacher sent a note home, inquiring about Floyd's health, as the bags under his eyes slowly grew darker each day. An 8 year old insomniac is one matter, a 2nd grader on a permanent caffeine rush and sugar buzz is an entirely different concern. Floyd's mom started limiting the change from her purse upon discovering a shopping bag of bottle caps under Floyd's bed. This did not deter Floyd, as he was much more interested in the bottle caps than the soda. After all, it was the caps that held an allure for him. Plus the soda upset his stomach, made his hands quake, and created inopportune periods of belching. The paper bag, reused from a Star Market excursion, was stained along the bottom from remnants of carbonated beverages that lingered in the nooks of the threads.

Around age 18, Floyd turned his bottle cap attention to the aluminum, pop off types, common to expensive beers and gourmet sodas. This collection, he felt, would hold value to some collector in Asia perhaps or the Middle East, who possessed a fetish for American brand paraphernalia. What Floyd didn't understand was that despite the billions of people sharing space on this planet, he alone possessed this unique fetish. But that was in the beginning.

Sandwich Blues

Another long gray day. Sundays meander along waiting for something important. Without any designation, Floyd captured the essence of Sunday in a large hoagie. Stacked high on a kaiser roll, three different meats sliced thin after a long period of curing. Tomatos sliced thick and allowed to leak juice everywhere, because the bread is protected by layers of lettuce nad onion. The mustard: a tangy Dijon, with no hint of sweetness. Leave the sugar for the milkshake.

Floyd could never understand the meager attempts by many to concoct a sandwich with little regard for materials and construction. Most grinders lack the synchronization of a middle school dance, allowing the ingredients to overwhlem and never reaching any potential sum. The sandwich should always be greater than its parts.

Floyd struggled: grilled or not? Pickles or not? Mayo - mostly never. Mayonnaise is the sauce of the unimaginative. Only the correct pairing and juxtaposition of ingredients should be considered. Floyd felt pride in great sandwiches and shame in the mediocre.

Floyd recalled a hamburger he'd eaten as a child. Somewhere in Boston, in a loud deli, filled with smoke from the grill, stifling like an August day. But the burger held his imagination. A thick cut of ground beef, seasoned with special herbs held secret through family traditions. A thick bun, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside; onion, thickly cut; tomato, thick and juicy; a complete concoction too thick for the mouth of a child. Floyd remembers attacking it in pieces, aiming at the sides, picking away at parts until it slowly receded.
Memories of one's childhood often overwhelm any semblance of reality. Floyd struggled to recall the location of that deli. His adolescence, his vegetarian years, the memory slowly faded, losing details that could lead him back.

The Shadows

A faint stream of light slipped under the crack of the bedroom door. Across a hardwood floor, it straddled the sneaker tossed from the bedside, and continued straight under the dresser. Floyd could watch the dust bunnies dance along the floor, directly in their spotlight. A slow swirl of city collected daily in small increments, building their own story. Floyd awoke without startle, as each morning, forgetful of reasons and hopeful for experiences. His motion, swift and graceful, landed his feet on the floor and sent the bunnies back under the dresser to search for more mass

Pushing the grocery Cart

Floyd tripped and hit his shin into the lower shelf of the shopping cart. With a brief stumble, all his momentum was lost and the seemingly effortless task of pushing large cartons of Red Bull, Sam Adams, 2% milk, and toilet paper from Costco up the hill to his apartment suddenly seemed burdensome. For Floyd, finding some sense of momentum to ride was a daily quest, regardless of location, intention, or footwear.
Floyd paused to collect a breath before continuing. Across the street a cab pulled over to let out Ms. Flannery.
"Shit" flashed into Floyd's thought line as he contemplated an afternoon wasted opening blinds in Ms. Flannery's apartment, after carrying her groceries up the three floors to her musty and moldy apartment. Following a regimen of opening dusty blinds, he would move onto watering the plants on top of her teetering bookshelves, and then moving baskets of laundry downstairs to the basement laundry room.
he was trapped. In the middle of the hill, just a few doors down from t he cab and in clear view of Ms. Falnnery. Her modus operandi typically involved scanning the block for any passerby. Her glaucoma and senility prevented her from ever remembering any and every soul who felt the universal pangs of guilt a the contemplation of not helping her. Floyd knew he could not say no or ignore her incessant pleas. It was a genetic fault he blamed on his father's side of the family.

Floyd crouched below the shopping cart, hoping she might think it had been abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk and miraculously fought any urge of gravity to carry down into Miller avenue. Floyd imagined remaining crouched low above the sidewalk long enough until some other person happened by and found themselves stuck in her web.

The lost journal

Floyd stepped off the outbound Red Line T and instantly felt naked. Not without clothes but rather naked to the sour ether of the city as it rolls over and around everything. Floyd always traveled with a small black notebook, hard covered and ruled. His thiughts, he had discovered sometime in high school, ran out of his head without any abandon or pattern and were eternally lost to any rhythms of the city block he was nearest. Thise thoughts, forever gone, held small bits of Floyd and over time he feared he would slowly fade away like the colors of a favorite t-shirt.
Standing on the T paltform, he suddenly realized he had set the current notebook on the seat next tio him as he pulled out his sandwhich from his courier bag. (Floyd struggled daily with maintaining the appearneace of a big city hipster, while secretly fighting an inherent urge to drive large American pick-ups and drink cheap beer.)
There on the hard palstic seat, next to the woamn with the rolling hand bag, Floyd had left his most recent collection of thoughts. In a sudden moment of panic, he felt several layers of color wash away.

Resolutions

Floyd couldn't tear the industrial cellophane wrapping around the stack of blank note cards. Unlined and completely blank, the cards would serve as points of collection for any and all the thoughts as they ventured into Floyd's head. Like a 9th grade English student, Floyd imagined arranging his thoughts like the research for a paper on the Great Gatsby. Along the open space of his floor, he would arrange the individual thoughts in an emerging order, hoping to discover some resemblance of order to all the notions that back up in his mind.
At this time of year, post-christmas, as hangovers of over-indulgence slowly dissipate, Floyd routinely engages in a period of persoanl reflection toward dissolving any acts of ineptness for the upcoming year. A laundry list of goals, accumualted during the previous year in a notebook of myriad thoughts is perused and only the best make the Resolution list.
A list of what he will do for the upcoming year, Floyd spends the week after Xmas revising this list into a polished guiding light that will remind him of the thoughts he had while stuffed on ham and cheesecake.

Solace

Floyd wandered through the stacks of the Engineering library at Boston University. Impressive for its subtle presence and infinite quiet, the engineering library held a collection of resources specifically for the various fields of engineering. Floyd never conducted any research here; partly because he never did research and mostly because he was not an engineer. In the basement, desks sat along the outer walls under narrow windows that opened to the street level. Through these windows, natural light rolled into the room, a rare find in the myriad libraries of Boston.
Windows in the public library stand as high as the ceiling and flood the room with outside light. The windows in the basement of the engineering library acted as filters, allowing through only enough light to complement the fluorescent light bulbs that stood in between each stack.
Despite the enrollment of the engineering school, the library typically remained half empty, with only a few dedicated students perched deep in to the corners of the basement.
Floyd would visit the engineering library in the Spring, during the baseball season, before games at Fenway, which was only a 10 minute walk. Study sessions in the spring could happen anywhere for Floyd. The library had always represented to Floyd a place for creative inspiration. As a place of solace, any library acted as the place to sit quietly amongst others who also sat silently and executed "mind exercises". For Floyd, libraries rest as temples or sanctuaries for thinking. In high school, Floyd discovered the ritual of sitting in a library for contemplative work and the energy it required to remain focused on whatever work was at hand. Walking out of the public library in Somerville as a high school student, Floyd could feel a buzz about him that slowly settled into a calming rhythm. As a college student, Floyd utilized this buzz to enhance worthy experiences. The first time he visited Fenway after an afternoon study session, Floyd could swear the grass was greener than normal and the voices from the dugout were as clear as talking to Toby in their living room. Red Sox games, after that first time, were always experienced with a vigorous study session, even during he summer, when he wasn't taking nay classes.
For Floyd ,the solace from living in the hustle and bustle rested in a routine that bordered on ritual. Rather than removing himself entirely from the city, Floyd hit the library followed by a Sox game. The act of solace for Floyd did not require physical solitude; instead it simply required the process of quietly thinking then experiencing the sanctity of Fenway. Some head to temples or monasteries; Floyd catches a Red Sox game.

Visions

"I'd give up my vision" Floyd stated after several minutes of imperceptible silence.
Toby looked up from the Style section of the Globe, which was laid out over the coffee table.
"Why vision?"
"I think giving up my hearing would be too lonely."
"Yeah. I could see that."
"But really, its the music. Can't imagine not having it."
"What about your 'inner saxophonist'?" For 3 years Floyd had regularly buzzed about the apartment humming to himself, proclaiming his development as a jazz saxophonist without he necessary and customary background of training and practice. In his visions, Floyd watched the notes well up in his stomach and slowly percolate up through his diaphragm, falling into the air without perceived control or design. Floyd hummed his way about various locales in Boston, buzzing like a purring cat and about as aloof as one also. Toby was barraged with an incoherent diatribe about letting the notes come out how instruments were not necessary except for amplification.
For the most part, Floyd was rational and coherent. But for brief instances, as Toby knew, logic and reason were conveniently substituted with entertaining stories and anecdotes that made sense only in Floyd's head.
"Its not really the same. I'll always have my music. It's the collaboration with other artists that I would miss."
Toby lifted his head and stared at Floyd who was busying himself with organizing his shelf of periodicals. "Collaboration? Like when you sing in the shower?"
"You have to be able to envision the notes to understand the music, Toby."

"Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd....Smiling." -Pink Floyd

Floyd's father hummed constantly, periodically interjecting lyrics into the melody. Some lyrics were correct; some were not. One summer as a young boy, post-diapers, Floyd hummed after his father the songs of Pink Floyd's Meddle. For years, Floyd was convinced he was named after the rock band, feeling for a long time an obligation to enjoy and understand the band's library of music. Well into high school, Floyd continued to develop into the persona of someone bestowed withthe burden of carrying the name of P. Floyd. Eccentricity did not happen, like shit does. Instead, he sought hte unique experience simply for the sake to say it so.
The figure in "Fearless" was always his favorite. A person so unconcerned with the potential consequences that his figure sets a tone of idiocy. Yet, as Floyd learned through experience, idiocy has nothing to do with intelligence. Fearless rests in displaying little concern for potential consequences and instead accepting the uniqueness of the experience.
Floyd's father never explained the purpose of naming his son Floyd. But, in his last year of high school, Floyd discovered jazz music and understood the idea of fearless experiences rests in an ability to improvise situations

TIME MACHINE

Floyd opened the apartment door to the easy-going sounds of Lionel Richie, post-Commodores. Only a dim light from the living room carried into the foyer, where Floyd removed his jacket and hung it over the desk chair. Floyd shuddered at the sudden flash of memory that overwhelmed him. In 7th grade, his classmates held the odd commitment to holding weekly parties at someones house, usually in the basement, with sporadic parent supervision. It seemed that each Friday and Saturday night, a party that included lots of junk food, soda, and dancing to slow songs with little light occurred in the variety of basements around Somerville. Awkward as he feels in his skin, Floyd could sens a metallic taste build on his tongue at the memory of sweating through acrylic sweaters. All the while holding on to the back of some eagerly desperate girl from his class, who felt the obligation to attend the parties were secondary to dancing as a sign of social status.
Floyd vomited in the kitchen sink. He was still holding his head over the sink when Toby walked in.
"Hey, Lynette and her roommate Mikela are here. Come on in and have some dinner with us."
"What?" was all Floyd could choke out.
"Are you all right? You don't look good. Have you been saucing?"
"No. But I think I might have to start. What are you guys drinking?"
Toby paused. "Lynette brought over a bottle of chardonnay."
Floyd held back another wave, brought on by the sudden memory of a college dorm room party and the stocked closet of white wines. He held back any remnants of his dinner and walked toward the front door.
"Where you going?"
"I don't think I can afford the pain of another memory."

Second chances never occur without some fore-warning. Floyd thought about the pawn shop, which smelled like mold and cat urine. Typical walks through Somerville for Floyd involve earphones, sunglasses, and a rhythm debilitated by the random syncopation of the city. Floyd walked about the city, the entire city, with an intention and commitment seeking resolution. But today Floyd became distracted by a sudden glimmer, of tinsel, he thought, in February. A glimmer of gold speckled through the dim winter, catching Floyd in his steps. A saxophone, a tenor saxophone hanging from the ceiling by a string of fishing line in the window of a pawn shop, next to a pair of skis, a flat-screen TV, and a fire-proof safe.
Floyd had played saxophone in his middle school band. For 3 years he tooted his way through afternoons of rehearsals, while others played basketball or, more importantly, hockey. Never a fan of sports, the saxophone called out one afternoon in the school auditorium as the band instructor held try-outs. Try-outs really should be reserved as a selection process. Floyd chose the saxophone over the trumpet, clarinet, and drums. Although drums secretly appealed to him.
In the pawn shop, i nthe window with other items of abandoned love sat a saxophone and suddenly Floyd remembered holding the #2 reed in his mouth to soften it up before playing. His wallet held $125, enough for the saxophone nad a music stand that the pawn shop owner recalled having somewhere in the back. It came with a black plastic case that was lined with synthetic fur to protect the finish. Floyd took it home, eager to test the sound limits of his apartment and re-discover some rhythm.

Floyd tripped along a broken floor tile on the top landing of the stairs. Running into the lit building, he squeezed passed a group of Existential Literature students blindly debating the essence of passion. Floyd breezed past, afraid of drowning in the swirling rhetoric that would never lead anywhere except back on itself with increasing force.
Professor Beasley had emailed a request to meet about Floyd's research paper. without much consideration, Floyd had turned in a shorty story about a moose living in the underground T tunnels, who enjoyed munching on used coffee grounds deposited into Newbury street dumpsters. The assignment had called for a discussion on the courage of Cyrano to remain silent in order to retain the happiness and contentedness of those he loved in Rostands' Cyrano de Bergerac. Beasley felt he had not completed the assignment; Floyd felt trapped by the lack of imagination and creativity of a stifling and moldy institution. It was not the first time.
A poster of the Louvre hangs squarely on Professor Beasley's office door. Tucked into the frame of the opaque pane of glass is a card displaying office hours, neatly typed and faded. Floyd realized he had come the wrong day. Relieved he would not have to endure any rants abouthe proper format and forum for the exchange of ideas pertinent to the course, Floyd scatted away, back down the stairs through the foyer, past the existential students, who were slowly realizing their folly.

Floyd often suffered through long nights of short sleep. Never one to find true solace in the deep refuge of dreams, Floyd more often slept as the need suddenly presented itself. His most productive episodes occur in the library, head down in the crease of textbook, a pile of drool slowly seeping along the page and under a cheek.
As a child Floyd conducted a nightly ritual of bath, pajamas, cookies then bed. Never sleep necessarily, but bed. Hours of lying with only stories running in his head. Stories that were potential dreams and lost to the ethereal subconscious. Floyd could spend countless minutes logging through fantastical plots in his mind. Occasionally he was the hero, complete with a super power that afforded him a unique niche in the welfare of the world. Other stories involved the extraordinary luck of a financial windfall.
The skill of occupying his mind with stories was not lost with puberty, high school, and minimum wage jobs. Traveling about Boston, Floyd frequently concocted tales of people who walked past, imagining their jobs, homes, and secret lives. In fits of sleep, Floyd loses the creativity of day dreams. Lost in the confusion of an early morning, all connections to the dreams from the previous evening are lost. Sleep never seemed productive, fun, or interesting to Floyd. Not with so much happening in the waking.

Floyd dropped a can opener into the sink. Somewhere under the gray water, it settled next to a fork,a pizza cutter and a porcelain mug with a broken handle from the Cambridge Hilton. Floyd considered the winter, dreary in its light and oppressive in its discomfort. As a child, his winter mornings were filled with bowls of oatmeal, filled beyond any adult palatability with brown sugar and butter.
The snow on the window sill melted during the day and refroze overnight. An icicle hung off the sill, funneling each drop of melt-water toward the sidewalk three stories below. Sundays always confused Floyd. Never a church-goer or a football fan, Sundays always seemed lost in a week of schedules and appointments. Floyd's mother, Patrice, spent Sunday mornings preparing a family meal for Floyd, his sisters, father, and grandparents. Saturday afternoons, Floyd and his mother would head to Haymarket and pick up any fresh vegetables that were available, riding the T with old canvas sacks. On the walk back to their apartment, they would stop at the butcher and pick up pork loins or a beef brisket. Meals were heartier in the winter, Floyd recalled, pulling the peanut butter from the middle shelf. The fridge was definitely more filled on the weekends, with very little space, which would slowly increase over the week as the lefovers were depleted.

The quest

Floyd threw the magazine on to the table, next to a dirty ash tray. His mind floated to a memory of the library, deep i nthe basement stacks, somewhere in the middle of the religions section. The book he'd been searching for had a title with the name of the Bhudda in it. Thinking it would be an easy find, Floyd by-passed the card catalog and headed straight to the shelves of Eastern religions. At a school of engineers, he imagined the religion section would be slight. Instead, shelves upon shelves of volumes on the Bhudda, the deities of Hinduism, of Zen, and of Confucious. In a haze of overwhelming confusion, Floyd picked out a book on Zen, reading through an entire chapter leaning against the stack.
Sitting in his living room, a sudden spark about that library search entered his mind without any noticeable provocation. It was an entire afternoon walking along each row of shelves, head cocked to one side, perusing each book spine.
Floyd often wandered the library waiting for books to jump out at him. Often at the expense of his studies. His patterned wanderings first began as study breaks. A few minutes of walking between periods of work. In the end, as Floyd looked back at his 6 and a half years in college, much of his best learning happened randomly, lost i nthe rows of the library.

"Foul"
Toby poured out the unexpected remnants of an open Miller bottle. The thick chunky sludge dropped into the sink, filling the drain trap with pieces of tobacco chew.
"Who was dipping last night?"
Floyd walked past the sink with an armful of bottles and cans, many still slightly filled with beer. The linoleum on the floor was covered in a dried mixture of beer, water, and road grime dropped from the shoes that had traveled through the winter streets.
"I tried a little last night. Franny had a package he got for free at the packy. But I didn't use any beer bottle."
"Where did you spit?"
"Spit?"
"Foul! Seriously, that's really foul"

Floyd inherited an antique toaster from his uncle Owen, who regularly ventured into New Hampshire on Saturdays just for the yard sales. It was an old piece of tin, shaped into a cylindrical pyramid, with holes perforated through the walls on each of the 4 sides. Originally designed to be used over a gas burner, the toaster holds the bread on its crust, with the bread center of each slice slowly absorbing the heat as it rises up and out the chimney. Once a side has reached optimal toasting, it is manually flipped over for the remaining side.
Floyd had no intention of using it. At least not for toast. His scheme, as with many others, loomed large in its original intention. Uncle Owen drove an old Subaru Legacy wagon with a Dukakis '88 sticker proudly displayed in the rear window. It's state remained nearly perfect, since it was taped on the interior and did not require the use of its included adhesive backing. Uncle Owen regularly collected artifacts and passed them along to various members of the Pittsleyfamily. Floyd's mother still held onto a shelf clock that did not work and confused several clock repairman. Stuck at 2:23, it has remained on the bookshelf in her living room, waiting for the instant when it suddenly remembers it must be measuring the time. Owen found the clock in a bakery in Manchester, siting on a counter beside a cash register. Originally craving a chocolate croissant, he quickly became distracted by the subtle curves of the long-based timepiece. Staring at the face, realizing the time wrong, Owen quickly inquired about the price. The owner, standing behind the display counter in a dirty white apron stared blankly at the odd man staring at his broken clock.
"It's not really for sale. It's been broken since my wife divorced me 13 years ago and left me with her family business."
"How'd it break?"
"It didn't really break so much as it stopped working."
"How much for it?"
"You want it? You can have it. Just know that it's probably cursed."
"Cursed? I'm not religious, so that doesn't really work on me. Can I give you something for it?" Owen never took anything for nothing. It wasn't so much an act of karma as much as he simply couldn't afford to collect all the things he found. While he collected things, hording was not one of Owen's characteristics.
"I have this pen that write upside down, in water, in space. It's what the astronauts use."
"I thought they used pencils. Sure I'll take your pen."

Owen never bought the croissant. He passed the clock onto Floyd's mother for a book on Japanese calligraphy, which he eventually traded onto his nephew, Floyd, for a pair of Converse sneakers. In the end, Owen got the book back from Floyd for an antique toaster, which he'd discovered easily burns bread unless one is diligent in monitoring the toast. Owen is frugal, but not necessarily diligent.
Floyd enjoyed the prospect of inheriting something new from his uncle.

Floyd danced up the stairs, moving to Ben Harper's "Burn one Down", in a flow with limited senses. Unaware of the opening door on the landing, Floyd breezed past Mr. Whiting, who became alarmed by the sudden presence of a rhythmic figure with no noticeable or predictable pattern of movement. Floyd never noticed the old man, who smiled at Floyd's synchronized steps.
Without any perceptible hesitation, Floyd launched onto the next flight and breezed on through another floor.
Floyd regularly lost himself in the meditative flow of dance. Never a student of the modern, ball, jazz or interpretive styles, Floyd moved with a distinct signature of separate arm and leg motions. As though the arms were listening to Ike and Tina, while the legs followed Tony Bennett. With his headphones on, Floyd unconsciously accepted a n air of invisibility, where nothing mattered much and if anything did happen, it could never be considered real.