“The elevens are up” – a reference to the two cords on the back of a your neck that stand out prominently after a lifetime of heavy drinking, a sign that your end is near.
“You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Eleven. Exactly. One louder.” — Nigel Tufnel (This is Spinal Tap)
That’s it. That’s it exactly, almost exactly. I have no ten, no nine. I have zero (complete silence, complete stillness) and I have eleven.
Most the year, unless it’s raining, real rain, not that hair frizzle drizzle that belongs in Seattle, I drive windows down, sunroof wide open, the heat blasting onto my feet. I’ve never heard my car’s ticks, clicks, dings, whirrs or knocks, have no idea when to be concerned, the car stereo rocks & vibrates my bones, shaking loose our bolts, the car & me. I love that.
I don’t like the idea of sleeping anywhere but home, never think about vacations but my default fantasy starts with shaving my head & ends with moving to a remote coastal village in Italy, living in a one room rough hewn stone home, outfitted with only a wood stove, but no electricity, no refrigerator, forcing me to make the long walk to town daily, down rocky hills to shop for fresh fruit & vegetables. With the exception of gratuità non è incluso (the tip is not included) I don’t speak Italian. The closest I’ve come was an Italian sailor, an English/Italian phrase book & one steamy weekend in 1982 spent in the sack, rendering the phrase book a waste of $1.99. But I’m ready.
I have no middle ground. I have no five.
I have zero: complete total silence. Mornings. Single living. My default social setting.
I have eleven: complete chaos and overdrive. My brain when I hang at zero for too long.
I’ve lived in the elevenest city there is, New York, for the last thirty years. I recently sawInto the Wild, about Chris McCandless, who leaves everything & everyone, walks into the Alaskan wilderness and lives off the land – man, oh man, that’s the elevenest zero I can imagine. Except for the starving to death part it really appealed to me.
