The Tricky Part

The tricky part of most days is thinking. If I can just get through the day without stopping I'm usually all right. It's when things slow down, when I'm given enough time to look out the window at afternoon light and the bare limbs of trees that the trouble starts. This is not entirely true. I often find that truly resting, staring for twenty minutes at a body of water is, in fact, peaceful.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm not good alone. I blame evolution or creation. Either way, we're not meant to be alone. Or, at least, we have to teach ourselves how to do it well. It's a bit inauthentic, this being alone. Rather, what I mean, is being alone even when I'm not entirely alone, when I'm working, or in a room full of people who are talking about things that drift past me like clouds and the moon. It is generally after these times pass, when I'm alone, that I begin to think about things that causes me trouble. There it is again, that thinking. The unexamined life is perhaps worth living. Perhaps that's why I enjoy distraction so much, music, television, the Internet, various gateways to worlds that leave me untroubled. I hear the objection already, though unsatisfied. Let us not worry the question of happiness, it is too contingent, too vexed, too intertwined with the blood and muscle fibers and families and neurons that bind us into the meat puppets that we are.

I suppose what I'm getting at is the inherent bias of the person who sits around, drinking wine at 3 P.M. on a Friday, which is, they're taking the time to consider what makes them happy or sad, and therefore, as we've seen in literature piece after literature piece, they wonder whether the people who are speeding about on errands: getting haircuts, buying clothes, changing diapers, worrying about the next thing, are happy. The general conclusion is that our consumer culture or worried non-introspective lifestyles are, at root, unhappy. However, perhaps that's because those less introspective types don't find as much of an opportunity to scrawl it all down. Perhaps they are not given the opportunity to riff on the wonders of a perfect sweater. Or, when they are, they are scoffed at as being too shallow. Perhaps they are just happy, though I promised I'd leave that alone.

MSN Mondays: 13 endearing things men love about women

1) From MSN: "No matter what she is eating, my wife will always leave one in the container. Just out of principle, so she doesn't actually finish it. I'll come home, and there will be one pickle left in jar, or one Raisinette in the bag. " —Adam, 31

This uh, this is untrue. Every person in a relationship knows that it's a battle to see who gets the last thing, and that sometimes you have to eat three cookies that you don't want just to make sure that you get them. The only time you leave the final item is when you don't particularly care for it, or you literally are going to throw up if you eat another one. Even then, you might try and hide the last one until you feel healthy enough to eat it.

2) "I like watching my wife put her makeup on. It's mesmerizing. The time she puts into fixing herself up shows how much she cares about looking good for me."

Here's when my wife and I look good: when we are leaving the house. Guess what? It's nice to know you can just put on the sweats and call it a day with the spouse. It is not time to put on a suit and slick back that hair. It's time for socks with holes and old t-shirts.

3) "I have really embarrassing videos of my girlfriend doing her Marvin the Martian impression. I love that she is goofy enough to talk to me in that voice and cute enough to pull it off."

You know, sometimes we pull these off and sometimes we don't. I mean, I thought it was going to be a good idea to learn all the moves to All the Single Ladies and then perform a dance in high heels for S, but it turned out to just be awkward. Who knew?

4) "My wife rails against insipid, soulless reality TV shows, but I've walked in on her several times, when she thought she was alone, watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She looks at me with a guilty smirk on her face like I just caught her doing something really bad."

Okay, this is kind of true. I love railing against reality TV until The Bachelor, coming soon, rolls around. Then I understand the appeal of watching ridiculous people behaving ridiculously. However, if S were to watch anything like The Real Housewives, rest assured, I'd be railing all night and asking her why she hadn't made dessert.

5) "I know my girlfriend likes to look her best in front of me, but when she's under the weather, she really lets her guard down and lets me take care of her. It feels great being there for her in those vulnerable moments so that she knows I'm not just into her when she is at her best."

So, this is funny. Yeah, we're all like that when we're dating. Then it gets serious and you stop trying to look cute (see above). So, yeah, enjoy that buddy. Letting your guard down=being in a relationship for longer than two months.

6) "If I ever have a question about what the right thing to do is, I call my wife and confidently assert what I'm going to do. She sees right through it and says you're only calling me because you know that's the wrong thing to do. She's always right, and not just because I have to agree... because she is."

And that's why you don't call your wife. I mean, look, should I drink an entire bottle of vodka and then spend the night doing an impromptu performance of Fiddler on the Roof, whilst playing all parts. No, I probably shouldn't. I don't need to make a call to figure that out. I just do it.

7) My wife has a persistent ingenuity in coming up with a different reason every day as to why she deserves chocolate."

Why do you have to come up with a reason for that? Anyhow, chocolate is hearth healthy, so it's fine to eat every day. I always eat a piece of chocolate and drink a glass of wine before bed, and I say, "Hearth healthy and life extension."

8) "I love that my wife has to try to re-create every good meal she eats. When we're at a restaurant, she'll eat something she likes and remark that she could totally re-create the dish herself. She then inevitably (shamelessly) asks the waiter, 'What’s in this sauce?' or, sometimes even more brazenly, 'So, how do you make this?'"

Wait, you allow your wife to talk at dinner? I kid. Anyhow, S often relates that she could make the meal at home. However, she doesn't exactly spend her time asking the waiter the ingredients. No. What she means is, "we could be eating this meal at home and saving ourselves money for s's college fund and not going to Europe."

9) "I loved the songs my ex would make up as she'd drive. They were always completely random and loud, and most people would've hated them, but I was impressed she was able to come up with decently rhymed lyrics with no particular tune in mind and narrate everything that was happening around us. She made terrible car trips more enjoyable (and definitely entertaining)

You know what's annoying? Not knowing the lyrics to songs. Okay, it's cute, but rarely. Mostly you just wind up correcting the person and asking them why they don't just keep quiet if they don't know the lyrics.

10) "I love how my fiancee makes the simple act of putting on perfume so theatrical. She sprays the lightest amount in the air, walks through it with this real straight-faced look and wafts the perfume cloud around her. Watching her do this makes me feel closer to her. It's part of our morning routine now, and it puts a smile on my face to see her do it."

How beautiful, my friend. I love how I elbow my wife out of bed at 6 A.M. with a complex series of jabs to the ribs, so that she gets out of bed and attends to the crying baby. It makes me feel closer to her, or, you know, less homicidal. It puts me back to sleep.

11) Shop till you drop? Not my wife! I love when she tells me she's going to go shopping, because she usually talks herself out of buying anything, convinced that she just doesn't need it... which then gives me perfect gift ideas for her for the future."

You know what sucks, shopping? Your wife shouldn't be buying one million things anyway. You want an idea? It's called the internet, buy something off of it. Come on man! Spend your money on something better you uncreative bastard.

12) "My girlfriend always plans things down to the very last detail, whereas I take a much more laid-back approach to life. But I love knowing that she has everything under control, and her planning has even grown on me—now I find myself planning a lot more for nights that we're going out together.


All right, buddy, this is helpful on vacations and something to emulate. It will be less lovely when she's asking you what you're doing six Tuesdays from now because she's got a game night planned for October. Then when the night arrives and she says, "Hey, I told you about this six weeks ago, you bastard!" You'll find yourself responding, "Six weeks ago! How is that supposed to help. Tell me four days before and their is a slight chance that I'll remember come Tuesday."

13) "I love the way my girlfriend whines when she finds an empty food box that I'd shoved back in the fridge or cabinet during my haste to put food in my belly. She'll stomp over to me with the evidence—then crack a smile."

This lucky SOB still gets to go out. I can only imagine the pleasure of having a leftover that isn't a Cheerio that lil s hasn't fired onto the floor or an old bottle of milk. Come on! Besides which, I'm usually the one who says as we throw out greens, "More wasted money for the Bertaina family. That's why we should never eat fresh foods."

I hope my list helped to clear up any misconceptions caused by the ridiculous MSN article of the same title. Your welcome.

Flights

When leaving for a flight it's generally best to wake at 3 A.M. You'll feel better about yourself because you're up ahead of most of the rest of the world. I mean, yeah, you'll feel like someone kicked some sand in your ear and it ended up in your brain and then beat you for a few hours with palm fronds, but it's worth it. This is especially fun if you have a one-year old, who, will probably react as though the world has ended, which, in fairness, it has.

It is always best to be at odds with your spouse at the beginning of a flight. This is important because flights are stressful enough as it is, but this added dimension makes it a bit more fun. Me against the world has gotten a lot of people to a lot of glory. Napoleon, Caesar, Carrot Top, to name at least three people who did it alone and did it with style before crash landing when they finally reached the top. Anyhow, remember, if you've woken up at 3 A.M. the world does have it in for you, and it's best not to reward it by being a sissy about it. Rage against the dying of the light.

In the airport make sure that you stress over everything your child does. Insist that the carpet is too dirty to walk on, grab yourself roughly 1,000 paper towels from the bathroom and place them in your area of the terminal asking people to please not step on them. Place your baby in a bubble and then start handing out pencils to fellow passengers in a frantic manner asking them to please make holes quickly so she can breathe. If they act shocked, ask them if they've ever been parents. If they say no shake your head knowingly. If the say yes, offer to have them adopt your child.

Other ways to pass the time:

Teach your child to participate in a fight with a mechanized teddy bear. Encourage fellow passengers to bet on the fight. Act upset when people question your parenting. Insist that your parents raised you to fight real bears, and that it turned you into the man you are. Make sure the kid takes a dive in round two, so you can cash out.

Bring a boombox to the airport and blare Christmas music in the airport. Try to hit the high notes in heaven and nature sing. Ask people if you're getting it just right. Ask them to join in on the second verse. If they do, ask them to quit singing immediately and claim they're off key. Sing off key.

Stay up the entire evening before, not sweeping the floors, but making giant paper maiche cut outs of your family. Act offended when you're told that you can't carry them on. Stage an argument with them in the airport in a foreign language. Use ventriloquism to make it look authentic.

Dress your child in an entire NHL goalie outfit. If anyone says that it's cute tell them that she's trying out for the Rangers. Stage long phone calls with her agent and the Rangers GM. Curse vehemently. Later, wad up paper towels and fire them at your child, asking them to make a better stick save. If they cry, ask them if they want your love or not. If people seem disturbed, ask them if they've ever had children. Refer above.

Attempt to carry your Christmas Tree through the airport. Mention that you're worried that it will get too dry what with you being gone and all. Offer to cut it up into four different pieces in order to carry it on as two separate items. Attempt to bribe the guards with shiny ornaments.

While you're waiting make numerous jokes about how much you can get for a healthy one year old. Later, furtively ask people around you what they think the going rate really is. Then, lean away and touch your finger to the bridge of your nose and offer to meet them in the bathroom in fifteen minutes.

Dress your child up like a mummy and insist that it's the daughter of Tutenkaman, don't even come remotely close to spelling it correctly. Put a sign of the name on her chest. Later, unwrap your child and claim that you have discovered the elixir to eternal life. Attempt to sell jars of Tang to fellow passengers claiming it as authentic fountain of youth water.

Attempt to bring a bear on the flight. Dress him up in a full suit with tails. Have him riding a bike while balancing a ball on his nose. Ask the attendants who the civilized one is. When he poops, act surprised and say, "He's never done that before."

December songs

Obviously I've already talked about loving "We wish you a merry cheescake" and "It's the most wonderful sale of the year" playing from November through July. However, I wanted to take the time to reflect on some songs from December that don't get as much play in your local mall.

A Long December by the Counting Crows


Of course I'm going to put something by the world's greatest band,
"All at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl"

Right on Adam Duritz. And, you know, from what I can gather of the life of bands on the road you've probably seen a lot of light attach itself to a lot of women over the years. That being said, when we're talking about coming to CA, you have my heart.

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her"

And yes, it has been so long since I've seen the ocean.



Holiday in Spain by Counting Crows

You know what's annoying? When you read an internet list of best books or songs or something, and the dumb bastard making that list just keeps including his/her favorite writer or band over and over again. And it's like, we get it, you like them, I thought this was supposed to be a more comprehensive list than just one band you like. Well,

"Someone stole my shoes, but there's a couple of bananas and a bottle of booze. Oh, well happy new year's baby we could probably fix it if we clean it up all day. Or we could simply pack our bags and take a plane to Barcelona cause this city's a drag"

So yeah, we're totally in the clear when it comes to seasonal because we have a clear mention of New Year's Eve, and, we have that common human theme of being disappointed at the end of yet another year and looking for something new. And as far as looking for something new, a person could do worse than hopping a plane to Barcelona. That said, my Spain fund from two years ago is now being used at parking meters in DC. Oh well, maybe next year.



30 Days by Never Shout Never

Hey look, a song that's not by Counting Crows. Thank God someone else is finally making this list. Anyhow, I posted this song earlier on my facebook as a reminder that you can have a new seasonal song that doesn't royally suck. I mean, yes, it's probably best if it's a bit depressing, the days are short and many people have issues with family, but I'll take it if it means skipping another round of Happy Honda days.

"You'll see, Why I love everything you throw my way. I know it's hard to say, but it's a crying shame. That I came all this way with so much to say. But all that came out was Happy Holiday."

And we have a winner because of the use of Holiday in lieu of Christmas.



The Lights and Buzz by Jack's Mannequin

Okay, I'm just going to deal with the elephant in the room. I am a bit limited by my criteria, however, it is hard to ignore that most of my songs are about having Christmas in CA. I think it's pure chance. But I'm willing to admit that I'm attached to the idea of home as much as the next person. That's right, white winters are overrated, a person should be able to go outside and take a hike or throw the damn football around, or race new remote control cars without being worried about getting frostbite after ten minutes.

"But I'll take a West Coast winter...It's good to be alive." Me too Jack's Mannequin.



Winter Song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson

So yeah, this one, not about CA at all. It's mainly about it being cold and stuff. That said,

"I'll be your harvester of light" kind of melts me. I don't quite know why, but I love that particular phrasing. The gentle romantic that hasn't quite died out in my soul loves it and doesn't care that it's slow or sung by two female popular type singers. Beauty is beauty.



Bon Iver Stacks

I realize I'm a late comer to this guy, so I'm merely preaching to large choir. In fact, I find a few of his songs a little too hard to interpret. However, stacks, which I first heard by the group Sonos is definitively about winter and therefore acceptable to include on that obnoxious playlist you've got going.

Well I've been twisting to the sun and the moon
I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground

All right, so the love could actually just be in a metaphorical frozen ground. However, I'm going to interpret it literally and claim it as a winter song with pride because I think it makes a nice addition. Plus, I feel bad about not loving Bon Iver ahead of the curve.



Owl City Vanilla Twilight

I know, too popular. However, the rest of these songs are a little too slow. I think we need a little more computer generated music in this line up. Plus, people in this video look cold and it has Shaq, who made one of the greatest movies ever, Kazaam! I mean, after you do something like that the rest of your career is just kind of a slow trip down from heaven.



Fleetwood Mac Landslide

Oh shi- has anyone heard of these guys or this song? Probably not. Anyhow, the hills are definitely snow-covered in this song, and that's enough for me to include it because it's beautiful and seems to be sort of timeless in terms of its musicality and lyrics.

"Can I handle the seasons of my life?" Hell of a question.



Winter by Joshua Radin

Yeah the SOB whispers his song lyrics too damn much. But yeah, it's winter, we've got a November to remember, a warm December, we're in good shape here to put this song on a list and get a brief break from that date rape classic "Baby it's cold outside." And I'm not going to quibble with "Your voice is the splinter inside me while I wait." Not bad. And, extra bonus for being featured during that really poignant moment on Scrubs.




River by Joni Mitchell

We get some extra street cred for the use of Joni Mitchell in the new holiday classic "Love Actually." So, yeah, she's got a hell of a voice, and I feel like we need a little more hippie on this mix. I jest, what it's missing is upbeat rap. However, as much as I love to dance, something about these short cold days calls for a bit of piano and sadness. I'll skate away with you.

"I'm so hard to handle. I'm so selfish and so sad." Me too, Joni.



White Winter Hymnal by Sonos

I did not, nor have ever, been in a group that sings A capella. However, that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good song or two in that vein. These songs are legit because the album is called December songs, so we get snow and Christmas and stuff like that. I also have a memory of holding a tiny newborn little girl in my arms and staring out a cold window at the bare black branches of trees and listening to beautiful music. It's hard to imagine she was ever that small. Time, my God, it flies for the young.

This: Guy on a buffalo

A lot of days I meander through and wonder what I'll write about at the end. Other days, the easy days, you come across something as amazing as this video and narration of guy on a buffalo, and at the point where the cougar shows up, you just lose your shi-. So yeah, this video of a guy on a buffalo is today's reason that the internet was invented. It was invented so we could disseminate this video to mass audiences. Spread it my friend. Oh, and democracy and stuff. But no, really it's for guy on a buffalo.

Some of the world's biggest problems

1)

You know that point in time when you're in a room, usually work, and you're walking towards a person that you know, but not that well, and you have to decide whether to smile. Well, the library has vast amounts of space on certain floors and one of my co-workers made eye contact with me from across the room, and we both smiled. But then we had like another fifteen yards to go before we actually crossed paths, and like, do we keep maniacally smiling the whole time? At what point do we break eye contact, half-way, immediately, and when do we go back to making eye contact and smiling? Or do we at all? Needless to say by the time we actually crossed paths I gave a half-hearted smile, and I'm not sure my co-worker even gave that. Anyhow, the point is, the world is full of a lot of real problems like war, and famine, but it's also full of equally large problems like this one.

2)

Sometimes in the winter when you're wearing a sweater, this is mostly for men, and you've made into the office and are sitting down, and that's when you realize that they are playing a game of heat out with you. Note that this game is more fun when played during college with your friends or more familiar acquaintances. Anyhow, you realize immediately that your'e going to lose the game of heat out and shed the sweater. However, if your hair isn't short, and it probably isn't because it's cold in winter, you can't just pull the sweater off because it will ruin your stylish hair. So now you're left having to choose between looking foolish by sweating profusely at your desk job and having people wander by to ask if you're feeling all right or taking off your sweater and being left with the tousled hair look of a seven year old version of yourself that was a lot cuter because you were seven. This is a real problem. I've got no good answers. This is a real problem.

3)

That's tasteful.


Why does Christmas, and I use it intentionally, S told me that her work changed a particular party from Holiday party to winter party to avoid offending people who presumably enjoy showing up to work over the Holidays and checking spreadsheets and who would therefore be offended to take a holiday. Winter indeed. Anyhow, Christmas has like ten songs and Mariah Carey has sung all of them well enough that we've got the season covered. However, for some reason, S added an extra Christmas station to Pandora. Why? Because apparently my Christmas station occasionally plays songs that aren't Christmas related. Of course, I only do that to avoid going insane from the nineteenth version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in a two hour time block.

Note: Sadly, I'm not aided by R and B Christmas renditions, which tend to make me feel as though I'm sidling up to Christmas with a glass of hot cocoa and some naughty intentions, which, no Christmas, I don't move that quickly. I mean, I already downloaded Ne-Yo makes love to the Holiday season but that's it for me.

Anyhow, the real point here is that X-mas needs more songs, not more of the same stuff. I challenge anyone who reads this blog: all twelve of you, to write a new song this Christmas and maybe set it to music and sing it to your family and then send it to me on Youtube, and maybe we can get Mariah to do a rendition and then we'll all be happier next winter season. I'll go first.

"Uh, something about cold fingers on a window pane,"
"Types of birds that might still be around,"
"Being cold and white are overrated"
"But you know what's not icy cold and overrated"
"You"

And chorus.

Moving on.

4)
Why doesn't S like this song? This is one of the biggest problems in the world. If you've married or are dating a woman from south of the imaginary Mason Dixon line in your head she probably doesn't like this song either because of the lack of banjos and tambourines. And, even if she's branched out, she's probably only onto listening to women playing pianos and stuff, which I love, but come on women from south of the imaginary Mason Dixon line, let's get with it. The song has a line about Johnny Cash. What are we going to do about this problem? What? What!!! Let's listen to this song and look up at our starless city sky and reflect on the lack of banjos and how that's okay.



5) Tom's of Maine Fennel Toothpaste

Why would they make this monstrosity? It tastes like black licquorish. Who the hell wants to brush their teeth with candy? Children, Tom's of Maine, and I am an adult. And if you didn't make that crappy spearmint brand that S specifically asked me to avoid, so I got her fennel instead, which, of course, she pawns off on me because she decides it's awful, and now I'm brushing my teeth with fennel, which should taste like grass not candy, for the last eight months. I guess what I'm saying is that we should probably all stop buying from Tom's of Maine until they stop tricking unsuspecting fools like myself with their small print into purchasing something they don't like but that will last for almost a year. Bastards. And I don't use that term lightly in this "more cold type weather in the northern hemisphere time of year."


6)

Why we haz no dancing in publik? It's funny because cats aren't good at spelling.

Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof? Neither have I, or, at best, I caught a few minutes. Anyhow, in my mind people are always dancing in Fiddler. They don't go out to clubs or anything, they just dance around the house and presumably play the fiddle. One of the biggest problems in American culture is how awkward town public dancing is. At some point in my life I'm moving to Samoa or something and engaging in nightly tribal dances. In the meantime it's fair to say that I'll be trying to teach Sadie that it's okay to move your legs and not just head bang.

Let's talk about the French

Of the sixteenth century. If Cicero wasn't the father of the essay than Montaigne surely was. So, yeah, I've culled a few hundred pages worth of his writing to give you the pithy stuff, and he's been dead for a few hundred years and can no longer advocate for himself, so it's left to me, and you, to bring him back into being. As I've said before, the interesting thing about reading Montaigne is the similarity you see in the ills of the world and the condition of humanity, in general. Which is to say, things change, but man, other than life span, (yay for us!), seems to struggle with the same things. I watched Life in a Day this evening, which is also a good documentary type way of reminding yourself that the human condition is incredibly disparate on this planet and is also simultaneously familiar to us all. Anyhow, I'd recommend it. However, first read sixteenth century french essayists because it gives you more street cred.

From his essay called "Of Vanity"

Among human human characteristics, this one is rather common: to be better pleased with other people's things than with our own, and to love movement and change.

Everyday annoyances are never slight. They are continual and irreparable, especially when they arise from details of household management, which are continual and unavoidable.

For as regards my own personal inclination, neither the pleasure of building, which is said to be so alluring, nor hunting, nor gardens, nor the other pleasures of a retired life, are capable of amusing me very much. That is a thing for which I am annoyed with myself...

In the eighteen years that I have been managing an estate, I have not succeeded in prevailing with myself to examine a title deed or my principal affairs, which necessarily have to pass within my knowledge and attention. This is not a philosophical scorn for transitory and mundane things; my taste is not so refined, and I value them at least at their worth; but it certainly is inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence. What would I not do rather than read a contract...Nothing costs me so dear as care and trouble, and I only seek to grow indifferent and relaxed.

"...a little natural pride, inability to endure refusal, limitation of desires and plans, incapacity for any kind of business, and my very favorite qualities, idleness and freedom."

Brand-new acquaintances that are wholly of my own choice seem to me to be well worth those other common chance acquaintances of our neighborhood. Friendships purely of our own acquisition usually surpass those to which community or climate bond us.

Besides these reasons, travel seems to me a profitable exercise. The mind is continually exercised observing new and unknown things; and I know of no better school, as I have often said, for forming one's life, than to set before it constantly the diversity of so many other lives, ideas, and customs, and to make it taste such a perpetual variety of forms of our nature.

Other things

Angel
I picked her up on the seventeenth of December. The sky was an envelope of black clouds, and I was giving the jackdaws and pines that line the side of the road in Michigan new names. That’s how damn tired I was. I kept closing my eyes and thinking how my mom used to make me watch Lawrence Welk, how he always called everything “wunnerful.” It struck me as funny then, but maybe I was just too drunk, or tired, or both.

Anyhow, I was in the middle of that long lonely drive on the way to Benton Harbor where my mother was having her funeral. She could have picked a better spot to croak, but she wanted her ashes spread over the old St. Joseph’s River for some reason. We never talked a lot about where she grew up.

So I’m calling out to Joe, whose standing on the side of the road, a beautiful red maple with red veined leaves, and he starts screaming at me, “What the hell are you doing?” The next thing I know I’m all tangled up in Joe and a few of his friends, and something on my head is bleeding as if it was a fire hydrant hose.

And Joe and all his friends are screaming bloody murder at me, and I realize I’ve been talking to the trees for a little while too long. Then, this angel appears.

She’s screaming at me too, “Are you all right. Can you feel your legs?”
I look down, and they look kind of smashed up, but I’m sure I can feel them. She looks so damn concerned for me that I want to marry her straight off, no questions asked. Joe was a mess though, I’d severed his arm, and it was coming through the right side of my windshield.

“Lucky I didn’t meet you before,” I said, gesturing to Joe’s arm puncturing the passenger side seat.

That angel gave me the strangest look, “I don’t understand what you are saying,” she says, bending back to the window. “Are you all right?”

“I’m flying high as a kite,” I say, sliding my legs from beneath the steering wheel. “Ole Joe already punched a way out of this car for me.” I climbed through the shattered front windshield and onto the hood of the car. And I must confess this first, the variegated striations of light, coming off that glass, from the sun, a million miles away, was—shit I don’t know.

“I called 911,” she said, some sort of worried look in her eyes.

“Do you have wheels,” I asked her as if we were in a movie. “I’ve got to get to my mother’s funeral,” I told her. “Joe’s already screwed up my schedule.” I lifted my middle finger toward Joe, who was just as dead as he’d always been.

“Did something hit you in the head? Are you all right?” she asked, running a finger across my forehead. She pulled her hand away, and it was red on the tips.

“I promise not to bleed in your car,” I told her, holding a hand over my heart as if I were a Boy Scout—if Boy Scouts do that, my mother never let me join them.

MSN Mondays: Ten Movie Dads We wish we had

MSN Mondays are back with an article about the Ten Movie Dads we wish we had. Thank you MSN for providing me excellent material for my blog. I rise to meet your challenge.

Dad 1) That dad, John Lithgow? from Harry and the Hendersons. He was like, so what if this this giant sasquatch eats goats and is a minion of Satan, he's got a heart of gold. Lord knows most dads would have booted him on the grounds that he effed up the house so royally. I think most moms would have turned him into a rug. Not that dad.

Dad 2) Sergeant Slaughter from GI Joe. He had big ole biceps and definitely would have smoked if he'd been around in the 1970's. Anyhow, he's the sort of dad that would have taught you how to kick ass and wear tight t-shirts and stuff. And, those tight t-shirts would net you all sorts of ladies along with the smoking, which is cool. Also, he could teach you how to do squat thrusts and stuff and a good goal for a realistic body image, which is mondo important with dads.

Dad 3) That dad from the Jetsons. I mean, what the eff was that guy on about? Did anyone like the Jetsons? Were they a pleasant family? I think not. I think his name was George, and if he was my dad I'd probably be just as obnoxious as Elroy. Were they from the south? Did people in the 80's hate dads?

Dad 4) James Bond. Because yeah, he's had his fair share of women, so I'm pretty certain he's got boat loads of kids out there. Anyhow, he'd be a great dad to have because when people asked you what your dad did you could tell them he was an international man of mystery, and everyone would be real impressed until they realized that meant nothing and then your dad could fix you a martini and tell you that it was going to be okay.

Dad 5) Uncle Scrooge-Because when you get right down to it, the man not only loved his nephews, he was loaded, and those kids were going to be rich. You could learn from him about the joys of hoarding wealth and having more than other people. You could talk with him about job creation while swimming in pools of money and laughing because you were so rich that you didn't need to create jobs. That guy would be awesome.

Dad 6) Ugulino della Gherdesca-Yeah, that's right, maybe your dad ate you and maybe he didn't. It's a mystery. Either your dad is a bad ass who died because he loved you so much, or maybe he feasted on your corpse to stay alive. Either way, that's a pretty good story to tell about your dad, even if you are dead.

Dad 7) Tobias as Mrs. Featherbottom-Because you know your dad loves you enough to disguise himself as a nanny and jump from the balcony with an umbrella. Yeah, Tobias as Mrs. Featherbottom would be an awesome dad.



Dad 8) Harrison Ford from Regarding Henry, because after he gets amnesia he's an awesome dad. And wouldn't that be amazing if your dad suddenly went from super douchey to awesome? I'd bet you'd appreciate him a lot more than a dad who was just always awesome you ingrate.

Dad 9) Baloo from the Jungle Book. Imagine if your dad was a bear. You know what little boys do at school? They say, I bet my dad could kick your dad's ass, and you fight about it. But what if your dad was a bear? Well, you could settle it the old fashioned way by having your dad show up to school one day and eat everyone else's dad. That would show them. Although, you might lose your dad to animal control.

Dad 10) Will Smith. Because your dad would write songs about you, and make quasi-crappy movies that netted all sorts of money because America is stupid, and you and your dad could sit around and laugh about how stupid they were and maybe record a song about it and watch it top the charts. Yeah. That's a good dad.


Now let's listen to some music by a Scottish Canadian band and reflect on the fact that winter is sad and that people with Scottish accents really get that. Oh, come on song, stop making me sad.

Winter in Santa Barbara

We spent that winter trying to find beauty. In the morning, we'd place green tinted glasses of water on the table and wait for the light to come in the window and illuminate it like Orthodox art, or make rainbows on the surface. We had decided that winter that we were going to live off art, off words, rather than the prosaic and unrelenting requests of our the shallow vessels we call bodies. We were determined to follow in the footsteps of art, the painter Renoir said, "The pain passes--but the beauty remains."

On weekends we'd travel to the coast, admire steep hillsides draped in yellow sunflowers that plunged to the turquoise water below. We'd marvel at the rakish hair of the sage, the old costal live oaks, roots growing from shale, trunks silvered, bent but not broken by the wind. In the evenings we'd drive up dark roads, slithering up the mountains until we reached remote places. There, we'd climb on granite rocks and sit with our legs crossed, listening to the Santa Ana winds melting the white alders and Manzanitas, mimickign the sound of the ocean that we'd left behind.

We'd walk through cemeteries veiled in early morning fog, run our fingers across the rough names of the dead. We'd marvel at the light on stained glass in old churches, the white bellies of gulls against pale blue sky. At dusk we'd sit with the graves behind us, on a small sea cliff, the voices of the dead but memories of lives misspent. Below us, the ocean, beating its same old tune, always on message, at our backs, the dusky arms of fig tree, slivered by light. We drank beauty in as easily as if it were water.

We left behind, for those few somber months, all the things that we'd failed to be: good lovers, good friends, hard workers, the children our parents had dreamt that we'd be. Our dreams were no longer rimmed like an old cup with regret. We remembered fondly those who had loved us. We imagined the fingers of our mothers, our lovers, pulling softly through our hair; a child' rake across the sand. We forgot the places we'd left behind, and didn't bother imagining the places we'd be. We were here, or there, in a cobble stone courtyard with artists drawing pictures of children in bright colored chalk, in the balconies at ballets, on cold walls at midnight, admiring the shape and pull of the moon.

Towards the end of that season, we saw humpback whales near sunrise, their bodies, like gargantuan brass dressers we had left behind in the houses of our youth, slipping through the water like rain through the sky. It was that morning, my body chilled by the sea, with those leviathans playing some indecipherable game at our feet, that I remember acutely from that lovely and bizarre winter. It's the last clear memory I have of you, standing next to me on sandstone cliffs, bare foot and windblown, looking out across that steely water as if we were explorers bound for some new valley. It is not the precise image of that morning that I remember so well that my heart briefly leaps, even now, years later. No. It is the reflection of that morning through your eyes. Just look at them! Look! They are on fire. Only beauty remains.

Why do we all dislike the New England Patriots?

I'm taking this opportunity for a brief foray into the world of sport, which dominates most of my television viewing hours. I am lights out at Trivial Pursuit on this category, yet I rarely take the opportunity to write about sports because they are considered vaguely neolithic by the general humanities crowd. However, I enjoy sports. I enjoy them because they are resolved quickly, have definitive endings, and allow a sense of the tribalism that is absent in these anti-nationalistic times. I may not approve of my country, but I do approve of my team.

I've read an article or two on this subject before. The "seemingly" most trenchant argument is the charmed life of NE QB, Tom Brady. The subject, as sports reporting now goes, revolves around the fact that he is a good looking guy who is married to a supermodel. Less clear is how much street cred he is given for dumping his pregnant good looking actress girlfriend.

1) The Tom Brady is handsome argument-Men are not jealous of Tom Brady because he is handsome. In fact, how can you be jealous of something that you would never even notice. To be jealous of Tom Brady for being handsome would be in fact admitting that Tom Brady is handsome. And, with few exceptions, most men aren't watching football to see if guys look great with their helmets off. So, no, how can you be jealous of a thing who's existence you aren't actually aware of.

And yes, for my money, he's a good looking dude, especially pre-long hair. But I can't hate a bro for looking good.

The second argument, involving the jilted lover and the new supermodel wife is also problematic. Why? Because even if you dump this woman:

to marry this one:

you still had to extricate yourself from a relationship with a woman, who was pregnant. Anyone who has dated someone for more than two months and then had to break up can tell you that it's not a fun experience. Now, couple that with the fact that the woman is pregnant, and guess who's side everyone is going to take, Tom, you bastard. I don't think the man's life is charmed for falling face first into another good looking woman. He was probably running from the peasants, and past friends who were carrying torches.

3rd argument-The beautiful wife. No man, or few men are jealous of Tom Brady because of his supermodel wife. Any wise man, will one, tell you that his wife is as good looking as a super model and 2) that even if your wife is a supermodel she still probably occasionally asks you to take out the trash when you're in the middle of something important like browsing the internet or forces you to watch the entire series of Brothers and Sisters in a two night sitting, so you can get quality time together. Ie, it ain't perfect.

So, now that we've demythologized the legend of Tom Brady we'll have to tackle the less pop culture oriented image of Bill Belichick. Bill Belichick is not as handsome:

and as far as I know, he is not married to a supermodel. This immediately makes him less charismatic. However, he was once charged with Spygate or, illegally having an assistant record Rams practices before the Super Bowl. Any man, and here I apologize for excluding lady sports fans, apology, worth his salt has played a pick up basketball game at some point in his life. And guess what, you cheat. It's game point and someone strips the ball from you. You were fouled. A younger guy beats you to the baseline, hands you your ass, next time you grab is jersey a little, hand check like you're playing for 1990's Knicks. You hit a one pointer but claim it's a two. That's right, you try to win dammit. Nobody hates Belichick for trying to win. They hate him for actually winning.

So, we're still stuck at square one. Why do we all hate, or dislike if the verbiage is too strong, the Pats? I'll start on the field. We hate the Pats because we have the vague sense that they cheat just like those old guys in the pickup games. Granted, sometimes we're those guys, but we also call bullshi- when they call foul. We talk about how the games we grew up in nobody called fouls. Apparently we all grew up in Rucker Park. And when the Pats beat the Rams they cheated like crazy. They grabbed uniforms, chucked receivers, actually changed the way the game was officiated. They made it damn near impossible for the guys to get open. They played defense the way those 1990's Knicks teams did, in a way so offensive to the viewing public that things had to change. Except, we have no iconic Jordan slaying the Knicks with a baseline jam. We have Kurt Warner, the greatest show on turf, humbled by Tom Brady. We didn't hate the Pats yet; they were the underdog, but we should have sensed it coming.

In the years that followed the Pats continued to maintain their defensive dominance while slowly breaking Brady in. But deep down, we understood that the team relied on it's defense. Every person has a core thing they always go back to. That favorite story from camp, the time you went on a three day bender and ended up in a Mexican prison married to a donkey. You know, a go to, something that defines you. And the second the Pats abandoned playing defense; they lost what little respect we had left for them. They lost that story that could wow the newbies and bore the shi- out of those who had heard it before, but who would still acknowledge, that it was a pretty damn good story.

No, we dislike the Pats because they now use the same rules they were integral in having enforced to terrorize teams with their offense. We have the vague, slightly racist sense, that no white receiver should get as many catches as Wes Welker. We know that if you could just chuck receivers like old, or hell, just get the guy out of the slot, that he would be an above average NFL receiver. But you can't touch the bastard, and we know that he isn't as good as he looks, that he just runs and option route every damn play. It's like he's that guy in a video game who button mashes, or calls the same play over and over. It sucks. We don't like Rob Gronkowski either. We don't like how ESPN now has to drool over the Patriots and TE's because Brett Favre has retired. Tight Ends are meant to block and occasionally catch passes. We don't like Jeremey Shockey either, he's overrated. You want to be a tight end? Block someone. We know that he just runs down field and posts up helpless DB's who can't do anything but stand behind him and give up TD's. It sucks. Button mash away.

And, for those of us who grew up playing QB on the playground and in the backyard, we also have the vague sense, now made manifest through Aaron Rodgers, that Tom Brady plays QB like a bit--. No, he is constantly given credit for shuffling away from pressure in the pocket, managing it, the pocket, like a genius. Guess what? Playground football is not about managing the pocket. It's about running around that one unathletic kid to scamper away for touchdowns, or to fire across your body on the run to someone sprinting open downfield. Football, for the novice, is about running around and making plays, not managing the gd pocket. That, my friends, is BS, and we know it. We know it on a visceral level. And it hurts to watch him shuffle around and throw darts.

We dislike the Pats for more complex reasons too. Though it would seem that the way they play the game in so many terrible ways should be enough. No, quite frankly, in general, (and I always have to say in general when it comes to New England because I know a fine person or two from there, including my brother-in-law, who is as about as fine and upstanding a guy as you'll find around) we don't care for people from NE. They enjoy their pro sports teams in a way that midwestern folks enjoy their college teams, and it sickens us. What the hell else do they have in the Midwest. Nothing. No choices. Besides which, these teams are full of guys playing gratis, not a bunch of cheating slot receivers making millions. We dislike the Pats because they win. We dislike NE folk because they're always trying to convince you that fall is just around the corner and that the leaves are brilliant. No, it's effing cold.

We dislike the Pats because they make our offenses feel inadequate, our defenses look unprepared. We dislike them because we know that they cheat. But moreso, we dislike them because we know that they know they're cheating, that Welker's option routes are boring, that the tuck rule, the no hitting the legs rule, the no touching receivers rule are all because of them, and we know, that if we ever played the Pats in a game of pickup basketball that they'd clutch and grab their way to a tainted victory without ever admitting it. We dislike NE in general because we have the vague sense that underneath all that friendly outdoor type stuff the right shoes, jacket, carving knife, canoeing and general usefulness, that they're just like us, and would like a condo on the beach in Southern CA with three working maids, and we just wish they'd admit it once.

Friday night

The shadow of the fruit cart on the wall, pears, shaped like certain women. Some evenings arrive all too quickly. The light dims, and the pale moon hangs low in a cold sky before I have had the chance to give any shape to the day. These evenings, generally in winter, when the cement smells raw, when I walk outside to search the car for my wife's purse in a pair of slippers are my least favorite.

Perhaps it was that she said to me, "Honey, nine years from now you'll be forty," that sent me into this tail spin. I suddenly become arithmetically incisive, measuring out the rim of milk on cereal bowls, the crust of old sandwiches, the unfailing light of the computer screen, these things that measure our life. I panic on these evenings, begin filling out job applications, I lie next to my wife on the couch, and she says,

"Isn't this nice, finally getting a chance to snuggle?"

And I sit up rigidly, and say, "Someday, this is all going to end."

"Everyone dies," she reminds me.

And first I say something along the lines of "yes, but does everyone really live," followed by, "Hollywood movie scripts are easy to write. You just put two people on a couch and have them talk about changing their lives. And either he gets up and makes a pot of coffee, and we get a whole montage of the change that has been wrought, or, they drift into dreamless sleep. Either way, I should be writing scripts." And, after a pause. "Yes, but how can I live on?"

She tells me that people live on through their jobs, their children.

I tell her that it makes me want to write books, that making copies of articles for graduate students will probably not last throughout eternity. I mean it, though not entirely, the coffee stays untouched in the kitchen. I go into the kitchen and look at the wine rack, the arches of its shadow on the yellow wall, the shape of a pear. These are the nights when the anesthetics are done, the television off, no games, no conversation, no sex, nothing to distract me from the reality of time's infernal push. But these things are best put to bed before midnight. They will be gone in the morning, but for the unfinished application blinking solemnly. Faint cries will wake me in the morning.

Things

I've got a different sort of blog post in mind. However, I'll take the rare opportunity to link to a piece I had published online by the magazine Big Lucks. Everyone should go buy a copy of this magazine because I know the guy who runs it, and he's a hard worker, a good thinker, and a hell of a hard worker. Ironically, one of my main complaints about blogging is that it doesn't give me the chance to actually show things that are, you know, polished. Anyhow, the irony is that this particular piece of writing is rough hewn. I wrote it a few years ago and liked it. Here it is. Buy Big Lucks. Read fiction.



I wish that I knew about the stars. Tonight I listened to a story about Atlas, Pleiades, and the rest of the stars. I know near nothing about the stars. I live in a city. The North Star is often but an idea rather than reality, veiled in light. I cannot identify either of the dippers, or the wandering planets. The stars are a mystery to me like so many things.

The galaxy of light seems like a good metaphor for things. Perhaps I could use it to describe all the other things that I don't know, God, parallel universes, the mystery of the human heart.

The stars, can act equally as well as a vector for the things that I could know. Local politics, math, the ins and outs of the new health care law and yet choose not to. Our time here is limited on earth, and the stars help remind us of that with their light from millions of years away. It is strange, as I'm sure you know, to fathom that we could be seeing light from an entity that is already gone.

I'm taking lessons on the stars starting tonight. I'm identifying the things in the night sky, bringing names to the void as if I were a tertiary Adam. And yet I wonder whether putting a name to things, pointing to the stars and saying, yes, that is Orion, will change anything. Perhaps it is just one more thing to do as I pass the time between the mystery of life and the mystery of death.

Books you should be buying this Christmas

Oh, look, it's a drum and I'm banging the hell out of it. Go ahead and buy Infinite Jest for that special someone this Christmas.

Why? Because it's the best American book of the last eighty years or so. It's the most interesting thing written since Joyce and Woolf were messing around with modernism a billion years ago. Also, it's funny and sad. Life is funny and sad. Therefore, this book is about life.

People you should buy this book for: White males aged 18-35. Men don't read books anymore, but if they do, they're likely to read this one because it makes you feel smarter.

People you shouldn't buy this book for: Parents. This book is way too effing long for that. Don't do that to your parents, and the eye strain they'd get from flipping through the end notes is scary to even contemplate.

Aunts and uncles: Similar problem. Also, drug use. They'll probably assume you're addicted to drugs or alcohol if you give them this book even though it's mostly about people getting over various addictions, (this is really unfair the book is about a lot of stuff and to try and boil it down this way is foolish) and they'll assume that you're recovering as well.

Women-Okay, that's a pretty large generalization. I'm willing to take it back on the grounds that smart people like Zadie Smith love the guy. However, in my experience, women don't like intellectual white guys who write long books. Besides which, yeah, it's a bit more of a coming of age guy story.

Should you buy this book to impress a girl/guy: I'd go with no. That is, in less they're really into literature. It's probably more acceptable for a gal to buy this for her boyfriend to show how cool she is with him spending a month of his life consumed by this book.

Quote:

“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”

Yeah, I'll write about this book again.

Why? Because it's the best prose, sentence by sentence I've read of any living author. I know, prose, who gives a shi-. How is that going to help them make this into a movie that the mass public can enjoy. Trick. It was made into a movie.

People you should buy this book for: Women between the ages of 18-175. Even if they don't like the glittering prose they'll enjoy the complete lack of male characters. Who hasn't been waiting for a book about rural America that doesn't have men? Certainly not Toni Morrison fans, but for the rest of us, enjoy!

People you shouldn't buy this book for: Men. That is, in less they're really into prose. Otherwise the dearth of long car trips, descriptions of various good looking women they'd like to uh, get to know better, hallucinations from overdosing and lack of war or the Holocaust is going to make this book kind of boring for them.

People you can buy this book for: Mom, sister, aunt, friend.

Should you buy this book to impress a girl/guy: Probably not. It's too short to be impressive, and glittering prose just doesn't sell like it used to.

Quoting:

“There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

Or this:

“Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”

We're talking about Tolstoy. Tolstoi?

Why? Because it's the best realist novel I've ever read, and I've read at least ten books. This book left me but the characters didn't. Did I really just write that hackneyed sentence? Yes, dammit, I did, but that's only because it's true. I still wonder about all the incredibly realistic that Tolstoy came up with in this book, far less than I wonder about Anna who struck me as way less complex than the rest of the lot in War and Peace.

People you should buy this book for: People over 25, who are capable of sitting for long periods of time reading a book. This is not for the faint of heart.

People to avoid: Those who don't enjoy a long history of why Napoleon failed in battle. No really, it's a gigantic section in the book, and it's only going to be interesting to everyone's uncle/father who reads books exclusively about Stonewall Jackson's tactics in the Civil War. It bogs the book way down. And guess what, the book is still amazing. (This is unlike Les Miserables, which goes off the rails so far that you immediately buy tickets to the musical, so you can avoid reading any further).

People this book is okay to buy for: Avid readers. Fathers. Some mothers. Some uncles, perhaps aunts. This one requires some judgement. It's long, but it pays off.

Possibility of buying this to impress someone: Not in less that person is also a huge book nerd.

Quotes:

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

“In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive.”

I just wanted the opportunity to talk about sparkling prose again. I don't think we talk enough about sparking prose. Virginia Woolf has the sort of prose that wakes us up to ourselves, the selves that lie beneath the humdrum of the every day. It is every bit as relevant as it was eighty or so years ago. It is true now that a woman can sit in an office all day, without ever having anyone know what passed through her mind, or a man can ride a subway in obscurity while his whole world is rocked. She wakes us up to this.

People you should buy this book for: Women. Also, men who fancy themselves poets. Some people will try and convince you that the better work is "To the Lighthouse," but I'll take Mrs. Dalloway every day of the week.

People you should avoid: Men. She's really skimpy on the narratives involving how exactly George Washington survived that first winter at valley forge. In fact, it lacks a whole host of facts. What it contains is everything else.

Should you buy this book to impress a girl/guy: It's probably okay to buy this book for a girl to impress her with your amazing male sensitivity. Mention the sparkling prose and how we all keep our true selves hidden.


Quotes:


“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”

“An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.

All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . .”

Why? Because who, besides the NBA (National Book Award, he is not an erstwhile hoops star) of a few years ago has heard of this guy? Almost no one. And guess what? These stories are fun. They range from a doomed trip to discover an inland lake in Australia, to the Chernobyl meltdown, a woman in space with a cosmonaut lover. So yeah, varied, and fun, and sad. Theme achieved.

People you should buy this book for: Anyone over the age of 20 or so. You might have to talk them into actually reading a book of short stories first. It's okay to read short stories, they won't hurt you. In fact, you might even like them. You see, you begin, and then it ends, rather quickly. Yes, a short story is just a poor metaphor for life or sex.

People to avoid: People who do not enjoy short stories. Who say? You know, I just can't get into them. Feel free to hit them over the head with a good collection of short stories and then leave them dazed and perhaps bloody.

Romance: This book is probably not your best bet. It's better for the fathers, mothers, uncles, brothers, sisters, estranged cousins crowd. In short, no fear of sparkling prose here, just enjoyable and interesting stories.

Quotes:

“I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.”

“You get lonely, is what it is. A person's not supposed to go through life with absolutely nobody. It's not normal. The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself. It's a loop and you gotta do something to get out of it.”

I try not to write

The bench I'm sitting on is green and dotted by varieties of bird shit. The weather is warm and the sky is suffused with a sort of uniform purple caused by the reflection of the sun through creamy cloud cover. I'm not saying much, am I?

I try not to write when I'm in love. I find that I rely too heavily on adjectives. Just let the damn thing be, I tell myself. The bench should just be a bench, it needn't be green or covered by shit. I'm talking about being in love here, not love. No, the latter is too tough to come by. If you want to know anything about love just read that section of Corinthians, and if you can find me a person who is roughly even half of things then give them my number, and I'll gladly throw down my profligate life. Better yet, ask them if they're capable of even a fourth after their boss has gone ape shit on them and the commute home takes an ungodly time because of the rain and general stupidity of other drivers. Though, I suppose, if they were exhibiting all those traits the other drivers wouldn't be obstacles but just more folks to love.

Anyhow, the sky is now doing this ostentatious sort of pink thing that's probably influenced by the high amount of smog in our little valley. A couple of crows dart across the horizon to improve the scene. When I'm in love I tend not to see things rationally. It always arises out of a sort of misunderstanding. A Gatsby type thing. It's never the women I really know. It's always the ones I don't. You know as well as I do why that is. It allows you to fill in all the gaps where problems might otherwise be. If I see my beloved infrequently enough I'll forget that she has a gap in her teeth. The less I know about a girl the better.

A blond couple is tossing a stick to a dog on the grass in front of me. I want to tell them to take in the sunset, but I can tell that neither one of them are in love, and that the beauty would be lost on them anyway. The dog is sometimes bringing back the stick and other times just sort of running in the general vicinity of the stick and then sniffing the bushes for a while before taking a piss.

I like dogs. I like taking walks after eleven on near empty streets. I think that might be an easier way to find a woman to love. Most of the day everything is so crowded. But when you walk the streets at night, beneath the sulfurous pools of light, it's easy to imagine running in to the woman you love and just standing there, not even minding the cold, your runny nose, your crummy job, it's just you and this girl that you've now realized you've been waiting your whole life to find.

You see, I told you it's a bad idea for me to write when I'm like this. Waiting your whole life to find. Drivel, though being conscious of it does nothing to diminish the actual impact of the feeling. The couple is gone home now with their dumbish dog, and I'm still sitting on the bench, in a dim pre-storm light, waiting for that walk home in the dark where I never talk to anyone but myself.

The porch

"In the rain everything makes sense," she said to me from underneath a small white umbrellas sprinkled with black polka dots. We'd been talking for a while about sadness, or something like it. More correctly, she'd been talking about a dog of hers that had died when she was very young, and how she'd stayed up all night crying. Or what felt like all night. It seems implausible that the was up the entire night.

I was talking about what it felt like to be twenty seven in this town. About how all the women were looking for dads or lovers. I don't suppose she really heard a word I said what with the tears about that old damn dog of hers. Women are always telling me stories about things they've lost. I suppose that's because I do my best to listen.

The cars are rolling past at thirty in a thirty five. Her nose is a bit longer than I like, but I don't say anything. "That's the impossibility of it," I say. "Of what?" she asks. "Of life," I tell her. "Weren't you listening to what I've been telling you?" She wrinkled up her nose in disgust.

The problem, as I said before, is that no one listens to me. I've got a wealth of information just ready to spring its way into the world, but nobody gives a damn except about what they've been thinking of, what new coupon or haircut or online dating site they've recently discovered. "The world has no time for philosophy," I tell her. She rolls her eyes.

"The world has no time for one of your monologues," she says, hailing a cab and stepping out into the rain.

"Whether tis nobler in mind..." I start, but she doesn't even crack a smile. Nobody knows their Shakespeare anymore. She's gone just like that, and I'm now standing in the rain with a monologue trailing on through my head. Nothing much makes sense in the rain. It's a degenerate sort of weather that would bring out the worst in even the best of us, and I am so far short of the best that it hardly seems worth the effort to continue.

I got home and took a hot bath. I know that men aren't supposed to take baths anymore, that as soon as we lost the ability to have the butler draw one it was time to stand in the damn shower like a fool. But I'm old fashioned, and I enjoy taking a long bath, drinking a cold beer, and thinking about all the ways that people disappoint me.

My brother was a world class screw up who'd managed to hide it all behind a good job at the hospital, a nice wife, and two happy kids. I hated him for a while, but it's sort of dropped off now into a drizzly type of pity. The Cubs are down four in the seventh because the Cubs are always down even when they're up. I think about calling Bernice and asking her some more questions about her dog, stretching an old phone cord into the bathtub and just listening to her remember. To hell with it.

The bath has gone cold and a light rain is tapping at the window. The neighbor, some vaguely Eastern European woman is watching a game show at decibels that reach through the floorboards. I think about going upstairs and just watching it with her, but I sit down on my couch instead and use my imagination. Towards the end, I yell out, "Don't open the effing case," because the guy is making a huge probability mistake on the show, if my math and hearing are serving me correct, though, to be fair, my math is circumspect at best. My neighbor's dog starts barking, and I think of poor old Bernice only nine years old, and that old mutt of hers dead as a door nail that day.

"I'd have backed over him too," I told her, and perhaps that wasn't the best way to start the conversation. Bernice was not kind, and neither was I. We were good company for each other because neither one of us expected much from one another. It was like marriage without all the fanfare. "You're a terrible person," she says, and I agree. "One of the worst."

I tell her that in the morning we'll go down to the pound and pick out a dog. We'll take him to the park and play fetch, rub his belly, say to strangers, "Don't worry, he's good with children" even if we don't know a damn thing about him. We'll make out of our lives what we've already lost. "Can he be a retriever?" she asks, and I tell her yes because I'm feeling magnanimous. "What will we do with him at the end of the day?" she asks. "Neither one of us can take him?" And it's that sort of question that people have been asking me all of my life? Sure, sure, we like your dream old boy, but how are you going to put it all together? "I don't know," I tell her, and hang up the phone in an instant, and walk out into the rain, barefoot, and thread my toes through the rivulets on the back porch. This is what I'll be doing tonight.

A shout out to single parents

So S is out of town for a brief stint, and I'm responsible for taking care of the little urchin on my own for a while. And even though that's not entirely unusual as I take care of lil s a couple days a week, for some reason, it being a weekend or something, I was struck by just how much work it is to take care of a child. Naturally she refused to take a nap, insisting that it was perfectly fine to just stay up all day creating a tornado in the living room. This new toddler phase seems to include more swaths of destruction than the earlier and less mobile phases. I'd have taken a picture of the room as she left it, but I was afraid I'd give up on parenting for good. Why get down one book when you can get down seven?

So yeah, I lasted about six hours. And, the thing that's tough, is that you don't get any time for yourself, particularly with the no napping thing. No watching football or curling up to read a book. I could check scores on the computer, but it's not exactly kosher to just read a book while she chews on lamp cords or read a book while she sneaks up the stairs, smiling the entire way. Anyhow, I'm glad I usually have a second on the weekends, enough so that I can squeeze in maybe twenty pages of a book or half of a game, you know, those little things that keep you sane. This is not to say that lil s is no fun. She was a little bundle of joy wandering around the house smiling and carrying her winter hat, occasionally passing the cute pink thing off to me, so I could put it on my head, which she found endlessly amusing. Or stealing my hat and wearing it for a second with her dimpled smile, two bottom teeth protruding. The point is, she's wonderful. However, you lose any semblance of time that is your own. So, I just wanted to raise a glass, or two, I definitely drank some wine after she went to bed, to all the single parents, or just parents in general out there, keep on keepin on.



I used to be afraid of the dark. No, afraid is probably an understatement. I was terrified. I would lie in bed and imagine the extravagant ways that people might access my bedroom, what exactly I'd do if they approached. Debated the merits of pretending to sleep vs. hiding under the bed. I used to choose to sleep on the farthest side of the bed from the door when I slept in a new place. The theory being, murders are likely to take the first person they come to, and I'd prefer that I was the second.

You'd think that the years of watching G.I. Joe, Transformers, and HeMan would have made me into a person built of sterner stuff. It seems now, in hindsight, that I should have armed myself with a plastic sword, slept with it on my back, and known full well that if trouble arose I'd deal with it instantly. Unfortunately, my imagination was too acute for that. It understood that if worse came to worse there would be no hope.

The first night I feel asleep without the light on was an accident. I don't remember how old I was, but I imagine that I was ten or so. I woke up in the morning, shocked to find myself not whisked away by Dracula in the middle of the night. For years I'd turn the light on in my bedroom and then sleep in the hallway between the bedrooms of my mother and brother. Surely one of them would protect me if something ever went wrong.

I suppose now I should connect dots, figure out exactly what went wrong that made a little boy so afraid to sleep in his own room. But I'm alone tonight, and I don't want my mind to wander too far. This house is old. It creaks. And this mind, at times, can still be young and imaginative.

More quoting of Thomas Lynch:

"My friend, the poet, Matthew Sweeney, is certain he is dying. This is a conviction he had held, without remission, since 1952 when he first saw the light, in its gray Irish version, in Ballyliffin, in northernmost Donegal. He knew even then, though he was some years from the articulation of this intelligence, that something was very, very wrong."

"We had buried my mother that morning. We stood in the gray midmorning at Holy Sepulchre watching the casket go into its vault, a company of the brokenhearted at the death of a good woman...I was trying to remember my mother's voice. The tumor had taken it from her in doses. I was beginning to panic because I'd never hear her voice again, the soft contralto full of wisdom and the acoustics of safety."

"And the life on either side of that moment was nothing but heartache and affection, romance and hurt, laughter and waking, wakes and leavetakings, lovemaking and joys--the horizontal mysteries."

"As much as I'd like to have a handle on the past and future, the moment I live in is the one I have. Here is how the moment instructs me: clouds float in front of the moon's face, lights flicker in the carved heads of pumpkins, leaves rise in the wind at random, saints go nameless, love comforts, souls sing beyond the reach of bodies."

Jack Handy Deep Thoughts

"Instead of having answers on a math test, they should just call them impressions, and if you got a different impression, so what, can't we all be brothers?"

Back to Lynch:

"At one end of life the community declares Is alive, it stinks, we'd better do something. At the other end we echo, Its dead, it stinks, we'd better do something."

And the last essay entitled Tract is one of the best culmination essays I've come across in my days of reading essays, which is about, appropriately, his own funeral.

The opening section is as follows. The rest is worth reading as well:

I'd rather it be February. Not that it will matter much to me. Not that I'm a stickler for details. But since you're asking -- February. The month I first became a father, the month my father died. Yes. Better even than November.

I want it cold. I want the gray to inhabit the air like wood does trees: as an essence not a coincidence. And the hope for springtime, gardens, romance, dulled to a stump by the winter in Michigan.

Yes, February. With the cold behind and the cold before you and the darkness stubborn at the edges of the day. And a wind to make the cold more bitter. So that ever after it might be said, "It was a sad old day we did it after all."

And a good frosthold on the ground so that, for nights before it is dug, the sexton will have had to go up and put a fire down, under the hood that fits the space, to soften the topsoil for the backhoe's toothy bucket.

Wake me. Let those who want to come and look. They have their reasons. You'll have yours. And if someone says, "Doesn't he look natural!" take no offense. They've got it right. For this was always in my nature. It's in yours.

And have the clergy take their part in it. Let them take their best shot. If they're ever going to make sense to you, now's the time. They're looking, same as the rest of us. The questions are more instructive than the answers. Be wary of anyone who knows what to say.

As for music, suit yourselves. I'll be out of earshot, stone deaf. A lot can be said for pipers and tinwhistlers. But consider the difference between a funeral with a few tunes and a concert with a corpse down front. Avoid, for your own sakes, anything you've heard in the dentist's office or the roller rink.

Poems might be said. I've had friends who were poets. Mind you, they tend to go on a bit. Especially around horizontal bodies. Sex and death are their principle studies. It is here where the services of an experienced undertaker are most appreciated. Accustomed to being personae non grata, they'll act the worthy editor and tell the bards when it's time to put a sock in it.

More on politics (insert mild depression)

It's nice to hear from some folks to the right of my own particular views, particularly when it's well thought out as opposed to just crazy mob stuff. Anyhow, my first proposal for killing off bloated programs...the military. Guess what. It's inefficient to try and control the entire world under your thumb. It's expensive. Hell, let's cut through the crap. We still spend way more than China, our new perceived rival on the military. And, guess what? If we go to war w/ China we're all effed anyway, so we might as well cool it. The future for humanity is probably not best figured out on the other end of a rifle butt. That said, I'm find with the U.S. maintaining a strong military, but I don't know that we need to far outstrip everyone else in the known world because we're AMERICA.

The budget problem. As my cousin aptly pointed out, budgets are a problem. You should not need to spend your whole budget in order to maintain funding. I get that that's how we do things, but some kind of reform is necessary. It's dumb. Hell, my office at American University does it. It is not in fact wise to spend all your money if you don't have to. It's wasteful and asinine. Would it take some figuring out to allocate budgets more effectively? Yes. But dammit, I'd rather spend the extra time/money on that than on a bunch of initiatives/unnecessary work hours to justify the budget for the following year.

The firing problem. Listen, while I've heard that the Fed has issues firing people, perhaps more than most. In general, at almost every job I've been at, many private, it's hard to get fired. I hope that answer is giving more incentives to high achieving employees and leaving the folks who don't give a damn lower on the totem poll. Why? Because it's awkward to fire people. Doesn't mean it can't be done. However, I get that it's tough for anyone.

Are private companies more efficient than the government. Sometimes. And sometimes they are actually the greedy SOB's they're portrayed to be. The best model is the non-profit model, find funding, do great stuff to help people/ spread the gospel of arts and culture. The only problem is that non-profits are always groveling for cash from wealthy private citizens and the government, so I guess that doesn't work. The tough part for me is figuring out how we can find some sort of melding of the ethical and the profitable. There are some good models out there but also a hell of a lot of bad ones. The government provides services, probably not with hyper efficiency, and for profit companies like big pharm or oil and gas, provide services and attempt to rape the environment/your general consumer in the process. I don't know much about Wall Street, so I won't step in that pile of s. However, I suppose I will, I have literally been shocked at many of the conversations I've overheard/remotely been a part of while I was working at the U of Michigan B school that were so directly about acquiring wealth as a good way to live your life that I found it morally repulsive. So yeah, not so much a big fan of that as your raison de etre. So yeah, some sort of melding of ethics, profitability, etc. but corporations and government always involve individuals who are sometimes good and sometimes shitty. The ideal model is probably a corporation with some ethical people running it who can make the finances work along with the service provided. Service here, meaning literal service, ie production etc.

What to do with big projects? Are we capable of getting them done w/o the government just mandating it? We have a shitty train system. Europe pretty much kicks our ass on this one. Guess what? It's cheaper to ship freight by rail than it is by truck? It's more environmentally/just good for the soul, and I do think stuff like that is important, than driving by car, and we don't have good options right now. So, we need to have a massive project to restore our rail and make it a better option. Can any single company take this on? Probably not. I've got no problem w/ the government taking a bunch of unemployed folks and putting them up to useful stuff like the Civilian Conservation Corps. I read an interesting article complaining about the stimulus package that basically intimated that it would have been better to just put people to work on infrastructure projects, improving national parks etc. rather than allocating money, which, as we all know, bogs shi- down in bureaucracy.

Subtending this whole thing is the idea that we need a growth economy and that things will always be getting better. This may be patently untrue. We may not be able to continue "growing" (hate that usage) our economy indefinitely. I mean, it's obvious, even if you don't give a crap about the environment, which, we're practically the last civilized country who disputes the science, you're better than that America, that we're going to use up all of our natural resources in a fairly short period of time if we continue down a path of 70 percent consumption economy. ((We're wrapping Christmas presents as I write this)) (((I'm making an assumption that humanity will be around for a bit longer and that we have some sort of responsibility to folks who come after us. It's been two thousand years for religious folks, and even longer that we've avoided asteroids, volcanoes etc. for the non-believers. Either way I'm making a dangerous assumption that we're capable of thinking long term))). So yeah, we might not/okay are not capable of continuing in this manner forever, which calls into question the whole idea of productivity. ((((A recent trip to visit a friend of ours in Michigan who is running a small farm and who said, "I don't know why there is so much talk about jobs. People can find work," was a sort of wake up call about other options for productivity than conventional knowledge based ones we're operating with now)))).

I suppose the last caveat in this whole thing is whether the capital W work we're doing right now is necessary or not. I'm beginning to think that it might be from a Biblical perspective. But the secular part of me keeps thinking that perhaps we overrate work in general. Perhaps we can scale back on the economy, and the hours at work, and find other important outlets like family, our own damn backyard, etc. that aren't all about work. However, I have a job, so it's sort of unfair of me to talk about other options. Anyhow, everyone go read Then We Came to the End and ask yourself if that doesn't mimic the curiously ambivalent world of work.