Crying
I cry most frequently in the car. These moments usually occur when I'm driving in the car. Cars are strange ecosystems where everything is magnified. The slightest provocation, going 23 in a 25, taking a right turn more slowly than you'd need to, can send me into paroxysms of anger. I am, in the words of an old Biblical nature, a vile sinner when I'm behind the wheel of a car. I am, truth be told, a sinner in every other context as well, but at least I'm not actively bearing enmity towards the rest of the human species.
This is a roundabout way of talking about crying, but here we are. I don't know how crying works across gender lines, but I do know that, as a man, I'm generally embarrassed to be found doing it. Though my mother almost never cries either. The thing about the world is that it can break your heart. But sometimes you can slip through days, weeks, a month, without realizing that your heart is a little bit broken that you're like that angel from the Garcia Marquez story, sitting in the middle of a pen with broken and dirty wings. And, more complex than that, you are also the cause of the brokenness, capable of creating the small fissures between people.
But then I'm driving in the car, it's Tuesday, and I'm taking the back way to work. The park is now a canopy of trees. The road, which is clearly supposed to be a stream, is all patches and pot holes. And then a song comes on, and I am accidentally crying.
Dancing
I wish I could dance. I wish that I was born as someone with rhythm and rhyme and a culture that loved to move. As it is, I still dance because I like too. I just don't do it well enough. It reminds me of being a kid in my front yard pretending to be Michael Jordan. Have I ever been as good at something as I wish that I was? Probably not. In this way life is a series of failures, but I suppose the interesting part is figuring out what I'd like to fail at next. I don't mean that to sound as profoundly disappointing as it might to an untrained ear. I think, and perhaps it's my Judeo-Christian ethic at work, that we are all failures.
Not all music is created for dancing. But occasionally you hear a song that has the right synthesis of beat, lyrics, and musicality that lets you know it was created for movement. The very young, my children included, immediately start bobbing their head to music when a song comes on. Children innately seem to know what music is for. And just like that you're spinning around the living room floor, unmoored for a moment from the thick flesh of time.
S
I don't know if S would ever listen to music if it weren't for me. I always accuse her of having Germanic roots that desire order and purpose. She could accuse me of having Irish roots that crave disorder and frequent losing of keys, but marriage is best when you are not keeping a record of rights and wrongs. She's from Delaware, though if you ask her she might say she was born in CA. It's the sort of place that everyone wishes they were from. Like New York, it sings its own siren song.
She does like music though, but she doesn't know how to find it. She's said, more than once, that she likes my taste in music more than hers. She's got a bit of the rural still in her soul, despite having a great job in the nation's capital. She likes folk music and blue grass. The woman grew up on Garrison Keilor and loves to hear a fiddle. I don't mind the fiddle, but I can do without it. Sometimes I'll put on a song and play it several times, partly because that's how I like to listen to music and partly to remind that part of her brain that would probably like music if she gave it a chance that she actually likes this song. And after a few days you might hear her say, "I like this song."
Sadie
She's beginning to ask questions when we play music, like, "Is that a song I already heard?" Or she'll tell you something, the girl loves telling you things, "Daddy, you should put on a sweatshirt if you're cold because it's cold outside." She loves words. Musically, she wants to be a ballerina. She tends to just bounce around the room when she dances, waiting for ballet to lighten her limbs.
What she attaches to now are the songs. "I don't like this song," she might say as we're riding home, listening to the same thing we always do. Or she might say, "This is the new song. This is the new song, mommy." And I write myself an e-mail, reminding myself that when she was three she liked this song.
Julian
I've been trying to instill some decent dancing in Ian since he was young. He actually does a pretty credible side to side head waggle if he's sitting down, and he learned to dance before he learned to walk. Now that he's walking though he's forgotten how to dance. He twirls around in a circle, or does a series of deep knee bends like an old school weight lifter. This, most decidedly is not dancing.
He's a sweet boy though, and he aims to please. The latest word that he's learned is "No," which he says vociferously and frequently. If I say, "that's a trash can," he walks up next to it points and says, "No," in this very deep boyish voice. He's also taken to cars. Now, wherever we are, playground, library, pool, he just tries to wander off into the parking lot in order to point at cars and say, "car." Then he turns around and spots another one, "Car." Occasionally he'll mix it up by walking up next to a wheel well and saying, "esa car!" I think he's attempting to say it's a car, but we'll never really know. The point is, he's already displayed more interests in cars than I ever did. But I don't care because I'm going to teach him to do real man things like dance. I think he likes this song because it reminds him of that great Donna Lewis song from the 90's, I love you always forever.
I cry most frequently in the car. These moments usually occur when I'm driving in the car. Cars are strange ecosystems where everything is magnified. The slightest provocation, going 23 in a 25, taking a right turn more slowly than you'd need to, can send me into paroxysms of anger. I am, in the words of an old Biblical nature, a vile sinner when I'm behind the wheel of a car. I am, truth be told, a sinner in every other context as well, but at least I'm not actively bearing enmity towards the rest of the human species.
This is a roundabout way of talking about crying, but here we are. I don't know how crying works across gender lines, but I do know that, as a man, I'm generally embarrassed to be found doing it. Though my mother almost never cries either. The thing about the world is that it can break your heart. But sometimes you can slip through days, weeks, a month, without realizing that your heart is a little bit broken that you're like that angel from the Garcia Marquez story, sitting in the middle of a pen with broken and dirty wings. And, more complex than that, you are also the cause of the brokenness, capable of creating the small fissures between people.
But then I'm driving in the car, it's Tuesday, and I'm taking the back way to work. The park is now a canopy of trees. The road, which is clearly supposed to be a stream, is all patches and pot holes. And then a song comes on, and I am accidentally crying.
Dancing
I wish I could dance. I wish that I was born as someone with rhythm and rhyme and a culture that loved to move. As it is, I still dance because I like too. I just don't do it well enough. It reminds me of being a kid in my front yard pretending to be Michael Jordan. Have I ever been as good at something as I wish that I was? Probably not. In this way life is a series of failures, but I suppose the interesting part is figuring out what I'd like to fail at next. I don't mean that to sound as profoundly disappointing as it might to an untrained ear. I think, and perhaps it's my Judeo-Christian ethic at work, that we are all failures.
Not all music is created for dancing. But occasionally you hear a song that has the right synthesis of beat, lyrics, and musicality that lets you know it was created for movement. The very young, my children included, immediately start bobbing their head to music when a song comes on. Children innately seem to know what music is for. And just like that you're spinning around the living room floor, unmoored for a moment from the thick flesh of time.
S
I don't know if S would ever listen to music if it weren't for me. I always accuse her of having Germanic roots that desire order and purpose. She could accuse me of having Irish roots that crave disorder and frequent losing of keys, but marriage is best when you are not keeping a record of rights and wrongs. She's from Delaware, though if you ask her she might say she was born in CA. It's the sort of place that everyone wishes they were from. Like New York, it sings its own siren song.
She does like music though, but she doesn't know how to find it. She's said, more than once, that she likes my taste in music more than hers. She's got a bit of the rural still in her soul, despite having a great job in the nation's capital. She likes folk music and blue grass. The woman grew up on Garrison Keilor and loves to hear a fiddle. I don't mind the fiddle, but I can do without it. Sometimes I'll put on a song and play it several times, partly because that's how I like to listen to music and partly to remind that part of her brain that would probably like music if she gave it a chance that she actually likes this song. And after a few days you might hear her say, "I like this song."
Sadie
She's beginning to ask questions when we play music, like, "Is that a song I already heard?" Or she'll tell you something, the girl loves telling you things, "Daddy, you should put on a sweatshirt if you're cold because it's cold outside." She loves words. Musically, she wants to be a ballerina. She tends to just bounce around the room when she dances, waiting for ballet to lighten her limbs.
What she attaches to now are the songs. "I don't like this song," she might say as we're riding home, listening to the same thing we always do. Or she might say, "This is the new song. This is the new song, mommy." And I write myself an e-mail, reminding myself that when she was three she liked this song.
Julian
I've been trying to instill some decent dancing in Ian since he was young. He actually does a pretty credible side to side head waggle if he's sitting down, and he learned to dance before he learned to walk. Now that he's walking though he's forgotten how to dance. He twirls around in a circle, or does a series of deep knee bends like an old school weight lifter. This, most decidedly is not dancing.
He's a sweet boy though, and he aims to please. The latest word that he's learned is "No," which he says vociferously and frequently. If I say, "that's a trash can," he walks up next to it points and says, "No," in this very deep boyish voice. He's also taken to cars. Now, wherever we are, playground, library, pool, he just tries to wander off into the parking lot in order to point at cars and say, "car." Then he turns around and spots another one, "Car." Occasionally he'll mix it up by walking up next to a wheel well and saying, "esa car!" I think he's attempting to say it's a car, but we'll never really know. The point is, he's already displayed more interests in cars than I ever did. But I don't care because I'm going to teach him to do real man things like dance. I think he likes this song because it reminds him of that great Donna Lewis song from the 90's, I love you always forever.
just as there are certain songs that make us cry,
ReplyDeletethere are certain movies that will forever bring tears...
"marley and me", "tuesdays with morrie", the
notebook,and of course godzilla(what)