Self-loathing, an Excerpt

[Soundtrack for this post: Red House Painters, Red House Painters (Rollercoaster)]

[Beer for this post: Goose Island’s Mild Winter]

There are a great many things I don’t like about me. Those of you who know me, which is all of you since I’m pretty sure my dad, my wife, and a handful of friends are the only people who read this thing, might find that hard to believe since you undoubtedly know how awesome I am. But it is true. For now, I want to focus on three things that I’ve been thinking about today.

(1) I will do almost anything to avoid doing what it is that I should be doing.

When I was in law school I would read just about anything other than what I was supposed to be reading. I’d pass the time reading briefs and listening to oral arguments in random cases that I had nothing to do with and had nothing to do with my studies. I’d read blogs and news about Indian law. I’d watch seven episodes of Law and Order back to back, telling myself that I was doing it to critique the evidentiary objections (or gross lack of them). What’s somewhat strange is I wouldn’t read fiction or something more overtly fun. I’d justify my extracurricular reading and viewing by telling myself that these things I was doing instead of what I should’ve been doing were actually good for me, legal education wise, and that was usually true to some extent. But it was rarely, in the grades-obsessed world of law school, as good for me as doing what I was supposed to be doing would’ve been.

The surest way to keep me from reading a brief or a book is to assign that reading to me or to otherwise make it known to me that what I am supposed to be doing is reading that brief or book. I am a great procrastinator, and this is part of the reason why.

I will not do what it is that I’m supposed to do until the last possible moment, often I will misjudge and I will start too late. One very recent example of this, and what made me think about this today, is this: I had a brief to write that had to be filed today. The person I was writing it for made the great mistake of telling me that she didn’t need it until the end of the business day. So that’s when she got it. I was up pretty much all night writing it and then got up and had to continue pounding it out all day today. This is incredibly annoying to me, and possibly to the people I was writing it for. I really wish I’d done it earlier. Why didn’t I? I have no idea.

When I was in college I developed the habit, after I realized I could get away with it, of not starting a paper until around 11pm the night before it was due. I figured out that I averaged about a page an hour—thus a seven-page paper would take me seven hours. Thankfully most of my college papers were in the five- to seven-page range (my thesis, of sorts, was the biggest exception—it was about 40 pages and took me way more than 40 hours to write). So I worked through many nights in college. Which leads me to the second thing I don’t like about me.

(2) I am a night person.

I used to think this was cool. Maybe I still do, in some respects. But I also really wish I were one of those worm-getting early birds. I have romantic ideas about the charm of getting up before the sun, being a farmer looking out my kitchen window surveying my fields while I cradle a cup of coffee, steeling myself to tackle my day. But I’m not. I’m a night person. The late night hours are when I am most productive, if I’m working, and are also when I feel most like me.

I did pretty much all of my college work after 10pm. I also did much of my law school work in the later hours. And even if I’m not working, night is when I want to be up. For a while I had to be at my first post-college job by 6am. Which meant I had to be out of my house by just after 5:30. Even then, I was often up until 2am, sometimes later, hanging out with my housemates or just with myself. I survived an extended, unnecessary period of getting three hours of sleep a night, all out of stubbornness.

My night-person-ness has been a cause of some strife in my romantic relationships. One of my girlfriends, who I lived with, made it clear that she thought it was important that we went to bed at the same time. But she went to bed at a regular person’s reasonable time, which is to say much earlier than I wanted to. My wife has not been as forceful in expressing this same desire, but I suspect that she’d appreciate it if we went to bed at the same time. The problem for me is that the night is when I want, almost desperately, to be up. In some powerful way, it is when I need to be awake to be me. Productivity aside, night is when I feel the most me, when I feel the most connected and in tune with my thoughts, emotions, and general self. Without that time, I’m scared I’d lose myself.

What bothers me about this is that I don’t understand why the time I spend alone, in the early morning hours, is when I am most comfortable being me, why I see that time as vital to maintaining myself. Why can’t I do it when I’m with my friends and loved ones? What does that say about me and my relationships? It makes me sad. But it is true. And I don’t know how to change it or even if I can change it.

(3) I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Ever since I graduated from college I’ve felt that I’ve had the seemingly luxurious problem of having too many options. The problem has only gotten worse since I finished law school. I understand why many people would say it is a nice problem to have, but I think it is hard. Choosing, particularly when there is more at stake, is not an easy thing to do.

After I moved to Chicago and quit my job at my old law firm, I was both apathetic and torn about what I should do. The possibility of leaving the law suddenly seemed like something to consider. And, for lots of reasons I won’t get into, the decision would’ve provided a great deal of relief. I once told a friend, when I was first thinking about it, that as long as I thought I might want to stay in the law, my current situation would be agonizing, but if I just made the decision to do something else, to leave the law behind, I would be much happier and more free. But the problem was, and still is, that I’m not sure that’s what I really want, so the decision has lingered and has not become easier.

In a chapter from his unfinished novel, The Pale King, David Foster Wallace narrates the awakening of a college student named Chris Fogle (this excerpt is from an article in The New Yorker, I have no idea if the ellipses are the magazine’s or Wallace’s):

I was by myself, wearing nylon warm-up pants and a black Pink Floyd tee shirt, trying to spin a soccer ball on my finger and watching the CBS soap opera “As The World Turns” on the room’s little black-and-white Zenith. . . . There was certainly always reading and studying for finals I could do, but I was being a wastoid. . . . Anyhow, I was sitting there trying to spin the ball on my finger and watching the soap opera . . . and at the end of every commercial break, the show’s trademark shot of planet earth as seen from space, turning, would appear, and the CBS daytime network announcer’s voice would say, “You’re watching ‘As the World Turns,’ ” which he seemed, on this particular day, to say more and more pointedly each time—“You’re watching ‘As the World Turns’ ” until the tone began to seem almost incredulous—“You’re watching ‘As the World Turns’ ”—until I was suddenly struck by the bare reality of the statement. . . . It was as if the CBS announcer were speaking directly to me, shaking my shoulder or leg as though trying to arouse someone from sleep—“You’re watching ‘As the World Turns.’ ” . . . I didn’t stand for anything. If I wanted to matter—even just to myself—I would have to be less free, by deciding to choose in some kind of definite way.

I find this to be exceptionally true.

I am convinced that my directional ambivalence has been the root cause of much of my psychic pain, my great angst. There are several things that I think I’d like to try but haven’t out of fear, the fear of it being the not-optimal decision. The flipside here, though, and a corresponding fear that helps bind me in my crushing ambivalence, is my fierce the-grass-is-always-greener nature, that if I make a choice I will be constantly haunted by what-ifs. Damn me and my gutlessness.

Dog-eared 4

I’ve decided to copy my wife's “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

The Reality of Magnetic Fields

(They’re real. I’m really, really serial.)

One of my top-five-of-all-time bands, The Magnetic Fields, released a new album this week. It’s called Realism. On Tuesday, which apparently has been forever ordained by God or someone else powerful as new-record-release-day, I stopped by Best Buy to pick up the new record and they did not have it. Actually, they didn’t have anything by the Magnetic Fields, nothing, not even a little place card. I spent a good five minutes looking at all of the other crap in the “M” section and silently rampaged about how can they have all this crap and no Magnetic Fields. So I stopped at the next Best Buy (strangely only a mile away) and they didn’t have any Magnetic Fields either. Screw Best Buy. Their music buyer should be flogged. [n.1]

Anyhow. Here’s a bit from track 9, Seduced and Abandoned:

Seduced with a grin,

I was taken all in;

taken in sin

and in shame.

Seduced by a smile,

I walked down the aisle

then waited awhile.

No one came.

Seduced and abandoned

and baby makes two.

Baby abandoned by you.

Seduced and abandoned

and what can I do?

I think I might drink a few.

Abandoned to weep

I collapsed in a heap,

dutifully sleeping all day.

Abandoned to die

I did nothing but cry

in my one-ply négligée.

Seduced and abandoned

and baby makes two.

Baby abandoned by you.

Seduced and abandoned

and what can I do?

I think I might drink a few.

Yes, I think I might drink a few

and maybe the baby will too.

Note 1: You might wonder why I’m buying records at Best Buy anyway. Well, because they are cheap. Also, I was driving and Best Buys always have nice giant parking lots or garages. But it also probably has something to do with the fact that I can go in a Best Buy and be ignored and not care what anyone in there thinks. If I go to one of the many independent record shops in my neighborhood, which is something I’d like to do for many reasons, I inevitably feel like I’m not cool enough to be in there and that the obnoxious hipsters I’m surrounded by are judging me. There are all sorts of problems with that, but it’s the truth.

My So-Called Wife

Sandra Tsing Loh has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times titled My So-Called Wife. She talks about the challenges of duel-breadwinner households, and how she fantasizes about the simplicity of the imagined-ideal of the stereotyped ’50s household with the “working” husband and the homemaking wife. One of her conclusions is that everyone wants a “wife” regardless of sex.

I think there’s something to the idea that the old system was, at least in some important ways, better. But I also think Loh has a point in that everyone wants a “wife,” which is to say many people today don’t want to be the “wife.” I have never studied domestic partnerships, or feminism, or anything even remotely related to this topic, so there’s much I don’t know about this stuff, but here are some of my amateur thoughts:

(1) There is something to be said about having very clear divisions of authority. In Loh’s fantasy, there’s the wage earner who couldn’t find the icebox and the homemaker who doesn’t want someone else messing up the organization system and such. As Loh mentions, conflict comes when you try to split these duties. In our household I’d say the majority of “disputes” involve who’s doing what around the house, how it’s being done, et cetera. We regularly battle over how to load the dishwasher, which is something that just wouldn’t happen if only one person ever loaded the dishwasher.

(2) I also agree that many people these days, both men and women, would not be content to be the homemaker. I certainly haven’t been. I’ve probably done less housework since I’ve been under-employed, and I don’t doubt that one of the reasons is that I fear becoming nothing more than the person who keeps the house tidy and makes dinner.

(3) Staying home with a baby is a great deal of work and is psychologically exhausting. I don’t understand how people can keep beautiful homes while dealing with an infant or toddler. In my experience, dealing with a young child is much more exhausting than going to work. Much, much, much more.

(4) Going back to #2 (heh), I realize that by saying “people these days . . . would not be content to be the homemaker” I’m suggesting that people were ever content with it, which is something I don’t know. And if watching The Hours suggested anything to me it was that being a homemaker could be a lonely and tedious job, even for a ’50s woman.

(5) Combining #s 3 and 4: being a housewife might be great if you’re Betty Draper, with a nanny and housekeeper to watch your kids and clean your house as you go out and ride horses, play tennis, and have afternoon cocktails with your friends. But most people don’t have the luxury of help. And even Betty Draper seems awfully discontent and troubled about her situation.

(6) There has been a massive increase in the U.S. divorce rate over the last 40 years. Is it because it has become more socially acceptable, women have gained greater freedoms, or is it because of the shift away from the divisions of family life? I’d guess it has to do with all three, and probably other stuff. But I don’t doubt that the shift away from clear division of obligations has led to more domestic strife. Even if it has led to other good things.

(7) Loh says what everyone wants is a “wife.” I think what we all want is servants.

Manhood for Amateurs, Parts 6 and 7: Artwork

[Soundtrack for this post: The Australian Open on TV]

[Beer for this post: Dark Horse Brewing Company’s Crooked Tree IPA]

On to the fifth and sixth essays in Manhood for Amateurs.

The Memory Hole

In this essay Chabon talks about throwing away his kids’ artwork. He says he keeps some of the better pieces, but throws most of it out. He also mentions how his parents kept very little of the art he created in his youth.

One of the first things that I think about when I think about this essay is: what did his kids think when they read it?

I have a hard time thinking that I’d ever want to throw away anything that Carver created. But I know the time will come, probably soon, when I will. Well, I might not want to throw it away, but I’ll realize that I need to. I’m kind of a hoarder by nature and we have too much stuff in our house already, so there’s no way we can keep every bit of art Carver makes. And even if we chose to, if we put it in bins and then put them in storage, what would be the point? Chabon says that the good stuff they keep just goes in a bin that goes in the attic and is never seen again. Carver, Anne, and I are probably never going to want to look at every single piece of art that Carver ever makes, so it would just sit there in the dark.

My mom has in her house a couple drawings I made in my early youth that she has framed. I love that they are there, and I love being able to see them, but I think having a few meaningful pieces is enough.

My dad maintains my “baby book” (his term), which now fills an entire armoire. And the thing is: what’s going to happen to it? When my dad moves on, it’ll be left to me to decide, and since I’m a hoarder who doesn’t like to throw stuff out I’m going to want to keep all of it. And then what am I going to do with it? It would inevitably just sit in some dark storage area. I’d probably prefer that it not be there, at least most of it. But I’d tell my parents: “Do not feel obligated to throw away my baby book stuff. Actually, don’t throw it out.” I could never encourage the destruction of evidence of my existence and testaments to who I am. Which is what that stuff is to me.

The Binding of Isaac

In this essay Chabon talks about watching President Obama speak at his election victory party in Grant Park. He has his five-year-old son on his shoulders. He’s caught up in the joy of the moment, but then he suddenly feels sorry for Obama’s daughters, for they are about to lose access to their father as they’ve known it. But then he feels sorry for Obama. And he talks about how a child’s want for his father’s attention is insatiable, and how all fathers abandon their children, in some small way, countless times.

First, I wonder if Carver is going to be mad at Anne and me for not taking him to the election night celebration (and, in case you don’t know us that well, it was a celebration for us too). We were about four miles away, holed up in our apartment. Carver was just shy of two months and I had no interest in fighting the masses to get into Grant Park that night while trying to pacify a two-month old. But part of me now really regrets not being able to tell him that he was there on that night.

I think a parent can be a positive influence even if they aren’t there all that often. I like to think that President Obama can be a fine father, and a fine example for his daughters, even though his new job undoubtedly keeps him extremely busy. I think the same can be true of military parents—even in absence their service can be a shining example. I think some sort of presence is required, but it doesn’t need to be constant. And I also think it is important to have happy and fulfilled parents, so if that means the parents need to tackle time-intensive jobs, then so be it. Setting an example is just as important as being available.

Dog-eared 3

I’ve decided to copy my wife’s “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Infinite Jest (again)

From David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (note the unusual italicization toward the end):

Then, just as in AA, the NA meeting closed with everybody shouting to the air in front of them to Keep Coming Back because It Works.

But then, kind of horrifically, everyone in the room started milling around wildly and hugging each other. It was like somebody’d thrown a switch. There wasn’t even very much conversation. It was just hugging, as far as Erdedy could see. Rampant, indiscriminate hugging, where the point seemed to be to hug as many people as possible regardless of whether you’d ever seen them before in your life. People went from person to person, arms out and leaning in. Big people stooped and short people got up on tiptoe. Jowls ground into other jowls. Both genders hugged both genders. And the male‐to‐male hugs were straight embraces, hugs minus the vigorous little thumps on the back that Erdedy’d always seen as somehow requisite for male‐to‐male hugs. Johnette Foltz was almost a blur. She went from person to person. She was racking up serious numbers of hugs. Kate Gompert had her usual lipless expression of morose distaste, but even she gave and got some hugs. But Erdedy — who’d never particularly liked hugging — moved way back from the throng, over up next to the NA‐Conference‐Approved‐Literature table, and stood there by himself with his hands in his pockets, pretending to study the coffee urn with great interest.

But then a tall heavy Afro‐American fellow with a gold incisor and perfect vertical cylinder of Afro‐American hairstyle peeled away from a sort of group‐hug nearby, he’d spotted Erdedy, and the fellow came over and established himself right in front of Erdedy, spreading the arms of his fatigue jacket for a hug, stooping slightly and leaning in toward Erdedy’s personal trunk‐region.

Erdedy raised his hands in a benign No Thanks and backed up further so that his bottom was squashed up against the edge of the Conference‐Approved‐Literature table.

‘Thanks, but I don’t particularly like to hug,’ he said.

The fellow had to sort of pull up out of his pre‐hug lean, and stood there awkwardly frozen, with his big arms still out, which Erdedy could see must have been awkward and embarrassing for the fellow. Erdedy found himself trying to calculate just what remote sub‐Asian locale would be the maximum possible number of km. away from this exact spot and moment as the fellow just stood there, his arms out and the smile draining from his face.

‘Say what?’ the fellow said.

Erdedy proffered a hand. ‘Ken E., Ennet House, Enfield. How do you do. You are?’

The fellow slowly let his arms down but just looked at Erdedy’s proffered hand. A single styptic blink. ‘Roy Tony,’ he said.

‘Roy, how do you do.’

‘What it is,’ Roy said. The big fellow now had his handshake‐hand behind his neck and was pretending to feel the back of his neck, which Erdedy didn’t know was a blatant dis.

‘Well Roy, if I may call you Roy, or Mr. Tony, if you prefer, unless it’s a compound first name, hyphenated, "Roy‐Tony" and then a last name, but well with respect to this hugging thing, Roy, it’s nothing personal, rest assured.’

‘Assured?’

Erdedy’s best helpless smile and an apologetic shrug of the GoreTex anorak. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t particularly like to hug. Just not a hugger. Never have been. It was something of a joke among my fam—’

Now the ominous finger‐pointing of street‐aggression, this Roy fellow pointing first at Erdedy’s chest and then at his own: ‘So man what you say you saying I’m a hugger? You saying you think I go around like to hug?’

Both Erdedy’s hands were now up palms‐out and waggling in a like bon‐hommic gesture of heading off all possible misunderstanding: ‘No but see the whole point is that I wouldn’t presume to call you either a hugger or a nonhugger because I don’t know you. I only meant to say it’s nothing personal having to do with you as an individual, and I’d be more than happy to shake hands, even one of those intricate multiple‐handed ethnic handshakes if you’ll bear with my inexperience with that sort of handshake, but I’m simply uncomfortable with the whole idea of hugging.’

By the time Johnette Foltz could break away and get over to them, the fellow had Erdedy by his anorak’s insulated lapels and was leaning him way back over the edge of the Literature table so that Erdedy’s waterproof lodge boots were off the ground, and the fellow’s face was right up in Erdedy’s face in a show of naked aggression:

‘You think I fucking like to go around hug on folks? You think any of us like this shit? We fucking do what they tell us. They tell us Hugs Not Drugs in here. We done motherfucking surrendered our wills in here,’ Roy said. ‘You little faggot,’ Roy added. He wedged his hand between them to point at himself, which meant he was now holding Erdedy off the ground with just one hand, which fact was not lost on Erdedy’s nervous system. ‘I done had to give four hugs my first night here and then I gone ran in the fucking can and fucking puked. Puked,’ he said. ‘Not comfortable? Who the fuck are you? Don’t even try and tell me I’m coming over feeling comfortable about trying to hug on your James‐River‐Traders‐wearing‐Calvin‐ Klein‐aftershave‐smelling‐goofy‐ass motherfucking ass.’

Erdedy observed one of the Afro‐American women who was looking on clap her hands and shout ‘Talk about it!’

‘And now you go and disrespect me in front of my whole clean and sober set just when I gone risk sharing my vulnerability and discomfort with you?’

Johnette Foltz was sort of pawing at the back of Roy Tony’s fatigue jacket, shuddering mentally at how the report of an Ennet House resident assaulted at an NA meeting she’d personally brought him to would look written up in the Staff Log.

‘Now,’ Roy said, extracting his free hand and pointing to the vestry floor with a stabbing gesture, ‘now,’ he said, ‘you gone risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I gone fucking rip your head off and shit down your neck?’

Johnette Foltz had hold of the Roy fellow’s coat now with both hands and was trying to pull the fellow off, Keds scrabbling for purchase on the smooth parquet, saying ‘Yo Roy T. man, easy there Dude, Man, Esse, Bro, Posse, Crew, Homes, Jim, Brother, he’s just new is all’; but by this time Erdedy had both arms around the guy’s neck and was hugging him with such vigor Kate Gompert later told Joelle van Dyne it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him.

What's that?

There's a giant version of this ad on a building near my house. I don't think that's what they meant to say. When you pour your heart into it (gross), coffee tastes like what? A giant billboard?

Built Ford Tough

There's a commercial that's been airing recently for the Ford F-150. I believe Dennis Leary narrates it (n.1), but that's not my point. Here's a transcription of the first half:

Alright [sic]. So you’re driving down the freeway doing about 60 when you notice the guy next to you is steering with his knees, eating a cheeseburger, and talking on the phone.

And that is exactly why the Ford F-150 is the safest truck in America.

No, that is not why the F-150 is purportedly the safest truck in America. The relative safeness of the F-150 is due to its design, construction, and features; it has nothing to do with who happens to be driving next to F-150s.

Note 1: Who was great in Suicide Kings, by the way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWKrncseUw8&NR=1

Sports and Parenting

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm]

[Beer for this post: Brooklyn Brewery’s East India Pale Ale]

I was sitting at a table around the Christmas before last with Anne’s family and we were talking about Carver and his cousin Ryan playing sports. Ryan’s mom, Anne’s sister-in-law, was saying that Ryan would not be allowed to play football. I have a feeling that Anne would love to say the same thing about Carver, but it wouldn’t be true. Carver will play football, at least for a time, because I really want him to.

I played organized baseball for many years, but I never did play organized football despite talking about it a few times with my dad and my friend Chad’s parents. I was recruited heavily to play on my High School football team—my ninth grade P.E. teacher raved about my football and general physical abilities considering my size, at the time I was 205 pounds when the average guy in my class was probably 150, and I was still very quick, I have little doubt I would’ve been a monster of a fullback and linebacker—but football conflicted with Band, and I wasn’t going to give up Band for anything. There are parts of me that wonder what would’ve happened had I played football, would I have been as good as I like to think? But I also have a hard time thinking that I didn’t make the right decision; Band provided me with music, a huge amount of fun, great friends, my first love, and my first real school-centered community. I don’t see how I could’ve had it better.

So when I say I really want Carver to play football, I imagine many people will think it is the typical dad-trying-to-live-through-his-son situation. But I don’t think that’s it at all. I want Carver to play football because I love football, and I want to share that love with him. I also want him to learn to play music. If the time comes when he has to choose between music and football (or whatever), I would never begrudge him his choice. But I want him to experience both.

To me, football is the ultimate team sport, and I love it with an obsessive passion. Why would I not want to share that with my son?

Golfing with My Dad

My dad is an obsessive golfer. I enjoy golf, but it doesn’t mean that much to me. Golf, to my dad, is a very important part of his life. My dad plays at least once a week, almost every Sunday—he considers his Sunday golf rounds as “going to church.” When he started dating again after his most recent divorce he told me how he made a point to make it clear to his prospects that he plays golf every Sunday, and that every Sunday means every single Sunday, regardless of whether it is Mother’s Day, Christmas, or the apocalypse. My dad is committed to getting in his rounds. To him it is a sort of refuge, and a love.

So when he gave me a set of cut-down clubs and signed me up for youth lessons, I don’t doubt some might have taken it as is version of the typical dad-trying-to-live-through-his-son situation. But that wasn’t it at all, I know.

My dad’s dad was an excellent golfer, and my dad played with him on occasion. I imagine the time those two remarkably dissimilar men spent on the course as rare moments when they had a love in common, when they shared a pursuit. I imagine it as a time of bonding and father-son togetherness that my father appreciated deeply. So it should surprise no one that he shared the game with me at an early age. And the bonus was that he almost certainly did it with more care and love than he got from his dad.

I don’t play nearly as much as my dad does. I’ve lived in Chicago for nearly two years and I’ve played once here (granted, you can’t play half the year here, and I have played a few times while away on vacation). I don’t love golf the way my dad does, yet, at least, but that’s OK. I do enjoy playing, and playing a round with him is one of my favorite things to do, and I know it’s something he treasures dearly.

In the summer of 2005 my dad and I, along with two good friends, did a golf tour of Ireland. We spent a night in Dublin, stayed at some great hotels, drank pints of stout, and hand some great food. But it was about the golf, and the time before and after the golf, and us doing it together. Sure, we bickered a bit here and there, as anyone who has to spend 10 days with me will learn is inevitable, but it was a trip of a lifetime for both of us and it never would’ve happened with out my dad’s love of golf and his decision to share it with me.

Sherman Alexie wrote a great piece in The Stranger about keeping the Seattle SuperSonics in Seattle (which, unfortunately, didn’t happen). Much of the content of Alexie’s pitch to “save the Sonics” is worthy of its own post, but for now I’ll just share this part:

While my father was dying, he and I talked basketball. Three days before he died, my father still had enough will and character left to deride Kobe Bryant for being a rotten smallpox wound on the game of basketball.

"I know," I said. "I can't stand him."

That meant I love you, Dad.

"I still can't believe they traded Shaq instead of Kobe."

That meant I love you, too, Son.

Of course, no matter how much I hate Kobe, I still love to watch him play. He's a ferocious poet on the court. And I most especially love to watch him lose.

I hate Kobe like other people hate the New York Yankees. And, man, it feels good to hate like that because I won't start any wars because of it. I get to hate without fear of violence.

And my father hated Kobe like that, too.

When I look back at my relationship with my father, when I put a narrative to it, I realize that every plot point, every surprise, and every tender and/or painful moment has something to do with basketball.

My father was a great basketball player. I was a very good small-town hoopster but I couldn't beat him one-on-one until I was 16 years old.

And I have never felt better or worse than the day I finally defeated my father.

My father haunts every basketball game.

In every round I play with my dad, Great shot, Bud, and Nice putt! means I love you, Dad. And when he’s gone my father will, without a doubt, haunt every round of golf I ever play. And that’s a great and beautiful thing.

Dog-eared 2

I’ve decided to copy my wife’s “dog-eared” feature. These posts will contain quotations from books, music, movies, and whatever else I feel like sharing.

Infinite Jest

From David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest:

“One of the troubles with his Moms is the fact that Avril Incandenza believes she knows him inside and out as a human being, and an internally worthy one at that, when in fact inside Hal there’s pretty much nothing at all, he knows. His Moms Avril hears her own echoes inside him and thinks what she hears is him, and this makes Hal feel the one thing he feels to the limit, lately: he is lonely.”

(A little extra, if you’re interested):

“It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip—and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded engagement in the self. Once we’ve hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the shape of whatever it wears. And then it’s stuck there, the weary cynicism that saves us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always like about J.O. Incandenza’s The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naïveté is the last true terrible sin in the theology of millennial America. And since sin is the sort of thing that can be talked about only figuratively, it’s natural that Himself’s dark little cartridge was mostly about a myth, viz. that queerly persistent U.S. myth that cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive. Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile, some sort of not-quite-right-looking infant dragging itself anaclitically around the map, with big wet eyes and froggy-soft skin, huge skull, gooey drool. One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.”