Winning Time

The title of this post comes not only from the new 30 for 30 documentary Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks, which premieres tonight at 9:00 PM on ESPN, but also because even on a rainy weekend we are approaching winning time.  The weather is getting warmer; we put the clocks ahead today and it is going to get lighter and lighter each days, which means that we won.

Also, this evening the brackets for the 2010 NCAA Tournament will be released.  This is a little bittersweet for me since UNC had an off year and will not be getting a chance to defend their title from last year - unfortunate.  However, everyone is a winner around this time of year with the abundance of basketball and excitement that will be on TV.  This Thursday and Friday are the two best basketball days of the entire year.  You can literally watch basketball from 11:55 AM to midnight on each of those days.  I have a meeting at Vogue magazine on Thursday, but after that you can rest assure that I will be pulling up a bar stool at some dark hole and watching basketball for the rest of the day. This week should yield at least one substantive post about this year's tournament - bound to be one of the weirdest of all time - and the NBA prospects/leading stars heading into the tournament - my love of Evan Turner has exponentially increased over the weekend - so look out for all that.

Some other items of business to address today:

- I got my hands on the new Joanna Newsom album Have One on Me, the new Gorrilaz album, Plastic Beach, and the Field Music album, Field Music (Measure). I'll be listening to all of these albums during this next week and may be giving a low down of at least one of  them. I am not a Joanna Newsom fan, but I am hoping to get into her from this album.  I have heard really good things about the Gorillaz album and I am overall very excited to listen to the Field Music album. Field Music is basically the brain child of David and Peter Brewis, two brothers who write excellent pop songs in the vein of a band like XTC.  Peter released an album with his side project The Week that Was in 2008 and it was one of my favorite albums of that year.

- I was just browsing through some of my bookmarks and I wanted to mention the blog of a friend of mine, Dan Shapiro. Dan went to Skidmore as well and here is his blog.  Very entertaining and mesmerizing site.

- My friend Janelle turned me on to the artwork of yet another Brown alumni over the weekend.  This alumni's name is Lauren Gidwitz and she has a fine website with her work.  You can visit it here. She definitely has a vision and aesthetic that I can relate to.

- Also stumbled upon this link as well, which was perfect for me.

As far Winning Time tonight, you can listen to Bill Simmons interview the director Dan Klores at his podcast website on ESPN.

Speaking of podcasts, I will be soon adding that element to this website as well.  I am just looking into the simplest and most direct route of recording and will then proceed with interviews and bull shit sessions with my friends and other local celebrities.  I basically just want to talk to people who are trying to create something and maintain an aesthetic belief while being faced with the harsh reality of possibly just being a loser - you know, people like myself.  I will of course be forcing the discussions towards basketball and the music I enjoy so there will bound to be plenty of arguments and empty beer cans. If you have any insights on podcast recording, please feel free to let me know.

The comedy shorts have not gone out the window.  We are re-recording one of the simpler sketches before the documentary tonight and will be conducting the more difficult sketches once we can catch some sunny weather.  Stay tuned for it all.

Always new content.

Now, From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt.  This is the last installment from the first section of Part II of the novel.  This concludes the "wake" portion of the funeral ceremony.  The next section picks up in the limo on the way to the cemetary and is told completely from the perspective of the limo driver:


The procession of the family continued solemnly.  The O’Donnells carried the casket through the lobby.  Douglas Bryant admired the family as they moved.  He was surprised how nicely the shape had fallen into place.  He liked the boy-girl-boy order that was reflected on each side of the casket.  It was a shame that Connor was not a part of the nuclear family, but the healing that might occur between the two brothers over this moment and ceremony was far more dramatic.  Douglas Bryant looked up at the portrait of his father.  This was why his father had gotten into the funeral home business: to help families reunite over a ritual.  That was the power the home had; families and individuals could connect with each other, could connect with something greater, something they always felt within themselves but could never really understand.  That was why there were death rituals, so that one could hope to make that greater universe understandable.  It wasn’t the most appealing profession, but it helped soothe people in its repetition and reliability.  Douglas watched Connor and Ben O’Donnell as they walked at the rear of the casket.  He had to admit that they did look very similar.  It was something in their faces, a childish quality, playful, yes, but also something adventurous, especially with their hair wispy and somewhat unkempt around the ears.  Funeral Director Bryant felt his heart skip.  If he could bring these two brothers together, then this job would have been a true success.

Douglas took a deep breath.  He looked at Eve.  This was the first he had ever seen of James O’Donnell’s wife in person.  He had seen her in the Herald in the “People” section towards the back of the paper.  There was a picture of the two of them with a  notice that they had gotten married, the ceremony was in Georgetown.  He found her to be quite beautiful and he wondered how old she was, how old they both were.  She looked to be about thirty.  Douglas thought they would probably have children soon.  Although, looking at her trim frame, he couldn’t imagine her gaining the creamy glow that a woman’s skin and overall appearance took when she was pregnant.  He remembered when Eileen, his wife, was pregnant with Frank.  He was never more attracted to her.  To Douglas, it was the greatest pleasure of his life that he loved a woman and was able to have a child with her, that simplicity made everything else bearable.

The main doors of the funeral home were open and Douglas could see the hearse parked outside.  Everything had been set up correctly and was going according to his vision.  The family would pass the casket into the hearse and it would be driven to the place of rest.  Once the casket was in the hearse, his job was over.  Douglas stood behind the O’Donnell family as they carried the hearse out of the funeral home and down the concrete steps.  He heard the constant whoosh of the car passing on Old Town Road.  The extended family and other well wishers were gathered along the steps as the family passed through with the casket to the back of the hearse.  Douglas remained on the top step.  He saw the fine polished wood pass partly, then fully, past the opened black back door of the hearse, the spare tire with its silver hubcap looking directly at him.

Funeral Director Bryant sighed and continued to listen to the cars.  He heard the back door of the hearse slam and felt the eyes of the mourners fall on him.

“Our service here is concluded.  The hearse will guide you all past the last residence and then out to the place of rest.  Kindly follow the procession and know that my heart and the hearts of all those at Bryant & Sons Funeral Home are heavy with your loss as well.”

The O’Donnell family remained near the hearse.  However, Ben O’Donnell shuffled up the stairs, Thomas followed him.

“Ben?” Douglas Bryant said.

“You did a good job.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

“For a real son of a bitch, I think I can understand you,” Ben said, smiling.

“I appreciate that, Ben.”

Ben turned and looked at Thomas for a moment. He turned back. “You and I aren’t so different.”

Douglas Bryant shuffled his black shoes on the cement step. “No.”

Ben held out his hand.  Douglas shook it.

“Thanks again.  You did a good job,” Ben said and walked away.

Thomas remained for a moment.  He held out his hand.  Douglas Bryant shook it.

“Thanks, Mr. Bryant.”

Douglas released his hand and looked up at Tom’s sharp face.  There was a kindness in it, but also something around the eyes that disturbed him.  Douglas felt himself lose his control.

“You’re OK, aren’t you?” he blurted.

Tom smiled and looked out to the cars. “I’d say so.”

“You know,” Douglas said, “people always had great things to say about you.  They just never understand why you were.  Well, why you did it.”

Tom continued to smile. “Thanks, Mr. Bryant.”

Douglas watched Tom turn away.  As he did, he paused for a moment.  Douglas followed Tom’s vision and saw a girl standing on the front lawn of the home.  Tom and the girl both stood frozen for a moment before Tom moved toward her on the far side of the hearse.  Douglas wanted to watch, but something from Tom’s tone made him turn away.  He listened to the sound of the cars in the road and turned his head back to the high school.  Douglas Bryant frowned and bowed his head.  He hoped his son would never come to the crossroads Tom O’Donnell had come to when he jumped in the frozen creek.  He hoped his son would forgive him for being hard on him.  Douglas breathed in the fresh air.  Frank would come to understand him someday, he hoped at least. However, Douglas Bryant thought, as he dug his hand into his pocket, all of the order he surrounded himself with and took pride in for years with his own father and the job he had been given seemed to fall by the wayside when he had to face his own son.  When Douglas thought of Frank, he felt a great swell of love within himself, but could never translate it into something real.  His hugs were false and his kisses non-existant.  The warm air blew the thin front strands of Douglas Bryant’s hair.  He grabbed onto the iron hand rail that split the front steps of the home and eased himself to a sit on the top step.

Douglas Bryant watched Tom O’Donnell talk to the girl on the grass.

Role Models

 

This post was supposed to air on Thursday night, was pre-empted due to other reasons. So you may all enjoy it now:

I just finished watching the new Magic and Bird documentary on HBO.  I had been looking forward to the premiere of Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks on Sunday evening and had forgotten that a new Bird and Magic documentary was floating around.

The Bird/Magic story is obviously one of the most well known and well documented stories (maybe even any story) in the history of sports.  It has always been so interesting because you have timeless stories and themes so readily at hand: black against white; workaday values against Hollywood fame; East vs. West; an intensely private figure against one who was admired and revered for his warmth.  The fact that these two players played for the two most iconic franchises in the NBA was only icing on the cake.  And, you also have the fact that they were doppelgangers – two guys who were about the same height, who traditionally (Magic played every position, but mainly point, and no one his size had ever done that) played the same position.  They were both excellent passers and they played with an appreciation for the game itself; a game that is based on the giving to others, the unselfishness that spurs on success in basketball – although TV and sneaker deals and the beauty of a drive and dunk through the lane always seem to tell us differently.

All of this was already known about Bird and Magic.  However, what struck me most about this documentary was how affected I was by watching it. This is a story that I had pored over for years.  I can’t count how many summers I went to basketball camp and sat in the dark after lunch with my fellow campers watching Magic Johnson and Larry Bird highlight videos.  We heard the stories of Magic working on his last minute shot on every morning before school; we knew about Larry’s uncanny knack for the game and his hailing from not only the heartland of America, but also the heartland of basketball. But tonight – at twenty-four – from watching this documentary, I realized how much basketball actually means to me.

I played basketball throughout my youth and up through high school.  I wasn’t gifted at the sport, but I was good enough.  I was even a captain on certain teams because I ran well and played defense and could deliver a well-placed bounce pass.  I never felt the game within me. I never felt its extension as an immediate and serious part of myself – the natural extension of the arm and hand for a one armed bounce pass; the immediate throw of the perfect outlet; the timing for a wrap around pass; or the grace and body control to absorb contact on a reverse lay-up for three points the old fashioned way.  That is to say, the game was not my solace.  I could play it.  I had flashes of youthful brilliance, when at eight years old, I would play three on one against three other nine and ten year olds in my neighborhood.  However, at the critical point in my relation to the game, there was no immediacy – the game did not give me sanctuary and it did not move my soul.

Now, as I was saying, it is different.  All of this writing I have done here about basketball only opened up the understanding that came tonight. This understanding came because I am twenty four with a wealth of optimism and enthusiasm for the world and, like most, I hate my job and I see the very obvious forces against my desire to create and make an art for others in this world.  So, for the first time I truly need basketball.  I need to go to the local court and play pickup ball with high school kids.  I need this because I see how they need the game and how they love the game.  On the court, when I am “the whitest (expletive) in the gym,” I can at least run and push that ball and try to draw contact and finish with a fingeroll. And then, afterwards, I can smell the asphalt and worn rubber on my hands and I can drink a beer.  It is my solace. I just read recently that the latter day MJ was different in his relation to the game because at that point in his life, the court was his sanctuary.  He was the best because he lived in basketball.  It was his extension, the place he was natural.

However, Larry and Magic were before Michael and I (had to put myself in a sentence with those three names).  They played the game with a certain perfection – instinctually – that Michael worked harder than anybody to attain.  Michael was natural in the way his body was made for the game and his mind was natural because it was made for being the best.  But Larry and Magic’s minds were made for basketball.  They know “The Secret” as Bill Simmons as recently expanded upon in The Book of Basketball.  “The Secret” is making others better. The secret is finding your role and fitting in it.  Finding your role makes for the success of others. You excel when you need to and you supplement when you need to.  It’s that simple.

Perhaps what I felt so strongly and so surprisingly was how much this single truth affected me.  I love basketball (obviously) and I have seen tapes of Magic and Bird playing so many times.  Yet, tonight, I saw the perfection in their passes and their movement, their understanding of the game. They were men and perhaps their success garnered more riches than I can know, but in the end, they were men and could find a place to hang their hat in this world. They found a way to bring success to themselves and to others by finding their roles, by helping others fit into their roles. And by doing both of these things, they found a sanctuary.

We are all like Bird and Magic.  We are all trying to find our sanctuaries no matter what risks we take or rewards we seek. As much as I finally can appreciate my love for basketball and the solace I can take in the bounce of the ball on the court; in the squeaking of my sneakers from end-line to end-line; in the rush of a steal at the top of the key and the ensuing breakaway lay-up to inspire your pickup team.  However, the court is not my place of sanctuary – it is not my role.  My role may very well be the words I write, or it could be something else entirely unknown to me.  All that is important is that we can recognize beauty, passion and perfection when we see it and that that recognition causes us to reach for the same deep feelings and ability in ourselves, no matter where it is or where we may find it.

Celtics vs. Lakers is the greatest basketball rivalry for a reason.

Clip Show

I've been getting some positive feedback on the last Rolling Stones post, although I was unsure of the actual execution of the writing.  I feel as though the actual point may have gotten away from me.  I actually do love the Rolling Stones as I hope the energy (maybe force?) of the writing may have shown.  I have absolutely been on a thread of writing about time, youth and embracing age and the moment recently.  I am trying to figure out where this is going to take me as I'm also sketching out the humble beginnings of this new story I'm working on.  It has taken the shape and design of a novel-sized story, but we will see where it goes to.  Anyway, no use explaining anything, that's not what writing is about - it's about the objects and the writing itself.

This space was mainly to serve as a clip show for the music writing I have done so far in light of the insane, off the charts compliments I have gotten for that bit of writing I posted last night.  So, to recap, the following artists have had their heads on the guillotine on the blog:

Bob Dylan

Van Morrison

The Rolling Stones

The Walkmen

Beach House

Talk Talk

Animal Collective


Gene Clark

Wilco

Paul McCartney

Not a bad assembly of names, reviews and dissections there.  I am going to continue on with these digressions into music writing, yet I will always give you that sports and nonsese balance. I promise.  If it doesn't rain out this weekend, video footage will be shot and soon shared - I swear.  Anyway, some upcoming music topics: John Phillips' John the Wolfking of LA, Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago, Fleetwood Mac Tusk, The Strokes vs. The White Stripes: Whereforearthou 2001?, and Beck's Mutations.

Finally, please visit this man's Youtube videos as he is able to capture some of the madness and he is also one of my dear friends.

Always new content.

Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt:





“Dad,” James said. “It’s your turn.”

Ben O’Donnell smoothed back his hair.  He always enjoyed the thrust that hair, when pushed back, gave to the palm of his hand.  He stretched his legs out and felt a pain underneath his ribcage.  One of the things he hated most about getting old was the disconnected pain.  Little things like that, although painful, amused him – even though he knew the human body in and out, in ways clinical and sexual, he still would never be able to explain why for some reason when he stretched his leg his chest hurt.
Ben stood. “Thanks for warming the crowd up.”

All four of his children and Eve looked at him.

“Bad timing.”

The thought of his brother standing at the back of the room gave Ben pause.  He did not look behind, however.  He pulled the lapels of his suit jacket, running his fingers – his thumb especially - along their smooth edge, and stepped forward.  His hands fell to a natural position by his waist and he locked them together.  Out of habit, he bowed his head.  A faint memory, something gold, touched the tip of his mind and he felt drawn to look at his brother.  However, he did not and kept walking toward the dead body of his wife.  When he reached the kneeler he crossed himself.  He almost smiled thinking how a motion, remembering a murder upon a solid piece of wood, felt so fluid and comfortable.  Ben O’Donnell then knelt.  He looked at his wife lying down in a strange new bed that he felt she would never have approved of and closed his eyes. After remaining in that position for a few moments, he rose to his feet.  He crossed himself again and stood looking at his wife’s dead body.  Then, Ben nodded his head, wished he had worn a hat and walked back to the seat he had been sitting in.  He felt the eyes of his children on him.  A flash from a night when he was younger came to him.  There was music and light, there were handsome faces, but nothing seemed definite to him.  A familiar dread rose in his stomach.  He pushed his hands into his pockets and appreciated the comfort and familiarity of the posture.  Ben sat back down in his chair and stretched his legs out once again, this time crossing them over each other – right over left.  He admired the shine on his pointed black shoes.  This time the back of his leg hurt.  This time he knew it was tightness in his calf.

Douglas Bryant’s hands were crossed behind his back right above his rear.  He pushed himself off the wall uncrossing his hands as he did so.   He placed his hands together and walked toward the front of the room.  As he walked, he thought about how strange it was that Ben O’Donnell knelt for such a short time.  It was well known that he adored Rose and always had.  If he hadn’t, he never would have stopped drinking the way he did – the way she wanted him to.  The fact that he knelt briefly added to the doubt Douglas Bryant had about Ben O’Donnell’s devotion to his late wife.  It surely would not have been her wish to defer from the traditional Catholic funeral ceremony.  It struck Douglas as a lack of planning and order.  He felt his hairline itch.  The air of carelessness that Ben O’Donnell had given off angered him.  How could so many people trust him as a doctor?  Douglas understood how they could trust Connor.  Connor was reserved, respectable, thoughtful and orderly.  But Ben, Ben was none of those things.  Perhaps if he had been any of those things he would not have killed Connor’s daughter.

Douglas Bryant shook his head.  He remembered that he was conducting business.  He faced those who remained and took a breath.

“We will now begin the procession to the place of rest.  Those of you who will be joining the procession, kindly exit out to the front. We will be bringing the casket out to the hearse.  You may follow the hearse once we have begun. Thank you.”

Douglas Bryant turned toward the O’Donnells.

“Ben, Tom, James. You three will help us carry the casket?”

James stood. “I don’t know if dad is feeling well enough.  He’s been a little sick.”

“I see,” Douglas Bryant said.

Ben stood up as well. “I’m fine.  I can carry a piece of wood.  I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Jimmy.”

“Ben,” Eve said, touching Ben’s hand. “James didn’t mean anything. You haven’t really been yourself is all.”

Douglas Bryant watched as Ben O’Donnell looked down at Eve.

“Thanks, darling.  But this is myself.  This is who I am.  And I am who she made me too.  I feel strong as ever.”

Douglas saw Ben squint at James O’Donnell, but he couldn’t help notice as Connor walked in their direction.  Connor pushed his greyish brown hair behind his ears as he approached.  Douglas always forgot how tall he was.  Connor stopped and stood next to Ben.  Ben looked behind him and saw Connor standing there.  Douglas Bryant felt the importance of the moment.  He watched as Ben switched his posture in relation to his brother.  He pulled the lapels of his jacket together and his chest seemed to get broader.  Connor had some strange power over Ben.

“I’ll help carry the casket, Ben,” Connor said.

Ben smiled. “You will, will you?”

“Yes, I will,” Connor said, pushing his hair behind his ears once again.

“Thank Erin for me,” Ben said.

“You can thank her later.” Connor turned his head in the direction of the casket.  “Let’s just carry on.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ben said and he looked at his children. “Are you all going to say hello to your Uncle Connor?”

All four children and Eve greeted him.  Douglas Bryant didn’t feel as though he belonged among them all; he felt as though he were intruding.  He hated to feel that way, he always wanted to be humble and cognizant of the boundaries and courtesies of any social interaction.  However, Douglas shook off his pride and humility because he knew that he had a job to do; he had to continue with the ceremony.

“Well,  Connor, thank you for offering your services.  Now if you will, whomever will be carrying the casket please follow me.”

Ben looked at each of his children.  He then turned and looked at his brother.  There was something in him that wanted to speak.  Ben felt the alcohol flush in his face and he thought of himself on the day he had let Lucy die.  It was the him from that day that wanted to speak.  That him had been muffled by years, memories, simple chores, the day to day difficulties of paying mortgages, college bills, insurance, remembering to eat fruits and vegetables  and keep his blood pressure low,  however, that him never ceased wanting to speak, to say that he’d loved Lucy like a daughter.  He’d loved her because she was his neice, because she had alluring blue eyes even for a child, because she had a small tight smile with white teeth, because she was just a little girl and he’d had two of his own and knew how weak his heart was against their beauty and charms.

“Well, there’s six of us here,” he said, looking at Connor. “Why don’t we all carry it.”

Connor pushed his hair back behind his ears and nodded.

“Very good.” Douglas Bryant  was pleased with the order and the way the number of people fell into place.  There had to be three pall bearers on e ach side. He almost smiled as he walked briskly over to the casket.  Douglas stepped onto the raised platform where the casket lay.  As he stood behind its open panels, he resumed an air of complete solemnity.  There was a familiar tingle throughout his body as he touched the panels.  There was something about the sensation that was reminiscent of self pity, however Douglas Bryant had always liked to think that it was an appreciation of the moment.  A taking in of the loss of life and the importance that the person in the casket once had.  Yet after so many years of seeing wakes and conducting them, there was something of a show in it no matter if anyone ever watched.  And Douglas Bryant enjoyed that, because he never had a chance to put on a show in any other avenue of his life.  So when he grew solemn and hung his head, touching the tarnished wood panels of a casket, the sensation inside was self pity.

Douglas shut the panels of the casket.

Liza saw the casket shut on her mother.  She felt scared for a moment that she wouldn’t see her mother’s face again.  However, she remembered her grandmother’s funeral.  There was a last chance to see the person before they were buried, at least in the only other ceremony she had seen  or remembered.  She wasn’t old enough to remember Lucy’s funeral.  What she did remember, was driving to her grandmother’s house during her eleventh summer to take her over for a day on the sound.  Her grandmother lived right on Shore Road looking at the harbor.  They pulled up to the house and there was a strong warm breeze blowing, the flag on the pole in the back of the house was flapping rapidly.  The shepard dogs from the house next door were running along the lawn and barking.  Liza had always wanted to go and play with those dogs, they looked so well behaved.

She followed her mother up to the back steps.  The wooden screen door was open.

“Mom,” Rose said.  As a child, Liza enjoyed to hear her mother say, “mom.”  It amused her to think that her own mother had a mother and that at one time her mother was a little girl too, who had to listen to her mother and who cared about silly things like doll hair and boys.  There was no answer, however, so they opened the door and walked into the kitchen.  The kitchen was in order as usual, there was a bowl of fruit on the table.

“Mom,” Rose repeated.  There was still no response so they walked into the main hallway. “Hello?”  Liza held her mother’s hand.  Her mother turned off into the parlor room with the windows that looked out onto the harbor and the boats that floated there.  When they walked into the parlor, Liza saw her grandmother laying on the sofa, her face was buried in the arm.

“Grandma?” Liza said.

“Shhh,” her mother said.

There was a tea set on the table in front of the sofa.  Three cups were set out, as well as the shining white teapot her grandmother always used, the one wit the big blue ribbon painted along the top of the pot.  One of the cups was filled with tea.  Rose went over to her mother and poked her gently.

“Mom?”

Liza touched the teapot.  It was still slightly warm, like a roll in a bread basket at a restaurant that a child waits so earnestly for when she is out to dinner.  Liza looked up and her mother was kneeling next to the arm of the couch, where her grandmother’s face was now turned upwards.  Liza saw her grandmother’s eyes were closed, her mouth open.  Rose began to cry.

Liza touched the casket.  The wood was slick and cool.

“Alright everyone,” Douglas Bryant said. “Please line up on each side.  Let’s have two men and one woman on each side for symmetry.”

Ben frowned at Douglas Bryant.

“Yes, Connor and Ben you stand at the back of each side, then let’s have Liza and Maggie in the middle, with James and Thomas at the back.”

Liza stood behind James and in front of Uncle Connor.  She looked across the casket at Maggie. Maggie glanced at her and, keeping a serious face, turned forward.  From in front of Liza, James turned around.  He pet her on the top of her head gently.  Then he looked at Funeral Director Bryant.

“Wait, what will Eve do?” he asked.

“She can walk alongside with me.  Now, are we ready?”

Ben mumbled and grunted and they all bent down to prepare for the lift.  Liza let her brother and her uncle lift first, then she put her hand under the casket to help hold the weight.  It was much heavier than she imagined.  They began walking away from the stage and toward the door.  Liza focused on James’ jacket and thought back to her first reaction to their grandmother’s death.  When she had touched the tea kettle, it first struck her child’s mind that death could happen so swiftly.  Her grandmother had made the tea and she was alive.  Her grandmother had died.  The tea was sitting warm.  Before that moment, death seemed to her like a concrete and planned event.  Not planned, but it was an event, not something that came and passed n the middle of the day.  People became sick and then died, they had heart attacks, there were plane crashes and car accidents that killed people or you were hit by a bus or drowned.  Death was separate from normal life. But, she thought, feeling the weight and the movement of her feet as they exited the room of the wake, death always coexisted with life and they were in fact never really separate.  Life and death supported one another. In a way, they understood each other more than any two things in the world – maybe not as much as her parents understood each other, though.  And the tea that sat on the table that day, still warm and drinkable, told her that.

Gather No Moss

Don’t you just hate the Rolling Stones?  They just won’t die and continue to tour constantly.  They sell tickets for seats onstage at exorbitant millionaire prices and they make irrelevant documentaries with now irrelevant filmmakers like Martin Scorsese.  They’re like all the rest of the Baby Boomers – they can’t step out of the spot light for even a second.  Cue the Tom Brokaw narration, please.

In 2005, I was in a friend’s apartment in Saratoga Springs. It was one of those dry, bitter upstate winter nights and the dim light, stale carpeting and exposed, painted pipes of the building kept its nineteenth century aura alive and well. My friend and I were walking down the creaking steps of the building in order to enter the freezing night and eventually find ourselves at a bar.  This friend was older than I was so he was hoping that my fake I.D. would serve me well and he wouldn’t have to ditch me.  We were both equally large Rolling Stones fans and the Stones were just about to embark on yet another one of their world tours.  This friend asked me if I was going to try to get tickets because even though they were damn expensive he, “had to try and see the Stones” just once.  I told him flatly right then that I would never try to see the Rolling Stones alive; because that was not the band I cared about.  The band I cared about lived in the albums I owned and listened to.  They weren’t the ones rolling into the Fleet Center or the Pepsi Arena in Albany. My friend tisked my dismissiveness and we walked out into the cold, orange streets to drink beer with our classmates.

Now, the remarks in the first paragraph are true and they are not true.  Just like my sentiment towards the Rolling Stones is both true and not true as an inclination and idea that people have about anything that was once real to them. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” is not one of Neil Young’s better lines.  It is a simple sentiment that is as old as anything and as much as I love the son of a bitch, he was prone to spreading hippyisms such as that from time to time. For the Neil Young on Tonight’s the Night singing about Bruce Berry sticking a needle in his arm would not have shared that same sentiment, which makes it both true and not true.  The idea of explosive youth and talent is one of the most appealing ideas in the realm of the human imagination and ability to project desire.  We love our Keatsian and Shellyesque figures: Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Len Bias, James Dean – those talents whose hearts and ability burn too brightly and too rapidly for their bodies to sustain their universal energy.  We all want a figure in our lives to look at in that same way so that we can say, “that we were there with him (or her). I was in that damn room.”  However, we are all not meant to explode (sometimes implode) like that. So, we admire those who are able to age and find grace and maturity.  Because this life is made of many days and for many of us, the real heroes and idols are those that show us how to grow up and accept our changing roles in the world.  We all die at sometime, but most of us die past twenty-seven years old and most of us die with spouses and children and hopefully a mortgage we have paid off as well as a frozen and paid off home equity line of credit.

Now, the Rolling Stones have never understood this concept.  As much as they have admired bluesmen and the image of finding that one dilapidated bar in Mississippi or Alabama where are the strange ghosts and oddities of America rise up (sort of like a 1967 era Dylan), they have never understood that aging like a bluesman means retreating to those remote spaces of culture and not thrusting yourselves and your hips continually in the limelight. 

But the Stones are survivors. That’s their image.

The Stones are certainly survivors. If a nuclear bomb went off, those boys would still be
crawling around in the post-apocalypse. They have weathered the changing cultures and business models of four decades and soon to be five. This piece isn’t meant to be a diatribe against aging musicians.  I am not an ageist and I will not go quoting “I hope I die before I get old,” because I don’t believe in that kind of propaganda either.  What frustrates me about the Stones so much is that they can’t kick the habit.  They have to perform. They have to be out there grinding on the road. And the fact is that their music, more than any star that was extinguished much too soon, epitomizes the energy of youth, the explosiveness, danger and never-ending nights and cases of beer.  When one listens to Nirvana, there is a certain sentiment contained in the music and in the postures of Kurt Cobain – the misplaced aggression, the melody amid the noise – that retains the image of youth, but if you truly let that image sit in repose, it is because he died young.  And the art of one who died young, can’t be influenced by the fact that he or she died young.  In Jimi Hendrix, there was almost that wondering element, that vision to some extraordinary blue twilight, that maturity and nuance in his voice that elevated him to a certain level that I still have trouble explaining.  His talent was obviously immense and so was his taste.  However even with that abundance of gifts, his music does not capture that restlessness of youth and that confusion that the Stones encompass.

 

The Stones are survivors because they are always there. It’s not just because they have stuck around together as a band for so long. It’s because they are always there in the background of your life, always waiting to spring into action. That is not only at the multiple levels that they have achieved as cultural touchstones from movies, it is also on the extremely personal. And perhaps that is a moot point, because any music should affect you on a personal level more than on a cultural level. However, the Stones have achieved the rare quality of owning relevance on both the widespread cultural level and widespread personal level.  No matter where you are, the Stones infect you and they make you feel young. Even when you are young, they make that youth feel even more real than you know at the time.  An eccentric timeline:

Spring 2002 – I’m driving my Nissan Pathfinder back from my SAT test with two of my closest friends at the time: Erik and Buzzy.  We have the sunroof open and all the windows open and Exile on Main Street on the stereo.  “Let it Loose” is blaring out of my speakers and those soul singers are wailing away as Mick goes, “You’re just a stranger of which I never see no more.” Then the horns pipe up in the back and that twanging reverb guitar puts its two cents in too.  The day was sunny, we went down to the sound where it was low tide, and we walked around in the water and the sand.  We had a car, cigarettes (Buzzy didn’t smoke) and we had just finished a test.  The flashes of the classroom were still in my eyes then as they are now.  And who ever knew that soon one of those friends would be a stranger in many ways to me sooner rather than later and who I never see no more. But that didn’t matter then because we were all with each other and it was spring and summer was almost there and we were all friends.

Fall 2009 – I’m staying at my college roommate’s family’s condo in Stratton.  It’s a core group of us who have gotten closer after college.  We’re up in Vermont because when you are in your early to mid-20’s living in New York, you just have to get out to get a break and to pretend that you just aren’t drawn to going back to the city with all of its challenges and enticing opportunities. We all get drunk one night and decide to play a game of the best goodnight song. So, we all take turns picking songs. My friend Kat picks “You Got the Silver” and of course she had to win what with a thin voiced Keith singing his heart out when the song picks up at the end and the drums go a little crazy and he bursts out, “You got my soul, you got the silver you got the gold, if that’s your love that leaves me blind, I don’t care, no, is that a big surprise?”  The next morning we were impervious to hangovers, made eggs and sandwiches, hiked 15 miles to a lake and then came home and all ate dinner together.

Fall 2006 – Lovesick, feeling dangerous but confident with my progress in life “You Got the Silver” plays on my Nissan Pathfinder car stereo every morning on the way to class.  Driving the same route through Saratoga Springs from my apartment to campus and admiring the tight old neighborhoods that surrounded the school with their homes so full of promise and mystery of the simple or complicated or quite simply the lives that lay there within, I screamed out my window, “You got my soul, you got the silver you got the gold, if that’s your love that leaves me blind, I don’t care, no, is that a big surprise?” The leaves slowly fell, dried and collected against the sedimentary sidewalks and the days grew shorter and shorter.

Fall 2005 – Living in Ireland, I have taken it upon myself to not go to class and to teach myself the intricacies of Ulysses, to remain constantly drunk and to write melancholy poems about people I meet for only seconds.  However, amid all of this immaturity, the moon would sometimes shine extremely bright and full when I would be riding in the window seat of a bus and I’d listen to “Moonlight Mile” and think about traveling under “strange strange skies” and dying to be  “lying by your side” not ever knowing who that  “your” was supposed to be directed towards.

Summer 2002 – Drunk in the screened in porch of a friend who has since moved away from his cozy home right by the water, I confront an old sworn enemy of my youth when he tries to stare me down after a pointless disagreement.  I rage out at him verbally in an even more immature showing.  Once the noise dies down, one of my friends takes me home where I lie in bed listening to “Monkey Man” on my Discman over and over again.  This puts the fighting spirit in me so I start walking all the way back across town towards the water to settle the score. My arms and shoulders are twitching the whole way as I picture myself as some kind of boxer with nothing to lose.  This is all remedied when a friend passes me in his car as I am walking along the road and talks me into going back home.

Summer 2008 – Confused and exhausted throughout most of the heat, the only solace I can find is in the nervous joy, glee and high Keith harmonies of “Connection.”  Well that is the only place aside from the parties in my new apartment where the only thing that seems warm enough to meet the joy and energy is playing Exile on Main Street over and over and letting my friends pick up acoustic guitars and start singing while the beer runs out over and over again.

Late Winter 2010 – At a crossroads in contempt with my job.  Feeling like my creativity is reaching some kind of peak, I ride the subways after eleven and twelve-hour workdays never feeling tired and listening to “Monkey Man” on repeat.  I don’t want to fight anyone anymore, I just want to keep working and keep making things so that I can find what it is I really care about.

We’ll break from that extremely biased look at how the Stones effected my life back to the main point, which is that despite their short comings and the fact that they do continue to move on in the world as if there were no such thing as time, the music of the Rolling Stones continues to defy time and perpetuate that amalgam of feeling that is youth.  You don’t know what that thing you are chasing after is, and neither did the Rolling Stones.  They warbled and snared their way through it and after it just like we all do.  Even when we wake up at forty and are reminded of something lost to us, perhaps in the way that fifty degree weather in March feels like swimming in a pool during the high heat of summer, we don’t know what we are chasing after. Although we may have children then, love our wives, and make all the mortgage payments, electric and insurance payments we need to, we are never closer to identifying that energy that we once called youth, which always lives in us unless we allow ourselves to lose it completely.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” is the proverb that the Rolling Stones’ name comes from. This proverb simultaneously entices us with its suggestion of restlessness and rootlessness as well with its flip side of never staying in one place long enough to learn anything or love anyone.  There is some part of us that will forever long to be clean and indestructible. We want to be young with no responsibilities.  The only ability we want to have is to be on the road, watching things as they pass and never having to consider the lives that spring out of every object that passes our eye.  We “got tee move” and when we move we have to have that swagger of “Tumbling Dice” or the electricity of “Jumping Jack Flash.”  However, we are all looking to take something with us in our lives.  We want to collect memories, love, children and accomplishments. We want to have a home and have someone who we can lay beside.  There is no “road” without the vision of the form of the person that you imagine you will at some point be sleeping next to.  No one ever really wants to “burn out” because we’ve all grown up watching as people “fade away” – and this is not a bad thing. Even though I take my contempt out for the Rolling Stones as they fade away, they are doing what normal people do: forgetting their youth or trying to relive it in some misguided way.  However, we all have a way out of that fate.  We do not have to forget our youth, because we will always have the musics that conjure it up so well for us and as we grow older and our burdens weigh heavier, we can keep our identities separate from our jobs and from our growing responsibilities and remember where we came from, while we acknowledge where we are.  We do not have to lose any of our laughter or liberalism, even as we grow more fiscally conservative for the sake of our children.

So, in the end, whether you like the Stones or not, we are all rolling stones.  At the same moment we are incapable of growing up or embracing responsibility; we lack the patience to learn anything new; we can never sit in one place to settle down; we can’t let ourselves grow stagnant with contentment and are always searching for a new idea, for the creative way that we are going to turn around this economy or revolutionize an industry or foolishly try to write that Great American Novel – foolishly chase what doesn’t exist.  However, at the same turn we long to collect those fragments from our storied lives and place them in a restored home somewhere in south Brooklyn or maybe along the Hudson River.  A home where we can usher the kids or grandkids into, tell them stories, and explain how you must appreciate the spaces in the world and the chances to walk in the woods on a misty morning in April.  We all want to have things. However, it is how we understand in the end that we can’t take any of these things with us that unites that nomadic energy of youth and that poise of age: we are simultaneously clean and invincible, while remaining wise and patient.

But right now, we are young just like the Stones always make me feel.  The Stones on record.  And maybe if I heed their story and pay attention to what I am capable of at any moment, I will learn how to grow older with grace and still be able to keep that feeling the records give me.  I’ll keep it, but I won’t need to show any of you.

Cleaning House

I've been extremely busy at work this past week or so as I began to wrap up my (graceful?) exit into whatever step will be next for me, so I apologize for the lack of posts and new material for you all to read.  Alright, so I lied.  I don't have a job and I haven't been busy, I've just been watching Wainy Days nonstop and haven't gotten out of bed until now, because its too funny and depresses me.

The funny thing is, both of those things are true.

This post is just to clear out some random things I have been thinking about over the past few days. We will get to the new material later on this week such as a music post focused on the Rolling Stones, which will dare to not be trite and cliched - hopefully that achievement will occur; a new humorous list ranking something irrelevant to you, but relevant to my manic brain; a brief look into some of the raw material for my next story; and perhaps that long played up book post I have been referring to that will run-down Thomas Wolfe, A Fan's Notes, and the recently (last year) published Family Album.

For now, however, it is time to clean house:

-Have been catching a fair deal of Kobe playing lately.  The Heat vs. Lakers game on Thursday night on TNT was tremendously entertaining to watch.  Kobe was unbelievable.  He was literally channeling Michael Jordan circa 1997/1998.  It is a little eerie to watch being an incredible (who isn't?) Michael Jordan fan.  His ability to make clutch shots is absolutely unparalleled in the game right now.  He seems to hang and fade back just far enough on his jump shots to elude the defender every time, much like a latter day Jordan.  He has also refined and perhaps perfected his pivot moves to the same degree that Michael did as well.  You have to observe closely as Kobe doesn't rely on his speed or complete athleticism anymore. He relies more on cunning, body control and the vast language of the game that he has accumulated.   I have been a begrudging Kobe fan throughout his career, but it is becoming easier and easier to like him as you realize what a student of the game he is and with what knowledge he brings to it.  He still remains calculated and artificial in a way that Michael never was, even though Michael constantly put the brand of Michael Jordan instead of the actual person of Michael Jordan.  There was just something about Michael's version of will and his competitive streak that rang truer than Kobe's does.

- Staying on the Heat vs. Lakers game, Dwyane Wade was absolutely phenomenal.  Check out his line from the game:

                        Min   Pts.  Reb.   Ast.   TO    Stl.
03/04    LAL    42     27     5       14       6        1


You also just have to look at his line from the game before:

                     Min  Pts.   Reb.   Ast.    TO   Stl.
03/02    GS    37    35      6        12       3      4

That line is seriously insane. No one fills up the stat sheet in such a complete way as Wade does. Not even Lebron. It's just painful to watch his team. Wade has to do everything for that team every time up the floor and every time back down the floor on defense.  Wade is working so hard that even Kobe said after the game that he needs help.  I like Wade playing in Miami even if the fans are frontrunners and it is sort of disgusting how the arena always looks half empty when one of the top three players in the world is playing for their team. I like it because its good to have  star in a popular city like Miami where he has already won one title.  He just needs help or he needs to get out, because I can't see him continue to waste his tremendous efforts for a team that is barely making the playoffs.

- I'm also getting excited for the upcoming 30 for 30 Documentary on ESPN called Winning Time.  If visiting that link doesn't excite you, then I just have nothing to say to you ever again.

- With the nice weather this weekend I got a chance like most people to do some walking around my neighborhood and I have to say that Brooklyn is extremely enjoyable on sunny, low 50's days like this past weekend.  I got out and enjoyed some Stumptown coffee at Second Stop Cafe and then also got to play some pickup ball with high schoolers at McCarren Park. They only slightly insulted me by murmuring that I was the "whitest (racial slur deleted) in the gym."

- Listened to the latest Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman podcast where they touched on a lot of interesting points about race, basketball, Lost and the Wire.  I recommend checking it out.

- Also checked out that show How to Make it in America this weekend also. I can't decide if its terrible or not.  It is absolutely the east coast Entourage and it does remind me of a few too many people I know and interact with.  However, you can't deny a show that has a strange easiness to it, especially when you are hungover.

- Caught the Oscars last night and thought they were funny as hell.  All the winners just seemed strange to me.  Maybe because I didn't see so many movies this year and I even saw one movie this year (Moon with my man Sam Rockwell) just to go somewhere cool to sleep.  I did see Up In the Air and thought that was a good movie. I liked the younger girl in it.  All the girls looked good at the Oscars last night.

- One thing about the Oscars. When I was watching it, I was secretly hoping that the Academy would pull a classic WWF move, where the award is given for Best Picture, but then the presenter of the award hits the winner with a chair and either a) takes the award for him or herself or b) takes the award and gives it to the winner from last year (in this case Slum Dog Millionaire) and declares to the world that they were in cahoots the whole time.  I feel like this would spice up the Oscars a little bit.  Then again, what do I know. When I see two people present at the Oscars I assume they are married. And yes, sex has no bearing on that.

- The comedy sketches will be coming soon. However, I also want to develop an idea I came up with last summer for a series of videos called Caught! This idea is comprised of a series of short videos of people doing mundane things, but getting "caught" by somebody. An example would be "CAUGHT! Using the dimmer switch," or "CAUGHT! Licking ice cream off of a spoon." I think this would catch on very quickly. It's either that or the other idea I have had recently for a character with the catchphrase "I'll eat that."  Have to develop that a little further.

That's all the random thoughts I have cleared out for now.  Look for the Stones post up tomorrow night as I frantically try to jot down some initial notes tonight to get kick started. Keep yourselves safe, enjoy the weather, and let your souls rage out to any Talk Talk albums you can get your hands on so that you can stay as un-Tiger as possible.

Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt:


James exhaled and passed his hand through his hair.

“People love you for something else and I can’t see it so clearly right now.”
If that was what his father said to him, it was difficult for James to imagine what his mother would say to if she saw the way he was acting.  He knew that Eve saw the difference, she’d confronted him about it the night before.  However, she let him off the hook easy.  She loved him in the way that only a soul mate could.  Eve would be satisfied with his stammering answers about his family, because she’d do her best to be right there with him.  That is why he married her: she challenged him in the ways he needed to be challenged. She respected what he truly wanted, because she knew him and knew that he didn’t want anything easy, but in the end she loved him and would let him off the hook – not because she had to, but because she wanted to.

James wasn’t sure what his mother would do.  She had raised him to be a man, a well-rounded man.  She wanted him to treat women with respect, he treated women with respect.  She wanted him to seek the good in the world, he tried his best to seek the good in the world.  She wanted him to be humble, he was humble when he wasn’t drunk, and even when he was, very rarely was he brash.  His mother had dressed him in a red bow-tie when he was a baby.  There was a photo of him wearing it from Maggie’s fifth birthday party.  Their parents had sat him next to Maggie when she was going to blow out the candles.  Maggie wanted her friend Nicole to sit next to her.  The picture was of Maggie with a frown, cake on her hands and James, in his red bow-tie and vest, smiling with cake frosting all around his mouth and cheeks.  Ben stood behind Maggie.  That photo always made him tear up with both a sense of joy and of sadness.  There was a joy in looking at himself as a child dressed up properly in a man’s clothing.  The red bow tie became more than an accessory, it was a sign of his mother’s care, her embrace of motherhood.  She had loved his little body  and cared about his entrance and his appearance in the world.  However, there was a sadness because that little boy in a red bow tie now wore red ties, blue ties, and nice grey coats to work and he was a man, but he could not face the fact that he had created another life.  There was a piece of him growing inside of Eve, a new child who he could dress and shape in his own image – but he wasn’t sure if he liked that image.

What also made James sad when he thought of the photo and of his mother was the that the fact he had a worn a bow-tie as a child only reminded him that maybe his whole life had been formed by his mother’s vision of what it should be.  And it wasn’t only true for him; it was true for Maggie, Tom and Liza.  Maggie was the first child and a girl, which naturally made Rose take an aggressive approach towards parenting.  She didn’t know how to be a mother, there was a feeling inside of her that felt very natural, but she didn’t know what to do in each circumstance.  So she tried very hard to make Maggie into a sweet little girl, which was easy to do because she was very striking and cute with her red brown hair, especially when it was pushed up in  pigtails.  However, what she failed to realize, in those early days, with all of her intuition was that it was Maggie’s spirit that defined her, the non-feminine, non-sexual fire that always kept her seperate.

For Tom, perhaps she had indulged him too much.  James thought of how Rose was always protecting Tom.  She never pretended that he wasn’t guilty of being odd.  When Tom’s friends’ mothers came over to report that Tom had told their sons there was no Santa Claus or when their CCD teacher called and told Rose that Tom had stated that he did not believe in God but only the air, Rose always made him apologize.  She made him come to the door or come to the phone no matter how old he was.  However, afterward she would always pet his hair in a strange way.  James could remember sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework when Tom had to apologize for telling his friend Jeremy that he didn’t care what it would be like to be an NFL wide receiver, he only wanted to know what it would be like to be dead.  Tom was seven and James was fourteen.  Tom had apologized to Jeremy’s mother and Rose kneeled in front of him to make sure he understood how serious she was about him saying upsetting things to his friends.  But then they walked back in the kitchen and she pet his head; it was some symbol telling him that she knew he was different.  James never wanted to let Tom have that, though.  Tom was too smart not to know the things he was doing; he knew the way the world worked, yet he did these strange things, not out of some kind of malice, but simply because he saw the world.  And the way he saw the world was his way and although he  knew all the different ways the world could be  and was seen, he never let those ways intrude on his vision.

He wondered if Tom could survive in the world.  Despite the fact that Tom stuck to his view, he was extremely sensitive to other people and their pains and struggles.  James felt that was something they had in common.  Yet, there was a small difference that seperated them.  James wasn’t quite sure what it was.  He knew it had something to do with their mindsets.  Tom took everything to heart and had difficulty differentiating the empathy he felt for others with his own pains, fears and ambitions.  James knew where the lines ended and where he could do nothing more than help – his short coming was never knowing when to quit. There was something abstract in the way Tom related to other people and the world.  James remembered a conversation he and Tom had a few years before.  James had been home for Labor Day and Tom was going back to school the next day.  They stood at the edge of the garage door, where the white concrete met the black tar of the driveway, there were a few leaves already stuck in the divot between the two.  They stood drinking beer and listening to the crickets. James remembered the eve of the first day of school from when he was a child, he smelled the slight coolness of the air and his heart beat  uncontrollably.  His mind was wandering away, thinking about how he hadn’t changed so much since he was a student.  Then, Tom had spoken.

“Jimmy,” he said.

James laughed. “Yes, Thomas.”

Tom bowed his head and looked out into the dark.  James tried to follow his gaze but the darkness pressed and all he could find was a backlight glowing from the neighbors yard.  He didn’t know what Tom saw.

“Do you ever get that feeling when you smell the freshness of the air?  I mean the freshness of a cool summer night?”

“Yeah, you mean that school day feeling?”

“No,” he paused.  “I mean.” He stammered. “I mean, I mean, that feeling that makes the edges of leaves strange to you.  That you don’t understand exactly why they’re there, or how they live and make air and make the world go on the way it does.  Then you keeping thinking about their edges and you remember school, and you remember a sunny day in summer and always wanting to flop down underneath them in the shade and not care about anything else in the world.  When I smell that air, when I smell the trees or the night I think about how nice it would be to just lay down under a tree and just die.  Become part of the rest of it, you know? Not walk around to smoke cigarettes and drink beer, just cry and fall and lay down and die to become a leaf too.  Or a piece of grass.”

James didn’t know what to say.  He felt strongly that the throbbing feeling in his chest was the same feeling his brother was talking about, but he simply couldn’t see it in that way.  So he pat and held Tom’s shoulder.

“Its funny to get older, Tom. All of that is the good stuff, though.  Summer days and nights growing up around here.  Those are all the things you remember.”

Tom turned away from the distance and looked at him.  His lips were pursed and his eyes were wide.
 
Then his face focused, his lips tightened and he frowned.

“Are you afraid to get married?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you love Eve?”

“Yes. I do. What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” Tom looked away, back out into the dark. “That must be nice.”

James stared at the side of his face and took a drink of his beer. 

“People love you for something else and I can’t see it so clearly right now.”

The phrase caused his stomach to churn again.  He shook his head unconsciously and stood up.  It occurred to him that he and Eve had been kneeling too long.  James took Eve’s hand and they walked back to the chairs.  James shook his head again, he hadn’t even thought of Liza.  He looked at her in profile.  She looked like Tom in a way.  They had the pointer features.  He admired her chin and thought, poetically, that it looked like a crescent moon.  James noticed her smoothing her skirt against her thighs,  her hands moving out from the center where the thighs touched while her knees nervously bobbed. He shook his head once more as he sat.  There was too much to pay attention to and that was one of the reasons he had always hated coming home.  He imagined each of the people he loved in a list and could not help seeing the boxes next to each of their names, the boxes that his mind would check off when he felt he had satisfied them, or satisfied his idea of what they needed.  James hung his head for a moment and then looked up at his father.  He wanted to tell him he would be a grandfather.

Wainy Days

When I'm sapped of energy these days, I've got to look towards the people and celebrities that give me inspiration, and there is no other place to look than Wainy Days.

David Wain is the man. He was behind some of the greatest sketches of all time on The State.  I'm sure many of you have to know him by now after he has branched out through cult hits like Wet Hot American Summer and (shudder) The Ten as well as through the more main stream genius of a movie like Role Models where he pops  up here and there to give an immortal line like "classic case of guy on the ground." As a part of Stella Comedy, he is not my favorite actor (that accolade goes to the immortal Michael Showalter).  However, his solo project Wainy Days, which has been kicking around for a couple of years now definitely beats out the Michael Showalter Showalter and the late Michael and Michael Have Issues on Comedy Central.  This show features some of the best actors that are putting their faces on a screen and then putting that screen on the face of my computer.  The guest stars are always perfect and like I said, the acting is just a cut above everything else you watch - including the sun.

Here are a few of the more recent examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtBdx_JN_to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6HYbHYxUgM&feature=PlayList&p=2ClgzWQcbVI

This is the kind of stuff that can keep you laughing all day long as you shield yourself from the grumpiness, anxiety, and insecurity of your fellow commuters.  These videos just make me want to be a better person, and by better person I just mean funnier and more absurd.

Gotta start writing more TV shows and comedy.

However, for now...

Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt:



James tugged on his pants, pulling the pleat over and against his knee. 

“My turn, I suppose,” he said.

He stood and Eve stood with him.

“I’ll kneel with you,” she said.  Eve looked at him in the way that a woman, especially a wife, looks at a man she loves when he believes and postures himself in the manner that says – this is something I do alone and no one comes with me.  And this is a posture that always has to do with death, and no man believes that a woman will die.  James saw the look in Eve’s unwavering grey eyes and remembered how he’d first seen that look during their wedding.  His body had not communicated any form of solitude, but she adopted the look and her eyes drove straight into him below the thinnest sheen threads of the veil and he knew that this woman whom he’d known deeply, whom he’d been in and out of, whom he felt the most mature in his feelings towards, was attached to him in a way that he could never have imagined and she now had a look that would always tell him that.  The part that made his heart throb, was that she would never use it to control him, but only to love him and understand him.
“Let’s go,” he said and took her hand.  Feeling her fingers within his, the room dropped away for a moment.  James no longer felt any anxiety at seeing people he knew, people that knew his family, people that required something from him.  Part of his relief was from the fact that they had exited, but it was also the sense memory of Eve’s fingers.  In one step, he marvelled at how he could constantly overlook that simple rub of the inside of their fingers so many times and only feel the clamminess of two palms together.  Yet, in one instance the touch would bring everything rushing forward at once, so fast that he couldn’t make one memory out from another – everything was simply their fingers locked together.

With their fingers linked they approached the kneeler and coffin.  They paused and kneeled in front of the body.  As his knees touched the pad, James thought of what his father had said to him the night before.

“People love you for something else and I can’t see it so clearly right now.”

The words hadn’t come into his head for most of the day with all of the motion of getting his father up, getting out of the house, getting to the funeral home, preparing himself for seeing members of the family – all of the ceremony.  However, now he was in the middle of that ceremony,  participating in the small mechanical motions which made the ritual of death.  James let go of Eve’s hand and locked his fingers together. He smiled as he felt his fingertips touch his knuckles.  The standing, sitting and kneeling made the ritual and that is what made the whole scenario real.  Just as he had done so many times in church when he was younger, he clasped his hands together. The repetition was a white noise in his mind, but it brought a reality to what he experienced because it was real and it felt holy and important.  Most of all it was familiar and its familiarity brought his father’s words back into his mind.  The sentiment that his father tried to convey stung him because there was something absolutely true about it.  James felt that he had lost something.  However, he didn’t know what it was.  He took a brief look at the coffin before closing his eyes.  The muscle in his tricep twitched.

James frowned and focused on his mother.  His mother was dead and he didn’t know what that meant.  She had been a woman, she had  been a mother, she had been kind, she had been intelligent, but she’d never been dead.  It was a strange thing to try and define the roles that a person played, especially when that person was your mother.  James tried to forget that his actual mother was beyond the closed lids of his eyes and laying lifeless.  He tightened the muscles in his face so that the pressure on his eyes made him cry slightly. Through the tepid warmth of his tears, the vision of his mother holding Tom in the hospital came to him.  The day of Tom’s birth was one of those instances when a child comes to a distinct recognition that transcends the small sphere of its understanding.  For James, seeing his mother hold his new little brother – the brother he had named Mike when it was in his mother’s belly – he understood the distance of things in the world.  The hospital room was far from his house, his mother up on the bed and him standing beside the white blanket was close, but also very far in a way that made him uncomfortable.  He’d looked out the room’s window and saw the early morning sun and the sky becoming a perfect blue.  At the bottom of the window, in the distance, were trees blowing back and forth, and they were very far away.  This he’d come to understand when his brother was born. He’d looked at Tom’s little pink face and felt his stomach throb with a feeling he didn’t understand at all then, and was still perplexed by it now as he saw the memory in front of him and mouthed, unconsciously, the words that he’d said.

“What’s his name, mommy?”

“His name is Thomas, honey.”

“I thought we were going to name him, Mike.”

Maggie held a pink comb and poked him in his back with it. “That’s what you wanted to name him, but Mom picks the name.  She named him after her favorite author. Thomas Alinus.”

“Aquinus,” Rose said.

“Aquinas,” Maggie repeated.

“Thomas Aquinas,” James said, gripping the white hospital blanket and looking at the baby cradled in his mother’s arms.  And he’d remembered the first time he saw Tom when he arrived at the doorway to his brother’s room at Mather hospital on that January night.  He walked in with his pea coat draped over his forearm and listened to his work shoes clack on the pea green floor.  Tom was sleeping and they had monitors and an IV hooked up to his arm.  James hung his coat on the bed end.  He touched his brother’s foot and squeezed it.

“Why the fuck did you do it, idiot?” He stepped closer to his brother’s head.  “What the fuck did we have all those years together for if you were just going to drown yourself in some ice water?”

He squeezed Tom’s sleeping arm.

“How could you let this happen to you?”

James felt as though he were going to cry.  Then he tried to think about who he was talking to.  He looked down at his work shoes and his pant cuffs, damp from the slush, and felt a restlessness.  His head pounded and he couldn’t concentrate on the great love he had for his brother.  A strong feeling of guilt clouded his heart and he wanted to scream at himself and the walls for the fact that that feeling could rise in him, when the moment was not about him at all.  It was about Tom.  Thomas Aquinas.  The little pink faced baby who’d been wrapped in towels in the same hospital seventeen years before.  That same Tom was now lying on one of the hospital beds and James didn’t know who he was.
James exhaled at the kneeler.  He still wasn’t sure who his brother was.

“People love you for something else and I can’t see it so clearly right now.”

Remembering Tom as an infant, drew James’ mind back to the main source of his insecurity.  He opened one eye and glanced at Eve.  She was kneeling with her eyes closed.  James almost laughed thinking of the situation he was in.  It was inevitable that she would find out.  She would be in the bathroom one morning throwing up in the toilet with morning sickness when he walked in to take a shower before work.  The scenario unfolded and took shape in his mind.  She’d be sitting in front of the toilet on the soft new tan shower rug she’d bought – the way women did in the movies or on TV when they found out they were pregnant – and she’d look up at him.  He’d take her look in and feel the swelling importance in the center of his gut.  He'd feel the pride a man gets when a woman looks up at him, because all men want women to look up at them, since in some way that means they are responsible, in charge, and all men want to feel that responsibility whether it is real or not; whether the woman conveys that or not.  Then Eve would smile, she’d wipe the strands of hair on her forehead back off to the side and smile.

“I’m pregnant,” she would say and twitch her feet slightly so that they hit the tile, making a slight dull thud.  Then James would have the choice.  He would have the choice to pretend it was news to him or that he’d known.  He had the opportunity to tell her now, to tell her at any minute he felt like it.  However, if he told her, it would make it real. The reality of her being his wife would become even stronger.  The reality, that once he gave life to another being he could never escape, would strike him.  He hated to know that feeling lurked inside himself, but it was true.  He didn’t want to run away from Eve and he never would.  However, there was something in him that felt an attachment to the idea that he could if he wanted to, that there had been no life created between them to make everything so real and beyond them, beyond her and beyond him.  It was the control, or the lack of it, that a child signified to him.  James felt ashamed to think that a small innocent infant could signify such shallow thoughts.  However, there was an illumination he felt too at knowing that his insecurity and his fear were very much connected to his own brother and the fact that his brother’s birth first communicated to him that he could control nothing in the world because things could be far away from him.  And in some way, he’d been trying to get that back all of his life.

Just a Follow Up

I was rereading my post from yesterday and it didn't seem to have come out as well as I had hoped.  The idea I am trying to convey comes out a bit shallow and more generic than I have it in my head.  Maybe using sports to set the example is not the best means of expressing what I want to.  In any event, I'll get it all out there at some point for you all to read and smile at in amusement while thinking, "Jesus, this guy hasn't figured these things out already? Why am I even reading this? I should be watching Lost."  Well, I heard that Lost sucks this season so the joke will be on you.

But these blog posts don't even matter when we get mudslides to go along with more and more earthquakes.  Everyone is talking about how this latest earthquake in Chile caused the earth's axis to alter and shorted the length of the day.  I trust the scientists, but this theory comes awful close to Daylight Savings on March 14 (OK, I know terrible joke).  The whole earthquake situation has me thinking about Voltaire's Candide, that amusing little book full of the mockery of Liebnitz.  "Everything is done for the greater good."

I wish the Chileans the best.  I used to work with one or two in my dad's warehouse.

In recent news, I an my writing partners have finished writing all of the sketches for our first episode of the comedy show and will be doing all the filming as the weather gets nicer.  Fueled on by The State and plenty of hangovers and coffee, I think you will be truly inspired by the stupidity.  Believe me, your patience will almost assuredly not be rewarded - so, if you like being treated badly, then your patience will be rewarded.  See how that all works?

Oscars coming up.  Maybe I'll do a play by play of those things to brighten things up around here with a little comedy post or two.

Just finishing up Look Homeward Angel and Family Album so I can do my little recent reading recap.  I finished up A Fan's Notes already.  So, of course you will get my thoughts on all these things. Why? I don't really know.

I'll be thinking as always of the next music piece to write.  I'd like to stick to a newer album or band, but I may have to jump back to a "classic" album.  I may even tackle my fathomless feelings for the music of Gram Parsons.

Also, I couldn't help it and had to start sketching out the beginning of my Third Novel.  I've got a plot set-up and I know what the last scene is going to be, but of course this will all change as it goes along.  Right now, the main knot to untangle is how the story should be told, as in from what perspective.  I've had the plotline for awhile and once you have a story, you need to look at it from its varying points of view in order to heighten its character, shape and effectiveness.  I'm telling you, I've got ideas.  I'll sell them too. Gotta get that green, man, so I can buy some green - Charlie Sheen.

Finally, a new blog recommendation to follow.  This one is close to the vest.  Too Bad I Like It.   Alright, its my mom's blog.  So show some respect. 

Always new stuff coming out. So stick here to read, laugh, laugh at, send to your parents, send to your parents' parents, and send to your uncle who you only see at some holidays but who works for that big studio in L.A. and who is looking for that kid with the good movie idea called "Reverse Major League."

Now, the next installment of From Here to the Last Mound of Dirt:

Maggie sat down and Tom gave his father a pat on the back.  The girls had gone youngest to oldest, so it seemed appropriate to him, as though it were a tradition or ritual, for him to go next as the youngest male.

    “My turn, dad.”

    Ben nodded.  Tom felt that his father’s gaze lasted a long time on him.  It was only a brief passing of seconds, but Tom’s attention extended the moment and he turned to the casket and kneeler.   He approached with his hands held piously locked right in front of his groin. 

    The hymn “Take and Eat” was stuck in his head.  When his body was posed piously the way it was, this hymn always came to mind.  The hymn’s tune had a murmering quality, it bubbled along and even the high notes did not reach so high.  He’d heard women sing it high in church, but it didn’t suit the song and it did not suit him.  The refrain was most appealing to Tom; he enjoyed the simple repetition, the actions of the title.  “Take and eat,” he could see that very clearly in his mind.  In fact, it reminded him a favorite poem of his.  “Love (III)” by George Herbert:

        Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
                    Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
                    From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                    If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
                    Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
                    I cannot look on thee."
  Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                    "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
                    Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
                    "My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
                    So I did sit and eat.

His mother used to recite that poem to him; his mother smelled like roasted beef and garlic. When Tom saw himself as a child that is what she smelled like.  That odor association was him then, but Tom was not him then, he was him now and his mother did not smell like meat in the oven, she smelled like nothing.  That smell was new to him.

    Tom kneeled his right knee into the cushion and kept his left one bent.  He wiped his face with his arm.  Then, placing pressure on the wood bannister with his forearms, he lifted his body slightly up, the way he did when he was a child and not who he was now kneeling. He let himself drop.  He placed his forehead to his knuckles.  He thought of the words of the poem instead of how it looked on a page.  His soul was drawn to the phrase “yet my soul drew back,” because he always marvelled at the idea of a soul drawing back, because he often felt something similar in himself but could never give word to it in that way.  It seemed to him that this was one area where he was not alone, that many people also felt their souls drawing back, receding from themselves and the world,  but not knowing it – not knowing what to call the sensation.  Tom imagined Liza sitting behind him in her chair smoothing the black skirt she wore.  There was something meek about her.  He imagined her smoothing and then crossing and recrossing her legs, a faint white on her kneecap.  He saw himself the way he used to look, sitting on the floor of the kitchen, listening to the stove click and rain fall on the skylight.  He heard his mother’s voice. “I the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear, I cannot look on thee.”  It was the flatness of her vowels that he remembered.  He heard the words, saw them collect their strange shapes in the darkness and he saw his sister, as she was then – a little girl, who knew nothing about guilt or shame, but who now carried it with her, if only vaguely. 

As Tom saw his sister’s childsbody and his as well, he could see no connection with his kneeling form and her sitting form.  If a stranger saw the way he looked now and the way he looked then, there would be no recognition.  However, those he knew, connected the two distinct objects by a thread called time - he wasn’t inclined to call that memory.  Yet those two people were two different people: him then and him now.  His father, when looking upon him,  held his gaze because of this.  Because Ben felt that the two different objects he saw were the same thing when known and seen from a certain perspective.  Tom tested himself with this sensation.  He did not know himself so he was a stranger to that other self, which time told the world was him.  He thought of the bubbles in the club soda he had drank the night before with Natalie.  The smell of the tuck of her neck came to his nose.  What  remained constant so that he was the same thing last night that he was today? It was not just the passage of time, because the passage of time meant that the object was the same thing seen from a different moment.  However, that object sitting on a screened in porch looking at a girl with a pointed chin and sharply cut brown hair, drinking club soda, was not the same object kneeling, looking at his mother in a casket.  The boy on the floor who smelled roasted meat was not him.  Yet, Liza was still his meek, blonde sister.

    Tom rubbed his knuckles into the space between his eyebrows.  He smelt the moistness between his fingers – it reminded him of envelope glue.  What also disproved his notion was his mother.  In the moment, her life was complete. Every time from her life was now frozen and wrapped by the cool body that lay in the casket.  Even though he was not the boy who sat and listened to her feet step lightly on the kitchen throw rugs, she was the same woman dead that she was then.  She was the same woman who, earlier in July when he had come over unannounced to weed the gardens in the middle of the night, wiped his brow when she found him sitting, sweating on the back porch at seven in the morning.  Tom turned back, he looked past his family.  He saw quickly his Uncle Connor, Aunt Erin.  No one would see Rose as a procession of times any longer, she was now all times.  There would no longer be a then and now, there would only be this – the culmination, blackness, completeness.

He hummed the tune to “Take and Eat.”  He didn’t know how his father saw his mother.  He had an idea, but there was nothing in him – nothing that drew his soul – to feel the confidence to say “This is how my father sees my mother.”  Then, after turning the idea and feeling his knee grow numb, Tom felt he could understand the mystery he felt towards his father.  While anyone looking at his mother saw in this one moment all of the moments they had known her, his father never needed a moment to draw up all of the substance and outline that made her the presence she was.  For him, there was no moment; how does a husband look at or remember his wife’s funeral?  Tom felt his father looking at him. He heard his mumbling, “My strange son.  My strange boy.”  However, they were both strange.  Their strangeness was in the way they saw things.  At that moment, Tom was as close to and as far from understanding his father as he’d ever been.  His eyes watered slightly and he felt tremors of coolness from his neck to his ankles.  He opened his eyes, closed them and opened them once more.  What Tom wanted was to feel Natalie in the room, feel the electricity of her walking on the red carpet with the white vacuum lines.  But he knew she wasn’t there.  He crossed himself and said “I love you.”  He rose.

As Tom returned to his seat, he looked at James.  The few steps Tom took seemed to elongate in their duration.  He saw his brother and he saw Eve.  Tom was tempted to laugh when he looked at Eve.  It was amazing, to him, that he could have believed that he loved her.  He wasn’t sure if that emotion he had was truly a romantic longing in direct relation to his want of love and of the warmth of a body, or if it was something more mature – a vision of her true character and true beauty, that even though she was beautiful to his eye, it was more the way she sat in relation to other things which made her beautiful, the way she moved and fit into the world.  He let that thought run along the edges of his skin.  It made him tingle, and once again he thought of Natalie.  He thought of the curl under her neck, the way her eyes were moist in the dim porchlight and how he wanted to curl her hair behind her ear and did.  The chair eased his body to a stop and he crossed his right leg over his left knee.