Newton's First Law of Emotion

You get back what you're putting out.

On one hand this is a blinding flash of the obvious, but it's amazing how powerful this principle is in our lives.

On Friday Marie had a needle biopsy at Kaiser Interstate. A year and a month ago she discovered a hard round lump in her left breast. Probably nothing. Probably just a cyst. It was bigger than a pea but smaller than an eyeball. Roundish and encapsulated. She went to the doctor for an exam and a mammogram and an ultrasound and an anxious week later got back a paper form that told her not to worry. At least for now.

The year passed and the thing grew a little. Now it was the size of a glassy marble and noticeable when she touched it. Marie's father had a brain tumor and then prostate cancer, and died far before she was ready for God to take him, at 63. Just five years later her sister Peggy died of pancreatic cancer. Like many people she has a dark, fearful and scared place where that word resides in her memory. Cancer. The Big C. Among the most painful and ravaging ways to die, or watch someone you love die. Every once in a while when a headache doesn't go away or stomach trouble lasts longer than it should the fear crops up in the back of her mind. What if it comes for me? When we were little we all feared monsters in the dark, but this is a monster that is real. We've all seen its work. We've heard it gurgling under the bed or in the closet. We've watched it hollow out the cheeks and take the life from someone's eyes. It destroys cruelly and surely, and leaves despair in the place of joy and hope and belonging. On the last few days of Peggy's life her throat was full of sores from the chemo, and it was too painful to take a sip of water. We hate cancer and fear it and never want to say its name. We remember how awfully and slowly it took away someone we loved. We don't want to see that monster again. No one does.

We drove through the winter grayness to Kaiser not saying much. Bryce was cute that morning and traffic flowed smoothly. The parking garage was jammed and we had to circle around endlessly to find a spot, finally acing out an SUV for the last one along the south wall. Orange P2, the section said. I locked up and followed her to the elevator.

Marie was edgy and tense and hard to read. The woman at the counter said there was a copay. "How can there be a copay? This is a scheduled surgery, a referral. That doesn't sound right." Her voice was irritable and hard. I took out my debit card and paid it, overwhelmed by my wife's anxiety. I should have used the flex spending card but I just forgot.

On some level I knew she was acting out of fear and anxiety, but I couldn't find words or the tone to soothe her. I followed her and the nurse down the corridor and around the corner to the changing station where she had to put on the ill-fitting and unflattering exam gown. "I hate these fucking things," she screamed, loud enough for the retreating nurse to hear.

The nurse had some required identity verification questions and pre-procedure information to go over. The ludicrousness of the questions irritated Marie further. I couldn't blame her. Why would they need to ask her name and date of birth and address at that point? Would anyone impersonate someone else, merely to go through the joy of a needle biopsy? My wife is a formidable woman. She can light up a room, or suck all of the air out of it with an eyeroll and a sneer. I felt small and quiet.

In the room there was a chair in the corner and I took it, holding on to a plastic bag of snacks and a book I'd brought, not saying much as Marie vented about the stupid hospital and the stupid nurse. She had to vent about these things because you can't vent about the stupid Cancer. You can't say its name. Even though it probably wasn't cancer, just a cyst, the monster was as real as ever. It had been here before. It had haunted the most tender parts of her heart and memory.

The radiologist came in and told me I would have to leave. "It would work better for me if you waited out in the lobby," she said. I wanted to say, I don't care what works better for you, I want to be here for my wife, but I didn't want to add to the terrible tension. I left the room as asked and wandered the corridors in search of a Portland Tribune news box, finding one outside the North entrance to the clinic.

The procedure took about 30-35 minutes. Marie said they inserted the needle three times and it hurt more than she thought it would. "They numb the outside of the breast, but when it went inside and snipped it I could feel it." The entry wound took a pretty big bandage and two stitches.

She was calmer now. The results would come in a week. She told me that at first she and the radiologist and the assisting nurse were first really unpleasant, matching her own fierce anxiety, but the ice broke when she started crying. "What's wrong?" the nurse asked. She told him about her father and her sister. And the ice broke. They understood. Showing vulnerability instead of anger, she received comfort and understanding instead of cold medical indifference.

That was the lesson. You get back what you give out. And sometimes we have to be strong enough and self aware enough to give out what we really want.

It's funny how lessons like these reverberate through your life once you become receptive to them. Last night we went dancing, just like we used to, and we had a lovely date. Norman Sylvester was playing at the Tillicum and he played all our favorites, "Bring It On Home to Me," "The Thrill is Gone--and I don't want it back," the James Brown medley. He was resplendent in a red fedora and played and sang with energy that belies his age, and the crowd loved him. The old joint was packed. The pool tables were full and the bar stools were full and people were circling to find an empty chair. Our friend Jay showed up, doing a silly dance in the entryway. It was good to see him. The bass player, Rob Shoemaker, Norman's side man for 27 years, came over to say hello and introduced his son Paul, who plays drums now, the son following the father in the family business. "Ever since he was a little kid, he was drumming on something," Paul said. "I'd take him to gigs and be over talking to the drummer, asking him, 'how's this work, how do you do that.'" You could tell he was proud of his boy, who towered over his father. His youngest. Rob said he had two daughters, the oldest in Boston, the mother of his first and only grandchild, now eight months. We agreed that grandchildren were the reward for growing old. The praise and joy grandparents express about their grandchildren is kind of a fraternity handshake. It was good to talk to Rob. A bass player who never sings and doesn't talk much, but when you get to know him you find he's the kind of guy you'd want to have for a neighbor.

The evening went on that way. We saw old friends like Tony and Alisha and Monte. People complimented us on our dancing. The wait staff was pleasant and efficient and appropriately cordial. A lady at the next table started a conversation with Marie. They'd just come from the movies, saw George Clooney's new film, "Up In the Air," and it was really good.

The lesson was, we were happy and getting along and we had our spark back, and everywhere and throughout the evening people were happy to see us and saying complimentary and encouraging things. It was good to be us again. You get back what you give out, and the momentum of that simple truth is magical.

I have never seen my beautiful wife look more lovely or desirable. She was radiant and alive, and it felt wonderful to see her have such a good time. I adore her. I wish I loved her better, and she could know how much.

Try A Little Tenderness

We've come to a lovely place in our often stormy relationship here at Blog Central, She gave a little and I did too, and gradually and then suddenly things have become remarkably better. Our voices are softer and smiles come more easily. We hold each other more and our kisses are softer and more frequent. We don't seem to get as troubled by the little bumps or the times we're busy. There's more cooperation, more compliments, more acceptance. If she's busy with chores or I'm playing poker we still stay connected. There are little timeouts for an embrace or conversation. We seem to enjoy each more, and a lot of the tension and hurt is gone. I'm sure we will still have our days and moments and tests of wills, but the worst is over. We've decided to move on together, that we need and enjoy each other, and it feels nice. It feels like home.

Yesterday we visited baby Madilyne, six weeks old, looking pretty and pink in a blue outfit with yellow daisies. I sang to her and held her and read her two stories. Already she is smiling and responding to faces, and she seemed to enjoy reading time. Of course at this point she's enjoying being held and talked to, the love and attention and comfort that accompanies the storybook. She turns to look when people talk to her and her eyes follow her mother when she walks across the room. The life of a small baby is full of miracles and wonderful discoveries. It's been a great joy to us sharing in the first weeks of her life and her parents are very generous with her. Invariably when we come to visit Ashley will put her in our arms, obviously delighted by our delight in her baby girl.

Much of my life has been a waste and a disappointment, through no one's fault but my own. I had opportunities I squandered and gifts I never used, and I loved the people I was given to love imperfectly. My life was chaotic, often sad, too often self-destructive. I fought demons within myself, angry, unsettled, often without goals or a plan or a purpose. As a young man I was a fool, nervous and unprepared for the world, crippled and conflicted by my nightmare upbringing. But many people have done far better coming from far worse circumstances. Instead of being resilient or resourceful I hid behind shallow pretenses and vague distractions and obsessions. My thirties got here in an awful hurry. I kept repeating the same mistakes in new situations. I kept running. I never stayed anywhere for long. I quit jobs. I started arguments. I packed my bags and started over somewhere else.

My fifties came long before I expected. What a blur the time had been. I hadn't held on to anything. But in the last season of my life I was lucky enough to meet a woman strong enough to stand up to me and demand I stand my ground, and through luck and the passage of time I became a grandpa.

I was born to be a grandpa. All my best qualities have come out in grandpahood, and I've mellowed just enough to be ready for the role. The little ones seem to love my voice and my gentleness, arms strong enough to swing them and hold them and a lap that is always ready for a storybook or a cartoon movie. They readily sense the depth and genuineness in me, the gentleness that survived living in a thicket on Swan Island and parents who beat and humiliated me. My grandchildren know I would never hurt them. They know I see them as the most precious and delightful children in all the world. Exactly the way they should feel around their granda. It's the job of a lifetime, the joy that undoes all regret.

I'm looking forward to the unfolding of their lives, their accomplishments and discoveries and the sound of their laughter. Kourtney, Makenzie, Bryce, Ethan, Madilyne and Elizabeth are the cherry tootsie roll in the candy dish of life, and they make me so happy I made it to the last season of life. They make me happy to be an old man. I wouldn't trade places with anyone in the world.

Heaven Can Wait, But Common Sense Can't

Disaster struck the Oregon Ducks on Saturday night. Star quarterback Jeremiah Masoli was implicated in a theft at a fraternity party. A couple of laptops and an expensive guitar were stolen, and he and another player, reserve wide receiver Garrett Embry, were fingered by one of the frat boys as the culprits. That same night a few blocks away kicker Rob Beard was beaten and critically injured in a street brawl. The details on each incident are sketchy, and twenty-year-old kids will find themselves in the occasional scrape, but it's disturbing to see a proud, successful team fall into such disreputable and destructive behavior. Here's an essay I wrote on the debacle, which I originally submitted to Rob Moseley's Oregon Duck football blog in the Eugene Register Guard:

There’s a movie I saw one time and it starred Warren Beatty. He played a quarterback who died and came back to life in the body of a spoiled rich industrialist, a gunslinger in the world of big business with a wife who hated him and a body gone slack. Everybody trying to make a name for himself is trying to gun him down. His assistant is sleeping with his wife.

Beatty has to lead a board meeting, and since he doesn’t have much experience in business he relates it to football. He looks around the table at his gathered minions and number crunchers and says, “Fellas, there’s one thing I want to know: are we having a winning season so far?”

The table of dark suits look puzzled so he places his hands in front of him chest high like he’s about to receive a shotgun snap and explains, “Because we’re you’re having a winning season, you don’t mess up. You don’t throw the girl out the motel room window. You don’t get drunk and get arrested for speeding. You take care of business and eat your protein shakes and win the next game.”

That wasn’t exactly how he said it, but that was the gist. I had too big a crush on Julie Christie and a pre-wattle Dyan Cannon to remember it exactly. Plus it was more than 25 years ago, and a lot has happened since then.

The point of this digressive tale is this: after the smoke stops burning all of our eyes from these hazy and foul-smelling incidents, regardless of the verdict of juries, Chip Kelly needs to sit down with the preseason-number-two-ranked Oregon Ducks and have a come-to-Jesus. He needs to give the Warren Beatty speech.

Fellas, we had a winning season. And we’re about to have the greatest season in Oregon Duck history. And when that happens, you don’t mess it up. You stay out of trouble. You stay out of the places where trouble happens. You stay close to your own and away from people who would try to trip you up. Travel in twos, and make sure one of you stays sober and keeps his head and has the sense to say, “Hey cuz, let’s get out of here.”

Maybe that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night. I’m more concerned about all the Saturday nights leading up to the ones where they start keeping score again. Please, Ducks. No more incidents, brawls, or allegedlies. We don’t want to wind up looking like the Florida States or Tennessees, or worse, some sheep-stealing, National Guardsmen-bashing idiots down the road.

Assailed Daily by the Jawbone of An Ass

Three names in this week's news that prove you don't have to wise or smart or admirable to be famous:

Jay Leno got his way. The most self-promoting in show business has managed to undermine several careers and orchestrate several graceless exits on his way to the top, and his latest triumph is America's loss. NBC spent $35 million dollars to make Conan and his staff go away, and what they have now is Jay and his aging audience and tired old shtick.

The real problem is, Leno is not FUNNY. Most of his punch lines are the stuff of 7th-grade locker rooms and tittering from the boys in the band. He's not fresh, original or innovative. He may have shouldered out Johnny Carson and outmaneuvered David Letterman and kicked Conan O'Brien to the curb, but once he got the mike he had nothing to say. Tap it all you want, Jay Leno. This mike is on but you'll never get more than token applause. And everyone is rolling their eyes at you behind your back.

John Edwards denied his affair for years, denied he was the father of the child, went on Oprah and piously declared he had learned his lesson and was making amends for the damage he had done to his wife and family. He waits until he's out of the country on a relief mission to Haiti and the eve of the publication of a damaging tell-all book. He leaves his staff and advisors to answer the questions and issue the statements.

It's embarrassing and sad on many levels. Here is a man who once stood for something and campaigned to make a difference in the lives of people. He has wrecked his life and his legacy, and now he cannot stand up to what he has done.

Tiger Woods is reportedly in a sexual addiction clinic in Hattiesburg Mississippi. His stay there includes several special accommodations, including a $100,000 temporary makeover to his room and a agreement that he doesn't have to participate in group therapy or eat the common meals with the rest of the patients.

I have two problems with this. The first is that everyone nowadays claims their failures to be an illness and runs off for treatment. The second is, if he is going to a facility to address his "issues," he ought to subject himself to the discipline and regimen of that experience. Thinking he was above the rules is what got him into this situation in the first place.

In fact, thinking that way was central to the problems of all these men. We have to earn the trust and the affection of others. Once lost, it is a hard road to earn it back. Rehabilitation and real change are not easy, and have to begin with an authentic change of the heart. It's hard to think how any of these three could achieve that. They've shown themselves to be terminally selfish, hollow men addicted to appetite and getting what they want without regard of the cost to anyone.

We have to bear our human failings and the consequences of them, and take responsibility with grace and self-reflection. The true triumphs of the soul come in trial and defeat. It will be interesting to see where these men are five years from now. Will they rise from the rubble of the earthquakes that have shook their lives, or will they remain arrogant and unchanged, clinging to their privilege and celebrity, clinging to the image of themselves as victims of a voracious media, hungry for scandal or sorrow in the lives of public men?

Pat Robertson Needs a Big Glass of Shut the Hell Up

In the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti that killed over a 100,000 people, Pat Robertson went on The 700 Club and declared to his audience that the quake and aftermath were God's judgment on the Haitian people for a deal with the devil made in the time of Napoleon.

An ancient Haitian leader, he intoned, brought this curse upon the people in hopes of throwing off colonial rule. They escaped the emperor's oppression to bring on one far worse. The earthquake, all the damage and devastating injuries, were a direct result of that awful bargain. Apparently God waits a long time before lowering the boom.

Robertson gives Christians a bad name. Six-month-old babies are buried under rubble and he's claiming to speak for God about what it means. Only a handful of people in the history of the world were able to do that creditably, and in spite of his empire Robertson has no standing to put himself among them. Elijah, Noah, John the Baptist--that's presumptuous company for a televangelist with a penchant for stupid remarks.

The worst part is how he misrepresents Christianity. The Jesus who walked the earth was a God of compassion, mercy and sacrifice, one who saved his harshest criticism for the religious elite and the rigid ritualistic moralists who passed cruel judgment on the ordinary people who came to the temple in faithful worship. The real Christians are the ones who pray and comfort, not the bombastic oafs who condemn the innocent for the obscure sins of the past.

Haiti has profound chronic problems of its own. But Robertson's blast was ill-timed and ill-considered, and typical for him. He shoots from the lip, preaching chiefly to the narrow-minded chorus of voices like his own. His conservative fan base eats up every word. I hardly am in a position to know, but I hope there is a special place in hell for people like this, who take such delight in suffering and assign it a holy purpose.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

There is no greater sorrow than being a disappointment to the one you love, particularly when that disappointment begins to destroy the fabric of your intimacy.

Every time Marie and I fight it feels like the last fight, like things have gotten so desperate and so divided and so excruciatingly painful we'll absolutely never recover. By now what keeps us together is the fear of uncertainty and a lingering memory of the better days and the hope we can reclaim them, but I hate it that we hurt each other, I hate to see the pain she is in, and I hate myself for causing it.

I think she has come to a place where I don't appeal to her anymore. I think it's gotten so bad the anger rises to the surface at the slightest provocation or trigger. I feel so alone and so defeated. I never meant for it to turn out like this. I love her very much. I wish I was better at it.

Sometimes I try to stand up for myself and make demands that we proceed with mutual respect, but I'm not a good negotiator, and I come off as unreasonable and manipulative and heavy-handed. I just want the best for us, and I want a love we can both trust. I don't want to fight anymore, at least not like that.

That's all I have to say right now. We've had an hour and a half to calm down, and I want to go home and apologize and make up. I hope she will let me and meet me halfway.

I don't think we are bad people. We've just made some mistakes, and we have some deep down lingering hurts that become stumbling blocks when we try to relate and work our way through the difficult times. It would help to be more financially secure and have less pressure and worry. Most of all it would help to break through our fears and regrets. I do love her with all my heart.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

I like watching Dr. Phil with my wife. We tape it on the dvr and can watch over dinner or after dinner, and it sparks all kinds of dialogue and opportunities for new understanding, or just the catty fun of picking apart the dysfunctional and hopelessly deluded guests. Two days ago there was a pathetic woman, 50, with a face lift and a boob job and a 28-year-old son and 32-year-old boyfriend, in desperate denial over the fact that like everyone else she will grow old. She is clinging to a narrow window and a shallow dim guy she can lead around by the nose, while her son agonizes about the sure hurt that is in her future. So often our grown kids can see what we are deliberately blind to. The misunderstanding on all sides can become very painful.

Yesterday's topic was lying. Lies hurt. Lies, even the little ones, accumulate in our souls and destroy trust. Because on some level deep within ourselves we know when we are being lied to, and the lies create mistrust and fear that slowly destroy our hopes. It hurts to be lied to, and to know the other person is discarding the hope and opportunity to grow and build understanding in our lives. Statistically, men lie three times more often than woman, and typically men lie out of a desire to make themselves look better and women lie most often out of a desire to spare someone hurt. But lies do more damage than good, and they last longer and burrow deeper into our hearts.

One of the guests had lied to her husband about stopping her birth control pills. She deeply wanted children and he didn't, and she had stopped taking them for a year, and told him only in the heat of an argument. He was devastated. She had concealed other things from him and made decisions behind his back, buying an expensive new car while he was out of town, a cat, an exercise machine. She lied out of a fear to negotiate and in an immature shortcut to getting what she wanted, and it ended up costing her her marriage. The couple is in counseling and trying to reconcile, but it's a tough road: it takes far longer to rebuild trust than it does to destroy it.

A man in the audience lied to get out of a date, and his grandmother sitting next to him admitted she had faked an orgasm during sex just to get it over with. Why would anyone admit that on national TV? Unfortunately Dr. Phil and the audience treated this as a laugh line, a Jay Leno moment of sophomoric tittering and self indulgence. I thought that was a terrible shame, because sexual lies are the most damaging of all. We are most vulnerable to each other in our sexuality, and the hurt of being rejected or unpleasing to someone we hunger to connect with is awful to live with. I would give anything to please my wife and be pleasing to her. It hurts to not have the opportunity to really know her, to truly grow closer. Behind every lie is a lost opportunity to build hope. A callus begins to form in a tender place, until the tenderness is lost forever.

I wish we could begin again without the damaging lies. I wish they had never happened, and we had never turned away from each other and deceived each other and not trusted the strength and worth of each other. What was once hopeful and joyous and spontaneous is now guarded and fraught with hidden difficulty and painful traps of memory and regret. We reach for each other tentatively at times, and pull back quickly and sometimes with anger and new hurt. We have to be careful and patient, and sometimes the care and patience comes off as disinterest or unwillingness. We are hedging our bets. A part of our hearts are kept hidden from the other.

I love my wife. I want her to be happy. I like her and love spending time with her. Beginning again is hard and takes a lot of faith. I wish she loved me like she used to. I wish I could rebuild my worthiness in her eyes, and I could see the admiration and desire I once found there. A part of us has grown cold and careful, and it hurts to the core to feel the difference.

The hopeful part is, when we stop lying to one another in a relationship, and turn to one another in hope and new commitment, and begin a transparent and earnest dialogue, understanding grows. Forgiveness can begin. The lies that imprisoned us lose their power, and we can begin to discover joy worth living for and love worth trusting. That is the hopeful part. I cling to that with all my heart. I love my wife. And I want to be happy too.

Blog update:

I finished the bed. It took me five hours and a couple of fairly quiet cuss sentences, but it's done and sturdy and looks just right. I had a half dozen screws left over but it's solid and holding together. Austin came home when I was nearly finished, and as I assembled the mattress slats I told her, "If you had any idea how much I hate projects like this you would have a new-found respect for how much I like you." I said this quietly and without looking up from my work, and I meant it. She seemed genuinely happy to have the bed assembled, and it looks wonderful in her room. She thanked me three times, and her tone and demeanor are noticeably warmer over the last two days. I feel she is starting to relax a little and feel more comfortable at home, more at home at home. I never felt at home growing up, and I know what a terror that can be. A lot of energy goes into hiding your fear and hurt, particularly when you go out into the world. It made me such a guarded person. I put a facade of good cheer and was voted the friendliest person in my senior class. Deep inside, I rarely trusted anyone, and the anxious, nervous, uncertain, pained heart of me poisoned every relationship and every choice I ever made. I was a refugee from the cold country of hurt, a terrible lie to bear in the center of your being.

Many of us have lived our lives that way, and hidden our secrets in a hundred ways. We dig shallow graves or build our prisons and live in them, whether drinking or acting out or flying into rage or just plain hiding and living guarded, disappointing lives. There's a new beginning awaiting us all. It starts when we stop lying and turn to someone in honest vulnerability: I need you. This is where I want to take my stand. Yesterday Marie told me that she wanted to be married to me and she couldn't be married to anyone better for her. They were the most hopeful and healing words I have ever heard. I've been off the last two days, and they've been good ones, full of quiet tenderness and little affections. She made me dinner and folded my laundry. We held each over the kitchen sink. We took a long nap with cuddling included, watched our shows and ate. We held our new granddaughter, fed her a bottle and changed her and sang her to sleep. She is so beautiful and pink and perfect. We have five amazing grandchildren, with another one on the way. I don't understand people who say, "Don't call me Grandpa." Why would anyone be afraid of something so rewarding and full of hope?

They were good days, free of anger or recrimination or loud words. If we can string enough good days together the pain of the bad ones will lose their hold, especially if we talk about them honestly and demonstrate a change of heart. I truly love her. This is where I want to be.

During the show Dr. Phil offered some tremendous, concrete, practical advice on "Changing Your Relationship with a Liar":

Remember that You Teach People How to Treat You
You’ve got to have your eyes wide open. See people for who they are, not who you want them to be. Don't teach somebody that they can get away with lying to you.

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Acknowledge
You have to be honest with yourself about whether somebody is abusing you, using you or misrepresenting things to you.

Be Real with Yourself and Your Partner
If you lie to yourself, you’re the filter. You’re the way the world gets to see you, so if you’re distorting, then you’re totally lost.

Be as Forthcoming as You Can Be Before You Enter into a Commitment
If something is not right about you — you think you’ve got a bad trait or characteristic — it’s going to come out eventually. You might as well be honest from the beginning.

Hear Your Partner
Listen to what your mate is saying. Don't hear what you want to hear.

Ask Yourself if You’re Willing to Settle for What You’re Doing Are you happy with the circumstances you're in? If not, demand the truth from others and yourself.

People in relationships that are poisoned by lies have to begin with the commitment that the lies have to stop. This means the lies they tell each other and the lies they are telling themselves. And leaving out an important part of the truth is the worst kind of lie. Secrets destroy the way water erodes a rock. With enough time there is nothing left but sand, or a hollowed-out shell that has no strength.

Love and tenderness are the most precious things. They are worth fighting for, worth preserving, and worth taking the risk of being honest and letting go of our lies. I want to do some more counseling this year. Each year my work allows six new visits, although six are probably not enough. There's a lot of ground to cover within me. I'll have to supplant them with prayer and spiritual growth, and a renewed commitment to the work of these pages. Thank you for taking today's journey with me, and supporting me along the way.

The Most Terrifying Words in the World:

Some assembly required.

My stepdaughter Austin got a new bed from Ikea as a gift from her oldest sister. Since I am the man, it's my job to assemble it, or so the tradition goes.

Unfortunately I was born without the fix-it gene, or it has deteriorated overtime from disuse and avoidance. My m.o. in these situations over the years has been to wait the rest of the household out, or to string together so many cuss sentences of rampant frustration that someone else takes up the task in disgust. A few other times I've had a softball buddy or someone else nearby that I could bribe with a sixpack of beer.

It's a remarkable achievement that I've reached the 54th year of my life without ever putting anything together, a long legacy of sloth, immaturity and irresponsibility it's taken a lifetime to achieve.

I can't fix things. I can't put things together. And I don't have time to whine about it. Austin gets home from school in a couple of hours, and like every other reasonable child she's entitled to a bed to sleep in.

I got all the parts out and basically arranged, but the meager instructions don't say what goes into where.

So now, for the first time in my underachieving life, I'm going to do the responsible thing.

I'm fighting off the urge to play poker or go to the gym or storm off in a miserable huff. I'm sucking it up, and googling tech support.

Stay tuned. It's me against Some Assembly Required, and if I can conquer this demon, anything is possible.

And Now For Something Completely Different

The blog has been under the cone of silence for nearly a week, and the explanation can be traced to fear. Ernest Hemingway called writing facing the white bull, and although Hemingway can be accused of being overly dramatic in his posturing and his extravagant liberations and runnings about, and particularly in his choice of exits, he did have a gift of turning an illuminating phrase. Sometimes a blank, empty page can seem daunting. What if I have nothing to say? What if what I do write pisses someone off, not some random stranger, but someone I know and love and need? Ideally the blog is free range writing, and we have to be free to forage and feast and peck on any seed of inspiration we unearth. But what looks like a tasty morsel to me can strike the reader as a disgusting bug covered with dirt. Well today we are going to dish the dirt, and let the dust and the disgust fall where they may.

Kate Gosselin is on the cover of People magazine this week with a new $20,000 hairdo and a $4,000 makeup job. Here is a woman who is fake from the top of her head to her boobs to her belly, and famous and admired for practically nothing. Shakespeare named his famous shrew Kate, and Kates (at least this one) have been trying to live up to the name ever since. Kate Gosselin repulses me, for she is the epitome of the empty celebrity-worshipping culture that is America. She parents eight ill-advised children badly (no one as immature as dysfunctional as she and her husband should have one child, let alone eight induced and created by the use of powerful fertility treatments.) The Gosselins are famous for nothing, living right down the celebrity street from the Kardashians and the Hilton sisters, with a talent for nothing other than a willingness to display all their messy embarrassing immaturity in public, and wear expensive pretty clothes on red carpets. Kate's getting a talk show now. Maybe her first guest can be Tiger Woods.

I don't like watching people fight on TV, because I hate myself when I'm angry. I don't like losing control. I hate craziness and the loss of rationality, the place where arguments turn into scenes and everything becomes hurtful and personal and your guts start to churn and you find yourself fighting the urge to fight or flee. My mother was an amazing woman in many ways, but something that will always stay with me was her painful and acute ability to cut you when she was angry, with wounding words, withholding affection, sarcasm and humiliation. I have a deep, visceral reaction to people who talk like Kate, who try to get the upper hand in a negotiation with belittling remarks and hurt. Jon was a spoiled, self-indulgent teenager, but his wife humiliated and emasculated him on national TV week after week. His mid-life crisis and train wreck carrying on were sad and predictable. Like Tiger Woods he seemed to have a very low standard for what comprised "hot chicks."

It will be interesting to view the sequel to this sad celebrity tale. For Jon now the money is gone and his fifteen minutes are nearly over. His life is taking on the bloated remember me quality of faded minor television actors, and, after the TLC lawyers are done carving up his office-above-the-liquor-store mouthpiece, he'll have severely limited prospects for rebuilding his brand. He'll no doubt wind up doing shows like "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" or "Dance Your Ass Off." His wife's prospects are brighter. Somehow in the whole mess she comes off as the sympathetic and responsible one. I know better. I've been in those kinds of arguments, so I know where the verbal weapons were hidden, where the hand grenades of shame were tossed. She broke him down. They destroyed each other, and turned eight little lives into tabloid curiousities, all for a little bit of money. I love that line, the closing words of "Fargo." The Coen brothers should take a stab at the Gosselin saga, but it's probably too bizarre even for them.

I'm writing cranky and bitter today, because circumstances here at blog central are getting under my skin. Most of the news is bad, especially at the personal level. Marie's employer called her this morning and her temporary assignment ends as of today, and that plunges us into a new round of financial uncertainty. We had another global thermonuclear fight, and this one was all my fault. I was the one who got irrational and flew off the handle. Fortunately she was quiet and understanding and waited for me to calm down. We need a miracle. We need our own reality show. I've always said we would be good rich people. We would enjoy it far more than they do, and we would be more generous.

My own job has taken a turn for the worse. I spend my days talking to drunk, pissed off people who don't know how to operate a TV remote or connect a cable wire or read a bill, and now the global communications giant is instituting a 2% sales quota, meaning that 20 of the thousand calls I take in a month have to end in the sale of a new product, which sounds reasonable except that nearly all of my calls are from people who are furious about their existing products.

It's a weird job environment. All of the communication is by email and on a typical day I get 30-40 emails, some about service issues or lost ipods and at least six that are of the "Office Space" TPS report variety, something about a policy that is changing or a new code is being instituted, or this campaign is being revamped and that one is ending or a new work order error is being created. My eyes glaze over when I read them. I'm literally bored out of my mind and want to stare off into space, gut a fish at my desk just to break the monotony. Lately I've being taking my laptop into work, to play Bowl Bound College Football and Pokerstars.com between calls and the really even more bizarre thing is that my supervisor is okay with it. He hasn't expressed anything other than mild curiosity about it. "Are you playing with real money?" he asked. I assured him that I am, although lately I'm not winning any. It's amazing how many ways wired aces can lose to a pair of eights or deuces. I'm having new nightmares just thinking about it.

I'm basically an optimistic and positive person. I never set out to be such a bitter old man. But I've come to the stage where I need something good to happen, or I may have to take matters into my own hands and go a little crazy. I've done that before, however, and it didn't come out well. If only I could get a job writing a blog, watching Duck football, playing poker and exercising. Then I would be the happiest man in the world. I wonder if we have any cheese curls.

In other news, the smart, funny and beautiful blog daughter is having a baby, on June 8th, dangerously close to her beloved, now-deceased Grandpa Prunehead's birthday. The ultrasound was last week and it's a girl. We have a surplus of girls but I consider that an embarrassment of riches. Marie's son just a had a baby in December, Madilyne Rose, and she as pretty and sweet and pink and perfect as a baby could be. These are the compensations for growing old. In another 14 years the government is going to pay me for doing absolutely nothing, and I'm sure it will be everything I ever dreamed it would be, and in the meantime there are beautiful, pink, perfect grandchildren, who only want to be held and loved. Just like all the rest of us.

The Most Desolate Time

In February of 1993, on Super Bowl Sunday, I was hospitalized for manic depression at Eastern Oregon State Hospital in Pendleton, Oregon. I spent mornings in the day room where the books were kept, castoff volumes from the public library. They had a small writing desk that looked out to the window. I found a copy of the King James Bible and started reading the Gospels and the Psalms, and an old hardbound volume of The Old Man and the Sea. My brother sent me a spiral notebook and pens in a care package, so I started a journal.

The window was covered with iron grating on the outside. The first night, deeply manic and lost in delusion I threw a cup of urine in the face of the night attendant and tried to escape. It took five of them to subdue me. They gave me a shot of Haldol and put me in restraints. I was terrified and completely helpless and alone and ashamed. I was afraid I would be there forever, with those other lost, broken people. One of the voluble manics took me under his wing. He coaxed me into calling my wife and pleading my case with her, told me to be sure to request certain medications and refuse others. I did push ups and chins on the pipes above the grated-in deck, thinking of softball season.

The Eastern Oregon mornings were bitter cold, temperatures in single digits. I window in the day room looked out on the prison yard next door. The cons would gather in groups, hands in their pockets, breath rising above their heads. The morning sun gleamed off the razor wire.

The meals were starchy and tasteless, and I shuffled through the day, spent hours writing. By the third week lithium had stabilized my symptoms and they assured me I'd be getting out soon. About then it was revealed to me Susan "would not be a resource for me" when I got out. My mother agreed to have me stay with her. At 6 a.m., on a Monday in early March, they took me to the bus station and rode the long hours through the one gas station towns to Portland. To begin a new life.

I called for jobs the next day and got a temp assignment, and a few days into the week called the garbage company and they hired me back. I have no idea why. I suppose everyone there was crazy too in their own way. The other guys were understandably wary of me, but just as happy to not have to double up on their routes. I kept to myself even before, so my isolation and unspoken separateness didn't seem unusual. I think I've always held myself apart from people. Everyone probably assumes it's out of snobbery or unfriendliness or a spirit of judgment, but it's not. It's the fear of being found out, of having all that vulnerability and shame exposed. Not just the mental illness. I've been relatively healthy and functioning for 17 years now. It's the weight of everything else, growing up poor, having yellow teeth, secretly feeling unlikeable and unworthy and eccentric.

Eventually the shame faded. I buried the experience, began my grief over the unraveling of my second marriage, got an apartment, reconnected with my kids. I went to movies and played golf, read books. I went back to night school and finished my degree. It was just a night school diploma from a nothing college in a subject, Human Development, that would lead to no kind of career, but it was an important symbol to me. I finished something. I started something new. There was no triumphant moment or get breakthrough, but I stayed healthy and never had to go back to the window with the iron grates and the razor wire and the bitter cold. I don't think of it often but you never forget a place like that. It's surprising, given that experience, that I don't live with more purpose and humility and perspective. Sometimes I have this fragile shell of pretense about me, and it doesn't serve me well.

These days I keep myself busy with amusements. Sometimes we use things and activity to hide from the truth of our lives. All of those painful and misspent choices have something to teach us, the failed relationships, the dead end jobs, the dark corners and blind alleys of time. I kept myself hidden from other people. I have a job I hate and do poorly. There was a lot I didn't want anyone to know, and was frantic to forget myself. You can use television or poker or Bowl Bound College Football like a drug. You can throw things away or keep them hidden away, but the gleam of the razor wire is still blinding in your memory.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Great movies are personal. I don't measure movies by the number of stars they got or how they did at the box office. My definition of a great movie is one that sticks with you, one that is memorable or makes you want to see it again. A truly great movie helps you connect more deeply with your own experience, helps you define and express what is really in your heart. Great movies become touchstones. And when you're trying to share the deepest, saddest, most hopeful or tender part of you with someone you can can say, "here, watch this with me." I couldn't be with someone who didn't get "The Princess Bride," "The Bucket List," "Second Hand Lions," or "As Good As It Gets." There are others, but those are four that will always stay with me.

This weekend I added another one to the list. It's not a famous movie or a highly successful one, but the story touched me and I thought it was beautifully acted by Will Smith and his son. They are in the homeless shelter and he's tucking the boy in and the boy reaches up and takes his father's chin, "You're a good papa," he says. Sometimes our kids know just what to say, right from their souls. Every parent has four or five moments like that tucked away in their hearts, moments when their children ministered to them with laughter or tenderness.

But the most powerful element of the movie for me is how it captured the frantic momentum of being working poor, where one broken bulb can create an avalanche of small disasters in your life, and just managing can be overwhelming. All of the sudden you find yourself lower than you ever thought you could be. In the spring of '86 I was sleeping on a piece of cardboard on a thicket on Swan Island, and bathing in the sink at the warehouse where I worked. You don't mean to get to such a low place. One thing happens and then another. You lose a job or quit a deadend one in a huff. The car breaks down. Your share of the rent is 325 a month your paycheck is 240 and you have three overdrafts on your account. The burger you bought on Thursday went through right away and wound up costing 38.75. When you're behind on everything the least little thing that comes up seems like a big deal. And you're always running and you're always late, and having to carry your stuff with you wherever you go. Most of all it takes tremendous energy merely to hide your embarrassment and desperation. Once I walked two miles carry a typewriter to a pawn shop. They didn't want it and I had to haul it back to the thicket. On Thursday there was a heavy spring rain.

Finding your way out of the low place takes courage and ingenuity and a little luck. Maybe someone comes along and provides you shelter from the storm. You're not fooling anyone but everyone manages to look the other way. A buddy comes along and tells you about a job, and you tell a good story and manage to get it. Life improves. But some never get the right combination of luck and opportunity. They slip away into Night Train or the needle. They lose their piece of cardboard in the wind. Things don't get better and one day they are caught in the winter rain, or worse.

Failure and despair have a frightful momentum. Will Smith's character, Chris Gardner, had exceptional gifts, determination, intelligence and resilience, and these gifts got him to a better place. In the movie's last scene, I saw him clapping his hands above his head, almost ready to break out into a dance or tears, and I felt I understood that moment more than anyone who had ever watched the film. It takes courage to be that broken. It takes unspeakable human courage to rise up and hope, to come to the moment where you don't have to hide anymore, the day you get the keys to a place of your own with two rooms and a shower, a patio that looks out onto a green manicured lawn. The apartment on 106th and Wygant had a pool and they kept it clean. The manager was nice. I had the rent on time and bought a dependable car, a Ford Escort with 60,000 miles, with I hatchback for my softball gear and golf clubs. My daughter could come over and go swimming. When it snowed Roger and I played broom hockey on the street. I bought him a yellow bike and taught him to ride it in the parking lot of the church. I was rich. I had quarters for the laundry and bought a suit.

Thank you Will Smith for sharing the gift of your soul. People get placed in movies because they look pretty and can change their faces in the light to depict another mood, but you did something far more remarkable. You got into the skin of another person, and lived their fear and possibility. Watching you do that helped me to remember how much of each lies within us all.

I am bitter and in pain, and Nick Alliotti is the worst defensive coordinator in the United States

The Ohio State dominated Oregon in the Rose Bowl today. Give credit to the Buckeyes, but Nick Alliotti continues to confound Oregon fans by rushing three on third and long and letting opponents drive the length of the field. Oregon needs a new defensive coordinator. They have for years. He's predictable and stupid. Ohio State had the ball for forty minutes. The Ducks lost contain on Pryor and failed to pressure him consistently.

Nick, here's a new concept: three and out! Give the ball back to your talented offense.

There is too much talent on the Oregon defense for them to continue to play so poorly. They are taught a system that undermines their aggression and athletic ability. It's both too complicated and too predictable. Under Alliotti's tutelage they got worse as the season went on. Year after year Oregon only wins when they outscore people.

What an agonizing, dissatisfying way to end a lovely, memorable season. The coaches failed the players today, particularly on defense. Sadly, all the breaks and bounces went the other way: a tipped pass for an interception just before halftime, a fumble that bounded 20 yards down the field when they were driving for a go-ahead score, a field goal a yard right. It was too much to overcome.

Ohio State played well and they were better prepared. The Ducks lost and deserved to lose, playing one of their worst games of the year on the biggest stage. They didn't block, tackle or think like PAC-10 champions. It's a defeat that will sting a long time. I'll remember the bad start and the lost composure, and the phantom face mask penalty that sustained a key drive (teach Brandon Bair to drive and wrap up rather than reach, and the officials don't have the opportunity to blow that call.)

I was an embarrassment to myself watching that game, raging and out of control. I screamed, I swore, I threw my hat. I feel as low and defeated as I did after the first game, as I if was the one who both threw and took a punch to the jaw.

My head is full of random bad thoughts. I kept waiting for Jeremiah Masoli to assert himself in the second half, but he didn't get enough chances. I wish they had gone for it on the fourth and one late in the fourth quarter. All night long the blocking was terrible.

What a disappointing way to end a good season. It isn't enough to get to the Rose Bowl, although that is an accomplishment. The Ducks have to take the next step. Maybe next year. But next year they will be targets and an object of national scepticism. They have an early road game in Tennessee, and critical senior leadership to replace. They need an upgrade in the defensive line.

Most of all, they need to replace Nick Alliotti. There's no questioning his heart, passion or commitment. He just doesn't teach, game plan or manage defense at the level needed to compete at the highest level. He never has.