I only have time for a short post, in hopes of placating my daughter Stephanie, who keeps track of such things with all the fierce devotion in her fierce heart.
Important decisions have to be made carefully, because they echo through your life. Several paths close forever when you choose the wrong one, and it's easy to lose your way. You can open your eyes years later and wonder how you came to such a strange place. In the middle of brambles you can find a freshly cut grave, and shudder to think who placed it there, and for who. The memory will haunt you a long time. I still wonder why I didn't realize what I was seeing when I came there. Stephanie remembers it too.
Somewhere in the brambles of the future there is a grave marked for each one of us, and the twisted path we take toward it makes all the difference. The challenge is to step forward with clarity, and mark your path with a purpose, and touch and hold someone meaningfully before you lose your way altogether. The journey of life wasn't meant to be taken in isolation. That leads to despair and emptiness, as forlorn as an unmarked grave in the shadows of time.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Must Love Dogs and I AM Sam
When you misplace your energy and enthusiasm for something you once did well and very successfully, it may be time to reevaluate your reasons for doing it.
It may be a sign to take your life in a new direction. Step back. Breathe. Be objective and refresh yourself. Your time is precious and unrecoverable, and your commitments are important. What's worth committing to, breathing for, giving your heart and the essential moment?
It could be that you've lost touch with the fundamental principles that made you successful in the first place. You may have become less attentive, expecting better results without the effort and awareness and discipline you initially practiced. Innate ability is not enough. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird practiced like journeyman. They were geniuses in their game, but worked constantly to perfect their craft in all the small details, like building a fine boat from native woods. Excellence is a way of life. You can't just show up and slide by and expect to do as well as you once did with an all-out effort.
If you want to continue in your chosen passion, take a break, refresh yourself, and plunge in with renewed energy and commitment. And don't expect immediate results. The universe may test you with some bad breaks. Are you here for the long haul? Or is this another of your flirtations and half-hearted commitments? Immediate results are for sissies and fools. Beginner's luck is a stumble forward. Real success is a journey of careful preparation and practice. The bamboo grows slowly, hardly at all at first, and after several years of patiently doing the right things in the right order, it rockets forward, shooting to the sky feet at a time, seemingly over night. The real secret is hidden in the deep roots of patient commitment. Faith is not the first moment of bowing your knees, it is the actions you perform when you get up. It is returning to the same heart-felt understanding day after day, and acting on it when the rewards are not evident.
You must know, "I am here because I want to be. I do this because this is where I belong." If you no longer feel that in your heart, find what is in your heart. Follow that, and never let it go.
Must Love Dogs was a movie about the search for love, told with a wry detachment. It was a difficult movie to love, because it didn't earn its hopeful and inevitable ending. The actors didn't convince us. Despite doing fine work elsewhere John Cusack and Diane Lane and Christopher Plummer seemed to be going through the motions here, and the script didn't give them a chance to offer a real glimpse into the soul of how we connect to someone and how difficult it is, and the laughs were predictable and forced. The couple had dinner and fell into bed, but we never saw why. One moment they were having an awkward dinner conversation and the next moment they were tearing off one another's clothes. Urgency and desire are marvelous, but they have to come from somewhere. We never saw the connection develop. They didn't show us the magic. It made it hard to believe there was any.
As others have commented, John Cusack has fell into the trap of playing the same character over and over, a lovelorn hangdog with a quick wit, and he does it with less effort and less charm as time goes by. His boyish insouciance has worn out. He peaked holding a boombox over his arms twenty years ago, and now all he can do is fall into a hot tub time machine, acting ridiculous. I hope he too returns to the soul of what he is doing, and finds the courage to push himself further.
What a contrast to Sean Penn, who emerged about the same time, and never stops reinventing his characters in every gesture, who becomes the heart and soul of Harvey Milk and Huey Long and a grown man with the mind of a seven year old and a daughter he loves with every fiber of his tortured brain and perfect heart. Sam wasn't bright enough to count change, but he knew enough to love fiercely and change lives. There was nothing wry and ironic about him. He just had soul and courage, and those are far more important.
It may be a sign to take your life in a new direction. Step back. Breathe. Be objective and refresh yourself. Your time is precious and unrecoverable, and your commitments are important. What's worth committing to, breathing for, giving your heart and the essential moment?
It could be that you've lost touch with the fundamental principles that made you successful in the first place. You may have become less attentive, expecting better results without the effort and awareness and discipline you initially practiced. Innate ability is not enough. Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and Larry Bird practiced like journeyman. They were geniuses in their game, but worked constantly to perfect their craft in all the small details, like building a fine boat from native woods. Excellence is a way of life. You can't just show up and slide by and expect to do as well as you once did with an all-out effort.
If you want to continue in your chosen passion, take a break, refresh yourself, and plunge in with renewed energy and commitment. And don't expect immediate results. The universe may test you with some bad breaks. Are you here for the long haul? Or is this another of your flirtations and half-hearted commitments? Immediate results are for sissies and fools. Beginner's luck is a stumble forward. Real success is a journey of careful preparation and practice. The bamboo grows slowly, hardly at all at first, and after several years of patiently doing the right things in the right order, it rockets forward, shooting to the sky feet at a time, seemingly over night. The real secret is hidden in the deep roots of patient commitment. Faith is not the first moment of bowing your knees, it is the actions you perform when you get up. It is returning to the same heart-felt understanding day after day, and acting on it when the rewards are not evident.
You must know, "I am here because I want to be. I do this because this is where I belong." If you no longer feel that in your heart, find what is in your heart. Follow that, and never let it go.
Must Love Dogs was a movie about the search for love, told with a wry detachment. It was a difficult movie to love, because it didn't earn its hopeful and inevitable ending. The actors didn't convince us. Despite doing fine work elsewhere John Cusack and Diane Lane and Christopher Plummer seemed to be going through the motions here, and the script didn't give them a chance to offer a real glimpse into the soul of how we connect to someone and how difficult it is, and the laughs were predictable and forced. The couple had dinner and fell into bed, but we never saw why. One moment they were having an awkward dinner conversation and the next moment they were tearing off one another's clothes. Urgency and desire are marvelous, but they have to come from somewhere. We never saw the connection develop. They didn't show us the magic. It made it hard to believe there was any.
As others have commented, John Cusack has fell into the trap of playing the same character over and over, a lovelorn hangdog with a quick wit, and he does it with less effort and less charm as time goes by. His boyish insouciance has worn out. He peaked holding a boombox over his arms twenty years ago, and now all he can do is fall into a hot tub time machine, acting ridiculous. I hope he too returns to the soul of what he is doing, and finds the courage to push himself further.
What a contrast to Sean Penn, who emerged about the same time, and never stops reinventing his characters in every gesture, who becomes the heart and soul of Harvey Milk and Huey Long and a grown man with the mind of a seven year old and a daughter he loves with every fiber of his tortured brain and perfect heart. Sam wasn't bright enough to count change, but he knew enough to love fiercely and change lives. There was nothing wry and ironic about him. He just had soul and courage, and those are far more important.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Adventures in the Space-Time Continuum
We are all time travelers, whether reluctant or unaware or purposeful. We move forward through time at our own pace, impeded or rocketed forward by the powerful momentum of our expectations and preparation. The choice is ours, even when we are hopelessly stuck in the past or momentarily paralyzed by fear or regret. Whether a bitter trudge of negativity or a quick dance of optimism, we choose, and we affirm our choice in a hundred small decisions. We shape it by the way we look at things. We clothe ourselves for the journey, signalling our intentions as hostile or hopeful, armed for success or armored woefully with defensiveness and uncertainty.
If our stores are full of energy and we have mapped out what we want, the future is a bright place. Powerful and positive impulses guide our steps. If we let a death grip of self-imposed misery infect our outlook, our course is ragged and dangerous. We maroon ourselves. We steer toward asteroid belts and force fields and black holes, usually the same ones we've found before. The future looks like the past. The future can become a lonely outpost of dread or madness. It can look predestined and helpless.
It's not. Tomorrow is as awful or graceful as our forecast. It is determined by the stars we choose to guide us. A parent's love or a spouse's devotion is a powerful force that resonates through our lives, but even in the absence of these, we can choose our own course. We can define ourselves in a new way. Hold up your thumb to a bright star. Be confident in your reckoning. Choose your most stalwart companions and fear nothing. Go boldly and live well.
If our stores are full of energy and we have mapped out what we want, the future is a bright place. Powerful and positive impulses guide our steps. If we let a death grip of self-imposed misery infect our outlook, our course is ragged and dangerous. We maroon ourselves. We steer toward asteroid belts and force fields and black holes, usually the same ones we've found before. The future looks like the past. The future can become a lonely outpost of dread or madness. It can look predestined and helpless.
It's not. Tomorrow is as awful or graceful as our forecast. It is determined by the stars we choose to guide us. A parent's love or a spouse's devotion is a powerful force that resonates through our lives, but even in the absence of these, we can choose our own course. We can define ourselves in a new way. Hold up your thumb to a bright star. Be confident in your reckoning. Choose your most stalwart companions and fear nothing. Go boldly and live well.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Cost of Opportunity, The Terrible Risk of Stealing Your Own Hopes
Occasionally I dream of winning the lottery. When the jackpot gets big I plunk down one or two dollars on a ticket, and I think the main reason I do, the main thing I'm buying, is the opportunity to dream for a day or two, to muse and wonder on the life that might be. The dreams are both distracting and instructive, a mental vacation, a seminar on what you really want.
What I dream of is not fabulous riches and an oversized house and fancy cars, although those pass throught the picture. The chief appeal is time. A lottery winner, or at least the lottery winner I become in my head, is with one oversized check given back the precious store of 24 hours in every day for the rest of his life. Life suddenly is no longer dominated by drudgery and petty obligation.
I wouldn't have to put on the headset and get abused and bombarded by people's petty troubles, the litany of their enormous irritation at having to press two buttons instead of one, their outrage at missing Dancing With the Stars. I like a little TV as much as the next guy, but I can't help but thinking they'd be better off dancing with their wives, or gazing at the stars, or reaching for them, rather than being nasty and rude to me because I had the misfortune of being on the other end of the line when the dreaded beep sounded, the tone that haunts the dreamless space between closing my eyes and losing consciousness.
I get frantic, my fists clench for a second, if I think about that beep and the control it holds over my life. It is an audible lash of slavery. I wear a headset but I might as well be chained to the desk. For forty precious hours a week I'm in a misery of triviality and whiny indignation, over what? The right to stuff your minds with nothing and line the pockets of the stockholders of the Global Communications Giant with ill-gotten cash. There is no way the monthly cable phone and internet bill should be $300, for anyone, but for hundreds of thousands of people it is. There is no way Ray Ramano should make twenty million a year for telling jokes, but he does. We're that desperate to be distracted.
There's an opportunity cost to everything we choose to do. There are fishermen who are poets, but even they must realize the more time they spend tying flies, the less fish they'll catch and the more poems will pop into their heads, but the fewer hours they'll spend writing them down. The dream of winning the lottery isn't wallowing in the pile of money; it's wallowing in the priceless luxury of having enough time to take care of the body and mind, to sleep until you're ready to be awake and exercise until the body is rejuvenated and read until the mind is inspired, to be free of punching the clock, to live the Johnny Paycheck classic, "Take this job and shove it, I ain't workin' here no more."
I live in dread of being discovered for the malcontent I am. It takes an enormous energy to hold in check my growing discontent. My wanderlust is at war with my sense of responsibility. I need to earn a living. Everyone does. But why does it have to make us so miserable? Why do I have to average 10.85 calls per hour and achieve 2% new product sales and maintain a CQE rating of 94 while keeping the occurences below 5.0 a year? I'm supposed to care about the customers. Deep down I'm a fundamentally courteous person, so I do. But who cares about me? How do I escape the dread I feel climbing those stairs to the third floor? When I get to the top of them I've only climbed high enough to reach another round of emailed memos and motivational pep talks, of glitches and fixes and oppressive reminders and error codes and points to remember.
The biggest part of the problem of me is not the working hours, it's the time that's left to me. No matter how rich or poor we are, we have the same store of 24 hours, and we can spend it sleeping or dreaming or stuffing our faces. I can play poker or go to the gym or take a nap. I can read the Duck blog or research a new novel. Most of the time I don't do much of anything, and the years mount while I fall asleep. I have a lottery ticket in my wallet but I don't want to check the numbers yet. I'd like to keep the dream alive for another day.
There's a new movie out which I've heard about but haven't seen called Food, Inc., about the dangers of our highly processed and manufactured food supply, the ways it is literally making us sick. The movie has an agenda and a pronounced political viewpoint, and I'm not sure if it's still in theaters or available now for rental or on DVD. Draw your own conclusions about its content, but it illustrates an essential principle at the heart of our lives:
That's the exciting part. I could wake up tomorrow and find I won the lottery. Or I could wake up this afternoon and make a choice that unravels all the rest of them, that sets in motion the life and the hopes I really want to realize. I need to find the courage within myself to live my passion. I need to find the courage to be truly passionate. Somewhere in all of us is the power to discard our complacency and lazy assumption, to consider the cost of what we're doing and failing to do. We have to stop stealing our own hopes. We have to discover what we knew all along.
In Remember the Titans, Coach Boone is blowing his whistle while the neat rows of players in their practice whites are doing up-downs in the summer heat. "We're going to change the way we eat, We're going to change the way we block." He's a fierce taskmaster. Every detail will be right. Every choice will be for a purpose. The Titans will play with one heart and for one goal. The Titans went undefeated. They left everything on the field. They didn't let racism or ignorance stand in their way. Every one of them accomplished more than they thought they could. They changed the way they ate. They made a future greater than anyone forecast for them. They are remembered, and their story still inspires greatness.
What I dream of is not fabulous riches and an oversized house and fancy cars, although those pass throught the picture. The chief appeal is time. A lottery winner, or at least the lottery winner I become in my head, is with one oversized check given back the precious store of 24 hours in every day for the rest of his life. Life suddenly is no longer dominated by drudgery and petty obligation.
I wouldn't have to put on the headset and get abused and bombarded by people's petty troubles, the litany of their enormous irritation at having to press two buttons instead of one, their outrage at missing Dancing With the Stars. I like a little TV as much as the next guy, but I can't help but thinking they'd be better off dancing with their wives, or gazing at the stars, or reaching for them, rather than being nasty and rude to me because I had the misfortune of being on the other end of the line when the dreaded beep sounded, the tone that haunts the dreamless space between closing my eyes and losing consciousness.
I get frantic, my fists clench for a second, if I think about that beep and the control it holds over my life. It is an audible lash of slavery. I wear a headset but I might as well be chained to the desk. For forty precious hours a week I'm in a misery of triviality and whiny indignation, over what? The right to stuff your minds with nothing and line the pockets of the stockholders of the Global Communications Giant with ill-gotten cash. There is no way the monthly cable phone and internet bill should be $300, for anyone, but for hundreds of thousands of people it is. There is no way Ray Ramano should make twenty million a year for telling jokes, but he does. We're that desperate to be distracted.
There's an opportunity cost to everything we choose to do. There are fishermen who are poets, but even they must realize the more time they spend tying flies, the less fish they'll catch and the more poems will pop into their heads, but the fewer hours they'll spend writing them down. The dream of winning the lottery isn't wallowing in the pile of money; it's wallowing in the priceless luxury of having enough time to take care of the body and mind, to sleep until you're ready to be awake and exercise until the body is rejuvenated and read until the mind is inspired, to be free of punching the clock, to live the Johnny Paycheck classic, "Take this job and shove it, I ain't workin' here no more."
I live in dread of being discovered for the malcontent I am. It takes an enormous energy to hold in check my growing discontent. My wanderlust is at war with my sense of responsibility. I need to earn a living. Everyone does. But why does it have to make us so miserable? Why do I have to average 10.85 calls per hour and achieve 2% new product sales and maintain a CQE rating of 94 while keeping the occurences below 5.0 a year? I'm supposed to care about the customers. Deep down I'm a fundamentally courteous person, so I do. But who cares about me? How do I escape the dread I feel climbing those stairs to the third floor? When I get to the top of them I've only climbed high enough to reach another round of emailed memos and motivational pep talks, of glitches and fixes and oppressive reminders and error codes and points to remember.
The biggest part of the problem of me is not the working hours, it's the time that's left to me. No matter how rich or poor we are, we have the same store of 24 hours, and we can spend it sleeping or dreaming or stuffing our faces. I can play poker or go to the gym or take a nap. I can read the Duck blog or research a new novel. Most of the time I don't do much of anything, and the years mount while I fall asleep. I have a lottery ticket in my wallet but I don't want to check the numbers yet. I'd like to keep the dream alive for another day.
There's a new movie out which I've heard about but haven't seen called Food, Inc., about the dangers of our highly processed and manufactured food supply, the ways it is literally making us sick. The movie has an agenda and a pronounced political viewpoint, and I'm not sure if it's still in theaters or available now for rental or on DVD. Draw your own conclusions about its content, but it illustrates an essential principle at the heart of our lives:
We become what we think about, we are what we take in, the inevitable product of our lives is the habits we practice and the choices we make, whether they are made consciously or not. No matter where we are, we didn't get there by accident, and nothing changes until we change our thinking.
That's the exciting part. I could wake up tomorrow and find I won the lottery. Or I could wake up this afternoon and make a choice that unravels all the rest of them, that sets in motion the life and the hopes I really want to realize. I need to find the courage within myself to live my passion. I need to find the courage to be truly passionate. Somewhere in all of us is the power to discard our complacency and lazy assumption, to consider the cost of what we're doing and failing to do. We have to stop stealing our own hopes. We have to discover what we knew all along.
In Remember the Titans, Coach Boone is blowing his whistle while the neat rows of players in their practice whites are doing up-downs in the summer heat. "We're going to change the way we eat, We're going to change the way we block." He's a fierce taskmaster. Every detail will be right. Every choice will be for a purpose. The Titans will play with one heart and for one goal. The Titans went undefeated. They left everything on the field. They didn't let racism or ignorance stand in their way. Every one of them accomplished more than they thought they could. They changed the way they ate. They made a future greater than anyone forecast for them. They are remembered, and their story still inspires greatness.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
A Change of Heart, A Change of Mind, A Change of Pants
I'm embarrassed with myself for sounding so mopey and helpless. Last night I put on my best suit and Marie put on a sexy red sweater and curve-flattering black slacks, and we took twenty bucks of her hard-earned first paycheck and went out for Chinese food. We went to China Jade, our favorite place. The service is quick and efficient and the food is fresh and beautfully prepared. On the way home we stopped at the Red Box and got another movie. We ate peppermint Easter candies in bed and watched Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. It was a perfect evening and next day, the perfect antidote to the morose self-absorption I was feeling yesterday.
Occasionally it's good to watch something bright and colorful and happy, to remind yourself that there is magic and it is real, and that the most powerful and magical things are simple. Holding a squishy, bright, beautiful baby. Whispering to someone that you love them. Having them squeeze you in return. In the afternoon at lunchtime the last two days I caught pieces of Ella Enchanted and Remember the Titans on cable, and in my life and in my viewing I'm getting all these subtle and encouraging reminders that it's okay to believe, that there's no reason to give up merely because circumstances are discouraging or your sinuses are stuffed. Today is a brighter day and I'm grateful, even though it's Sunday afternoon and time to go back to work. At least I'll have leftover Chinese food for lunch.
Occasionally it's good to watch something bright and colorful and happy, to remind yourself that there is magic and it is real, and that the most powerful and magical things are simple. Holding a squishy, bright, beautiful baby. Whispering to someone that you love them. Having them squeeze you in return. In the afternoon at lunchtime the last two days I caught pieces of Ella Enchanted and Remember the Titans on cable, and in my life and in my viewing I'm getting all these subtle and encouraging reminders that it's okay to believe, that there's no reason to give up merely because circumstances are discouraging or your sinuses are stuffed. Today is a brighter day and I'm grateful, even though it's Sunday afternoon and time to go back to work. At least I'll have leftover Chinese food for lunch.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Gran Torino and My Sister's Keeper
In movies there are big moments that define lives, but real life isn't that clear. We have a lot of messy little decisions instead of great crystallizing climaxes and defining moments. On the surface these were two movies that had little to do with each other, but both were about sacrifices and redemption and acceptance, facing death. The hope is by viewing such beautifully told stories we can step back from our own messy lives for a moment and find our own integrity and decisiveness, increase our own awareness of life and death and purpose.
I'm just spitballing here. The farther I get into this the more I realize I don't know anything. It's a risky thing to write, particularly about your own life. Sometimes it's like throwing a party and having nobody come. To love somebody, to believe in something, that's the important thing. But in the midst of all the small decisions and mounting discouragements sometimes that isn't an easy thing. You can lose your way.
A week ago Thursday I bounced the rent check. It came through a day earlier than I'd planned and it cost me an extra $134, a late fee from the property management company and a returned check fee, and a late fee from the bank. On Monday I had to go to court for a traffic ticket. My license had expired. I had to send away to the State Department for my birth certificate. It cost $35 for the research and the copy and $40 for a new license. I didn't have the money so I kept putting it off. I only drove back and forth to work, so I was hoping I could buy a little time till things got better. Then one night a Beaverton cop pulled me over. I got out of the car with my wallet in my hand, a stupid thing to do. As if driving expired weren't stupid enough. "What was I doing wrong, sir?" I asked, trying my best to suck up. I'm not good at sucking up. It's part of the reason I'm not good at my job. Another story interrupts the first. The cop told me my license plate light was out. It's just a pretense to write tickets. A license plate light doesn't make a damn bit of difference. But it justifies a lot of stops.
So Friday I hawked my laptop to offset the extra expenses, and Saturday I went over to DMV to renew the license, and Monday I went to court. The judge reduced the fine to $295. He used to be able to dismiss those but not anymore. The legislature passed a new set of minimum fines, with a maximum reduction of 25%. It's a way of raising taxes without raising taxes. Things have momentum when you're poor. And everything that happens sucks up more time.
On Wednesday I took a bus over to JPM to straighten out the rent mess, and Thursday I did the taxes. We owe state but we're getting a refund from federal. I filed an injured spouse form to keep them from confiscating it all for interest on an old school loan one of us had. We're buried in debt. We'll never get out unless we get better jobs, win the lottery, or I master the poker thing or the writing thing, which is why I keep doing both of them. You have to keep ridiculous hope alive, because it is far better than no hope at all. Marie got a new job, which helps a lot. Her first check was $530 take home for one week of work, and those numbers looked awfully pretty printed out in a row after a week of self-induced defeats. Finally we had some breathing room and a cause for optimism. We bought groceries and paid the phone bill.
Last night we went out and had the same old fight. One of the bartenders was a young blonde woman with big boobs, and I got in trouble for ignoring her. It's complicated. I don't understand it. My thinking was, I love and adore my wife, and I'm going to show it by staying focused on her and ignoring this bimbo who wants everybody's attention. I just wanted to have a nice time, to dance and then go home and make love. We had hurt feelings and a misunderstanding instead, in a way that always seems to dredge old hurt feelings and feelings of not measuring up, for both of us. We're stuck in a loop with each other, and it's such an awful shame. She's such a vibrant and desirable woman. She deserves to be happy. I don't make her happy. I don't think I'm that appealing to her any more.
In My Sister's Keeper a family's life gets crazy over the oldest daughter's battle with leukemia. They conceived the youngest child in vitro to create a donor match, and after 11 years of cord blood and bone marrow and tests and transfusions the younger sister sues her parents for medical emancipation. It's a tear-jerker, but what humanizes and lifts the story are the honest portrayals. Each family member reacts to the crisis in their own way, and their responses seem very genuine, bouncing from anger to acting out to incredibly touching tenderness. I welled up. There's a time to die. The dying girl keeps a scrapbook of her memories and feelings of guilt.
In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is an angry man burying his wife, and everything he sees around him angers him more. He fought in Korea and worked forty years in the Ford plant, but his granddaughter shows up at the funeral with a belly ring and a navel-bearing shirt. His oldest son drives a Toyota. His neighborhood is being taken over by foreigners. A gang of gooks try to steal his car. The punks are lawless and purposeless and overrunning the streets. A frail neighbor lady drops her grocery bags and a passing scumbag pantomines raping her.
In a surprising and unlikely way he befriends his Asian neighbors and ends up teaching and protecting the Hmong girl who lives next door and her fatherless brother. The story is told with dignity and rough humor, and as the director, Eastwood displays his spare, lean stye and eye for detail. He's a careful craftsman. I read one time that his father owned a hardware store and his storytelling style shows his respect for the tools of his trade. A locked screen door echoes the priest's confessional without making a big deal about it. It just does. When Eastwood is riddled with bullets and stretched out on the lawn like Christ, there is a rightness about it. The moment is totally free of artfulness or pretension. It just makes sense, like willing the Gran Torino to his young friend instead of his ungrateful family.
I loved Walt Kowalski. I loved his uncompromising grumpiness and rough humor. I loved him giving lessons to his Hmong protege on how to talk like a man, complain about your girlfriend and the cheating mechanic, be confident and irritable and not weak. I saw him as the logical heir to Eastwood's cinematic history. No one can grit their teeth over a cocked weapon like Eastwood, and Walt Kowalski is Harry Callahan aged and humanized, dying gracefully, poignantly, handling things in the only way they can be handled, a savior in a stark place, a savior in a place too grim and lost for saving. Decaying neighborhoods and crumbling morals all over America are aching for a Walt Kowalski, but what they'll likely get is a fire next time that nothing will put out.
In truth I don't know much. I just keep writing because it's the only thing I know how to do. I want to love and be a better man, but the business of living in the real world is tricky. We keep running into the problems of time and money and the problem of living with our regrets and our fears. I watch these movies and I walk away from them inspired by the courage that pushes people on, facing hopelessness with such a spirit of hope, believing something is worthwhile despite all the evidence to the contrary.
I'm just spitballing here. The farther I get into this the more I realize I don't know anything. It's a risky thing to write, particularly about your own life. Sometimes it's like throwing a party and having nobody come. To love somebody, to believe in something, that's the important thing. But in the midst of all the small decisions and mounting discouragements sometimes that isn't an easy thing. You can lose your way.
A week ago Thursday I bounced the rent check. It came through a day earlier than I'd planned and it cost me an extra $134, a late fee from the property management company and a returned check fee, and a late fee from the bank. On Monday I had to go to court for a traffic ticket. My license had expired. I had to send away to the State Department for my birth certificate. It cost $35 for the research and the copy and $40 for a new license. I didn't have the money so I kept putting it off. I only drove back and forth to work, so I was hoping I could buy a little time till things got better. Then one night a Beaverton cop pulled me over. I got out of the car with my wallet in my hand, a stupid thing to do. As if driving expired weren't stupid enough. "What was I doing wrong, sir?" I asked, trying my best to suck up. I'm not good at sucking up. It's part of the reason I'm not good at my job. Another story interrupts the first. The cop told me my license plate light was out. It's just a pretense to write tickets. A license plate light doesn't make a damn bit of difference. But it justifies a lot of stops.
So Friday I hawked my laptop to offset the extra expenses, and Saturday I went over to DMV to renew the license, and Monday I went to court. The judge reduced the fine to $295. He used to be able to dismiss those but not anymore. The legislature passed a new set of minimum fines, with a maximum reduction of 25%. It's a way of raising taxes without raising taxes. Things have momentum when you're poor. And everything that happens sucks up more time.
On Wednesday I took a bus over to JPM to straighten out the rent mess, and Thursday I did the taxes. We owe state but we're getting a refund from federal. I filed an injured spouse form to keep them from confiscating it all for interest on an old school loan one of us had. We're buried in debt. We'll never get out unless we get better jobs, win the lottery, or I master the poker thing or the writing thing, which is why I keep doing both of them. You have to keep ridiculous hope alive, because it is far better than no hope at all. Marie got a new job, which helps a lot. Her first check was $530 take home for one week of work, and those numbers looked awfully pretty printed out in a row after a week of self-induced defeats. Finally we had some breathing room and a cause for optimism. We bought groceries and paid the phone bill.
Last night we went out and had the same old fight. One of the bartenders was a young blonde woman with big boobs, and I got in trouble for ignoring her. It's complicated. I don't understand it. My thinking was, I love and adore my wife, and I'm going to show it by staying focused on her and ignoring this bimbo who wants everybody's attention. I just wanted to have a nice time, to dance and then go home and make love. We had hurt feelings and a misunderstanding instead, in a way that always seems to dredge old hurt feelings and feelings of not measuring up, for both of us. We're stuck in a loop with each other, and it's such an awful shame. She's such a vibrant and desirable woman. She deserves to be happy. I don't make her happy. I don't think I'm that appealing to her any more.
In My Sister's Keeper a family's life gets crazy over the oldest daughter's battle with leukemia. They conceived the youngest child in vitro to create a donor match, and after 11 years of cord blood and bone marrow and tests and transfusions the younger sister sues her parents for medical emancipation. It's a tear-jerker, but what humanizes and lifts the story are the honest portrayals. Each family member reacts to the crisis in their own way, and their responses seem very genuine, bouncing from anger to acting out to incredibly touching tenderness. I welled up. There's a time to die. The dying girl keeps a scrapbook of her memories and feelings of guilt.
In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is an angry man burying his wife, and everything he sees around him angers him more. He fought in Korea and worked forty years in the Ford plant, but his granddaughter shows up at the funeral with a belly ring and a navel-bearing shirt. His oldest son drives a Toyota. His neighborhood is being taken over by foreigners. A gang of gooks try to steal his car. The punks are lawless and purposeless and overrunning the streets. A frail neighbor lady drops her grocery bags and a passing scumbag pantomines raping her.
In a surprising and unlikely way he befriends his Asian neighbors and ends up teaching and protecting the Hmong girl who lives next door and her fatherless brother. The story is told with dignity and rough humor, and as the director, Eastwood displays his spare, lean stye and eye for detail. He's a careful craftsman. I read one time that his father owned a hardware store and his storytelling style shows his respect for the tools of his trade. A locked screen door echoes the priest's confessional without making a big deal about it. It just does. When Eastwood is riddled with bullets and stretched out on the lawn like Christ, there is a rightness about it. The moment is totally free of artfulness or pretension. It just makes sense, like willing the Gran Torino to his young friend instead of his ungrateful family.
I loved Walt Kowalski. I loved his uncompromising grumpiness and rough humor. I loved him giving lessons to his Hmong protege on how to talk like a man, complain about your girlfriend and the cheating mechanic, be confident and irritable and not weak. I saw him as the logical heir to Eastwood's cinematic history. No one can grit their teeth over a cocked weapon like Eastwood, and Walt Kowalski is Harry Callahan aged and humanized, dying gracefully, poignantly, handling things in the only way they can be handled, a savior in a stark place, a savior in a place too grim and lost for saving. Decaying neighborhoods and crumbling morals all over America are aching for a Walt Kowalski, but what they'll likely get is a fire next time that nothing will put out.
In truth I don't know much. I just keep writing because it's the only thing I know how to do. I want to love and be a better man, but the business of living in the real world is tricky. We keep running into the problems of time and money and the problem of living with our regrets and our fears. I watch these movies and I walk away from them inspired by the courage that pushes people on, facing hopelessness with such a spirit of hope, believing something is worthwhile despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
I'm Rooting for the Other Guy
As a sports fan I've always rooted for the underdogs, the teams and players no one expects to win. I love comeback stories and redemption stories, guys who overcome injury or failure to succeed. I choose a lot of my favorites based on likability. Of course we can never really know athletes, just the glimpses of their public persona, the carefully guarded interviews and appearances, the hints we get from the way they comport themselves after the wins and losses.
I've never liked Tiger Woods. Long before his indiscretions, I liked Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els. I hated the way announcers and interviewers fawned on Woods and excused or overlooked his bad on-course behavior. I conceded he was good, even great, but I always rooted against him, rooted for the crucial putt to lip out. I thought he was phony and scripted.
I even hated the way everyone called him "Tiger," as if they were chummy with him. Nicklaus was Nicklaus, Hogan was Hogan, but every breathless commentator would say, "Here's Tiger on the 16th tee." It was though he had home court advantage everywhere in the world. Even Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest and most world-impacting athlete ever, was "Ali." But Tiger got first name status, like Elvis and Madonna. It rankled me, the favoritism and the small hyprocrisy of it. I used to work in a golf shop, and people who wouldn't have given a black person a bite of a sandwich would stroll into the shop with ridiculous grins on their faces and say, "Did you see what Tiger did today?" as if they were bosom buddies or brothers from another mother.
Our love of sports and sports figures is inherently ridiculous, and the cult of Tiger worship, particularly after his embarrassing and self-imposed downfall, was exposed as a sham and a monstrosity. And now talk of his comeback has dominated the sports shows and even mainstream media for a month. Will Tiger be ready? How will he cope with the attention and pressure? How will he perform after his layoff?
I'm cynical too about his rehabilitation. He's reforming his behavior chiefly because he got caught and exposed in a particularly embarrassing way. And now he is making a great show of saying the right things and expressing remorse. Missing from his declarations is any sort of apology to the series of women he used and discarded over the last several years, apparently without so much as buying them dinner or an occasional gift. The various inside editions and tell-all updates exposed him as cheap, ungenerous and socially retarded, kinky and twisted, insatiable and impressively endowed. The focused, fierce, disciplined competitive drive he displayed on course gave way to another person, someone that lacked morality, self control or human decency. I don't think he would have changed at all had he not crashed his car and wound up in the tabloids.
All that is parenthetical however, to the simple fact I never liked Tiger Woods as a athlete, the fact that he got the lion's share of attention even when someone else won. A great store is made over his race to overtake Jack Nicklaus' career majors record, but the Golden Bear set his mark in a golden age of golf. He had to earn his victories against Hogan and Palmer and Player and Trevino and Watson and Norman and Faldo. He beat Hall of Famers to earn his victories, finishing second nineteen times and in the top five 56 times. The competition was stronger and the equipment was far less advanced, persimmon drivers and aluminum shafts. Golf was a different and more difficult game. Stuff like this gets overlooked.
At the Masters this week there are plenty of storylines and inspirational beginnings. Tom Watson shot a 67, five under par at age 60. Fifty-year-old Fred Couples leads the tournament at minus six. Ricky Barnes, who finished second at last year's U.S. Open, is just off the lead at minus four. Barnes was a highly touted amateur player who has struggled as a pro, and a win at Augusta could turn his career around. Phil Mickelson made five under as well, and he is playing for his wife and mother, both of whom are recovering from breast cancer.
Inside the ropes there are plenty of athletes who have competed nobly and avoided indiscretion. A cascade of praise is heaped on Tiger Woods for doing what he should have done all along. The only thing he's coming back from is his own mess, and I'll be tickled to death if he falls short and fails.
I've never liked Tiger Woods. Long before his indiscretions, I liked Phil Mickelson or Ernie Els. I hated the way announcers and interviewers fawned on Woods and excused or overlooked his bad on-course behavior. I conceded he was good, even great, but I always rooted against him, rooted for the crucial putt to lip out. I thought he was phony and scripted.
I even hated the way everyone called him "Tiger," as if they were chummy with him. Nicklaus was Nicklaus, Hogan was Hogan, but every breathless commentator would say, "Here's Tiger on the 16th tee." It was though he had home court advantage everywhere in the world. Even Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest and most world-impacting athlete ever, was "Ali." But Tiger got first name status, like Elvis and Madonna. It rankled me, the favoritism and the small hyprocrisy of it. I used to work in a golf shop, and people who wouldn't have given a black person a bite of a sandwich would stroll into the shop with ridiculous grins on their faces and say, "Did you see what Tiger did today?" as if they were bosom buddies or brothers from another mother.
Our love of sports and sports figures is inherently ridiculous, and the cult of Tiger worship, particularly after his embarrassing and self-imposed downfall, was exposed as a sham and a monstrosity. And now talk of his comeback has dominated the sports shows and even mainstream media for a month. Will Tiger be ready? How will he cope with the attention and pressure? How will he perform after his layoff?
I'm cynical too about his rehabilitation. He's reforming his behavior chiefly because he got caught and exposed in a particularly embarrassing way. And now he is making a great show of saying the right things and expressing remorse. Missing from his declarations is any sort of apology to the series of women he used and discarded over the last several years, apparently without so much as buying them dinner or an occasional gift. The various inside editions and tell-all updates exposed him as cheap, ungenerous and socially retarded, kinky and twisted, insatiable and impressively endowed. The focused, fierce, disciplined competitive drive he displayed on course gave way to another person, someone that lacked morality, self control or human decency. I don't think he would have changed at all had he not crashed his car and wound up in the tabloids.
All that is parenthetical however, to the simple fact I never liked Tiger Woods as a athlete, the fact that he got the lion's share of attention even when someone else won. A great store is made over his race to overtake Jack Nicklaus' career majors record, but the Golden Bear set his mark in a golden age of golf. He had to earn his victories against Hogan and Palmer and Player and Trevino and Watson and Norman and Faldo. He beat Hall of Famers to earn his victories, finishing second nineteen times and in the top five 56 times. The competition was stronger and the equipment was far less advanced, persimmon drivers and aluminum shafts. Golf was a different and more difficult game. Stuff like this gets overlooked.
At the Masters this week there are plenty of storylines and inspirational beginnings. Tom Watson shot a 67, five under par at age 60. Fifty-year-old Fred Couples leads the tournament at minus six. Ricky Barnes, who finished second at last year's U.S. Open, is just off the lead at minus four. Barnes was a highly touted amateur player who has struggled as a pro, and a win at Augusta could turn his career around. Phil Mickelson made five under as well, and he is playing for his wife and mother, both of whom are recovering from breast cancer.
Inside the ropes there are plenty of athletes who have competed nobly and avoided indiscretion. A cascade of praise is heaped on Tiger Woods for doing what he should have done all along. The only thing he's coming back from is his own mess, and I'll be tickled to death if he falls short and fails.
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photo by Kajo123 from the website flickr.com
The Hawthorne Bridge at sunrise, Portland Oregon. Photo by Joe Collver, from flickr.com
"It's a Wonderful Life"
George returns home to everything he ever wanted.
