Snow, Disappointment, and George Saunders

It is the second or third day of Spring, depending on which person you ask, and a foot of snow is predicted for those of us living in The Republic. I don't know what it is about snow lately—if I've simply become Colorado-ized since my arrival in 1997 and therefore can't stand a moment of daylight without sun (my wife, from Nova Scotia, and I used to rejoice and dance around and other things on days when it rained; one gets tired of endless sun, as one probably does having a dog licking your face, loving you in their way, for your salt, regardless of what you may have done or not done to deserve it) without getting sullen and paralytic, or what—but let's just say it isn't helping. Normally, by now, I would have gone to the garage and grabbed a shovel and starting digging out. It wouldn't have mattered if it was still snowing so long as there was at least six inches of snow and I could say to myself: Better to scoop some now and have less to scoop later on. That is how a person who gets considerable sunlight on his skin almost every day, who has a good outlook here in The Republic, looks at things: do a little now and have less to do later.

But I don't have the energy. I'm not even sure I'll get to it today. I'm not sure I'll leave my study, where the fan is going, drowning out the new noise my one ear is making: not ringing anymore but more like the distant chanting of Zen monks if I was locked in someone's trunk listening to it, way off.

No big deal.

I could be at karate, sparring right now. It would almost certainly be a good thing considering how I feel, which is sort of the way you feel after you've, oh, I don't know, been involved in a situation you're pretty sure is hopelessly fucked up, but you've been involved in it so long that to admit it's as hopelessly fucked up as you have a pretty strong feeling it is is just too fucking depressing to face ...

But then, finally, comes the equivalent of a telegram from God, saying something like: This Situation You've Been Trying To Deal With For Longer Than You Can Bear To Remember Is As You Guessed Hopelessly Fucked Up Stop Worse Still All Your Efforts Haven't Amounted To A Hill Of Beans And Might Have Been Better Spent Shoveling Or Moving Piles Of Rocks From One Senseless Spot To Another Or Practically Anything Else Really Stop Please Gather Your Things And Leave Immediately Before You Go On And Waste Anymore Precious Time On Something Hopeless Stop

OOOHHHMMM OOOHHHHMMMM

At least I've got the good sense to sit down and write, yes? Write your way through it, as countless souls, themselves occasionally beset by the above, have counseled. And if that doesn't work there is always drugs. Or ECT ...

Or ... OR ... one can try George Saunders.

Specifically, his new collection of stories, Tenth of December. One can do this even if he is still working his way through another collection of stories, as well as book four of the entire Thomas Pynchon oeurve. On a day like this one, one can, and should, stop what one is doing and run to Saunders. One never knows, it might only take one story ...

The first story, entitled, "Victory Lap," seemed ironic enough. Just the kind of story, as Thomas Pynchon (who blurbs the collection, which is a bit like Christ appearing out of no where to validate someone's saintliness) remarks, "to get us through these times."

Which is good enough for me.

So I started reading. The story is told from three points of view, from the heads of 1) A pretty young girl "Three days shy of her fifteenth birthday" imagining (concurrent to italicized ballet commands) an assortment of "{special one[s]}" attempting to charm her (think: Simon in "American Idol" crossed with the girl in "The Nutcracker"), 2) Her neighbor, a boy of the same age, whose parents are crazy in the current helicopter-y, high-fuss, micro-manage-y fashion of ambitious, well-heeled, educated parents in our better communities, who has a litany of thoughts going through his mind, things to be done, and avoided, leading to a scrupulously concocted, utterly absurd reward system compliments of Mom and Dad, who love him love him love him, these thoughts punctuated by Tourette's-y blasts of swear word phraseology, one of my favorite being "crap-cunt shit-turd dick-in-the-ear butt-creamery." To these two POVs is added a third: 3) A guy dressed in the uniform of someone who reads the meter. A guy who looks like, the boy thinks, a "rooskie." A bad person, we get the feeling, with bad designs on the pretty girl, as we don't discover, for sure, until much later ...

And what will the boy who has been given mulitple "directives" by his sublimely, lovingly dictatorial mother and father do, when, after all, he isn't to be outside, on the deck, without shoes on, much less when strangers are in the neighborhood, he is to stay inside until they leave, that is what he is to do, and not mess in business that isn't his, after all, and yet this stranger has this lovely girl, his neighbor, by the wrist, a girl he used to play with when he was younger, who doesn't seem to think much of him now, or so he imagines, and is dragging her to his van, a van the Rooskie borrowed from a guy named Kenneth ...

Are you leaning in yet? I was, in spite of everything. A good story, told well, in not the usual way, whatever we might imagine that might be, can do that.

Get this: instead of saying the boy was too scared to move once the man saw him on the deck and warned that if he so much as moved he, the Rooskie in the meter-reader costume, would stab the girl with the knife he was holding (in this neighborhood where nothing "weird" ever happened), Saunders remarks, "Kyle's mouth was so spitless all he could do was make his mouth do the shape it normally did when saying Yes."

Not dry. Not parched. Spitless. It's not all in the [surprising] diction, but [surprising] diction sure can help. Funny helps, too. And Saunders is very funny. This story, believe it or not, about a girl getting dragged off like one of the girls in "Silence of the Lambs," is very funny, right when you need it to be. Humor at the swerve, when you least expect it. Pretty soon you've forgotten the sun isn't shining, that you have a foot of snow to shovel. You're feeling not all is hopeless.

I won't spoil it. You'll have to read the story to see how it turns out.

Do it if you'd like, if you must.

While I go out and shovel some snow.

Roth's Birthday, March Madness, and Iraq, Ten Years After a Big Mistake

I skied for the first time this season yesterday, a beautiful snow-grabbing, low-skid, sunny and not too windy day at Copper, went directly to my son's end of the season hockey banquet afterwards, drank a couple pints of Guinness, came home and popped two Advil PMs (not wanting to be too sore for karate at noon today), woke up at 6:00 AM, still in that soporific Advil PM stupor, made coffee and got to the 5th Grade Graduation meeting at the school at 7:30. There are over 100 kids in the fifth grade and there were about ten people at the meeting, about half of whom were teachers. I asked a couple of questions during the meeting and found out quickly that even after a cup of coffee my head and mouth weren't working well together yet. I was still in my Advil PM stupor. On the other hand, my ear isn't ringing so badly today ... not yet, at least.

It's Philip Roth's birthday to today. There's a video of him being interviewed, then reading a short, depressing passage from The Dying Animal, on PBS. This was picked up by The Daily Beast, a news outlet I follow on Twitter (something I do in lieu of reading a daily newspaper, so I don't feel so fucking old). A lot of people find Roth's obsession and utter lack of sentimentality with getting older/old to be depressing. And I suppose it is. But I prefer it over being lied to. There's too much in our society that smacks of adults trying to compensate for having their illusions shattered when they discovered that Santa didn't actually bring the toys on Christmas Eve, that the Tooth Fairy didn't actually put the money under the pillow. The list goes on. It is said that we need these comforts, but I much prefer the comfort of looking to another human being and saying, What a fucking load of shit, and having them smile ironically and nod. I prefer that over someone telling me that everything happens for a reason (Yeah? And what might that reason be?), that God doesn't give us anything we can't handle (thus the set up for their fellow human beings to judge them, when it turns out they can't quite handle what God has given them, be it a ride in a train car to Auschwitz, seeing their baby tossed in the air and impaled on the end of a bayonet, not having any legs anymore due to a decision made ten years ago by a guy—several of them, actually, who dodged their opportunity to shoot and get shot at when the stupid war being fought at the time was in Vietnam—who is in Texas now, peacefully painting pictures of his dog while the Secret Service keeps watch, while the VA stays busy).

Ahhhh, but we don't need to hear a lot of glowering despairing vitriole on this fine morning, do we? It's the lingering effects of the Advil PM. Luckily, I have karate in an hour. I'll feel better after karate. I generally do. Ten years ago I was in Kauai with my family. I went there depressed, I came back depressed. I left saying, "They're going to invade Iraq while we're gone, and it'll be over before we get back. Still, it's going to be a disaster ... " Bill Clinton had been on Letterman a few days earlier. He said he'd be amazed if the military operation took more than six days. I figured it would take maybe three or four. That all the worry about that piece was a joke. I'd been meeting with a friend on Fridays and he and I would talk about it over a beer. Despite the revisionist talk that no one could have known the mess that was to come from this, there were countless articles written on why invading Iraq was a very bad idea. My friend and I both lamented ... that while the invading part would be quick, the occupation would be problematic. Insurgents coming out of the woodwork, that sort of thing. It seemed obvious to us, and we weren't geniuses. We weren't even wonks. Still, after the quick success of Desert Storm in 1991, not many Democrats, particularly the ones hoping to become president in 2004, wanted to look soft on war. And so, helping out a bunch of neocon nuts, at least three of whom were previous draft dodgers, were the future Democratic hopefuls: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and of course the charismatic populist with the big house and perfect hair John Edwards. This after a big tax cut two years earlier that no one of consequence really fought, after we'd briefly had a surplus in our fiscal year budget. Apparently no one saw the expense coming, starting in 2011, of retiring the Baby Boom Generation. No, this was an opportunity, rather, to starve the beast, to give everyone a three hundred dollar check.

And now we're bankrupt. (Craig, Craig, you're so negative. You shouldn't take Advil PM. Have you looked into Zoloft? Zoloft happens for a reason. It's what God has given us, along with a lot of other options, more options than breakfast cereal, really, to get through what he has given us. And thanks to the Bush-Era prescription drug plan that came on the heels of a tax cut and two wars and the TSA getting created to keep us safe of planes and still allow us pocket knives and matches, you'll be able to stay smiling well into your Golden Years, for pennies on the dollar, starting when you're 65, which isn't that far away for you anymore ... Can you hear this? Or is your ear still ringing?)

You thought when I said March Madness, that I was talking about college basketball, yes? Well, not entirely as it turns out.

Obama's going with Indiana over Louisville. I saw that on Twitter, too. I saw on FaceBook that the new Pope Francis has Georgetown, Gonzaga, Creighton, and one other one ... maybe Seton Hall (they're always in there, right) in his Top Four. Big money on it, I'm told. I like this guy already. And (this is no shit, I'm told), he can tango. The man used to dance when he was younger. I heard this at the hockey banquet last night, from a tango aficionado. John the 23rd brought native languages to the Mass; perhaps Francis will bring the tango.

Don't get me started on all this fuss over Nancy and Joe taking communion. I'm more concerned about the pederasts taking communion (Everything happens for a reason, my child, some things again and again ... God doesn't give us anything we can't handle, and if you breathe a word to anyone about any of this, I will deny it, and they will think you are crazy, and that I am right ... One day I will pray for you, that you will overcome your bitterness, I will pray that you, my accuser, my cross to bear, will be forgiven ... ).

Be careful with that Advil PM. It's not what the times call for, I fear ...

Get thee to karate!!

Have a nice day!

The Monday Warm-up

Now that my son's hockey season is over, that the other's musical, "Suessical," is through, that St. Patrick's Day is finished, that I am back from Chicago, and the AWP in Boston, that I have clean jeans and underwear and socks for the week, a ski trip planned for tomorrow, four new debit cards to register and be asked afterwards if I'd like to take a few minutes to do a follow-up survey, to then get the auto-pays switched from the old debit cards to the new debit cards, be asked again if I'd mind taking a few minutes to take a follow-up survey ...

Now that the puppy has been spayed and must be kept calm, no need to walk her, in fact don't walk her, keep her calm, the vet said, here are some pills to keep her calm, pills that won't otherwise hurt her while her stapled up incision heals and she stumbles around in slightly less of a stooper with each passing day since she's getting used to the pills—Puppy's Little Helper, Valley of the Dogs—but mostly sleeps like Keith Richards splayed out face down on the bed in the hotel room, in that photo Annie Leibowitz took way back ...

Now that I've got the fan on for background noise so I can't hear my ear that keeps ringing and has been for two weeks, the ear that is on the same side that my wife (who might have been a good opera singer had she applied herself) sits in the car on long trips, that my son who inherited her vocal chords sits fighting with his brother on long trips, the son who talks as though he has buds in his ears with Metallica playing so fucking loud he can't hear himself and thus imagines he needs to talk Really Loud, at the dinner table for instance, where he sits on the side of my ringing ear, except he doesn't have buds in his ears, he can hear fine, we know it! the doctor tells us every year and I joke that ha ha ha so you can hear me when I say do this, do that, will you please Be Quiet!! Yes, he can hear just fine. It is I, his fifty-something-year-old father who has the chronic ringing in his ear, who remembers his own dad warning him that if I didn't quit listening to Emerson Lake & Palmer at two o'clock on the dial on the stereo he wouldn't be able to hear himself piss by the time he was twenty-five—and yet, here I am, nearly thirty years later, and I can still hear myself piss, even with the fan on! You'd think I'd feel pretty good about that, beating the odds for so long. Be a good American and focus on the positive. Be glad you don't have money in the bank in Cyprus. That you aren't a woman who loves shoes living in North Korea. Rejoice! You're in your fifties, man, and you can still hear yourself piss! 

With the fan on, the ringing muted, Janacek playing like at the start of Murakami's 1Q84 now that my children are off to school and my wife is off to work and the puppy is out cold on pills after her surgery last Thursday ... what is stopping me from Radically Wasting Time?

Writing. Sitting down. Doing it.

Right after another cup of coffee ...