a note from the downtown office

The custodian lady at work is over 80 and won't pick up our trash if it's wet or has loose food. She trained the others to keep their trash clean. I resented her at first but eventually had to respect her impudence. She never checked my trash. I threw nothing away.

She was gone a while because she had a heart attack. She returned, and we picked up where we left off.

a poem about making music

Mid-40s, playing guitar

 

Dissonance and distortion hid subtlety
And, subtly, dissonance and distortion hid
I got old, and I believed I would
But did not feel it until it happened
Music roams

  home roams never to mine
Now I have no sound other than
  what the sound is
    of passing time

 

about perspective

I pushed open the bathroom stall door and discovered on the toilet there a man who looked like Alex Trebek taking a shit. His gaze was locked in the thousand-yard stare—like he was seeing an invisible atrocity unfold in the distance but feeling nothing. A serious shitter. He did not maneuver his eyeballs to see who it was that walked in on his most intimate moment.

A normal man—and he was not one—would have flinched, made a motion, feigned a gesture in a futile attempt to regain agency. Would not a normal man look at the beast moving in on him, threatening the boundaries of his dignity? Amazing. He blocked me mentally; but I knew—and I think he knew—we were the same man.

about dehumanization in routines

The day after my birthday, I grew sensitive to all the things that flash at me and beep at me, and I felt I did not have time for these things.

anything but about idealism

Countries speak to ideals, but are never kind to idealists.

"Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn & John

If i told you things I did before,
told you how i used to be,
would you go along with someone like me?
If you knew my story word for word,
had all of my history,
would you go along with someone like me?


I did before and had my share;
it didn't lead nowhere.
I would go along with someone like you.
It doesn't matter what you did,
who you were hanging with.
We could stick around and see this night through.


And we don't care about the young folks
talkin' 'bout the young style
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking--
talking only me and you.


Usually, when things have gone this far,
people tend to disappear.

No one will surprise me unless you do.


I can tell there's something goin' on,
hours seems to disappear.

Everyone is leaving; I'm still with you.

It doesn't matter what we do,
where we are going, too.
We can stick around and see this night through.

And we don't care about the young folks,
talkin' 'bout the young style.
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking,
talking only me and you.


And we don't care about the young folks,
talkin' 'bout the young style.
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking,
talking only me and you--
talking only me and you.

Talking only me and you.
Talking only me and you.

Make sure you hear the national anthem.

“When you're good at something, you'll tell everyone. When you're great at something, they'll tell you.”
    ―Walter Payton

(coming from behind in the Super Bowl)

Michael Jordan might be a jerk and competitive to a fault, but the man knows greatness, and he knows how time distorts the collective memory of greatness. Here is a wonderful excerpt from a new ESPN "Outside the Lines" profile of professional basketball's greatest ever at age 50:

Over the next seven hours, all of it spent watching one basketball game after another, he's (Jordan) again pulled inward, on a Tilt-a-Whirl of emotion, mostly shades of anger, from active screaming to a slow, silent burn. He transforms from a businessman returning from the office -- Honey, I'm home! -- to a man on fire. The first sparks come from a "SportsCenter" debate, one of those impossible, vaguely ridiculous arguments that can, of course, never be won: Who's a better quarterback, Joe Montana or Tom Brady?

"I can't wait to hear this conversation," he says.

He stretches his legs out on the ottoman, wearing sweats and socks, and as one of the guys on television argues for Brady, Jordan laughs.

"They're gonna say Brady because they don't remember Montana," he says. "Isn't that amazing?"

Aging means losing things, and not just eyesight and flexibility. It means watching the accomplishments of your youth be diminished, maybe in your own eyes through perspective, maybe in the eyes of others through cultural amnesia. Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away. They're forgotten, some more slowly than others, but eventually it happens to virtually everyone. Yet for the few people in each generation who reach the very pinnacle of fame and achievement, a mirage flickers: immortality. They come to believe in it. Even after Jordan is gone, he knows people will remember him. Here lies the greatest basketball player of all time. That's his epitaph. When he walked off the court for the last time, he must have believed that nothing could ever diminish what he'd done. That knowledge would be his shield against aging.

There's a fable about returning Roman generals who rode in victory parades through the streets of the capital; a slave stood behind them, whispering in their ears, "All glory is fleeting." Nobody does that for professional athletes. Jordan couldn't have known that the closest he'd get to immortality was during that final walk off the court, the one symbolically preserved in the print in his office. All that can happen in the days and years that follow is for the shining monument he built to be chipped away, eroded. Maybe he realizes that now. Maybe he doesn't. But when he sees Joe Montana joined on the mountaintop by the next generation, he has to realize that someday his picture will be on a screen next to LeBron James as people argue about who was better.

The debaters announce the results of an Internet poll, and 925,000 people voted. There was a tie: 50 percent said Montana and 50 percent said Brady. It doesn't matter that Montana never lost a Super Bowl or that, unlike Brady, he never faded on the biggest stage. Questions of legacy, of greatness, are weighted in favor of youth. Time itself is on Brady's side, for now.

Jordan shakes his head.

"That doesn't make any sense," he says.

That's good writing, and a compelling anecdote, considering it's about a guy sitting, watching TV. And what it says is so Goddamn true.


Notes:

Speaking of basketball and greatness, as the annual stupid NBA All-Star game approaches, let's remember the only rendition of the national anthem that ever mattered: Marvin Gaye at the 1983 game:

Young love

They came to a settle on the sidewalk there in front of the house. Freshmen, maybe sophomores. He held her hand walking home from school and now, having reached her block, they look around bashfully to figure their discretion in saying goodbye. I keep still and watch from the couch, wanting them to express things I will not. He was readily handsome, trim, and rightly confident; she was cute, unworried. They extend their hands, press palms, spread arms out to the sides, keeping the most gentle resistance; she gives. They hug, then their lids drip downward, their vision extinguished for better understanding the other's breath, their kiss flavor, better learning how the tip of her nose finds his cheek and the urging of his hand on the small of her back. Fade in. They negotiate a goodbye, just for now, and let go, parting dandelion snow in the breeze. Their love was the vampire's, relived through the ages, unburdened by its persistent reflection in these two mirrors, only reckoning its passing on waking with a heart chiseled in half.

Postscript: The age of your friends' anxiety

Wednesday I went on about the New York magazine piece "Listening to Xanax", calling it weak and intellectually lazy. I thought I'd pile on. The author of that piece wrote, "When news outlets began reporting that a cocktail of alcohol, Valium, and Xanax might have caused Whitney Houston’s death, it felt oddly inevitable. Coke binges are for fizzier eras; now people overdo it trying to calm down." Well, as reported everywhere yesterday, "Singer Whitney Houston's use of cocaine combined with a heart condition contributed to her accidental drowning, coroner officials said" (Los Angeles Times).

Broken Flowers

In the film "Broken Flowers", Bill Murray plays Don Johnston. I'd guess that Murray's motivation when he plays Don is that he has no motivation at all. The woman leaving him in the film's opening describes Don as an over-the-hill Don Juan, but what's so Don Juan about him, we can't tell. Rather than impassioned and hungry, this aging man is listless and indifferent.

The stoical plot of "Broken Flowers" begins when an anonymous letter informs Don that he has a 19 year-old son who may be looking for him. This revelation leads Don's amateur sleuth neighbor to map out a quest to identify the mother. So Don reluctantly accepts this mission. On his road trip, Don reunites briefly with four women who may have sent the letter. They are his unknowing suspects; Don is their detached inquisitor. These women all respond differently: The first with familiar affection, the next with frigid nervousness, another with distanced suspicion, and the last with outward aggression. None of these encounters leads Don to identify the mother. But once back again in his home town, Don spots a young man loitering first at the bus station, then outside the diner where Don lunches. Don approaches the stranger for an impromptu sit down which ends with Don embarrassing himself and frightening off the apparently wrong young man. It may be that Don never chose to be a confirmed bachelor. It may be that he never chose anything at all. He simply stopped developing but kept being. When the film ends, we can wonder if Don has been stirred again, or we might think this fruitless search has only affirmed his negation. But wait--a strange happening just before the credits only deepens the uncertainty.

Other interpretations: (1) The amateur sleuth neighbor represents the seeker; he is one who searches for Truth. Don is the skeptic, a slightly cynical denier of Truth. But, when Don is faced with the possibility of Truth he reaches out to take hold of it, wanting. But what does it mean that Truth evades him? (2) Another interpretation (my preference): The amateur sleuth neighbor represents the person compelled to exercise power, to subject the world to his gaze and prescribe truths, thereby creating knowledge he uses as he wishes. Don neither wishes to exercise power and refuses to have power exercised on him. When he takes up the quest for power and knowledge, he finds nothing but a stretch of time that is uninterpretable and not to be used for the purposes of meaning, knowledge, and power.

"Broken Flowers" is a good film, if a little flat in its pacing. Bill Murray, of course, awards even this static character with soul.