Franzen Probably Stuck Firecrackers Up His Star Wars Figures' Butts

Umbrellas - Sleeping at Last (mp3)
Stay Down - Smoking Popes (mp3)

“I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I wanted. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart.”

Patty, the depressive and tortured wife at the heart of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, wants an apology from her mother for damages done. The quote above is all she gets. And, by the time she pulls it from her mother like some impacted wisdom tooth, it’s more than she ever expected and more than sufficient.

Unfortunately, some three decades pass between when Patty first needs the apology and when she finally receives it, and in that time she’s placed her faith in a domestic house of cards and watched as it crumbles under the weight of time and things unsaid. Her husband, Walter, was never a candidate for The Bachelor. He was more suited for Beauty & the Geek. Their daughter Jessica is so well-rounded and mentally balanced as to have rendered her parents prematurely insignificant. Their son Joey ends up serving as the vehicle for every demon and angel in Patty’s Pandora’s Box of needs and wants and fears.

Contemporary literature cannot have a family without dysfunction, so the challenge for the best writers is to fight to convince us that the dysfunction of their tale is somehow deserving of the magnifying glass.

Unfortunately for Jonathan Franzen, everything I read is filtered through the comparative lens of a fanatical Richard Russo fan, and everything is doomed to lack an ingredient that the demigod Russo offers.

In the case of Freedom -- and it was also true with Franzen’s maybe-slightly-better previous novel The Corrections -- what Franzen lacks is a true, deep, sincere sympathizing love of his characters. Franzen loves the family at the heart of Freedom, but he can’t help but detest them, too.

When Richard Russo (Straight Man, Nobody's Fool, Bridge of Sighs) creates a character, I get the feeling he’s let this person swim around in his brain for eons, as if he’s developed relations with these characters in Inception time, the dream-within-a-dream slowdown where, in the time we waking souls spend watching an episode of Modern Family, he has lived a lifetime with these creations of his. He loves his characters the way a sagely wise shaman loves all people, knows all people, knows their hearts, knows they’re all deserving of forgiveness and honesty.

Franzen, on the other hand, can’t help himself. He loves his characters like Romeo loves girlfriends. It’s a roller-coaster of nauseating emotional flux. One minute he would take a knife for them, and the next he would prefer shoving the knife into them. One minute his prose gushes with admiration for their nobility and the next you can feel his seething superiority, and you know he thinks they’re inexcusably pathetic creatures.

This difference is crucial for me as a reader. It speaks very specifically to what I seek in great books, to what I value, to my weaknesses and needs. I make this clear because this difference need not be proof that a Russo book is “better” than a Franzen novel. The American canon of great books is filled with authors whose attitudes toward their characters run these two lines and millions more. Some great authors create characters as vessels of hate, as reminders of evil. Some treat their characters like infants or like gods.

Franzen, Perotta at his best, and Russo all love humanity. But only with Russo do I never get the sense of condescension. It’s why I love him so completely as an author; because as much as I write, I can’t imagine how he can so easily avoid such an omnipresent emotion in the evaluation of hundreds upon hundreds of human beings.

But back to Freedom. Twice in the book I felt he took things down an inevitable path that bordered on the absurd, as if he started hydroplaning and couldn’t hit the brakes in time. But his odd narrative choices -- writing close to half the book as an autobiography written by Patty in the third person... (yeah, read that one again)... or opening and closing the book with a semi-omniscient take on the Berglunds as bit players in the complex organism of a neighborhood -- worked very well.

I loved ⅘ of this book, and it’s a great book for anyone who enjoys a beautifully-written book about royally screwed-up families. For some of us in the Land of Beautifully-Flawed Domesticity, books like this are like gladiator battles and 5-car accidents on the side of the Interstate, and we can’t help but buy a ticket and cheer on the hungry tigers or slow down as we pass to see if there’s any blood on the windshield.

A Softer Place to Fall

The Most - Lori McKenna (mp3)
Pieces of Me - Lori McKenna (mp3)

In a Jasper, Tennessee, kitchen roughly half the size of my office, my grandmother once fixed meals for her husband and seven children. I don’t have the foggiest notion where they all ate. Maybe at some dinner table on the roof. They sure didn’t have space in that house for a 7-person dining table.

Carrie was a red-headed firebrand in her younger years, but she’d gone shock-white by the time I knew her. While pictures in albums prove that she on occasion wore a nice dress, I can only recall her wearing flimsy or flannel housegowns and slippers. While she milled around the entire house, I can only recall her in that kitchen, busying herself over a pot, or over the sink, or over the counter. She was either working to serve someone a meal or working to escape the rest of the house and family. Or both.

When I listen to Lori McKenna, I think of my grandmother.

My grandfather was deaf in one ear by the time I met him. Their phone had a volume dial on it, which I always played with once I’d tired of my Star Wars figures. The rare times he was in the house instead of out in the community or tending obsessively to his two gardens on two separate plots of land, he was sitting in a flimsy rocker-recliner and gnawing on a plug of tobacco. Spittoons and their smells don’t erase easily from a child’s memories.

From all indications, my grandfather was exactly everything a wise soul would expect out of a influential figure with a charismatic charm: adored, adulated, admired, and, at least occasionally, adulterous.

Yeah, that last one I didn’t know about until I was in my 20s, a year or two after my grandmother had died. It took another decade to truly grasp it, that my grandfather had fathered a child out of wedlock, that my grandmother knew of this, that she continued cooking meals in that kitchen for seven children and her preacher husband. That she kept living, kept smiling, kept moving.

A few years ago, my mom showed me a collection of poems written by my grandmother. She kept them hidden in a small box, most of them written on the kinds of note cards usually reserved for family recipes. They closely followed Emily Dickinson in style and voice, quatrains full of dashes and simple rhyme schemes. Carefully written, words rarely crossed out, rarely if ever misspelled. Many about dying, about the struggle against meaninglessness, about the siren call of suicide, about feeling unloved and unappreciated.

I imagine her writing those poems as she cooked a stew, or chopped tomatoes, or heated up the morning’s oatmeal. I’m certain she wrote most of them in her kitchen. And when she wasn’t writing them, they were growing like mustard seeds in her mind.

Neither her smiles and witty comments from the kitchen, nor her frightening and lost poems were false representations of her. We are all more complicated than even we, our own autobiographers, can fathom. She was both personae and many others, surely.

When I listen to Lori McKenna, I think of my grandmother.

My mother was the oldest of seven children. She married young, then married again rashly, and then married again carefully. Divorce, death and death split her from those three men. I’ll see her occasionally, staring into the distance of nothing, and I know she’s thinking about my father.

I hope that heaven has a movie theater where I’ll be able to go and watch the whole movie of my mother’s life with the benefit of my adult understanding. It might be a shocking tale, or maybe merely a quiet and endearing one, but I know nothing in that movie will make me love her less.

When I listen to Lori McKenna, I think of my mother.

I walked into my bedroom last night to see my flu-ridden middle child curled into my wife, both of them buried under our covers and chasing soccer balls and American Girl dolls in their synchronous dreams. My wife has been housebound all week with two sick children and a sick mother-in-law, and her husband comes home every night with some new whiny tale of work woe and soapbox monologues aimed at some unseen adversary.

Her son woke up at 5:30 this morning with a nosebleed that first left its evidence all over his bed and with a trail from his room to ours. Her husband welcomed her home from her agonizing church meeting last night with a hug, a kiss, and a “I’m in there playing ‘Call of Duty.’ Gotta get back to it! By the way, the Tar Heels won! I’ll be in bed by midnight!”

When I listen to Lori McKenna, I think of my wife.

Lori McKenna has a new album, Lorraine. She has six albums. Her personal story is so endearing and worthy of its own novel that I can only just link to her own web site and encourage you to learn about her.

Her music need not be 100% autobiographical to be real. The feelings are real. The characters are real. The situations are real. Her music is my family and your family and anyone’s family that knows anything of cornbread or covered dishes, pick-up trucks or potholes. She is my grandmother, my mother, my wife, my friends. She is almost any woman with a yearning for more but a need to cling gratefully to the small good fortunes in her midst both past and present. She is everything I take for granted and cherish, everything worth crying for or fighting over.

Lori, can you feel me, down here in Tennessee, devouring your notes and twangs, feeding my hungry soul? Can you feel the hundreds or thousands of others who feel this connection without ever having met you? If so, I hope it warms and strengthens you and your family, because God knows you deserve it.

None of the pictures are of my family, my grandparents, or anyone related to me.

Christmas Card Insert

The Carpenters--"Merry Christmas, Darling" (mp3)

Dear Everyone on The _____ Family Christmas card list,

In our haste to get our cards out (Target arrival date: Dec. 15th, always!), we forgot to include our annual update of the many varied and exciting things that have been going on in our lives. We trust you have been enjoying the photograph, but are wondering, what is going on with those folks? Well, wonder no more. Indeed, we are Blessed, as you will read. Enjoy!

Your incredible friends,
The _____ Family


Another whirlwind year gone by! Can you believe it? So many accomplishments, so many hopes and dream fulfilled. Has it really only been 365 days since our last letter? I'm shaking my head as I write this. Incredible, incredible year. Most of us like to think that our lives are pretty darn good, but ours really are!

Blinky, our African Grey Parrot, mastered several more Bible verses and other sayings this year. _____ has really been working with him. It was quite a hoot to hear him shout "Go with God!" as Minister Jordan was leaving after a Sunday supper of _____'s famous Macaroni and Seven Cheeses.

Our son, _____, 16, has become quite the little stock expert. Despite that pesky recession, he's managed to increase our personal portfolio by some 32%, setting us up for both long-term growth and a few little getaway trips this year. I know, I know, you want him to handle your portfolio as well. Sorry, you'll have to wait five more years until he's out of college and ready to take it public!

_____, 18, is waiting to hear from colleges, though I prefer to think that they'll be waiting to hear from her, since she not only scored a PERFECT 2400 on the SAT, she actually found an error on the test (2nd English section--our little reader! I'd tell you the exact mistake, but if you haven't read Thackeray's Vanity Fair, there's no point) which she pointed out to the College Board, and which they agreed was an error, so we like to think of her as more than perfect. She continues as the president of the "Jews for Jesus" club at our school, a club which she started. No, of course, we're not Jewish, God forbid, but she's become quite the little converter, having helped to save some 17 souls since the second half of her freshman year.

My beautiful, loving (a lot!) wife, _____, has been the perfect homemaker these past 22 years, but now with our children just about all grown up and ready to make their impact, she's ready to fulfill her dream of opening a greeting card store and designing her own cards. You know this will be a winner, you've received another of her famous homemade cards this year! Next year, you'll be able to buy the cards you send to us from her. Hint. Hint. Look for her shop opening in February (in time for Valentine's Day) over on Jackson Street.

As for me, my little business recycling Tampons and sanitary napkins has really taken off in this "Green" world we're living in now! We've got to protect God's world, and I'm proud to be doing my part. And have it pay off so handsomely! Let's just say I've "wrapped up" the market and "flushed" (just kidding, ladies, don't flush those!) the competition. With 30 full-time employees and several facilities, business just keeps growing! We may be in your neighborhood soon!

But life is not all work, is it? Heck, no! _____ and I have recommitted ourselves to our marriage, increasing our lovemaking sessions from 7 to 14 a week. Maybe we shouldn't be so public about that, but if you live within two or three houses of us, you already know, right? "Time's winged chariot" and all that, right? We've explored some new positions and techniques, quite pleasurably, but I'll tell you, it can make for some exhausting (italics mine!) Sundays on the weeks when we have missed a time or two because I have a Board meeting or _____ has her book group, and we have to play "catch up ball"! Luckily, the kids are usually at Starbucks studying and preparing for the upcoming week, so we can try out the pool table and not have to stifle our cries of passion.

Thank God that both of us are also still in terrific shape ( _____ tried on her 27-year-old prom dress for me, and well, let's just say she looked great in it.........while it was on!). We've been faithful to our sports club membership, though honestly, _____ is giving me such a workout, I'm not sure I even need the cardio machines at the club!

Of course, we continue to select each other's wardrobes, so that incredible trust factor that you've always admired in us is still there, too. Each of us thinks the other has superb taste, this year enhanced by trips to Milan and Paris to check out the latest fashion lines. Thanks again to that incredible son of ours and his market savvy!

In my spare time, I've been restoring my great-grandfather's original Ford Model T to full working order. This summer, we plan to recreate the Joads' trip from The Grapes of Wrath in that old clunker, (I know, I know, we English majors are a crazy bunch!) though I expect a better ending than those poor Joads, since we'll be staying with _____'s folks in Carmel-By-The-Sea for a week on the back end of the trip!

It is hard to imagine a life more fulfilling than ours. Still, we'd like to know what's going on with you, so we look forward to mail from you. It would be nice if your card could arrive before Christmas this year (if at all possible!), because _____ takes down the tree and the decorations the day after Christmas and starts getting the house ready for Valentine's Day! ( ___ and I are ready right now, so gotta go!). Write us, and remember, no card from you for two years, and you're off of our list. Ha. Ha. Just kidding. Not really. As the _____ Family likes to say (it's on our refrigerator!), "Life is busy. Keep up, if you can." We do.

In God's Loving Name,

The _____ Family!

Mama's Garden

While my boyfriend and aunt were in the hospital I slept at my mom's house....  Sleeping at mom's afforded me the luxury of waking up with the family dogs anxiously and happily panting in my face (I fell asleep watching TV on the sofa), eating a delicious breakfast I didn't have to cook, and quality family time - SCORE!  All that aside, I got to wander through my mother's lovely yard/garden in the early morning  "oohing and ahhhing" as she eagerly watered her plants!  Here are some pictures I took, beginning with the image above which features the stunning yellow flower of her Frangipani, which had just bloomed that very same day (last Saturday), our dogs and much more of nature's wonderful beauty.  Thanks for passing on the green thumb mom, you're the best!

Enjoy! 

Our Boxer, "Kimbo".... one of my brother's friends gave him to us when he was a puppy and he already had that name, I guess my brother liked it because it stuck!  Kimbo is quite the character and a VERY intelligent dog.  I love that punk....

He LOVES to swim, he must jump in the pool and swim around at least 2-3 times a day!

Kimbo shakes hands too!....

LOL...Here we were making fun of him, lifting up his ears to get an idea of what he would have looked like if my brother had gone the traditional route and clipped his ears (he didn't clip his ears or tail... the ears I'm glad, the tail, not so much....that thing hurts like a whip)

That look says he doesn't appreciate our evil cackling....hehe...

Our oldest dog, Manchita the Dalmatian.... she is skin and bones and perhaps she should be put down due to many issues, but the girl still has so much life, she gallops around the yard like a horse!  We just don't have the heart... plus, I think she needs to go naturally!....

Last but not least my Chewby Dewby Doo, my caramel Cocker Spaniel.... the family calls him Chewy....  he has one of those sad personalities, poor thing, I think it got worse when my dad passed away.....  But, the one thing that definitely makes him happy is chasing lizards!

 And now, for my favorite part.... The other pictures of my mother's garden which I have enhanced the color contrast for added color and drama!..... Aren't they awesome!?  Yes, yes they are... :)

 Here is a huge bunch of Aloe and those awesome bright eggplant purple plants... don't know their name, but I need some of my own!....

Kalanchoes spilling out of their container..... how I love these Kalanchoes!  The ones in my garden come from my mother's yard, but it amazes me how different both of ours look - it's because they turn various shades of purple and green depending on how much sun or shade they get..... fascinating....

 

You better recognize... Gardeners know the best dirt!  :P

A Bromeliad mixed in with some of that creeping cactus vine, forgot the name.... but it's the same one I have that puts out the gorgeous blood red flower (because we both got our cutting from my grandmother's yard)!

....aaaaaaaaand........a magnificent purple and white orchid in full bloom!.....

(All images in this blog post are my own personal photographs)

What a week!!

Hello everyone...  Sorry I have been missing in action so long but unfortunately there have been not one, but two medical emergencies in my family in the past week!  

First, last Thursday my boyfriend woke up at 6:45 am with severe pressure and burning in his chest, arms and neck.  He suffered for over half an hour before he woke me up and I rushed him to the hospital (thank goodness he was not stubborn like most men)!  After several hours at the hospital they discharged him, claiming to have found nothing, only to call us back after we were half way home on the highway to say that blood work had come back late and it was very urgent that he come straight back to be admitted and monitored over night.  Umm, can we say they almost had a major lawsuit on their hands!?  Anyway, at that point we were scared, especially because they would not say what they had found in his blood work over the phone.  When we got back to the hospital we were told he had super high levels of the heart enzyme Troponin which acts as a diagnostic marker for damage in the heart  (particularly a heart attack) and various heart disorders.  Still, they were baffled by this finding because they say he is way too young to have a heart attack - but I don't believe that "You're too young for..." bit for anything!  Well, they kept him over the weekend and on Monday they did a cardiac cathertization exam on him and HALLELUJAH!  Doc says he has a completely normal heart for a 30 year old and no plaque buildup/blockage to be found in any of his arteries.  *Phew*!  Still, the doctors are baffled by the high troponin levels and say he either had a spasm in one of his arteries or inflammation of the heart.  Weird.  Suffice it to say this is a big wake up call for him and both our families!  We won't waste any time changing our eating and exercise habits to ensure this never becomes an issue again!  I am so relieved, I missed him and worried about him so much it's scary!

Second, my great aunt and godmother Francie underwent major surgery to remove a benign tumor pressing on her optical nerve and making her go blind, unfortunately in the days following the surgery she had two small strokes which may or may not have been caused by a buildup of fluid (thus pressure) at the sight of the surgery suture.  We noticed that her speech was funny, she did not make any sense when she spoke so we rushed her to the hospital and she has been there since Saturday night.  Thankfully doctors were able to flush the fluid buildup, thus relieving the pressure and restoring her speech.  Fortunately it seems the effect on her speech was only temporary due to the fact that both strokes were very small.   She is still in the Neurology Intensive Care Unit but may be released today or tomorrow.  She is very dear to all of our hearts and has so much life left to live, I just knew things had to workout for the best.

Thankfully, everyone is okay, thank goodness...  After my father passed away on a family vacation a few years ago from a massive heart attack I don't think I could handle losing another loved one right now.  I know that my father is watching out for all of us, and to him I say DADDY, THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU AND I MISS YOU DEARLY!

With that said, I really want to get back into the blogging swing of things this week, as it is I have an embarrassing amount of "Draft" posts just piling up, so I gotta hop to it!

How have you all been?  Hope all is well, bear with me as I churn out some posts....

(All images in this post are my own personal photographs)

Rumors, Details, and Sex on a Picnic Table

Clumsy - Our Lady Peace (mp3)
Deny All - Bettie Serveert (mp3)

I'm in a dentist's office. The faux-leather chair is reclined, and the blood is slowly pooling in my skull, and that light, brighter than a thousand suns, burns into my mouth.

My dentist is a highly-intelligent and beautiful wife and mother who has somehow managed to hold onto every ounce of her attractiveness as she approaches 40. Her skin seems a little less soft, her face a bit more wizened, but she got that young fire in her eyes, with a mighty impressive figure and modest but sharp taste in clothing. And oh yeah, she's a kick-ass dentist.

Yet, try as I might, here's the image that inevitably flashes into my mind: her, 17 years of age and a junior in high school, lying back on a wooden picnic table at a popular local Chattanooga park, her knees dangling off the edge, her feet hovering in open space above the dirt and grass, her skirt up around her waist and spread across the planks like a disheveled too-small tablecloth. And a senior at my school, a year older than us, a popular and athletic king of the hill, pushing himself into her.

In most of my recreations of this moment, the senior boy is looking around in some twisted hope that someone can be a witness to this moment, so that when he brags about this moment over and over for friends and classmates, he can talk about the person or people who saw it with their own eyes. I imagine him, on the verge of orgasm, holding up a Joe Namath finger of victory, stoking the imagined enthralled fans surrounding the table in his moment of sexual triumph.

Of all the rumors and tales of sexual escapades from my high school years, this one is easily the most salient. We didn't have tales of group sex or fantasy blowjob drafts back in the late '80s, when getting a mere one blow job in a night was plenty impresive, so having sex on a picnic table in lingering daylight with one of our sister school's most stunning students was an otherworldly tale of studliness.

I once overheard the senior in question regaling his friends with the details. I then heard it a dozen or so more times as the story became hallway legend, gaining additional details, reaching new heights of the fantastical.

From day one, I doubted this story. One of my closest friends in high school helped out in our athletic training room in the afternoons, and she was constantly the subject of sex tales. She gave blow jobs in the closet. She would jerk you off while she wrapped your ankle. Tales that I knew to be untrue, but they got shared and passed around as factual as if they'd been etched into a chapter of the Bible.

That's what boys do. We talk. We sit round proverbial campfires and tell each other tales of the epic conquering sexual hero. It's as old as Beowulf.

Even when she was 17 and a rumored slut, my dentist wanted to be a dentist. Hell, I wrote it down in my journal. We had a conversation one time -- and all conversations with females of her caliber were recorded and immortalized in my journals for posterity -- where she talked about how much she valued clean, straight teeth. She'd known early in her life that she was going to be a dentist, she said. I remember keeping my mouth closed and smiling, hoping to hide the five dozen fillings in my mouth, suffering painful regret from so insufficiently and inconsistently brushing my teeth in my youth, knowing those cavities were a guaranteed barrier to her falling in love with me. (As if that was the singular preventing factor...)

So of course, when I found out she had moved back to Chattanooga and opened an office with her dentist husband (natch), I signed up as her patient. She'd always been brilliant; she'd always known what she wanted to do as a profession; she was hot. That, my friends, is a perfect combination of motivations for picking your dentist. It's a nice reward of convenience that her husband is a swell guy and a great dentist as well, since he attends to patients 80% of the time, now that she mostly stays home with their daughter.

I remember finding out she was pregnant. During my cleaning, the hygienist said, "It's really brave of her, having this baby." I shrugged and made what limited sounds I could with her fist in my mouth.

"You know, with her having Cystic Fibrosis and all." My brow furrowed and I made more gutteral sounds.

"She said she never even expected to see 20, much less get married and have a career. They didn't even think she could get pregnant in the first place." (More gutteral acknowledgments.) "So, you know, when they did, it just seemed like life was giving her a chance she couldn't pass up."

I don't know whether my dentist got laid on a picnic table when she was 17. But I do know this. If I was 17 years old, and I'd already accepted that I might never see 20, and I knew what kind of potential I might see if only I wasn't saddled with a debilitating and often-fatal hereditary disease, I think I might well be inclined to fuck just about anything I could get my hands on. I might be inclined to drink, smoke, bungee jump, skydive, ski jump... anything and everything risky and life-affirming I could find. Because my dentist was cool and attractive, she just so happened to date cool and attractive studs.

And if -- IF -- they found themselves in flagrante delicto, horizontal or vertical or diagonal on a picnic table, the event takes a different meaning. Suddenly that moment becomes about her, not him, about savoring a precious (if scandalous) opportunity, not about a boy getting a story to tell the school.

I love my dentist because she provides me just one more reminder that the details we don't know about the people we encounter every day create such a complex and wondrous story, and even just a glimpse of those secret details can alter our perceptions and opinions, can engender sympathy and understanding, bring us closer together.

It's a shame we need those details. It's a shame we can't just know those details are out there, none of our business, but ready to explain so much about so many people.

Dark Come Soon

Dark Come Soon - Tegan & Sara (mp3)

Sometimes a song has a radar lock on your soul. It attaches its ivy tendrils to specific memories and experiences. Sometimes it digs into the soil of your past and grafts into the roots of childhood or teenage years, long before the song even existed, or long before you ever paid it much heed. It hits like those famed photon torpedoes into that tiny hole in the Death Star.

Lately, the song that has crept back up into my Billboard Hot Soul Top 10 is Tegan and Sara's "Dark Come Soon." It showed up on my Shuffle recently and has since been replayed a few dozen times.

Want a virtually guaranteed method of making yourself miserable? Do the right thing. Seriously, I can't think of many things, over the course of my life, that have resulted in greater misery, sadness or discomfort than walking the straight and narrow path in the face of temptation.

I'm not saying I've always managed to do the right thing. Not at all. I'm only saying that if you're under some impression that doing the right thing results in some happy ending movie where you get the girl, ride off on the white horse, cure the bully, avenge your parents, live happily ever after, or whatever, well, I'm here to burst your bubble.

While I can't proclaim to confidently know what their intent for this song was, its meaning for me has crystallized into every big gaping mineshaft of temptation I've encountered in my life, times when I was in personal torment and denied it or hid it from everyone around me. (Which is pretty much all of the times I've ever been tempted by anything.)

Dark, you can't come soon enough for me
Saved from one more day of misery
Everything I love, get back from me now
Everyone I love, I need you now

In times of temptation, days are marked by frustration, followed by a this strange sense of accomplishment when the day is done. One more day you've survived your own demons. One more square on the calendar you can X out, victorious over whatever the temptation or distraction. But good behavior in the face of temptation does this weird thing to your relationships. It's like the Joker has strapped a huge explosive device to you, and you desperately need someone to care enough for you to risk their lives and come defuse it. But you don't want to be the cause of the death of a loved one, or anyone for that matter, who tries in vain to defuse you only to be blown to tiny bits.

Don't forget a million miles from me
Safe, and another day can pass by me
Everything I love, get back from me now
Everyone I love, I need you now
So what? I lied, I lie to me, too (come on, come on)
So what? I lied, I lie to me, too (come on, come on)
So what?

Safe. And another day can pass by me. Get away from me before I explode. But... I really really need you near me.

And then the chorus comes in and kicks me in the gut, expressing the exact kind of process that worms its way through my mind. When confronted with the chance to do something wrong, or something taboo, our first instinct is to run away from it. But if we that temptation finds some way to grow like a weed through asphalt, we begin to create a new reality. We start telling ourselves whatever it is we need to hear to either stay away from the temptation or to justify succumbing. Sometimes we lie both ways. I can remember times when I told myself lies to keep me safe while at the same time telling myself lies to justify the act... just in case I eventually lost grip of my defenses and slipped. Sometimes, the angel and the devil on opposite shoulders are both just whispering different lies.

Hold out for the ones you know will love you
Hide out from the ones you know will love you, too

Doing the right thing almost always feels lonelier than succumbing. especially in the short run. Fight the temptations for those you love. Hide from them just in case you can't sustain, and hide for the shame of suffering the temptations to begin with.

Right to the edge, I'm barely there
Slow to make my move, I'm almost there
Everything I say, I say to me first
Everything I do, I do to me first
(So what?)
So what? I lied, I lie to me, too
(So what?)
So what? I lied, I lie to me, too

Everything I do, I do to me first. Every single time that couplet plays, it shakes me emotionally. I get all verklempt. Self-deception is, ultimately, the most sincere defense we have for our wrongdoings. Sure, it's ultimately an insufficient excuse -- that we're causing ourselves damage before we ever cause it to those around us, that we're lying to ourselves first before it spreads to our loved ones -- but it's all we've got. And when all you've got is a miserable defense that requires deceiving even yourself, the only thing you can do is keep hoping your days will end sooner rather than later.

It's Scylla and Carybdis. It's a rock and a hard place. It's a frying pan and a fire. It's turning right and turning wrong. Miserable places one and all. As WOPR/Joshua so wisely observed to Matthew Broderick, when it comes to temptation, "The only winning move is not to play." Easier said than done when your soul is at Defcon 2.

I'm glad I'm not there very often, and I haven't been there in a while -- and I'm honestly floored at how many times I was there in my teenage and younger years and didn't even really know it -- but I'm also grateful for songs like this that can take me to those memories, remind me of the pain that's there, and serve as occasional warning to do what I can to avoid going there again.

Joe

Come Sail Away (Live, 1996) - Styx (mp3)

Joe turned 20 in December. He will never turn 21. His four-year fight with cancer included momentary victories and at one point or another impacted half of his body. Scars on his chest, on his back, on his knee. Poison also known as chemotherapy surged through every vein and artery in his body. Below are the words I spoke at his funeral service, held at our school on Thursday, January 14, 2010.

At one point in his journey, Joe dreamt of getting into a boat and sailing into the wide blue yonder. Mostly he dreamt of going alone. Once in a while, he might find a port and allow his beloved younger brothers to hop aboard for a few days. Maybe the occasional visit from his parents. And, less frequently, he would even consider allowing one of his great friends to experience the open water with him, but it wouldn't be a regular thing.

He went so far as to spend time searching for the right boat, reading books and arranging for lessons to learn how to sail properly, hoping to make this dream come true. Eventually Joe acknowledged that this dream was beyond his grasp, and instead he "settled" for an amazing trip through Europe. He was so very grateful to his parents for giving him that trip. He even liked France except for all the French people. Although it wasn't sailing on the ocean, it was time away from everything and everyone familiar. Time alone to explore and contemplate and just be.

We are all, as humans, entangled in difficult-to-explain contradictions. Alongside this intense desire for separation and solitude existed Joe's intense love for his family and friends. He saw the kind of loyalty and love his trevails had inspired. But I think being at the center of that, and seeing it from his perspective, put a lot of strain on Joe, pressure to be or do or symbolize something big when his dreams and hopes were so very different before this all started.

O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

Joe didn't want this role. He despised it, in fact. I can't even recall how many times he spoke to me, often in the midnight hours in my kitchen, openly angry about his lot in life, an anger he earned but held in check more often than not. In our last conversation before he started UPenn, the single thing that excited him most was getting away from his cancer, making new friends who could like him for him. Not for osteosarcoma, not for the tragedy of his situation. Just because he was clever or cute or a sharp dresser any of those little things that draws one typical freshman to another typical freshman.

Part of what I think Joe hated about his illness was that it felt like he was cheating. I think he worried that his illness gave him an unfair advantage on the loyalty and love and support of friends and strangers, and Joe was most decidedly someone who felt like things had to be earned and deserved. Of course, Joe wasn't cheating at all. Joe drew people to him in ways that none of us, in a similar circumstance, quite could have. Seeing the rows of blue blazers, more than two dozen of his loyal and loving classmates and friends, sitting in that Charlotte church on Tuesday both broke my heart and lifted me in ways I can't express. I think it did the same for almost every grieving person in that sanctuary.

O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.

I don't mean to give anyone here the impression that Joe was a Christ figure -- Joe would certainly haunt me with expletive-ridden screams if I did -- but anyone trapped into knowing their days are numbered must have a similar experience.

Jesus found himself incredibly impatient with his friends. He felt lonely a lot, because all these people who loved him simply couldn't appreciate what was going on. All they could do was try to sympathize, and even that sympathy stilted the way a more natural relationship should have worked. In this way, Joe's frustrations and challenges with relationships were quite similar. Conversations sometimes felt more stilted, because people just didn't know quite what to say to him. Not all the time, but enough that everyone knew that the cancer thing was in the room with them.

Joe had no choice but to carry the burden of his illness, to bear the weight of altered friendship dynamics, to be Joe Cancer. As much as he hoped UPenn would be a place where he could begin life on his own merits, fair and square, eventually even his friends there discovered the truth he hoped to hide.

The Road wasn't Joe's favorite Cormac McCarthy novel. He preferred All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian. But in The Road, a boy and his father -- another man who must wrestle with his own imminent demise -- walk a desolate and dying world where few if any can be trusted. Theirs is a horrific odyssey.

We're going to be okay, arent we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That's right.
Because we're carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.

The father, struggling with his health, convinces the boy that they are keep the fire -- the best parts of humanity -- alight, and they cannot die, because they cannot allow the fire to die.

Whether Joe wanted this burden, whether he enjoyed it, is actually irrelevant. What all of us sitting in this Chapel know is that Joe carried that fire. He carried it in his quiet, understated, sarcastic, critical, pensive, brilliant way. He carried the fire in a way that somehow managed to inspire all of us to want to or need to carry it with him.

And carry it you have. And will. Dozens of guys and parents returning for last year's Bone Cancer Awareness Walk. Those who returned to this Chapel for Joe's talk just a few months ago. Going in carefully-measured droves to Charlotte and invading his family's household to show your love and support for him. And a family, wrapped around Joe almost like a blanket these last few months, offering every ounce of themselves day and night to him.

We carry Joe's fire. This is his final gift to us, a gift that's both a blessing and a vital responsibility. He gave us a kind of fire we never had before we became witnesses to his journey. It continues to burn brightly in our hearts.

Joe, meanwhile, finally gets his dream. He captains his sailboat into a vast ocean of beauty and wonder and mystery, free of his illness and pain, free from the restraints of time or responsibility. On occasion, he will stop at a port in our hearts and minds, and he will let us visit him for a while. And then he will insist on continuing his journey but will promise to keep in touch, as he always did. As he always will.

Life as Gumbo

Johnny Nash--"Stir It Up" (mp3)

Tony Trischka (featuring Syd Straw)--"Alfa Ya-Ya" (mp3)

One of the better pleasures of life is sitting down to eat a bowl of real gumbo, made without haste using a traditional recipe. But, arguably, an even greater pleasure is constructing that gumbo. I have spent much of the weekend doing just that. Hang with me, if you're not a cook (yet) and trust that my purpose is not to brag on my gumbo. I'll try to make a broader point.

The complexity of a gumbo depends on several steps, none of which can be rushed. Sure, there are shortcuts one could take, bottled this and frozen that, but each one would diminish the final stew. Gumbos tend to split into two basic camps: seafood gumbo and chicken and sausage gumbo. I made the latter, mostly because I had picked up some incredible andouille sausage the last time I was in New Orleans.

Gumbo's nuances are built layer by layer. The first layer is the chicken. You need to fry or roast it to intensify the flavors in the bones, meat, and skin. After you pull the skin off the bone, the bones become the base of the chicken stock, which, when boiled, then simmered, with onion, celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, and parsley in water that, left on low heat, becomes a rich broth. So, two things done. The key, though, is the roux. The gradual browning of white flour in hot oil until it becomes as dark as chocolate is the essential component. As it becomes the color of peanut butter and then darker, it takes on a carmelized flavor like nothing else. To achieve that perfect roux requires constant vigilance and stirring for the better part of an hour.

SIDEBAR: When is the last time most of us stirred anything for 40 minutes?

The addition of the Cajun trinity of chopped onions, green peppers, and celery, with garlic, to a dark roux releases smells into the room and house that seem like some heavenly blend of fried chicken and soy sauce. After the vegetables have softened, pouring in the chicken stock, brought to a boil, with bay leaf, thyme, and a blend of other spices, and then simmered for an hour or so, creates a base of some 20 different tastes, some added twice and in different ways. There is no quick way to duplicate it.

Then the chicken is added back in, and with it, the chunks of andouille, itself a myriad of flavors, including pork and pepper heat and smoke. And, finally, the okra, both as a taste and as a thickener, sauteed to eliminate the sliminess and to include yet another seared flavor. Finally, the seasoning is corrected, and over two days with essentially 7 major steps, eight if you serve it over rice, you have gumbo.

Gumbo is a pleasure both ways. If you don't know how it's made, then you are amazed by the complexity of its flavors, and each bite is a revelation. Your tongue, your mouth, your brain all know that you could not pour it out of a can. Or, if you do know how it is made, if you make it, then you are equally rewarded, in that you have successfully executed each step.

I could have talked about bread or ice cream or even a relationship. The point would be the same. Taking the time to do things the way they need to be done, the way they are best, is neither a luxury nor just a nod to some nostalgic vision of the past. The reality is that back when the world was slower, when money wasn't as important, when quality could reign over quantity, there were slower processes of life that justified themselves easily--first because the shortcuts weren't available, and, second, because the waiting increased their worth.

In the past few years there have been a plethora of books about things/places/books/etc. to do/see/read/visit/etc. before we die. I appreciate the sentiment. It's a big world, as Joe Jackson would say, so much to see.

But the book that really spoke to me was the one by Jan and Michael Stern, 500 Things To Eat Before It's Too Late (and the Best Places To Eat Them). You will note the slight shift in emphasis. Sure, the "too late" could refer to our potential imminent demises just like the rest of the books, but when you get into the Sterns' book, you quickly realize that the places, the joints, the specials dishes they advocate are ones that are made in Mom 'n Pop places whose offerings are specific to particular parts of the country. They have been making the same foods in the same basic ways for decades. When these places don't make them, who will? Who will carry on the traditions of making these foods the way they always have been made? "Before it's too late" means before the rush of the modern world squeezes them out, before their expensive, time-honored techniques become too expensive.

I tried to hit a number of these places when I was in Chicago this summer and to indulge in the best Italian Beef sandwich, the breaded steak sanwich, the Chicago hot dog, etc., but for me the larger issue becomes even more important each year when the holidays approach. That's when treasured family recipes, things that a deceased parent or relative or neighbor used to make, come to the forefront.

And here's the news that no one wants to hear: those people are deceased and they aren't going to be making those special treats that they used to make. We have to do it. But, maybe, we don't have time, we don't know how to, maybe we just don't want to, maybe we don't even care to, maybe we don't cook, maybe we don't bake, maybe our children will never know the difference. Hey, wake up! The past is disappearing and it isn't coming back. It's about to become an extinct animal. Short of cloning it, and I don't know how you clone time, the things that were important or comforting to us are going to be gone if we don't save them.

So that's why, up above, I wanted to give you an idea about how gumbo is made. And I'm here to say, it's all just gumbo, baby. Seven steps, one step at a time. Totally worth it. Ain't nothin' like it. Nowhere. Because it's my gumbo or your gumbo and that means it becomes my family's gumbo and maybe someday, a child or a grandchild makes it just like I used to. 'Cause families, too, are like gumbo--layers upon layers upon layers.

Bob will be serving his gumbo at the Mocs' tailgate this coming Saturday if the weather holds. Johnny Nash and Tony Trishka are available at Itunes. I don't know why the classic Johnny Nash track does not play, but it does download, so you can listen to it that way.