For years I've been looking for an easy way to work on the same document on different computers. I've never been good at copying work I've revised from one computer to another; when I do, I often forget which computer I last used. This logistical dilemma has, on more than one occasion, discouraged me enough to stop me from writing.
Dropbox has ended my search for a solution—a perfectly executed, elegant little program that automatically updates any file I ask it to across computers, as I write. And it's free.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Ruining the Country
Last night at a local hotel bar I listened to a man explain to the people around him that Mexicans are ruining the country.
He was an older man, bald, pink-faced, probably in his late fifties, wearing an Amsterdam t-shirt with a marijuana leaf on it. He let us know that he'd served in the Army and had no interest in the opinions of anyone who hadn't.
Just before going to the bar, I'd read this.
I suggest following the link, but I'll quickly summarize what it says: employees of Goldman Sachs (and a few other banks) bought thousands of sub-prime loans, packaged them together, sold the packages to various investment groups, and then bet on their failure. (That's worth re-reading again as a one sentence summary of what's wrong with American capitalist culture.)
Within the article, one finds this quote:
He was an older man, bald, pink-faced, probably in his late fifties, wearing an Amsterdam t-shirt with a marijuana leaf on it. He let us know that he'd served in the Army and had no interest in the opinions of anyone who hadn't.
Just before going to the bar, I'd read this.
I suggest following the link, but I'll quickly summarize what it says: employees of Goldman Sachs (and a few other banks) bought thousands of sub-prime loans, packaged them together, sold the packages to various investment groups, and then bet on their failure. (That's worth re-reading again as a one sentence summary of what's wrong with American capitalist culture.)
Within the article, one finds this quote:
“The simultaneous selling of securities to customers and shorting them because they believed they were going to default is the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen,” said Sylvain R. Raynes, an expert in structured finance at R & R Consulting in New York. “When you buy protection against an event that you have a hand in causing, you are buying fire insurance on someone else’s house and then committing arson.”
The article suggests that in effect every home in the country was lit on fire by these arsons—every home, in any case, which lost value when the global financial system locked up because of their bets.
But in the United States we've always admired the ingenuity of criminals. So we do not blame them for stealing our money. Instead, we blame the man born into abject poverty who ventures thousands of miles from home in order to eat. And who succeeds in eating by getting on his bicycle at five in the morning and riding to work, where he grows, harvests, and prepares our food.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The Most Depressed Place in America
According to Mental Health America, which claims to be "the country’s leading nonprofit dedicated to helping ALL people live mentally healthier lives," the most depressed state in America is . . . Utah.
Living in Utah—I lived there for many years—one feels an extraordinary, almost surreal pressure to be good.
This pressure leads, I think, to profound unhappiness, in part because we're not made happy by being good.
We especially aren't made happy by being good as it's defined in Utah, where being good means being obedient. Consequently, in Utah culture, being good means ceasing to exist as an individual.
We learn very quickly—as toddlers, really—that the way we articulate our personality is through disobedience. Living begins when obedience ends. Happiness, curiously, begins with disobedience, too—that's been the great (happy) surprise of my adult life.
But in Utah, individuality—personality—is a mark of perversion. It's viewed with suspicion. It represents a kind of egomaniacal impulse to distinguish oneself, Eve-like, from God.
Anyway, here's the chart:
Living in Utah—I lived there for many years—one feels an extraordinary, almost surreal pressure to be good.
This pressure leads, I think, to profound unhappiness, in part because we're not made happy by being good.
We especially aren't made happy by being good as it's defined in Utah, where being good means being obedient. Consequently, in Utah culture, being good means ceasing to exist as an individual.
We learn very quickly—as toddlers, really—that the way we articulate our personality is through disobedience. Living begins when obedience ends. Happiness, curiously, begins with disobedience, too—that's been the great (happy) surprise of my adult life.
But in Utah, individuality—personality—is a mark of perversion. It's viewed with suspicion. It represents a kind of egomaniacal impulse to distinguish oneself, Eve-like, from God.
Anyway, here's the chart:
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Eric, Trendsetting Again
I am now an iPhoner.
An iPhonist? An iPhonee? An iPhonian? An iPhonabee? An iPhoneator? An iPhony?
Yes, that. An iPhony.
An iPhonist? An iPhonee? An iPhonian? An iPhonabee? An iPhoneator? An iPhony?
Yes, that. An iPhony.
The Happiest Place on Earth
Having spent two years in Costa Rica, I'm not surprised to read this.
It's a hell of a country and remembers things that Americans have forgotten, or never learned.
Costa Rica provides universal health care, free education, has no standing army, and has committed itself to some of the strictest environmental laws in the world.
I complained while I lived there that in comparison to the United States or Argentina and Chile, little Costa Rica lacked culture. I said, "Nothing is happening here." But that wasn't true. Costa Rica had developed its own culture, and a great deal was happening. And the people were living well and remained close to the essential pleasures of life.
New York City or Buenos Aires represents a narrow and frankly strange genre of culture. There's a time for that genre in a person's life, certainly. But there are other vital ways of living—ways that might be more important to human health and delight over time than what we find in Manhattan or Palermo.
It's a hell of a country and remembers things that Americans have forgotten, or never learned.
Costa Rica provides universal health care, free education, has no standing army, and has committed itself to some of the strictest environmental laws in the world.
I complained while I lived there that in comparison to the United States or Argentina and Chile, little Costa Rica lacked culture. I said, "Nothing is happening here." But that wasn't true. Costa Rica had developed its own culture, and a great deal was happening. And the people were living well and remained close to the essential pleasures of life.
New York City or Buenos Aires represents a narrow and frankly strange genre of culture. There's a time for that genre in a person's life, certainly. But there are other vital ways of living—ways that might be more important to human health and delight over time than what we find in Manhattan or Palermo.
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Discovery of the Year
Javier Marías is the most exciting author I've encountered since learning of Roberto Bolaño three years ago.
Of course I learned of Marías from Bolaño.
Reading Marías, I can hear his influence on Bolaño—particularly on Bolaño's pacing and dazzling effusiveness.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2009/dec/15/javier-marias-your-face-tomorrow
Of course I learned of Marías from Bolaño.
Reading Marías, I can hear his influence on Bolaño—particularly on Bolaño's pacing and dazzling effusiveness.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2009/dec/15/javier-marias-your-face-tomorrow
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call — New Orleans
Our civilization doesn’t have adequate images, and I think a civilization is doomed or is going to die out like dinosaurs if it does not develop an adequate language or adequate images. . . . That’s what I’m working on: a new grammar of images. — Werner Herzog, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Is there a quality in art—in an artist—more important than delightedness?
The Bad Lieutenant, the new film by the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is delighted by the world. Unlike most films, it doesn't take delight in the world's demise but in its ongoing, omnivorous—Herzog might use the word "obscene"—beauty.
I suspect most great art, especially visual art, is born of delight: the fertile pleasure the artist, for reasons he or she often can't explain, takes in an image. With an image, the play begins.
The artist intuits that art's language of images forestalls our doom, as only art can, and yearns to speak of our ongoingness.
Herzog exuded this Shakespearean delight in images when I saw him at the University of Utah in—when? 1999? I hadn't heard of him and went with some friends to a lecture he was giving on campus.
The Bad Lieutenant, the new film by the great German filmmaker Werner Herzog, is delighted by the world. Unlike most films, it doesn't take delight in the world's demise but in its ongoing, omnivorous—Herzog might use the word "obscene"—beauty.
I suspect most great art, especially visual art, is born of delight: the fertile pleasure the artist, for reasons he or she often can't explain, takes in an image. With an image, the play begins.
The artist intuits that art's language of images forestalls our doom, as only art can, and yearns to speak of our ongoingness.
Herzog exuded this Shakespearean delight in images when I saw him at the University of Utah in—when? 1999? I hadn't heard of him and went with some friends to a lecture he was giving on campus.
During the lecture, he projected onto a screen behind him the image of a premature infant, just born, grasping the fingers of a doctor and being lifted up, naked, to hang, swinging, from the doctor's fingers. Seeing this image I gasped with just about everyone else in the audience, and wasn't alone, I think, to find myself abruptly in tears.
The great moments in The Bad Lieutenant—and there are many of them—arise from the world in the same fashion, naked infants swinging above the void. The plot stops, or at least slows (from its otherwise hurtling pace), and Herzog gives us: a water moccasin gliding through filthy post-Katrina flood waters into a prison cell that holds a drowning inmate; an alligator crushed on a Louisiana highway, its back leg twitching, and beyond it an overturned SUV; two iguanas on a coffee table beside surveilling city cops (the movie comes to a stop to allow the the camera to linger delightedly about the iguanas' heads, probing them, child-like); Nicolas Cage (brilliant again) hunched against the wall behind a rest-home door, working over his neck, his face with an electric shaver; the corpse of a mafia hit-man, and behind the corpse, the hit-man's soul, breakdancing.
During the film's most moving scene, Cage's character, Terence McDonagh, takes his lover to a shed behind his childhood home and describes to her the hours he spent there as a little boy, imagining. After talking, he stands behind her and they look out into the light, as if looking back on their innocence.
Their gazes are themselves a kind of innocence: the innocent delight of the once-upon-a-time artist, imagining.
Imagining: by which we mean: creating images.
During the film's most moving scene, Cage's character, Terence McDonagh, takes his lover to a shed behind his childhood home and describes to her the hours he spent there as a little boy, imagining. After talking, he stands behind her and they look out into the light, as if looking back on their innocence.
Their gazes are themselves a kind of innocence: the innocent delight of the once-upon-a-time artist, imagining.
Imagining: by which we mean: creating images.
This is an exuberant, brilliant movie, simultaneously joyous and grim. Herzog manages that seemingly impossible simultaneity better than anyone. I find most films—especially violent films—insulting, deadening, joyless. The Bad Lieutenant takes delight in the brutal strangeness of the world and communicates that delight in a language of images that's adequate to our time and enthralled by the beauty of our haplessness. It is the most best movie I've seen this year.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tolstoy in the Kitchen
On the refrigerator there's a photograph of Tolstoy taken a few years, I guess, before his death. I don’t like the look of him. Cheerless. Prophetic. Actually: insane. Physically, psychologically unkempt, and self-certain. Although he does look generous, and unhappy to be sitting for a photograph, which might be sign enough of sanity. Very Russian—his presentation is more culturally determined than I'd expect. And he looks like he’s dying, which I find repulsive.
At the time of the photograph his great work is finished, although he'll still give us Hadji Murad, one of my favorite books—a splendid tale that begins as well as Absalom, Absalom, One Hundred Years of Solitude, even The Trial. “I was returning home by the fields.”
Now I set alongside the aged Tolstoy the cover of my Modern Library edition of War and Peace, which gives us a photograph of Tolstoy in his thirties, on the cusp of greatness.
I don't know why, but the young Tolstoy allows me to see the aged Tolstoy anew. He no longer looks ravaged but merely frail; he seems kind, even majestic, tired, yes, but no less intelligent than he was as a young man, and more plainly spiritual.
Now I set alongside the aged Tolstoy the cover of my Modern Library edition of War and Peace, which gives us a photograph of Tolstoy in his thirties, on the cusp of greatness.
I don't know why, but the young Tolstoy allows me to see the aged Tolstoy anew. He no longer looks ravaged but merely frail; he seems kind, even majestic, tired, yes, but no less intelligent than he was as a young man, and more plainly spiritual.
The young man is in that dying organism.
Because I've been reading War and Peace again (the relatively new, superb Pevear/Volokhonsky translation), it's hard to look at him as he neared the end of his life. I’m frightened of his—our—mortality and by the way his face acknowledges, even foretells his approaching death. It's an honest, doomed face.
Reading Tolstoy ruins my self-esteem.
Reading Tolstoy ruins my self-esteem.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Americans, by Robert Frank
Robert Frank's photographs are sometimes affectionately, sometimes bitterly witty. They are austere, lyrical, and post-romantic.
This last quality distinguishes his work from that of his greatest American predecessors (Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, and Man Ray), and from Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, his contemporaries and kindred spirits.
By spurning romanticism, Frank's art denies us romanticism's consolations. That denial is at the heart of his art's power. Frank's photographs, particularly in The Americans, add beauty to the world without reinforcing or adding to our fantasies of happiness.
While his art isn't itself romantic, he shows us that Americans, like all religious people, are fiercely romantic; and our romanticism—or, specifically, the peculiar manner by which we articulate it—is what he believes merits attention.
Here we arrive at the source of Frank's genius: his refusal to frame Americans romantically has the ironic effect of emphasizing our intensely romantic disposition.
Even at our most downtrodden, our most lonely, there's flair; there's extravagance. (Note, most obviously, the belt buckle. There would be no photograph without it. Beyond that: the tightness of the clothing, the intricate stitching of the boots, the elegant inward under-statedness of the man's stance, the floral curves of the hat, etc.) Our extravagance is embattled, apologetic; the subtle means by which we decorate our world and ourselves gives us a complex splendor and rescues us from pity and from self-pity. (We do not—or did not—have time for self-pity.)
Frank finds beauty where we least expect it: among our most bewildered and despised, among the old and broken, in failure, in what we forget, in inconsequence, and not—during the triumphant American century—in our triumphs.
We've received no greater gift from any photographer.
This slideshow, with its accompanying commentary, offers a wonderful introduction to this astonishing artist:
http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/298876613/slide-show-dominique-nabokov-on-robert-frank
This last quality distinguishes his work from that of his greatest American predecessors (Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, and Man Ray), and from Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, his contemporaries and kindred spirits.
By spurning romanticism, Frank's art denies us romanticism's consolations. That denial is at the heart of his art's power. Frank's photographs, particularly in The Americans, add beauty to the world without reinforcing or adding to our fantasies of happiness.
While his art isn't itself romantic, he shows us that Americans, like all religious people, are fiercely romantic; and our romanticism—or, specifically, the peculiar manner by which we articulate it—is what he believes merits attention.
Here we arrive at the source of Frank's genius: his refusal to frame Americans romantically has the ironic effect of emphasizing our intensely romantic disposition.
Even at our most downtrodden, our most lonely, there's flair; there's extravagance. (Note, most obviously, the belt buckle. There would be no photograph without it. Beyond that: the tightness of the clothing, the intricate stitching of the boots, the elegant inward under-statedness of the man's stance, the floral curves of the hat, etc.) Our extravagance is embattled, apologetic; the subtle means by which we decorate our world and ourselves gives us a complex splendor and rescues us from pity and from self-pity. (We do not—or did not—have time for self-pity.)
Frank finds beauty where we least expect it: among our most bewildered and despised, among the old and broken, in failure, in what we forget, in inconsequence, and not—during the triumphant American century—in our triumphs.
We've received no greater gift from any photographer.
This slideshow, with its accompanying commentary, offers a wonderful introduction to this astonishing artist:
http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/298876613/slide-show-dominique-nabokov-on-robert-frank
Avril Lavigne
Spring 2003. A warm morning in Costa Rica—I'm teaching at the European School in Heredia, 7th graders, and Marilia Campos is sitting on the counter by the window, listening to her CD player. Her classmates are arriving for the day. Marilia, shouting over the music in her ears, says: "Mr. Eric, do you like Avril Lavigne?"
"I don't think I do, Marilia," I say. I'm shuffling my books.
She waves me over. "Listen to this. She's so good."
I sit next to her on the counter and she gives me one of her earbuds. We sit for a while and listen, the earbuds' wires hanging between us.
The song is "I'm with You." It goes along nicely. Normally.
I glance at Marilia. Listening to the song, I can see that she feels like she's being spoken to honestly. And I can understand why. Sometimes honesty is cliché. The song is just what a boy wants to hear, too.
If the rising cry at 2:49 is not the essence—the raison d'etre—of the pop ballad, I don't know what is.
"I don't think I do, Marilia," I say. I'm shuffling my books.
She waves me over. "Listen to this. She's so good."
I sit next to her on the counter and she gives me one of her earbuds. We sit for a while and listen, the earbuds' wires hanging between us.
The song is "I'm with You." It goes along nicely. Normally.
I glance at Marilia. Listening to the song, I can see that she feels like she's being spoken to honestly. And I can understand why. Sometimes honesty is cliché. The song is just what a boy wants to hear, too.
If the rising cry at 2:49 is not the essence—the raison d'etre—of the pop ballad, I don't know what is.
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, by César Aira
Approving words by Roberto Bolaño led me to this strange, elegant writer. I was further encouraged by the fact that he's translated by Chris Andrews—there's no better translator bringing texts from Spanish into English—and when I saw that he's published by New Directions.
Aira continues Borges, which is, I suppose, inevitable, coming as he does from Coronel Pringles, a little town in la provincia de Buenos Aires. (I passed through it by bus, long ago.) In a brief preface, Bolaño also suggests the influence of Witold Gombrowicz, the enfant terrible of Polish/Argentinean literature. I don't hear Gombrowicz, frankly—but I don't hear much that Bolaño hears, and that's no fault of Bolaño's.
I do hear Dostoyevsky.
If a bastard child of Dostoyevsky and Borges doesn't trigger your interest, then you can't be helped.
Consider, for instance, this line—a brilliant summary of the dilemma of the artist in the modern age:
Aira continues Borges, which is, I suppose, inevitable, coming as he does from Coronel Pringles, a little town in la provincia de Buenos Aires. (I passed through it by bus, long ago.) In a brief preface, Bolaño also suggests the influence of Witold Gombrowicz, the enfant terrible of Polish/Argentinean literature. I don't hear Gombrowicz, frankly—but I don't hear much that Bolaño hears, and that's no fault of Bolaño's.
I do hear Dostoyevsky.
If a bastard child of Dostoyevsky and Borges doesn't trigger your interest, then you can't be helped.
Consider, for instance, this line—a brilliant summary of the dilemma of the artist in the modern age:
The variations revolved around a curious impossibility: how could he communicate the proposition “I am a monster”?The influences one hears are to Aira's credit. Bolaño claims Aira is "one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today." After reading this little book, I don't doubt it.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Maternity Leave
A tweet from my brother this morning:
Fun fact of the day: Swaziland, New Guinea, Liberia & the USA are the only countries w/o paid maternity leave. Family values.Researched that briefly and found nothing to contradict it. Came across this graph at wikipedia:
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Osama
I dropped off my 4Runner this afternoon for an oil change and decided to use the time at an AT&T store to shop for a new phone.
I was met at the door by the store manager; after a brief wait he led me to a sales consultant, who shook my hand and introduced himself as "Osama." His name tag confirmed that I hadn't misheard him.
He was a strikingly handsome young man, with large soft eyes, a beautiful mouth, dark hair (cut very short), and a fashionably trimmed beard. His face was oval; his skin fair and unblemished; his demeanor gentle and bemused. I felt after he introduced himself that he was waiting for me to gather myself. For a moment I couldn't look at him.
He invited me to browse the phones and told me he was available if I had any questions.
I thought to myself, Questions.
And I wondered most of all at my unwillingness to meet his gaze. That unwillingness passed quickly, but I was surprised by it.
Eventually he sought me out. Soon it became apparent that he was guiding me toward the purchase of an iPhone. He was another young American doing his job.
He might have been right that an iPhone best suits my needs, but I'd already decided—I still don't understand this—that I wasn't going to buy anything from him. I felt disoriented and therefore belligerent. Perhaps it was his beauty. Or his name. Or the conjunction of the two.
Maybe I'll return on Wednesday and allow him to sell me an iPhone. More likely I won't. But not because of him.
Regardless, I wonder: Is there another place in this country where he could continue to use that name? And could he continue to use it at all, even here, if he weren't handsome?
Monday, December 7, 2009
Not-Quite Paradise Not-Yet Lost
As he is no doubt aware (cough), Tony Judt, an eminent British historian, expands brilliantly upon the ideas I attempted to lay out in "Trust and Governance":
What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy?
Judt's superb essay reminds us what the West achieved for itself during the 20th century, and he warns that with the passage of time we're losing our appreciation for the scope of that achievement. Consequently, we now collaborate in its destruction.
An exemplary quote:
But raising taxes requires that we expand our idea of ourselves beyond the individual ego—an expansion that seems increasingly unlikely in a culture obsessed with money, celebrity, and race.
What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy?
Judt's superb essay reminds us what the West achieved for itself during the 20th century, and he warns that with the passage of time we're losing our appreciation for the scope of that achievement. Consequently, we now collaborate in its destruction.
An exemplary quote:
The common theme and universal accomplishment of the neo-Keynesian governments of the postwar era was their remarkable success in curbing inequality. If you compare the gap separating rich and poor, whether by income or assets, in all continental European countries along with Great Britain and the US, you will see that it shrinks dramatically in the generation following 1945.
With greater equality there came other benefits. Over time, the fear of a return to extremist politics—the politics of desperation, the politics of envy, the politics of insecurity—abated. The Western industrialized world entered a halcyon era of prosperous security: a bubble, perhaps, but a comforting bubble in which most people did far better than they could ever have hoped in the past and had good reason to anticipate the future with confidence.
The paradox of the welfare state, and indeed of all the social democratic (and Christian Democratic) states of Europe, was quite simply that their success would over time undermine their appeal. The generation that remembered the 1930s was understandably the most committed to preserving institutions and systems of taxation, social service, and public provision that they saw as bulwarks against a return to the horrors of the past. But their successors—even in Sweden—began to forget why they had sought such security in the first place.
It was social democracy that bound the middle classes to liberal institutions in the wake of World War II. . . . They received in many cases the same welfare assistance and services as the poor: free education, cheap or free medical treatment, public pensions, and the like. In consequence, the European middle class found itself by the 1960s with far greater disposable incomes than ever before, with so many of life's necessities prepaid in tax. And thus the very class that had been so exposed to fear and insecurity in the interwar years was now tightly woven into the postwar democratic consensus.During the 1950s, when the size of the middle class exploded in both Europe and North America, the top tax rate in the United States was 91%. (The history of US tax rates can be seen here.) I'm not suggesting a return to 91%. The tax rates during Reagan's first term seem like a reasonable target. But unless we're willing to tax our wealthiest citizens at a level commensurate with what society gives them, we will continue to dismantle the humane, stable, prosperous societies that we've built "as bulwarks against a return to the horrors of the past."
But raising taxes requires that we expand our idea of ourselves beyond the individual ego—an expansion that seems increasingly unlikely in a culture obsessed with money, celebrity, and race.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Playing Pool
Of pool halls, David Mamet writes:
The name of our pool hall changed three times while I lived there. First it was called Pete's Pool. Then the name was changed to Spanky's—a great name, I thought, and the name that still comes to mind when I think of the place. Shortly before I left Utah, someone, a new owner, changed the name to Ya Buts.
I have no idea what it's called now, or if it still exists.
Because it was possible to drink liquor there, Spanky's required a yearly membership, which was something like $12. You could smoke, too, if you wanted to, and most people did.
The pool hall itself was the second floor of an old building humbled by adjacent, very ugly skyscrapers. Downstairs, some nights, there was live music, usually metal or punk.
Spanky's had eleven pool tables. Only one of them was full-sized; the rest were smaller six-foot tables, which had the formidable advantage of being much easier to play on. The pool hall's floor was warped wood, beer-stained, otherwise gray. During mid-afternoon, which was when we went, the hall got it's light from the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up its north wall. Looking through the windows to the west you could watch the sun set over the Great Salt Lake. In the summer, thunderstorms accumulated over the desert and we would take comfort in their swift approach.
Playing pool, I learned about friendship—about what it means to love a man who is your friend. I still remember looking across the table at my friends and feeling a surge of joy. There's real intimacy around a pool table, alternating between shooting and drinking, with music from the jukebox, some chalk on our hands, and each other's voices. I didn't know then how rare intimacy would be in my life, as I aged.
I never saw an unkind word exchanged in Spanky's, which is unusual for a bar but not, I've learned, for a pool hall. I guess pool's proximity and difficulty promotes civility. In a good pool hall the tables are too close for players at neighboring tables to shoot at the same time in the same area, so you learn to practice deference and to value patience. And one of the game's keenest pleasures is to compliment your opponent when he makes a difficult shot—to applaud, in other words, your opponent's triumphs. I felt greater happiness watching my friends make successful shots than I ever felt making my own. It was if we were collaborators working together to defeat pool's complex geometry.
I learned, too, about the pleasure of drinking. We bought pitchers of beer—mostly Guinness, which is not, I guess, supposed to be served in a pitcher—and drank into late evening. With each pitcher we played less and talked more. All my friends at that time were superb conversationalists. They were exquisitely funny. They were well-read and had traveled. Basically, they were all loving, happy men, in their early thirties, like me, and in love with their women, most days, and either artists or devoted to the arts, and good-looking, in their various ways, which, at the time, for some reason, mattered.
When I was with them, I was absolutely never bored; and they were at their most interesting when we were playing pool.
Sometimes, not often, there would be girls to watch play. There are few sights more erotic than a girl leaning over a pool table, gazing down her cue. Sometimes her shirt comes up off her jeans, exposing her lower back, or falls away from her neck so that looking down her shirt you can see her bra, her breasts, for a moment. The girls would smile while they shot, their hair falling to frame their faces, knowing how they looked. The games around them would stop.
I learned about the Rolling Stones—which is to say I finally came to understand rock&roll—in that pool hall. Spanky's had a great jukebox and we kept it playing the Stones, as much as we could, or Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Cash.
Eventually we started to bring a cigar or two to smoke while we played. Then Brad started bringing cigarettes, so we tried that, despite the fact that none of us, including Brad, were smokers. Brad would put his cigarette between his teeth and the smoke would burn his eyes while he shot. But he insisted on playing with the cigarette in his mouth. Brad was built like Mick Jagger, and he wore big Vasque hiking boots, which seemed while he was smoking to keep him grounded to the floor. He looked like Willem Dafoe or John Malkovich, with their same intelligence in the structure of his face. He was very hard-working at that time in his life, trying to build his own business, and you could see the scope of what he'd undertaken in his eyes while he played.
So I learned about friendship, civility, drinking, conversation, tobacco, and music in a pool hall. That's a hell of a list. I learned, very slowly, to be less religious. And I learned how the transition from afternoon to evening feels when you're happy.
I never really learned to play pool, but I didn't care then and don't care now. I don't play pool anymore; I don't know anyone I would want to play it with.
"People are supposed to gamble here, people are supposed to drink here, people are supposed to spend their days here in pursuit of skill, cunning, comradeship, and money. No one is supposed to be pompous here, or intrusive, or boring: no one will be held unaccountable for the bets they make, or the way that they comport themselves. But if they choose, they can choose to be left alone."I learned about playing pool when I was living in Salt Lake City. My instructors were fellow students from the University of Utah, especially Martin Corless-Smith, a poet from England, with whom I played every Thursday afternoon, just about, for two years. I also played with Brad Wahlquist, my dearest friend at that time, and, later, with David Hawkins, who is still in Utah, raising his family.
The name of our pool hall changed three times while I lived there. First it was called Pete's Pool. Then the name was changed to Spanky's—a great name, I thought, and the name that still comes to mind when I think of the place. Shortly before I left Utah, someone, a new owner, changed the name to Ya Buts.
I have no idea what it's called now, or if it still exists.
Because it was possible to drink liquor there, Spanky's required a yearly membership, which was something like $12. You could smoke, too, if you wanted to, and most people did.
The pool hall itself was the second floor of an old building humbled by adjacent, very ugly skyscrapers. Downstairs, some nights, there was live music, usually metal or punk.
Spanky's had eleven pool tables. Only one of them was full-sized; the rest were smaller six-foot tables, which had the formidable advantage of being much easier to play on. The pool hall's floor was warped wood, beer-stained, otherwise gray. During mid-afternoon, which was when we went, the hall got it's light from the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up its north wall. Looking through the windows to the west you could watch the sun set over the Great Salt Lake. In the summer, thunderstorms accumulated over the desert and we would take comfort in their swift approach.
Playing pool, I learned about friendship—about what it means to love a man who is your friend. I still remember looking across the table at my friends and feeling a surge of joy. There's real intimacy around a pool table, alternating between shooting and drinking, with music from the jukebox, some chalk on our hands, and each other's voices. I didn't know then how rare intimacy would be in my life, as I aged.
I never saw an unkind word exchanged in Spanky's, which is unusual for a bar but not, I've learned, for a pool hall. I guess pool's proximity and difficulty promotes civility. In a good pool hall the tables are too close for players at neighboring tables to shoot at the same time in the same area, so you learn to practice deference and to value patience. And one of the game's keenest pleasures is to compliment your opponent when he makes a difficult shot—to applaud, in other words, your opponent's triumphs. I felt greater happiness watching my friends make successful shots than I ever felt making my own. It was if we were collaborators working together to defeat pool's complex geometry.
I learned, too, about the pleasure of drinking. We bought pitchers of beer—mostly Guinness, which is not, I guess, supposed to be served in a pitcher—and drank into late evening. With each pitcher we played less and talked more. All my friends at that time were superb conversationalists. They were exquisitely funny. They were well-read and had traveled. Basically, they were all loving, happy men, in their early thirties, like me, and in love with their women, most days, and either artists or devoted to the arts, and good-looking, in their various ways, which, at the time, for some reason, mattered.
When I was with them, I was absolutely never bored; and they were at their most interesting when we were playing pool.
Sometimes, not often, there would be girls to watch play. There are few sights more erotic than a girl leaning over a pool table, gazing down her cue. Sometimes her shirt comes up off her jeans, exposing her lower back, or falls away from her neck so that looking down her shirt you can see her bra, her breasts, for a moment. The girls would smile while they shot, their hair falling to frame their faces, knowing how they looked. The games around them would stop.
I learned about the Rolling Stones—which is to say I finally came to understand rock&roll—in that pool hall. Spanky's had a great jukebox and we kept it playing the Stones, as much as we could, or Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Cash.
Eventually we started to bring a cigar or two to smoke while we played. Then Brad started bringing cigarettes, so we tried that, despite the fact that none of us, including Brad, were smokers. Brad would put his cigarette between his teeth and the smoke would burn his eyes while he shot. But he insisted on playing with the cigarette in his mouth. Brad was built like Mick Jagger, and he wore big Vasque hiking boots, which seemed while he was smoking to keep him grounded to the floor. He looked like Willem Dafoe or John Malkovich, with their same intelligence in the structure of his face. He was very hard-working at that time in his life, trying to build his own business, and you could see the scope of what he'd undertaken in his eyes while he played.
So I learned about friendship, civility, drinking, conversation, tobacco, and music in a pool hall. That's a hell of a list. I learned, very slowly, to be less religious. And I learned how the transition from afternoon to evening feels when you're happy.
I never really learned to play pool, but I didn't care then and don't care now. I don't play pool anymore; I don't know anyone I would want to play it with.
Louis Armstrong
“When I blow I think of times and things from outa the past that gives me an image of the tune. Like moving pictures passing in front of my eyes. A town, a chick somewhere back down the line, an old man with no name you seen once in a place you don’t remember.”A nice idea, but it doesn't explain this music:
If you haven't heard Armstrong's original Okey recording of "West End Blues" with his Hot Five, featuring Earl Hines on piano, you haven't heard the single greatest recording in the history of American music and the most influential work of art ever produced in this country. Listening to it this morning, I witnessed once again the invention of modern music, as it happened.
iTunes was on shuffle—when "West End Blues" finished, "Notion," by Kings of Leon, began, and I thought: "There he is. He's still in there." And he will always be, in every note we play, forever.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Spring Semester @ Chabot College
I'm to teach "Reading, Reasoning, and Writing" at Chabot College this spring.
Given Pres. Obama's decision, announced last night, to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, I've decided to focus the course readings on the psychological consequences of war for combat soldiers.
Our primary texts will be:
Shadow of the Sword: A Marine's Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption, by Jeremiah Workman.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, by Jonathan Shay.
Given Pres. Obama's decision, announced last night, to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, I've decided to focus the course readings on the psychological consequences of war for combat soldiers.
Our primary texts will be:
Shadow of the Sword: A Marine's Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption, by Jeremiah Workman.
Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, by Jonathan Shay.
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