The Formality of Occurrence
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Of Divides and Color: 2009 and Beyond
In a commentary piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer last week (Friday, November 6), columnist George Curry uses USA Today/Gallup poll data to paint a bleak picture of America's sense of "race relations." Noting that when Barack Obama was elected president at this time last year, as many as 70% of Americans were "convinced that race relations would improve..." a year later, writes Curry, only about 56% of the country feels hopeful -- the proportion of Americans who felt this way in 1963.
Curry then goes on to examine American opinion about race with respect to the Gates-Crowley "teachable moment" we witnessed this summer. He reports that 30% of African Americans blamed Sgt. Crowley for the incident and only 4% blamed Professor Gates, while 32% of whites blamed Gates and 7% blamed Crowley.
Leaving aside the fact that well over half the country still has hope that racial issues can settle down, and that more than two-thirds of the African and European citizens of this country are not opinionated enough to feel that they know what happened between the professor and the cop, it sure would be nice to see statistics on racial issues that come from bi-racial and mixed race respondents. Or how about American Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans, and Chinese or Vietnamese Americans?
I for one have little hope for journalism and the American media as long as they couch so-called "race related issues" in terms of black vs. white. It is simplistic, divisive, and misses the point completely. This is not a country of two cultural groups. The reality of our situation requires in-depth and thoughtful analysis, something truly lacking in mainstream journalism these days.
Mixed race Americans are not just part black and part white. Some of us are tri-racial; some part Asian and part Hispanic and European and African; some are Japanese and Chinese; some are part Vietnamese, adopted into European American households, and raised by Swedish and Italian nannies. And we have a president who is part African (not African American as the term is generally used) and part European in ancestry. There are also millions of Americans who don't have a clue about their DNA. They think they're "white," "black," "brown," whatever, but they have no proof where they came from.
Is there hope? Can so-called race relations improve in this country? Even with the race bating by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others; even with the Obama-as-Joker posters, those of us who know how ridiculous the very idea of race is -- those of us who see the proof of the lunacy of skin color as a dividing line -- know that a person who has transcended race lives with his family in the White House. The question is no longer one about black vs. white. Evidence of improvement or failure cannot be found in single cases illuminated to the extreme by the media. And until Gallup learns to ask intelligent questions, opinion polls probably aren't going to tell us what we all know: things are changing -- fast. That's why all these right-wing whack jobs are out in the street. They're completely freaked out.
No, as long as you understand that "Yes We Can" applies to our cultural identities along with everything else, we're going to get there, we just don't know where that is yet.
Photo credit: Gary Roberts
Read more! ¶ 4:45 PM 1 comments
In a commentary piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer last week (Friday, November 6), columnist George Curry uses USA Today/Gallup poll data to paint a bleak picture of America's sense of "race relations." Noting that when Barack Obama was elected president at this time last year, as many as 70% of Americans were "convinced that race relations would improve..." a year later, writes Curry, only about 56% of the country feels hopeful -- the proportion of Americans who felt this way in 1963.Curry then goes on to examine American opinion about race with respect to the Gates-Crowley "teachable moment" we witnessed this summer. He reports that 30% of African Americans blamed Sgt. Crowley for the incident and only 4% blamed Professor Gates, while 32% of whites blamed Gates and 7% blamed Crowley.
Leaving aside the fact that well over half the country still has hope that racial issues can settle down, and that more than two-thirds of the African and European citizens of this country are not opinionated enough to feel that they know what happened between the professor and the cop, it sure would be nice to see statistics on racial issues that come from bi-racial and mixed race respondents. Or how about American Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans, and Chinese or Vietnamese Americans?
I for one have little hope for journalism and the American media as long as they couch so-called "race related issues" in terms of black vs. white. It is simplistic, divisive, and misses the point completely. This is not a country of two cultural groups. The reality of our situation requires in-depth and thoughtful analysis, something truly lacking in mainstream journalism these days.
Mixed race Americans are not just part black and part white. Some of us are tri-racial; some part Asian and part Hispanic and European and African; some are Japanese and Chinese; some are part Vietnamese, adopted into European American households, and raised by Swedish and Italian nannies. And we have a president who is part African (not African American as the term is generally used) and part European in ancestry. There are also millions of Americans who don't have a clue about their DNA. They think they're "white," "black," "brown," whatever, but they have no proof where they came from.
Is there hope? Can so-called race relations improve in this country? Even with the race bating by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others; even with the Obama-as-Joker posters, those of us who know how ridiculous the very idea of race is -- those of us who see the proof of the lunacy of skin color as a dividing line -- know that a person who has transcended race lives with his family in the White House. The question is no longer one about black vs. white. Evidence of improvement or failure cannot be found in single cases illuminated to the extreme by the media. And until Gallup learns to ask intelligent questions, opinion polls probably aren't going to tell us what we all know: things are changing -- fast. That's why all these right-wing whack jobs are out in the street. They're completely freaked out.
No, as long as you understand that "Yes We Can" applies to our cultural identities along with everything else, we're going to get there, we just don't know where that is yet.
Photo credit: Gary Roberts
Labels: mixed race, Obama, race relations, racial issues, tri-racial
Read more! ¶ 4:45 PM 1 comments
Monday, October 19, 2009
Comments on Leonard Peltier
I am honored to find that John Trimbach, son of retired special agent in charge (SAC) of the Minnesota FBI offices, Joseph Trimbach, posted a letter to the editor regarding my commentary piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Leonard Peltier's denial of parole. Father and son are co-authors of American Indian Mafia. The letter was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, two weeks after my commentary piece. Go here to read Mr. Trimbach's letter and make sure to read the comments that follow.
Why am I honored? Because regardless of their position, it's important that all intelligent people pay attention to this issue. It's important too that we break up the silence about America's first original sin.
“We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home."
Read more! ¶ 9:41 AM 0 comments
I am honored to find that John Trimbach, son of retired special agent in charge (SAC) of the Minnesota FBI offices, Joseph Trimbach, posted a letter to the editor regarding my commentary piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Leonard Peltier's denial of parole. Father and son are co-authors of American Indian Mafia. The letter was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, two weeks after my commentary piece. Go here to read Mr. Trimbach's letter and make sure to read the comments that follow.Why am I honored? Because regardless of their position, it's important that all intelligent people pay attention to this issue. It's important too that we break up the silence about America's first original sin.
“We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home."
Read more! ¶ 9:41 AM 0 comments
Leonard Peltier: a personal essay
My latest commentary was just published by KotoriMagazine.com, "Leonard Peltier and this Great, Funny Nation." It is really a personal essay, but full of good links and resources.
"To give Leonard Peltier the last decade or two of his life outside of prison, on parole in his home community, would require that this nation acknowledge a sickness that is its original sin."
Read more! ¶ 8:54 AM 0 comments
My latest commentary was just published by KotoriMagazine.com, "Leonard Peltier and this Great, Funny Nation." It is really a personal essay, but full of good links and resources."To give Leonard Peltier the last decade or two of his life outside of prison, on parole in his home community, would require that this nation acknowledge a sickness that is its original sin."
Labels: AIM, Indians, leonard peltier, Native American
Read more! ¶ 8:54 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Something More
Something More (for Marion, October 13, 2009)
An older man with dark features
And an older woman – long brown hair,
Luminous eyes, blue like
A cloudless autumn sky –
Sit in an old wood bed together.
As the audience, we are tired.
They have been speaking to each other
For many days now.
We did not know
For the price of admission
The time spent would be weeks
Here in this theater
Where management has served us meals
And brought hot towels
Down the aisles
And given us breaks for showers
And toilet runs.
The older man looks at the woman,
Says, “This is amazing.”
Slowly she smiles.
The stage fades to black.
We hear sheets rustle.
The slow, sensual wet sound of lips
On skin, whisper kisses,
A quiet chuckle
From the older woman’s throat.
Then silence.
We know this is the silence
Of two lovers,
The embrace
Of what some call true love.
But we also know now
There is something more.
There are just no words to describe it.
-dcb
© Copyright David Biddle, 2009
Read more! ¶ 12:25 PM 0 comments
Something More (for Marion, October 13, 2009)An older man with dark features
And an older woman – long brown hair,
Luminous eyes, blue like
A cloudless autumn sky –
Sit in an old wood bed together.
As the audience, we are tired.
They have been speaking to each other
For many days now.
We did not know
For the price of admission
The time spent would be weeks
Here in this theater
Where management has served us meals
And brought hot towels
Down the aisles
And given us breaks for showers
And toilet runs.
The older man looks at the woman,
Says, “This is amazing.”
Slowly she smiles.
The stage fades to black.
We hear sheets rustle.
The slow, sensual wet sound of lips
On skin, whisper kisses,
A quiet chuckle
From the older woman’s throat.
Then silence.
We know this is the silence
Of two lovers,
The embrace
Of what some call true love.
But we also know now
There is something more.
There are just no words to describe it.
-dcb
© Copyright David Biddle, 2009
Labels: David Biddle, poetry
Read more! ¶ 12:25 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 13, 2009
David Mamet on Race
Today's New York Times contains an excellent essay by the playwright David Mamet called "We Can't Stop Talking About Race in America." The essay is part of The Times' super-sized Arts & Leisure section cataloging all the new cultural events coming this fall and winter. Mamet has a new play coming out this fall called Race.
If you know Mamet, you know that he provides some fearless insights on this subject. Let me offer a few choice quotes to get you to go read the piece:
"Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth."
"Most contemporary debate on race is nothing but sanctimony..."
"The question of the poor drama is 'What is the truth?' but of the better drama, and particularly of tragedy, 'What are the lies?'"
In light of all the moments we've had this year: with Barrack Obama's inauguration; the Valley Swim Club in Huntingdon Valley, PA; the Gates-Crowley face off; madding crowds wielding pictures of our president sporting a little Hitler moustache; and the troubling denial of parole for Leonard Peltier -- a man many feel embodies America's need to pretend its indigenous people do not exist --Mamet's essay says a lot. What is the truth? What are the lies?
Hopefully the answers to these questions will become clear soon. If not in Mamet's new play, then maybe in the drama and tragedy of the life we live moving into our future. We've got a little more than seven years to go...if you know what I mean.
Photo: David Shankbone, from http://www.broadway.tv
Read more! ¶ 6:43 PM 0 comments
Today's New York Times contains an excellent essay by the playwright David Mamet called "We Can't Stop Talking About Race in America." The essay is part of The Times' super-sized Arts & Leisure section cataloging all the new cultural events coming this fall and winter. Mamet has a new play coming out this fall called Race.If you know Mamet, you know that he provides some fearless insights on this subject. Let me offer a few choice quotes to get you to go read the piece:
"Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth."
"Most contemporary debate on race is nothing but sanctimony..."
"The question of the poor drama is 'What is the truth?' but of the better drama, and particularly of tragedy, 'What are the lies?'"
In light of all the moments we've had this year: with Barrack Obama's inauguration; the Valley Swim Club in Huntingdon Valley, PA; the Gates-Crowley face off; madding crowds wielding pictures of our president sporting a little Hitler moustache; and the troubling denial of parole for Leonard Peltier -- a man many feel embodies America's need to pretend its indigenous people do not exist --Mamet's essay says a lot. What is the truth? What are the lies?
Hopefully the answers to these questions will become clear soon. If not in Mamet's new play, then maybe in the drama and tragedy of the life we live moving into our future. We've got a little more than seven years to go...if you know what I mean.
Photo: David Shankbone, from http://www.broadway.tv
Labels: david mamet, leonard peltier, racism
Read more! ¶ 6:43 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Confessions of a FaceBook Commentor
On and off today, I took part in an interesting though distressing set of comments at a FaceBook site that were spurred by this weekend's bizarre confrontation and arrest of Louis Henry Gates by Cambridge police. Mark Cohen, an erudite Pennsylvania State Representative got the ball rolling by posting a link to his commentary on this issue at the Daily Kos. See Mark's piece here. It's an excellent drawing together of a number of the more bizarre race-related incidents that we've seen 'round here over the past several weeks.
The kurfuffle coming out of this Gates incident is the question of whether it is a blatant example of racial profiling. I usually try not to get involved in commenting on people's posts to their FaceBook sites, but I really liked what Mark wrote and so I paid attention to other people's comments on and off as their additions rolled into my email box. By the end of the day there are 40 comments and the entire discussion seemed to have turned into some folks claiming that racism is an evil that must be confronted wherever it is found in America, while others were arguing that perhaps acknowledging racism is a way of making it real.
Anyone who knows me or who has read this little blog of mine will know that I do not buy into racism on any level and that I choose to believe that life is about people living in the world as individuals. I strongly believe that folks cannot speak intelligently about race and prejudice because these issues are based on false premises, lies, and the funk of group hypnotism.
There is no question that there is a power system at play in America, and there is a case to be made that it is run by "whites," but trust me, there are no "whites" in power. This is the 21st century. Who the hell is white? Generally, those in power are the ones with educations, particularly law degrees, money, connections, and hustle. You're only as powerless as you feel. If you're going to argue with cops, they're going to more often than not take you in for a sit down visit and call to your parents or your lawyer.
Most important though, all of this points me towards music, comedy and intelligent poetics. Take Gil Scott-Heron's little ditty that I ran into this morning at Peter Rothberg's blog at The Nation Whitey On the Moon. I don't agree with the "Whitey" sentiment Mr. Scott-Heron so expertly wields, but it's important to pay attention to his message anyway: exactly what are we spending money on in this country?
My final word to Professor Gates, a man whose thoughts and persona we should all deeply love?
Dude, be pissed that the cops messed with you in your home! Don't let other people's stupidity work to manufacture and sustain the ugliness of racism.
Read more! ¶ 5:08 PM 0 comments
On and off today, I took part in an interesting though distressing set of comments at a FaceBook site that were spurred by this weekend's bizarre confrontation and arrest of Louis Henry Gates by Cambridge police. Mark Cohen, an erudite Pennsylvania State Representative got the ball rolling by posting a link to his commentary on this issue at the Daily Kos. See Mark's piece here. It's an excellent drawing together of a number of the more bizarre race-related incidents that we've seen 'round here over the past several weeks.The kurfuffle coming out of this Gates incident is the question of whether it is a blatant example of racial profiling. I usually try not to get involved in commenting on people's posts to their FaceBook sites, but I really liked what Mark wrote and so I paid attention to other people's comments on and off as their additions rolled into my email box. By the end of the day there are 40 comments and the entire discussion seemed to have turned into some folks claiming that racism is an evil that must be confronted wherever it is found in America, while others were arguing that perhaps acknowledging racism is a way of making it real.
Anyone who knows me or who has read this little blog of mine will know that I do not buy into racism on any level and that I choose to believe that life is about people living in the world as individuals. I strongly believe that folks cannot speak intelligently about race and prejudice because these issues are based on false premises, lies, and the funk of group hypnotism.
There is no question that there is a power system at play in America, and there is a case to be made that it is run by "whites," but trust me, there are no "whites" in power. This is the 21st century. Who the hell is white? Generally, those in power are the ones with educations, particularly law degrees, money, connections, and hustle. You're only as powerless as you feel. If you're going to argue with cops, they're going to more often than not take you in for a sit down visit and call to your parents or your lawyer.
Most important though, all of this points me towards music, comedy and intelligent poetics. Take Gil Scott-Heron's little ditty that I ran into this morning at Peter Rothberg's blog at The Nation Whitey On the Moon. I don't agree with the "Whitey" sentiment Mr. Scott-Heron so expertly wields, but it's important to pay attention to his message anyway: exactly what are we spending money on in this country?
My final word to Professor Gates, a man whose thoughts and persona we should all deeply love?
Dude, be pissed that the cops messed with you in your home! Don't let other people's stupidity work to manufacture and sustain the ugliness of racism.
Read more! ¶ 5:08 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 21, 2008
We Love You David Foster Wallace...Rest In Peace
This twisted appreciation of David Foster Wallace began as an email to my good friend Paula. I've edited it a bit since sending it to her, but for the most part it remains the same as I wrote it struggling to survive the weirdest illness I've ever had. (Click the photo to the left and it will take you to a short story published by the New Yorker in 2007 called "Good People.").
By now you've heard that David Foster Wallace hung himself to death on Friday, September 12th. Around that time, I was just beginning a four-day, all out defense against a flu virus the likes of which have never been seen -- literally, it would appear, since my name is now on the first page of the CDC's list of 2008 flu-season illnesses treated in a hospital.
I would like to believe the wild and crazy spirit of DFW may have had a role in things attacking my body (although I know he would have no reason to do so). I knew nothing of his demise until Monday the 15th after a Sunday afternoon in the ER and the embarrassment of realizing that I wasn't actually going to die (the embarrassment coming when my wife reported that she'd paid the $200 ER co-pay and that it was all right, but still if I could just learn to be sick a bit better without suffering quite so much we would have saved enough money to pay for the Orkin man to do a full sweep and extermination series on our dilapidated house).
During much of my illness from Friday night through Sunday night I struggled with long moments of delirium. My illness was made all that much worse by a sudden onset of sleep apnea, meaning that every time I tried to doze off I would slowly stop breathing, waking suddenly to the physical panic of suffocation. This lasted for almost two days until I finally decided that I didn't care about the $200 and that I needed at least the solace of overworked nurses (still never failing to make me feel the brilliance of their competence and the charisma of their healing personalities) and young ER docs spread so thin you can see a film of peanut butter just under the stubble on their faces.
I think DFW would have been fascinated by what happened to me on Friday night just as this virus was really kicking into high gear. I was lying on our couch, having dozed on and off through David Letterman and Craig Ferguson's "Late Late" show. This was weird enough. In my super-psychotic state both shows annoyed me immensely. I began to worry that I'd finally gone beyond Schtick. That's a terrifying feeling even if you question it from the get-go because you know you're actually just moronically feeble due to a bunch of microscopic parasites looking to turn your brain into a frothing megalopolis. "I've gone beyond Schtick! Oy, fuck me!" Only David Foster Wallace would truly understand the path of fear I had stepped onto. Going beyond Schtick leaves irony behind as well; going beyond Schtick is a step into the unknown.
All of this was through the slow and gradual incremental anti-zen fermentation of viral LOVE that ultimately resulted in this little case of sleep apnea that I took on. By the end of Ferguson's floggity "Late, Late," I was floating in and out of sleep in a stupor and fog, sick as a door mouse crushed by barefooted clowns at a combined septuagenarian orgy and an octogenarian S&M-for-late-comers coming out party.
When you're as sick as I was, sleep is the only heaven. But when every few minutes you begin to doze, feeling nearly pain free, and then you awaken first to the sense that you're drowning in cotton and warm water, (can't breathe mother fucker!), and then you realize you can, but oh My God how absolutely horrible it is to feel my body, and what the fuck is on TV?...What the?... perfect people sitting around a room, driving in perfect cars? I heard them just as I was falling asleep: insanely brilliant banter, socially astounding quips and metaphorical lunges, sexy voices, a plot that can turn a lag bolt under a summer deck in Maine. Brilliance!
I think: David Foster Wallace, are you writing TV shows? I've never seen anything like this. It's beyond Mamet because its not trying to be anything important or thick with blood and turmoil.
I think these small but important thoughts about this Foster Wallace TV creation, understanding that I'm really just captured by a crude, multiplying substance roaming through my body, turning it into a home, and then I'm drowning again. It comes as a shock every time. Ub lub lub lub, I hate...and then I look up and everyone on the show has stopped speaking. They're sitting there or standing in utter silence. I barely have time to register something is wrong, then I'm slipping into a daze again; I hear the intelligent dialog, feel the effect of profundity, and then I'm in a state of paranoid fear, I'm dying! They come up again, only this time the TV flashes a montage of close and wide-angle versions of these people's lives, they're not saying a thing, I'm wondering and breathing for my life and then I'm under again thinking maybe it's them trying to suffocate me and the reason they're not talking is that they're waiting to see if I'm just going to die right there.
This went on for about an hour. I didn't realize until the next day that I wasn't really sleeping but just letting the virus play with my health. Germs are very intelligent, I think, lying there in agony with my beautiful, healthy wife taking my temperature. I'm hoping they're not as intelligent as my wife.
The most frightening moment of that night came near the end of the show. I vaulted confused out of my swamp, snuffing and gasping, angry really, and they were all there in a room on the set, just staring at me with a hint of sadness on their faces. That's when I knew I needed to turn the TV to ESPN reruns of Sports Center. Nothing is more soothing than hearing the same Schtick over and over when it is the importance of sports that is at stake. There is no way to go beyond ESPN Schtick.
Three days later, randomly it seemed at first, I read on my Salon.com an email posting of DFW'S self-hanging. "This is not real," I thought. "How can you joke about something like this?" He is invincible! How can you be a God of Reality, a maker of Truth like no one else living in this language, and do such a thing. Surely, a joke...I was finally on the mend. Turns out I needed a double dose of Tylenol along with a double dose of Motrin. I'd only been taking Motrin in 200 mg tabs. Should have been 400 all along and taken with the Tylenol, not staggered, which was just a schedule that seemed more healthy. My wife never said, that's an expensive lesson, $200 to learn that you need 1000 mg of Tylenol and 400 mg of Motrin, but she didn't have to either. I love my wife. David Foster Wallace could not have killed himself. I feel so much better. But he had...
We've lost one of only four great writers living in America today. This will piss a lot of you off, but I don't care. Barry Hannah, Don DeLillo, and Annie Dillard are the other three. DFW was the tops though. He was our Michael Jordon, our Muhammad Ali. And no one, except us hacks who had aspirations of these four's absolute human genius, American genius, no one understood how important David's work was and how he was preparing this next generation to fly finally beyond post-modern twittery. I read Infinite Jest on the toilet only. I figure with over 1200 pages it will take me at least 600 sessions on that toilet. I have Oblivion and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men next to my bed. I get false erections whenever I find a new essay, interview, or story by him in general media. How could anyone be so damned amazing as a writer? How could anyone tell the truth so well about being an American with a brain? How could anyone actually think you're supposed try to tell the truth...not the literary truth but the raw up the butt truth, the sense of being a turd on the way down, sad, so sad...
I had intended for years to write to DFW after reading an interview in which he talked about "the click" and honesty and good writing being about dying in order to move the reader; that good writing is about really giving something to the reader -- de-egoized; that there may be some writer out there who has gone beyond irony, a writer who uses sincerity as his tool, who brings back in the flush of life as lived through love. I wanted to write to him to tell him that I think that's what I've been doing because I can't even define what irony is and it makes sense, because for every great piece of fiction I've ever written I've received nothing but rejection. I was going to ask him if he might read my very long, sad novel about confused male sexuality. It would have been pathetic, I know. He is four years younger than me and I'm kind of seeing him as a god (a King really), but there you have it. By now, I would hope you'd expect something as childish as that from me. It's not my childishness though. It's his greatness. I'm willing to grovel at the feet of someone whose understanding of American literature was the new beginning we all wanted, even back there in 1977 when it became clear that Ken Kesey did not want to write anymore. We wanted something. I kept looking. I kept trying. Roth, Oates, Bellow, Salinger, Ford, Cheever, Munro -- shit the list goes on and on. You can't imagine how many girls I've picked up with the line, "When are we going to find the next Fitzgerald, Kerouac, or Hemingway? When? No, no, no, all of these you list are derivative, realist, bullshit."
What would I say to DFW now, other than what I've already said here? Only one thing, a
nd I mean it from the bottom of my heart: I love you David Foster Wallace. I love you and we're in deep shit now without your navigating system and your mapping of the social mind lost amongst the objects. I love you David Foster Wallace, and thank you.
And, no, I never picked up a girl with a line about the poor state of writing in America. Only you, David Foster Wallace, could have pulled something like that off.
Check out video of a 1997 interview with Charlie Rose.
Read more! ¶ 9:51 PM 0 comments
This twisted appreciation of David Foster Wallace began as an email to my good friend Paula. I've edited it a bit since sending it to her, but for the most part it remains the same as I wrote it struggling to survive the weirdest illness I've ever had. (Click the photo to the left and it will take you to a short story published by the New Yorker in 2007 called "Good People.").By now you've heard that David Foster Wallace hung himself to death on Friday, September 12th. Around that time, I was just beginning a four-day, all out defense against a flu virus the likes of which have never been seen -- literally, it would appear, since my name is now on the first page of the CDC's list of 2008 flu-season illnesses treated in a hospital.
I would like to believe the wild and crazy spirit of DFW may have had a role in things attacking my body (although I know he would have no reason to do so). I knew nothing of his demise until Monday the 15th after a Sunday afternoon in the ER and the embarrassment of realizing that I wasn't actually going to die (the embarrassment coming when my wife reported that she'd paid the $200 ER co-pay and that it was all right, but still if I could just learn to be sick a bit better without suffering quite so much we would have saved enough money to pay for the Orkin man to do a full sweep and extermination series on our dilapidated house).
During much of my illness from Friday night through Sunday night I struggled with long moments of delirium. My illness was made all that much worse by a sudden onset of sleep apnea, meaning that every time I tried to doze off I would slowly stop breathing, waking suddenly to the physical panic of suffocation. This lasted for almost two days until I finally decided that I didn't care about the $200 and that I needed at least the solace of overworked nurses (still never failing to make me feel the brilliance of their competence and the charisma of their healing personalities) and young ER docs spread so thin you can see a film of peanut butter just under the stubble on their faces.
I think DFW would have been fascinated by what happened to me on Friday night just as this virus was really kicking into high gear. I was lying on our couch, having dozed on and off through David Letterman and Craig Ferguson's "Late Late" show. This was weird enough. In my super-psychotic state both shows annoyed me immensely. I began to worry that I'd finally gone beyond Schtick. That's a terrifying feeling even if you question it from the get-go because you know you're actually just moronically feeble due to a bunch of microscopic parasites looking to turn your brain into a frothing megalopolis. "I've gone beyond Schtick! Oy, fuck me!" Only David Foster Wallace would truly understand the path of fear I had stepped onto. Going beyond Schtick leaves irony behind as well; going beyond Schtick is a step into the unknown.
All of this was through the slow and gradual incremental anti-zen fermentation of viral LOVE that ultimately resulted in this little case of sleep apnea that I took on. By the end of Ferguson's floggity "Late, Late," I was floating in and out of sleep in a stupor and fog, sick as a door mouse crushed by barefooted clowns at a combined septuagenarian orgy and an octogenarian S&M-for-late-comers coming out party.
When you're as sick as I was, sleep is the only heaven. But when every few minutes you begin to doze, feeling nearly pain free, and then you awaken first to the sense that you're drowning in cotton and warm water, (can't breathe mother fucker!), and then you realize you can, but oh My God how absolutely horrible it is to feel my body, and what the fuck is on TV?...What the?... perfect people sitting around a room, driving in perfect cars? I heard them just as I was falling asleep: insanely brilliant banter, socially astounding quips and metaphorical lunges, sexy voices, a plot that can turn a lag bolt under a summer deck in Maine. Brilliance!
I think: David Foster Wallace, are you writing TV shows? I've never seen anything like this. It's beyond Mamet because its not trying to be anything important or thick with blood and turmoil.
I think these small but important thoughts about this Foster Wallace TV creation, understanding that I'm really just captured by a crude, multiplying substance roaming through my body, turning it into a home, and then I'm drowning again. It comes as a shock every time. Ub lub lub lub, I hate...and then I look up and everyone on the show has stopped speaking. They're sitting there or standing in utter silence. I barely have time to register something is wrong, then I'm slipping into a daze again; I hear the intelligent dialog, feel the effect of profundity, and then I'm in a state of paranoid fear, I'm dying! They come up again, only this time the TV flashes a montage of close and wide-angle versions of these people's lives, they're not saying a thing, I'm wondering and breathing for my life and then I'm under again thinking maybe it's them trying to suffocate me and the reason they're not talking is that they're waiting to see if I'm just going to die right there.
This went on for about an hour. I didn't realize until the next day that I wasn't really sleeping but just letting the virus play with my health. Germs are very intelligent, I think, lying there in agony with my beautiful, healthy wife taking my temperature. I'm hoping they're not as intelligent as my wife.
The most frightening moment of that night came near the end of the show. I vaulted confused out of my swamp, snuffing and gasping, angry really, and they were all there in a room on the set, just staring at me with a hint of sadness on their faces. That's when I knew I needed to turn the TV to ESPN reruns of Sports Center. Nothing is more soothing than hearing the same Schtick over and over when it is the importance of sports that is at stake. There is no way to go beyond ESPN Schtick.
Three days later, randomly it seemed at first, I read on my Salon.com an email posting of DFW'S self-hanging. "This is not real," I thought. "How can you joke about something like this?" He is invincible! How can you be a God of Reality, a maker of Truth like no one else living in this language, and do such a thing. Surely, a joke...I was finally on the mend. Turns out I needed a double dose of Tylenol along with a double dose of Motrin. I'd only been taking Motrin in 200 mg tabs. Should have been 400 all along and taken with the Tylenol, not staggered, which was just a schedule that seemed more healthy. My wife never said, that's an expensive lesson, $200 to learn that you need 1000 mg of Tylenol and 400 mg of Motrin, but she didn't have to either. I love my wife. David Foster Wallace could not have killed himself. I feel so much better. But he had...
We've lost one of only four great writers living in America today. This will piss a lot of you off, but I don't care. Barry Hannah, Don DeLillo, and Annie Dillard are the other three. DFW was the tops though. He was our Michael Jordon, our Muhammad Ali. And no one, except us hacks who had aspirations of these four's absolute human genius, American genius, no one understood how important David's work was and how he was preparing this next generation to fly finally beyond post-modern twittery. I read Infinite Jest on the toilet only. I figure with over 1200 pages it will take me at least 600 sessions on that toilet. I have Oblivion and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men next to my bed. I get false erections whenever I find a new essay, interview, or story by him in general media. How could anyone be so damned amazing as a writer? How could anyone tell the truth so well about being an American with a brain? How could anyone actually think you're supposed try to tell the truth...not the literary truth but the raw up the butt truth, the sense of being a turd on the way down, sad, so sad...
I had intended for years to write to DFW after reading an interview in which he talked about "the click" and honesty and good writing being about dying in order to move the reader; that good writing is about really giving something to the reader -- de-egoized; that there may be some writer out there who has gone beyond irony, a writer who uses sincerity as his tool, who brings back in the flush of life as lived through love. I wanted to write to him to tell him that I think that's what I've been doing because I can't even define what irony is and it makes sense, because for every great piece of fiction I've ever written I've received nothing but rejection. I was going to ask him if he might read my very long, sad novel about confused male sexuality. It would have been pathetic, I know. He is four years younger than me and I'm kind of seeing him as a god (a King really), but there you have it. By now, I would hope you'd expect something as childish as that from me. It's not my childishness though. It's his greatness. I'm willing to grovel at the feet of someone whose understanding of American literature was the new beginning we all wanted, even back there in 1977 when it became clear that Ken Kesey did not want to write anymore. We wanted something. I kept looking. I kept trying. Roth, Oates, Bellow, Salinger, Ford, Cheever, Munro -- shit the list goes on and on. You can't imagine how many girls I've picked up with the line, "When are we going to find the next Fitzgerald, Kerouac, or Hemingway? When? No, no, no, all of these you list are derivative, realist, bullshit."
What would I say to DFW now, other than what I've already said here? Only one thing, a
nd I mean it from the bottom of my heart: I love you David Foster Wallace. I love you and we're in deep shit now without your navigating system and your mapping of the social mind lost amongst the objects. I love you David Foster Wallace, and thank you.And, no, I never picked up a girl with a line about the poor state of writing in America. Only you, David Foster Wallace, could have pulled something like that off.
Check out video of a 1997 interview with Charlie Rose.
Labels: David Foster Wallace, DFW, writers in America
Read more! ¶ 9:51 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
What is Going to Be Our Future?
"Confronted with a choice between saying no and saying yes, Americans are going to say yes -- and in the process, show themselves and the world that America is still a place capable of reinventing itself."
Gary Kamiya. March 13, 2008
"Poetry vs. Fear"
Photos above are taken from a Daily Kos entry in early March charging that the Clinton campaign doctored a photo of Obama to make him appear darker.
Read more! ¶ 10:42 PM 0 comments
"Confronted with a choice between saying no and saying yes, Americans are going to say yes -- and in the process, show themselves and the world that America is still a place capable of reinventing itself."Gary Kamiya. March 13, 2008
"Poetry vs. Fear"
Photos above are taken from a Daily Kos entry in early March charging that the Clinton campaign doctored a photo of Obama to make him appear darker.
Read more! ¶ 10:42 PM 0 comments
Out of Admiration
"In fact, I would venture to predict that the number of Americans who will vote for Obama because he's black -- out of admiration for his achievements and character, to prove to themselves they're not prejudiced, to prove to the world that America is not prejudiced, to effect a historic change -- will be greater than the number of Americans who will vote against him for the same reason."
Gary Kamiya, Salon, May 13, 2008, "Poetry vs. Fear"
If you think he's going down, you're UnAmerican.
Read more! ¶ 10:26 PM 0 comments
"In fact, I would venture to predict that the number of Americans who will vote for Obama because he's black -- out of admiration for his achievements and character, to prove to themselves they're not prejudiced, to prove to the world that America is not prejudiced, to effect a historic change -- will be greater than the number of Americans who will vote against him for the same reason."Gary Kamiya, Salon, May 13, 2008, "Poetry vs. Fear"
If you think he's going down, you're UnAmerican.
Read more! ¶ 10:26 PM 0 comments
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Pondering Baseball's Purity
Go to Hitting with Wood to see my new baseball blog and to read my editorial published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the metal bat controversy.
Stay tuned for more commentary on racial confusion in America.
Read more! ¶ 4:11 PM 0 comments
Go to Hitting with Wood to see my new baseball blog and to read my editorial published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the metal bat controversy.Stay tuned for more commentary on racial confusion in America.
Read more! ¶ 4:11 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Beyond Prejudice and Stupidity
Race is boiling up again in the collective conscience of public media and viewership. Michael 'Kramer' Richards' comedy rampage got things going in grand style. Joe Biden kind of goofed his way into heating up our national confusion with his improvisational riff on Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American [candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean". But Biden is by no means alone in coming across as a twit (I sat and chatted with Biden and his mother once at a bus stop in Wilmington, Delaware, and I know the man is not a twit and that he certainly deserves to be considered a strong contender for President of this country). As you will see in the links contained in the short essay below, the foot-in-mouth syndrome is growing with a fervor. Sadly, it's not just liberalish people of European descent who are letting loose.
******************************
Beyond Prejudice and Stupidity
I am not yet convinced that I will be voting for Barack Obama in the primaries next year. It is too early to tell anything about this man's hardcore ability to make tough decisions or to perform the demanding work of a statesman. I'm tired of liberal pandering and compromise. I'm tired of politically correct candidates mouthing the platitudes of the past 45-50 years. Substance, fearlessness, and truth about our future and how we're going to get there is all that matters now. Does Obama have the goods? We'll see...
All that said, it is very likely that we are about to begin a new chapter in the country's long history of presidential elections that will be as fascinating and breathless and full of wonder as any in our 231 year story. Barack Obama glistens and vibrates right now with positive force and charisma, the likes of which we have not seen since John Kennedy. Historically, the parallels between these two men should be carefully examined. Eloquent, thoughtful, truly inspiring leaders are few and far between for this nation -- for this world. Will Obama rise to the level of our one and only Irish Catholic President with that intoxicating Camelot glint in his eye? Only time (and the media and dirty politics) will tell. The best hint of success right now is how clearly so many people want to see him succeed.
With regard to the manner in which race will shape this man's candidacy and this country's view of itself, as a people we have a dilemma. Race is such a false and twisted social poetics. Words are ionically charged to maintain a state of confusion all the way around. The majority of us have, indeed, moved above and beyond prejudice and stupidity, but it is still virtually impossible to speak about racialism without being offensive to someone or sounding dim, insensitive, or silly. This endless national discourse should be beneath us by now and yet black and white, brown, yellow, red, blue, green, chartreuse, virtually anyone who seeks to speak about this issue manages to perpetuate a spiralling vortex of half-truth, finger pointing, and Othering. It is suffocating and stifling to continue to go to this place...and very dangerous. And yet it continues, and so, many are trying to pull Obama into the fray.
How this very young Presidential candidate responds to the nation's intense desire to pull him into the discussion about race may well tell us what kind of man he is. Barack Obama, like most of mixed descent, knows how pointless this talk of skin color and origin is. He has spent his adult life trying to lead people (just people) and shape the world into a better place. If he is to become the next President of the United States, he will be carrying all of us on his back. He will be leading us despite ourselves. It will be one of the more Herculean socio-political feats this country has witnessed in many, many years.
And then the hard part will begin for all of us, because for one man to move us so far above and beyond the twisted social poetics of today, means that he will then have to move us into our future where we actually begin to solve real problems and seek to grapple again with the promise of this country's ideals and principles set forth so many years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Photo credit: www.barackobama.com
Read more! ¶ 9:49 AM 0 comments
Race is boiling up again in the collective conscience of public media and viewership. Michael 'Kramer' Richards' comedy rampage got things going in grand style. Joe Biden kind of goofed his way into heating up our national confusion with his improvisational riff on Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American [candidate] who is articulate and bright and clean". But Biden is by no means alone in coming across as a twit (I sat and chatted with Biden and his mother once at a bus stop in Wilmington, Delaware, and I know the man is not a twit and that he certainly deserves to be considered a strong contender for President of this country). As you will see in the links contained in the short essay below, the foot-in-mouth syndrome is growing with a fervor. Sadly, it's not just liberalish people of European descent who are letting loose.******************************
Beyond Prejudice and Stupidity
I am not yet convinced that I will be voting for Barack Obama in the primaries next year. It is too early to tell anything about this man's hardcore ability to make tough decisions or to perform the demanding work of a statesman. I'm tired of liberal pandering and compromise. I'm tired of politically correct candidates mouthing the platitudes of the past 45-50 years. Substance, fearlessness, and truth about our future and how we're going to get there is all that matters now. Does Obama have the goods? We'll see...
All that said, it is very likely that we are about to begin a new chapter in the country's long history of presidential elections that will be as fascinating and breathless and full of wonder as any in our 231 year story. Barack Obama glistens and vibrates right now with positive force and charisma, the likes of which we have not seen since John Kennedy. Historically, the parallels between these two men should be carefully examined. Eloquent, thoughtful, truly inspiring leaders are few and far between for this nation -- for this world. Will Obama rise to the level of our one and only Irish Catholic President with that intoxicating Camelot glint in his eye? Only time (and the media and dirty politics) will tell. The best hint of success right now is how clearly so many people want to see him succeed.
With regard to the manner in which race will shape this man's candidacy and this country's view of itself, as a people we have a dilemma. Race is such a false and twisted social poetics. Words are ionically charged to maintain a state of confusion all the way around. The majority of us have, indeed, moved above and beyond prejudice and stupidity, but it is still virtually impossible to speak about racialism without being offensive to someone or sounding dim, insensitive, or silly. This endless national discourse should be beneath us by now and yet black and white, brown, yellow, red, blue, green, chartreuse, virtually anyone who seeks to speak about this issue manages to perpetuate a spiralling vortex of half-truth, finger pointing, and Othering. It is suffocating and stifling to continue to go to this place...and very dangerous. And yet it continues, and so, many are trying to pull Obama into the fray.
How this very young Presidential candidate responds to the nation's intense desire to pull him into the discussion about race may well tell us what kind of man he is. Barack Obama, like most of mixed descent, knows how pointless this talk of skin color and origin is. He has spent his adult life trying to lead people (just people) and shape the world into a better place. If he is to become the next President of the United States, he will be carrying all of us on his back. He will be leading us despite ourselves. It will be one of the more Herculean socio-political feats this country has witnessed in many, many years.
And then the hard part will begin for all of us, because for one man to move us so far above and beyond the twisted social poetics of today, means that he will then have to move us into our future where we actually begin to solve real problems and seek to grapple again with the promise of this country's ideals and principles set forth so many years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Photo credit: www.barackobama.com
Labels: Barack Obama, charisma, elections, Kennedy, liberal, mixed-race, racism
Read more! ¶ 9:49 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Mr. Inevitable
An essay by Gary Kamiya in Salon.com today, "Me and Mr. Bonds," (click on the title link above), takes an interesting look at the moral dilemma that Barry Bonds will present us next season as he moves towards breaking Hank Aaron's career home run record of 755 (Bonds is at 734 right now). As most people know, Barry Bonds has, along with many other modern day sluggers, been accused of using steroids, growth hormones and other performance enhancing drugs in the last few years running up to Major League Baseball finally banning them outright. To put a fine head on things, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada's Game of Shadows presents so-called definitive evidence that Bonds knew exactly what he was doing.
Kamiya is a San Francisco Giants fan and a Bonds lover. He openly, and humorously, presents some of the basic excuses people are making for the beleagured slugger, and teases us with pronouncements that are somewhat nose-thumbing in posture, but pulls back admitting that, in his own words, he's "...full of shit" in several parts of the essay.
I was hoping Mr. Kamiya would get us baseball fans over the moral hump that most people don't even seem to be able to see yet. It's good that he makes the hump visible at least, but he should have gone all the way. There is no question this is one of the true conundrums sports fans have ever faced--especially those of us who love the game of baseball more than life itself.
I was surprised, however, that no mention was made by Kamiya of the structural changes in the game that sort of detract from all of the offensive records we've seen since the late 1960s. Dropping the official height of the mound seems to me to be one of the more obvious asterisk producers I can think of. After the Year of the Pitcher (1968) baseball required mounds to go from 15 inches down to 10.
Although it's not true of all ball parks, there's no question that fields are shrinking. Most of the new parks have power alleys designed for fan appreciation first and big muscled boppers. Rumors about a juiced ball are always ebbing and flowing as well. Who knows?
And what about the equipment? In the early days of the game they didn't even have home run fences. If you hit a bomb, you just ran like a bat-out-of-hell and legged it for all you could get. Gloves weren't as well made either, nor bats, and the courage it took to stand in there on an inside pitch when you didn't have a helmet (take a look at photos of Babe Ruth or even Ted Williams at the plate) is something we all forget--not to mention the fact that no one used elbow, wrist, and shin armor.
As I write, rumors begin to crop up that Bonds may be headed to the Oakland A's next year -- an American League team -- where more than likely old Barry will become a designated hitter extraordinaire. One has to wonder how many more homers Ruth or Aaron would have hit had they been provided with such a luxury.
And speaking of Ted Williams and moral character, most of the real baseball people I know don't give a damn about Ruth's old record, Aaron's current one, or Bonds and his enhanced possibilities. Everyone knows that Ted Williams, The Splendid Splinter, gave nearly 5 seasons of his career, from the age of 22 to 27 (kind of prime years) to join the military as a volunteer and defend this country in World War II and the Korean War. Five years is about a quarter of his major league sojourn. Williams ended his career in his last at-bat with his 521st homerun. He is number 15 on the all-time list. He'd be right up there near the top if they'd had the DH and he'd not been so patriotic.
Finally, of course, is the problem of modern professional baseball and it's 30+ teams versus the "good old days" when there were two leagues with 8-10 teams a piece. Those who made it up to The Bigs were truly ready back there in the Golden Age. Nowadays, and we all know this, a good 30-40% of the pitchers just aren't up to the level we want them to be. I don't know the statistics, but I'd like to see a study done on who Bonds is hitting his homers off of--(McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro and all the others supposedly disgraced by the game as well).
The point here is that if the moral issue about performance enhancing drugs comes down to the idea that some players are cheating and others are not, that's one thing. But if you're concern is about whether a performance-enhanced Bonds should get credit for breaking Hank Aaron's record for lifetime home runs, you can relax because Aaron hit practically every homer (though not all) in the era of bigger parks, less questionable balls, and taller mounds (and for that matter, higher grade pitching overall). In this regard, there's no way to take much of this record-mania very seriously. Post 1968 is a different era and there's just no comparison (I won't even go into the argument comparing Aaron's feat to Ruth's engenders, except to point out that a segregated pre-Jackie Robinson sport meant that Ruth never faced some of the best pitchers of his day but Hammerin' Hank got to look at pitches from Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Mudcat Grant, Al Downing, and Dock Ellis--to name just a few--regularly). And I would imagine even Hammerin' Hank would tip his cap to Ted Williams and admit that his record and pretty much every other hitter in the 500 club should have an asterisk next to their names pointing out that Ted Williams service for his country makes all these numbers rather anti-climactic and flaccid.
But let's go to the question of cheating by using chemicals, because regardless of records, that's the real question. I am a 48-year-old squash player whose body has broken down. Five years ago I competed one night in a club match against a 17-year-old whiz kid (ranked #2 in the country in his age group). I stayed close for the first two games of our best-of-five match, but half-way into the third game my body began to turn into rubber and I was sucking wind like the old, feeble man I had just realized I was. I lost the match 3-1. In the final game I didn't get a single point.
These days I content myself with long walks in the woods, hitting the ball around with other old farts, and working out on the court by myself doing drills and trying to learn new shots. My days of intense competition are over. It is a sad, sad reality to face if you are a committed athlete.
Add to my situation $15-20 million a year (not that anyone would) for another few years, and I assure you I would have no problem getting help from anyone who had a "cure." In fact, I'm not sure whether there's anyone in this country who would not do what old Barry has done. (People make asses out of themselves on TV all the time for far less money). There's plenty of gym rats and running addicts and club competitors who have bought into the "fountain of youth" syndrome. In fact, there are doctors out there who are willing to provide any one of us with the necessary prescriptions to stay on the court or the track.
Is medical science taking a very serious look at what could reasonably be done for the likes of folks like me using low-dose therapeutic levels of steroids and hGH? Exactly what would the problem be if that were a real and acceptable option? Is it cheating when you're boss takes anti-depressants in order to function at work? How about truck drivers and night-shift workers with prescriptions for amphetamines? Or, simply, athletes who get cortozone shots or prescriptions for other pain meds? Or look at the case of Adam LaRoche of the Atlanta Braves who must take a banned substance in order to control his attention deficit disorder. Yes, he's a much better player under the influence. Is that natural? Is it right?
Where do we draw the line? I don't think we can. You can try, but you risk sounding awfully sanctimonious...and the louder you yell, the more obvious it will be that you haven't got a leg to stand on. This is the 21st century. We're kind of different than we were back there in days of yore.
In the end, it all comes down to two weird ideas that we seem to have about Sports: 1) competition must be based on equal playing fields and, 2) athletes should compete in "natural states." I'm not sure if these ideas are driven more by the basic philosophy of the fan as an innocent who needs to trust what they're seeing, or by the gamblers out there who govern so much of sports from the underground.
But there are no "equal playing fields" and no professional athlete is in a "natural" state. Special diets, special workout techniques, hi-tech excercise machines, scientific practice schedules, the fact that athletes can simply dedicate themselves to nothing but playing--all of this is unnatural, and truly, remarkably, presents room for massive amounts of inequality. If we took this logic to it's ultimate conclusion, maybe pro basketball should limit player height to 6'6", and maybe pro football should limit weights to 280 pounds. And maybe in baseball every field should have the exact same measurements and pitchers who throw over 100 mph should be penalized. Certainly, all the body armor that baseball players wear while at the plate needs to be banned. And it's common knowledge that many players in many sports take amphetamines on game day. Who's really making a big deal about that?
You may think I'm trying to let Barry off the hook here. I'm not. I think there's no question that his cheating sullies the sport (a sport I love more than life itself). But he's just adding insult to injury. I love The Game itself, but I've got a love-hate relationship with the major leagues. The Majors easily gets me confused about my feelings for The Game. I'm very happy coaching youth baseball where there's never an equal playing field. I love working with preternaturally gifted athletes side-by-side with kids who can barely catch. And I am happiest most of all watching high school ball where the only reason anyone is playing is to play, and there are usually no home run fences.
What I like about the pros is that they make fewer errors than any other level and that they are so monumentally talented. No matter what, the eye-hand coordination required to make full contact with a ball thrown 95-100 mph is a titanic feat--juiced or unjuiced. I'll take it however it's dished up. I always wonder how home run balls feel traveling so high above everything, knowing they are on their way to never-never land.
Barry will confuse many people, but not me. It will be marvelous to see him break the record, but it won't mean a whole lot...and you can be sure that Barry, a student of the game and Willie Mays's godson, knows better than any of us how stupid and pointless it is to make such a big deal out of this. He'll be happy for awhile; he'll be relieved; he'll make a good amount of money off his name for the rest of his life; but he will not be confused by what he's done. He prolonged his career (and money-making potential) by taking drugs, and maybe gave himself a little boost of power in the process. But the record? My guess is that Barry Bonds already understands that in the end records mean very little to a retired player. At best they're like trophies sitting in your den; at worst they're a reminder that you're done with the game, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and now you have to figure out how to be a real person in a world you never even knew existed. God bless you Barry Bonds. God bless the game of baseball. God bless us all. Think 756...
Read more! ¶ 12:33 PM 0 comments
An essay by Gary Kamiya in Salon.com today, "Me and Mr. Bonds," (click on the title link above), takes an interesting look at the moral dilemma that Barry Bonds will present us next season as he moves towards breaking Hank Aaron's career home run record of 755 (Bonds is at 734 right now). As most people know, Barry Bonds has, along with many other modern day sluggers, been accused of using steroids, growth hormones and other performance enhancing drugs in the last few years running up to Major League Baseball finally banning them outright. To put a fine head on things, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada's Game of Shadows presents so-called definitive evidence that Bonds knew exactly what he was doing.
Kamiya is a San Francisco Giants fan and a Bonds lover. He openly, and humorously, presents some of the basic excuses people are making for the beleagured slugger, and teases us with pronouncements that are somewhat nose-thumbing in posture, but pulls back admitting that, in his own words, he's "...full of shit" in several parts of the essay.
I was hoping Mr. Kamiya would get us baseball fans over the moral hump that most people don't even seem to be able to see yet. It's good that he makes the hump visible at least, but he should have gone all the way. There is no question this is one of the true conundrums sports fans have ever faced--especially those of us who love the game of baseball more than life itself.
I was surprised, however, that no mention was made by Kamiya of the structural changes in the game that sort of detract from all of the offensive records we've seen since the late 1960s. Dropping the official height of the mound seems to me to be one of the more obvious asterisk producers I can think of. After the Year of the Pitcher (1968) baseball required mounds to go from 15 inches down to 10.
Although it's not true of all ball parks, there's no question that fields are shrinking. Most of the new parks have power alleys designed for fan appreciation first and big muscled boppers. Rumors about a juiced ball are always ebbing and flowing as well. Who knows?
And what about the equipment? In the early days of the game they didn't even have home run fences. If you hit a bomb, you just ran like a bat-out-of-hell and legged it for all you could get. Gloves weren't as well made either, nor bats, and the courage it took to stand in there on an inside pitch when you didn't have a helmet (take a look at photos of Babe Ruth or even Ted Williams at the plate) is something we all forget--not to mention the fact that no one used elbow, wrist, and shin armor.
As I write, rumors begin to crop up that Bonds may be headed to the Oakland A's next year -- an American League team -- where more than likely old Barry will become a designated hitter extraordinaire. One has to wonder how many more homers Ruth or Aaron would have hit had they been provided with such a luxury.
And speaking of Ted Williams and moral character, most of the real baseball people I know don't give a damn about Ruth's old record, Aaron's current one, or Bonds and his enhanced possibilities. Everyone knows that Ted Williams, The Splendid Splinter, gave nearly 5 seasons of his career, from the age of 22 to 27 (kind of prime years) to join the military as a volunteer and defend this country in World War II and the Korean War. Five years is about a quarter of his major league sojourn. Williams ended his career in his last at-bat with his 521st homerun. He is number 15 on the all-time list. He'd be right up there near the top if they'd had the DH and he'd not been so patriotic.
Finally, of course, is the problem of modern professional baseball and it's 30+ teams versus the "good old days" when there were two leagues with 8-10 teams a piece. Those who made it up to The Bigs were truly ready back there in the Golden Age. Nowadays, and we all know this, a good 30-40% of the pitchers just aren't up to the level we want them to be. I don't know the statistics, but I'd like to see a study done on who Bonds is hitting his homers off of--(McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro and all the others supposedly disgraced by the game as well).
The point here is that if the moral issue about performance enhancing drugs comes down to the idea that some players are cheating and others are not, that's one thing. But if you're concern is about whether a performance-enhanced Bonds should get credit for breaking Hank Aaron's record for lifetime home runs, you can relax because Aaron hit practically every homer (though not all) in the era of bigger parks, less questionable balls, and taller mounds (and for that matter, higher grade pitching overall). In this regard, there's no way to take much of this record-mania very seriously. Post 1968 is a different era and there's just no comparison (I won't even go into the argument comparing Aaron's feat to Ruth's engenders, except to point out that a segregated pre-Jackie Robinson sport meant that Ruth never faced some of the best pitchers of his day but Hammerin' Hank got to look at pitches from Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Mudcat Grant, Al Downing, and Dock Ellis--to name just a few--regularly). And I would imagine even Hammerin' Hank would tip his cap to Ted Williams and admit that his record and pretty much every other hitter in the 500 club should have an asterisk next to their names pointing out that Ted Williams service for his country makes all these numbers rather anti-climactic and flaccid.
But let's go to the question of cheating by using chemicals, because regardless of records, that's the real question. I am a 48-year-old squash player whose body has broken down. Five years ago I competed one night in a club match against a 17-year-old whiz kid (ranked #2 in the country in his age group). I stayed close for the first two games of our best-of-five match, but half-way into the third game my body began to turn into rubber and I was sucking wind like the old, feeble man I had just realized I was. I lost the match 3-1. In the final game I didn't get a single point.
These days I content myself with long walks in the woods, hitting the ball around with other old farts, and working out on the court by myself doing drills and trying to learn new shots. My days of intense competition are over. It is a sad, sad reality to face if you are a committed athlete.
Add to my situation $15-20 million a year (not that anyone would) for another few years, and I assure you I would have no problem getting help from anyone who had a "cure." In fact, I'm not sure whether there's anyone in this country who would not do what old Barry has done. (People make asses out of themselves on TV all the time for far less money). There's plenty of gym rats and running addicts and club competitors who have bought into the "fountain of youth" syndrome. In fact, there are doctors out there who are willing to provide any one of us with the necessary prescriptions to stay on the court or the track.
Is medical science taking a very serious look at what could reasonably be done for the likes of folks like me using low-dose therapeutic levels of steroids and hGH? Exactly what would the problem be if that were a real and acceptable option? Is it cheating when you're boss takes anti-depressants in order to function at work? How about truck drivers and night-shift workers with prescriptions for amphetamines? Or, simply, athletes who get cortozone shots or prescriptions for other pain meds? Or look at the case of Adam LaRoche of the Atlanta Braves who must take a banned substance in order to control his attention deficit disorder. Yes, he's a much better player under the influence. Is that natural? Is it right?
Where do we draw the line? I don't think we can. You can try, but you risk sounding awfully sanctimonious...and the louder you yell, the more obvious it will be that you haven't got a leg to stand on. This is the 21st century. We're kind of different than we were back there in days of yore.
In the end, it all comes down to two weird ideas that we seem to have about Sports: 1) competition must be based on equal playing fields and, 2) athletes should compete in "natural states." I'm not sure if these ideas are driven more by the basic philosophy of the fan as an innocent who needs to trust what they're seeing, or by the gamblers out there who govern so much of sports from the underground.
But there are no "equal playing fields" and no professional athlete is in a "natural" state. Special diets, special workout techniques, hi-tech excercise machines, scientific practice schedules, the fact that athletes can simply dedicate themselves to nothing but playing--all of this is unnatural, and truly, remarkably, presents room for massive amounts of inequality. If we took this logic to it's ultimate conclusion, maybe pro basketball should limit player height to 6'6", and maybe pro football should limit weights to 280 pounds. And maybe in baseball every field should have the exact same measurements and pitchers who throw over 100 mph should be penalized. Certainly, all the body armor that baseball players wear while at the plate needs to be banned. And it's common knowledge that many players in many sports take amphetamines on game day. Who's really making a big deal about that?
You may think I'm trying to let Barry off the hook here. I'm not. I think there's no question that his cheating sullies the sport (a sport I love more than life itself). But he's just adding insult to injury. I love The Game itself, but I've got a love-hate relationship with the major leagues. The Majors easily gets me confused about my feelings for The Game. I'm very happy coaching youth baseball where there's never an equal playing field. I love working with preternaturally gifted athletes side-by-side with kids who can barely catch. And I am happiest most of all watching high school ball where the only reason anyone is playing is to play, and there are usually no home run fences.
What I like about the pros is that they make fewer errors than any other level and that they are so monumentally talented. No matter what, the eye-hand coordination required to make full contact with a ball thrown 95-100 mph is a titanic feat--juiced or unjuiced. I'll take it however it's dished up. I always wonder how home run balls feel traveling so high above everything, knowing they are on their way to never-never land.
Barry will confuse many people, but not me. It will be marvelous to see him break the record, but it won't mean a whole lot...and you can be sure that Barry, a student of the game and Willie Mays's godson, knows better than any of us how stupid and pointless it is to make such a big deal out of this. He'll be happy for awhile; he'll be relieved; he'll make a good amount of money off his name for the rest of his life; but he will not be confused by what he's done. He prolonged his career (and money-making potential) by taking drugs, and maybe gave himself a little boost of power in the process. But the record? My guess is that Barry Bonds already understands that in the end records mean very little to a retired player. At best they're like trophies sitting in your den; at worst they're a reminder that you're done with the game, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and now you have to figure out how to be a real person in a world you never even knew existed. God bless you Barry Bonds. God bless the game of baseball. God bless us all. Think 756...
Read more! ¶ 12:33 PM 0 comments
Monday, September 11, 2006
The New World
On September 11th we needed to say goodbye.
Our phones are mobile now
So we did. And somewhere
In that bright blue sky
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings
Found every one of us.
We needed to say goodbye to innocence;
Goodbye to an innocence
We did not know we possessed
Until it was gone.
There is no longer anything to hold onto.
We are letting go.
The world of silk and linen
The world of wet hair and hot skin
Is drifting into memory, into time.
We are left with our selves,
With each other.
That night, we listened to the Beatles
And watched Sam Waterston and Robert Redford
In The Great Gatsby.
A blue pool under a hot, summer-ending sun.
"Speaking words of wisdom. Let It Be."
We did not know it was behind us
Until it was.
You can’t repeat the past.
It is gone.
We are left to dream our new world.
We are left with our dreams
And the new world.
© David Biddle, September 12, 2001
Read more! ¶ 1:46 PM 0 comments
On September 11th we needed to say goodbye.
Our phones are mobile now
So we did. And somewhere
In that bright blue sky
Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings
Found every one of us.
We needed to say goodbye to innocence;
Goodbye to an innocence
We did not know we possessed
Until it was gone.
There is no longer anything to hold onto.
We are letting go.
The world of silk and linen
The world of wet hair and hot skin
Is drifting into memory, into time.
We are left with our selves,
With each other.
That night, we listened to the Beatles
And watched Sam Waterston and Robert Redford
In The Great Gatsby.
A blue pool under a hot, summer-ending sun.
"Speaking words of wisdom. Let It Be."
We did not know it was behind us
Until it was.
You can’t repeat the past.
It is gone.
We are left to dream our new world.
We are left with our dreams
And the new world.
© David Biddle, September 12, 2001
Read more! ¶ 1:46 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
My husband's dog is incontinent and I can't stand it
Millie Floating, a piece of a short story...
By David Biddle
I was convinced by lunchtime on a very snowy December day that my wife, Deena, had murdered our dog, Millie. The dog had been urinating every other night in the same approximate part of the dining room carpet for months. She was getting old. Her bladder muscles may have been weakened by a near-death experience she had about a year earlier rooting through garbage sweetened with propylene glycol. Deena didn’t exactly despise Millie, she had just gotten to the point, I think, where she didn’t see that the benefits Millie brought to us outweighed the costs. Deena is an analyst with Wharton Econometrics.
For my part, I put up with Millie—bad smells, mud in the car, morning and evening walks, the vet bills, urinating in the house—because I loved her desperate stupidity. She was a Weimaraner. The kids had wanted a Weimaraner because of those ridiculous New Yorker photos. Mary in particular, who was eight at the time, wanted a dog she could dress up in a business suit or tennis outfit. Adelaide, just four, went along with her sister, but had, I’m afraid, the idea that the dog would be the size they were in the magazine. Twelve-year-old Mike, on the other hand, was just happy to have unanimous support in his quest (a battle, really, from the age of six) to have a dog. By that time, he probably would have been just as satisfied with a Dachshund or a Chihuahua as a Weimaraner. So Millie came into our lives at those ages: four, eight, and twelve. Those are the right ages for a dog, and my children did a good job of loving her. Millie left thirteen years later when only Addie resided in our nest.
As luck would have it, though, that snowy Tuesday morning before Christmas, the whole family was together. The room we were going to eat our holiday turkey dinner in was scented with a bitter, rusty urine tang, and the thick ivory carpet was discolored and stained as if a large rodent had once been slaughtered there—a groundhog or raccoon maybe.
Thirteen is over ninety in dog years. Millie slept long, deep sleeps. I believe Deena just smothered her in her sleep. My wife is strong and athletic. It wouldn’t take much: one of our thick, white bath towels; come up behind, wrap the towel around the sleeping dog’s face; grasp the head and neck firmly; straddle the dog; hold on for maybe two minutes. The struggle is more a dance with death than a fight to survive. Loyal dogs are like that, I’ve been told. They do their family’s bidding because they can’t exist otherwise. Millie slept during the early portion of the night in the back hall off the kitchen guarding the rear entrance to our house. She died doing Deena’s bidding.
The snow had laid in thick all night long. I woke several times to hear the wind moaning against the northern side of the house. Deena was in bed two of those times. I remember, however, around 4:15, waking up and knowing immediately that her spot in the bed was empty. By the early morning hours, Millie had often moved into our room, sleeping on the floor under the window near the heating register. But one of her habits of enthusiasm is to follow anyone who is awake around the house. She was gone then, with Deena, wherever Deena was—or so I thought.
From the bedroom window, our backyard was sculpted smooth, glistening with shiny night-lit snow. It had to be close to two feet thick and still falling.
There is a silent sort of promise that heavy snowfall gives. We wake on another planet, it seems. There is a sense that this other planet is perfect because it is so surreal. It is rendered by artists. We have been on this snowy planet before, of course, on and off all of our lives, and our memories cascade in: the world shut down; sound dampened by the acoustic properties of air trapped inside trillions of snow crystals; boots, slush, clean smells, bundles and layers of cloth; the scrape of a snow shovel hitting asphalt; muffled voices flowing through cold, liquid air; the comfort, after being out and about on this new planet, of warmth near fires, hot chocolate, brandy, and the miracle of centralized household heat.
All of that flashed through my mind looking out into our backyard. I recalled other winters of the past and the joy of being snowed-in with my family, playing on the streets and hills around our house with all the kids and parents in the neighborhood, the way Millie would gambol around us while we shoveled out our driveway, the enthusiasm with which she ran through deep snow, bounding across it’s surface, her endless, daylong energy, the way she slept from dinner on if she was allowed, exhausted and spent, her legs sometimes churning as she dreamt, I imagine, of still playing in the cold white drifts, floating through the neighborhood, possessed by nothing other than her simple-minded sense of belonging and being what she imagined was the center of attention on this new planet sculpted by artists.
I smiled to myself with all of that in my head as a promise for the new day. The whole family was home and we had another chance to live through a snow day together.
I put my hand on Deena’s spot. I had no idea if she loved me anymore. No one does after nearly thirty years with the same person. I lay there wondering where she was in the house, wanting to go back to our twenties when we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other and we walked three miles to work every day and three miles home, talking about the life we wanted together, making plans that would come true but forgetting to include what we felt in those days and how to make it grow.
Millie came along at the beginning of our shift away from love. She was one of those unfortunate dogs with a low IQ and a belief that she was the center of the universe. She stole food off kitchen counters, badgered guests to pet her, waited all morning to scare the mailwoman with violent barking, and felt it her right to go on any car ride that was in the offing. But what Millie lacked in intelligence she made up for with enthusiasm. She’d been a strange sort of glue for the family in our last decade or so together.
***
I was drifting back into sleep when I heard Deena’s body move through the doorway. As she slid into bed, it seemed like she was trying to sneak. I wanted to touch her, to smell her scalp, feel her warmth, but I stayed in my place trying to breathe like I was sleeping. Not knowing whether you still love someone after more than twenty years is beyond pain.
To read the rest of this story, please email me. I'd be happy to send it as a PDF file. I'm in a publishing mode right now and this piece is out for review to several online publications and literary journals.
© Copyright, David Biddle, 2005
Read more! ¶ 9:56 AM 6 comments
Millie Floating, a piece of a short story...
By David Biddle
I was convinced by lunchtime on a very snowy December day that my wife, Deena, had murdered our dog, Millie. The dog had been urinating every other night in the same approximate part of the dining room carpet for months. She was getting old. Her bladder muscles may have been weakened by a near-death experience she had about a year earlier rooting through garbage sweetened with propylene glycol. Deena didn’t exactly despise Millie, she had just gotten to the point, I think, where she didn’t see that the benefits Millie brought to us outweighed the costs. Deena is an analyst with Wharton Econometrics.
For my part, I put up with Millie—bad smells, mud in the car, morning and evening walks, the vet bills, urinating in the house—because I loved her desperate stupidity. She was a Weimaraner. The kids had wanted a Weimaraner because of those ridiculous New Yorker photos. Mary in particular, who was eight at the time, wanted a dog she could dress up in a business suit or tennis outfit. Adelaide, just four, went along with her sister, but had, I’m afraid, the idea that the dog would be the size they were in the magazine. Twelve-year-old Mike, on the other hand, was just happy to have unanimous support in his quest (a battle, really, from the age of six) to have a dog. By that time, he probably would have been just as satisfied with a Dachshund or a Chihuahua as a Weimaraner. So Millie came into our lives at those ages: four, eight, and twelve. Those are the right ages for a dog, and my children did a good job of loving her. Millie left thirteen years later when only Addie resided in our nest.
As luck would have it, though, that snowy Tuesday morning before Christmas, the whole family was together. The room we were going to eat our holiday turkey dinner in was scented with a bitter, rusty urine tang, and the thick ivory carpet was discolored and stained as if a large rodent had once been slaughtered there—a groundhog or raccoon maybe.
Thirteen is over ninety in dog years. Millie slept long, deep sleeps. I believe Deena just smothered her in her sleep. My wife is strong and athletic. It wouldn’t take much: one of our thick, white bath towels; come up behind, wrap the towel around the sleeping dog’s face; grasp the head and neck firmly; straddle the dog; hold on for maybe two minutes. The struggle is more a dance with death than a fight to survive. Loyal dogs are like that, I’ve been told. They do their family’s bidding because they can’t exist otherwise. Millie slept during the early portion of the night in the back hall off the kitchen guarding the rear entrance to our house. She died doing Deena’s bidding.
The snow had laid in thick all night long. I woke several times to hear the wind moaning against the northern side of the house. Deena was in bed two of those times. I remember, however, around 4:15, waking up and knowing immediately that her spot in the bed was empty. By the early morning hours, Millie had often moved into our room, sleeping on the floor under the window near the heating register. But one of her habits of enthusiasm is to follow anyone who is awake around the house. She was gone then, with Deena, wherever Deena was—or so I thought.
From the bedroom window, our backyard was sculpted smooth, glistening with shiny night-lit snow. It had to be close to two feet thick and still falling.
There is a silent sort of promise that heavy snowfall gives. We wake on another planet, it seems. There is a sense that this other planet is perfect because it is so surreal. It is rendered by artists. We have been on this snowy planet before, of course, on and off all of our lives, and our memories cascade in: the world shut down; sound dampened by the acoustic properties of air trapped inside trillions of snow crystals; boots, slush, clean smells, bundles and layers of cloth; the scrape of a snow shovel hitting asphalt; muffled voices flowing through cold, liquid air; the comfort, after being out and about on this new planet, of warmth near fires, hot chocolate, brandy, and the miracle of centralized household heat.
All of that flashed through my mind looking out into our backyard. I recalled other winters of the past and the joy of being snowed-in with my family, playing on the streets and hills around our house with all the kids and parents in the neighborhood, the way Millie would gambol around us while we shoveled out our driveway, the enthusiasm with which she ran through deep snow, bounding across it’s surface, her endless, daylong energy, the way she slept from dinner on if she was allowed, exhausted and spent, her legs sometimes churning as she dreamt, I imagine, of still playing in the cold white drifts, floating through the neighborhood, possessed by nothing other than her simple-minded sense of belonging and being what she imagined was the center of attention on this new planet sculpted by artists.
I smiled to myself with all of that in my head as a promise for the new day. The whole family was home and we had another chance to live through a snow day together.
I put my hand on Deena’s spot. I had no idea if she loved me anymore. No one does after nearly thirty years with the same person. I lay there wondering where she was in the house, wanting to go back to our twenties when we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other and we walked three miles to work every day and three miles home, talking about the life we wanted together, making plans that would come true but forgetting to include what we felt in those days and how to make it grow.
Millie came along at the beginning of our shift away from love. She was one of those unfortunate dogs with a low IQ and a belief that she was the center of the universe. She stole food off kitchen counters, badgered guests to pet her, waited all morning to scare the mailwoman with violent barking, and felt it her right to go on any car ride that was in the offing. But what Millie lacked in intelligence she made up for with enthusiasm. She’d been a strange sort of glue for the family in our last decade or so together.
***
I was drifting back into sleep when I heard Deena’s body move through the doorway. As she slid into bed, it seemed like she was trying to sneak. I wanted to touch her, to smell her scalp, feel her warmth, but I stayed in my place trying to breathe like I was sleeping. Not knowing whether you still love someone after more than twenty years is beyond pain.
To read the rest of this story, please email me. I'd be happy to send it as a PDF file. I'm in a publishing mode right now and this piece is out for review to several online publications and literary journals.
© Copyright, David Biddle, 2005
Read more! ¶ 9:56 AM 6 comments
Monday, November 28, 2005
WildViolets, Toasted-Cheese, Sleep Magazine
Several websites have recently published fiction that I've written. Sleep Magazine posted my short story, "The Exact Black of Night," back in October. You can find it in their archives near the bottom of the page. I am tickled pink that a London-based, avant garde team of crazy wonderful supporters of new writing would choose my story about a desolate, American male, lost and lonely in his neighborhood video rental shop.
Wildviolet.net has also published excerpts of journal entries by Cecil Miller from my first novel, The Electric Pool: Beyond the Will of God. If you were around in the Sixties and Seventies, then you know that there was magic and philosophy in the air. "The Significance of Music" addresses that magic and philosophy. Let me know your thoughts. I'm editing The Electric Pool again and want to re-submit to agents and small presses in early 2006.
Finally, back last summer the well-regarded magazine, Toasted-Cheese.com, published my little short piece, "Guda and His Son," a story about a Pakistani father and his American-born son, Carter, one early summer morning a few years ago working together at the gas station they own. There's a nice little payoff for the reader, so check it out.
Let me know what you think of my work. Send agents and publishers to my stories. I am going to die an unhappy, possibly early, death if I don't get to the point where I'm earning my living writing full-time.
More power to you. Read books! Take the time to pay attention to short stories. Eat lots of fiber. Grow your own thoughts. Life is for the creative and thoughtful. Go watch a Little League baseball game this spring!
-db
Read more! ¶ 9:08 AM 0 comments
Several websites have recently published fiction that I've written. Sleep Magazine posted my short story, "The Exact Black of Night," back in October. You can find it in their archives near the bottom of the page. I am tickled pink that a London-based, avant garde team of crazy wonderful supporters of new writing would choose my story about a desolate, American male, lost and lonely in his neighborhood video rental shop.
Wildviolet.net has also published excerpts of journal entries by Cecil Miller from my first novel, The Electric Pool: Beyond the Will of God. If you were around in the Sixties and Seventies, then you know that there was magic and philosophy in the air. "The Significance of Music" addresses that magic and philosophy. Let me know your thoughts. I'm editing The Electric Pool again and want to re-submit to agents and small presses in early 2006.
Finally, back last summer the well-regarded magazine, Toasted-Cheese.com, published my little short piece, "Guda and His Son," a story about a Pakistani father and his American-born son, Carter, one early summer morning a few years ago working together at the gas station they own. There's a nice little payoff for the reader, so check it out.
Let me know what you think of my work. Send agents and publishers to my stories. I am going to die an unhappy, possibly early, death if I don't get to the point where I'm earning my living writing full-time.
More power to you. Read books! Take the time to pay attention to short stories. Eat lots of fiber. Grow your own thoughts. Life is for the creative and thoughtful. Go watch a Little League baseball game this spring!
-db
Read more! ¶ 9:08 AM 0 comments
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Ralph Ellison and How the Self Floats
It seems to me that Ralph Ellison may be this country's greatest writer. Not so much for his production or even his style, but because of his deep wisdom and his remarkable understanding of the links between literature, politics, and our national struggle with the culture of identity. Every time I read essays like "Indivisible Man," "The Novel as a Function of American Democracy," or "Going to the Territory," I find a new perspective on life and am constantly amazed by the little jewels of truth that sparkle beneath the waters of Ellison's words.
The greatest influence on Ralph as a writer was Fyodor Dostoevsky. Invisible Man was Ellison's "Notes from the Underground." To me, Ralph Ellison did so much more than elevate Dostoevsky to the 20th century. He pointed at the universality of true human experience, that push and pull of soul, identity, culture, politics, and livelihood that goes on always just beyond our ability to understand and verbalize. We are inside ourselves, but we are also out there, floating in the world. This "floating" self is what is invisible. This floating self is where we are all one--connected, pure, blending, formally occurring. And he wasn't alone either. At their best, all of this country's great writers provide us with a glimpse of our invisible selves, pointing at what is floating out there just in front of us like little puffs of breath on a winter's morning. Certainly Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau up through Hemingway, T.S. Elliot, Pound, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Kerouac and Kesey understood the same thing that Ellison did. What makes Ellison so important, though, besides his extreme intellect and devotion to literature as the highest form of art, is the poignancy of the metaphor of the invisible man delivered through the alienated experience of the cast off intellectual (who just so happened to be black and wandered up from the rural south). But somehow, over the past twenty to thirty years, we have lost track of what Ralph Ellison and his colleagues were pointing at. It's as if there is a competition to do away with individuality. I see fear and hesitancy all around me. The object of life seems to be about being part of things. This is made all that much worse by TV and the media. Conform. Conform. Conform.
But the self is still out there floating, whether you like it or not. The only question is whether you want to take on the challenge of following it, or whether you wish to ignore what and who you are--do what you are told, ask no questions, bury your head int he sand.
I do not know if I have made sense of the experience my family and I went through trying to find Dana. I do not think I would be able to write all of this down without the understanding of life that Ellison provides. The very notion of race in America is a wound in each individual psyche. Even those proud to be a certain color and physique bleed away a little bit every day. There is no skin on the self, no body, no milk in the eyes. The self cannot be touched and it cannot be wounded. And yet, all would have it otherwise. It is so easy to slide into the protection of the body and live in the context of the body's particular place in the material world. And, yes, it is hard to conceive of oneself as separate from one's body and place in the world--but that doesn't mean it's real.
We are all invisible, floating inside our bodies. When we love, we float into the world. When we read, we float into the world. When we sing and dance; when we laugh; when we walk in the woods; when we pray or meditate. This is our task and our purpose--to be floating in the world--yet so few really know this, so few are aware that they hover out in front of themselves sometimes. If you're invisible, how can you see yourself?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man finds it easy to hide.
Read more! ¶ 9:18 AM 0 comments
It seems to me that Ralph Ellison may be this country's greatest writer. Not so much for his production or even his style, but because of his deep wisdom and his remarkable understanding of the links between literature, politics, and our national struggle with the culture of identity. Every time I read essays like "Indivisible Man," "The Novel as a Function of American Democracy," or "Going to the Territory," I find a new perspective on life and am constantly amazed by the little jewels of truth that sparkle beneath the waters of Ellison's words.
The greatest influence on Ralph as a writer was Fyodor Dostoevsky. Invisible Man was Ellison's "Notes from the Underground." To me, Ralph Ellison did so much more than elevate Dostoevsky to the 20th century. He pointed at the universality of true human experience, that push and pull of soul, identity, culture, politics, and livelihood that goes on always just beyond our ability to understand and verbalize. We are inside ourselves, but we are also out there, floating in the world. This "floating" self is what is invisible. This floating self is where we are all one--connected, pure, blending, formally occurring. And he wasn't alone either. At their best, all of this country's great writers provide us with a glimpse of our invisible selves, pointing at what is floating out there just in front of us like little puffs of breath on a winter's morning. Certainly Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau up through Hemingway, T.S. Elliot, Pound, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Kerouac and Kesey understood the same thing that Ellison did. What makes Ellison so important, though, besides his extreme intellect and devotion to literature as the highest form of art, is the poignancy of the metaphor of the invisible man delivered through the alienated experience of the cast off intellectual (who just so happened to be black and wandered up from the rural south). But somehow, over the past twenty to thirty years, we have lost track of what Ralph Ellison and his colleagues were pointing at. It's as if there is a competition to do away with individuality. I see fear and hesitancy all around me. The object of life seems to be about being part of things. This is made all that much worse by TV and the media. Conform. Conform. Conform.
But the self is still out there floating, whether you like it or not. The only question is whether you want to take on the challenge of following it, or whether you wish to ignore what and who you are--do what you are told, ask no questions, bury your head int he sand.
I do not know if I have made sense of the experience my family and I went through trying to find Dana. I do not think I would be able to write all of this down without the understanding of life that Ellison provides. The very notion of race in America is a wound in each individual psyche. Even those proud to be a certain color and physique bleed away a little bit every day. There is no skin on the self, no body, no milk in the eyes. The self cannot be touched and it cannot be wounded. And yet, all would have it otherwise. It is so easy to slide into the protection of the body and live in the context of the body's particular place in the material world. And, yes, it is hard to conceive of oneself as separate from one's body and place in the world--but that doesn't mean it's real.
We are all invisible, floating inside our bodies. When we love, we float into the world. When we read, we float into the world. When we sing and dance; when we laugh; when we walk in the woods; when we pray or meditate. This is our task and our purpose--to be floating in the world--yet so few really know this, so few are aware that they hover out in front of themselves sometimes. If you're invisible, how can you see yourself?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man finds it easy to hide.
Read more! ¶ 9:18 AM 0 comments
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Citadel on the Mountain
When we set out on our journey to Richmond, it never occurred to me that I would have a story to tell. I took some notes on thoughts I was having at the time. I wrote in my journal some. But I never intended to write out this story. It just came to me over the course of the end of 2003, sort of as an unrelenting need to struggle with what had happened to me--especially the strange sleepy sensations I was having and the vague auditory hallucinations.
I could not even have conceived of writing the story of our quest for Dana without having read Dick Wertime's Citadel on the Mountain several years ago (see "true links" to the right for a sample from the book, or click on the title of this entry to go to Amazon). Citadel is Dick's memoir of growing up with a father who was brilliant, intense, possibly connected to the CIA, and also at times paranoid and delusional. Dick's story is about trying to understand his father (and himself) after his father had died, realizing how much of his own life he did not understand.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Dick in his office at Arcadia University here in the Philadelphia area several years ago. He is a professor of English and writing there. We spent maybe a half hour talking about writing and his book. The intent of the meeting was for him to give me advice on my first novel, Beyond the Will of God (sadly, unpublished). In ten minutes he illustrated five key points of fiction writing that I have taken to heart over the years. We also talked about non-fiction and the memoir as a form. Until that conversation, I had resisted the hype surrounding "creative non-fiction" and New Journalism. I have always admired Mailer, Wolfe, Matthiessen and others capable of exploring real-life in essays and books, but I never saw their "journalism" as art. To me, even serious photography was not art. It approached art, but it was still simply getting lucky by catching a piece ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giff someone's or something's moment.
But Dick turned me around. We discussed the whole idea of what Citadel was about: a sort of detective story, a refitting of the puzzle pieces of his life after discovering new shapes and new dimensions.
I came away from Dick's office with a greater appreciation then, for the literary quality of non-fiction. (Please understand that I have been a cretin all my adult life and I apologize for this. Although I have been writing since I was eight, I never took an English class or a fiction workshop of any kind after high school).
I'm still not sure where creative non-fiction and memoir fit in the taxonomy of the field of "Litchertchure." I do know, however, that without reading The Citadel on the Mountain, and having the opportunity to listen to Dick's wise counsel, I never would have figured out that I could write this story.
Dr. Wertime will be releasing a new novel soon called San Giovanni.
Read more! ¶ 10:15 AM 0 comments
I could not even have conceived of writing the story of our quest for Dana without having read Dick Wertime's Citadel on the Mountain several years ago (see "true links" to the right for a sample from the book, or click on the title of this entry to go to Amazon). Citadel is Dick's memoir of growing up with a father who was brilliant, intense, possibly connected to the CIA, and also at times paranoid and delusional. Dick's story is about trying to understand his father (and himself) after his father had died, realizing how much of his own life he did not understand.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Dick in his office at Arcadia University here in the Philadelphia area several years ago. He is a professor of English and writing there. We spent maybe a half hour talking about writing and his book. The intent of the meeting was for him to give me advice on my first novel, Beyond the Will of God (sadly, unpublished). In ten minutes he illustrated five key points of fiction writing that I have taken to heart over the years. We also talked about non-fiction and the memoir as a form. Until that conversation, I had resisted the hype surrounding "creative non-fiction" and New Journalism. I have always admired Mailer, Wolfe, Matthiessen and others capable of exploring real-life in essays and books, but I never saw their "journalism" as art. To me, even serious photography was not art. It approached art, but it was still simply getting lucky by catching a piece ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giff someone's or something's moment.
But Dick turned me around. We discussed the whole idea of what Citadel was about: a sort of detective story, a refitting of the puzzle pieces of his life after discovering new shapes and new dimensions.
I came away from Dick's office with a greater appreciation then, for the literary quality of non-fiction. (Please understand that I have been a cretin all my adult life and I apologize for this. Although I have been writing since I was eight, I never took an English class or a fiction workshop of any kind after high school).
I'm still not sure where creative non-fiction and memoir fit in the taxonomy of the field of "Litchertchure." I do know, however, that without reading The Citadel on the Mountain, and having the opportunity to listen to Dick's wise counsel, I never would have figured out that I could write this story.
Dr. Wertime will be releasing a new novel soon called San Giovanni.
Read more! ¶ 10:15 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Once and Future Worlds
The Acadians of the Maritime Coast in Canada were a fully integrated culture mixing Native and French cultures over the course of several centuries prior to the Revolutionary War. They were a culture of some 18,000 people wiped out in a few years by the British, utterly eliminated through forced removal or simply driven into the wilderness to fend for themselves. Some of these displaced Acadians eventually straggled down to Louisiana. Over the next century (mostly the 19th), French/Creole language shifts eventually came up with the name Cajuns for them.
An article in Salon.com contains an extended interview with John Mack Faragher, a Yale professor of history, who wrote the book entitled, "A Great and Noble Scheme." The article can be found at Salon's website in the books section, "America's Forgotten Atrocity."
Here's an interesting clip from the article:
"To what extent should the Acadians be viewed as a mixed-race or an ethnically mixed people? And how much did that perception contribute to their downfall?
There was an early period in their history, mostly in the 17th century, where there was considerable intermarriage. It really characterized the first and maybe the second generation, when the community was in formation. Once they had established their community the rate of intermarriage fell off, but the important point was that they recognized kinship across community lines. The Acadians looked at the Míkmaq and didn't just see "others" there. They saw cousins, distant cousins perhaps, but cousins nonetheless. They often went to the same missionaries, their names were placed in the same baptismal records, the same marriage records. Because of the early pattern of intermarriage, they came to recognize a cultural and Christian kinship across ethnic lines.
In fact, this also characterizes a lot of American history. I don't like the word, but we're a miscegenated culture. There is nothing really pure about Americans. You scratch us, and we bleed many colors and many ethnicities. Our culture is about hybridity, bringing formerly separate things together. The Acadians are perhaps a more dramatic example.
Now it must be said that the French had a tendency, in part because they emphasized commerce rather than agriculture, to create the kinds of ties with the Indians that made commerce possible. They also practiced an ecumenical Catholicism and were genuinely interested in converting the Indians, where the English really were not.
Yes, you write that the Puritans made no attempts to do that.
Well, there were some attempts, John Eliot and the Mayhews -- these were missionaries in 17th century New England. But the Indians that Eliot converted, who lived in the "praying towns" in Massachusetts, those Indians were attacked during King Philip's War, and subjected to the same hatred and violence as non-Christian Indians. This remains one of the fundamental problems in understanding North American history: the English way of dealing with the Indians vs. the French way."
Read more! ¶ 9:48 AM 0 comments
An article in Salon.com contains an extended interview with John Mack Faragher, a Yale professor of history, who wrote the book entitled, "A Great and Noble Scheme." The article can be found at Salon's website in the books section, "America's Forgotten Atrocity."
Here's an interesting clip from the article:
"To what extent should the Acadians be viewed as a mixed-race or an ethnically mixed people? And how much did that perception contribute to their downfall?
There was an early period in their history, mostly in the 17th century, where there was considerable intermarriage. It really characterized the first and maybe the second generation, when the community was in formation. Once they had established their community the rate of intermarriage fell off, but the important point was that they recognized kinship across community lines. The Acadians looked at the Míkmaq and didn't just see "others" there. They saw cousins, distant cousins perhaps, but cousins nonetheless. They often went to the same missionaries, their names were placed in the same baptismal records, the same marriage records. Because of the early pattern of intermarriage, they came to recognize a cultural and Christian kinship across ethnic lines.
In fact, this also characterizes a lot of American history. I don't like the word, but we're a miscegenated culture. There is nothing really pure about Americans. You scratch us, and we bleed many colors and many ethnicities. Our culture is about hybridity, bringing formerly separate things together. The Acadians are perhaps a more dramatic example.
Now it must be said that the French had a tendency, in part because they emphasized commerce rather than agriculture, to create the kinds of ties with the Indians that made commerce possible. They also practiced an ecumenical Catholicism and were genuinely interested in converting the Indians, where the English really were not.
Yes, you write that the Puritans made no attempts to do that.
Well, there were some attempts, John Eliot and the Mayhews -- these were missionaries in 17th century New England. But the Indians that Eliot converted, who lived in the "praying towns" in Massachusetts, those Indians were attacked during King Philip's War, and subjected to the same hatred and violence as non-Christian Indians. This remains one of the fundamental problems in understanding North American history: the English way of dealing with the Indians vs. the French way."
Read more! ¶ 9:48 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 14, 2004
I Don't Need to Find Them
From the beginning it is likely they had a good idea what orphanage I would be sent to. I’m sure the Wayne County, Indiana professionals in the Department of Children and Family were considering their options--that I may well have been a topic at staff meetings, even brainstorming sessions. How cost effective could it be for a social worker in Middle America to spin her wheels looking for a family that might legitimately want to adopt such a conundrum?
The social worker in charge of my case had three daughters all nearly full grown. She and her husband had always wanted a boy. I’m told I was one of those very personable, fat and happy babies. The story is that she and her husband decided if no one else was going to adopt me, they would.
But that was not to be. In the same town, Loureide Jeanette Biddle, a feisty, compassionate, in-your-face woman barely five feet tall, had taken it upon herself to expedite the adoption process for her son Bruce and daughter-in-law Ellen who had just suffered their fourth miscarriage in as many years. Loureide was no ordinary woman. Neither was her husband Bill. Together, during the thirties and forties, they forged a new approach to applied social science that they called community development. Drawing on principles of anthropology, social work, and religion, community development meant helping solve the problems of the poor and destitute by going out and living with them, participating in their way of life, understanding their values and the needs of their town or village. Then, from within, using the networking smarts of the social worker, Bill and Loureide would work with group leaders to solve the problems of the community. Bill was a very respected thinker in the progressive and liberal world of social science and education. By the fifties he was a professor at Earlham College, a small Quaker liberal arts college on the western half of the town of Richmond, Indiana (besides my mother who did graduate work at Earlham, my brother Jesse received his BA there thirty years later). Bill was busy teaching his theories in 1958. Impish, frenetic Loureide was a super-bright woman in her own right: an accomplished musician and political activist who had organized the socialist democratic party of Philadelphia in the early forties, and was also the first female lower school principal at Friends Central, a private school in Philly’s privileged mainline. In slow-paced Richmond she was champing at the bit for a new project, a new challenge. Bruce and Ellen were living in Lexington where he had his first job as an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Kentucky. Louriede pushed for adoption and, as the story goes, figured they all had a better shot in sleepy little Richmond than Lexington.
In my early years, I saw my grandmother Loureide tell off and boss around any number of people. She never took No for an answer. She had the remarkable skill of being domineering and even bitchy in order to get her point across, all the while never leaving you with the sense that she’d done anything other than sweetly ask you to do something for her. I can only imagine how the social work agency responsible for me dealt with her.
Ellen Horgan Biddle and Bruce Jesse Biddle became my parents on May 5, 1958. I’m sure I was dumbfounded and overwhelmed by the love and happiness surrounding me. On my birthday every year for my entire adult life my mother would send me a card reading the same words: “Dear David, when I first saw you I fell in love with you. I loved you then and I love you now. I held you in my arms and smiled down at you and you smiled right back at me and cooed like a little dove. Happy Birthday. I love you.”
For the first twenty-four years of my life, that love was all I needed. Faithfully, I never felt the need to know anything about my origins. People would always ask me: “Don’t you want to find your birth parents?” But my answer was always the same. “No. No, I don’t need to find them. I belong to this family. That’s more than enough.”
But it wasn’t enough. I spent the first two decades or so of my life ignoring something so fundamental and personal that it may permanently have warped my sense of identity. In the heart of my heart, I was nothing to the world and I was nothing to myself.
Read more! ¶ 4:53 PM 0 comments
The social worker in charge of my case had three daughters all nearly full grown. She and her husband had always wanted a boy. I’m told I was one of those very personable, fat and happy babies. The story is that she and her husband decided if no one else was going to adopt me, they would.
But that was not to be. In the same town, Loureide Jeanette Biddle, a feisty, compassionate, in-your-face woman barely five feet tall, had taken it upon herself to expedite the adoption process for her son Bruce and daughter-in-law Ellen who had just suffered their fourth miscarriage in as many years. Loureide was no ordinary woman. Neither was her husband Bill. Together, during the thirties and forties, they forged a new approach to applied social science that they called community development. Drawing on principles of anthropology, social work, and religion, community development meant helping solve the problems of the poor and destitute by going out and living with them, participating in their way of life, understanding their values and the needs of their town or village. Then, from within, using the networking smarts of the social worker, Bill and Loureide would work with group leaders to solve the problems of the community. Bill was a very respected thinker in the progressive and liberal world of social science and education. By the fifties he was a professor at Earlham College, a small Quaker liberal arts college on the western half of the town of Richmond, Indiana (besides my mother who did graduate work at Earlham, my brother Jesse received his BA there thirty years later). Bill was busy teaching his theories in 1958. Impish, frenetic Loureide was a super-bright woman in her own right: an accomplished musician and political activist who had organized the socialist democratic party of Philadelphia in the early forties, and was also the first female lower school principal at Friends Central, a private school in Philly’s privileged mainline. In slow-paced Richmond she was champing at the bit for a new project, a new challenge. Bruce and Ellen were living in Lexington where he had his first job as an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Kentucky. Louriede pushed for adoption and, as the story goes, figured they all had a better shot in sleepy little Richmond than Lexington.
In my early years, I saw my grandmother Loureide tell off and boss around any number of people. She never took No for an answer. She had the remarkable skill of being domineering and even bitchy in order to get her point across, all the while never leaving you with the sense that she’d done anything other than sweetly ask you to do something for her. I can only imagine how the social work agency responsible for me dealt with her.
Ellen Horgan Biddle and Bruce Jesse Biddle became my parents on May 5, 1958. I’m sure I was dumbfounded and overwhelmed by the love and happiness surrounding me. On my birthday every year for my entire adult life my mother would send me a card reading the same words: “Dear David, when I first saw you I fell in love with you. I loved you then and I love you now. I held you in my arms and smiled down at you and you smiled right back at me and cooed like a little dove. Happy Birthday. I love you.”
For the first twenty-four years of my life, that love was all I needed. Faithfully, I never felt the need to know anything about my origins. People would always ask me: “Don’t you want to find your birth parents?” But my answer was always the same. “No. No, I don’t need to find them. I belong to this family. That’s more than enough.”
But it wasn’t enough. I spent the first two decades or so of my life ignoring something so fundamental and personal that it may permanently have warped my sense of identity. In the heart of my heart, I was nothing to the world and I was nothing to myself.
Read more! ¶ 4:53 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The Sad Story of the Invisible Mom
Around the time of my birthday every year, my mother would tell me how happy she had become once I came into her life.
“Tell me how you found me,” I would say.
“It’s a sad story,” she would respond. “But it has a happy ending.” This was a ritual between us, because I knew how much my mother loved me and I knew the story by heart.
“We came to Richmond, Indiana because your grandparents lived there. I had finished my master’s work at Earlham College which is located there a few years earlier. It was a small town then. People had trouble dealing with skin color in those days. Your birth parents were high school students in Richmond. You were put up for adoption as soon as you were born, but you were too dark-skinned to be adopted by a white family. And you were too light-skinned to be adopted by a black family. You were perfect for us, though, as soon as we saw you.”
I felt the radiance of my mother’s love when she told me that story. But the message wasn’t lost on me either: no one could deal with me. Light and dark. Black and white. It was early 1958, one of the pinnacle years of the civil rights movement. I was actually born thirty miles from Richmond in Dayton, Ohio, a city that twenty years earlier had been the temporary home of a young Ralph Ellison who found inspiration there to begin his writing career that would eventually lead to the novel Invisible Man. I always figured my birth mother had me in Dayton in order to escape the humiliation and shame she would have faced in her small home town. No one would know her in Dayton. She would have been invisible.
Through the last weeks of the winter of 1958 I was shuttled from one Richmond foster home to another while my social worker sought a family who could accept the implications of my skin color. There’s no telling how I was treated during my first month and a half. March has always been a tough time for me if I’m not careful. I imagine my round face and big, dark eyes staring at different ceilings, very quickly coming to expect a sense of being alone in a small room at the back of houses that all smelled different: camphor, old newspapers, garlic, cat urine, rubber tires, old lumber, fried food, fresh paint. How many inquisitive seven-year-olds peered over the railings of my many cribs and spit on me? How many gentle sixteen-year-old daughters stroked my cheek and sang the songs of the day to me? How long did it take for the realization to set in that I was very likely the product of a mixed race union? How long before a new home had to be found for me, a new ceiling, new smells, new people who might or might not have the time to hold and comfort me? How might I sense that life would ever be otherwise, that normal babies are doted over by their mommies and daddies, that there is only one house to wake up to every morning, that no matter what the smells and sights and sounds, it all comes to equal warmth and love and security to a baby in the end?
Back then there were those who believed in equal rights for African Americans and those who did not. But I wasn’t an objective legal principle, I was the end result of it. In a hypothetical world, if all couplings between men and women could be mixed, the question of “the Negro in America” would fade away--so would the question of Caucasians. In the late fifties, those of mixed descent must have confounded everyone. The riddle of white versus black was so big and so volatile and carried such emotional valence--even hysteria--that the gray areas and the nuances of real life were too much for people to handle. Even today in the year 2003, the majority of mixed race children feel the need to choose sides.
My skin was the color of raw teak or breakfast coffee half full of heavy cream and sugar. My nose and lips were nondescript Anglo, though my hair was nearly black and my eyes were the color of baker’s chocolate. I was, and still am today, a dark-featured blend of something.
There are many versions of mix in this country. Although there are no useful statistics, it is very likely that ours is a country dominated by mixed heritage citizens. Certainly, most African Americans and Hispanics are mixed race. And the number of so-called white people who are actually combinations of multiple ethnic groups with hints--or more--of African, Native, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian, and Mediterranean genes in their histories, is untold. But no one could tell me anything about my story. In one sense I was whatever you wanted to imagine I was. You could make up just about anything and it probably would have worked.
Read more! ¶ 4:42 PM 5 comments
“Tell me how you found me,” I would say.
“It’s a sad story,” she would respond. “But it has a happy ending.” This was a ritual between us, because I knew how much my mother loved me and I knew the story by heart.
“We came to Richmond, Indiana because your grandparents lived there. I had finished my master’s work at Earlham College which is located there a few years earlier. It was a small town then. People had trouble dealing with skin color in those days. Your birth parents were high school students in Richmond. You were put up for adoption as soon as you were born, but you were too dark-skinned to be adopted by a white family. And you were too light-skinned to be adopted by a black family. You were perfect for us, though, as soon as we saw you.”
I felt the radiance of my mother’s love when she told me that story. But the message wasn’t lost on me either: no one could deal with me. Light and dark. Black and white. It was early 1958, one of the pinnacle years of the civil rights movement. I was actually born thirty miles from Richmond in Dayton, Ohio, a city that twenty years earlier had been the temporary home of a young Ralph Ellison who found inspiration there to begin his writing career that would eventually lead to the novel Invisible Man. I always figured my birth mother had me in Dayton in order to escape the humiliation and shame she would have faced in her small home town. No one would know her in Dayton. She would have been invisible.
Through the last weeks of the winter of 1958 I was shuttled from one Richmond foster home to another while my social worker sought a family who could accept the implications of my skin color. There’s no telling how I was treated during my first month and a half. March has always been a tough time for me if I’m not careful. I imagine my round face and big, dark eyes staring at different ceilings, very quickly coming to expect a sense of being alone in a small room at the back of houses that all smelled different: camphor, old newspapers, garlic, cat urine, rubber tires, old lumber, fried food, fresh paint. How many inquisitive seven-year-olds peered over the railings of my many cribs and spit on me? How many gentle sixteen-year-old daughters stroked my cheek and sang the songs of the day to me? How long did it take for the realization to set in that I was very likely the product of a mixed race union? How long before a new home had to be found for me, a new ceiling, new smells, new people who might or might not have the time to hold and comfort me? How might I sense that life would ever be otherwise, that normal babies are doted over by their mommies and daddies, that there is only one house to wake up to every morning, that no matter what the smells and sights and sounds, it all comes to equal warmth and love and security to a baby in the end?
Back then there were those who believed in equal rights for African Americans and those who did not. But I wasn’t an objective legal principle, I was the end result of it. In a hypothetical world, if all couplings between men and women could be mixed, the question of “the Negro in America” would fade away--so would the question of Caucasians. In the late fifties, those of mixed descent must have confounded everyone. The riddle of white versus black was so big and so volatile and carried such emotional valence--even hysteria--that the gray areas and the nuances of real life were too much for people to handle. Even today in the year 2003, the majority of mixed race children feel the need to choose sides.
My skin was the color of raw teak or breakfast coffee half full of heavy cream and sugar. My nose and lips were nondescript Anglo, though my hair was nearly black and my eyes were the color of baker’s chocolate. I was, and still am today, a dark-featured blend of something.
There are many versions of mix in this country. Although there are no useful statistics, it is very likely that ours is a country dominated by mixed heritage citizens. Certainly, most African Americans and Hispanics are mixed race. And the number of so-called white people who are actually combinations of multiple ethnic groups with hints--or more--of African, Native, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian, and Mediterranean genes in their histories, is untold. But no one could tell me anything about my story. In one sense I was whatever you wanted to imagine I was. You could make up just about anything and it probably would have worked.
Read more! ¶ 4:42 PM 5 comments
Monday, October 11, 2004
Dogs and Wolves In My Dreams
My demons come back when we return to our room. The ventilation system doesn’t work well and there are no controls. The room is a perfect seventy-eight degrees with moderate humidity, but I want it seventy-two and I want a unit that will allow me to drive the humidity well below fifty-percent.
We go to bed, all four of us, and I lie there feeling the heat prickle my skin, thinking about the fact that I am driving to Richmond, Indiana with nothing but the name of a high school student from 1958. In order to fall asleep, I count the things I want to take back in my life. There are many of them. I have lied and stolen things. I’ve manipulated the lives of those I love. Most of my major decisions were made in order to please others. My ego drives what I accomplish. I am a materialist. I want desperately to be rich. I’ve done worse too, far worse. The worst thing though, I realize in the dark, is that I’ve worked so hard to appear to others as a good person, a noble, decent, gentle man with positive, progressive values, that I’m no longer sure who I really am. “I’ve worked hard,” I think, “at covering up what a shit I’ve become.”
I drift across a sea of sleep, bumping into myself over and over, wondering about all of my transgressions, wondering if they’re somehow related to being adopted. If you aren’t connected, if you’re untethered, isn’t it inevitable that you will be at least slightly morally off-center and selfish? I usually do the right thing in life, probably more than some, but occasionally I make mistakes. And when I do, there is nothing to face. No guilt. Nothing. I am alone and floating outside the rest of the world. I am a mistake, an alien, a lone wolf cut off from the pack. I struggle to find sleep in the incessant heat of the room and tumble in and out of guilt and self-consciousness.
There are moments in all of this, while I drift, where I understand things better. At one point in the night, I realize that loneliness might be a good thing. It is the root cause of my ability to love others. It is the source of my deep need to find, and my belief in, true love. I went through so much to discover that love, to find Marion.
That same loneliness is filled every day being around my sons. The desperation of my situation in the world has been salved by my family, but it has not been eliminated. I lie in a room on the 16th floor of the Pittsburgh Ramada Inn and I can only be cured of this desolation by overcoming my adoption, by understanding, at least in part, the formal reasons for why I occurred.
I’ve dreamt of wolves and wild dogs my whole life. Sometimes I am in my house sitting at the kitchen table by myself. There are house noises all around me, common house noises: a ticking clock, the refrigerator, the far off sound of a vacuum sweeper, maybe I forgot to turn the water off in the sink. A wolf comes into the room. He is salivating and panting. I smell him. Death out of the dark. His eyes are ice cave blue, his fur the color of burned forest and dust. And then he’s gone. I’m afraid I will forget. I’m afraid I won’t remember he was there.
It’s sunrise, the air is moist and thick, a pack of wild dogs goes noisily through our back yard, mongrels bred of pit bulls, boxers, bull dogs, and mastiffs, some with huge, almost bald skulls, bulging eyes, vicious snarls. They breath in unison, messengers of fear cruising through our suburban neighborhood, looking to fall on any living thing, flesh on their minds. I struggle to figure out if I’m dreaming. Our suburb is on the edge of a great, sprawling metropolis. The pack streaks through our yard, then silence. The yard is vacant. I am looking out the window, standing on my bed, wondering if what I saw was real. Sometimes you’re the wolf. Sometimes you’re the dog. Sometimes he’s just there, like in the kitchen--watching, waiting, moving through.
A single dog finally comes into the yard, unable to run with the pack, it seems too goofy and deranged to belong in the group. It is the quintessential mongrel: part Shepard, part Lab, part Beagle, part Golden Retriever. Sometimes I am that dog and sometimes he is me.
Read more! ¶ 4:55 PM 0 comments
We go to bed, all four of us, and I lie there feeling the heat prickle my skin, thinking about the fact that I am driving to Richmond, Indiana with nothing but the name of a high school student from 1958. In order to fall asleep, I count the things I want to take back in my life. There are many of them. I have lied and stolen things. I’ve manipulated the lives of those I love. Most of my major decisions were made in order to please others. My ego drives what I accomplish. I am a materialist. I want desperately to be rich. I’ve done worse too, far worse. The worst thing though, I realize in the dark, is that I’ve worked so hard to appear to others as a good person, a noble, decent, gentle man with positive, progressive values, that I’m no longer sure who I really am. “I’ve worked hard,” I think, “at covering up what a shit I’ve become.”
I drift across a sea of sleep, bumping into myself over and over, wondering about all of my transgressions, wondering if they’re somehow related to being adopted. If you aren’t connected, if you’re untethered, isn’t it inevitable that you will be at least slightly morally off-center and selfish? I usually do the right thing in life, probably more than some, but occasionally I make mistakes. And when I do, there is nothing to face. No guilt. Nothing. I am alone and floating outside the rest of the world. I am a mistake, an alien, a lone wolf cut off from the pack. I struggle to find sleep in the incessant heat of the room and tumble in and out of guilt and self-consciousness.
There are moments in all of this, while I drift, where I understand things better. At one point in the night, I realize that loneliness might be a good thing. It is the root cause of my ability to love others. It is the source of my deep need to find, and my belief in, true love. I went through so much to discover that love, to find Marion.
That same loneliness is filled every day being around my sons. The desperation of my situation in the world has been salved by my family, but it has not been eliminated. I lie in a room on the 16th floor of the Pittsburgh Ramada Inn and I can only be cured of this desolation by overcoming my adoption, by understanding, at least in part, the formal reasons for why I occurred.
I’ve dreamt of wolves and wild dogs my whole life. Sometimes I am in my house sitting at the kitchen table by myself. There are house noises all around me, common house noises: a ticking clock, the refrigerator, the far off sound of a vacuum sweeper, maybe I forgot to turn the water off in the sink. A wolf comes into the room. He is salivating and panting. I smell him. Death out of the dark. His eyes are ice cave blue, his fur the color of burned forest and dust. And then he’s gone. I’m afraid I will forget. I’m afraid I won’t remember he was there.
It’s sunrise, the air is moist and thick, a pack of wild dogs goes noisily through our back yard, mongrels bred of pit bulls, boxers, bull dogs, and mastiffs, some with huge, almost bald skulls, bulging eyes, vicious snarls. They breath in unison, messengers of fear cruising through our suburban neighborhood, looking to fall on any living thing, flesh on their minds. I struggle to figure out if I’m dreaming. Our suburb is on the edge of a great, sprawling metropolis. The pack streaks through our yard, then silence. The yard is vacant. I am looking out the window, standing on my bed, wondering if what I saw was real. Sometimes you’re the wolf. Sometimes you’re the dog. Sometimes he’s just there, like in the kitchen--watching, waiting, moving through.
A single dog finally comes into the yard, unable to run with the pack, it seems too goofy and deranged to belong in the group. It is the quintessential mongrel: part Shepard, part Lab, part Beagle, part Golden Retriever. Sometimes I am that dog and sometimes he is me.
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Sunday, October 10, 2004
Empty Streets and Dinner at the Ruddy Duck
After checking into the Pittsburgh Ramada Inn, we head out onto the streets to find a place to eat, but all the restaurants are closed and there’s practically no one around. It’s a beautiful summer evening, a bit of cool coming off the rivers that converge around this old city’s center; the sky is a dusty violet. All four of us are hungry after our long drive. Coming from Philadelphia, though, we are somewhat flummoxed by the lack of people. We wander the streets, temporarily forgetting the idea of food. We are simply in search of human beings.
It grows dark. We hear live music reverberating amongst the buildings, but it is impossible to locate. There are no people, but there is old, industrial-age stone and iron mixed with modern glass, polished marble, and granite. Ornate office buildings vault to the sky, shimmering in the twilight. Ancient brick and stone churches and storefronts crouch in the shadows, lit by the warm glow of light off the evening clouds. Everything is coated with a layer of dried coal syrup from more than a century of steel manufacturing. We peer through dark restaurant windows, scratching our heads. I begin to feel the day has been an omen for our quest: first the fierce, tangle of cars and families on the highway, now the ghost town of Pittsburgh’s famed downtown Golden Triangle. Our search will yield nothing but people all going their own way, then closed doors and darkened rooms.
“This is a lost cause,” I say to Marion.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” she says. “There was a bar or something that looked open just off the lobby.”
As we begin to retrace our steps, I realize I am growing irritable. I need a drink desperately. I don’t want to think about what we’re doing, what I’m doing, what I may end up doing to another person. Finding her. Stopping her dead in the tracks of her reality and telling her what she may or may not want to hear. I’m your son. I’m forty-five. Do you remember me? What happened?
My family instinctively knows to keep their distance. They trail five to ten yards back, leaving their father and husband to his black thoughts and a growing sense of futility.
Coming back up a hill toward our hotel, we hear the live music again. At the base of the U.S. Steel Building is a mass of young business professionals drinking and cavorting with each other at Willy and Pete’s Bar. On the patio in front are a man and a woman playing electric guitars, singing Shawn Colvin’s song The Avalanche. The woman is attractive, and though petite, very athletic looking. She has dark features: long black hair, almond skin a bit darker than mine. Her face is at once Hispanic, Asian, Jewish and mulatto. I begin to wonder, stupidly, whether she is my sister. Not “Wouldn’t that be funny if she were my sister?” more like: “I wonder if she’s my sister.” Her voice is nothing special. There is a bit of range to it, the timber and vocal quality are pleasing enough, but my black mood, my hunger, my thirst for booze, and the overarching knowledge I have of how overwrought my thought processes are, do not let me appreciate the woman’s singing. I watch the crowd swilling it up and downing hors d’oevures, thinking how dumb they are in their contentedness. Something keeps me from going over the edge, though. The words: “No man is an island,” pop into my head. I am not a stranger here in this empty maze of hulking architecture. Behind me is my family, in front of me is a country of people partying and trading banter, on the prowl, about to consummate any number of relationships and deeds everywhere on this Friday night. It is raining somewhere. It is perfectly cool and gentle where we are, paused in front of U.S. Steel headquarters.
“I guess we’re eating at the hotel,” Jesse says, coming up from behind me, using his best quiet, wise eleven-year-old voice on me.
“I guess we are,” Marion sighs.
“I want chicken fingers,” says Conor.
We have a horrible meal at the Ruddy Duck, with slow service, bland food, over-salted meat, mushy vegetables, meager salads, and loud table neighbors with two noisy toddlers. But I do well enough at ignoring the demon thoughts lurking in my cluttered mind while I drink a beer and consume my cheap, stringy steak and a salad smothered in what is the only saving grace of the meal: a delicately flavored raspberry lime vinaigrette.
Read more! ¶ 4:43 PM 0 comments
It grows dark. We hear live music reverberating amongst the buildings, but it is impossible to locate. There are no people, but there is old, industrial-age stone and iron mixed with modern glass, polished marble, and granite. Ornate office buildings vault to the sky, shimmering in the twilight. Ancient brick and stone churches and storefronts crouch in the shadows, lit by the warm glow of light off the evening clouds. Everything is coated with a layer of dried coal syrup from more than a century of steel manufacturing. We peer through dark restaurant windows, scratching our heads. I begin to feel the day has been an omen for our quest: first the fierce, tangle of cars and families on the highway, now the ghost town of Pittsburgh’s famed downtown Golden Triangle. Our search will yield nothing but people all going their own way, then closed doors and darkened rooms.
“This is a lost cause,” I say to Marion.
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” she says. “There was a bar or something that looked open just off the lobby.”
As we begin to retrace our steps, I realize I am growing irritable. I need a drink desperately. I don’t want to think about what we’re doing, what I’m doing, what I may end up doing to another person. Finding her. Stopping her dead in the tracks of her reality and telling her what she may or may not want to hear. I’m your son. I’m forty-five. Do you remember me? What happened?
My family instinctively knows to keep their distance. They trail five to ten yards back, leaving their father and husband to his black thoughts and a growing sense of futility.
Coming back up a hill toward our hotel, we hear the live music again. At the base of the U.S. Steel Building is a mass of young business professionals drinking and cavorting with each other at Willy and Pete’s Bar. On the patio in front are a man and a woman playing electric guitars, singing Shawn Colvin’s song The Avalanche. The woman is attractive, and though petite, very athletic looking. She has dark features: long black hair, almond skin a bit darker than mine. Her face is at once Hispanic, Asian, Jewish and mulatto. I begin to wonder, stupidly, whether she is my sister. Not “Wouldn’t that be funny if she were my sister?” more like: “I wonder if she’s my sister.” Her voice is nothing special. There is a bit of range to it, the timber and vocal quality are pleasing enough, but my black mood, my hunger, my thirst for booze, and the overarching knowledge I have of how overwrought my thought processes are, do not let me appreciate the woman’s singing. I watch the crowd swilling it up and downing hors d’oevures, thinking how dumb they are in their contentedness. Something keeps me from going over the edge, though. The words: “No man is an island,” pop into my head. I am not a stranger here in this empty maze of hulking architecture. Behind me is my family, in front of me is a country of people partying and trading banter, on the prowl, about to consummate any number of relationships and deeds everywhere on this Friday night. It is raining somewhere. It is perfectly cool and gentle where we are, paused in front of U.S. Steel headquarters.
“I guess we’re eating at the hotel,” Jesse says, coming up from behind me, using his best quiet, wise eleven-year-old voice on me.
“I guess we are,” Marion sighs.
“I want chicken fingers,” says Conor.
We have a horrible meal at the Ruddy Duck, with slow service, bland food, over-salted meat, mushy vegetables, meager salads, and loud table neighbors with two noisy toddlers. But I do well enough at ignoring the demon thoughts lurking in my cluttered mind while I drink a beer and consume my cheap, stringy steak and a salad smothered in what is the only saving grace of the meal: a delicately flavored raspberry lime vinaigrette.
Read more! ¶ 4:43 PM 0 comments
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Dumb and Dumber
My brother Jesse is one of my best friends. I didn’t realize that until we were in high school. Another best friend is my sister Jennifer. They are both brilliant professionals now. Jesse is a USAID program director in Kenya, and Jennifer is a professor of anthropology in Australia. Our parents had suffered through four miscarriages before they adopted me. People used to say that my siblings would never have been born if it weren’t for me.
When we were teenagers my brother and sister both read over one thousand words per minute and had near perfect recall. I could barely read five hundred words per minute and had maybe eighty percent recall. Our parents were both dazzlingly brilliant as well, with information processing abilities similar to my siblings. I always felt stupid in my family, that I just didn’t have the intellect the rest of them did.
Read more! ¶ 4:28 PM 0 comments
When we were teenagers my brother and sister both read over one thousand words per minute and had near perfect recall. I could barely read five hundred words per minute and had maybe eighty percent recall. Our parents were both dazzlingly brilliant as well, with information processing abilities similar to my siblings. I always felt stupid in my family, that I just didn’t have the intellect the rest of them did.
Read more! ¶ 4:28 PM 0 comments
Nothing But a Nigger
“I hate him,” my brother Jesse screamed. “He’s nothing but a damn nigger!”
I came flying out of my bedroom in the basement and bolted for the stairs. As I moved, twisted emotions pulsed through my head--anger, longing, confusion, pride. I knew my anger wasn’t really due to the name my brother had called me. He was ten and I was twelve. In a way, his words were just a ridiculous joke. I wasn’t a nigger--at least I didn’t feel like one. But what was I? I wasn’t white like my brother and the rest of my family. I wasn’t black like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mrs. Brown, our housekeeper. I wasn’t even brown-skinned like Harry Belafonte or Lena Horn. But my skin was darker than most people’s of European descent, and lighter than most African Americans’.
I was adopted. My brother had heard the same story that I’d heard all my life.
“Your brother is mixed,” our mother would say.
“But what is the mix?” Jesse would ask.
“Well, it could be a lot of things,” she would say carefully. “We think David’s part black and maybe some other things, too.”
“But what part of me?” I would ask. “Am I half black? A quarter?”
“You might be Native American, too,” said our mother. “Or Hispanic.”
No one could give me specifics. It was all vague and non-defined. In fact, as far as I could tell it wasn’t even clear whether I was actually mixed race. By the time I was twelve I had been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, an Italian, and an Egyptian.
My little brother was mad at me, but it was the first time he had ever referred to me racially. I’d heard him shriek his epithet from my room where I’d been sent as punishment for a fight he and I were having. He was lying on the couch in the living room upstairs after our mother had separated us. I have no memory of what we were fighting about. It was past our bedtime, I remember that, and our father was out of town at a conference. Like all brothers close in age, we fought about a lot of dumb things, especially when we were tired.
I raced up the steps enraged, to be sure, but there was also a part of me that was proud and happy to be called that: a nigger. Looking back, I see now that I would have given anything to grow up knowing that I had African ancestors. I wouldn’t have felt so alone and isolated in the world. I wouldn’t have felt like an orphan or a mistake.
If you’re adopted, you shouldn’t believe anything they tell you.
“Mom,” I once asked, “you don’t really know anything about my background, do you?”
“The social worker told us you had some black in you.”
“But how do you know she was telling you the truth?”
“Some things in life you just don’t know, honey.”
“Someone knows.”
“Well--“
“There are people who know, Mom.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“My biological parents. They know what I am, they know what the mix is.”
“Yes, that’s true, but we have no way of getting in touch with them. We’re not allowed to.”
My mother was right, of course. My original birth certificate had been sealed by the courts in 1959, a year after I was born. The one I possessed said I was the son of Bruce and Ellen Biddle. The certificate listed both of them as “white.” There was no place on the certificate to list the race of the child. By inference then, I was “white” as well.
I burst into the living room with all of this jumbled up in my twelve-year-old mind and found my brother cowering on the couch, our mother nowhere to be found.
“Don’t you ever call me that again!” I screamed as I launched my body in the air feet first. I can still see my blond-haired, blue-eyed younger brother in a submissive, near fetal position, shutting his eyes but holding his face up for my feet to slam into.
I caught him on both cheeks with my heels and knocked his head around hard into the back of the couch. For a few seconds he didn’t move. In my anger, I felt glad about this. He remained silent. No crying, no breathing even. His face was just buried in the fabric of the couch. My brother: frozen by fear and pain from my kick and, I realize now, these many years later, frozen by the agony and shame of having called me a nigger.
“That’ll teach you,” I said. “Don’t you ever call me that again.” And he never did.
Read more! ¶ 4:09 PM 0 comments
I came flying out of my bedroom in the basement and bolted for the stairs. As I moved, twisted emotions pulsed through my head--anger, longing, confusion, pride. I knew my anger wasn’t really due to the name my brother had called me. He was ten and I was twelve. In a way, his words were just a ridiculous joke. I wasn’t a nigger--at least I didn’t feel like one. But what was I? I wasn’t white like my brother and the rest of my family. I wasn’t black like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mrs. Brown, our housekeeper. I wasn’t even brown-skinned like Harry Belafonte or Lena Horn. But my skin was darker than most people’s of European descent, and lighter than most African Americans’.
I was adopted. My brother had heard the same story that I’d heard all my life.
“Your brother is mixed,” our mother would say.
“But what is the mix?” Jesse would ask.
“Well, it could be a lot of things,” she would say carefully. “We think David’s part black and maybe some other things, too.”
“But what part of me?” I would ask. “Am I half black? A quarter?”
“You might be Native American, too,” said our mother. “Or Hispanic.”
No one could give me specifics. It was all vague and non-defined. In fact, as far as I could tell it wasn’t even clear whether I was actually mixed race. By the time I was twelve I had been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, an Italian, and an Egyptian.
My little brother was mad at me, but it was the first time he had ever referred to me racially. I’d heard him shriek his epithet from my room where I’d been sent as punishment for a fight he and I were having. He was lying on the couch in the living room upstairs after our mother had separated us. I have no memory of what we were fighting about. It was past our bedtime, I remember that, and our father was out of town at a conference. Like all brothers close in age, we fought about a lot of dumb things, especially when we were tired.
I raced up the steps enraged, to be sure, but there was also a part of me that was proud and happy to be called that: a nigger. Looking back, I see now that I would have given anything to grow up knowing that I had African ancestors. I wouldn’t have felt so alone and isolated in the world. I wouldn’t have felt like an orphan or a mistake.
If you’re adopted, you shouldn’t believe anything they tell you.
“Mom,” I once asked, “you don’t really know anything about my background, do you?”
“The social worker told us you had some black in you.”
“But how do you know she was telling you the truth?”
“Some things in life you just don’t know, honey.”
“Someone knows.”
“Well--“
“There are people who know, Mom.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“My biological parents. They know what I am, they know what the mix is.”
“Yes, that’s true, but we have no way of getting in touch with them. We’re not allowed to.”
My mother was right, of course. My original birth certificate had been sealed by the courts in 1959, a year after I was born. The one I possessed said I was the son of Bruce and Ellen Biddle. The certificate listed both of them as “white.” There was no place on the certificate to list the race of the child. By inference then, I was “white” as well.
I burst into the living room with all of this jumbled up in my twelve-year-old mind and found my brother cowering on the couch, our mother nowhere to be found.
“Don’t you ever call me that again!” I screamed as I launched my body in the air feet first. I can still see my blond-haired, blue-eyed younger brother in a submissive, near fetal position, shutting his eyes but holding his face up for my feet to slam into.
I caught him on both cheeks with my heels and knocked his head around hard into the back of the couch. For a few seconds he didn’t move. In my anger, I felt glad about this. He remained silent. No crying, no breathing even. His face was just buried in the fabric of the couch. My brother: frozen by fear and pain from my kick and, I realize now, these many years later, frozen by the agony and shame of having called me a nigger.
“That’ll teach you,” I said. “Don’t you ever call me that again.” And he never did.
Read more! ¶ 4:09 PM 0 comments
Friday, October 08, 2004
Finding Out What We Find Out
Our original idea for a summer vacation had been to rent a cottage in Maine or New Hampshire. Sam, my oldest son and from my first marriage, spends Augusts in Maine with his mother at their family summer home. The rest of us thought we would all four go up and maybe spend a few days in the Penobscot Bay area learning about sailing from Sam and exploring Maine’s maritime setting. We miss Sam desperately every August. But the cottages we wanted were all reserved during the week available to us. We had waited too long to make reservations. Confronted with this obstacle, I jokingly suggested we drive to Pittsburgh to see a baseball game at the Pirates’ new stadium. Jesse and Conor thought that was a great idea. Then I suggested we go to Missouri to visit my dad. On the way, I said, we could stop in Richmond and go to the library to see if we could find a picture of Dana Black in an old Richmond High School yearbook. Marion liked that idea, but topped it by suggesting, “We drive to Richmond and find out what we find out.”
“What about going to see the Pirates?” Jesse asked.
“Well, let’s go to Pittsburgh first, then,” Marion said. “We’ll spend the weekend in Pittsburgh, then drive on to Richmond. And we’ll find out what we find out.”
“Wow,” Conor chimed. “A picture of her is in a school yearbook at the library all the way out in Indiana?”
Read more! ¶ 2:54 PM 0 comments
“What about going to see the Pirates?” Jesse asked.
“Well, let’s go to Pittsburgh first, then,” Marion said. “We’ll spend the weekend in Pittsburgh, then drive on to Richmond. And we’ll find out what we find out.”
“Wow,” Conor chimed. “A picture of her is in a school yearbook at the library all the way out in Indiana?”
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Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Something a Philosopher Said
In February 2003 I turned forty-five. My family gave me lots of nice gifts. After I’d opened them, we sat around the dining room table eating cake and ice cream while I told stories of growing up in Missouri. After awhile I began to wonder about all the things I did not know about my life. I’d had a couple glasses of wine. It didn’t take long before I started thinking about my birth mother, wondering if she ever thought about me on February 26th.
Telling my wife and sons to wait, I rushed upstairs to the desk in my study. The folder was still there in the back of file drawer. I yanked out my birth certificate and hurried downstairs. As I entered the dining room, I contemplated for the hundredth time the fact that I had no idea where the term formality of occurrence came from. I sat down at the table wondering whether I had made it up myself.
“You all have been so good to me,” I told my family, “now I’ve got something for you.” I handed my wife, Marion, the sheet of paper and watched her unfold it. Sam, Jesse, and Conor crowded around. Sam was fifteen, Jesse almost twelve, and Conor nearly eight.
After a few seconds they understood what they were looking at.
“Your mother’s name was Dana Black?” Sam asked. “And your name was Anthony Tobias Black?”
Marion seemed annoyed. “How long have you had this?”
“A few months.”
“Why would you keep something so important from us?” she asked. I could tell she wasn’t exactly mad, more disappointed, feeling left out.
“I start thinking so many things about this that I don’t want to think anymore,” I finally told her.
“You should have let me know,” she insisted. “This is important to me, too…and your sons.”
“I am. Right now.”
“Yes, you are.” She let it all drift away then by shaking her head a few times and chuckling at me.
“I came up with this concept of the formality of occurrence,” I went on hurriedly. “I can’t remember where I got it from--the formality of occurrence. I could swear it was a reference by some psychologist like Jung to something a philosopher like Wittgenstein or Alfred North Whitehead said about time and coincidence. I thought I had a book with a chapter in it called “The Formality of Occurrence,” but I can’t find a thing. I’ve looked everywhere.”
My wife just shook her head and laughed quietly.
When you're adopted you're less than an accident--you don't know the circumstances of your birth; your conception seems to have come about by the snap of two fingers in the back seat of a car around 11:30 P.M. on a rainy Saturday night; and, in my case anyway, you have no idea what your racial or ethnic heritage is.
I remember thinking as I lay in bed that night that I wished I could chuckle at me, too. I had given a name to the malaise plaguing me: “The Formality of Occurrence.” But I didn’t really know what it meant, nor did I know where it came from. The term was like me: confused, disoriented, and without origin—somehow made up, unconnected, plucked from chaos, just four words, confounding, and yet, oddly defining.
Read more! ¶ 2:44 PM 0 comments
Telling my wife and sons to wait, I rushed upstairs to the desk in my study. The folder was still there in the back of file drawer. I yanked out my birth certificate and hurried downstairs. As I entered the dining room, I contemplated for the hundredth time the fact that I had no idea where the term formality of occurrence came from. I sat down at the table wondering whether I had made it up myself.
“You all have been so good to me,” I told my family, “now I’ve got something for you.” I handed my wife, Marion, the sheet of paper and watched her unfold it. Sam, Jesse, and Conor crowded around. Sam was fifteen, Jesse almost twelve, and Conor nearly eight.
After a few seconds they understood what they were looking at.
“Your mother’s name was Dana Black?” Sam asked. “And your name was Anthony Tobias Black?”
Marion seemed annoyed. “How long have you had this?”
“A few months.”
“Why would you keep something so important from us?” she asked. I could tell she wasn’t exactly mad, more disappointed, feeling left out.
“I start thinking so many things about this that I don’t want to think anymore,” I finally told her.
“You should have let me know,” she insisted. “This is important to me, too…and your sons.”
“I am. Right now.”
“Yes, you are.” She let it all drift away then by shaking her head a few times and chuckling at me.
“I came up with this concept of the formality of occurrence,” I went on hurriedly. “I can’t remember where I got it from--the formality of occurrence. I could swear it was a reference by some psychologist like Jung to something a philosopher like Wittgenstein or Alfred North Whitehead said about time and coincidence. I thought I had a book with a chapter in it called “The Formality of Occurrence,” but I can’t find a thing. I’ve looked everywhere.”
My wife just shook her head and laughed quietly.
When you're adopted you're less than an accident--you don't know the circumstances of your birth; your conception seems to have come about by the snap of two fingers in the back seat of a car around 11:30 P.M. on a rainy Saturday night; and, in my case anyway, you have no idea what your racial or ethnic heritage is.
I remember thinking as I lay in bed that night that I wished I could chuckle at me, too. I had given a name to the malaise plaguing me: “The Formality of Occurrence.” But I didn’t really know what it meant, nor did I know where it came from. The term was like me: confused, disoriented, and without origin—somehow made up, unconnected, plucked from chaos, just four words, confounding, and yet, oddly defining.
Read more! ¶ 2:44 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Cattle Cars and Aliens on the Turnpike
Photo to the left is me with my first-born son, Sam, circa spring 1989. What were we? Where did we come from?
August 15, 2003
We set off west for Richmond, Indiana and the traffic is like a line of cattle cars beginning in Philadelphia migrating all the way to Pittsburgh. I don’t remember the Pennsylvania Turnpike ever being so congested and dense with automobiles and trucks and people and confusion. The rest areas are a mass of humanity and smell of disinfectant, cash, body odor, new plastic, sugar drinks, and fried food. You are risking your life getting off this three hundred mile strip of highway to grab a snack and take a leak. Re-entering the road is like trying to attach your car to an alien freight train doing seventy-five, driven by thousands of desperate engineers.
I didn’t know why we were taking the trip, really. We had a name. That was all. In 1992 the state of Ohio created a process for adoptees born before 1970 to petition the state for their original birth certificates. I found out about this in 1996. It took me a year to work up the energy to obtain all the pertinent documents Ohio wanted me to file, but then I just let them all sit for another eighteen months after I discovered that I needed to send in a notarized form with copies of my social security card and driver’s license attached. I couldn’t find my social security card and didn’t have a copier, nor did I have the mojo required to apply to the Social Security Administration for a new card, go to Kinko’s, make the copies, and then walk half a block down the road from Kinko’s to our local AAA office where as a member I was entitled to one notarized signature a year. Finally, I just left the documents I had in an unmarked folder on the corner of my desk and forgot about them. Over the next year they were buried underneath other folders and magazines with articles I intended to read.
September 11, 2001 came along, though, and got me thinking about how limited life can be if you let things go. That day of insanity got a lot of us thinking about a lot of things. I knew several people who’d lost loved ones in the fall of the Twin Towers. They hold your gaze when you look at them, and make you feel that you need to do something with your life.
I spent a whole year thinking about my adoption and what it meant after that day. When you’re adopted you’re less than an accident—you don’t know the circumstances of your birth; your very conception seems to have come about by the snap of two fingers in the backseat of a car around 11:30 P.M. on a rainy Saturday night; and, in my case anyway, you have no idea what your racial or ethnic heritage is.
But on the first anniversary of that beautiful morning ushering us into the realities of the 21st century, I took the day off and pulled all my documentation together so that I could finally make the state of Ohio happy. Three months later I received a copy of my original birth certificate in the mail. My biological father” was registered as “Unknown,” but my birth mother’s name and even her address at the time of my adoption in 1958 were listed. I spent several days trying to track her down on the Internet, all to no avail. I used MapQuest to plot out the address given on the document. But cartoon maps are not very satisfying when you want answers to real questions. After a week or so of dithering, I put the document away again in the folder, but this time labeled it The Formality of Occurrence. It was a bright yellow folder and I hid it in the back of my file cabinet. The term was something I’d read somewhere. The formality of occurrence. When things happen they become formal; they move from what is possible to what is real. By formal I do not mean sophisticated or academic. I don’t mean that it is necessarily complex or something to be studied by science. The formality of occurrence is simply the recognition that something has happened, something beyond the five senses, something that is real to the mind and to our understanding. The formality of occurrence is the nexus of fate and individual existence. It is the answer to the question: “What if all of this is just a figment of my imagination? What if I’m just dreaming all of this? What if I’ve just made up all of you?” The formality of occurrence seemed to me the process whereby each of our realities becomes as real as every other possible reality that could have been; the process that makes one life no more worthy than another.
The formality of occurrence for my life, though, was incomplete because I was adopted. I was stuck in the infinity of possibility, a story with no beginning. Somehow, I felt that putting things in that yellow folder was the only way I could come close to filling my identity up with even a semblance of significance.
After that, I began to put everything I came across about adoption and racial identity in that folder: how people chart out their connections; all the articles I could find on Kevin Bacon and the five degrees of separation supposedly connecting our entire culture; little essays by famous writers on what it felt like to adopt a child; feature pieces on the dilemmas and joys of inter-racial adoption. I remember thinking that I had no idea what I was doing. I was just stuffing this file folder full of anything that seemed significant. I couldn’t even remember where I’d read about the formality of occurrence. I walked around for months with that term in my head, scanning magazines and the Internet for anything even remotely relevant to the notion of the story of lives and the fragile net of connection that we all seek all of the time, even if we’re not aware of our seeking. The phrase fell into my head once years before, but its origin at that time had dissipated into the ether. It just seemed like an appropriate title for a file folder that I intended to fill up with this almost useless information. I think I hoped that the accumulation of enough material would someday lead to a transformation--if not real, then at least something intellectual.
I put the official Ohio birth certificate away in that folder, then stuffed it in the back of my filing cabinet. I told no one about what I’d received in the mail. My birth mother’s name roiled around in my head after that, but it became almost frightening to consider her after awhile.
Her name was Dana Faith Black. The backup documentation to the certificate also gave the name of the baby--Anthony Tobias Black…me.
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Photo to the left is me with my first-born son, Sam, circa spring 1989. What were we? Where did we come from?
August 15, 2003
We set off west for Richmond, Indiana and the traffic is like a line of cattle cars beginning in Philadelphia migrating all the way to Pittsburgh. I don’t remember the Pennsylvania Turnpike ever being so congested and dense with automobiles and trucks and people and confusion. The rest areas are a mass of humanity and smell of disinfectant, cash, body odor, new plastic, sugar drinks, and fried food. You are risking your life getting off this three hundred mile strip of highway to grab a snack and take a leak. Re-entering the road is like trying to attach your car to an alien freight train doing seventy-five, driven by thousands of desperate engineers.
I didn’t know why we were taking the trip, really. We had a name. That was all. In 1992 the state of Ohio created a process for adoptees born before 1970 to petition the state for their original birth certificates. I found out about this in 1996. It took me a year to work up the energy to obtain all the pertinent documents Ohio wanted me to file, but then I just let them all sit for another eighteen months after I discovered that I needed to send in a notarized form with copies of my social security card and driver’s license attached. I couldn’t find my social security card and didn’t have a copier, nor did I have the mojo required to apply to the Social Security Administration for a new card, go to Kinko’s, make the copies, and then walk half a block down the road from Kinko’s to our local AAA office where as a member I was entitled to one notarized signature a year. Finally, I just left the documents I had in an unmarked folder on the corner of my desk and forgot about them. Over the next year they were buried underneath other folders and magazines with articles I intended to read.
September 11, 2001 came along, though, and got me thinking about how limited life can be if you let things go. That day of insanity got a lot of us thinking about a lot of things. I knew several people who’d lost loved ones in the fall of the Twin Towers. They hold your gaze when you look at them, and make you feel that you need to do something with your life.
I spent a whole year thinking about my adoption and what it meant after that day. When you’re adopted you’re less than an accident—you don’t know the circumstances of your birth; your very conception seems to have come about by the snap of two fingers in the backseat of a car around 11:30 P.M. on a rainy Saturday night; and, in my case anyway, you have no idea what your racial or ethnic heritage is.
But on the first anniversary of that beautiful morning ushering us into the realities of the 21st century, I took the day off and pulled all my documentation together so that I could finally make the state of Ohio happy. Three months later I received a copy of my original birth certificate in the mail. My biological father” was registered as “Unknown,” but my birth mother’s name and even her address at the time of my adoption in 1958 were listed. I spent several days trying to track her down on the Internet, all to no avail. I used MapQuest to plot out the address given on the document. But cartoon maps are not very satisfying when you want answers to real questions. After a week or so of dithering, I put the document away again in the folder, but this time labeled it The Formality of Occurrence. It was a bright yellow folder and I hid it in the back of my file cabinet. The term was something I’d read somewhere. The formality of occurrence. When things happen they become formal; they move from what is possible to what is real. By formal I do not mean sophisticated or academic. I don’t mean that it is necessarily complex or something to be studied by science. The formality of occurrence is simply the recognition that something has happened, something beyond the five senses, something that is real to the mind and to our understanding. The formality of occurrence is the nexus of fate and individual existence. It is the answer to the question: “What if all of this is just a figment of my imagination? What if I’m just dreaming all of this? What if I’ve just made up all of you?” The formality of occurrence seemed to me the process whereby each of our realities becomes as real as every other possible reality that could have been; the process that makes one life no more worthy than another.
The formality of occurrence for my life, though, was incomplete because I was adopted. I was stuck in the infinity of possibility, a story with no beginning. Somehow, I felt that putting things in that yellow folder was the only way I could come close to filling my identity up with even a semblance of significance.
After that, I began to put everything I came across about adoption and racial identity in that folder: how people chart out their connections; all the articles I could find on Kevin Bacon and the five degrees of separation supposedly connecting our entire culture; little essays by famous writers on what it felt like to adopt a child; feature pieces on the dilemmas and joys of inter-racial adoption. I remember thinking that I had no idea what I was doing. I was just stuffing this file folder full of anything that seemed significant. I couldn’t even remember where I’d read about the formality of occurrence. I walked around for months with that term in my head, scanning magazines and the Internet for anything even remotely relevant to the notion of the story of lives and the fragile net of connection that we all seek all of the time, even if we’re not aware of our seeking. The phrase fell into my head once years before, but its origin at that time had dissipated into the ether. It just seemed like an appropriate title for a file folder that I intended to fill up with this almost useless information. I think I hoped that the accumulation of enough material would someday lead to a transformation--if not real, then at least something intellectual.
I put the official Ohio birth certificate away in that folder, then stuffed it in the back of my filing cabinet. I told no one about what I’d received in the mail. My birth mother’s name roiled around in my head after that, but it became almost frightening to consider her after awhile.
Her name was Dana Faith Black. The backup documentation to the certificate also gave the name of the baby--Anthony Tobias Black…me.
Read more! ¶ 7:08 PM 0 comments
