The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

     They say Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, but I think it’s more the second or third week of August, the dog days filled with everything and nothing, tasked with no obligations, and certainly no trips to Macy’s.

      Undoubtedly, there is a special magic that appears in the ether around Christmastime, a collective contract to make manifest the intangible values of togetherness and generosity. For a time, flights to Kansas, giant boxes of sweets, and cards sent in snail mail serve as our new currency.

     But there is something uniquely magical about those days in August, when togetherness and generosity occurs mainly within oneself, within our decisions about how to spend those last days of summer, about how to make use of time, the truly most valuable of currencies.

     Here’s wishing you a rich Christmas and a wealthy New Year, the kinds of which can never be bought.

Busy

Busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy  busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy.

Yup.

Reality

     The two best shows on television are Catfish and Love After Lockup.

     Catfish chronicles the real stories of young people who finally meet those with whom they’ve fallen in love online, but have never seen in person nor on live video.

     Love After Lockup documents couples who finally meet after they’ve fallen in love while one person was incarcerated and the other was a free citizen.

     Spoiler alert: things do not go well.

     While they are both billed as reality television shows, it takes little time to recognize the shows are about the uniquely human compulsion to argue against reality.

     Viewing them is essentially like walking through a poorly decorated live museum of human behavior. There is the “He Was the First One to Actually Listen to Me” exhibit, the “Look at All the Beautiful Pictures She Sent Me of Herself” gallery, and lastly, my favorite, the “This is How Both Our Lives Will be Perfect Once We’re Finally Together” fantasy loop.

     The only glimmers of hope appear when, during individual interview portions, the protagonists are asked to reflect on their experiences.

     “There are times when I think to myself, ‘If he really loved you he would have already come to see you by now.’”

     “I wonder sometimes whether or not she’s only using me for money while she’s still in prison.”

     “I have a bad feeling about this.”

     For a fleeting moment I see them acknowledge the truth like a tiny fairy godmother frantically waiving her wand in the rear of their psyche, a billowing cloud of glitter swirling above her head. Sitting on my couch I silently beg them to look at her, listen to her, be with her. Or at least watch their episode back. Because let me tell you, it’s a good show.

I Walk to School

From the pen of 18-year-old Dan, applying to college:

     I walk to school. I’ve been a walker every day since I was five, wobbling up the hill to Williams-Cone Elementary. And now, though the high school is a little over a mile away, I still make the ceremonious trek every morning.

     I appreciate the solidarity, the exercise, and the chance to observe. I enjoy seeing if the only two car dealerships in town have a new model on display, when the Dairy Queen stand has opened for the season, or how the construction of the new town hall is coming along. But most of all, I love my current route from Elm Street to Mt. Ararat High School because of the little things I get to notice along the way.

     My former English teacher Mr. Brassil, for example, drives the exact same car as Mrs. Brassil, only they drive to school separately, directly behind each other, every morning. Also, in the winter months the Volvo dealership in Topsham neglects to salt their entrance driveway, leaving those who walk across it susceptible to slip and fall (as I discovered just a few weeks ago). And most obviously, drivers as a whole are disconnected with the world.

     But who can blame them? The idea of staring just at the road in front of you is something I find intrinsically ignorant. How can people ever take the time notice what is around them? On the road, all people see is the pavement. On the sidewalk, I see the world. This daily act of observing, discovering, and being in the midst of the action is what truly excites me.

     The desire to be in places where I can absorb my surroundings is something I think defines me as a person: I don’t appreciate reading books about the culture in China as much as I do living with a host family there; I don’t see as much value in studying philosophical writings as I do in learning from life experiences themselves; and I don’t feel the same sense of fulfillment and awareness in driving to school as I do walking. I am always trying to place myself in environments that encourage the engagement of thought, and I appreciate the little things I get to notice along the way.

     So the next time you are in your car, notice what is around. If you look hard enough, you’ll see a guy walking on the sidewalk. Maybe this is his first time. Maybe he has been doing it since he was five. In any case, he is seeing the world. 

Economics 203

     Sitting in Dr. Hess’ Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory class, I listened painfully as he extrapolated on wage growth and consumer confidence.

     A dinosaur of a man, both in stature and experience, he ran his classroom like a cafeteria, mechanically dolling out ladles of information onto our trays of hope that we’d pass the next exam and find jobs after college.

    In risk of creating an interactive moment, he posed a question to the class as he continued writing feverishly on the white board.

     “Now, let’s take two situations. Option 1, let’s say the median wage is $50,000 per year and you collect $75,000, or 25% above the median. Pretty good.

     Option 2, the median is $80,000 and you make $90,000, or only 12.5% above the median, but with $15,000 more buying power.

     Assuming inflation is constant between our two examples, how many of you would rather have Option 1?”

     Without thinking, my hand shot up. And it was alone.

     My heart skipped a beat as I felt naked in front of the room of polos and Longchamp totes.

     “That’s exactly right. We see more consumer confidence when people’s wages are further above the median than whether or not they are actually higher.”

     For the first time on my broken road of economic study at Davidson College, I felt like the smartest kid in the class. While economic theory assumes that all people will act rationally all the time, I had known from my hours of reality television viewing and closeted adolescent angst that such an assumption is bogus. We don’t care about the millionaire in Dubai. We care about the Joneses next door.

     I knew that $15,000 was a low price to pay to feel like you’re keeping up.

Wonderland

      Walking to the subway yesterday, my face was pelted by the tiny bits of winter swooping down from the sky above. Slippery sidewalks, honking cars, and general mayhem had taken Manhattan from a humming hive to an apocalyptic wonderland. I dodged umbrellas and slipped past traffic-jammed taxis, focusing plainly on the pavement just before my feet as they trudged through layers of snowy slush.

     I was on my way to my warm apartment, and I was so happy.

A Parking Lot

by, Dan Van Note 2003 (age 11)

Shining with automobiles

Plentiful and glimmering with the sun’s warm rays

So simple and plain, holding many memories

Not making a slight movement or sound.

We think it just is.

Just another thing like grass or telephone pole.

It just is.

But what it is, is only what we see

Cars coming and going, not leaving a thank you.

But doesn’t complain

Tons of pounds upon it,

But doesn’t make a peep.

Is it really just, there?

Or is it something more?

Can it feel?

Can it see?

We will never know.

Maybe we just are.

Maybe we are just like grass or a telephone pole.

Maybe we all just, are.

A parking lot.

Driver

     When Oprah was in her twenties, she dated a man with a sports car. As he was pulling away from her, she remembered clinging onto his bumper and falling onto the pavement, pleading for him to come back. As he rolled away, he yelled out the window, “The problem with you, baby doll, is you think you’re special.”

     “No I’m not!” She cried out, “I’m not special! I’m not special!”

     “Can you believe?” I told my therapist. “I never thought that I would be the Oprah in a story.”

     “Or maybe you’re driving the car.”

Lotto

     I am a smart person. I understand statistics. But I also know that the most important time to buy a lottery ticket is when the jackpot reaches unprecedented heights and the odds are the lowest in history.

     Passing the corner deli on a crisp Friday night, I noticed several people waiting in line at the counter. Immediately I remembered the story on Channel 7 Eyewitness News about the Mega Millions Jackpot surpassing $1 billion, and out of fear that I might miss out on the most important opportunity of my life, I joined the line.

     “Just one please.”

     (I only buy lottery tickets when I can order them like a slice of cheese at the $1 Pizza place, where it’s so obvious what I’m there for that just a single finger in the air will do.)

     I kept the ticket clean and flat as I turned the corner of my block, double checking the terms and conditions and making a mental note that I must not forget to sign the back upon learning of my winnings.

     I thought of the new apartment to be bought, the trips to be taken, the boundaries to be set, and the relationships that would inevitably be rendered impossible.

     My most ingenious plan was to wait the maximum amount of time permitted before claiming my prize, telling nobody that I held the winning ticket until I could experience what it felt like to move through the world with an invisible billion dollars. (A bestselling book would have soon followed. I would have donated those proceeds to charity, of course.)

     That plan was quickly derailed, though, upon entering my apartment and immediately telling my brother that I would be moving out if I was to win.

     While I would have been a richer man holding a penny in one hand than a lottery ticket in the other, walking down the street with those tiny butterflies in my stomach and swirling gold clouds in my head, I understood that I had paid for exactly what I wanted.

     The lottery is in the fantasy business. It’s theater. It sells people the permission to dream. And for $2, that’s a pretty cheap ticket.

Shame

     Some people really don’t have shame. And some people really do. I wonder if it’s similar to the amount of nerve endings in our bodies. Shame can keep people away from hot objects, while those without it have no problem wrapping their hands around burning pipes. Are shameless people walking around with giant burn marks, unrecognizable? Or are they the only ones who are truly free?

My Body

     My body has never been the love of my life. It’s more like the guy I’ve always known was kind, patient, and pretty cute, but to whom I should really hold off on committing.

     There has to be a better version out there somewhere.

     “Out there.”

     I used to sleep with a particularly fit guy. One time during pillow talk I said, “You’re so hot. You know, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a really nice body.”

     “You don’t have to wonder,” He mumbled.

     My heart swelled three sizes in preparation of his inevitable response. “You’re perfect just the way you are,” he would surely say.

     “You just have to work out a lot. It’s like a choice,” he encouraged.

     Deflated.

     The aspirational body is a betrayal of the self. It’s like hating the apartment you have simply because there are penthouses out there.

     I’m sure just as many divorces happen in penthouses as in fifth-floor walkups.

     My body ran a marathon. It portaged a canoe over two miles. It has been with me through every step in every room I’ve entered since birth. But the process of falling in love with it still feels slow and arduous.

     I just have to work at it a lot. It’s like a choice.

Endurance Queen

On Monday I will run a marathon for the first time. These are the things I will be thinking:

     Get comfortable.

     Give yourself time to get comfortable.

     Can you soften into this?

     Can you enjoy this?

     Can you let that go?

     This is the best run you’ve ever done, because you’re doing it now.

     Soft focus.

     Finish strong.

     Bring it to the runway.

Dear Brett,

     What baffles me the most is not that you likely assaulted a girl while drunk in 1982, but that you genuinely believe you are incapable of such a thing.

     When we claim acts of violence are beyond our capacity, we turn other people into monsters. The full range of human experience is available to all of us at all times. As much as we adore résumés and family photos, none of us are a “type of person.”

     Most of us have not killed someone, but can understand the urge after driving in tri-state area traffic.

     Also, the idea that we are only as bad as the worst thing we’ve done with hard evidence seems insufficient criteria for any job candidate.

     When I was interviewing for entry-level arts administration positions, my success rate was worse than my foul shot percentage in freshman high school basketball (which was 24%). I went through multiple rounds of interviews, answered several questions about my past, and was honest while still being thoughtful about what I chose to share.

     Upon hearing that I was not confirmed for those jobs, it would have been satisfying to deliver angry testimony to those who made the hiring decision. It feels bad to not get something to which you believe you are entitled.

     But sometimes you just don’t get the job. Hillary didn’t. I didn’t. And hopefully this will be the first time in a lifetime full of weekends in Connecticut and beach trips full of beer that you, too, just won't get it.

Choreography

The organization of space and time.

Stormy Weather

     In all of the hurricane coverage, the detail that alarmed me the most was a line in an article that stated something to the effect of, “As is the case with any storm, there are those who will refuse to leave their homes no matter how dire the forecast.”

     I imagined a man and woman sitting on giant recliner chairs in their living room, watching the plot of the hurricane move directly over their house, looking over at their case of bottled water, and concluding, “We’ll be fine.”

     It’s difficult to overestimate the power of denial. But easy, apparently, to underestimate the power of a hurricane.

     Those squatters seem to be drawing from the same well as the woman who stays in a bad marriage, or me when I stayed in the closet for 20 years with a giant glittery gay rain cloud hovering above me.

     The greatest burden, of course, falls upon those who become tasked with rescuing you from the rubble that was once your house, pulling you from the evidence you apparently needed to prove that nature is more powerful than your stubbornness.

     Still, I feel like I understand them. Sitting on my couch, watching palm trees blow sideways on the TV, I ask myself…

     What house am I refusing to leave?

Fall

     When I retire and have my own vacation home in Maine, the thing I look forward to most is driving up there in the middle of September. After getting all my affairs in order in the city (attending doctors appointments, fixing the powder room faucet, changing the newspaper delivery address), I picture waking up early on a Saturday morning and driving out of the tiny garage on the ground floor of my building, gliding up the Henry Hudson Parkway with my husband, and listening to the sounds of easy jazz.

     We’ll make as many stops as we want on the drive up, perhaps enjoying lobster rolls in Kennebunkport like the tourists do, without any lines or unruly children. We'll let the windows down. And eventually we’ll turn onto our small driveway, packed with dirt and gravel and a smattering of burnt orange leaves wet from the rainstorm the night before.

     I’ll revel in the sound of those car tires crawling over that gravel.

     Our house guy, Tom, will have done such a great job keeping up the place since we were last there that we’ll just turn the key with our bags in tow, throwing them down on the bed and immediately walking the short walk down to the pond to “make sure it’s still there.”

     The water, like glass, will greet us like an old friend. We’ll take off our shoes and sit at the edge of the creaky wooden dock, dip our ankles in, and observe the tiny bugs dancing on its surface.

     We’ll talk a lot, or, better yet, not at all.

     We’ll cheers our glasses of red wine to a “very successful drive up.” After dinner I’ll fire up the wood stove and we’ll each crack open a new book. We’ll go to bed early and bathe in the silence of the woods.

     And such it will be for all of fall.

Labor Day

     When the month turns to 9, things mean business.

     I always appreciated the first day of school, when everyone looked brand new.

     September is, of course, the January in fashion.

     But there is a strange sadness that comes with the end of summer. It’s like giving back a boat you knew you had on loan, but liked pretending you lived on anyway.

     Back to land.

Bush

     Cars honk as I walk down the sidewalk and observe attractive people sitting across from each other at restaurant tables. The cool air is punctuated by drifting exhaust fumes. My sweaty cotton shirt sticks to my chest as an unfortunate reminder of an unsatisfactory spin class.

     (Forgive me, but straight men should not be allowed to instruct spin class. Can we just say that that is a women-and-gays-only lane? As a compromise, perhaps a mandatory training course in pop playlist curation and positive motivational yelling could be offered for any aspiring straight-dude-spin-class-instructors. But I digress.)

     As I turn onto my street, I go on mental vacation. I feel the volume of the week’s anxieties begin to dissipate. I tell myself to touch the fabric umbrella sitting outside a small shop, to remind myself that things feel like something. I pause at the next building and stand at its corner with my hand on the wood siding, a strange feeling, and imagine myself as a faceless woman in some novel standing at a bus stop.

     I decide that I am going to take a long time to get home. I proceed to walk almost as slowly as I can down the block, feeling all the parts of my feet shift inside my New Balance running shoes.

     I mentally review the wrongdoings of others, notice the silhouettes of people passing by, and mistake the cool light being cast by a streetlamp as moonlight. I imagine the oddity I must present to people who see me, a zombie-monk hybrid in workout clothes. I imagine them imagining me, and their hastily made conclusion that I must be a troubled man of some kind.

     I tend to overestimate the interest of others in me.

     Closer to my apartment, I pass by a bush that has overgrown its wire fence, and notice a single green stem with healthy leaves sticking out from all the rest. I pluck it.

     It now sits in water, next to a single flower, in a tiny glass vase on my windowsill. I like to look over and appreciate its little beauty, when I have the time.

What You Deserve

     “All I want is what I have coming to me, all I want is my fair share.” - Lucy, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

     “Deserve” is a funny word to me. I can think of few instances where it actually makes sense. My favorite is when someone is describing a couple that particularly irks them, and says, “They deserve each other.”

     Boom.

     Respect and kindness are the only things to which I can find everyone entitled. But once you get more specific, the moral waters seem murky to me.

     Who really deserves a better house? Who deserves a Caribbean vacation? Who deserves to sleep in just a little bit longer?

     Why is it that just because you’ve flown in a plane more often than other people, you’ve earned the privilege of flying more in that plane?

     A practice of gratitude and attention to one’s breath seem suitable antidotes to much of the strife surrounding our constant desires for more.

     But come Christmas, I must stand with Lucy. All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.

Friday

Do you ever wake up and wish it was Friday?