Irish Blatherings Post 1: The Importance In Realizing Your Lack of Importance

Soooo...I am 52.  I thought for a while that I was 53 but then I did the math.  It was interesting to realize that no single fact could be less meaningless than whether I was 52 or 53.  Not to anyone.  Certainly not to me.  At 52/53 I am BUSY!  BIZZY!  CRAZY, STUPID BiZeeeee!  Get it?  I am busy because I am RFP (really Fucking Important).  I am:

1. A husband

2. An empty nest father

3. A lawyer which for me means:

a. I have clients who expect me to be available

b. I have employees who expect that I will bring in enough paying clients so they

can eat.

c. I need to bring in enough paying clients so I can eat.

d. I have to take care of a lot of administrivia (i.e. getting bills out to clients,

getting clients to pay bills, making sure we have supplies and helping to deal

with shit when it breaks.

4. I volunteer a lot of time with SLU’s law clinic

5. I blog infrequently and intelligently.

6. I keep in touch with a large number of people younger than myself on Facebook

(nothing creepy about that).

7. I am a home owner.  There is stuff to do.  Getting things fixed (can't fix them myself),

cleaning up and of course cooking.  I have to cook a lot because of specific dietary

needs related to being an asshole.

8. We also have a place in Michigan which requires attention and visiting.

9. My parents are old.  They don’t “require” attention but they “merit” attention.  More

thanI give.

10. My siblings had children who I like but who might or might not be “damaged” and are

now having children themselves.

11. I was active in my old church, I sense the same will be true of my new church.

12. I read

I say this not to impress anyone.  I trust you have busy lives as well.  But what I have realized is that… for some period of time… all of these things go on, things get dealt with and many things… thrive, in my absence.  This is, in no particular order,

1. Humbling

2. Frightening; and (if you're paying attention)

3. Liberating

I am a bitter, shallow man.  I complain...A LOT!  My glass, half empty.  This is a character flaw.  Arguably a DRAMATIC character flaw but if God is kind to you he delivers a modicum of self knowledge along with all the aches and pains and maladies that complainers deal with as they age. My recent dissatisfaction is evidence of how little I have to complain about.  That is a two headed complaint.  

1. My “career” does not lend itself to enjoying sabbaticals and as I have grown older and realized I might only be ⅔ of the way through my work life, the concept of sabbatical seems eminently sensible.  But this plays in with my second complaint;

2. I don’t travel enough, specifically internationally.  Every time I have left the country in my life it has been a broadening epiphany giving me a look at the world outside my silo and making more appreciative of our great country, God’s baffling kindness towards me, my family and my country and my home, wife family and… kitchen.  Sometimes it can even help to make me more appreciative of my job!

So my New Years Resolution was that for the rest of my life I would leave the country twice a year.  My wife and I then spent some time together in Florida visiting her parents and we stretched it out that in 2015 we would take two weeks and go live in another country, towards a goal of moving for one month a year to another country and just taking it in or in the immortal words of Jules in the movie Pulp Fiction we are going to “Walk The Land”.

Jules: I'll just walk the earth.

Vincent: What'cha mean walk the earth?

Jules: You know, walk the earth, meet people... get into adventures. Like Caine from "Kung Fu."

That is good stuff.  But my plan I think is to fly the earth, drive the earth, live around people I didn’t grow up with for a while each year and do it with my wife.  Sooo… my daughter is in Cambridge this semester and my wife decided I should go visit her so went and met her in Dublin and I decided I would spend a few days wandering around Ireland on my own which led me to Galway for a few days where I am now typing away preparing to fly back to the Lou tomorrow.  In my absence it appears things have gone… splendidly.  Perhaps I should leave more often and… perhaps I will but the next several posts will be known forever as my own personal “There And Back Again” and if you don’t get that reference, shame on you and Google it, but I think I will call this little series my…”Irish Blatherings”.  Round one was yesterday when I put up the Edward Sharpe Concert.

Peace!

I Cry A Lot

Yes, I am a 48 year old man who sobs like a baby. Sometimes at weddings, sometimes at funerals but mostly when I am by myself and watching a movie, or reading a book where the beauty and sadness of it all cannot be expressed by me in any other way. It is always cathartic. It always leads to a little more balance, a little more recognition of what a blessed life I lead and.... well...it improves my general happiness. I cannot draw it out or have it come on at will (which would be great) but it hits at random times probably when I am feeling on the verge of falling apart myself.

Yesterday I slept in till about 7 and then went to work. It was Saturday which tends to always be good. Got a little breakfast and worked all morning but upon getting home found out my wife has gotten the flu. So I am sitting downstairs and doing my normal male hunter gatherer thing (surfing through all the channels) when I discovered that two of my favorite movies were on today. Almost Famous is an awesome film with Kate Hudson based on the early triumphs (mythologized) of the great Cameron Crowe and "A River Runs Through It" which is great on a 100 different levels.

I have seen "A River Runs Through It" almost as many times as "The Godfather" which means at least 30 times and probably more. And that is not my usual self aggrandizing over estimate. I would guess it is an under estimate as to River and the Godfather flicks. "Almost Famous" has only been viewed about a dozen times, so in comparison I really do not know the movie at all. But both of them strike to the heart on totally different levels and they both delight and cause more then a little soul searching.

Almost Famous is so good because I love pop music (or loved pop music) so much when I was growing up. Crowe was a genius with a hyper engaged mother that pushed him to graduate from high school at fifteen. He did go on tour with a band as a kid and did have a relationship with lester Bangs which then led to Ben Fong Torres of Rolling Stone. Crowe Wrote the most brilliant interview I have ever read and it just happened to be of Neil Young, the Zeus of my musical pantheon. I urge you to read it:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9102786/neil_young_the_rs_interview

Anyway, there is so much sad and trite and beautiful and stupid about the movie. The way he develop[s a relationship and the pretentious idiots in the band who are dwarfed by the genius in their presence..."Russell". Russell like every rock star is a parody of conflicts but the movie pulls together beautifully with perfectly drawn characters and pitch perfect dialogue. It mirrors several great, iconic rock and roll moments such as:

A scene with the band in a small plane (what could go wrong) and it hurts turbulence over Mississippi (like Skynard) and Russell starts to sing Buddy Holly and Big Bopper songs.

At the party, when he is on acid, Russell Hammond cries out, "I am a golden god!" This is a reference to Robert Plant of the band Led Zeppelin, who is purported to have said the same thing (sober) while looking over the Sunset Strip from a balcony at the Continental Hyatt "Riot" House.

At the beginning of the movie one of the groupies wanders into the party saying "Does anyone remember laughter?" channeling her Led Zeppelin.

The movie is heartbreaking and after every heartbreak there is a moment of Karmic healing...to a soundtrack. The cheesiest and best moment is on the bus where no one is speaking and they start to sing "Tiny Dancer". Priceless. The fact that the actor playing Crowe looks like a young Jeff Tweedy is also sadly moving for this St. Louisan.

***

"A River Runs Through It" is just a beautiful movie. Beautifully shot. Beautifully casted. Beautifully scripted. I think that eventually we look back on this as one of the great films of our time. The movie, released in 1992 was I think one of Robert redfords directing debuts.... can you have more then one? I am certain he can. Starring Brad Pitt, Craig Sheffer, Tom Skerritt, Brenda Blethyn, and Emily Lloyd there is not a mis step and you really get your first taste that Brad Pitt can act. Walking two brothers through growing up as the sons of a Presbyterian minister in Montana. Fly Fishing and communing with nature is the metaphor for everything.

The movie is a perfect echo of the brilliant book by Norman Maclean. They can (and should) be enjoyed in tandem. They are both heartbreaking in asking the hard question. When Skeritt, after losing his son is preaching in his small church he asks.... or tells:

"Each one of here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding."

And at the end you hear Redford narrating as we see the aged Norman Maclean fishing: Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

The whole perfect movie is a set up for those two scenes at the end. And I tear up like a baby.

Sometimes life in movies is beautiful. Real men do not cry at shit like this, so I assume I have a problem. Rent them, buy them.

***

Boston Globe ran a nice review of the laye Johnny Cash's new release, The American Recordings VI. I do not need to tell you how important it might be to buy this CD, first thing on Tuesday. To quote the great philosopher Larry The Cable Guy.... "Git her done!"

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/02/21/johnny_cashs_final_chapter_is_the_most_compelling/

Fungus...Aong Us

Skin Cancer!
FUNGUS!










One of the many joys of being old, pale, bald and my fathers son is a genetic weakness for skin related cancers, fungises, maladies, parasites and other grotesqe things which in Biblical times would have relegated me to a colony somewhere away from people. Clearly there is a certain portion of the public which would applaud me taken and removed generally from society but this would have nothing to do with my skin condition.

In everything, in every facet of my life, every weakness, vice, failure or unhappiness, no matter how small or petty, I blame my father. It is such a simple catch all. By the time when he was my age and teaching Sunday School he had a whole raft of little Lutheran kids thinking he might or might not be the devil, because they had already carved out two chunks of his head with skin cancer problems. He is also hair impaired and evidently as a child my father was forced by my grandmother to play outside all the time (babrbaric). My father by the way might or might not be the devil but the point was that he told the children that the equidistant scars on his forehead were where they had removed his horns. That is my dad.

My mother tried to keep me out of the sun and being a rather effeminate kid with a total lack of motor skills it was not too hard. In high school and college I took to wearing bandanas and ball caps since the hair started to thin at about 18. Anyway... I have been through a number of skin doctors but have finally found one to stay with. Of the several others a few stand out in blessed memory. One who was freezing half a dozen things on my body every time I showed up and another who never got that close. Everytime I tried to show him something on my skin he would move away and tell me “it is a fungus, we all have them all over our bodies”, like he was sharing some mystical incantation. He was not. My wife has since excused he backing away from my disease as “nearsightedness”. I prefer to think of him as a quack. The other guy burnt off or froze every anomoly which was comforting in that he hurt me, so he showed me that he cared.

Now I have a gal who is supposed to be awesome. She only sees patients once a month. She is with Barnes, a "teaching" hospital so she send an intern in to talk to me, look me over and make initial recommendations. I have to strip. I have to turn slowly. I have to expose my deteriorating, flabby, hairy, old man body to this doctor. Then the boss comes in, looks at her notes and we start all over again. It is a fairly complete process. They gave me some ointments and creams for various maladies and then shaved something off my head which she said "might be a basal cell". It was like it was no big deal, very slow moving cancer. I left feeling like I had been well looked over and responsible about my bad genetics. A few days later she called me and said it is Basal Cell. I said "no big deal" and then she did her best to tell me it was serious and referred me to the surgeon. I called the surgeon immediately and she was so concerned that she set an appointment to consult with me.... a month from then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_cell_carcinoma

So this week I go see the cutter. For your knowledge and care I have posted photos of a few of the things I have cut off my head and thrown into the yard. The message here is simple... wear a hat.