air pocket in the toothpaste tube
pops out a little extra gel onto
upturned bristles. I look down
the neck into a black cavity
like nothing I've seen
before. Like if you chopped
my head off, drained me out,
scooped out the bones. Yeah,
it would look like that.
Of course, I've never really looked
into the neck of the toothpaste
before -- not so deliberately.
It's one of those inevitabilities,
something you picked up a long
time ago and only have to think
about once every few months
when its thoroughly flattened,
exhausted. Even then there's that
tiny bit of paste left in the neck,
a barrier to the emptiness behind.
What is a hole made of? It's made
of nothing. Absence has no substance,
so can a hole exist?
I don't know how the tube gets filled
some assembly line churns them out
robotic arms and everything. Even
without a human in sight, there is room
for imperfection, for a pocket of air,
for a hole.
10/17/2013
10/02/2013
leviathan
a picture of stillness
scattered cars parked placidly
under amber lights, the owners
wandering lit hallways or sitting
at security desks on the night
shift in the shadow shrouded
building hunched on the lot's
edge. Shrubberies have stopped
stirring, birds not yet stirred to
chirp on the dawn.
A hulking black
shape lumbers in, white eyes flashing,
sweeping the blacktop, a behemoth
disregarding the careful ordered
lines, rumbling through the quiet
to the gated dumpsters. A servile
leviathan hungrily roaming pre-dawn
streets, noisily devouring refuse
without a shade of subtlety
or recognition.
10/01/2013
whate'er thou art
Whate'er thou art, act well thy part.
An Italian lawyer in Cagliari told me much the same thing, using a bit more colorful language. "Qualsiasi cosa sia, sii uno con palle!"
He and I were going on exchanges, something I don't have many memories of doing with members. I don't recall where we were headed or any other details, just driving down the road that led by the church, via Peretti. During the day, you could stand in front of the church by the fig tree from which I had my first taste of that unusual fruit and look across via Peretti to see the hilltop Castello di San Michele. You could even see it from inside the church, where once President Pacini had asked me, gesturing out the open window of the classroom where he was interviewing me, if I could picture a temple in place of where that twelfth-century castle stood. But at the time of this advice, we were driving along in the dark and all I saw were street lights, traffic signals, and illuminated patches of roads and sidewalks, blurring by beyond the windshield.
I don't even remember the name of that man I was riding with. Fratello something. But I remember those words and they sting me sometimes when I'm feeling like I am not being whatever it is I'm supposed to be con palle.
I watched a YouTube video in which someone animated excerpts from a radio interview with the late David Foster Wallace. "The whole thing about perfectionism is that--perfectionism is very dangerous because, of course, if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything, because doing anything results -- it's actually very tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is."
The quote hit home hard enough that I typed it out, making allowances for Wallace's wandering way of getting to the point, and printed it on a strip of paper. He goes on to share his experience as a young tennis player. He says he played it "enough to feel like it was really beautiful." He apparently got quite good, but he never went pro, because, as he puts it, "you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point." When asked why he passed up on a potential career in tennis, he elaborated on his view of people who play seriously. "People who seriously, seriously play devote their lives to it sort of the way monks do. I mean, you don't date, you go to bed at a certain time, you eat certain ways, you practice 10 to 12 hours a day. The difference between practicing three hours a day and practicing 12 hours a day is everything."
Wallace clearly illustrates what he sees as the ideal tennis player--a pro tennis-player who has chosen a path and devoted oneself to it performs that way. The goal is to win championships and get sponsors and be very, very good, which requires certain actions. To be a tennis player con palle (forgive the pun), there is a clear-cut path.
The anecdote takes me back to my own college days, where I confronted my own limitations in another field: that of music. I was getting good on the saxophone. My instructor, who held a PhD in woodwind studies, told me I had what it took to be a music major if I had chosen that route, that of all his non-major students, I showed the most potential. After auditioning for the top jazz band one semester, he told me that I was good enough to be first alto, but that he had chosen another player for that seat simply because he was a music major and needed the experience of leading the section.
I would say I had played enough to see the saxophone and jazz music as something really beautiful, and yet I had reached a point where I either needed to make the decision to commit to it entirely, monastically, or not to. I either needed to become a saxophone player con palle, following the footsteps of greats like John Coltrane who could practice a single pentatonic scale in a small, windowless room for hours on end, or not. I opted to not go down that road, not willing to make that sacrifice to something that would provide negligible career opportunities.
My playing has declined measurably as a result; it had to. Though I made the choice deliberately, it is a fork in the road that I reflect on frequently, wishing I knew where that other branching path would have led me, because the path I have taken has been meandering for a long while now, and I have not yet discovered what it is I am.
Everything comes in two versions: the ideal version and the real version. I think the ideal is what we--all of us in tacit complicity--agree that a thing should be, what we wish it was. Though I may have my own personal ideal concept of what a tennis player is, it is based largely on what everyone else agrees a tennis player should be. And it's not just tennis players or jazz musicians, it's every role. Saul Bellow's Augie March pointed out that everyone constructs their own version of reality, and that most things that don't align with their version of reality tend to get filtered out in an effort to preserve the reality that they have constructed. Discord and difficulty ensue when one is forced to measure up those differences.
My versions come in conflict with the real versions every day. For example, an ideal father and husband is a provider - not just a barely satisfactory one, but one that secures the necessities with plenty to spare. He's Cliff Huxtable, or some other by-gone TV dad, one with a steady, satisfying, rewarding, challenging job and lots of leisure time. Maybe he's not a doctor, but he's at least somebody's boss, especially his own, because being somebody's subordinate is a shortcoming. Because being a man con palle brings with it the necessity to be top of the heap in some way, even though that heap is all on the same team.
Wherever this wandering path of mine is leading, that ideal outcome seems like the least likely of destinations. Like wandering a downhill path through wood and expecting to end up on top of a mountain. It seems unattainable from my current vantage point. What's worse, I'm not positive I can say I am doing "my best" under current circumstances, cowed by fear and uncertainty as I am. The best I can say is that I am doing something, which is not the same as acting well my part. I'll have to abide by another popular maxim that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until we are able to do it better. That one at least offers some encouragement.
I think all of this is what John Mayer is singing about when he says he is bigger than his body gives him credit for. There is so much packed inside, so many unrealistic expectations, false hopes, grand fantasies crowded in this meaty glove of a body, it feels like it must spill over somewhere, hover around me like a cloud of flies. Visions of myself being something con palle--it doesn't matter what, because all of them feel like they are simultaneously within me and just beyond me. Each vision is a spark kindled in my aspiring center and then set floating out of reach, out of sight. But that bursting feeling remains, the pressure of that great furnace, strictly internal, that urge to do something, to be something. To grapple those weaknesses into submission and achieve some work of noble note..
Something inside me feels a sense of nascent greatness, nurtured and probably blown out of proportion by inordinate levels of praise from teachers, grandparents, and too many inspirational quotes defying me to be anything less than great. But all those expectations get to be burdensome when things don't shape up in quite the way they are painted. And every single person who succeeds at something I mean to do or hope to do but haven't yet adds a brick to that load.
One consolation is that this struggle is anything but unique. John Mayer, Alfred Lord Tennyson, David Foster Wallace, that Italian brother in Cagliari, the anonymous author of that proverb, must all have experienced and slogged through the same confusing quagmire. Every individual probably experiences multiple levels of dissatisfaction, discouragement, and disappointment - it seems universal, part of the human experience. Their examples suggest that these feelings can become fuel.
I see now that the tendency is to get overly hung up on the first part of that phrase - what is it I am supposed to be anyway? But I'm beginning to think it is the second part that I should focus on. Previously I've seen that first clause as restrictive, as step one--first discover who you are. But there is a good chance that the author meant exactly the opposite: it doesn't matter what or who you are in the least, so long as you act well your part. That part may be hazy and undefined, it may not have a clear label complete with instructions and expectations, but you can't let that prevent you from performing. And not in a false way, but in the most sincere way you can. Put aside the fantasies and ideals, the pie-in-the-sky, paralyzing what-ifs and if-onlys, and deal in a real and admirable way with the daily realities and necessities.
If I can master that, then maybe that is how I will realize the first part - maybe that is the only way to finally define and declare what thou art.
An Italian lawyer in Cagliari told me much the same thing, using a bit more colorful language. "Qualsiasi cosa sia, sii uno con palle!"
He and I were going on exchanges, something I don't have many memories of doing with members. I don't recall where we were headed or any other details, just driving down the road that led by the church, via Peretti. During the day, you could stand in front of the church by the fig tree from which I had my first taste of that unusual fruit and look across via Peretti to see the hilltop Castello di San Michele. You could even see it from inside the church, where once President Pacini had asked me, gesturing out the open window of the classroom where he was interviewing me, if I could picture a temple in place of where that twelfth-century castle stood. But at the time of this advice, we were driving along in the dark and all I saw were street lights, traffic signals, and illuminated patches of roads and sidewalks, blurring by beyond the windshield.
I don't even remember the name of that man I was riding with. Fratello something. But I remember those words and they sting me sometimes when I'm feeling like I am not being whatever it is I'm supposed to be con palle.
I watched a YouTube video in which someone animated excerpts from a radio interview with the late David Foster Wallace. "The whole thing about perfectionism is that--perfectionism is very dangerous because, of course, if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything, because doing anything results -- it's actually very tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is."
The quote hit home hard enough that I typed it out, making allowances for Wallace's wandering way of getting to the point, and printed it on a strip of paper. He goes on to share his experience as a young tennis player. He says he played it "enough to feel like it was really beautiful." He apparently got quite good, but he never went pro, because, as he puts it, "you confront your own limitations rather starkly at a certain point." When asked why he passed up on a potential career in tennis, he elaborated on his view of people who play seriously. "People who seriously, seriously play devote their lives to it sort of the way monks do. I mean, you don't date, you go to bed at a certain time, you eat certain ways, you practice 10 to 12 hours a day. The difference between practicing three hours a day and practicing 12 hours a day is everything."
Wallace clearly illustrates what he sees as the ideal tennis player--a pro tennis-player who has chosen a path and devoted oneself to it performs that way. The goal is to win championships and get sponsors and be very, very good, which requires certain actions. To be a tennis player con palle (forgive the pun), there is a clear-cut path.
The anecdote takes me back to my own college days, where I confronted my own limitations in another field: that of music. I was getting good on the saxophone. My instructor, who held a PhD in woodwind studies, told me I had what it took to be a music major if I had chosen that route, that of all his non-major students, I showed the most potential. After auditioning for the top jazz band one semester, he told me that I was good enough to be first alto, but that he had chosen another player for that seat simply because he was a music major and needed the experience of leading the section.
I would say I had played enough to see the saxophone and jazz music as something really beautiful, and yet I had reached a point where I either needed to make the decision to commit to it entirely, monastically, or not to. I either needed to become a saxophone player con palle, following the footsteps of greats like John Coltrane who could practice a single pentatonic scale in a small, windowless room for hours on end, or not. I opted to not go down that road, not willing to make that sacrifice to something that would provide negligible career opportunities.
My playing has declined measurably as a result; it had to. Though I made the choice deliberately, it is a fork in the road that I reflect on frequently, wishing I knew where that other branching path would have led me, because the path I have taken has been meandering for a long while now, and I have not yet discovered what it is I am.
Everything comes in two versions: the ideal version and the real version. I think the ideal is what we--all of us in tacit complicity--agree that a thing should be, what we wish it was. Though I may have my own personal ideal concept of what a tennis player is, it is based largely on what everyone else agrees a tennis player should be. And it's not just tennis players or jazz musicians, it's every role. Saul Bellow's Augie March pointed out that everyone constructs their own version of reality, and that most things that don't align with their version of reality tend to get filtered out in an effort to preserve the reality that they have constructed. Discord and difficulty ensue when one is forced to measure up those differences.
My versions come in conflict with the real versions every day. For example, an ideal father and husband is a provider - not just a barely satisfactory one, but one that secures the necessities with plenty to spare. He's Cliff Huxtable, or some other by-gone TV dad, one with a steady, satisfying, rewarding, challenging job and lots of leisure time. Maybe he's not a doctor, but he's at least somebody's boss, especially his own, because being somebody's subordinate is a shortcoming. Because being a man con palle brings with it the necessity to be top of the heap in some way, even though that heap is all on the same team.
Wherever this wandering path of mine is leading, that ideal outcome seems like the least likely of destinations. Like wandering a downhill path through wood and expecting to end up on top of a mountain. It seems unattainable from my current vantage point. What's worse, I'm not positive I can say I am doing "my best" under current circumstances, cowed by fear and uncertainty as I am. The best I can say is that I am doing something, which is not the same as acting well my part. I'll have to abide by another popular maxim that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until we are able to do it better. That one at least offers some encouragement.
I think all of this is what John Mayer is singing about when he says he is bigger than his body gives him credit for. There is so much packed inside, so many unrealistic expectations, false hopes, grand fantasies crowded in this meaty glove of a body, it feels like it must spill over somewhere, hover around me like a cloud of flies. Visions of myself being something con palle--it doesn't matter what, because all of them feel like they are simultaneously within me and just beyond me. Each vision is a spark kindled in my aspiring center and then set floating out of reach, out of sight. But that bursting feeling remains, the pressure of that great furnace, strictly internal, that urge to do something, to be something. To grapple those weaknesses into submission and achieve some work of noble note..
Something inside me feels a sense of nascent greatness, nurtured and probably blown out of proportion by inordinate levels of praise from teachers, grandparents, and too many inspirational quotes defying me to be anything less than great. But all those expectations get to be burdensome when things don't shape up in quite the way they are painted. And every single person who succeeds at something I mean to do or hope to do but haven't yet adds a brick to that load.
One consolation is that this struggle is anything but unique. John Mayer, Alfred Lord Tennyson, David Foster Wallace, that Italian brother in Cagliari, the anonymous author of that proverb, must all have experienced and slogged through the same confusing quagmire. Every individual probably experiences multiple levels of dissatisfaction, discouragement, and disappointment - it seems universal, part of the human experience. Their examples suggest that these feelings can become fuel.
I see now that the tendency is to get overly hung up on the first part of that phrase - what is it I am supposed to be anyway? But I'm beginning to think it is the second part that I should focus on. Previously I've seen that first clause as restrictive, as step one--first discover who you are. But there is a good chance that the author meant exactly the opposite: it doesn't matter what or who you are in the least, so long as you act well your part. That part may be hazy and undefined, it may not have a clear label complete with instructions and expectations, but you can't let that prevent you from performing. And not in a false way, but in the most sincere way you can. Put aside the fantasies and ideals, the pie-in-the-sky, paralyzing what-ifs and if-onlys, and deal in a real and admirable way with the daily realities and necessities.
If I can master that, then maybe that is how I will realize the first part - maybe that is the only way to finally define and declare what thou art.
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