Disrespect
It occurs to me tonight, after watching the movie Wonderland, that much of the sordidness in this world is an indirect result of the lack of self-respect. The movie gives us no insight into John Holmes, because it is about the time in his life when he was so far into addiction that he was barely human. Whether or not he gave up people to be killed, or participated in their murders, he was unable, at that time in his life, to make a moral stand about anything. I remembered something my grandfather said to me once when we were watching one of the many television shows about cops that he loved. He would never talk about anything he did or witnessed when he was on the force, or when he was in the army during WWII, but he would comment on it indirectly sometimes. What he said that I remembered tonight was, that by the time people get into the court system and are dealing with the police, there is very little the courts and the police can do except remove them from their lives. The damage has already occurred, the spiraling out of control has finished spinning and the last act -- the murder, the robbery, the drug deal -- is all that is left to explain. At what point in his life could Holmes have avoided this event, avoided being with the kind of people who would prove to him that the only thing that was true is that he deserved the disrespect they showed him, that he deserved the disrespect he showed himself, that he deserved to treat others with disrespect. When did he turn his back on his own self?
Victims of child abuse can become abusers in return; this has been proved again and again. But so many of us do not, even when we lack any other voice to speak up for our damaged psyches, because we have achieved self-respect. At some point, you have to believe in yourself, in your own ability to change your own life. If you can't believe it, you have to act as if you do, and one day, you will find that you do believe it. That day will be the day you can see that you have done it, because you can't feel the darkness inside you anymore. That you have faced down the darkness and strived into the light; that you deserve to be in the light. Once you've lived in that light, being John Holmes is just inconceivable. I can see how someone can get there, I suppose, but I could never go.
Sitting Grumpily
I don't feel like such a tremendous slacker, now that I know that I'm a bit like William Gibson. In this interview, he is said to have explained that his novel-writing process has two stages: writing, and the long process of staring "grumpily" out the window, contemplating what to write. I've been trying to attack the novel in my head in a similar fashion, by trying to complete a loose (very) outline of it, during the long stretches I have at work with nothing to do. It's not even in an outline style--none of those dreaded Roman numerals, or anything (ever wonder why we always say Roman numerals, as if saying Roman numbers is too declassé)--and I find myself staring into space for somewhat long periods, moving the scenes around in my head. It's slow going, but it's going: there's no periods of staring at the blank white page, waiting for inspiration. So far, once I open the file, I manage to just fill it out, until I eventually get to a place where I can't seem to go further. So far, that's just past half, and I can see the ending. There will still have to be a lot of moving pieces around, and quite a bit of research to go in the direction I'm thinking of, but it is going.
Having my computer back from the repair shop helps much as well. Poor Richard spent quite a lot of time trying to fix it, until we had to give up and take it in to Gateway, where it was determined that capacitors on the motherboard were shot. Thank God for the 3-year warranty I bought. I will never buy another computer without a warranty that includes parts, like this one, and I strongly recommend that anyone else do the same -- no matter how many bells and whistles it's got! It expires in less than three months - but I have a new motherboard, new computer life for at least another year, knock wood, and enough memory for that novel! I'm writing it, really. . . it just appears as if I'm staring into space.
Backboard Slapping
NCSU's men's basketball team made the papers this morning because Scooter Sherrill talked some trash about Duke's super shooter JJ Redick (sorry, I just can't put a Duke hyperlink on my blog). To wit, he said that the arm motion Redick makes after a sink "looks gay." Scooter admitted to press that he was trying to get under Redick's skin. The Wolfpack's upcoming Sunday night game against Duke may just be the most pivotal game of their season. The Pack is #2 in the Conference and finally ranked nationally. It's been a glorious first half of the season for Wolfpack faithful, watching it all finally come together, and you can tell that Scooter is feeling it. But instead of running scared, he's getting right up in their face. Thank goodness he didn't call Redick a "homo," or State would end up on ESPN nightly for the next week -- and not because of their stellar play.>/p>
The Pack is a rarity among NCAA basketball because it is the only team in the country that runs the Princeton offense. Their offense looks, feels, and scores differently than any other opponent, and when it works, the way it's working this year, it's heavenly -- because it's team play. Julius Hodge, who defies gravity just by walking on the skinniest two legs on a young man I've ever seen, has undergone some criticism in the past few weeks. An extremely strong player and obvious team leader, Hodge takes the game upon himself, some say too much, and the losses we've suffered this year have been times when Julius seemed to be playing a different game than his teammates. In two instances so far this year (maybe more, I'm sure I've missed a few highlight reel moments here and there) Julius has slapped the opposing team's backboard after a steal/slam dunk combination in hostile territory, resulting in at least one technical foul. When Richard and I have watched these, we always commented on what we saw as rude behavior. There's been a lot of rude behavior in sports in the past few months, and it seemed that Hodge was indulging in some bad-boy behavior unworthy of the Pack. Yeah, okay. That's what I thought, and almost what I thought this morning when I read the Raleigh N&O piece about Sherrill's gay comment. Now, I don't feel like it's such a big deal. In fact, I'm kind of proud of it.
Pack fans take it on the chin, and seem to be happiest when they're unhappy. Apparently there was a "fire Herb" website put up by someone belonging to what I would call the Wolfpack Unfaithful, but it's come down now that we're 8-2 in the conference. You can't be too hard on those folks, though. It's hell to visit Duke and Carolina and see such a voluminous display of world-reknowned jerseys in the rafters, and then look up at ours and see only a few national championships. It's hell to feel like the bottom corner of the basketball triad. But you know, I'm proud of our guys. They fight like hell. If they need to push a few buttons, or slap a few backboards in another guy's house, to get it done, let them push and slap away. I haven't seen any of our ballplayers in the news for shenanigans with strippers, and Herb's got a priest behind the bench. Get rowdy, guys. It would be easy to feel like our guys just don't have a chance, given their lackluster performance at Duke a few weeks ago. But they do have a chance, because they're just that good, and because they believe. Go Wolfpack!
Anger Unmanaged
I've recently had some news about my other family: my mother, her mother, my middle sister and her daughter. Apparently my grandmother, the old bat, is still alive. I had heard about two years ago that she was dying or dead. Apparently my source was close to being right, but she pulled through. No word yet on how much longer she will hang on. My mother does not speak to my youngest sister or myself for reasons that I suppose are complicated when unearthed, but the base reason, I firmly believe, is jealousy and rage. The bond, such as it was (because I can't think of it as still being bonded; it's definitely fractured beyond repair if not completely severed), is a thick rope slimed with muck from the deep well of my mother's insecurity, guilt, and shame about what occurred between my father and myself, her own feelings (or lack thereof) of self-worth, and what of those feelings she passed along to me and my sisters. As long as those events remain unconfirmed by her, what remains between the two of us is distance, and my complete inability to deal with it on any rational level. A different kind of event most important to my youngest sister remains at the core of the problem between them, and that is so much about my mother's insecurities that it's like a textbook case of family dysfunction. It's been going on so long, but most of what I feel now is anger and loss. I had felt that I was subsiding into a kind of sorrowful peace about what has continued to go on -- we'll never be the kind of family that reunites on tv -- but hearing about her, and her plans to move to the other side of the country after our grandmother dies, solidifying, beyond any doubt, the breaking of the bond between her and us, has left me with this unspeakable rage and depression. Everything seems useless, plans for the future, trying to make a family of my own. I feel that I'm not equipped for any of it, that I've lost my chance, that I'm too old, too poor, too stupid, too irrational, too unfocused, too
too. Why bother? That's my state of mind right now. I wish it weren't, but is, and it's because of that. The wounds are always fresh. Because my mother was -- and is -- afraid. Unable to admit her fear, and therefore her vulnerability, she stands behind anger. Anger, that is her only legacy to her children. Her anger is mine. It solves nothing, creates nothing, repairs nothing. It just keeps breaking us all down.
Maybe we're just all overreacting
Our country is completely insane. The hoopla over Janet's breast exposure and President Bush's promise to push for a constitutional amendment making the legality of marriage contingent on the opposite sexes of its two partners (only one man plus one woman equals legitimate marriage) are obviously related to one another. Let's be honest folks: Janet's millisecond of breast exposure pales quickly in comparison to the average amount of flesh shown among any NFL cheerleading squad, not to mention 95% of advertising available in all forms of media. Mitch Albom said it succintly in his recent column. Our Puritanical heritage serves us ill in the eyes of the rest of the world. We all need to get over our squeamishness about each other's sex lives and sex parts. Bush's amendment push will die when someone points out to him that married people live longer, enabling them to buy more Tide and Tropicana and Janet Jackson albums, regardless of sex. Does anyone really, really care what our neighbors do in bed? Can we get over trying to save each other's children and perhaps concentrate on the ones we have in our own homes? Tipper Gore's unrelenting campaign in the early 90s against profanity in music has resulted in a backlash so severe that now pop music absolutely wallows in it, if it didn't before. Breast-baring, and the desire to see bare breasts, seems to me all part and parcel of the rock demographic. It's all about the benjamins, and Janet seems to need some, as does MTV.
Not to get into a rant here, but the state of recorded music is so ridiculously stale at this point that is seemed perfectly logical to MTV to try to entertain viewers with pop music as much as 30 years old. ("Dream On?" "Rhythm Nation?" are you kidding me?!) To make performances of tired music hip, they threw Justin Timberlake into the mix - there's someone high up on the playlists of males between the ages of 18 and 34. The jumping of the NFL and CBS onto high platforms of morality offends me much, much more than the bit of breast I missed because the show was so boring to begin with. Let's not forget, please, that CBS is responsible for "Survivor," and that fully half of NFL's advertising dollars are dependent on alcohol and products for erectile dysfunction. When are we going to learn that clamping a lid down on something we fear only makes that monster in the box hungry, and more impatient to get out, given that much more energy because it is now forbidden? Banning Janet Jackson from the Grammys makes about as much sense as labeling the albums of 2Live Crew did in the 90s. Pop stars will keep on laughing right to the bank, and gay couples will be more willing to kiss in public. Rock and roll will never die -- hey hey, my my.
Reading My Way Forward
I've been doing a serious stretch of reading lately. I read constantly for myself, usually every evening before bed and for a few hours on the weekends, despite the fact that an essential part of my job is also reading - skimming and clipping articles, trade publications, journals, news releases, etc., for bits on companies we might target or industry trends of which we should be aware. All of it is putting a serious strain on my eyes, but so what! There's just too much great stuff still to be read. I read for escape, edification, knowledge, and challenge.
As you can tell from my reading list, my reading ranges across the spectrum from sci-fi to lit to mass readership stuff to poetry to essays to biography. Whatever works. Everything currently on my reading list I've enjoyed thoroughly. I've been perusing end-of-year "best of" lists for fiction I've missed - it's just impossible to keep up with everything that's out there, much less try to read it all - and so far, have been pleasantly surprised to like most of it. Two novels that didn't make it to the list, because I couldn't make it through them, were Chris Moriarty's Spin State, which was mired in incomprehensible neo-techno babble that on another occasion, I may be able to dig into, but not now!; and Heidi Julavit's The Effect of Living Backwards, which is apparently a satire that only rich WASP's with diplomatic credentials can appreciate, because it bored me stiff. I'm sure someone must find this stuff fascinating, since it did make a few lists, but it was definitiely not for me. After Elizabeth Costello, I needed something light and quick, so I delved into Billie Lett's book and finished it in an evening. Something I wanted to read for a while, after having seen the movie about twelve times (and bawling every single time).
Right now I've gotten about ankle-deep into The Pieces from Berlin (see reading list below). It's really, really intriguing so far, and, given the subject matter, which is the sale of art stolen from Jews during the second World War, told in almost a psychological-thriller style. I'm finding out about our subject, the criminal antiques dealer, in a roundabout way that really keeps me glued to the book. It's exactly like peeling back a picture one puzzle piece at a time, but revealing facets, factiods and emotional interpretations rather than a running history or even a simple portrait. Great stuff.
