Back when I had a really popular website, I used to get e-mails almost constantly, e-mails that criticized or questioned certain decisions I would make in my quizzes. The epicenter of this feedback crystallized into three key critiques which I summarized as the top three Frequently Asked Quiztions.

But today I got a new one – totally unprecedented. Something that almost reminds me of my meeting-people gimmick of challenging them to come up with an original play on my name as they’re digesting its similarity to a word they use daily. It is presumably from someone in China… while the e-mail address is inconclusive, the hold on English and the sentiments expressed are not:

date Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 10:21 AM
subject what’s problem with your quiz?

To whom it may concern,

Today I took a “what country are you” quiz on your web and it says I’m the country Taiwan… Huh?? when did Taiwan become a C-O-U-N-T-R-Y???!!!! WTF with your web????

Taiwan has always been a part of territory of China!!

Taiwan is only a province of China!!!

Don’t ever forget this!!!

SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME ON YOU :-(

If only they’d used a couple more exclamation points, I might really never forget this. Although I highly doubt they expected me to record the verbatim transcript of their e-mail. Here’s your shot at immortality, friend.

The Internet is so liberating.

Speaking of the Internet, the big meme going around Facebook is to find your “celebrity doppelganger” and make said person your profile picture. I am hardly so cavalier about said picture, but I was reading the best article about David Foster Wallace since his death the other night, so I figure he might have to do:

Of course, that may just be the most authentic celebrity who looks like me, or the person I’d most like to be compared to. After all, we all know that reality shows have produced the people who really look the most like me:

No matter how much long brown hair they grow, though, none of these people ever seem quite as thin as I am. Ah well.

It will either happen today or February 14, 1958 when I am sixteen. It is ridiculous to mention even.

When people in my generation haven’t been in contact for a long time, or haven’t posted to their webpage or other expected forms of social media/communication, they tend to break the silence with the phrase “I’m alive” or, less frequently, “I’m not dead.” Where this custom originated is hard to trace, like any viral meme of our culture, but it is surely prevalent. When my father took a long absence from posting on his page, a relative wrote in fear that something had happened. It’s hard to argue that this is the frequent concern of people when a long absence is experienced, but our society tends to “go there” pretty quickly. J.D. Salinger is probably about as far from a social media type person as I can imagine living into the twenty-first century.

On November 22, 1963, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis died. No one particularly noticed because John F. Kennedy was shot that day as well.

In a discussion of next steps for my new novel American Dream On, my father purported that the fifty best books written in the last hundred years were never published. I told him that if I believed that, I would give up all hope. And while part of my disproof for his theory is The Catcher in the Rye, part of his rebuttal might include the unpublished works Salinger has famously kept in a safe for much of the last few decades. My excitement for the release of these works is perhaps the only heartening element of the developments of Wednesday.

I want them to have a nice time while they’re alive, because they like having a nice time… But they don’t love me and Booper – that’s my sister – that way. I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It’s not so good, that way.

When I was 18, I compiled a list of the hundred best books of all-time. All Salinger’s four published works made the cut, ranging from 10th (Catcher) to 61st (Franny and Zooey). Catcher had slipped to 12th on my list by 2002, but checks in at 5th on the composite list of 73 Blue Pyramid friends and visitors. Franny and Zooey is 69th. In 2008, I finally got around to compiling my favorite 17 short stories of all-time. They were bookended by Salinger works from Nine Stories, with “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” checking in 17th and “Teddy” 1st.

J.D. Salinger was born in 1919. Ray Bradbury was born in 1920. Richard Adams was born in 1920. Kurt Vonnegut was born in 1922. Howard Zinn was born in 1922.

Salinger’s obituaries were coated with accounts of his life as a recluse. These overshadowed any particular discussion of his works and their enormous qualities. His life was discussed as the story of potential gone bad, of talent gone crazy, of a light of the world snuffed out by his own misanthropy. There were the isolation and the lawsuits and the affairs and the urine-drinking rumors and everything beneath tepid notes about Catcher that still couldn’t resist citing the man who shot John Lennon. And censorship. Outcry. Controversy.

But I wouldn’t have had to get incarnated in an American body if I hadn’t met that lady. I mean it’s very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you’re a freak if you try to.

I haven’t been posting Duck and Covers lately because my scanner is broken. It used to have trouble, but now it seems completely ka-put. My phone line has been out for days, too, if you’ve been trying to get ahold of me. It keeps saying the line is in use and when I pick it up, the dialtone is replaced by a noise that sounds like someone is on the other line, but has set the phone down for a bit. I’d imagine it generates a perpetual busy-signal to anyone who tries to call. It’s had trouble like that before, where it hangs up on anyone calling in, but with this problem I can’t call out either.

Ray Bradbury and Richard Adams are still alive. They are hoping to turn 90 this year.

Salinger had allegedly promised the release of all his unpublished works upon his death, though it’s unlikely his estate will grant the right of others to hijack Holden Caulfield for use in an examination of what he’d think of being alive at 70. My suspicion was always that he didn’t want someone to write that book because he’d already written it, but that remains to be seen. Unfortunately, it remains to be seen over a devastatingly long period of time to come. Were there any justice in the publishing industry, all 15-20 tomes would be released in quick succession, maybe one a month, a cavalcade of Salinger’s views on the world we’ve lived through for the last half-century. But at their pace, we’ll be lucky to live long enough to read all of Salinger’s already written work. Hell, they haven’t even released The Pale King yet… nor do they plan to for 15 months.

My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.

On January 7, 2010, I sent American Dream On to twenty-two volunteer readers. Five more have since added themselves to the list. As of today (January 29, 2010), only three have finished reading the book. None of them have full-time jobs or are attending school.

On January 27, 2010, Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger died. Between these two events, President Barack Obama addressed the nation on its State for the first official time in his tenure. He noted that “it’s tempting to look back on these moments and assume that our progress was inevitable – that America was always destined to succeed.” He seemed to be warning against impending calamity. He went on to conclude that “We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation. But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren.” His dire tone about America’s future was belied by his eternal affable smile, made somehow more Bushlike by its inappropriateness while trying to empathize with unemployed families or explaining why US soldiers will continue to kill Afghans after a decade of doing so. Bush at least kept the smile to the corners of his mouth, always on the verge of an inappropriate grin. Obama’s grin seems to crest, convincing you that he’s really enjoying himself up there despite the calamity he portends.

Salinger’s reclusion begs the question of why one is writing at all. He insisted that he enjoyed writing for himself, noting notedly in 1974 that “There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” With all appropriate apologies, Jerome, this is phony. You were being a phony when you said this. People who believe that do not write. They sit around and think their own thoughts. And if they do write, if they do find some pathological urge to put their thoughts to paper because they love the artisanship of crafting the idea despite not wanting to share it, they insist their works get burned upon their death. Or they burn them themselves, just to make sure. (You’ll note Kafka, who was not born in the early 1920’s, never did this.) Certainly they do not insist their works are published upon their death. People who do that cannot live with the repercussions of their misunderstanding, Jerome, but they also cannot live without trying to be understood. Without trying to share what they have to share with the world. So I see that. I see you. I see that you could not face the same tribulation and misunderstanding that plagued Catcher, that plagued Holden. But you had to try anyway. You had to try to get out a message, to be understood. Which is what we will wait for, obnoxious greedy publishers’ delay or no.

For example, I have a swimming lesson in about five minutes. I could go downstairs to the pool, and there might not be any water in it. This might be the day they change the water or something. What might happen, though, I might walk to the edge of it, just to have a look at the bottom, for instance, and my sister might come up and sort of push me in. I could fracture my skull and die instantaneously.

In February, Emily will return to classes and I will start writing Good God and the Rutgers team will start debating again and I will buy a new scanner/printer and get my phone fixed and I will turn thirty years old. In February. Which is still three days hence.

J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn fought in World War II. Richard Adams was in the British Army for the duration of the war, but did not fight in it. Ray Bradbury was writing science fiction stories.

We write to be understood. No matter how hard that is, how long the odds are, how impossible it might seem. His literary agent said “Salinger had remarked that he was in this world but not of it.” It is hard to imagine a more fitting epitaph for this writer, for any writer. But being in creates an obligation, an obligation to try to be understood. He tried. His works will try. The only reason to write, really, is to make contact with other human beings. He was a coward, perhaps, or made a desperate failed attempt not to let personality overshadow works which he wanted to speak for themselves. But he wanted, wants, will want, to be understood.

Halfway down the passage, a stewardess was sitting on a chair outside the galleyway, reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. Nicholson went down to her, consulted her briefly, thanked her, then took a few additional steps forwardship and opened a heavy metal door that read: TO THE POOL. It opened onto a narrow, uncarpeted staircase. He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream – clearly coming from a small, female child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four tiled walls.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Read Duck and Cover at the Blue Pyramid.

Before I even begin this post, I feel the need to disclaim it in some way. I expect this to be controversial and difficult and that some people might get offended. Please don’t get offended. I’m exploring an idea here, something real that I feel. Don’t jump to conclusions or rush to judgment or do all those other things that people often do about emotionally charged issues. And keep in mind that you read this voluntarily.

With that out of the way, I have something to say: I am, overall, saddened by the tremendous outpouring of attention being given to Haiti.

It’s not that I’m a fan of earthquakes or human suffering or that I like chaos or people dying in the streets. Quite the opposite of all that is true. I want nothing more for this world and its people than for everyone to be free from violence, have access to life-sustaining items (food, clothing shelter), be equal, and find meaning in their lives. Obviously this earthquake impedes all those things and as such, I am against it.

Nor am I against compassion. Almost everyone in America has gone nuts over this thing, especially in my generation, plastering Facebook and (presumably – I don’t Twitter) Twitter and all manner of social media with widespread appeals for Haiti. Donate donate donate. Get involved. Show your support. It may be the first thing that’s actually eclipsed the troops in terms of universal sentiment in this country. Everybody – everybody – loves and/or feels bad for Haiti. And I agree. I also feel bad for Haiti, though perhaps not as much or in the same way as others, for reasons I will soon explain.

Indeed, one could make the argument (and I expect it) that such an overwhelming demonstration of heartfelt mourning and sympathy is one of the best things to come out of America in years. It demonstrates that we can overcome proclivities to racism, imperialism, and just general indifference to come out of the woodwork to show our support and fork over our cash. That Americans are fundamentally selfless, volunteerist, the most generous people on Earth showing up to once again offer their benevolence to a wounded world less fortunate than ourselves. And there’s a grain of truth to all of this, to be sure. I guess I’d have even more to complain about if this earthquake had happened and no one noticed at all.

The problem, though, is that the suffering of the people of Haiti is not particularly special. It’s not unique. It’s not all that different from the ongoing daily suffering of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. What it is, if not unique, is sudden. And close.

The closeness argument is a little weak, I’ll grant in advance, because there was admittedly a pretty big outpouring of donations and support for the tsunami in southeast Asia a few years back, although Facebook and Twitter weren’t really revved up then. Although there are devastating earthquakes in rural Iran all the time that don’t exactly get America’s juices flowing. But sure, Iran is hardly as poor as Haiti, so maybe it’s fair.

But the suddenness is what I want to focus on. Most of why people in America feel compassion for what happened is because people were going on living their (admittedly pretty miserable) lives one day, and then suddenly the world caved in and everything was much much worse. And unlike a hurricane with advance notice and evacuations, unlike anything predictable, there was nothing anyone could do to get out of the way. They were just there and then the next minute, everything fell over.

There is something very particular in the American psyche that I believe this kind of event triggers. Not only do people subconsciously link it to something like 9/11 in their mind – the day they remember the world falling over – but it’s something that can happen to literally anyone. It’s something that not the remotest Republican (okay, well maybe there are some people who believe that earthquakes are God’s wrathful judgment, but let’s leave out the Pat Robertsons of the world) could say was the fault of the people left victim by it. It is utterly blameless, utterly unavoidable. And this makes our compassion go crazy.

Great, right? We should have compassion for people whose world falls over through no fault of their own, who could have done nothing to predict or avoid the calamity. Right?

Yes, absolutely. But there’s also something insidious about this particular kind of compassion, especially when contrasted with its glaring absence in other equally warranted circumstances. Because it implies a particular worldview about dessert and outcomes and how much control we perceive to have over our life conditions. Very few people were spamming Facebook and Twitter with calls for aid to Haiti the day before the earthquake. Even though Haiti is the poorest country in the Hemisphere, is extremely close to the US, was even the site of US military involvement not so long ago. Haiti features 80% poverty and 50% illiteracy. Some estimates say a quarter of a million children have functionally been sold into slavery to combat the poverty of their families. By any measure, Haiti was in nearly as bad straits before the earthquake as after.

Okay, sure, this is perhaps a slight exaggeration. And I understand the argument that this kind of tragedy striking a place already in such dire circumstances is what makes this situation special. But the magnitude of the difference between conditions there before and after the earthquake is dwarfed by the magnitude of the difference in American perceptions before and after.

And I think it’s because we all fear earthquakes and think they could happen to us, but we don’t fear becoming an impoverished nation. Even after the housing crisis and the stock market plunge, I couldn’t find a single person who thought the US would lose control of its top-drawer economy to the point where poverty would be considered a widespread issue. And even though many Americans made great strides in the last 18 months in understanding they had less control over their economic circumstances than they thought before, almost no one was to the point of feeling like their standing was really legitimately in jeopardy, let alone the country’s.

Earthquakes don’t discriminate. They aren’t attached in people’s minds to moral worth or work ethic or financial holdings. They just hit and knock things over. Although, of course, the reason an earthquake like this kills so many people in Haiti and not in, say, San Francisco is because of all the disproportionate wealth accumulated in the latter and not the former. But people aren’t calling for aid to all the other poor countries where an earthquake might hit, anticipating that this could save millions of lives yet untaken. They’re calling for aid as a mental insurance policy, because they fear natural disasters themselves and want someone else to help them if they’re in that situation.

But because we get only one life each on this planet, it’s much harder to see that one could’ve been in the situation of being born in Somalia or Bangladesh, let alone Iraq or Afghanistan. Because one wasn’t born there, so it seems unrelatable. I haven’t even touched the issue of relating to the earthquake-like devastation that the US has itself caused in these countries with direct military action, let alone the de facto devastation of exporting imperialistic corporate kleptocracy. Yes, people talk about all these things. But in isolated pockets, as quiet outliers. Not in the kind of mainstream full-force universality currently being bolstered for Haiti.

And there’s the argument that this will set the precedent, that this kind of compassion will get a whole bunch of people eventually looking at the causes, the poverty, and applying these arguments to other countries. No argument – the compassionate outpouring will ultimately do a great deal of good for America’s understanding of others. But when it’s offered only (or vastly disproportionately) to victims of natural disasters and not of poverty or human violence, I think it also does a lot of harm. It reinforces our conceit that we’re above most of the human concerns, that we’ve somehow evolved beyond them or overcome them merely by greedily accumulating wealth and entrenching poverty elsewhere. It blinds us to the fact that we are largely creating the problem by being immune to it.

Not only are we not immune, but our immunity (to the extent that it exists) is an accident. The accident of birth. Which is every bit as accidental as an earthquake. An earthquake can hit anywhere, but you could have been born anywhere. And when people start generating compassion for everyone born in a bad situation, for everyone whose devastation is no less severe but was wrought by systems of violence and impoverishment, then we’ll really be getting somewhere.

When I first got into baseball, the Oakland Athletics were my team. It’s hard to admit as a loyal baseball fan that I had a team before the Mariners, that my eternal and undying fanhood is not to my first love. It has become acceptable in our society not to marry your first love or have the same job for life, but sports fans are basically supposed to stick with one horse forever, for some reason especially in baseball. But alas, such is not my story.

I first discovered baseball watching softball games in public parks in Washington DC in the spring of 1988. I was intrigued by the strange shape of the field, the amalgam of so many people doing such specific things. More than anything, it looked like fun. It was nothing like the sports they had us play in PE, nothing like the endless running that people seemed to equate with organized sports. It had an artistry to it, a mystery, it demanded explanation. I wanted to know more and my parents – not exactly big baseball (or sports) people – couldn’t give me much beyond the very basics, which only deepened the mystery. They enjoyed the camaraderie of the public park games, too, though, and we were sometimes the only fans in the bleachers at these loosely organized games.

Then we moved to Oregon that summer and took a trip down to retrieve our stored items from the Central San Joaquin Valley in October. In a random hotel lobby, there was a TV displaying – wonder of wonders! – the same basic game I’d seen in the DC parks. But it was shinier, with classier uniforms, and thousands of fans. I parked in front of what turned out to be a World Series game, having no idea the significance or even that these were professionals. The desk clerk took me for an avid fan and bemusedly asked me which team I was rooting for. It hadn’t occurred to me. I looked back at the screen.

“The green team.”

Green, you see, was my favorite color. And so I was enthralled by the Oakland uniforms, triply thrilled when I realized the next spring that their mascot was an elephant. And their nickname was associated with the grade I diligently pursued in every subject. I fell hard for baseball. And not just baseball, but Major League Baseball. I learned most of the rules through third grade playground kickball, started reading boxscores in the daily paper (I remember vividly poring over the details of a matchup that appeared to be between the Boston Royals and the Kansas City Red Sox), tried out for Little League, infamously (in my own memory) thinking that the glove was supposed to go on the hand one found dominant, to the point of arguing with the person who gave me a glove out of the bucket of extras that my right-hand glove wouldn’t fit properly on my right hand. I overcame this, adored Little League, and started setting my sights on a Major League career.

And then came baseball cards, which were to dominate an incredible amount of my time and energy for the rest of my time in Oregon. And with baseball cards, a new awareness of the players. And quickly, before even the midpoint of the 1989 season, I had picked a clear favorite. He was a towering hulk of a player, but thoroughly competent and, moreover, seemed like an affable guy. He was the heart of the Oakland A’s lineup. His name? Mark McGwire.

Mark McGwire was my favorite baseball player for years, even after I had shifted gears from the A’s to the Mariners, the result of a long geologic wearing down from hearing over a hundred M’s games a year on the radio and falling for the excitement of the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson. Before the ‘89 World Series, I had a lifesize Mark McGwire poster on the back of my door, which stayed there till we moved to New Mexico. I loved Big Mac, loved his effortless grace in smashing homers, his fearsome glower as he awaited the next hopeless pitch. He was perhaps an unlikely hero for a scrawny, terribly short right fielder (though I was quickly falling for Rickey Henderson too, with his wily speed, and I would soon become a catcher and really deepen my understanding of the game), but he just seemed to have the game figured out. He had the right attitude. And a cool name.

By 1998, I had grown to almost dislike the A’s after some intensely rivalrous years with the M’s in the new six-division structure of MLB and Big Mac had left them anyway. But I was over the moon about his season the summer before college, remember watching on a friend’s computer every at-bat after 60 homers. Wherever we were, whatever we were doing, someone would keep watch at the computer during Cardinals games and call us in and we’d all crowd around. Maybe it wasn’t every game, but that’s what it felt like at the time, and I’ll never forget 62, sending me over the moon with the high arc of the ball. There was the All-Star Game later, too, maybe the summer of ‘99 or 2000 if I recall correctly, watching Big Mac rip what felt like 50 straight homers, all of them 450+ feet, just taking the cover off the ball and sending it as far as possible. I couldn’t stop smiling and my parents watched too and said that I knew all along, had picked the best guy so long ago.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately or hate baseball, you’re doubtless aware of Mark McGwire’s recent admission that he used steroids. The news is hardly earth-shattering for those paying attention to baseball in the last decade or so, watching people balloon into caricatures of themselves, popping out homers left and right amidst rumors of juiced balls and diluted pitching while baseball enjoyed the increased “game-saving” profits and turned a blind eye. The recrimination McGwire and his cohorts have faced has been severe and one might expect, given all my other proclivities, that I would feel betrayed by Big Mac, that he’d play Bill Richardson to my baseball fandom and I’d walk away thinking they were all crooks and cheats, unworthy of the homage we try to pay them.

But it’s not so. I diligently attended tens of San Francisco Giants games during Barry Bonds’ pursuit of the career home-run record, cheering every time he came to the plate. I still think fondly of McGwire, even as the media eviscerates him and the baseball writers laughably refuse to grant him passage to the Hall of Fame. I’m not wild about Rafael Palmeiro, but I think that’s just because he lied so vehemently about the whole thing. And I’ve always hated Roger Clemens and A-Rod since he ditched the Mariners for greed, so it’s really just an excuse to gang up on those guys.

Why? Is this just my loyalty to baseball overwhelming everything else I rationally feel? Everything I think about drugs and authenticity and everything else out the window? I mean, how inconsistent could I get, right?

The issue for me, and I haven’t seen this argument anywhere else (nor do I expect to), so I suspect I’m on my own here, is that the difference between steroids and everything else is basically nil. Yes, steroids are technically illegal, but so is refusing to sign up for the Selective Service. We live in a country where smoking marijuana is a vilified criminal activity while drinking alcohol is a lauded social rite. Law alone is no argument, no justification. Folks, the laws are stupid. And even if the laws about steroids are designed to protect people from long-term ill health, I know plenty of people who’ve been prescribed steroids for one thing or another. Heck, just a year ago, a Kaiser doc tried to put me on a lifetime steroid nasal spray to prevent all these ear infections.

Mark McGwire started talking early on about Andro, his legal daily supplement that he took to help build muscle. (I think it’s short for something, but I’m not sure what.) He recommended it to people publicly. And it was always the part of him that made me most uncomfortable, because something felt weird about taking a drug that would make you better at baseball in some way. And that, I think, is the point. All of it – lifting weights, even, let alone nutritional supplements or legal chemicals or other artificial inducements – is weird. Professional athletics have long relied more on science than on straight hard work. It’s about what to eat and what to drink and what to ingest and what to inject and what to build to specifically construct, through carefully researched science, the greatest athlete possible. It’s all artificial.

At that point, we have two choices. Either only let people play who walk in off the street and refuse to try to change their bodies… or let them do whatever they want. There are countless players who are on prescription ADD drugs that would otherwise be banned stimulants, but they get a special exemption. You probably can’t find a Major Leaguer (at least a position player) who isn’t on countless chemical supplements and substances. The science of sports is carefully managed and throws everything into doubt, especially when compared with the era of Babe Ruth, whose scientific regimen consisted of eating as much as possible. I mean, come on. Can you imagine Babe Ruth getting by in today’s game? They wouldn’t even give him a tryout till he shaped up.

I just don’t see the bright line between steroids and the rest of it. And while the law may have made things “unfair,” deterring a Ken Griffey Jr. or a Will Clark from trying steroids, baseball’s policy throughout the Steroids Era made it clear that they didn’t see the difference between steroids and other artificial substances either. You can call something illegal all you want, but if no one’s going to enforce the regulations and everyone heaps praise on what you’re doing, you pretty quickly realize that word doesn’t mean what you think it does.

As we get closer to a world of genetic engineering, this question isn’t going to go away. People will look first for the genes that impact growth and size and strength, beefing up their children in the hopes of lucrative contracts. And then where will we be? Do we bar these people and their unfair advantages, penalizing them for things they had literally no control over? Or do we start a space race for 11-foot tall mutants who hit every single ball over the wall till we have to rebuild the Polo Grounds to keep things in play? And what of our society’s increasing proliferation of BGH and other substances which have already increased our relative size and height?

Science will keep pushing the bar. And if one’s going to let some things in and not others, one’s being inconsistent. I don’t blame any of the people who took steroids in the so-called Steroids Era, though I still hate Clemens and A-Rod. I look down a bit more on those who lied, but I even understand their frustration with the double-standard retroactively being enforced on them. Big Mac, I forgive you. I get it. And I hope all the baseball writers get off their sanctimonious high horses long enough to let you into the Hall of Fame someday. After all, they didn’t exactly blow the cover off these stories in 1998 or 2000, however obvious they think your actions were then. They pocketed their money and made their reputations at those times, so who are they to deny you yours? Ex post facto standards are never fair and certainly not in America’s pastime.

And thanks for being honest about it, however long it took you to open up.

When I worked at Glide (they update their website now!), I designed this makeshift sign that I manually laminated with contact paper which served the purpose of either the old open/closed signs my Dad used to package with FAX machines when he sold them in the 80’s or whiteboards on college dorm room doors. I made the latter correlation when one of the Administrative Assistants I hired used a whiteboard instead, but she was fresh out of college and the whiteboard thing was far too closely associated with college for me. Not that my makeshift sign looked all that more serious.

I wish I had a picture, but I can’t seem to find one in my archives. I didn’t take all that many pictures at Glide… even though my parents warned me about sufficiently chronicling a workplace, workplaces always seem like the mundanely ordinary in contrast to the extraordinary that’s worth documenting. Anyway, the basic idea was that it was a basic 8.5×11 with the phrase Storey is…, then a little transparent holder, then and will return…, then another transparent holder. And then I had all these fiddly little inserts that I would drop in the transparent slots, such as at Lunch, in a Meeting, Done Today for the top slot, and at noon, at 1:15, at 3:30 for the bottom. Yeah, I actually had them in 15-minute intervals from about 9:00 to 5:00. People really needed to know where I was.

I even made one of these for my super-incompetent boss in the early job, whose incompetence was based in never being reachable. The day he asked me to make one of these for him, my heart leapt with the joy of realizing that he really did care that people knew where he was and I would no longer need my Sherlock Holmes hat whenever someone called regarding his whereabouts. Of course, he used it maybe twice and it kept falling off his door in these sweeping metaphorical gestures about his general findability. Also, it misled a good number of people because he didn’t remove the inserts when he was neglecting it, so it would say he was in a meeting till 3:00 for twelve straight days. Which… was about right.

Anyway, I had a dream just now (I’m apparently sleeping and waking in roughly alternating 4-hour shifts, which I take optimistically as a sign that I do have an infection [ear? sinus?], but my body’s gotten serious about fighting it off) wherein I’d laid out all the little inserts for the sign on the front of the Glide Celebration (which is what they call their “church” services, which are somewhere between a Gospel rock-concert and a race to reference every known human religion) stage for some clearly work-related purpose. Em and I were in the front row, keeping an eye on all these little inserts, some of which weren’t laminated (historically accurate – you try wrapping contact paper around every quarter-hour between 9:00 and 5:00… it gets aggravatingly dull), trying to make sure the ratty little things didn’t blow all over the stage. And then it was time for the sermon and Cecil was preaching and I whispered to Em about how he preaches more often than I’d thought when we went to Celebration that one time and I told her it was very rare to see him preach and he glowers at me from the pulpit and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m whispering as he starts to speak or because I’ve left all these annoying little papers at the front of the stage for some purpose he’s either forgotten or can’t see. And I’m having trouble seeing the purpose myself and am considering cleaning them up, just sweeping them into the disorganized pile they often became themselves when I was switching them out frequently (like, six times a day) and didn’t have time to sort them and they got all disheveled, but I’m pretty sure my rising and doing this will be even more glower-worthy than the status quo and I decide to sit tight and try to enjoy his words and I wake up.

I think a little smidge of this dream may be about missing Glide, although the incumbent stress of the situation seems to belie that interpretation. Maybe I miss the stress that came with those ever-changing inserts, the correlated expectations on my time and energy. As I commented to Em a couple nights ago, going somewhat insane over the dearth of detailed feedback yet received on American Dream On (I get it, everyone’s much busier now with their lives than they were in 2001), I don’t get a lot of confirmation these days that I’m doing a good job. Much has been made of the solitude of the writing process and while I enjoy the aloneness of the creation, I really crave the confirmation (or denial) of others once the process is done. At Glide, three people a day told me I was impacting them in some direct and almost always positive way. When writing, one goes months at a time with no outside feedback whatsoever.

Which I guess is why people like Greg tend to release things serially in chapters. But that makes the process itself far too dependent on others, far more organic and focus groupy than I’m interested in. Besides, I’d just have heard the same overreactions to the difficulty of the subject matter – the “darkness” and “depression” and so forth – in 2002 instead of the last week. Which might have prompted me not to go on at all, or to change the project into something it wasn’t. No thanks.

A small price to pay for doing what one wants, for having freedom over one’s life. Really. But I’m beginning to think the most satisfying part of being picked up by a major publishing house (if/when it happens) would/will be getting a big unadulterated dose of others’ opinions about the work. Just like… y’know, work.

When I was in 4th-turned-8th grade, I was assigned the short story “Flowers for Algernon” in English. It appeared in one of those ridiculous textbook readers of stories that always comes with grandiose seventies-style illustrations and a total excess of mundane observations and question-prompts about the work. The story had a profound impact on me, though, despite its setting, and is one that I carry to this day.

The story went on to be novelized and is probably more known in that form, though I never got around to reading the novel. I really should (put it on the list – the endless list that is making no progress since writing full-time has somehow rendered me more or less unable to read). I’m not sure of the subtle differences and there’s a part of me that thinks what was in the reader may have actually been (gack) the abridged novel and not the actual original short story. Doesn’t matter. What hit home was the concept of the work.

The gist of “Flowers for Algernon” (spoiler alert!) is that this guy with a 68 IQ is given the opportunity to undergo an experimental surgery that triples his intelligence. Algernon is the lab rat that preceded him in this test and becomes his friend. The surgery works and we get information from the primary source (the guy being experimented on) about his increased intelligence and how he can see the world. His intelligence not only initially surges, but it increases over time, making him smarter and smarter while the rest of the world is left sort of dumbfounded by their inability to relate to him.

Now reading this after skipping four grades would seem to have a pretty obvious and explicable impact right there. But this is not actually what stuck with me particularly, though I could well relate to the isolation the subject was feeling. Rather, what stood out was the tail-end of the story, where Algernon suddenly declines precipitously, eventually dying as his brain basically atrophies to the point of disappearance. And of course the subject, the source of the story, realizes this is his fate as well and is irreversible. And the slow creeping horror of having intelligence, of knowing that you’re going to lose it, of being capable of understanding one’s own impending decay – this is what stuck with me.

The story aided this, of course, by being extremely well written and chronicling his slow decline as his speech slurs and his grasp on understanding slips and he finds himself increasingly desperate to chronicle his last intelligent thoughts, then thoroughly frustrated by what he can’t do, and finally rendered utterly amazed by what he used to write and can no longer comprehend.

Today, I slammed my head into an absurd metal bar protruding from the dumpster-sized recycling bin across the street from us. I was carrying an overfull box of paper recycling and had set it down under the bar without seeing the bar or consciously registering it, making sure to set it down out of the street.

Then I stood up. Fast.

I didn’t see stars or lose vision or even hurt that much. It took me a second to realize what had happened and then I had a frantic 30 seconds trying to assess how bad the injury was. I feared blacking out in the road. Then it didn’t hurt too much and I looked at the nasty metal pole and cursed its arbitrary existence and wondered why I wasn’t hurt worse. And lamented the fact that I seem to be remarkably accident-prone lately, what with the tiger toe and all, and then I settled in and worried about Algernon.

I think I worry about this a lot, for some reason, and it’s hard to say if I did before reading the story or if the story is entirely responsible. Discussions of Alzheimer’s have a similar affect on me, though it’s unclear how long one has to be aware that one is losing one’s mind under those conditions. I think it all has something to do with my general sense of urgency, my concerns about an early death, the whole picture. The sense that I’m just one stupid accident away from being plunged into a slow devastating decay toward unintelligence.

It’s not that I’m one of those super klutzy people or am always going around walking into walls. But I do have trouble with spatial realities, as those who really have logged the most time with me can attest. I fundamentally question the world’s physical existence and like to think as little as possible about my own body as a corporeal entity. I don’t always double-check my surroundings for poles or obstacles. I got in the habit around puberty or a little before of running around everywhere, moving quickly, something that probably relates to the upside of manic depression or is perhaps a lingering testament to my youthful exuberance. None of these really add up to an avoidance of objects that could do me harm, especially (I guess) when it’s combined with illness or the things I’m relenting to take to combat same. As evidenced by the toe and now the head.

Long story short, I think I’m fine. I got really sleepy at 8 PM and went to bed for two hours, prompting a huge conversation about whether I was concussed just before I rested. The thing doesn’t even hurt, unless I touch it, in which case it’s very sensitive and kind of welty and painful. But I wouldn’t notice it if I just left it alone. The thinking, though, that’s an issue. I notice myself monitoring myself, trying to make sure I’m still firing on all cylinders, that I still have my cognizance.

Maybe it’s a ridiculous fear to have. But the only head I’ve ever been in is this one and I’m quite fond of what it enables me to perceive. As Dan Quayle said, a mind is a terrible thing to lose. If only I didn’t have so many other functions attached to my head. Or could stop using it as an attempted battering ram.

You know how people sometimes say they wish they could hit the pause button on their life and just have some pure, unadulterated downtime? I’ve probably said it before at some point. Let’s see, yeah… here (15 March 2007).

Well the last few days have felt like that. And guess what? It’s not so great.

I mean, the big problem is that I’ve been sick. Not crazy super sick, although as I recently observed to Em, the sickness hasn’t really been tested because I’m not working or running around or really trying to do much of anything. When I had a day job, I would need a lot of energy to get through a day. When debate coaching or writing or playing basketball, I’d need quite a bit of energy. But I’m in this weird stage between vacation and starting the next project, still waiting to get feedback on American Dream On so I can find an agent/publisher for it, totally in limbo. And so I don’t use much energy. So I’m sick, yeah, but I don’t really know how sick.

But it’s been two weeks. Which isn’t a great sign. But it’s now just in my sinuses, which is sort of livable, though not conducive to expending energy. I had a cold and ear problems while in New Mexico, pretty well ruining my physical state during the vacation (though not really ruining the vacation in sum), but since getting back, it’s really just been in the sinuses. I sort of sniffle and blow through the day, then get a little worse at night, eventually decide to sleep and awaken to the sensation that I’m drowning. I then spend a very intense couple morning hours trying to unclog my sinuses to escape that lovely drowning sensation.

And it starts all over.

I’ve been taking Sudafed on and off, sort of experimentally, to discover that it doesn’t really change much. It certainly doesn’t prevent the drowning feeling, which is really the big problem.

In any case, I’m just drifting right now. Without the energy, motivation, or schedule to start a new project, but without enough real sense of freedom, departure from the last project, or wellness to feel free and like I can really enjoy a break or time off.

And then I smashed my toe. I kicked a tiger. Really. Or El Tigre Grande, the solid metal tiger I won for being top speaker at Princeton in 2002. This was about four days ago, I guess, just after I’d sent out the book (or just before?), and I was running into my room and had forgotten that El Tigre’d been moved off the bookshelf in the hallway and onto my floor before we left so people could inspect the damage behind the bookshelf that the movers had left there. It’s a real horseshoenail that lost the kingdom kind of thing, or tiger that broke the toe. Except I’m pretty sure it’s not broken.

If you’re wondering what it looks like, just imagine a left pinky toe that looks like this: my ring finger in April 2008.

I don’t mean to complain, really, because I’m doing pretty well overall. I’m very happy with my novel and the positive feedback is starting to trickle in (along with some expected grumblings about the difficult subject matters). Everything is on schedule and according to plan. Globally, it’s hard to imagine me being happier.

But day-to-day, I’m just sort of slumping along. In limbo. Which is probably why I haven’t been posting, haven’t written any comics yet, why it doesn’t feel like a new year yet.

I’m ready for that year to start. Anytime now. Just let me wake up able to breathe.

I am pleased to announce (this seems to be a big new phrase of mine these days) that drafts of American Dream On are in the (electronic) mail. Check your inboxes.

But seriously, please do. Because your e-mail program may not accept 2 MB PDF’s and you may have assumed you were getting a copy but didn’t tell me that you wanted one. Unlike when I sent out Loosely Based in its second-draft state, I am actually sending it only to people who expressed overt interest instead of just doing a cattle call. But I’m happy to share with friends, so drop a line my way if you’re interested.

It may be a few hours before I get you the copy, though, since I have to sleep. I wasn’t quite intending to stay up till 9:30 in the morning when suffering from sinusitis, but I couldn’t exactly stop halfway once I had it in mind that tonight was the night.

I really have nothing to add beyond expressing gratitude at the life that’s allowed me to focus on this, finally, relief at getting through the insanely extensive editing process, and weariness from continuing to be sick for every day this year so far. And, of course, incredible anticipation at what other people think of the plot I’ve been keeping under wraps for most of the last decade.

I’ll be excited soon.

After a torrid night of typing amidst the rages of what is almost certainly a sinus infection at this point, I am pleased to announce that I have completed constructing the second draft of my second novel, American Dream On.

There are still some very minor inconsistencies to iron-out, a couple last things to fact-check, and a few other small formatting issues that will keep me from sending draft copies to preliminary readers before I leave Albuquerque in four hours. The upshot, however, is that it will take me very little time to complete these last i-dottings and t-crossings, enabling me to send out copies quite soon.

The elation I feel for this is heavily mitigated by my ongoing illness and my predictable sadness at leaving New Mexico. It’s been a great visit, if one of the most sedentary, featuring the revitalizing time with parents and friends that has made coming back to Albuquerque so important every year. This trip in particular has yielded important talks and a deep-seated feeling of family, not to mention ever-winnowing progress toward a readable manuscript of what I have every hope will come to be considered a major work.

2010 seems ready to deliver on the same highs and lows that marked the previous year (see previous post). Today, I’m looking forward to Waffle House, making it through two plane flights with sinuses intact, seeing Philly friends and Pandora, and making it home. Tomorrow, maybe, you should be looking forward to a nice long read.

I’m thinking about compiling one of these for the decade too, but let’s look at what made 2009 great and not so great.

In summation, looking back at this year, it’s been one of those seminal and all-encompassing annums. It’s been a slow and generally joyous year, punctuated with some really lousy events. I think it’s good to look at the good and bad of a year, lest one think that any year, no matter how great or terrible, is all one or the other. Ultimately, however, I have to say that I’d be pretty happy if all the years were like this one.

Let’s start with the lowlights (who knew I could have a happy ending in something I write?!)…
9. In June, we were informed that we would be getting a small (464 square foot) apartment from the housing lottery at Princeton. Emily and I fought about to what extent the preferences I’d asked her not to list on the housing form had determined this decision and the ensuing tension lasted for much of the summer and the early part of our time moving into Princeton. Upside: We ended up being happy with the place and sincerely calling it “cozy” instead of just tiny. Though it will always be Tiny House to us.
8. In August, at the conclusion of a great six-week trip, we moved to New Jersey. We’d come to accomplish many great things in school, debate, and writing, all of which wound up going pretty well. But… New Jersey. Upside: Yeah, we were moving to Jersey for some pretty good reasons.
7. In December, a co-worker of mine from Glide passed away. While he was not my closest friend or someone I’d even contacted since departing Glide, his passing hit me very hard with its suddenness and the loss of such a vibrant, joyous personality. He’d moved me to tears the day I sent out my e-mail announcing my impending departure from Glide, coming down to my office, giving me a hug, tearing up, and saying “I don’t want you to go.” I can’t stop thinking about this scene, how much it meant to me, or how little time he proved to have left. Upside: While one never wants to see an upside in death, it does always get those still living to examine their mortality and priorities, which never hurts.
6. In November, I got tremendously sick, derailing my writing at the time and prompting my parents to cancel a long-anticipated trip to see us on the East Coast. I had extreme trouble breathing and went through a number of inconclusive tests, ultimately requiring simple time and rest to recover. Upside: The illness didn’t derail my novel as I feared it would at the time.
5. In July, we left the Bay Area, possibly never to return long-term. While I felt we’d stagnated a good bit in the Bay and needed a change, the actual departure was tough to swallow and required leaving jobs we’d felt were the best we’d ever had, people we really enjoyed, and an area that seemed more naturally like home than where we’d be going for some time. Plus, there was a lot of packing. Upside: (Most) everything that followed.
4. Over the course of the year, I lost an impressive amount of money in the stock market. I had been up big and got complacent and started losing like crazy. While all of this could theoretically be recouped, I’d started betting against banks right about the time people got irrationally excited about banks again. Granted, I hadn’t risked anything we couldn’t afford to lose and it was all in long-term futures anyway (i.e. money we can’t touch till we’re 65). But it still hurt. Upside: Banks could still collapse.
3. In July, Emily and I were informed that all of our stuff making the cross-country trip to support our life in Jersey had been in a rollover accident outside LA. This proved to be more devastating in the resignation and loss it inspired in us between then and finding that the damage was generally much better than anticipated. Almost all the most sentimental items came through minimally scathed, though we still took some costly losses. Upside: It was a good reminder of the relative insignificance of material goods.
2. In January, Emily and I were informed that her mother had colon cancer. We endured a horrific month of ambiguities and tests and worries. Upside: Not only was the surgery successful, it wiped out the cancer so completely she didn’t even need chemo.
1. In October, Emily and I were in a car accident that could have killed me were it not for a pickup sandwiching itself between a passed-out octogenarian and myself. The Prius sustained 5 digits worth of damage and Emily and I had 4 digits worth of damage assessed by the ER. Upside: We survived the accident.

And now for the highlights…
9. In September, Fish and I (accompanied by Madeleine and Emily) saw John K. Samson play “Sounds Familiar.” live.
8 (tie). In November, the same four of us (no John K.) enjoyed a restful and rejuvenating Thanksgiving weekend in Washington DC. It was just what we needed at the time and recharged our batteries to make a last push in the book and the semester.
8 (tie). In March/April, I spent a similar week of restful rejuvenation in LA with Russ, the last of my many trips to his apartment while I was living in the same state. We watched movies, talked about everything, played chess endlessly, beat FIFA on World Class mode with Denmark for the first time ever, and I even won the most money at online poker I’d ever won. It was just what I needed to get through the last 45 days of day job I had left.
7. In March, Emily ran the table on her grad school applications, going a perfect 5-for-5 in schools applied and allowing herself to have the maximum possible options. This culminated in her full-ride to Princeton, freeing up our options as a couple to pursue what we’ve spent most of the decade putting off in terms of personal aspirations and fulfillment.
6. In June, many New Mexican friends and I reunited for Jake’s wedding. We had a fabulous “bachelor party” hiking in the woods above JPL that would later be endangered by fire. Many of us wrapped up the weekend of celebration with a visit to Disneyland and California Adventure that was probably the most efficiently jam-packed such visit of my many to such parks.
5. In May, I watched Randy Johnson pitch what was almost certainly his last game in Seattle, going out to a triumphant standing ovation from an infinitely appreciative fanbase. Though watching him shut down the Angels in the ‘95 one-game playoff, let alone his relief appearance in that year’s ALDS, will always be more charged memories, those were witnessed on TV. This was my single greatest live moment of Mariner fandom to date. No less, it was enjoyed from the best seats I’ve ever secured at a Major League Baseball game. This was the highlight of a generally great trip to Seattle.
4. In November, the Rutgers team I’d been coaching for two and a half months enjoyed their first break in almost two years, to quarterfinals at American University, a tournament fielding 90+ teams. After being uncertain of the impact I was making on the team, I finally had confirmation of progress and great reason for optimism about the coming semesters. The team celebrated at a DC diner that night with spirits raised high to the future of the team.
3. In May, I left Glide exactly as I’d hoped to, going out after ten weeks’ notice with a perfect day of meetings including the long-anticipated foray into what would ultimately be the new database solution for Glide’s programs. I could not have scripted a more fitting exit and I finally got to leave something on my own terms, with a great replacement, and with people wanting me to stay.
2. In July, Emily and I departed for a six-week tour of the US, with stops in National Parks and baseball parks, plus plenty of time with friends and family. Highlights from this trip alone could fill this list, so it’s only fair to group the whole trip. Our anniversary dinner at the Wawona in Yosemite, hiking the Grand Canyon, and camping in the Badlands are probably the most lasting memories from this epic journey.
1. In December, I finished writing a novel for the first time in eight and a half years, after working on it for seven and a half. The culmination of everything I’ve hoped to do in the last decade of struggling to write against a backdrop of day-jobs was finally reached, five days ahead of my deadline. I had once again proven to myself that there’s reason to take this writing thing seriously. Just before year’s end, I finished editing the work.

Yeah, like I said, I’d be pleased if every year could be this full of life, decisions in the right direction, survival, and joy. I’ll take ten more like 2009 any time. 2010, care to start with one?