Monthly Archives: January 2013

Jan212013

Thoughts on Inauguration Day

For some time now, I’ve very deliberately tried to refrain from talking about politics here on Simple Tricks. It hasn’t been easy, especially during the recent presidential campaign when the liquid bullshit was flowing so freely and deeply it often seemed like a retention pond at the local water-treatment plant had collapsed. And yet I’ve (mostly) kept my mouth shut, even when I’ve been practically busting at the seams with the desire to unleash a tirade or two. The reason is simple: I’ve been trying to be a better neighbor.

You see, growing up and living where I do — the most right-wing state in the union aside from maybe Alabama — it’s virtually guaranteed that you’re going to have a number of friends and relatives who are conservative. Very conservative, in many cases. And believe it or not, I like these people, at least when we’re not talking about politics. And I’m reasonably sure they like me, too… when we’re not talking about politics. But whenever that subject creeps into the conversation… well, basically, I got tired of walking away from arguments wondering if I’d just lost a friend I’ve had since middle school without really winning a damn thing, a feeling of sick-to-my-stomach futility that was becoming all too frequent. It’s not that I lost the courage of my convictions or anything like that. But I’ve learned that my words aren’t likely to change anybody’s minds about anything, and I’m not the sort of person who thrives on stirring the pot. I give too much of a damn about what others think. So some months back, I decided it just wasn’t worth antagonizing a good percentage of my Loyal Readers simply in the name of expressing my opinion.

The downside to this high-minded civility is that, over time, I’ve started to feel like I’m somehow not being true to myself. I don’t quite understand why this should be the case, as I’m pretty sure my conservative friends know me well enough to guess what I’m liable to think about any given issue, just as I can imagine where they probably stand on various things, too, without any of us needing to say a word. Staying silent simply avoids bad feelings. But the conversation goes on in the culture around us whether I speak or not, and there are times when my soul cries out to stop staring at my shoes like I’ve done something wrong. Times when I need to stick out my chest and let the world know who I am and what I believe in. It’s not about picking a fight or pissing people off. It’s about pride. And demonstrating the courage of my convictions.

So today, on the occasion of the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, I want to shout from the rooftops that I am a liberal Democrat, and I’m not going to apologize for it. Moreover, I’m proud to state, for the record, that I voted twice for this man:

Inaugural Parade Held After Swearing In CeremonyNow, I’ll confess, Obama hasn’t exactly been the president I hoped he’d be. Not that I imagined he was any kind of “messiah,” as many folks on the right still like to sneeringly accuse we liberals of believing. (I’d like to know where the hell that ridiculous taunt came from; I don’t know anybody who ever thought that. The enthusiasm for Obama that made the right so uncomfortable was largely a reflection of the left’s absolute frustration and despair after eight years of George W. Bush and Darth — sorry, Dick  — Cheney, and our relief that those dreadful years were at last over. Also, we were simply excited that we were electing America’s first black president, a historic landmark that most of us progressives hoped but never really believed we’d ever see.) Four years ago, my wish was that hoped Barack Obama would be as aggressively, unrepentantly liberal as Bush had been conservative. I wanted another FDR who would come in and kick some Wall Street ass before reaffirming all the rights the previous administration had so contemptuously trampled in the name of “security.” That’s not what happened, of course. At the end of Obama’s first term, the economy still stinks, the big banks are bigger than ever, and nobody went to jail for using the whole damn financial system as their personal casino; healthcare remains in the iron grip of the for-profit insurance industry (a single-payer system makes far more sense to me); the hateful American gulag at Guantanamo remains in operation; this nation has not formally repudiated torture; the NSA is still listening in on everybody’s phone calls without a warrant; and I still have to take off my shoes at the airport.

Even so, there was never any question that Barack Obama would get my vote for a second term. Not merely because he’s a member of my Democratic tribe (although honestly, at this point, after observing 20 years of Gingrinchian temper tantrums and generally assholish behavior, I can’t imagine ever voting for a Republican). But also because I genuinely like the man, and I know that many of his failures to date are not strictly his fault, but due instead to an intransigent, obstructionist Republican Congress that made up its mind not to work with him on anything before he took one step inside the Oval Office. And also because I believe he has the best interests of the average person at heart. Because I still hope this country can become something better than it’s been in recent years.

Barack Obama’s second inaugural speech today included much to reassure me that my hope is not misplaced. To my great pleasure, this speech was as full-throated a defense of liberal ideals — my ideals — as I’ve heard since I reached voting age. Over and over again during the length of the address, I found myself thinking, “Yes! It’s about damn time somebody said something like this!”  Two passages in particular leapt out at me. First, this one, which echoes so much of what I myself have said in recent years in defense of so-called “entitlements”:

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity.  We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.  But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.  For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.  We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.  We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.  They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

Emphasis mine. A social safety net is not socialism or communism. It’s merely civilized. Every advanced nation in the world has one, as they should. And true freedom is not having to live in terror of losing everything you’ve worked for just because you have the misfortune to get sick, or laid off, or hit by bad weather.

And then there’s this:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

 

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.  Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.  Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.  Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

 

 

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American.  Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.

How can I explain what I hear in this passage? Why I find it so moving, so correct, so… fulfilling?  I guess it starts, as so many of my most cherished ideas do, with an old episode of Star Trek.

“The Omega Glory” is commonly derided as one of the worst segments of the original series — and admittedly, its central premise is pretty hard to swallow — but I have to confess I’ve always rather liked this one, even its notoriously far-fetched final scene. Briefly, the crew of the Starship Enterprise discovers a planet where pre-industrial villagers called the Kohms are under siege by nomadic barbarians known as Yangs. Our heroes eventually figure out that this planet was once a mirror-image of 20th century Earth, only these people fought the third world war that Earth managed to avoid, and their civilization was destroyed, “bombed back to the Stone Age,” to use an expression that was all the rage when this one was filmed. The asiatic-looking Kohms are descended from communists — commie, Kohm, get it? — while the white-skinned barbarians were once analogous to Americans, i.e., Yankees. (I know, I know, but bear with me here. The writers of the original series were far less concerned with plausibility than with parable.)

In the episode’s climax, the victorious Yangs bring out their most revered relic, the e plebista (a corruption of the Latin e pluribus unum, obviously). It’s a centuries-old document they hold so sacred that only the chief and high priest of their tribe are allowed to look upon it. It’s the U.S. Constitution, of course… and Captain Kirk reacts to this revelation with irritation, telling the Yangs that they have forgotten the meaning of their holy words, that they have in fact missed the entire point of them. These words, he passionately declares, are not meant only for chiefs or priests, but for all people. They must apply equally to everyone, Kirk says — even to the Kohms — or they mean nothing.

It’s a ridiculous scene, played in broad strokes with swelling music and William Shatner delivering one of his most bombastic performances, which is saying quite a lot considering his career is filled with them. And yet… while other Trekkies snicker and roll their eyes and even call out the episode as racist,  I have always found it curiously effective. Powerful, even, in spite of all its earnest, simplistic, ham-fisted proselytizing. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this one scene of a TV show that was cancelled before my birth, seen god-only-knows how many times during my early childhood — along with certain of those old Schoolhouse Rock PSAs that used to run on Saturday mornings — formed the foundation of my ideas about America. What it is, and what it’s supposed to be…

The words must apply to everyone or they mean nothing.

President Obama’s speech moved me because I heard in it the echo of Captain Kirk’s voice. And it excited me to hear so plainly articulated something I so deeply believe: We’re all in this together. All of us… rich and poor, black and white, straight and gay, religious and atheist, Democrat and Republican. We, the people. We all deserve the same liberties — to marry, to vote, to express ourselves, to better ourselves, to live the best life we can achieve. But that’s only going to work if we also all share the responsibilities that come from living in the same community. We have to work together, and help each other out when one of our neighbors is struggling. We can’t “go galt” because we’re not feeling properly appreciated. We can’t live by a philosophy of “every man for himself” and still call ourselves a community, much less a civilization. We can’t insist others live by our religious code if they have a different faith, or none at all. And we have to do our best to make the system as fair as possible for as many of our fellow citizens as possible, or all our high-minded declarations about being created equal are just so much hot wind.

Before the Red-baiters and Bible-thumpers enshrined “In God we trust” as the national motto, we had another, far more appropriate one (which sadly was never made official): e pluribus unum. Out of many, one. Originally referring to the thirteen separate colonies making up a new country, it’s meaning can also be applied to the rich diversity of our citizenry. It’s an idea I revere… my “Yang holy words,” as it were. My e plebnista. My vision of America, or at least of what America can be. And should be.

It’s a vision President Obama — my president — seems to share.

One final thought, assuming anybody has managed to read this far without clicking away in disgust… or boredom: I know this was just another speech, mere words. I have several liberal friends who have grown jaded about President Obama’s speeches, who won’t be satisfied until they see some actions that back up the words. I understand your feelings… and I agree. Mostly. As I said above, I don’t think Obama’s ineffectiveness on some issues is entirely his fault; there’s only so much he can accomplish in the current political environment. But something feels different to me this time out. And in any event, we, as liberals, need to keep giving voice to these ideals. The right figured out long ago that if you repeat a talking point often enough, people start to believe it. So let’s keep repeating our ideas until they sink in…

The words must apply to everyone or they mean nothing…

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Jan142013

It’s Bloody Cold, and I’ve Had Enough of It

star-trek_the-naked-time_frozenJanuary is a hard month in Utah. That’s when The Inversions come. The time when the world loses all its color and turns gray and filthy and indistinct. When the horizon seems to shrivel down and attach itself to buildings and trees and lampposts, like leathery skin with no flesh beneath it adhering to the bones of an ancient, starving man. In January, when The Inversions come, the world becomes small and hard… and very, very cold.

The Inversions. No, they’re not ethereal, soul-sucking monsters straight out of a Harry Potter novel, but they’re pretty damn close in my estimation. I used to tolerate them fairly well. But that was BD, before diagnosis. Things are different now, and January is much harder for me than it used to be. But I’ll get to that.

For my out-of-state readers who may be wondering what in the hell I’m on about today, I ought to explain that “the Inversions” — formally known as temperature inversions — are an annual phenomenon brought on by a quirk of the local climate and geography where I live. Essentially what happens is that, during the winter months, the air near the ground becomes stagnant and cools off, while the air higher up in the atmosphere remains warm, which is of course the opposite of how things are normally. Normally, wind currents would mix the two temperature zones up, but remember that the bottom layer is stagnant; there are no winds to speak of during this time of year, much like the doldrums sailors experience near the Equator. And so the cold air stays in place for days or even weeks at a stretch. And it gets very, very cold during these periods… damn cold.  As in “your taun-taun will freeze before you reach the outer marker” cold.

But wait, it gets worse.

Utah is a vast place, but believe it or not, most of it is uninhabited. Some 80% of this state’s population is crowded into a narrow strip of land called the Wasatch Front, which runs roughly 80 miles from Brigham City on the northern end to Santaquin in the south, with the state’s three largest cities — Salt Lake, Ogden and Provo — and their sprawling suburbs right in the middle. The Front is bounded on two sides by mountain ranges, so all these cities essentially lay at the bottom of a gigantic bowl. (Well, it’s shaped more like a trough, but the bowl image is a bit more illustrative for my purposes here.) Now picture this bowl filled with over two million people who are all driving cars and consuming electricity and trying to stay warm. Naturally, these activities all generate air pollution. And that layer of warm air up in the sky during an inversion is like a lid sitting on top the bowl, holding down not only the temperature, but also all that airborne pollution generated inside the bowl. Exhaust from cars and powerplants, smoke from fireplaces, god knows what from refineries and smelters and factories… it all lingers here in the valley during an inversion, growing more and more concentrated day by day until a storm front finally comes through and the savior winds punch a hole in that giant invisible Tupperware seal and drive all the frigid, mucky air away.

The Inversions have been a fact of life around here as long as I can remember, but they’ve been especially bad this year. An article in the Salt Lake Tribune last week noted that four of the five places with the worst current air quality in the entire country are right here in Utah, and three of those four locations are along the Wasatch Front. Doctors are warning of increasing danger to even healthy adults, in addition to the elderly and children they’re usually concerned about, and there’s a growing chorus of voices demanding that our politicians do something about it. But I don’t need newspapers to tell me what I see with my own eyes every time I look out the windows at work. From my offices on the 13th Floor, the Wasatch Mountains on the east side of the valley ought to appear close enough to touch. But for the past week, the mountains have been utterly invisible behind a grey scrim, and even the spires of Salt Lake’s Cathedral of the Madeleine, only a couple blocks away from my building, are mere shadows in the mist.

As worrisome as it is to be breathing filth, though, it’s really the cold that’s troubling me. It never used to, particularly. Oh, I didn’t like the cold, but I tolerated it quite well. I remember a time when I felt perfectly comfortable wearing only a t-shirt and a leather jacket. No more, though. I mentioned a while back that something has changed in my body over the past year and I no longer “run hot” the way I used to; I don’t know if it’s something to do with diabetes, a side effect of the medications I’m taking, or the result of losing a lot of weight and/or lowering my blood pressure. Whatever it is, these days I’m wearing long johns, layered shirts, and a cardigan underneath a goose-down parka, and I still feel chilly. Even when I’m indoors. Granted, it probably doesn’t help that my desk at work is located in a bump-out that sticks out the side of the building and is surrounded on three sides by glass; I would guess all those windows radiate heat into the cold air outside pretty efficiently, making it difficult to keep my area warm. Or it could just be my own perception. But whatever the explanation, I notice the cold settling over me as I sit at my desk, flowing across my arms and the tops of my thighs, and sinking into my fingers so the joints stiffen up and begin to ache. Lately I’ve been imagining myself as the unfortunate chap in the image above… immobilized beneath a rime of frost, waiting for a spring that seems as if it’s never going to come.

I hate it. I hate every miserable moment of it, feeling like I’ve grown weaker in some fundamental way, even though I’m in fact healthier than I was a year ago at this same time.

I finally understand why my dad has long fantasized about going to Hawaii during the winter months. I’ve been dreaming lately about heading south myself… along with all the other senior citizens who wear their sweaters year-round. And I hate that too. For someone who’s been fretting about getting old for a long time anyhow, this new development does not help the ego…

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Jan102013

The Unexpected Poetry of the Spambot

I don’t get a lot of junk email anymore. I guess the Nigerian scammers finally figured out that I don’t accept the logic of sending them money in return for an imaginary fortune, and the bottom has apparently fallen out of the all-natural male-enhancement market. Either that, or I’ve finally got the filters tuned properly. Regardless, my “spam catcher” account — the one I use for commerce and newsletter subscriptions — doesn’t receive a lot of unsolicited traffic anymore. But every once in a while, one lone ninja manages to slip past the defenses in the dead of night and remind me of the weird and wacky (and yet strangely sublime) crap that used to be such a common part of the online experience.

I got one today, for example, that was mostly inscrutable in its randomly generated nonsense text, but it contained a single vibrant line that caught my eye, because it comes so close to sounding like it actually means something:

“Yes, we must rave. I went out for a activate, and it was so individual I longed to shimmer in the classification.”

My first thought was that somebody had programmed a ‘bot to rewrite A Clockwork Orange in the voice of Jack Kerouac. This line dances in my mind, coming achingly near to comprehensibility, and then skating away again like the pretty girl on an ice rink who teases and flirts and never quite lets you touch her as you flail about and grab for the side railing, and curse your clumsiness even as you find you just can’t take your eyes off her tiny little skirt and the way it flutters in the breeze…

Yes… yes, we must rave. It’s so obvious. I, too, long to shimmer…

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Jan092013

My Travel Style

A quote for your consideration:

Eurohopping, that thing where you cram, like, three or four countries into one 10-day trip, isn’t for me. I like feeling languid in a city, really sinking in, having mornings where you don’t rush out or feel guilty for not being at a museum. And the thing I like the most, always, is just walking, walking with no particular agenda. Hard to do if you’re only in Paris for a few days before moving on to the next place — more pressure to make the most of your time and see the Top Hits. (I do, however, completely understand the appeal of wanting to make the most of a trip to Europe and see as many places as possible! Just not my personal preference.)

That’s my own preference as well. I’ve been abroad only twice, to England and Germany, and in both cases I could have done and seen much more in the time I spent there than I actually did. But I went with the philosophy of PBS travel guru Rick Steves, who counsels travelers to “assume you will return” as you plan your itinerary, rather than trying to cram everything into a single trip. Considering that a decade passed between England and Germany, and nearly another decade has gotten away from me since Germany, I have to sadly acknowledge that I may never make it back to Stonehenge or Berlin. But I don’t regret for one moment the way I handled my earlier travels, not when I consider that I still have a pretty good mental map of Cambridge and Munich. I know those places; they both feel like real towns in my memory, rather than just “destinations.” To me, it was worth it to not see everything in the country in exchange for spending enough time in one spot to acquire some small sense of what it might be like to live there. My best memories of both of those trips are mostly of just sitting in some public space, soaking in the atmosphere. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to have that kind of experience again, given the demands of a grown-up life — stupid responsibility! — but I’m incredibly grateful to have had it twice before.

Darn, now I’m feeling all wistful and wishing I was wandering down some mysterious alleyway in a place I’ve never been…

(For the record, that quotation came from an interview with a footloose young woman who talks about traveling solo to Paris over the holidays…)

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Jan062013

Best of Blogging 2012

I said a week or so ago that I didn’t feel like I’d written much on this blog in the past year that’s worth reading. Well, I’ve since decided that maybe I was being a little too harsh on myself, as I so often tend to be. After actually reviewing my output in 2012, I still think I’ve been off my game, both in terms of quantity and quality, compared to the Good Old Days when blogging was a novelty, and everything in the world was fresh and golden. The last few months, when a Friday Evening Video every couple of weeks has been the best I could manage, were especially disappointing. Nevertheless, though, I did find a few entries I think are worth reminding people of. Many of these aren’t so great stylistically, i.e., in terms of the actual writing, but I’m including them anyhow because I admire their honesty, or they contain a good image, or I simply want to remember the events they mention:

And with that, let’s close the books on 2012 and move on to some new business, shall we?

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Jan052013

2012 Media Wrap-Up

I have no idea if my annual recounting of everything I read and viewed in the past 12 months is of the slightest interest to anyone, but I find it useful to keep track of these things for my own purposes — damn aging memory! — and I can’t think of any better place to enshrine my handwritten notes more or less permanently, so…

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Jan032013

Movie Review: Jack Reacher

JACK REACHERJack Reacher is the kind of movie I rarely encounter these days: a tight, comprehensible action/detective thriller with both a heart and a brain, as well as some unexpectedly snappy dialogue that occasionally rivals the great exchanges of a classic 1940s noir. Tom Cruise plays the title character, a former military policeman who now exists as a vagabond, roaming from place to place in search of an understanding of what it is he spent his former life defending (i.e., he’s looking for America, as they used to say), and although he doesn’t invite trouble, it tends to find him anyway in the form of crimes to be solved and innocents to be protected. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this film is yet another variation on the theme that defined so many of the 1970s and ’80s television series I’ve always loved, a dude wandering around helping people, and I thoroughly enjoyed it every frame of it.

In large part, that’s because I was given the opportunity to actually see every frame. Jack Reacher eschews the hated shaky-cam cinematography and Cuisinart school of editing that has ruined other recent action films for me in favor of a more old-fashioned look. Fight scenes make sense, action is sequential and easy to follow (although no less visceral or brutal), and a car-chase scene between Reacher in a vintage Chevy muscle car and some Russian-mobster baddies in an Audi R8 is pure adrenaline-soaked pleasure, with no apparent CGI or editorial trickery, just two actual cars battling it out on real streets.

The movie is adapted from the ninth book in a series of novels by the author Lee Child. In an echo of the controversy when Cruise landed the role of Anne Rice’s Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, many of Child’s fans have been grumbling about his casting — the literary Reacher is apparently a very different physical type — but I thought Tommy-boy inhabited the character well. In fact, this is the most I’ve enjoyed his work in a very long time. The slightly creepy blankness he’s displayed in most of his recent films is absent here, and I was reminded of the talented, charismatic movie star I used to think he was before he became the Church of Scientology’s couch-jumping poster child.

Honestly, I’d love to see him play this character again. I never really got into the Mission: Impossible series, but I wouldn’t mind Jack Reacher becoming an ongoing franchise…

 

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Jan012013

Year-End Meme

Our esteemed colleague Jaquandor traditionally does the following meme/quiz every year around this time to help him sum up the past 12 months (this year’s edition can be found here). Given my recent difficulties getting and maintaining a blog post — ahem — I thought I’d borrow it for a bit of inspiration. Meme’ing begins below the fold…

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Jan012013

Didn’t We Just Leave This Party?, Part II

Okay, yesterday’s entry went off down a rabbit hole I did not intend to visit. Sorry about that.

Getting back to what should have been the topic — the year just ended — I wrote yesterday that 2012 was “traumatic and evolutionary and life-changing, a real personal watershed for me… ” Sounds like a moment in time that ought to be recorded in some fashion, so let’s at least jot down the highlights, shall we?

  • The year began with my dad having emergency surgery to remove his gallbladder, followed by complications that led to a week in the hospital.
  • The Girlfriend moved in with me.
  • I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. In other words, I officially hit middle age. Yay, me.
  • The GF and I went on a Hawaiian cruise with her parents.

(Note that all of those events happened within a month of each other, and the latter three within just a couple weeks of each other.)

  • While still recovering from his surgery and hospital stay, Dad turned an unfinished basement space into a master bedroom for Anne and me, nearly single-handed. (That’s a story I really need to chronicle one of these days… and for the record, I’ve officially abandoned any hope of ever being as competent, useful, and all-round manly as my old man.)
  • My employer relocated to a shiny, new, upscale building in a shiny, new, upscale neighborhood.
  • And just before my 43rd birthday, I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed, only about 25 years later than they should have been. For the record, I opted to do it the macho way with only a local anesthetic, so I remained aware of pretty much everything the oral surgeon was doing. I could still feel my mouth, it just didn’t hurt. (For the record, the crack of a tooth breaking free of the jaw is… unsettling.) So I guess I’ve got that on my dad.

Oh, and somewhere in the midst of all that, I attended my annual Rick Springfield concert, drove solo across the Nevada desert to see my dad put his ’56 Nomad through its paces at a car show, and just a week ago took The Girlfriend to see Donny and Marie Osmond. And last but not least, I also met Carrie Fisher… yes, that Carrie Fisher, the actress, screenwriter, novelist, advocate for mental-health issues, and once-and-future space princess of my adolescent dreams. Weirdly enough, she reminded me a lot of my mom. Another story I really need to tell someday.

Now, when I refer to those events as traumatic, I don’t necessarily mean they were bad. Anne moving in with me, for instance, was not remotely bad. Which isn’t to say we haven’t been through some rough spots as we’ve tried to figure out this cohabitation thing — we’re human, after all, and at our, ahem, somewhat advanced stage of life, we’re both very set in our respective ways — but overall, it’s been a unquestionably good thing. (I’ll also stipulate that it’s long, long overdue — I’m embarrassed to admit publicly just how long we’ve been a couple without taking the big step forward of sharing quarters — and that the delay was almost entirely my fault.) The Hawaii trip wasn’t bad either, except in the sense of bad timing, coming as it did mere days after my health problems were revealed, as well as taking place under some somewhat odd circumstances. (I really ought to write about this whole experience as well; it wasn’t just Anne’s folks we were traveling with, but an entire busload of senior citizens from their community, a social club known as the “Senior Circle.” Needless to say, this trip was quite a bit different from my usual way of traveling.) And even the revelations about my health, as shocking and depressing as they were, ultimately had a silver lining because the steps I’ve taken to avoid having a stroke have also left me looking and feeling a lot better than I have in years, and who can complain about that? (Well, it is kind of a drag to find that many of my favorite clothes are now too big for me, but given a choice between a beloved concert t-shirt and not having a stroke, guess which one wins?)

The thing about these events that made them so traumatic is that they all felt so… mature. They were Grown-Up Things. The sort of Very Grown-Up Things that only a real Grown-Up would face, or would be expected to face, or could effectively deal with. And being a grown-up is something I’ve frankly never been very comfortable with. The sad truth is I’ve spent decades trying to ignore the inescapable reality that I am an adult, and sooner or later, I was always going to have to face adult concerns and responsibilities. However, health problems, suddenly grokking that your parents are getting old, moving forward with a relationship… hell, even going on a cruise instead of a half-assed, spur-of-the-moment road trip… it was like I’d suddenly been promoted to a higher level than I’d been playing at previously. That would’ve been pretty unsettling if it only happened once in any given year, but for all of these things to happen in that timeframe? And many of them within only one month? That’s where the trauma comes in.

I’ve done a lot of thinking since all this started, and the one point I keep coming back to is that I’ve wasted a huge amount of time waiting for my life to begin. You know, that syndrome where you keep saying, someday I’ll do this; when I get my shit together, I’ll do that; one of these days when I grow up… And of course the sad irony is that my life was in fact already underway, whether I understood that or not. I did understand it, in an intellectual sense at least, but I don’t think I really, truly believed it. I didn’t want to, because being a grown-up and having a life — no, making a life — is bloody hard work, man, and I just wanted to play as long as I could. But then came the morning my doctor clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re a ticking time-bomb, man.” At that moment, suddenly I got it. This is it, and everything I’ve done (or not done) has consequences, and I’ve reached the age where those consequences are becoming apparent.

The consequences are these: I’m not the man I used to think I was, or was going to be by this point in my life. I’m not a globetrotting adventurer, and I’m not a bestselling novelist. I’m not especially tough, and I’m a hell of a long way from self-reliant or self-confident. I’m not any of the things I always just kind of assumed I would naturally evolve into. (Yes, I know how naive and ridiculous that sounds; that’s basically the point I’m trying to make here.) What I am is inescapably, irrefutably middle-aged, halfway through the marathon, a bit run down and neglected, and as a result, in need of a lot of renovation work. I’m broken in quite a few significant ways. I get my feelings hurt easily and I worry too much about what others think of me. And I’ve made a crapload of mistakes, not the least of which is refusing to make choices because I was so afraid of making the wrong one and becoming trapped in a place I would later decide I didn’t want to be. I think I have a fair shot of repairing or undoing some of these mistakes. But a lot of them are done deals, written in stone. It is what it is, as my man Rick would say. And somehow I’ve got to learn to live with the frustration and shame and self-recrimination that comes with realizing you’ve been a real dolt, and there’s very little you can do about it now.

I’ve been fretting about indecision and aging and “what I’m going to be when I grow up” for a long time. But during this past year, these things took on a new solidity and urgency. Because… this is it, man. This is my life.

So, yeah, 2012… it was quite a year.

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