December 15, 2007
BEST SONG(S) EVER OF THE DAY:/ALBUM OF THE DAY:
"Gospel" and "Fake Empire" by The National. The bookend tunes on the album "Boxer"-certainly a leading candidate for the Teddy Vegas Album of the Year honors. Such deep, slow, mournfully beautiful songs--sung in a lyrical, loss-haunted baritone that gives sound and shape to the native, inalienable sadness that is inseparable from joy. Only this guy can sing "Let me come over i can waste your time i'm bored" and make it feel like a heartbreakingly poignant romantic offering. It's as if Ian Curtis were channeling Elliot Smith. And yet it's its own sound entirely. Gorgeousness fortified with fragmented truth.
Spellbinding. I can't stop listening to it.
Here, listen for yourself:
"Fake Empire" on Letterman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBujZr20O6M
"Gospel" (acoustics not great. sounds MUCH better on the album.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz9KnUZyQH4
LFAQs of THE DAY:
Is Oprah's endorsement of Obama based on:
a) Her actual support of his policies and positions?
b) Racial allegiance trumping gender allegiance?
c) Her identification with people whose names start with the letter "O."
Can a bald person have a bad hair day?
OBIT OF THE DAY:
Ike Turner. Big Wheel just stopped turning.
PITHILY OUTLINED PHILOSOPHICAL OPPOSITION OF THE DAY:
"There’ll be plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead"
vs.
"Wake me when I’m dead."
AWKWARD MOMENT OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON:
Eating at the kosher restaurant Fine and Shapiro on the eighth night of Hanukah. Realizing the few other patrons there (mostly old Jewish couples, some with yarmulkes on) are all staring at me. At first I think it's because I'm wearing my funny looking old-style aviator's hat. But then I realize it's because I've been humming "Walking Through a Winter Wonderland" out loud for the last ten minutes without realizing it.
HOLIDAY-INSPIRED SPIRITUAL REFLECTION OF THE DAY:
To associate the miraculous with the rare and the unusual—is, arguably, to misunderstand the true nature of the miraculous. To minimize the wonder of the very thing you seek to extol. Just because the sun rises every day doesn’t make it any less of a wonder that it does so. It is to minimize the primordial miracle (for those inclined to use such terms) of presence. Of the profound, original mystery that there is something instead of nothing. You understand this when you lose someone you love. From the perspective of the one who mourns and grieves, it’s a miracle that the departed loved one was ever here with you. A part of your life. Each and every day. A mysterious stranger in familiar disguise. A stealth miracle hidden in plain sight.
It is this awareness that makes you realize the importance of cultivating a nostalgia for the present.
Full disclosure: I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in Jesus. I don't believe in Beatles. I don't even believe in John and Yoko. But I do believe in life. And this was just my attempt to take--in the spirit of the holiday season--the notion of the miraculous seriously. I have always felt that there was something slightly tawdry and desperate and beside the point in looking for the big miracle. The turning of water into wine. The Red Sea parting. The manna from heaven. The oil that lasted eight days. The resurrection of the dead. Jesus's face appearing in a piece of pita bread. If there is anything miraculous it is immanent and everywhere. It is in everything. And everyone. Everyday.
The miracle will be ubiquitous or it will not be at all.
FRAGMENT OF THE DAY:
We were a particular shape of time.
TRAGI-COMEDY IMAGE OF THE DAY:
A guy who'd bet on one of the underdogs in the 2005 Preakness, exclaiming "Yes!!" when the beloved favorite Barbaro pulls up fatally lame--momentarily exposing his soul for the rancid little goiter that it is.
HANUKAH THOUGHT OF THE DAY:
Watching the Hanukah candles burn tonight.... a meditation on mortality. Lights (as lives)--that burn in their own particular manner and emit their own kind of warmth until they are extinguished. Some burn quickly, others slowly. Some end abruptly. Others hang on well beyond any reasonable expectation. But when they finally go out, they all emit a little gasp of smoke...that tonight feels like spirit. I have to admit that I was only observing them this carefully because I was betting on which one would burn the longest (a familial Hanukah tradition that started when my brother and I were kids. In fact, we were so absurdly and single-mindedly competitive about it that if one of the other candles had fallen out of its holder and lit the house on fire, we probably wouldn't have noticed.)
RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:
He was happy as a clam; a really sad clam.
NOTES FROM THE JOURNAL OF COINCIDENCE AND MOURNING:
On Friday after work, I stopped by my beloved (and previously touted) Chipotle on my way home and picked up a "Burrito Bowl" (rice, black beans, carnitas (free range hanukah pork), mild and medium salsas, sour cream, corn relish and lettuce) and a soda in a paper cup. I carefully negociated my way onto the crowded rush hour subway--pressing the brown paper bag with my non broken thumb against the threadbare shearling coat i had inherited from my father and balancing the cola on top with the functioning four fingers of my other hand--all while carefully balancing myself --skateboarder style-- without benefit of contact with any of the subway handrails. At many points along the way I thought about the patent folly of this arrangement and acknowledged to myself the wisdom of throwing the freaking, ever threatening soda out (but where???). It was particularly absurd in that the burrito was losing its precious heat at a steady rate throughout and i knew that in my essentially one-handed state i was in no condition to scrape it into some suitable container and reheat it upon my return home. (I also didn't want to demystify the meal through an alteration of its familiar form--much the way you wouldn't want to see Dolly Pardon without her wig and makeup...actually that was a terribly inexact analogy; one that bore as much resemblance to an apt analogy as Dolly Pardon post make-up and wig removal bears to Dolly Pardon the familiar icon...) Anyhow I was pretty impressed with my balancing act until I got off the subway and discovered that all the while the brown bag had been leaking salsa or meat juice or something all over the breast of the cherished coat. I cursed to myself but kept my resolve. "It'll be ok," i told myself. "Just commit to the successful completion of your appointed round (Your self-appointed entirely absurd round.) and then you'll wipe the coat clean with a sponge and some warm water when you get back to the apartment." Ok, so long story short: I negociate the cold and wind and I make it all the way back to my apartment where I manage to balance this edible edifice as I successfully remove the key from my pocket and just JUST JUST as I'm about to open my front door, I make one false move and the freaking leaning tower of non-pizza tumbles! I manage to grab the burrito bowl bag, but the soda crashes onto the floor. Ice and sticky ass brown liquid everywhere. And a huge "Fuuuuuck!!!!" bellowed out through the hall. (It was mine.)
Anyhow, here's the thing. Once before (and only once before) in my life I had had a similar experience. It was during a weekend I spent with my father last year in Stonington, Ct., right near the Rhode Island border. We arrived at that coastal town on a bitter cold night, amidst gale force winds. (60 to 80 mph). And, after somehow getting his frail and walker-dependent self up the short flight of steps that led to our suite (his knuckles white as much from the wind-induced terror as from the bitter cold), we discovered that none of the restaurants in town delivered. And so it came to pass that one Teddy Vegas volunteered to brave the extreme weather conditions and walk into the town and get some food to bring back for his exhausted, slightly traumatized father. ( I can see in my mind's eye the look of fatigue he'd get after unfamiliar exertion..the few remaining hairs on his head waving about as if to signal surrender or the imminence of a nap--which, i guess, are often the samed thing.) I called what I'd been told was the best place in town and I ordered the steak au poivre for my father and the halibut for me. And then I bundled up and struck out for the big pick up.
I will never forget just how strong and cold the winds were that night as I made my way along the picturesque little main street of this quintessentially quaint New England town. I literally had to tilt myself forward 45 degrees to avoid being blown backwards--while staring down at my feet to protect the exposed part of my face from the icy blasts. It was probably only 300 yards but it felt like forever. When I arrived at the restaurant I honestly thought I might have gotten frost bite. The patrons looked at me with pity. They didn't have proper take-out containers (I must have been the first person in the history of this town to order take-out) and so they put the two entrees in ill-fitting styrofoam containers and stacked them in a brown paper bag. After lingering a bit to regain the feeling in my fingers and face, I finally braced myself for the return leg of my errand and sort of leapt out into the arctic maelstrom--fancy fare in hand. The return trip was brutal. But sustained by the knowledge of how hungry my father must be by now, I managed to keep my grip on the precariously packaged food while being blown forward in a burlesque fashion. I finally made it back to the Inn and, negotiating the winds with a heroic blend of concentration and balance, slowly ascended the little flight of stairs that led to our door. I didn't want to make my father get up so I carefully freed one hand to open the door and--as you must know by now--saw the the whole meal tumble onto the ground.
I let out the second loudest and longest "Fuuuuuuccccckkk! " of my life (the first was issued when, while serving as grill master up at my mother's place in Connecticut a few years ago barefoot, I stepped on a burning hot coal--an exclamation that made quite the impression on my young nephew Daniel who, heretofore unfamiliar with the expletive, mimicked it in its extended form for months afterwards to his parents' alternating horror and delight.). I can see it like it was yesterday. The walnut crusted halibut splattered all over the welcome mat, my father looking crestfallen with sympathy for me. Happily his meal stayed in its container and so was edible if lukewarm. I scraped up a few pieces of the fish and washed them off in the sink. My father kept insisting I take part of his steak but as I remember I was too busy being inconsolable and so declined his kind and repeated offers-making do with the scraps of rinsed off halibut I'd salvaged and trying to console myself, as we sat there side by side in front of the TV amidst the howling winds, by periodically peeking at my laptop to see how the players on my fantasy NBA team were performing.
Anyhow, I didn't really think about that connection when I spilled the Chipotle soda on Friday. But as I sat in my apartment afterwards checking periodically to see how my fantasy guys were performing that night, I had a vivid, unconscious flashbacks to the way I felt doing it while sitting beside my father that night. While I've checked fantasy scores on countless nights, this is the first time I'd ever associated it with that night with my father. There was a very, very specific, sensory connection. The names of the players ("Crawford", "Barbosa") somehow looked and felt exactly like they had that night. Maybe I was making an unconscious association with the food delivery debacle. Or, maybe, I began to think, it was the specific feeling of the time of year. In any event, I was suddenly remembering the feeling of that night with my father in the hotel room with remarkable--almost cruel-- vividness. The feeling of sitting beside him watching him slowly chew his food on his few remaining teeth. The sound of the howling winds outside. The warm reassurance of his presence. And, swept up in memory and emotion, I thought: wouldn't it be amazing if it turns out that it was exactly this night last year that we were up there? Wouldn't it be bizarre if it turns out that this is the actual anniversay of the night I'd dropped the food?
I vaguely remembered that I'd kept the receipt from that trip (the last I would ever take with my father) as a keepsake. And so for the first time in months, I found the courage to open the suitcase in which I've been storing many of my father's effects--including that. I rummaged through a bunch of things (camera lenses, watches, cuff links) and documents (his wedding album (with my mother), his diploma from Northwestern, his bar mitzvah photo album) until I found a manilla envelope that I'd marked "Miscellaneous Memorabilia." I removed the contents: A photo of my dad, my brother and me when we were teenagers. A photo of my dad and me about ten years ago when we visited my brother in San Francisco right after his son was born . The last photo ever taken of my father (a month or so before his death...he is wearing a Honda baseball cap and smiling sweetly.) and, yes, there it was: the receipt from that weekend trip. The Inn at Stonington. Dec 3-4, 2006. The first Friday in December. Just like it was tonight.
Unbelievable.
I looked at his signature on the receipt (yes, he insisted on paying--against my protestations). I remembered that night so so vividly. I felt humbled by the genius of memory and the power of the unconscious. And the love that binds. And the death that separates. And I started crying for the first time in a few weeks.
I was struck by the the juxtaposition of the fantasy sports--a little numbing bubble in which nothing real can ever happen, in which there is no real time or loss--and the devastating absence of the person who was sitting beside me that night while I checked in the scores.
I was beseiged by memories of that weekend. The drives, the meals, the challenges of getting my father in and out of seats, up steps, through doors. The quality of the lights at night on the town square. And the winter light during the day as we watched gulls alight on the little breaker that jutted out into the harbor. I remembered the dinner at the little Portugese place on the water. The brown leather jacket he wore. The eggs (he pronounced them "aygs") and waffles we had at this little diner in town. The specific, slow pace of the days. The little ride we took through the Connecticut College campus where I was staggered by how young everyone looked and then realized that he was almost exactly the age I was then when he visited me at college during my freshman year. ("This is how young my friends and I looked to him. Wow.") I remember him telling me about a little weekend trip to the French Riviera he and a buddy had taken while stationed in Germany during the Korean War--long before he had met my mother. I remember reflecting on the strange spell cast by one's personal prehistory--by your parents' lives before you. I remember his repeated gratitude for my having given up my weekend to be with him and my explaining that I didn't feel I'd given up anything. I remember our saying maybe we'd do it again next year. But most of all I just remember the specific quality of my father's presence. And the shared history and warmth we carried around with us during that bitterly cold weekend in New England.
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Posted on 12/15/2007
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