Pain is there, or it’s not. Physical pain; where in the brain is that memory stored? Show pictures of emotions: sadness, joy, anger, despair, fear, surprise.Then pain. And it is all of these, the most recognizable expression that is not a feeling.
We baby boomers have two topics: pain and medicine. Bill Clinton: “I share your pain.” And to look at him, to hear him perform, you could almost believe it, but no more: fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us. A politician couldn’t run on that promise; she would be run out of town. Our pain is our own, not even the closest among us can share it. To talk of it, eyes glaze over. Ask Nielsen, what’s beyond the 18- to 49-year-old group? Losers lane, narrowing toward the void. And on the way, pain and medicine. Yawn. Do you feel sleepy?
Running for Your Life: Resolutions
J, a friend of M’s came to the door the other night. With M in India last month, J hadn’t had the opportunity to say Happy New Year, so she did, almost two months and an untold number of snowstorms since Jan. 1, 2011. Or 1-1-11.
It strikes me that in these weeks I haven’t made any new year’s resolutions. That days go by and although I like to think of myself as thoughtful and prone to self-evaluation, but often as not I’m feeling pulled along by routine, three hundred days a year I leave home about the same time, stand on a spot on the subway platform
It strikes me that in these weeks I haven’t made any new year’s resolutions. That days go by and although I like to think of myself as thoughtful and prone to self-evaluation, but often as not I’m feeling pulled along by routine, three hundred days a year I leave home about the same time, stand on a spot on the subway platform
Running for Your Life: More on '18.3'
A fictive character of mine, newspaperman Ben Starwick, weighs in on some human costs of “18.3,” (http://www.economist.com/node/17957107). Overheard in conversation with a pal, our narrator Luke DeSoto:
“You don’t know the half of it, pal.” His dark brown eyes locked on to me.
“You don’t know the half of it, pal.” His dark brown eyes locked on to me.
Running for Your Life: Week One
Suddenly, Dr. Playground makes an appearance. The “y” in the shape of a stethoscope. Another freezing day, but that doesn’t stop Dr. Playground, the mobile fix-it truck that, presumably, keeps Prospect Parks’ many playgrounds in working order. But what to do since Dec. 26, when the snows came? No matter, Dr. Playground is spiffy as ever, sparkling clean forest green, no strained sewage for it, the color of the mini-growlers I had to hack out and around Vanya, twisting to get them out from under the car and I feel a twinge – uh, oh – but it’s a only temporary, put it down to my Jack LaLanne calisthenics, can’t afford an injury now.
Running for Your Life: Doppelgangers
“Swan Lake” meets “The Shining,” M tells the miraculously kind woman in the heart-shaped glasses who agrees to move two minutes before the !Coming Attractions! at the Regal Cinema, Union Square, Daniel Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” the feature presentation, in order to make it possible for M and I to have front row center stadium seats in the balcony for the Friday night show that I’ve modest expectations for and that exceeds those and beyond so much so that I find it even more remarkable than “The King’s Speech,” because like “The Shining,” “Black Swan” is a Henry James “madness of art” movie. (James: “We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”) M offers her assessment in the ladies room after thanking the woman again for moving so that all three of us could enjoy the show, M’s critique of which sparks the response, “Yes! That’s exactly right. Do you have a blog? You should definitely share that. ”
Running for Your Life: Interstate Imagination
There’s open water and thousands of black birds on the ground, and from the distance, even in my specs, hard to tell, but thinking crows not Canada geese, on the Jersey Turnpike, so far from God, and from the tropical birdhouse in Central Park, and the Key West butterfly house, catch your breath as you enter, here the scrub trees and what must be two feet of snow, two weeks ago on the road to Washington, DC, nothing but roadside sludge, color of strained sewage, tractor-trailer drivers at my height on this Bolt Bus, giant flat-sceen TV windows, why Post columnist Linda Stasi rants against “Jersey Shore,” a knife in the back of her Italian-American heritage, and horrors!, some of the characters playing the reality-TV stars on their way to Italy aren’t even Italian-American, set aside the fact that viewers respond to the show precisely because they recognize the culture’s unwillingness to value education and travel and to experience non-American appetites as full and rich and meaningful, as opposed to being threatened and intimidated by those with different ideas on, say, breakfast food or what side of the road to drive on, or how learning to say merci beaucoup, or a bientot, or s’il vous plait, before flying to Paris for a holiday isn’t unAmerican but rather enriches the American life, perhaps if such behavior were to catch on even to the point that “Jersey Shore” does not reflect the values of our dumbed-down culture and thus wouldn’t play in quite the same way, we wouldn’t be able to feel superior to Snooki and The Sitch in the same way that we do with American Idol, and don’t tell me this show (JS) blazes the fifteen minutes of fame trail, that’s so Andy Warhol, now dumb and numb enough and you’re in ten years of fame easy; I mean “Idol” is 10 years old next year. So rant, yes Linda! http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/boob_arians_invade_Ku6992bF0q7oN7r0zrpRrN . Ranting is good, better than bottling up your disgust, your rage at what accounts for mainstream TV culture in the American Imperium, consider John Milton, his “inward vicious rule,” to wit, in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), “If men within themselves would be governed by reason and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favor and uphold the tyrant of a nation. But being slaves within doors, no wonder that they strive so much to have the public state conformably governed to the inward vicious rule by which they govern themselves,” and thankfully, we’re just about there .¤.¤. off the Jersey Turnpike, bring it on Philly and Delware (with the “.” – see RFYL: A Congressional Run).
Running for Your Life: Jack Attack
Is shrill the new black? Increasingly, I find myself being stopped in mid-sentence, which is not my way. In the 1960s, Mom didn’t like to send me on supermarket errands because I’d read the list but study the labels, take an hour when I could have been in and out in ten minutes, so my patience is an alley (old Chinese proverb; see RFYL: Washington Memorial), and I’d like to think the change I detect in the press is not about me, rather that writers and commentators on both sides of the political fence are angry and bitter and all too often these days it comes out in what they have to say in print, fair game if the outburst is over dinner, or in the shower, while surfing cable TV, but you’d think the editors would tone down The Shrill, rather than encourage it, as M, the punster, would say: failing the Killer App, they embrace the Shriller App.
Running for Your Life: Washington Memorial
Jonathan Franzen will be here, at the Washington National Cathedral, I think as I run past the icy grounds, three days after DC’s worst blizzard of the year blew through, some people still without power and sidewalks icy and snow-covered, if Thurber didn’t need a walk/run and I didn’t need to get in some miles, only seventy-five days and counting until Boston, I’d be napping with M.
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