Category Archives: tragedy

On success (or failure?)

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Success is a strange animal. A little bit like bourbon, a little is very tasty and makes your head swim a little, but too much will make you sick and might even kill you. We live in a society obsessed with material success—intellectual success, not so much. We tell our children that only winning will do, and success is gauged by how many wins you have. We sign our children up for every team there is: football, dance, tennis, baseball, debate, color guard, wrestling, track, equestrian, gymnastics, science fair, tiddly-winks, twister, but other than making them take all AP classes, do we worry about their intellectual growth as people? The only possible outcome is victory. As someone who wasn’t very good at sports, or competitions in general, I could never measure success in terms of victories. I measured my success in terms of participation. Participation is great, of course, but the accolades go the victors, not the losers, not the also-rans. In many senses, I am one of an enormous anonymous multitude plodding along doing my thing. People who live in the public eye as movie stars or rock stars or politicians let popular success go to their heads. I’m thinking about people like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson. The pressure of living in public 24/7 is just too great for any one person to tolerate for any expended period. Eventually, they needed drugs to sleep and drugs to wake up. Privacy was impossible, and living like a normal person was a fantasy. Eventually, all three imploded under the stress and died due to drug overdoses. Students who are very successful in high school and college always run a similar risk of risk of believing their own press clippings. I much prefer to students who have garnered fewer accolades, and have substituted hard work for genius. Hard work in education is always more valuable than genius. The genius might have a great insight and be horrible glib and charismatic, but the hard worker will finish their thesis or dissertation, and the genius will struggle and may never finish. The Einsteins of the world prove the rule: they are so rare that they stand out as oddballs and iconoclasts. Real success, the kind of success that endures, the kind that matters, is based on hard work and dedication. Having a big ego will only ever get in your way, and if you actually think you are star in your field, you are probably only a legend in your own mind. There is always someone else who writes better, has more insight, and has a better job than you do. All success is fleeting and cruel, demanding a high price of those who would pray at that altar. Real success is not about getting trophies or medals, gold records or money. Real success is not about receiving any material goods at all. Success is about the journey, doing the work, demonstrating loyalty and humility, working in the shadows, finishing a job, turning in a paper, getting a degree. Success, any success, is fleeting and cruel and devours the successful from the inside out. Real success is never measured; it is lived on a day-to-day basis, based on humility and respect for those around you, and the daily assurance that you owe all of your success to the kindness of others.

On Yul Brynner’s Hair

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As a child I thought Yul Brynner had a lot guts to let his head go around naked. The man had no hair. None, zero, zippo, null set, no hair, and what made this really odd was that he was proud of his bald pate. From what I could tell he was making a career out of his baldness. I thought this was extremely bizarre and weird because handsome male leading men usually have good hair. What kind of strange anarchy is this? Flying in the face of Sampson and all the good-hair people in the world, he deliberately thumbed his nose at accepted convention and did his own thing. Was there a lesson in this, I asked myself. Clearly this man is not conforming to any known convention of beauty, so how does he get away with it? Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, James Dean, these men all had very good hair. Even today, look at someone like George Clooney: his hair is freaking perfect! I guess you are wondering about my personal hair agenda, but I have none. That is, I have no hair, which is not really true, but the little bit I still have is not worth mentioning and if I grow it out, it makes me look like a medieval monk with a graying tonsure. Not cool, not handsome, not worth having, so I cut my hair very short to emulate my personal hair hero, Yul Brynner. Yes, Telly Savalas is also very bald, and in much the same way. Getting your skull to go naked does fly in the face of tradition and rejects traditional conventions of male beauty concerning hair. I am not jealous, and just because I say that does not mean I am jealous after all. Letting your scalp go free is very liberating. I spend no money on combs or expensive hair care products, using about a half teaspoon of shampoo a day. I don’t worry about having a bad hair day. The rain will not ruin my recently coiffed locks, and the humidity will not wreck my perm. Getting a haircut is a rather simple assignment. Of course, now you can see the scar from where I ran into that old apple tree when I was six and had to get stitches. My hairline goes all the way to my back. Gray hair is not a problem. Split ends are not an issue either. When I had hair, it was always a mess, so I think this is better. I have come to terms with the Yul Brynner look, and I like it.

On larping and Don Quijote

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I learned this really strange word today, “larping,” which means “live action role playing.” “Oh, you mean the problem Don Quijote has?” I asked. Larpers, if I may use the term so loosely, are people that re-enact things like the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, storming the Bastille, the sinking of the Titanic, the running of the bulls (no, wait, that’s real), besieging a castle, dying of the plague, burning a heretic, that sort of thing. These people play these roles and take their “playing” very seriously, almost to the point of absurdity. I understand this perfectly because I have been living with Don Quijote for over thirty years, and he might have been one of the first live action role players in the history of the planet if you exclude Cleopatra, Nero, Caligula and Liberace, who were all doing their best to play real people, but sort of failed somewhere along the way. I digress. Don Quijote, or Alonso Quijano, his real person name, is rather unhappy with his boring life as comfortable landed gentry in central Spain. He basically collects rents, reads lots of books, and gets older. He decides at some point in his mid-life crisis that he wants more–more adventure, more danger, more sword fights, more intrigue, more women. So he decides to play a knight errant. The only problem is that nobody else is in on his game. Larping hadn’t been invented at the beginning of the seventeenth century, so the people that he ran into were rather uncooperative regarding his fantasy world of giants, damsels, knights and magicians. A fiasco ensues, to say the least, but it’s a rather humorous fiasco with a very high entertainment factor. Quijano sets out to be a knight, putting on his great-grandfather’s old rotting putrid armor, because in real life he is socially awkward, a little alienated from society, a natural loner, but he is also someone who really does not control his own destiny. He is stuck being boring Alonso Quijano with no real objectives or goals in his life. Live action role playing is very attractive because for a moment he can step out of character, be someone heroic and valiant, dream the impossible dream, and save the day. He larps, and part of that larping is a pre-arranged bout with insanity, fighting a windmill, attacking some sheep, making friends with some prostitutes, performing a vigil while some pigs sleep. It’s complicated. To make a long story short, he feels like, for first time in his life, he is in control of something. Is that really any different than what any of us wants out of life?

On daydreaming

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Can it really be that bad? I mean, it´s only a few minutes, to let your focus go, to let the mind drift, your eyes close a bit, and at least for a short while, you really don’t care about your surroundings. You slowly relax, your muscles go slack, your blood pressure drops, but you aren’t quite asleep either. You are dreaming wide awake. Background sounds do not disturb you, and other people and places invade your waking dream–a street in another town, a sunlit terrace in another country, a foggy mountain meadow, a neon-darkened subway, a busy county fair, a smoke-filled bar in an eastern port, an air-conditioned kitchen with an apple pie cooling on the counter, a rainy Sunday afternoon in May, a dark alley in a small Midwestern town. You tumble through time and come out in another life, a dingy office that smells of stale smoke and sweat. You don’t know the raven-haired beauty that just walked into your office, but she spells trouble. You can smell her perfume, lilacs and roses, and you don’t like it. That skirt couldn’t be tighter or shorter and still be a skirt. She wants to smoke a cigarette, and she fidgets with a lighter, but you have no ashtray. Her voice is husky and rough and you have no idea what she is talking about, but she reminds you of a case you solved in Chinatown, and you’re already thinking you want no part of this fiasco. A stiff drink would go down pretty well about now. The siren of an ambulance haunts your conversation. Something about her little sister, something about an older man, but none of it makes much sense. A sad song that plays too well on the mean streets of this city of angels. I recognize the surname and wonder what she’s doing slumming here in my office. Dirty work is only done by a dirty detective. She’s the daughter of a retired oil tycoon, she needs help, but this can only end badly…and the phone rings. “Hello, no, this is not the ticket office, no, I don’t know the right number. Yeah, bye.” And it’s over.

On Good Friday

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From any perspective, it may not be possible to understand Good Friday. The human tradition of capital punishment has a long and dark history that probably originates in the obscure reaches of our history that even anthropologists and archeologists cannot fathom. Trying to answer the question of why we want to kill each other is a mysterious, if not enigmatic, pursuit that inflames emotions and raises questions about human life. The Romans were good at executing people, using various painful and horrifying methods of executing criminals, terrorists and other human detritus. Of course, their methods for determining such categories were a part of their law codes, and I am sure they were justified in having non-conformists eaten by wild animals, for example. Good Friday is about capital punishment, however, and I think that Christians, probably above all others, should be sensitive to the modern practice of capital punishment. Yet, living in Texas, a place that prides itself on its beliefs and plants churches everywhere, I find that this is often not the case, and our state officials have carried out more executions than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. I know what people are thinking because I have also thought about this: the crimes these people have committed are so heinous that they don’t deserve to live anymore. How can you forgive a person who has used a pickax to kill another person? For this reason, however, the debate about the legitimacy of the death penalty is hot and full of conflict and polemics. The biggest problem with the death penalty, specifically, and capital punishment, in general, is that the result is irreversible. Justice, as we all know, is not handed out evenhandedly. We would like Lady Justice to keep that blindfold on and her scales evenly balanced, and I don’t know who lives in that ideal world, but I know I don’t. Innocent men and women are convicted of crimes every day in spite of the best efforts of judges, juries, prosecutors and defense lawyers. Good Friday shows me that an innocent man may be executed given circumstances beyond the control of even the judge. I would not ask for grace for a murderer, but I would suggest that that kind of punishment is not within our purview. Grace, forgiveness, these cannot be just words on a page. They must mean something to all of us, the imperfect people of this world. It’s true: this man was surely innocent.

On bacon

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Anything I could possibly say about the joys of bacon would be superfluous and redundant. We are a bacon nation, and we put it on burgers, salads, sandwiches, and just about anything else that can be eaten. Chocolate bacon is heaven on earth. Bacon is bad for you, your heart and your survival. Pure fried cholesterol, bacon dedicates all its time to clogging up your arteries, hanging off your waste, enlarging your thighs, and making you jowly, which is great if you are trying out for department store Santa, bad if you want your jeans to fit for one more day. The variety of bacon in the supermarket cooler is only equaled by the sausage section right next to it. For some mysterious, if not wholly mystical, reason, we love to cure white pork fat, fry it, and pig out, as it were. If there is one more slice of bacon on the plate, I will eat it, regardless of the number of pieces I have already eaten. Eating bacon is almost as bad as smoking, and certainly the long term effects are as bad or worse. I’m not going to compare bacon to sex for all sorts of reasons, but common decency should rule even when discussing sex. Bacon I’m not so sure about. Let’s face it people: America is obese and bacon isn’t helping the situation at all. I adore bacon that is particularly crunchy and overdone, bordering on burnt. The crisp crunch between my teeth, the sweet taste of fat, the fine smoked aroma of hickory or mesquite all add to its strange allure. Nobody needs to eat bacon for any reason at all other than pure self-centered egotism and self-indulgence. I wouldn’t, however, turn it down if someone passed me the bacon platter. Bacon does not help with digestion, it contains no essential vitamins as far as anyone knows, and a piece the size of a domino meets an average adult’s entire daily need for fat. Who ever ate a piece of bacon the size of a domino? So I live with this self-indulgent vice which is bacon. The best way to avoid bacon is to just leave it in the store and forget about it. Yet, the smell of frying bacon is so toxically magic that no one can resist it, and of course, the only thing I cannot resist is temptation itself.

On snoring

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I snore. I also suspect that most people do at some point in their lives. The sounds that snorers make is on my top ten list of all time worst sounds right between vacuum cleaner and leaf blower, but still below garbage trucks, babies crying on an airplane, and car crash noises. Snoring wouldn’t be so bad except that you hear it during the night when you are trying to sleep. It’s probably not as bad as water-boarding, but waiting for the snorer to either snort again or shut up is pure torture. And not all snorers are created equal. I know one or two that can make the paint peel and the wallpaper curl from the sheer volume of sound. I’m a little surprised they haven’t damaged their own hearing or that they don’t wake themselves up. Some snorers are stealthy and wake you up, but then don’t snore again for awhile until you are just about to sleep again and they start up the chainsaw again. A full-blown, sonic boom snorer can drive you out of your mind. Murders have been committed in the name of snoring. Researchers tell us that excessive snoring is bad and needs treatment, and some snorers get help. Yet many snorers just grind away each night, snuggled in the arms of sleep, blissfully ignorant of the havoc they are creating. I knew of one fellow that was asked to leave a hotel because he made so much noise. Some people sound like they are drowning, while others gurgle and grown, creating a symphony of strange animal noises. I am unsure of what the evolutionary function of snoring is. I would think that snorers would have been eaten by large predators who one, would have found them easily in the dark, and two, would eat them just to shut them up. Animals need their sleep as well. I haven’t even mentioned the victims of snoring, who grab and blanket and pillow and exile themselves to the lumpy couch in the den out of sheer desperation and sleepiness. For some snorers, no amount of prodding or poking does a bit of good, and they can snore equally well on their stomachs as on their backs. Posture means nothing. The thunder continues, the chainsaw drones on, and millions of helpless sleepers spend their nights roaming the halls of the homes in search of quiet place to sleep.

On Oscar

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What did Billy Crystal say last night? “Tonight we are going to watch a bunch of millionaires give each other little golden statues.” I have watched the Oscars for a couple of decades, and they really are no more transcendent now than they were in 1929 when the Screen Actors Guild started handing out the faceless statuettes. They just add another level of mysticism, elitism and glamor to an already very selective and exclusive club to which no mortal has access. Like a bunch of crazed voyeurs, we tune in each year to stare at the beautiful people come together to out-stage even each other. Their pathetic attempts at saying “thank you” border on the banal and boring. Basically, the Oscars are here to tell us all that we are just normal human beings and have no chance of ever attaining the fame and stature of the stars who will possibly win a little golden statuette. Oscar is a talisman of exclusivity. The people who receive the award have worked hard, but they also have had their share of good luck. And how many, exactly, have sold their souls to the Devil to get that little golden guy? Far from jealous, I would say that having a normal life is a pretty special thing. I can walk into any Starbucks in any airport in the world and not have to worry about being recognized, about having to be nice to fans, about having every inch of my life under a microscope. While I am out in public, my stress levels are very low. I can go to the grocery store, get my junk and get out. I’m not so sure that giving out autographs, getting lots of photos taken, and having my life scrutinized at every turn would be that interesting. In a sense, any of those famous people is just a regular person as well. Notting Hill (1999) is an unglorified look into the public/private pain of an actress (Julia Roberts) who is looking for love, but her all too public face makes that impossible. The stress of living a public life cannot be at all very fun. Having a face that half the planet will recognize has to be a pain in the neck. Oh, I wouldn’t mind the money, at least at first, and I’m sure the fame is great for the ego, at least at first, but in the long run, the press, the paparazzi, the news channels must be both tedious and boring. You cannot gain a pound or grow old, you cannot have a movie that goes bad, you cannot play characters that your fans might hate, you cannot fail to live up to their expectations. So let them pass out their little statues. The movies may or may not be good. Some of my favorite films were never nominated for anything, and, as far as I’m concerned, many of the big names might never have been made at all.

On love

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Love is a pretty tricky, if not risky, emotion, but most people enjoy being in love, most people love to be loved, and when love goes away, the pain is almost immeasurable. Valentine’s Day, which is just around the corner, always seemed like a time of crisis for so many, including myself when I was single. The whole idea of being single was just so much more tragic than it was the rest of the year. Human beings do not do well when forced to live by themselves. Single people do not live as long as married folks, but I’ve known so many married folks that live in conflict and pain. One thing that is very important about love is that you cannot generalize about why people fall in love, how they pick their mates, or how they stay together. I’m sure sociologists will disagree and site a bunch of studies, but my argument would be this: studies generalize, people are individuals. What humans hate and fear is being left alone, which is what makes the Robinson Crusoe analogue so frightening: you end up making friends with a volleyball called Wilson. I would also suggest that although love has a physical side to it, love that lasts is more than physical and transcends the day-to-day crap that makes life difficult. In fifty-plus years one has one’s successes and one’s disappointments. Ideally, we would all like to marry our childhood sweetheart and then just grow old together. Perhaps there was a time in some distant and golden past when that sort of thing happened, but in this complex world of high pressure jobs, family conflicts, strife of all kinds, random chaos, religion, politics, caprice, serendipitous chance, and strange attractors one is infrequently in the same place long enough to develop a real relationship with anyone. We move around too much and love has no chance. We all desire real emotion, we yearn to be loved, but love is such a dangerous proposition that we often say “no” because it is the only way to guarantee the safety of our soul. Loss, rejection, hurt, betrayal or indifference are heartbreaking because you risked everything, you dared to love, and now you walk away alone. You can only do that so many times before you quit in sheer desperation and self-preservation. Love is always that double-edged sword, and it either protects or kills, and you may never know why. Recently, a truly heartbroken friend asked the eternal question: is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Something to think about.

On Jekyll and Hyde

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I first read this story as a teenager, but after seeing Baylor’s wonderful and sprightly production, I finally understand it. Directed by master’s student Josiah Wallace, this adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher is a darkly lit montage of Victorian England’s seamier side of filthy alleys, morgues, flop houses, dark streets, corpses and solitary gardens. The play is not as possessed of forbidden science or occult practices as it with the solitary human heart. What is more frightening? To find you are capable of incredible violence and unrelenting cruelty? Or to find that although admired, loved, and applauded by all, you lead a sickening and solitary life of few friends and no family? Ultimately Robert Louis Stephenson, the novelist who penned the original, was probably less concerned with the potion his mad scientist concocted than he was with unleashing the horrific beast that resides within us all, controlled, just below the surface. The question is: can we forever keep the beast contained? Stephenson, Hatcher and Wallace would all say that, no, that’s not really possible, and that’s why the alter-ego, Hyde, slides to the surface. In the end Hyde is a monster who hides in the shadows, screams, hits, threatens, yet he also a man, indistinguishable from any other. To think that we absolutely control our emotions, that logic is always at our fingertips, that rational thought is our only response to any situation is totally absurd. The most frightening idea presented by the play is that many of the abusers look like Jekyll and are shining examples of decorum and respectability until they can get their victims alone and hurt them. Symbolized by a red door, a continuous rupture with logic and rational thought was the centerpiece of the work, and characters came and went, at one point in the guise of a doctor, or a professor, or a policeman, and then morphing into the violent, menacing, and irrational Hyde, and then changing back again into reasonable English Victorians with their lilting accents and proper manners. The ensemble seemed strangely constrained at times, torn between their need to repress their energies as Victorians and their need to let it all go in the guise of Henry Hyde. I admire both their guts and their courage, and it was obvious that they trusted their director. The only thing that would have made the play creepier would have been a more nuanced Hyde who shouted less, but then again, that’s just me. The set, a minimalist piece of moveable ironwork, kept transforming itself into new places, almost as unpredictable as Jekyll himself. The lighting was subdued since the entire production was cloaked in night, darkness, fog and mist, which was appropriate given the subject matter at hand. Too much rational empiricist makes Jekyll a dull boy indeed, but the unanswered question remains: There, but for the grace of God, go I?