*****
I reject that notion because, to put it simply, junior high school exists. And nobody in junior high school could mistake the world for one suffering under too much equality. The kids who get the Participation Trophies know how sad they are. I don't particularly blame those who worry about this. It's just a good example of a parent-child divide: the parent lives at an intellectual remove and can think themselves into these sort of abstract worries about social life; the child lives through gym and lunch. I just don't think children or adolescents live in a world where there's too little judgment or too little inequality or too little understanding that people are unequal. The people who make these observations, to my lights, have thought themselves into a corner and ended up with an intelligent critique of a danger very few actually face.
I'm talking about this because I think that this notion of differing abilities and the rank inegalitarian nature of talent is important for anyone who wants to be a writer to think about; because writing is for me, an amateur, both the only way to get outside of my head to avoid thinking myself into corners and a mechanism through which I do exactly that; and because it is only through writing that I know how to tell you why I think a certain symbolic reading of a nine-year-old animated movie is wrong.
*****
I don't know if this next part is a contradiction of the last bit, or a corollary.
For me the process of growing up was the process of coming to terms with the fact that life isn't fair and that you don't get what you want in life. And in the way of the young bookish dude, I turned this necessary bit of life wisdom and made it into a kind of personal chauvinism. I looked around at people who hadn't yet grasped that life wasn't fair and I just steeped in my own judgment. Nobody knows how to bend passion and conviction into sanctimony like someone in their early twenties. I did not want to be uncharitable. I only knew that I looked around and saw desperately unhappy people who could not forgive themselves for not having everything they wanted because they thought that their wanting was enough. I did not bother to indict myself the same way; I knew my failures were both out of my control and deserved.
Then I got a job at a middle school.
Every wall, festooned with posters: if you believe, you can achieve. Never give up on your dreams. The key to success is effort. Dozens of variations on the same theme: you can get what you want if you want it badly enough, if you don't quit. And I just thought, god, how cruel. What a wonderful mechanism for creating a culture of self-hating, unhappy people. And as has happened so many other times, I had to think about my personal judgments, and let them dissolve. I can't and don't blame anyone for holding on too long.
Sometimes people ask me if I'm anti dreams or anti trying, if I don't think that it's good for people to strive. Of course I think people should want things and of course I think they should work for them. But I think that they should frequently ask themselves if it's working, that they should ask themselves if holding on is doing more harm than good, that they should understand that in every
avenue of human achievement success depends on factors other than dedication and work, and I think that they should forgive themselves if it hasn't happened.
What to Do When Someone Hates You on The Internet
Step one: Close laptop.
Step two: Go outside.
Step three: Look at the people out on the street.
Step four: Realize that not one of them has ever heard of you, heard of the person who hates you, or could possibly care.
Step five: Imagine that person out on the street, with you. Imagine them free from the power of their blog or their magazine or whatever, away from sympathetic commenters and connected friends, free from the distorting power of text-based communication, in all of their limited flawed fleshy humanity, with beating human beating heart, and feel better about them and about you.
On my birthday, a month or so back, I went into the city to visit my brother and see Before Midnight. I loved it, which is no surprise. We've seen all three of them in the theater together. I'm nine years younger than the characters, and the movies are released every nine years, so I've been trailing along behind them.
I thought it was easily the best movie I've seen this year. The craft is so impressive. The acting between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy is as natural as it is entertaining. Richard Linklater, a criminally underrated director, shoots it all beautifully, in the kind of understated style that rarely wins awards but makes for a lovely experience. The setting is the perfect next step for the series. And I loved the dinner scene, where new voices integrated with Celine and Jesse's so well. Getting conversation right is very hard in the movies, and that's always been the great strengths of these films.
More than anything, I loved the movie's take on love and relationships: harsh, but romantic, but realistic, but tender, but conflicted, but sentimental, but pessimistic, but hopeful. It's a beautiful portrayal of deep feelings and real love that never descends into either a false vision of happily-ever-after or a pinched one of cynicism and hopelessness.
The fight is hard to watch. It's also incredibly real, a really compelling and convincing portrayal of two people who know each other very well and know just how to wound each other. That knowledge stems from how deeply intimate they are, and how interested they have been in exploring each other in true depth. They argue like real people: they alternate between perfectly principled and fair points and self-serving bullshit... and don't know, themselves, which is which. They jockey to take the high road against one another. And they argue in a way that shows how the political and the personal can't ever be adequately separated to our liking. Celine has a lot of critiques that stem from her feminism. Some of them are entirely fair. Some of them are self-justifying nonsense. What makes the film brave is its refusal to make her either a long-suffering feminist saint or someone cynically using feminism to advance her personal causes. Instead, she someone with righteous beliefs that mingle with all of the personal stuff that we all carry who can't always sort them out. Jesse is sometimes full of shit, but he's also sometimes perfectly right. And this will piss some people off, but I just think this is true of human life: we very rarely experience black-and-white political conflict when interacting with the people we love. I read some people claiming that this movie is just about Jesse's sexism, or his indifference to sexism, and Celine's having to suffer through it. That's just a profound misreading of what's here. Instead it's a human portrayal of the fact that social justice is not a march from a clearly-defined right to a clearly-defined wrong where each issue can be understood in deracinated politics but rather a constant negotiation between contexts, personalities, convictions, and disagreements.
It's also important that this third film pays a check that was written in the second. I quite liked the second movie, but something was bothering me the whole time: what about Jesse's wife and kid? How can he just be forgetting about them like this? The central conflict in the third movie is precisely about those questions. It makes me appreciate the second movie more: in that movie, where the theme of having less time is reinforced over and over again, Celine and Jesse's time together is portrayed as an escape, as stolen moments. In the third movie, we see all the ways in which reality has rushed back in.
The movie ends, as they all do, ambiguously. It may sound odd about a movie that portrays a really horrifically ugly argument that might lead to the end of a relationship, but this film helped me feel better about romantic love and life-long partnership. Perpetually, magazines and publishers release arguments that love is dead, or was always a lie, or that long-term relationships are contrary to human nature, or whatever. I have come to think that these arguments are exactly as immature and juvenile as the fairy-tale vision of love where two people meet and immediately fall in love and live happily ever after. I have had a life filled with both happiness and tragedy and there is no question in my mind that the portrayal of human life or human relationships as some hopelessly bleak and maudlin journey reveals a teenaged sensibility, a grasping and fussy pessimism that speaks of a refusal to confront life as petty indignities and great victories and terrible tragedies and little moments of grace all stacked on top of each other in nothing resembling a narrative or a plan.
Love is hard but it's probably worth it and anyway, what else? We have this idea that either you have a relationship with The One or you're settling, and that the romantic ideal is to pursue the former and not the latter. But as I get older I more and more think that the real beauty comes precisely from the endless negotiation between two flawed people who aren't perfect for each other or for anyone else but who are willing to work to find a way to live together in order to enjoy the good each has to offer. It's not "romantic life vs. settling." It's getting to good enough with another person out of the conviction that there is nothing else and nothing better. And sometimes it doesn't work. I believe in Celine and Jesse together, and I love this movie for showing two people who both can't get along and are meant for each other.
Then I got a job at a middle school.
Every wall, festooned with posters: if you believe, you can achieve. Never give up on your dreams. The key to success is effort. Dozens of variations on the same theme: you can get what you want if you want it badly enough, if you don't quit. And I just thought, god, how cruel. What a wonderful mechanism for creating a culture of self-hating, unhappy people. And as has happened so many other times, I had to think about my personal judgments, and let them dissolve. I can't and don't blame anyone for holding on too long.
Sometimes people ask me if I'm anti dreams or anti trying, if I don't think that it's good for people to strive. Of course I think people should want things and of course I think they should work for them. But I think that they should frequently ask themselves if it's working, that they should ask themselves if holding on is doing more harm than good, that they should understand that in every
avenue of human achievement success depends on factors other than dedication and work, and I think that they should forgive themselves if it hasn't happened.
*****
What to Do When Someone Hates You on The Internet
Step one: Close laptop.
Step two: Go outside.
Step three: Look at the people out on the street.
Step four: Realize that not one of them has ever heard of you, heard of the person who hates you, or could possibly care.
Step five: Imagine that person out on the street, with you. Imagine them free from the power of their blog or their magazine or whatever, away from sympathetic commenters and connected friends, free from the distorting power of text-based communication, in all of their limited flawed fleshy humanity, with beating human beating heart, and feel better about them and about you.
*****
I thought it was easily the best movie I've seen this year. The craft is so impressive. The acting between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy is as natural as it is entertaining. Richard Linklater, a criminally underrated director, shoots it all beautifully, in the kind of understated style that rarely wins awards but makes for a lovely experience. The setting is the perfect next step for the series. And I loved the dinner scene, where new voices integrated with Celine and Jesse's so well. Getting conversation right is very hard in the movies, and that's always been the great strengths of these films.
More than anything, I loved the movie's take on love and relationships: harsh, but romantic, but realistic, but tender, but conflicted, but sentimental, but pessimistic, but hopeful. It's a beautiful portrayal of deep feelings and real love that never descends into either a false vision of happily-ever-after or a pinched one of cynicism and hopelessness.
The fight is hard to watch. It's also incredibly real, a really compelling and convincing portrayal of two people who know each other very well and know just how to wound each other. That knowledge stems from how deeply intimate they are, and how interested they have been in exploring each other in true depth. They argue like real people: they alternate between perfectly principled and fair points and self-serving bullshit... and don't know, themselves, which is which. They jockey to take the high road against one another. And they argue in a way that shows how the political and the personal can't ever be adequately separated to our liking. Celine has a lot of critiques that stem from her feminism. Some of them are entirely fair. Some of them are self-justifying nonsense. What makes the film brave is its refusal to make her either a long-suffering feminist saint or someone cynically using feminism to advance her personal causes. Instead, she someone with righteous beliefs that mingle with all of the personal stuff that we all carry who can't always sort them out. Jesse is sometimes full of shit, but he's also sometimes perfectly right. And this will piss some people off, but I just think this is true of human life: we very rarely experience black-and-white political conflict when interacting with the people we love. I read some people claiming that this movie is just about Jesse's sexism, or his indifference to sexism, and Celine's having to suffer through it. That's just a profound misreading of what's here. Instead it's a human portrayal of the fact that social justice is not a march from a clearly-defined right to a clearly-defined wrong where each issue can be understood in deracinated politics but rather a constant negotiation between contexts, personalities, convictions, and disagreements.
It's also important that this third film pays a check that was written in the second. I quite liked the second movie, but something was bothering me the whole time: what about Jesse's wife and kid? How can he just be forgetting about them like this? The central conflict in the third movie is precisely about those questions. It makes me appreciate the second movie more: in that movie, where the theme of having less time is reinforced over and over again, Celine and Jesse's time together is portrayed as an escape, as stolen moments. In the third movie, we see all the ways in which reality has rushed back in.
The movie ends, as they all do, ambiguously. It may sound odd about a movie that portrays a really horrifically ugly argument that might lead to the end of a relationship, but this film helped me feel better about romantic love and life-long partnership. Perpetually, magazines and publishers release arguments that love is dead, or was always a lie, or that long-term relationships are contrary to human nature, or whatever. I have come to think that these arguments are exactly as immature and juvenile as the fairy-tale vision of love where two people meet and immediately fall in love and live happily ever after. I have had a life filled with both happiness and tragedy and there is no question in my mind that the portrayal of human life or human relationships as some hopelessly bleak and maudlin journey reveals a teenaged sensibility, a grasping and fussy pessimism that speaks of a refusal to confront life as petty indignities and great victories and terrible tragedies and little moments of grace all stacked on top of each other in nothing resembling a narrative or a plan.
Love is hard but it's probably worth it and anyway, what else? We have this idea that either you have a relationship with The One or you're settling, and that the romantic ideal is to pursue the former and not the latter. But as I get older I more and more think that the real beauty comes precisely from the endless negotiation between two flawed people who aren't perfect for each other or for anyone else but who are willing to work to find a way to live together in order to enjoy the good each has to offer. It's not "romantic life vs. settling." It's getting to good enough with another person out of the conviction that there is nothing else and nothing better. And sometimes it doesn't work. I believe in Celine and Jesse together, and I love this movie for showing two people who both can't get along and are meant for each other.
*****
Write it so that it's what you'd want to read. Don't ever try to write it to please anybody else. That's the only advice I've got for you.
*****
This is the kind of story I should know, by now, not to tell here.
So spring means babies, and for me it has meant baby birds. I live on the second floor of a beautiful old house. Weeks back, a bird started to build a nest in one of the eaves. I was worried even then; there was just a few lonely inches, on that 2x2, such a precarious spot. But she built dutifully. Before I knew it, there was sweet chirping.
I had walked to the corner store for beer. (Bud Light Lime. Forgive me.) On the way home, I saw some sort of commotion in the nest, and the inevitable: a baby fell from the nest. I walked over with my heart in my throat. I glanced down and saw just briefly a wriggling little body, covered in feathers like hairs, moving slowly the way a newborn infant moves its arm, like through water. So I did what came naturally: I ran. I'm not very proud of it. I just didn't want to see.
The next day, to my great surprise, I discovered the baby bird still alive. He was chirping like mad. Out of my guilt I had spent the night before Googling about what one does in this kind of situation. The internet discouraged trying to take him in and feed him and raise him myself; I was told he would need to eat constantly and that I couldn't teach him to fly. I don't own a car and there weren't any wildlife rehabilitation places I could get to. But they did say that I could try to put him high up, where his mother could see him and feed him. I couldn't reach the eave, but there's a small evergreen right underneath it, against the house. The chick was moving around a lot. I got some paper towel and wrapped it around him and put him up in the branches. He kind of sat there for a minute, and then took a hop into the depths of the tree. I stared for a minute and went inside.
The next morning, I took the dog out. The chick was still alive, and no longer in the tree. I saw his mother fly down and feed him. But he kept chasing after her when she would fly, trying to follow behind her on the ground. She flew across the street and he hopped after her (he could cover a lot of ground surprisingly fast) but when he chased after her into the street he couldn't get back up over the curb. It was a really sad sight, and there were cars all around. I was surprised and happy he was still alive but it seemed like life was conspiring for me to watch him die. So I grabbed more paper towels and chased after him. I was so scared to pick him up because his little body was so fragile that I ended up chasing him under my neighbors car. He hopped up on one of the tires and it took me forever to get him out and my neighbor thought I was fucking with his car. But I got him.
The paper towel was wrapped around him and through it I could feel his little bones like eggshells. He was so mad, squawking at me like crazy. This time I made a little nest out of coffee filters and put him securely in the tree. After I stuck him in there, he didn't move or make a sound for a moment, and I thought, oh shit, I killed him, I must have crushed his little bones in my hand. But I watched for awhile and I saw him breathing. He just sort of heaved some breaths. He seemed utterly exhausted, just spent. So I waited for a minute and went back in the house. That was the last I saw of him. I'm sure he died. But I didn't see it, and if I'm being 100% honest I guess not seeing had become the point.
I stopped hearing a lot of chirping from the nest. I feared the worst. A big chunk of it fell out a couple days later, but I didn't see anymore chicks. All I really wanted was for one of them to make it. I began to see dead chicks all over town in the next week, since I was by now looking for them when I was walking around, but then I also became more aware of adult birds.
Well: one of them made it.
I was coming home from school and I saw this little fledgling chilling on the top of the porch. He was very noisy. Now, if this isn't all too perfect for you (I swear it's true), Mama bird was giving him flying lessons. She would fly from the porch to the top of this tree and he would very unevenly fly out there. It was kind of scary how far he would dip down in the air before he would pop up, little wings beating like mad, but he always made it. Then up to the eave where the nest had been. Then back, following the mother, every time. He hung around the house for a long time. He'd be sitting on the eave or the roof or on top of the porch chirping. I was a little nervous because I didn't see the mama but he looked plump and happy and eventually I saw him fly on his own. I threw a hot dog bun on the porch for him once. I haven't seen him the last few days. I think he was finally ready to really head out on his own.
I named him Little Dude.
I had walked to the corner store for beer. (Bud Light Lime. Forgive me.) On the way home, I saw some sort of commotion in the nest, and the inevitable: a baby fell from the nest. I walked over with my heart in my throat. I glanced down and saw just briefly a wriggling little body, covered in feathers like hairs, moving slowly the way a newborn infant moves its arm, like through water. So I did what came naturally: I ran. I'm not very proud of it. I just didn't want to see.
The next day, to my great surprise, I discovered the baby bird still alive. He was chirping like mad. Out of my guilt I had spent the night before Googling about what one does in this kind of situation. The internet discouraged trying to take him in and feed him and raise him myself; I was told he would need to eat constantly and that I couldn't teach him to fly. I don't own a car and there weren't any wildlife rehabilitation places I could get to. But they did say that I could try to put him high up, where his mother could see him and feed him. I couldn't reach the eave, but there's a small evergreen right underneath it, against the house. The chick was moving around a lot. I got some paper towel and wrapped it around him and put him up in the branches. He kind of sat there for a minute, and then took a hop into the depths of the tree. I stared for a minute and went inside.
The next morning, I took the dog out. The chick was still alive, and no longer in the tree. I saw his mother fly down and feed him. But he kept chasing after her when she would fly, trying to follow behind her on the ground. She flew across the street and he hopped after her (he could cover a lot of ground surprisingly fast) but when he chased after her into the street he couldn't get back up over the curb. It was a really sad sight, and there were cars all around. I was surprised and happy he was still alive but it seemed like life was conspiring for me to watch him die. So I grabbed more paper towels and chased after him. I was so scared to pick him up because his little body was so fragile that I ended up chasing him under my neighbors car. He hopped up on one of the tires and it took me forever to get him out and my neighbor thought I was fucking with his car. But I got him.
The paper towel was wrapped around him and through it I could feel his little bones like eggshells. He was so mad, squawking at me like crazy. This time I made a little nest out of coffee filters and put him securely in the tree. After I stuck him in there, he didn't move or make a sound for a moment, and I thought, oh shit, I killed him, I must have crushed his little bones in my hand. But I watched for awhile and I saw him breathing. He just sort of heaved some breaths. He seemed utterly exhausted, just spent. So I waited for a minute and went back in the house. That was the last I saw of him. I'm sure he died. But I didn't see it, and if I'm being 100% honest I guess not seeing had become the point.
I stopped hearing a lot of chirping from the nest. I feared the worst. A big chunk of it fell out a couple days later, but I didn't see anymore chicks. All I really wanted was for one of them to make it. I began to see dead chicks all over town in the next week, since I was by now looking for them when I was walking around, but then I also became more aware of adult birds.
Well: one of them made it.
I was coming home from school and I saw this little fledgling chilling on the top of the porch. He was very noisy. Now, if this isn't all too perfect for you (I swear it's true), Mama bird was giving him flying lessons. She would fly from the porch to the top of this tree and he would very unevenly fly out there. It was kind of scary how far he would dip down in the air before he would pop up, little wings beating like mad, but he always made it. Then up to the eave where the nest had been. Then back, following the mother, every time. He hung around the house for a long time. He'd be sitting on the eave or the roof or on top of the porch chirping. I was a little nervous because I didn't see the mama but he looked plump and happy and eventually I saw him fly on his own. I threw a hot dog bun on the porch for him once. I haven't seen him the last few days. I think he was finally ready to really head out on his own.
I named him Little Dude.
*****
You find people who believe that to make good art, one must have experienced tragedy. I don't believe that's true. It's too neat, too clean, too obvious. But if it's true, don't stress about it. Don't worry about getting in touch with tragedy. Tragedy is going to get in touch with you.
*****
To write a post about getting to good enough is something of a cheat. Because to my surprise, the last few years of my life have been better than good enough. I can tell you without exaggeration that I have been happier the last several years than I ever thought I would be. I am not, generally, someone who expects happiness, given the reality of the world we live in, the ubiquity of tragedy and the profound ambivalence at the heart of the human project. Yet here I have been: more fulfilled and content on a day-to-day basis than I would have thought possible.
It's a funny thing, trying to square your own happiness with a philosophical ambiguity towards human life as a global phenomenon. But I guess that's life's way of telling you to spend more time experiencing and less thinking about experience. I wish I could tell you that there was some grand strategy I employed to get here, but it's just been the process of getting out of my own head and recognizing all the reasons I have to feel happy and fortunate. I can't tell you how much I appreciate my day-to-day existence. I'm surrounded by brilliant people, I have the material things that I need, I drink and eat out with friends often, I get to sleep in a lot, and best of all, I get to teach. When I think about how much contentment I enjoy in my life, I reflect on what privilege really means.
Of course, such things can change, and life has conditioned me to be prepared for the other shoe to drop. But if there's one thing that I feel confident in about myself, it's my capacity to survive, and if my lovely existence now is transitory, I know that I can face what comes next with the confidence that I have earned the ability and the right to enjoy my life. There was a time when I wouldn't allow myself to enjoy good times; now I trust myself to find enjoyment and fulfillment even when things are bad. I guess I just grew up.
*****
Now: you might tell me that I didn't quite pull off telling the true story of the two chicks, and I'd agree. A little too cloying, a little too sentimental. I would not offer it if I wasn't trying to explain something. It may be the case that a story about trying to save a little baby bird just can't be expressed without falling into the maudlin or the overly dramatic. It's much more likely that I can't express it, that such a story exceeds my talents as a writer. Don't get me wrong, I'm great. I got chops. But I don't have that kind of chops. The reality is that, for many of us, with our limited abilities, the most emotional aspects of our lives are going to be the hardest to express. That's the bittersweet part. The great part, though, is negotiating that. It's in the process of self-discovery as a writer where you see if your technique is equal to your material, where you find out if you have the chops to tell the story you want to tell. The answer is frequently no, and that's frustrating, but finding out can be great. And you do get better. It's like exercising. You do your reps and you watch yourself improving, inch by inch.
Which does not mean that you get as good as you want to get. You can work on your jump shot for hours and you will get better, but that doesn't mean you get to start for the Knicks. Talent is not fair. There is no deserves. And you don't get what you want in life.
But, look, I told the story. It's the only way I have to work out the things that are in my head. And that's ultimately the motivation: stuff happens, in your life or in your imagination, and you get to write about it. That has to be the motivation for most of us, because most of us aren't going to be making money doing this. That's just the percentages. I never said not to write. I could never say any such thing. I just said that you have to practice self-defense, that you shouldn't tie your heart too tightly around something that might not happen, and that you've got to forgive yourself if it doesn't. Then, if you make it, it's all a celebration anyhow.
I may not tell the story of Little Dude and his sibling all that well, but I have to tell it, and at this point in my life the sentiment and the imprecision have to be forgiven. Because the reality is the whole thing made me incredibly emotional, and when I thought about writing it, I knew that it was exactly those emotions that people could make fun of. And I even get that, I understand it. But at this point there is no turning it off. You do learn about yourself. You learn about what little neuroses you can slowly put away and which you can't. I am fine with the way I look, until I look at myself the wrong way, I like my own voice, until I hear it, I can socialize with anyone, until I see them seeing me. Those things get a little bit better but the slightest cracks, and I'm back to where I was. That's okay. The truth is that at 32 I am no more able to control the intensity of the emotions that I experience when I watch a baby bird fall out of the nest than I would have been when I was 17, and that I will likely live the rest of my days choked by emotions I have no capacity to express. So I can live like that honestly or I can live dishonestly out of fear of displeasing other people.
I just want to give up a little anger every day. And I want to figure out the things that I need to be harder on myself about and the things that I need to forgive myself for, and I want to stay passionate but to forgive others for everything, and I want to be more fully myself every day. So let's celebrate good enough, and let's get free, and long live Little Dude.
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