Category Archives: Welt

Jennifer Michael Hecht.

I listened to Jennifer Michael Hecht today (on WNYC.org (you’ll need the Real player to listen)) speak about life, love, and the universe and I was immediately taken. Her new book, The Happiness Myth, appears to fully attempt to debunk the tropes upon which we base most of our lives in the West. On the show, she essentially collapsed the difference between opium and Prozac, explaining that these two drugs are different sides of the same coin. Prozac, however, allows us to drive our cars and be productive citizens while being happy. She also talked about the relatonship between faith and certainty, doubt and discovery, and lefty culture.
I enjoyed listening to her: her New Yorkish accent, her overeducated brand of commentary, her youngish sense of possibility (and within that, a sharp capacity for critique and reason), and her aptitude for telling it straight. Ms. Hecht seems like someone I should have known when I lived in Brooklyn; she could have saved me from many of my consumerist and theoretical yearnings. I’ll read her book instead. Books are the last resort of the rascal.

Pesach, First.

I spent almost two hours today shopping for Passover foods. First, I went to Sobey’s, which being located in a relatively Jewish neighborhood here, and they had some things I needed—overly expensive macaroons, matzo, matzo ball mix. Then it was on to Safeway, which had a nicer display of Passover fare. And then I found some dill, horseradish, and parsley, all key ingredients for a dinner. Granted, I was shopping late, but the selection wasn’t there and it was hard to find all of traditional Pesach foods I really wanted. I left the supermarkets feeling oddly down, as if my new home couldn’t sustain me Jewishly. This city isn’t Brooklyn.
Then I talked with my friend, M.B., who kindly reminded me that there’s only one Brooklyn and that the vast majority of people who celebrate Passover scrape it all together and just celebrate the holiday, wherever and however. And then he said something that I just only figured out, “The whole holiday is about making it work,” or something like that, and he’s right, of course. This was a huge gift to me.
Passover is about the celebration of human freedom, the liberation of the spirit, and the beauty of the bountiful that surrounds us. It’s a holiday about the redemption of Jews from slavery and, amazingly, it’s suffused with the sadness of G-d’s reign of terror upon the Jews’ masters.
I’m sorry I took for granted the incredible bounty surrounding me, here, in Western Canada. An embarassment, of riches.
One of the final passages of the Haggadah, the book read during Passover, is this: “On this Seder night, when we pray for freedom, we invoke the memory of the beloved Elijah. May his spirit enter our home at this hour, and every home, bringing a message of hope for the future, faith in the goodness of man, and the assurance that freedom will come to all.”

Doerr Cries.

I was really struck when my friend, R.C., told me about John Doerr’s public, tearful breakdown at the TED conference, where perhaps some of the smartest and most privileged individuals gather each year to talk about the future.
Doerr has an amazing biography, but here it is in a nutshell, taken from a comment on the New York Times: “John Doerr has an undergraduate degree in engineering and a M.B.A. from Harvard. Over the course of his career, he has earned several engineering patents, and has helped to fund, among others, Compaq, Netscape, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, Amazon, and Google.”
Anyway, here’s what happened, according to the same Times piece: “Much is being made of venture capitalist John Doerr breaking down into tears as he talked about global warming on Thursday during the TED conference in Monterey, Calif. But what may be more disturbing is what he actually said: ‘I’m scared. I don’t think we’re going to make it.'” He left the stage, weeping, and then hugged his teenage daughter.
Here is a man who, as a paid optimist focused on building wealth and opportunity and innovation, clearly sees something coming down the pike that is not all that good. I take his cry as not so much a plea, which is how some in the media are spinning it. Rather, I take his cry for what it is—a clear sign of despair about the future, delivered directly to his peers.

4-0.

I turned forty yesterday.
Everyone I know has an opinion about turning 40, which seems to be a critical year in the life of a modern human being. In their responsivness to the issue of turning 40, there seem to be three main groups of people:

  1. Those who say “It’s just a number.”
  2. Those who say “You look great for your age.”
  3. Those who say “It’s better than the alternative.”

Here’s the thing: they’re all right. And I’m feeling alright.
My wife treated me to a wonderfully relaxing, enjoyable and thoroughly memorable weekend. No surprise parties, no question-and-answer periods, no pressures. Just the joy of knowing that I was loved and that I’m an extremely fortunate individual. I counted blessings all weekend. Here are forty of the more publishable ones:

  1. Being alive.
  2. Being known.
  3. Being healthy.
  4. Being wealthy.
  5. Being wise.
  6. Being a father.
  7. Being a husband.
  8. Being self-employed.
  9. Being awake.
  10. Being Jewish.
  11. Being wordly.
  12. Being on earth.
  13. Being honest.
  14. Being trustworthy.
  15. Being sane.
  16. Being of medium build.
  17. Being technical.
  18. Being productive.
  19. Being in Canada.
  20. Being able to read.
  21. Being able to write.
  22. Being able to think.
  23. Being able to create.
  24. Being able to own.
  25. Being able to fight.
  26. Being able to form.
  27. Being able to fantasize.
  28. Being able to run.
  29. Being able to rest.
  30. Being able to rat.
  31. Being able to spent.
  32. Being able to save.
  33. Being able to decide.
  34. Being able to be wrong.
  35. Being able to resist.
  36. Being able to recognize.
  37. Being able to realize.
  38. Being able to blog.
  39. Being able to bleed.
  40. Being able to ride.

Some Times.

Parenthood is often romanticized into something its not; the media has learned to do this to sell its books and magazines and toys and shows and products generally. Most of parenthood is holding down the fort, however; it’s babysitting, keeping things in order, ensuring peace among family members, watching that no one gets hurt, allowing oneself to have emotions, carting someone here or there or back, delivering or buying procurements, crafting schedules, planning educational schedules and playdates.
Tonight, I came home from a meeting and got to lie in bed with my daughter as she russeled herself to sleep. For about five eternal minutes, I looked into her eyes, quietly, and saw all of her future, her past, her present and her possibility. I saw in her eyes the love I felt for my parents at her age and the sweet, youthful gaze of assurance and anxiety, twirling around itself in endless emotion. She would turn and then I’d think about her future partner, who I desparately hope will love her as much as I. And then she’d turn again, pulling the covers over her a little, the sweet smell of her hair cascading over to me, and I’d feel honored to be in her presence, like some schoolboy in the throes of singular love. And then I’d watch her eyes close and I felt the universe shorten, the light dim, and my affection flow, sadly, awkwardly and randomly. It was hard to hold on to a singular feeling except I knew that this what people call love. My daughter fell asleep, restlessly at first then with some breathing, then turning away from me and curling into a ball and then calm and utter quiet and I was alone. All by myself, with her. I cry.
And here’s the rub: The magazines are right.

When It's Crazy.

As my child gets, ever so slightly, older and wiser (not necessarily for the better), the demands of language become more pronounced. About four or five months ago, she started using the word “crazy” to describe certain things that don’t quite make sense or aren’t right or are, in general, outside the normal scope of daily affairs. For instance, she might say that “that guy looks crazy” because he’s wearing a large red hat. I know she got this from me and a few other select sources, because I would say something similar, probably ironically.
It’s the other sources that I wonder about. Television and other communication mechanisms use the words “crazy,” “insane,” “ridiculous,” “loony,” “nuts” to describe things that don’t make sense and “nut job,” “nut ball,” “loony tune,” “dumby,” “dumb-head,” “dumb-ass,” “stoopid,” “crazy ass,” “shit head,” “shit for brains,” “lunatic,” “mad hatter,” “crackpot,” “crazy,” “crackhead,” or “bonzo” to describe people that don’t make sense.
I wonder where all of this stems from. The Surrealists, who were essentially shoved under Magritte’s umbrella by popular culture, were highly attuned to questions of mental stability, insanity and its cousin, inanity. For the Surrealists, culture was a kind of submission to our dreams and mental disabilities, our nightmares and fears. I remember reading, many years ago, that Breton believed that our real lives are lived in our dreams; I believed him. It could be said that all good artistry is a recognition of the surreal, or the components of life that are not easily explained and it was really the Surrealists that brought this gift to us.
Going back to our need to call things “crazy,” I wonder if the increased use of the word and its synonyms has to do with the super-rationalized, hyper-realistic, and over-informed world we inhabit. Capitalism, in all of its glory, has taken those living in the West for a linear ride of structured living. From Ikea to Microsoft, the object is to partition and contain and enhance and support—not to combine, expand, destroy and deny, which is what crazy people do.

Five Minutes to Midnight (or The Weather).

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is now set at Five Minutes to Midnight. These guys, probably the smartest group of affiliated individuals in the world (unless you count the employees at Google), have determined that we’re now almost entirely screwed, completely and utterly screwed. Briefly, they lay out three horror stories, which, for some reason, only get very light coverage on the daily news, the Web, and on the tube. They are:

Nuclear: “Terrorists alter the long-accepted nuclear threat paradigm.”
Environmental: “The future looks even bleaker, as scientists continue to observe cascading effects on Earth’s complex ecosystems.”
Emerging Technologies: “The emergence of nanotechnology–manufacturing at the molecular or atomic level–presents similar concerns, especially if coupled with chemical and biological weapons, explosives, or missiles.”

The Bulletin site (which is quite a work of art in and of itself) goes into lots of nice detail.
Me, I don’t need no smarty-pants professorial types to tell me the world is wacked. I read the weather report. Today’s weather says this:

“WINTER STORM WATCH FOR SOUTHWEST MOUNTAINS / LOWER GILA REGION, SIERRA COUNTY LAKES REGION, TULAROSA BASIN / SOUTHERN DESERT, SOUTHERN SACRAMENTO MOUNTAINS, SOUTHWEST DESERT / BOOTHEEL, SOUTHWEST DESERT / MIMBRES BASIN, SOUTHERN DESERT, NM EL PASO COUNTY, HUDSPETH COUNTY, TX UNTIL THU JAN 18 2007 06:30 AM MST”
“COASTAL FLOOD WARNING FOR SOUTHERN BREVARD COUNTY, INDIAN RIVER COUNTY, ST. LUCIE COUNTY, MARTIN COUNTY, COASTAL VOLUSIA COUNTY, NORTHERN BREVARD COUNTY, FL UNTIL THU JAN 18 2007 04:00 PM EST”
A FREEZE WARNING MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE IMMINENT OR HIGHLY LIKELY. THESE CONDITIONS WILL KILL CROPS AND OTHER SENSITIVE VEGETATION.TO PREVENT FREEZING AND POSSIBLE BURSTING OF OUTDOOR WATER PIPES…PIPES SHOULD BE WRAPPED…DRAINED…OR
ALLOWED TO DRIP SLOWLY. THOSE THAT HAVE IN-GROUND SPRINKLER SYSTEMS SHOULD DRAIN THEIR SYSTEMS…OR COVER ANY ABOVE-GROUND PIPES TO PROTECT THEM FROM FREEZING.”

Playing to Lose.

It’s an unwritten rule of parenthood that, when you play games with your kids, you have to lose. It’s important for your sense of self-worth and, more importantly, for theirs, to lose. You have to lose because children have to win. They have to know that they can win, even against adults. Kids need to be able assess a situation, wiggle their way out of it, and come out ahead. Mostly, they love to win, even more than adults do.
I’ve learned the hard way that there are a few games that allow one to lose easily. Generally, this requires what I call “reverse cheating.” Reverse cheating means putting cards under your bum when the kid’s not looking or stacking cards in such a way that the kid gets the advantage or pretending to roll the die and always getting a “1” or checking off the wrong boxes. Here are a few games that are good for losing:

  • Clue Jr.
  • Concentration (card game based on remembering and matching cards)
  • Checkers
  • Candy Land
  • Chutes and Ladders

– Brought to you by the letter “C.”

Deleting People.

I’ve spent the past hour or so going through my address book in Microsoft Entourage. I’m preparing to send out my direct mail piece for the year for MANOVERBOARD and need to prepare the addresses for sending. It’s a depressing task, to say the very least.
I started with 1536 names in my address book. I’m now down to 908. Some of those were duplicates, others were lower-cased names that somehow got stuck in my address book over the past few years. Others were names I no longer recognize. I found the names of old girlfriends who had phone numbers but no email addresses – this was before the ubiquity of email. I found aunts and uncles and cousins with whom I haven’t spoken in many years.
Other entries were art galleries, in New York mostly; these were galleries to which I used to send slides when I was a painter. Ironically, every one of these gallery entries had no addresses attached to them; they’re perhaps ten years old.
Sadder still were the friends and family that had passed away. Some were very close, like my grandmother. I can’t delete her name and address and phone number from my address list. I just can’t. Others had passed and I kept their spouse or partner in the address book. It’s just a small way of remembering these people.
It also means that time has passed by, quickly still. These individuals lived and live and now they are just one small part of my attention; some more than others. The time goes and the entries go.