Held the basketball tonight,
let it drop and bounce almost back to my hands,
then cradled it in one, balanced it with the other,
looked, breathed, and let it fly.
I knew it would go in,
that it wouldn't even touch the rim,
and I could hear the snap of the net
before it left my fingers.
Such was this day for me,
that chances and uncertainties were within my control
and life was a simple game,
a shot I simply could not miss.
I read a fair amount of news on the web. I'm into the political coverage as well as most other things that are happening out there. In the past I have used CNN.com for a lot of that reading because they were quick to get things online, usually accurate, and easy to use. No more. This is a quick post about why I have dropped CNN from daily use and deleted their bookmark in my browser.
CNN has become the tawdry, gossip-mongering, garbage tabloid of the web. When important events are occuring around the world, CNN leads with stories of, at best, local interest, especially sensational stories about abducted children or white women. These are the stuff that, I suppose, have made horrible shows like Nancy Grace popular, but they are not news and not worthy of being read.
Were it a once in a while case of going for the easy, cheesy, classless story, I might let it slide and that's what I tried to do for weeks, months even. But it's too much. The site is a slime hole.
In comparison, the New York Times and National Public Radio sites have remained newsworthy and worth my attention. I use them as my primary sites for news now and won't bother with CNN. I recommend that everyone else do the same. There are important events happening around our world and we should be informed and involved with them. None of them will be on Nancy Grace's show tonight and few if any will be the lead on CNN's web site.
Goodbye CNN. Good riddance.
We were at the Pizza Hut with some of her friends,
this was in college, a long time ago, but I remember.
People were talking and she said something. I disagreed.
I said so. She disagreed right back at me. Without thinking,
without thinking about her, I said, "shut up," and kept going.
She did. She shut up, but I didn't notice that she went quiet.
I went on with my dinner, the conversation, and my years
of self-obsession. I understand only now what she did:
she stopped hearing the conversations, heard only
the two words I said so off-handedly and unaware.
That night she told me how much it had hurt her,
to hear me say that, to speak that way to her in front of friends.
I tried to brush it off, I tried to say it was nothing.
But she said that it was not, she said it was everything,
and she made me hear the words and feel the meanings.
I knew then that she was strong, that I was weaker,
and I knew that I had to listen to her if I wanted to be
the man that I always imagined I could be,
the man I'm still imagining, a shadow who keeps
eluding me, twelve steps ahead, ducking down corners,
when I keep making so many wrong turns
all the while hearing her voice and knowing
that if I just followed, if I could just listen...
I'm working against my nature
the habits of my lifetime
to describe without judgment
the men in my imagination
who have sat in the toilet stall
throughout this year.
I've read what the marks left
by them on the stall:
A carved swastika, the word porn,
something about bitches,
an exchange about the sizes
of penises and excrement.
I imagine these men,
they are young enough,
though no longer children,
and their hands are dirty.
Their parents are large,
their homes are cold.
I expect their faces to smirk
as they write these things,
but they are concentrating,
carefully thinking, hoping
that what they write
will be the final words.
And now I smile.
For here we all are,
them with markers
writing on the wall,
me at this keyboard,
all of us hoping
to say the words
that will carry us forward
in the memory of this world
which seems so very large.
We all sit with our pants down
wondering how to be heard.
(on the occasion of receiving 179 spam messages in one day)
I am a lucky man and a rich one too
if what I have been told about friends
being the true sign of wealth in this world,
for I receive hundreds of emails each week
(sometimes thousands, though I hate to brag)
from friends offering me things that I need.
They write to me by screen-name and advise me
as to how I might elongate my penis and
keep it harder much, much, much longer;
they tell me how to meet hot young (or old) women
and how to please these woman when I get them home.
All of this without my having even asked.
Thank you old widow in Tampa, Florida,
and you lost soul in Topeka. Thank you for
letting this mail be channeled through your computer
and on to mine where I count each one a blessing,
a longing for friendship, camaraderie, or even love;
that and the prospect of some harder, longer loving
delivered to my mailbox hundreds at a time.
I know that I should guard as treasure
every day of each year, every moment
of each day and that there is no telling
how many more days I will be allotted, but
it's raining again and the sky is filled
with grey misery and empty of hope,
the walls are damp, the basement floor
is wet and slick. I know that I should
be grateful, but my daughters have
swimming lessons scheduled in this cold
and the sunshine of my wife's happiness
is completely obscured. And I am tired
and staring at a squirrel standing on
the stump of a branch I cut last year
as it chews on something under the canopy
of leaves and ignorance that keep out
this weather. I wonder how it all gets to me
soaks into me through the roof and walls
and my professed faith in this world,
all of which ought to keep me warm and dry.
At Starbucks I received a cup of coffee
on which had been printed the words
"heaven is so overrated" along with some more.
I agreed as I took that first sip.
There's the old line about how
anyone interesting was unlikely to get in
and that hell would be more of a party.
I picture nuns and priests up there.
My idea of heaven includes this breeze
that blue sky and the cloud there
grey on the bottom, frothy white on top.
I will need coffee there as well.
And there will have to be something missing
otherwise what will we wish for and
what will we strive toward?
I think we all need something to wait for.
Cars are nice too, especially with the window down
and the radio playing some song by a sinner
while a crazy dog chases the hubcaps.
I'm beginning to see something.
Heaven will have to be just about like this place
this city in which I live, with all of these people
around me and the thrill of what's next.
I wouldn't mind there being a bit more sun.
But otherwise, heaven should be just about like this
and every moment should be one in which I see
that heaven isn't anything far away.
It's inside this cup of absolutely delicious coffee.
I'll drink it down.
This morning, on the way to work, I drove past
a house in which my wife and I once lived. Long ago
It belonged to Matilda Joslyn Gage, a suffragette,
and it is now an historical site. A sign in the lawn reads
Archaeological dig 8-4 today, all are welcome
and I considered stopping to dig.
A dozen college kids were sifting the dirt, digging
with trowels, coming to understand the nature
of the place. I had the feeling that had I stopped
and said, I lived here, this place was once mine,
they would hold up artifacts and ask me to explain
the life that I have led.
The things would all be foreign to me now,
though their shapes would feel familiar and each would bear
my fingerprints. I would claim ignorance until one of them
gently troweled at the side of my head, flaking away
the accumulated dirt of the years gone by and another
brushed aside the dust and revealed me.
They would see the plans I had set aside
in favor of this reality to which I have succumbed.
They would read my dreams and nightmares in the relics.
Then, their professor would stand across from me and call them.
Each one would turn to look at her, turn away from me,
and I would fade from there and
reappear in the car, on the way to work, passing
the house and the dig, my mysteries still intact,
the dirt that buries me undisturbed. They would search again
not for me but for that woman from so long ago,
and only I would remain at this other site, gently sifting and digging
toward who I'm supposed to be.
