Chicago Triathlon

So last summer I completed the Chicago Triathlon, olympic distance.  Put in countless hours of training and preparation, entered (a bit) into the growing triathlon community, and loved everything about the race day.

I thought I'd blog about the whole experience, but then I came across this article in The Onion: 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/im-truly-sorry-for-this-but-youre-about-to-hear-al,28995/

That's how good The Onion is.  They'll call you on your pretentiousness before you can even get started.  And they're the one publication that can stop you cold before you write something.

Apparently I Only Post Links Now

But this article perfectly captures my experience of what it means to be an outsider living in Boston.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/04/29/130429taco_talk_packer

Yes, Thank You

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And thank you, thank you, thank you.

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/instead_of_a_war_on_teachers_how_about_one_on_poverty/

Gotta Say I Agree With All of This

Much appreciated if you read it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/

One Dollar and One Cent

Sometimes it's hard to do the right thing in a market economy, in this late stage of industrial capitalism that is the U.S.

But if we live in a capitalist society, we cast votes every day with our dollars.  So you try to make moral purchases.

The only problem is this:  buying ethically means it doesn't work.

If you buy all-natural, all-organic deodorant, it doesn't work.  It's the same as not wearing deodorant. 

I have this book called "Zen Cleaning" which claims you can clean your entire house by using only lemon juice, baking powder, vinegar, and salt.  And if you try to do that, you will have a dirty, filthy, stained house.  Because it doesn't work.  (You know what does work?  Some serious nasal cavity clearing bleach.  Oh my does it work).

The list goes on:  chemical-free soap won't get you clean.  Tom's of Maine toothpaste won't clean your teeth.  

Once year I finally found one article of clothing not made in a sweatshop--a black coat for the winter.  It frayed at the seams within days.

But most importantly I want to invest in justice.  I can't rail against polluters and exploiters and then have a mutual fund that invests in those companies.  As a shareholder, I would be those companies.

So you find funds that invest in green technology, in businesses with fair labor practices, in those trying to do the right thing.

And do you know what that means?  It means you make no money. 

My big fund is Winslow Sustainability Fund.  In 2012, it made me $1.01.  Let me say that again:  the return on this investment for the entire year of 2012 was one dollar and one cent.

It was pretty embarrassing to hand over the forms to my tax guy.  If I didn't know better, he may have shaken his head and said "hippies" under his breath.

"Farther Away"

"Farther Away" is the new collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen, author of "The Corrections" and "Freedom", darling of the literary world, and friend of David Foster Wallace.  DFW is the best essay writer ever (yes, I said it), and because I miss him so much I often find myself reading lesser writers who might vaguely fall into the same milieu:  George Saunders, Chuck Klosterman, and Franzen.

Of course everyone always falls short of DFW, but Franzen falls the least short, which means he's pretty good.  His commentary is sharp, but the real pleasure is when he gets on a descriptive roll, crystalizing something you always though but could never say the right way.  He did it for me with this description of the emptiness of the American suburbs:

"Building-size pieces of earth-moving equipment were scraping it all bare.  Reshaping the very contours of the land--creating these cute little fake dells and fake wrinkles for hideous houses to be sold to sentimentalists so enraged with the world they had to inform it, in writing, on a road sign, that they love their children.  Clouds of diesel exhaust, broken full-grown oak tries piled up like little sticks, birds whizzing around in a panic.  I could see the whole gray and lukewarm future.  No urban.  No rural.  The entire country just a wasteland of shittily built neither-nor."

New Names

When I ask someone their name, and they tell me, I never register it.  I forget to listen to their response, somehow assuming that just asking the question was enough.  And when I realize I hadn't paid attention, I ask them again.  But as soon as their vocal chords start vibrating to create the appropriate sound waves which flow through the air to be received by my own complex hearing system, I have stopped paying attention again.  One second later, the second time, I have no idea what their name is.

A.  I am a selfish, self-absorbed bastard.
B.  I have the attention span of a flea.
C.  I have the memory of a goldfish.

U.S.A.: Europe's 3rd World Country

As I type this hurricane Sandy is pounding the east coast.  I'm not too worried about it, but earlier today I noticed my Swiss roommate Christa was.  I asked her about what was making her nervous, and she said:  "The shoddy American infrastructure."

That's right Americans, richest country in the world, we have a crumbling (enough) infrastructure that it concerns Europeans who live here.  

I've realized that Christa talks about the U.S. the way I talk about the 3rd world.  I think Latin American and Africa have a kind of spirit and energy that the U.S. lacks.  She thinks the U.S. has a kind of spirit and energy that Switzerland lacks.  I've been taken aback by the disrepair of the infrastructure in the 3rd word.  She's taken aback by the disrepair of the infrastructure in the U.S.

I love living with her.  Mostly because she a fantastic human being, but also because it's interesting to hear a Western European's perspective on America.  

Here's another one:  she told me that if I was in my 19th year of teaching high school in Switzerland, I'd be earning over $150,000.  

Um, that'd be close to THREE TIMES as much as I'm making now.

It's tough living in this 3rd world country.

"Horseman, Pass By" by Larry McMurtry

I think I’m a big Larry McMurtry fan . . . something I’d never thought I’d say.  I’d always seen those covers of Lonesome Dove, with the ornate lettering and the rustic scenery, and figured it was some hack romantic western. 

Little did I know. 

On my wilderness trip in Montana last year one of my instructors said Lonesome Dove was his favorite book.  And since I had sort of a western spirit going that summer I decided pick it up—and within hours was amidst one of the most absorbing reading experiences of my life.

It reminded me of these Wallace Stevens lines:

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.

That kind of merging with a text happened to me only twice before:  with 1984 when I was 17 years old, and then with The Poisonwood Bible when I was 33.  And now I can add Lonesome Dove to the list.  I lived so deeply inside the pages that I found myself running around, trying to find someone who also read it so I could say things like:  “They hung Jake Spoon!  I can’t believe it!  They hung Jake Spoon!!”

Let's say you gave this challenge to any American author:  you have exactly two pages to develop a living, breathing, full-realized character.  Go.  I'd put my money on McMurtry.

So I've concluded McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy are the two best authors of the American west.  Unless there’s another author whose name starts with “Mc” that I can’t think of.

One more great quote that describes my Lonesome Dove reading experience, this time from Jonathan Franzen:

“Here is [a] description of [the] initial engagement with a novel:  ‘I feel a tug.  The chain has settled over the sprockets; there is the feel of meshing, then the forward glide.’”

McMurtry might have a better chance of doing that (for me) than anyone else.

So what about “Horseman, Pass By”? 

Well, it’s very minor McMurtry.  Not too much tugging and gliding.  No serious settling over the sprockets, no summer night becoming the book.  But still some good sentences.  Including this one, which may come haunt me when I’m 80 years old and still unmarried and without property:  

“’It don’t hurt to take a little look around,’ he said.  ‘Just don’t turn into an old loose horse like me.  You’re better off to stop somewhere, even if it ain’t no paradise.  I could have myself, many a time.  I had the chances any man has . . . I guess I was too particular for too long, what’s wrong with me.  I went all over this cow country, looking for the exact right place and the exact right people, so once I got stopped I wouldn’t have to be movin’ agin, like my old man always done.  But that’s going at it wrong.  I shoulda just set down an’ made it right wherever the hell I was.’”

Even in a minor McMurtry novel you get some great passages.  And that's more than enough, as Jonathan Franzen would say:

“Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society—to help solve our contemporary problems—seems to me a peculiarly American delusion.  To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them:  Isn’t this enough?  Isn’t it a lot?” 

Spanish with an Impediment

This evening I spoke Spanish to a woman.  It was really hard to understand her--for a moment I thought it was my rusty Spanish, but then it sounded like she just had a bad impediment.

Turns out she's Brazilian and was speaking Portuguese. 

I'm sure the hundreds of millions of people who speak Portuguese would be glad to hear that, to me, their language is just Spanish with a collective impediment.