Good reads

Always eager to expand my web presence, I recently gave in to the pressure of my friends and joined Goodreads. This is a website where you list the books you've read or are reading, and you rate things based on a five-star system, and you can peruse other people's reading lists and rank the books they've read and compare your impressions. I was pretty reluctant to join because the last thing I need is another website to maintain (Ol' Clarity causes enough stress when I see the same entry staring me in the face for days on end, as I watch whatever intelligence and humor I tried to create become stale and really uninteresting, even to me) but it seemed simple enough. I've been keeping a list of the books I read for fun since 2000, and it's one of the smartest things I did that year -- now I can really punctuate the seasons and what I was doing in life by the books I read and what I thought of them. I'm not trying to reproduce the list on Goodreads, but it is interesting to see what other people like to check out. My friends were right: it's not about you listing your own books for your benefit, it's about other people checking you out (literarily, that is).

In the first 72 hours I've been a member, I've been updating and checking my little profile incessantly, seeing what other people are doing and adding my own stars to the books we've mutually read. I need to chill out a bit with this, but for now it's pretty fun. Like the New Yorker festival -- a way to make the individual experience of reading something shared and communal, which is always great to find.

If you want to join goodreads and be my friend, let me know.

Marathon training update: week 4, day 6

Today was the first long run that actually felt long: nine whole miles. Until this point, the "long runs" have not been too far removed from pretty standard distances I might cover in an ambitious weekend. But nine miles -- nobody runs nine miles for fun. It's just too darn long. At nine miles, you're either taking a subway or staying home.

I had a good plan for the run: one full loop around Central Park, as well as two laps around the Reservoir. I made a conscious effort to go slow ("slow and steady" was my mantra), as my training programs instructs. The first several miles felt great: legs felt warm, easy breathing, heart was under control. When I got to the Reservoir, though, my body kind of wigged out. I had a weird time on the unpaved path, there were too many other people around, and it was unforgivingly hot. There was no nice breeze rippling over the water and cooling me off: it was just hot like hell, with many other people hustling beside me and behind me and ahead of me.

The final couple of miles, back on the smooth newly-laid asphalt, felt great. I finished pretty strong and ended up at exactly 9 minutes per mile, which I was very pleased with, considering: (1) I was trying to go slow, shooting for between 8:30 and 9:00, and (2) I had a couple walking breaks in the middle, around that stupid Reservoir, when I just sort of lost interest in running.

I am pleased with how today went. The long runs will be morphing into unpleasant runs as the weeks progress, but I feel good having nine under my belt, since anything over 6-7 gets me a little anxious. Two more notes from today: I passed this little old black lady twice, as she was lumbering up and down the great hill (I guess she had turned around at some point), and the second time, she called out to me, "I saw you on the way down, too! Whew!" And we both cracked up mid-stride. And finally, on the train back home, I looked like a contestant in a wet t-shirt contest because of the voluminous amount of sweat I produced and the gossamer-like cotton shirt I was wearing. Very little was left to the imagination, but I held my head up high, dammit, because I jut ran nine miles.

In sum, training is going well. I have a few weird aches and pains, and I am constantly tired and hungry, but morale is high. Only about 13 weeks left until my mission is fulfilled!

Get tested

Last night we learned that L is not pregnant, and, equally important, neither am I. For surprisingly uninteresting reasons, we ended up with a couple of home pregnancy tests in the apartment last night. Obviously, we had to try them out. And I came to the conclusion that a home pregnancy test is like a gun in a couple of ways.

First, if you have one around, you're going to use it. After L told me we had an extra one, I obviously dropped whatever I was doing to try it out. I was impressed with its light weight and comfortable grip. I decided it would be easier to use if I sat down, but I quickly began to worry about how much time you had to spend peeing on the stick to get an accurate sample. As a result, when I was finished I held the test at an awkward angle, lest a flood of unnecessary urine rush past the sample area, window panels, and out onto my hand. Fortunately this didn't happen, but there was a tense moment where the liquid (which somehow turned blue) seemed to meander through the whole thing, revealing both a control stripe and the results panel, which indicated that I am ... not pregnant. Damn. Kind of bittersweet.

The second way a home pregnancy test is like a gun is that practice makes you more comfortable using it. What happened last night, with me liberally peeing on a stick while yelling through the door to my wife, is like a trip to the firing range. I got to know the home pregnancy test, to understand it, to feel comfortable with it. So that when the real moment arrives, if and when we ever have occasion to use one -- like (God forbid) the day I need to shoot an assailant or a wild boar to protect myself and my loved ones -- I will be ready to go (and not freeze up or get confused, ending up peeing on my assailant, or throwing a home pregnancy test at the boar).

Here's to a great, non-pregnant weekend -- sushi and beers for everybody.

Marathon training update: week 3, day 1

Today is a rest day, which means I don't have to exercise. I cling to these rest days like Leonardo DiCaprio, clutching that old piece of boat he held onto before he drowned in the water and old-lady Kate Winslet started throwing jewelry at him. You remember.

It's only been two solid weeks of my marathon training schedule (short runs Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, long run on Saturday, cross-training Sunday, and resting Monday and Friday) but I feel like it's going well. I have violently upended my natural clock, getting up early in the mornings and exercising before work. One potential problem is that I have not cut back on my regular exercise routine; instead I'm just adding more stuff. I'm realizing that this is not a sustainable course of action, though. You should see me in strength training, trying to lift weights as my legs shake violently underneath me. There is some sort of diminishing return happening, I think. In the next couple weeks I want to focus on running more, running a lot, and cutting back on the cross-training and lifting.

I ran a solid 10K on Saturday, yet I was a little discouraged - my breathing seemed a little raggedy, I had that weird loping gait like a marionette for the first couple of miles, and I had to go to the bathroom the entire length of the run. It was not ideal. I'm trying to run slow, as I'm supposed to on these longer weekend runs, but it's hard for me to run slow. When I first began running (7 years ago!) I honestly didn't realize that "jogging" means "don't sprint." I would run as fast as I could for as long as I could, then marvel at all the other normal joggers passing me by as I clutched my side and minced back home. A similar learning process needs to occur here -- I need to get a better sense of my timing (I can't not a run mile between 7:20-7:40, it seems) and let it slide, just a bit.

Overall, it's an exciting couple of weeks. Two weeks down, sixteen to go. I want to use this space to keep a record of my training, both to mark my progress and any obstacles that arise, and to keep myself accountable to this process by posting a public record. This is exciting! Hit the streets!

Abraham Lincoln: Believe the hype

A few days ago I finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's massive cinderblock of a book, "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." A biography of Lincoln, it also explores the lives of his main rivals for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, and then moves into a study of how Lincoln included these intelligent, ambitious men in his Cabinet, shrewdly managing their skills and egos to create a strong presidency fueled by intelligence, compassion, rivalry, and, ultimately, loyalty. I don't know if I've ever written a sentence with nine commas before, but Lincoln is worth it.


One of the remarkable things about this book for me was that it truly humanized Lincoln. He was no longer the marble deity in Washington, or the severe portrait on our currency; Goodwin portrayed him as a real man, who suffered loss in his life yet found strength through his own self-confidence and natural abilities. When he was young he would listen intently to his father telling stories to other adults, and then he would ponder these stories and figure out how to relay them to his young friends, and later enthrall them with his anecdotes and humor. This knack for language and narrative remained with him his entire life and prepared him to be an amazing orator, someone who would use analogies, simple language, and folksy humor to convey profound ideas about freedom, the Constitution, the importance of liberty.

He was truly a self-taught man, studying the Bible and learning Shakespeare to make up for the elite education he never received. He lost his mother, his sister, his first love. Yet from age 23 he knew he wanted to leave his mark on the world -- although he was ambitious, he was never corrupted by the lure of power. He spoke of his political enemies with respect, and was honored by his peers for his wisdom and patience. He did not act impulsively, or out of anger.

To me one of his most remarkable characteristics was his reliance on humor. The few bawdy jokes Goodwin reproduced in the book were slightly crass, slightly tasteless, and surprisingly funny. Even in the darkest days of the Civil War, he would begin meetings with jokes and funny stories. Although some of his colleagues frowned on this, he needed to laugh in order to face the seemingly impossible tasks ahead of him.

And here's the thing: even when he was president, Americans knew that they were in the presence of a truly great man. His reputation of honesty was well-forged by the time he entered the White House. His Cabinet members constantly remarked on his wisdom and gifts as a leader, and many writers pointed out that the nation was lucky to have him at the helm during those violent years.

Can you imagine a president renowned in his own time for his wisdom, patience, compassion, humor, and conciliatory nature? A self-taught man, a brilliant orator, a man who could rise to the nearly impossible challenges of his day. People used to say that someday Lincoln would join the pantheon of great American leaders, and that his reputation may someday surpass that of even Washington. In a very small way, despite the anger and lack of charity in our political culture today, I feel proud to live in an America that honors Lincoln as the leader and statesman he aspired to be. He would not bask in the praise and glory our country has draped around his name -- around the very idea of Abraham Lincoln -- but he certainly earned it.

Rite of summer

Yesterday L and I did one of my favorite New York activities of the whole year, an event that marks the brilliance of summer as much as the sunniest weekend or the coldest fountain Coke: we went to see Shakespeare in the Park. This year's first selection is Romeo and Juliet. We woke up at 5:30 am and dragged ourselves, armed with blankets, books, and an assortment of healthy snacks, up to the Delacorte Theater to try to get tickets. These tickets are free, and passed out at 1 pm each day, so the crowds form very early (the first people usually camp overnight, or get there around 4 am). Each year I feel a unique stress as we hustle out of the house, and then, in the most horrifying moments of all, try to run in flip-flops past the already-formed line with an increasing sense of dread, until you throw down your blanket and stake your claim in line.

We were there by 6 am, so we settled in for a solid seven hours of reading and napping. You always make friends with the people around you; the two girls behind us in line were friendly grad students who had interesting stories and good choices in reading material. People in this line approach the task with the intensity and organizational focus that is characteristic of this city. Everyone listens intently as the line monitors explain the process, and people are vigilant to kick out would-be line cutters. We did not wake up at 5:30 am, and we are not spending most of the day bumming around in the park, for nothing.

So the great news was that we did get tickets, after many snacks, several trips to the public bathrooms (which, given their location in a municipal park, could be a lot grosser), and 250 pages of my Lincoln biography. Of course, a couple hundred people behind us were turned away, many of whom were only a half hour or so behind us -- we were very fortunate to get tickets, so we spent some time high-fiving, which is somewhat rare in our marriage. Anyways, here's how I spent the rest of the day: I did my first long run of marathon training (6 miles), I got a haircut (including the mandatory moment of ghastliness when my hair is soaked and the guy does this thing with the comb that makes me look tragically bald, which may or may not be true), took a nap, when to Chipeezley, and then came home for dinner, then went back up to the Park for the play.

The play. Here's the thing. We've gone to Shakespeare in the Park for four years now, and every year I think it's the best one ever, and this time was no exception. But for all the familiarity of Romeo and Juliet, I was so surprised and enthralled by this production. Lauren Ambrose as Juliet was stunning. She brought a sense of youth, intensity, and passion to her role. This was the first time I ever considered how young Romeo and Juliet are, and Ambrose infused her role with the enthusiasm and slightly spastic quality of teenage love. During the balcony scene, when the two are furtively flirting and kissing and generally mooning over each other, I was reminded of those long ago nights in high school, when a football stadium or a parking lot or a school dance created all of the romance and privacy you could possibly fathom, and this was more than you could ever dream of while it also fell flaggingly short -- the play brought back all of those dizzying emotions.

I guess while the play is about romance and tragedy and thwarted love, it's also about the the impetuousness of youth, and the utter faith you have in your own choices and destiny and view of the world, a faith that may be battered as the years move along. This play was passionate, and sexy, and funny, and gripping.

The set itself was utterly beautiful -- there was a huge, round shallow pool in the center of the stage, with only an additional structure of scaffolding to create the public squares, balconies, ballrooms, and crypts of the setting. The characters would glide or wade or stomp or fight through the water, lights would reflect and characters would become their own doubles. It was almost magical, especially as the sun set and the birds flew above us and the few stars emerged into the sky.

Basically it was an amazing night, one that fully justified my excitement and fondness for Shakespeare in the Park. The second production this summer is "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and I'm already planning on another trip when my sis is in town. Another day in the Park, lazing the morning away beneath the canopy of trees and making unexpected friends, then returning at night to be moved and surprised and reminded of how lucky you are to be here -- what more could anyone ask of a summer day?

State update: California

Well, I'm back from two and a half weeks in California. Although I was very busy at work, which sufficiently filled my days and cumulated in a bizarre anti-climax (kind of like the "Sopranos" finale), I had enough time to experience Los Angeles and get to know my temporary host city.

And here's what I learned: L.A. is awful. We were staying at a particularly trendy hotel, swishy and swanky to a ridiculous degree, with a chic rooftop pool and hallways that smelled like pot. Pot was officially the aroma of the trip. At first, I thought maybe the hotel used a very particular kind of carpet cleaner or something, but no, it was pot. Everywhere in the hotel. Pot, and a too-cool pool, and me. Welcome to Los Angeles.

We did a lot of people-watching, seeing girls dressed like Paris Hilton with their fake boobs perky and perhaps slightly askew, accompanied by Jersey-like guys in their uniforms of untucked button-downs and carefully distressed jeans. I felt like an utter yokel in our hotel, especially the first night, as my New York friends and I swam in the pool as the socialite types glowered and strutted around us. (I think that in an urban environment, you can either project hipness by genuinely being hip, or being familiar enough with your environment to fake it. In New York, I can fake it. In LA, I was irredeemably uncool, like I was wearing the same pair of overalls the whole time.)

We stayed in the downtown area, a desolate district of high-rise office buildings and restaurants that close early and don't open on the weekends. It's a very commuter-centric area, where one can spend 40 minutes on a Sunday morning searching for a New York Times (the sign of a true Manhattanite, according to our friend at the bookstore) before one discovers the lone Starbucks that is open. Nobody walks in LA, and nobody reads.

Good things about LA: Dodger Stadium, which is small and disheveled like a beloved old person; hiking in the San Gabriel mountains, to be in an environment utterly unlike anything back east; seeing the Hollywood sign through the haze from our office window; the variety of R&B radio stations, which let me enjoy dance hour in the purest way, the way I did in high school; the ocean breeze you can feel from the PCH; karaoke in Koreatown.

It was an interesting trip. L came to see me for a weekend, which was exactly what I needed to pull through. Not only could she laugh at the ridiculousness of it all with me and charm the hell out of my colleagues, but she brought me the books and magazines and news of our culture that is completely ignored out there. In the midst of our trendy, spare hotel, with the ironic carpet and wall art and lack of comfortable seating, I missed our little apartment with the old furniture and the plants and the street noise.

And to arrive home -- I came home to find the city in the full explosion of summertime. The leaves on the trees were thick and mature, there was warm sun and a breeze, people eating on sidewalk tables and walking in pairs or with their kids. We wandered around to bookstores and movie theaters, through parks, enjoying the afternoon light that softened into night as the streetlights flicked on to signal a new phase in the urban day. Nothing was closing, nothing was ending. For a very brief moment, the night, like the summer, seemed endless.

Professional class

I have had a really busy few weeks, but I have been conspicuously quiet about everything, blog-wise. I started working at the big ol' law firm, and the corridors of the professional world are lined with too many pikes decorated with the heads of loose-lipped bloggers for me to even think about sharing my work escapades here. But it's hard to not say anything -- my life this summer is remarkably different than it has ever been, really. I've joined the mobs of sharply-dressed twenty-something guys. Waiting for the subway today I counted ten other young men, about my age, wearing similar khaki pants and the same business-casual shirts, sans ties. We all carried umbrellas, ipods. Some had bags, I had a book. It's strange to join this throng of commuters, and I wonder if it's an avoidable part of adulthood -- I think it is a part of New York adulthood, if you've been in school for many years and are aiming for the professional class, rather than a hipsterish plastic-black-frames lifestyle, which just looks silly as people get farther from thirty. I'm taking the professional route.

Anyways, all this to say that work is going well. I feel challenged, and I'm striving to be smart, and I'm also turning on the charm and professionalism and collegiality as much as I can. Every sentence is punctuated by numerous thank yous, even when the other person and I both know that I have nothing to thank them for -- it's just good business. It's worked for me so far, at least. I've even started going to the gym early, at 6:45 am, to make up for some of the classes I'm missing, now that my workdays bleed into the evening. But usually I have time to go for a run by the river as the sun sets, or at least have a nice meal or a stroll around the block with L. It's a very different summer than I'm used to, but it is undeniably summer.

On Thursday this law firm is sending me to Los Angeles, California for a couple weeks -- I'll be back June 23rd. Wish me luck.

On shampoo

Today I realized that I finally finished up the bottles of shampoo and conditioner that I purchased in Hawaii lo those many months ago. Back in late December, as the honeymoon began so promisingly, we bought standard-sized bottles of Suave shampoo and conditioner, and we carried them around with us from Oahu to Hawaii to Oahu again, and then back to New York. They were exotic; they were Hawaiian; they were souvenirs. And now, five months later, I finally finished them (L having her own well-established haircare regime which sadly does not involve Suave products, but somehow involves 14 other bottles in our shower).

Call me crazy, but I feel that five months is a really long time to nurse the same bottle of shampoo. Of course, maybe I'm doing some showering at the gym that would otherwise occur at home, but this is unlikely, since I shower at the gym at nine o'clock at night. Since my hair has been fairly short, maybe I'm applying smaller dollops than usual. But if this is actually the case, then over the course of my lifetime I've only used about 65 bottles of shampoo. As a pampered American who has been on this planet for 27 years, obviously I feel a bit shortchanged by my consumption here. Have I been underwashing? Is 65 bottles even a whole crate or pallet or shipment of shampoo? What the hell?

This is what I think about in the shower every day, mindful of the exotic curves of the Hawaii Suave bottles, and the remnants of the price stickers on the plastic. Years ago I heard that it takes six weeks for all of your skins cells to flake off and be replaced, to leave you with a completely new outer layer, so I would always think that for six weeks after I returned from anyplace, I still wore some of the same skin that had been far away and experienced different breezes or water or sand or light. I guess I can add the five-month shampoo yardstick as another measurement of time and distance. It will be mildly sad to toss out those two bottles -- not many of my toiletries are native Hawaiian.

State update: Montana

"Big Sky Country" is such a simple phrase that it can be hard to grasp the grand, literal truth of the statement. As soon as you arrive in Montana you are confronted with the vast dome of sky above you, clear, uninterrupted, blurry on the edges with rolling hills or snowy peaks or the lurching tips of pine trees. There are no tall buidings here; there are none of the smudgy east coast afternoons to which you are accustomed.

We spent most of our time in Missoula, a college town with a modest downtown area and the rebellious streak that comes from a constantly moving student population. The Clark Fork river meanders through town; once we took a break from a bike ride to watch a beaver work on his dam and meander through the snowmelt river. Cycling is the preferred mode of transportation here; we would ride our bikes along the dirt path alongside the river, park our bikes next to the college bookstore or the brewery or the pizza place, and eventually coast back home. Once we hit the paved streets of the neighborhood we would ride bikes with the freedom of kids on a summer evening, loping along in wide turns punctuated by the occasional sprinted race. Missoula was an oasis, an extremely peaceable valley.

In Glacier National Park we ogled at the remarkably clear reflections of the mountains in McDonald Lake. Since we arrived before the beginning of the season, the park was ours: empty roads, quiet trails. The mountains seemed almost protective of their tranquil lakes, each one ice-cold and fed by countless tributaries tumbling down the slopes. We could follow the progression of each waterfall with our eyes, watching the streams gain power as pale mountain goats hobbled along the rocky cliffs above.

On our last day in Glacier we went on a ten-mile hike, aiming to get up to a glacier. We didn't make it, though; we passed the snow line, and were tromping along the banks in shorts and t-shirts and sneakers, but the sun had already peaked and we had a long way to go. We made it back to McDonald with wet feet and sunburnt faces, with a distinct sense of satisfaction and acute exhaustion. On the drive back to Missoula we honored our accomplishments with sandwiches and tall glasses of Pepsi, and another feast awaited us in town.

Montana was a dream, an alternative to the life we've chosen in New York. The whole trip was such a ridiculously clear Country Mouse/City Mouse comparison; we replaced our city walks and media consumption and cosmopolitan poses with early evenings and bike rides and an utter lack of awareness of the world beyond the mountain range on any side of us. It was a great sojourn, but I was happy to come home. One more photo: the latest in my genre of awesome, one-handed self-portraiture.

Charlottesville is my home planet

I had a startling realization today, as L and I made a mad dash to Charlottesville and back for a baptism and lunch at Take It Away: my home planet is this town. I look at myself, and I look at everyone else around here, and I realize that they are me.

The proof came when L and I got dressed to head down for the baptism, a pleasant, classy affair with some easygoing parents and their occasionally cranky baby. I was rocking a bright polo and some cargo shorts, and L was wearing a really pretty sun dress. She was like the hottest chick at the Kentucky Derby. Anyways, when we made it into town and went in to get our sandwiches, we looked around and quickly noticed that everyone looked exactly like us. All of the young men wore their polo shirts (what a spectrum of pastel bright colors, my own cerulean shirt effortlessly joining the parade!) untucked over khaki shorts or pants, ratty old flip flops beating the brick sidewalk; all of the women and coeds wore pretty sundresses or skirts with the same flips as L. Everyone was more tan than us, but their hair was the same length and color as ours. All of us were scrubbed, earnest, open-faced, and well-dressed, carrying ourselves with a certain confidence and easy happiness that comes from an elite education and a distinct familiarity with affluence. What a day to be young and alive! Khakis for everyone!

I have to admit, it felt good in a way. These were the good, decent, Polo-wearing white folk of Charlottesville! We saw nary a poor person. Nary a person of color. It was nothing like New York, nothing like real life. But to some degree it explained a lot about me and how I present myself and how I think things should be, for whatever that's worth.

Charlottesville is my home planet; Charlottesville is my Krypton. But New York is my home. A marriage between those two worlds may be impossible, but it's nice to visit your past in order to better appreciate your present. It will be good to return home in a little while.

Tomorrow we're flying out to Montana. More to come in a week.

Look the part

Today L and I went on a shopping extravaganza to buy me work clothes for my new job, which starts in a couple weeks. We walked into Macy's this morning armed with nothing more than a set of extremely specific guidelines to help define "business casual," as well as moxie in abundance, and we left the store two hours later carrying two bags apiece and beaming with a glow of triumph. Here is what I purchased, starting at the top and working down:

3 dress shirts, two white and one blue (and slim fit, no less) (hubba hubba) (thanks James)

4 extremely cool neckties, none of them paisley and none of them from the Donald J. Trump collection

4 pairs of premium Dockers (khaki, olive, navy, black), all with a special sheen of quality

12 new pairs of socks, with extra-stay protection, to make sure they cling to my calves in a most flattering way

2 pairs of shoes, kind of dressy, kind of orthopedic, in black and brown.

This amount of clothes, which could dress an entire Somalian village for a summer internship at a law firm, cost me about $575. But I saved a total of about $197 on all of my purchases, thanks to the one-day sale we unknowingly stumbled into.

All in all, this was an extremely successful shopping adventure, and even L was impressed with our efficiency. Special thanks to Ashesh for his sartorial guidance, since no one rocks the young professional look quite like he does. Sweater vests for everyone!

Sweet surrender

So, I guess this is summer. Exams are over, feet are bare, shorts are worn on the street. It was such a relief yesterday to take my last exam and walk away from school, knowing I don't have to go back there for several months. Here's the final wrap-up:

Professional Responsibility: Harder than I thought it would be. Am I an unethical person, after all? The essay turned weirdly personal: "Well, if I was in that situation I guess I would just follow my heart, you know? Like Jiminy Cricket? Always let your conscience by your guide, unless prohibited by statute?"

Income Tax: An utter fiasco. Apparently some people were in tears as they left the exam; at least I kept it all in. I guessed on the multiple choice section. On the essay I tried to spit out whatever statements of fact I could cobble together, hoping something would be mildly relevant. Discouraging.

Entertainment Law: I actually felt all right during this one, although I basically finished the three-hour exam in an hour and a half. Everyone was clattering on the keyboards furiously as I squirmed in my seat and tried to wring some additional knowledge from my brain. I made myself sit for an additional hour, occasionally tinkering with a sentence or adding another clause here or there, but I knew I was finished. Moseyed to the bathroom, came back. Anything else to say? No? Ok, I guess we're done then.

And that's how the semester ended - prematurely. I went to the bookstore and got $40 back for two textbooks that cost about $100 apiece, then I used my hard-won earnings to buy a school t-shirt (my first one ever -- the school's weird purple-burgundy color, with "Fordham Law" in white -- I guess I'm ready to publicly acknowledge my attendance, now that I'm 2/3 finished) and lunch. I now have a few days of relaxation before a quick trip to Charlottesville, then Montana, then back here again for work, my first regular income source since 2005.

So this is summer. What a relief! I'm glad the school year is over. By the time I have to go back I'll be ready to return for another round, but for now I surrender myself to some days of indolence. "The life I Ieft behind me is a cold room."

Uncharitable thoughts

I think I have been stressed out lately, more agitated than I realized. My Barcelona eye twitch is still flaring, and I am quite aggravated over this round of final exams. I stumbled through one yesterday and have the most wretched exam ever tomorrow (Federal Income Tax) and I just want to wash my hands of the whole thing. I was looking forward to going to the gym tonight, but it was the kind of night where I just felt generally cranky throughout, and allowed myself to wallow in uncharitable thoughts about everything.

It started at home, when I went to try on a new shirt I got from my last race, a shirt that's good-looking and made of a special sweat-wicking material (not one of these tissue-paper-thin cotton shirts that dissolves after six washes and lets everyone check out your torso once you sweat through the fine layer of fabric). Since I realized a couple years ago that most men's large sizes are made for chunky people rather than tall people, I've been going medium. So I pull this shirt on, and it's incredibly tight in the upper chest area and arms, but then the neckhole is gaping wide, exposing my collar bones. L laughed at me and said "you look like a hot gay guy." I tried to see this as a compliment. Strike one.

Progress to the gym. In hip hop, this new, muscle-bound-to-a-silly-degree guy comes in and sets up shop in the front row [gritting teeth] and proceeds to verbally process the entire class: "One TWO three-and-four FIVE SIX seven-and-EIGHT! Ba ba BA BA BA ba BA BA ba bum bum!" He's grunting and doing all of this loudly, not like the occasional "uh" or "ooh" that I might expel under my breath. He's also meandering his way into the center of the room, into my zone. Please shut up. EMNY! I wondered if he was mildly retarded; I wanted to say something but didn't want to provoke an episode of roid rage. Strike two.

[It goes without saying, of course, that the standard bunch of arrhythmic morons are crowding me in class too: the little guy I call the Ninja, who is hyperkinetc and jumps all around but doesn't really get the smooth vibe of the music; the girl with about half the skill she thinks she has, despite her cool baggy pants; etc. I may not get all the moves precisely, and I may be like Old Man Suburbia in that room, and there may be occasions like this where I'm copping some serious attitude, but at least I feel the groove and don't move my body like it's marching band tryouts. Yet I know I'm being a jerk right now.]

I make my way through another nintey minutes of exercise and head on over to the burrito place to regain some calories and negate my previous activity. At the soda fountain, I was waiting to get my drink as three of the back-kitchen cooks filled their cups. Now tell me, is it wrong that when I saw these young men, identically-dressed, all pretty short, all hard-working immigrants who make an honest living and deserve all the protections and benefits our society can offer, is it wrong that I immediately thought of them as Oompa Loompas?

Strike three. I need to finish up exams and get the hell out of Dodge. I'm a nicer person than this.

Don't sweat the technique

The alarm went off this morning at 7:30 am, way too early for a Sunday. Once I registered the facts of the alarm and the radio and the morning itself, I was immediately aware of the insistent ringing in my ears and the dull hum in my brain, remnants of L's birthday festivities from last night. So, with about five hours of sleep under my belt, I lurched out of bed and got ready to run a 4-mile race in Central Park. I brushed my teeth, put my contacts in, and headed uptown on the train.

Last night we kicked things off with a tapas dinner, which sounded great in theory but in actuality may have left all of us slightly hungry. I know I was about ready to eat my napkin. Then we moved on to our latest nightspot of choice, conveniently located two blocks from the apartment. Knowing I had this race in the morning I kept my alcohol consumption to a minimal degree, for me, at a birthday party, with fun people. We were having a great time, the music was lively, except for a weird Bon Jovi interlude, but as the night progressed, Ashesh rightly pointed out that "the crowd was...changing." Changing into a more surly, outer-borough, inappropriately-dressed permutation of its previous self. (Ladies: keep your bras under your clothing. This applies to most of you.) So finally we left, got some pizza, and went home. Success.

On the train up to the park this morning I assembled these recollections in my brain as I thought about why I was running, and also tried to focus on not getting mugged by the other tired and untrustworthy people around me. My head felt a little inflated and my body was exhausted. L had just rolled over when I left the house.

So I finally started doing this run, then, and it seemed pretty standard: pick somebody up ahead of you and gradually overtake them; run on the periphery of the road so you don't waste too much time jostling past other people; take note of the dreadlock guy you see at every race, who runs at about your pace; don't stop for water, don't even think about it; focus on your breathing; note how pretty the park is in the springtime; let gravity speed you up on the downhills; consider the communal nature of these races, the fact that you can dissolve into a sea of 8,000 runners with 16,000 legs pumping on the asphalt just like yours, the way that the crowd becomes something almost organic; just listen to your music and keep moving.

I felt winded at points and felt like I dropped my speed down to a crawl. At other times I really pushed hard and basically stalked some hapless runner until I passed them. I was dying to come across mile marker 3, and when I finally passed it, I didn't feel like I had much left for the remaining mile, and I couldn't even muster up a decent sprint for the very last stretch, when the banner at the finish line is in sight, an actual crowd is present along the edges and the thumping dance music obliterates whatever club tune you've been listening to. But I crossed the finish line, gave myself a high-five over my head (which may look like an ordinary clap, but it's not), gathered my complimentary water and sportsdrink and tart macintosh apple, and headed home.

Later in the afternoon I checked my results out on the web, and it turns out that today I posted my fastest pace-per-mile time ever, in the two years I've been running these things. It was a solid twenty seconds quicker than my usual effort, and I beat last week's time, in the same distance, by a solid minute. Maybe I didn't waste as much time dodging other people today, or maybe I happened to just hit some nice new peak of fitness today, but whatever the case, I felt really proud of myself.

I'm already thinking about what my goal time is for the next four-miler I do, and the next threshold for my pace time. In hindsight (of course) it felt great to wake up early and get out of the house and do something, to wipe away the cobwebs left over from a night on the town and embrace the day. When I came home the ringing had subsided in my head. Today I felt a certain pride and contentment that I doubt I could feel from, say, Federal Income Tax, or Professional Responsibility, or Entertainment Law, which are the exams I'm facing in the next couple days.

I guess the moral of the story is, if you can't eat your Wheaties, try knocking back a few Heineckens and not sleeping for a night, and watch your athletic abilities soar! You'll see a real spike, I guarantee it.

Groove salad

The latest thing I have found to help me stagger through this round of final exams is a radio station on iTunes, filed under Electronic, called "Groove Salad on SomaFM." The Salad describes itself as "a nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves." That well-turned phrase illustrates everything there is to know about it, and I have come to love this random little station.

I listen to this as I cobble together my outlines, and the mostly lyric-free, synthetic beats and whirrs are the perfect complement. Occasionally a vocal will waft along to ride the spare drumbeats and syncopated clicks and clacks. Sometimes I will be immersed in the sounds and suddenly I am no longer at my desk alone in the middle of the night: I am on the midnight flight from Reykjavik to the Northern Lights, the Japanese stewardess is strutting up the aisle carrying my vodka gimlet on a silver tray and the man across the aisle in sunglasses is raising his glass in a toast, and there's dry ice everywhere, and suddenly I am behind the eclipse or in the center of the moon in a room made of ice and light, like the Fortress of Solitude, but instead of Superman there are harajuku girls and aliens and a dolphin in a nightclub, tiny candles everywhere, floating upwards like bubbles in champagne, then the Northern Lights come on and the jet flying me from Reykjavik to infinity gently lifts up, up, up, and the stewardess and the sunglasses man and the dolphin are there, and we all raise our glasses in a toast to ... we raise our glasses in a toast to ... oh no ... that's it.

I lost it. Suddenly I am back to the books, realizing I read the same paragraph about federal income tax three times. The nouns are interchangeable at this point. Undaunted, I must press on and keep reading and typing, carefully, with reflection, until the next flight from Reykjavik leaves for a brief sojourn away from the desk and the books and law school. This is why I love Groove Salad.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road

A couple of days ago I finished reading The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I was particularly excited to read it because it was at the cross-section of two of the most powerful forces in publishing: Oprah picked it for her book club, hence the gaping "O" sticker on the cover, and it won the Pulitzer Prize. I love the Pulitzer prize, but in recent years, I feel that it has gone to these small, modest character studies (see Gilead, March) where intense introspection occurs in front of a rainy window, yet nothing seems to transpire. I like a novel that is ambitious - some big, brawny book spanning decades, where the author tries to take the ideal of the Great American Novel and wrestle it in between two covers (see Middlesex, Kavalier and Clay). So I was excited when the Pulitzer chose this book, and I was excited that Oprah's blessing upon it moved the paperback publishing date up by about six months.

I read this novel over the course of three weeknights, from midnight to two in the morning. It was one of the most bleak books I've ever read: about the sojourn of an unnamed man and his son through a near-future, post-apocalyptic America. In the wake of some horrible undisclosed nightmare, when the planet and most of humanity have perished, this man is hoping to follow the road to the coast, where hopefully something better will await him and his son. As they encounter other stragglers and scavenge abandoned homes and towns, details emerge of the hellish world that has reconstituted itself in the face of utter disaster: roving gangs, slavery, cannibalism. Out of chaos, this order has formed.

The redemptive quality of the book comes from the bond between father and son, the father's selfless and ingenious devotion to the boy. The father can remember the world before this disastrous event occurred; he can remember the boy's mother and knows why she is not with them. But he protects his son from these facts, and tries to teach the child decency and compassion when these ideas are completely untethered from their reality. His love for the child is so bright that it carries the novel forward.

Now, several days after I reached the last page, I'm still thinking about the book and wondering what happened to its protagonists. It was the most harrowing book I've read. I read it as L slept beside me, and when I finally put it down, my eyes weary but my mind racing, I would sleep with a hand on her shoulder or around her waist to remind me that the book was not real, and that I was safe in my cozy yellow bedroom with my wife in our too-small bed.

I have always been superstitious about the talismanic power of books. As a kid I couldn't sleep with the cover of a Stephen King novel facing upwards on my nightstand. When I read American Psycho a couple years ago, the most unredeemably horrifying book I had ever encountered, I wouldn't keep it in my bedroom, and when I finally finished it, I dropped it into a trashcan on the street the next day. I didn't want it in my home.

With The Road, I placed it face-down on the dresser at the end of each night. One of the reasons I read so late into the morning hours was that if I encountered an idea or a passage that was especially bleak or gruesome, I couldn't stop there - I had to create more distance between myself and the offending paragraphs. In a way I was on my own journey to parallel that of the characters, searching for the same happy ending (to use a pat phrase) that they sought.

With that said, I can't recommend this book highly enough. I don't think it's for everyone (I think L would chuck it out the window), but it does fit in nicely with some of the other dystopian literature I've been encountering lately. I read this book after reading EB White's wry and wistful essays, and now I've moved on to more of Joan Didion's acerbic and incisive prose. But The Road has stayed with me; I've picked it up to read the first few pages again, to try to see how McCarthy did it. In the face of such disaster and horror, his ability to find love and bravery for two unknown people recalled the best of what his characters had lost, the best of what we all could lose.

I will also say this: this is the ballsiest book club choice Oprah has ever made. The ladies are about to get their socks knocked off.

Patriotism, part II

This semester I have been interning with a judge downtown, and today I got to see a naturalization ceremony where 250 people became American citizens. They were sitting in a massive room in the courthouse, people of all ages and from all over the place, many of them dressed in their best. The largest contingents were from the DR and China, but there were people from Armenia, Malawi, France, etc, and even, thanks apparently to the benefit of time travel, the USSR. A couple Iranians and Syrians, but no Iraqis (good luck, you guys! As you stand up, we'll stand down! So try to stand up without being blown to bits!). Anyways, I digress: today all of those people became Americans.

First, a clerk made everyone stand and repeat an oath of citizenship, which required people to serve the country, if necessary, to pick up arms in defense, and to pay taxes. This seemed much more stringent than what we require of native-born citizens, but that was fine. It was amusing to note that many of our newest citizens still have no grasp of the English language, though -- when asked to repeat after the clerk, a lot of people moved their mouths and looked around without making any sound. Or maybe they were just deaf new citizens, I don't know.

Then we all said the Pledge of Allegiance, which was refreshing. Then the judge (dare I say it, my judge) gave a speech where he talked about how America is the greatest country in the history of the world, and now everyone in the room is an equal, with the same rights and freedoms. We are all immigrants, from some other place, and no one has any standing over anyone else. Your citizenship, which is ten minutes' old, is good and solid and equivalent to that of a federal jduge, like him. With this freedom comes responsibilities: honoring our fellow citizens, respecting them, voting in elections, paying taxes. This is a happy day, one of the most important days of your life, and you should go celebrate with your loved ones after you leave here, because this is a wonderful occasion. You are a citizen of the United States of America. It was really a great, beautiful speech, which I utterly failed to recapture here. I wanted to copy it when we returned, but that would have been strange.

Afterwards, like graduation, they read everyone's name, and the people walked or strided or hobbled up and received their certificate and a handshake with the judge. Family members would occasionally clap. I sat there with a big smile on my face the whole time, watching people as they looked at their names and photos on the certificate, or made fleeting eye contact with the judge as they shook his hand and then left. The US Marshals were congratulating people too and clapping them on the back. A few people even made eye contact with me, and I would give the ol' smile-and-nod, American to American.

As we left I thought about how April 20, 2007 would be a memorable day for so many people. I thought of the risk and strength and courage it would take to leave your home, either willingly or under duress, and seek a new home and a new identity elsewhere. I am very fortunate to have never faced those trials, and now there are 250 more people in this great city with the same rights and freedoms as me, despite whatever differences of culture or language may exist between us. In that room was such a sense of unity and pride, only amplified by the complete heterogenity of the assembly. All of us are sheltered in the arms of this great country.

Patriotism

In the months after 9/11 Vanity Fair featured an Annie Leibovitz cover of George Bush and his team in the Oval Office: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet. I went out and bought the magazine and carefully cut out the cover and put it up on my wall. They looked strong, and intelligent, and capable. I felt reassured to see them, and I felt that America had some direction. Watching President Bush give his speech to Congress on September 20th gave me a certain courage and hope that was difficult to find during that time.

And yet now, of course, that sense of hope and unity is scattered to the wind. Every name I listed above is now weighed down by a litany of errors, mistakes, and examples of striking incompetence. What we are doing in Iraq is simply wasteful, of so much: the lives of our soldiers; the existing Iraqi society, which is now ripped to shreds; the good faith so many decent Iraqis placed in us; and the goodwill of the international community that buoyed us when we were at our lowest.

And yet - John McCain is out there advocating for more troops, more strength, and a longer commitment in Iraq. And the damned thing is, I think he's right: if we expect to pull any kind of success out of this debacle, we have to stick it through. But his problem, and the president's, is that our nation has lost the will for the fight, and for good reason. Once the president gets out of office, he will spend the rest of his life justifying and defending this war, and trying to come up with a narrative to vindicate his own errors. John McCain, I think, is acting honestly right now, with integrity. He's not pandering to anyone, because no one agrees with him; but he is insisting on this course, and staking his political future on it, because he thinks it's the right thing to do. And for that reason, I think what he is doing is an incredibly noble thing.

I'm a bit worked up now from reading Newsweek late at night. And at this hour of the morning I'm telling you I can see the threads binding this Imus debacle to our national fatigue with Iraq to the Duke lacrosse scandal to what happened at Virginia Tech today. Maybe all of those elements reveal a certain lack of honesty in our society, a coarseness, a cruelty, a rush to judgment, a lack of deliberation.

Oh Lord, we need a change right now. The national grief that we're about to endure - we've endured it before. The jockeying of the politicians, the race cards thrown down with such glee by all sides, the lies we've grown accustomed to, the parsed language that says nothing at all, the relentless sense of entropy...! I've had it.

I think this country is anticipating the next election because we are desperate for a change, desperate for a signal of different things to come. I voted for John McCain in the Virginia primary seven years ago, but I think his moment has passed. I am tired of the Bush/Clinton seesaw, where one half of the country violently hates our president for four or eight years, and then we switch. If Chuck Hagel can jump in the mix, and get the Republicans to pull their heads out of their butts about evolution, stem cells, gay marriage, and other issues, I might look to him. But to be honest, right now I feel the language and unity and hope and fresh air of Barack Obama is exactly the remedy this country needs.

So, in this dark night - as the last shreds of a nor'easter bluster outside the window, as the carnage burns in Iraq, as thirty-some families mourn the loss of their kids and spouses in Blacksburg, as the professional screamers and sycophants in our society sleep in preparation for another day of meaningless combat, as we all get another night older - I'm voting Obama for president. May the election come tomorrow.

E.B. White, "Here is New York," 1948:

"On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence within the city's walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual, or it can fulfill them, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky."