Scott Taylor
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Scott Taylor

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Here in Milano, on Columbus Day

Here in Milano, because my daughters go to an American school, where American holidays are observed, there was no school today because of Columbus Day.

Columbus, an Italian sailing for Spain, who discovered America.

And by America, we mean he discovered Central America, South America, Cuba, and the Bahamas.

And by discovered, we mean he was convinced he had made it to Asia. There is no consensus amongst historians that he ever realized he had landed on a continent previously unknown (to Europeans).

And by discovered, we don’t include the Vikings and the continent’s inhabitants whose ancestors crossed the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. Columbus wrote about the first natives he saw: “With fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.”

While this may have been the 1492 equivalent of Apollo 11, the whole thing still makes for an inappropriate national holiday for the United States.

And by inappropriate, I mean for the enlightenment-inspired “all men are created equal” United States of America—not the one with slavery, Native American genocide, Japanese Internment camps, and Trump.

 

 

Note:
In 2018, I expanded the text and recorded a video version. In 2019, I updated the sound.
Watch it here:
https://scott-taylor.co/wp-admin/post.php?post=1504&action=edit

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Essays

All I Really Need to Know I Learned . . . by Driving in Italy

First off, this is not a primer about the various gestures and “hand signals” Italians use to wordlessly communicate to other drivers here in Milan. Although, trust me, I have had plenty of those aimed in my general direction. Avoiding accidents is good policy no matter where you are, but as a driver new to the country, I’d prefer not have to use my limited Italian language skills to describe any incidents to the polizia. Also, one tries to avoid being part of the flashing-light street-side spectacles that the Italians are famously fond of—they last for hours, and require a stack of paperwork decipherable only by old-money Italian lawyers.

I drive about two hours a day in Milan. After couple of months of this routine, I decided I didn’t want to resent my time in the car, that I needed to consciously improve my driving. I would try to pay more attention, to put my ego in the backseat, and get into the flow of driving in Milan.

“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help.” —Marcus Aurelius

The first thing I heard about driving in Italy was from my wife’s boss who stated that lanes and lights are “suggestions.” He added later that there are intersections with cameras so some suggestions should be considered more strongly than others.

Lanes and Scooters

Lanes are fluid here. At some intersections, two lanes become three or four, and sometimes disappear altogether, looking like the bottom of an airport escalator after five planes have landed.

There are crazy amounts of scooters and motorcycles. The riders have all been trained in stunt-riding, possibly at a circus. They weave their way through the maze of cars stopped at a light, then on green, begin zooming in and out of lanes. They pass trains and buses by veering temporarily into oncoming traffic. Being on a scooter somehow renders them fearless.

 

Here’s where I’ve had to up my driving game with payoffs for the rest of the day.

Be Present/Pay Attention

Scooterists of MilanoWith all the opportunistic and creative lane-changers, the acrobatic scooterists, some incredibly complicated intersections involving up to five streets, two train routes, and possibly a canal, you have to pay air-traffic-controller-like attention. Defensive driving taken to a new level is necessary here. You must be present, very present grasshopper. Set your mirrors carefully. Assume that there’s someone in your blind spot.

Let’s talk about pedestrians. No one crosses the street here without concurrently interacting with their phone somehow. Everyone is reading texts, or talking. I will sometimes see groups walking and talking together. But just as often, everyone’s on their own phone. Given the crazy traffic situation here, not paying attention as you cross the street is, to my mind, putting a lot of faith in the universe for protection. I am not familiar enough with the Catholic religion to know if it’s included in the Catechism.

I very rarely rock out while driving because it’s too damn distracting. Also, because one tries not to look like a dork. On the highway, I may put on jazz and star in a European film from the 60s for a bit, but in town I need to be as much like the Buddha as possible.

 

Don’t be in a Hurry

It is very unpleasant to be in a hurry here while driving. You start thinking about how to make up time, you go too fast, you are no longer present, no longer giving driving your full attention. When you are in a hurry, anxiety is your copilot, navigator, and backseat driver all rolled into one. I prefer Google Map’s Lady Robot as my navigator and copilot, even if she, while directing me in English, butchers the Milano street names in hilarious fashion.

 

Plus, if you are not in a hurry, you are more likely to

Be Generous

If you have enough time, you can let people onto the street in front of you without worry. If I’m in a hurry, I absolutely do not want to lose a few spots in the driving line—getting through a light a couple streets down could save 5 minutes! There are streets here that feed into very busy streets that are not regulated by traffic lights. In the United States, these people would wait several forevers.

If you find yourself on one of the streets, you have to nose your car out when there’s a gap in the traffic coming the other direction, and then hope your confidence springs a gap so you can make your left turn. I try to let one of these cars through when I’m able to do so. Despite my appreciation of Buddhism, I do not believe in any sort of karma-magic. Personally though, I do feel better about inserting my way into traffic if I’ve been on the other side of the equation a number of times. Possibly, this is what karma is supposed to be about anyway. When you have time, and can put yourself in that person’s shoes, it’s an easy decision to make.

 

Acknowledge mistakes/no reactive gestures

Sometimes you screw up and because of the grace and awareness of another driver, there wasn’t a crash. Flipping them off because, somehow, it’s their fault (?) doesn’t help. In fact, I feel shitty after being a prick. There’s no reason to add to the anger on the road just because your little ego can’t admit fucking up. Wordlessly confess your crimes and drive on—and hope the driver isn’t dropping their kids off at the same school as you.

 

Don’t be Anxious

If you’re driving to, say, a doctor appointment, don’t worry about parking until you’re there. Sure, it’s busy, and you’re heading into a crazy part of town—or maybe you’re heading home, you live by me, it’s Friday night, and the theater down the street has a production and so parking will be challenging.

Relax. First worry about getting there. When you arrive, you can

Improvise/Be Creative

If you can get onto the sidewalk without blocking pedestrian traffic or park in another car—do it—park there. I actually don’t know if it’s legal. I’m assuming it is—maybe it’s just decriminalized. Italy has streets that come into at an angle to each other and so there’ll be a triangular zone marked by white paint —park there. Pull up on the curb a bit.  You likely will not get a ticket. If you’ve parked like this fifty times and you finally get one—whatever—that’s still cheap parking.

 

There are plenty of ways to park creatively. As long as you’re not in a spot designated for a weekly street market the next morning (not that I would know anything about that), or you haven’t parked anybody in while sidewalk parking, you’ll very likely be unticketed and untowed. 

Finally, we are all in this together

Driving in Italy is chaotic and requires you to pay attention to get where you want to go. Cut other drivers some slack. If enough of us cut each other some slack, be a bit generous from time to time, then we’ll all get to where we want to go as efficiently as possible—which is the goal, right?

To sum up: give yourself enough time, be generous, and keep your ego out of the driver’s seat. In fact, if you can tie your ego up, put it in cement shoes and drop it into a deep body of water—all the better. At the very least, lock it in the trunk while you are driving, and if you forget and leave it in there after you’re home, I seriously doubt anyone will complain.

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that's covfefe
parody

That’s Covfefe: This One Word Explains Everything

That’s Covfefe

To be sung to the tune of Dean Martin’s signature song

(In America, there’s a toddler king
And when he tweets, here’s what it means)

 

When you promise a wall
that costs “nothing at all,”
That’s Covfefe

When you sit and you tweet
on your gold toilet seat,
That’s Covfefe

When your wife slaps your hand
and it’s bad for your brand,
That’s Covfefe

When you act like a punk
‘cause you’ve got tiny junk,
That’s Covfefe

 

Pulling out of Paris
that’s not manly to me—
That’s Covfefe

When you’re acting surprised
as the sea starts to rise,
That’s Covfefe

When your golfing estate’s
beneath a salt water lake,
That’s Covfefe

When you wish it was a dream
but you know you’re not dreaming,
What-the-Eff-ay?

Excusez mon Français, but in every way,
That’s Covfefe

repeat with full chorus

 

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Guggenheim MMap
Essays

Chance Encounters: Improving the Odds

Two friends have recently reported chance encounters with friends in unlikely places. Cindy ran into an old friend at the Keflavík airport in Iceland, and Megan ran into a friend while traveling in Jordan.

Cindy asked in her post, “What are the chances of meeting a dear friend at an airport in Iceland?” Just this side of impossible to calculate, I’m guessing. The number of the variables alone would explode exponentially in no time. The odds of running into someone are different if you’re at the Keflavík airport, the Guggenheim Museum, or walking on the Great Wall. We might very well have been within a few feet of each other at Grand Central Station, but the sheer number of people there surely diluted our chances of meeting. And what number of friends, dear or otherwise, would you choose to plug into such an equation?

 

To sum up what happens to make these unlikely meetings possible:

  1. You are at the same place—which ideally is wildly out of the context you know them in
  2. You’re there at the same time—and the longer it’s been since you’ve been at the same place at the same time, the better.
  3. At least one of you needs to be aware of their surroundings—if you both have your noses pointed toward your phones, forget about it
  4. You need to be able to recognize each other—how long has it been after all?
  5. You both want to be seen—some of us aren’t so keen on getting a blast from the past

 

So being away in an exotic locale and running into an old friend happens pretty rarely. But I’m wondering how many times we just miss one of these chance encounters.

How many times are we just a block away from each other? Or maybe one of us was there in the same place, having their photo taken in front of the same landmark, an hour earlier.

Map DetailIf we were to expand our range from “same place, same time,” to “same block, same hour,” then the chances must go up considerably. The odds that there could be someone we know with a block or an hour of us, would have to
be greater than the odds of running into them—since this happens only occasionally—and it would stand to reason that more often we just miss people we’d like to run into. Maybe we’ve walked right by each other because at least one of us is looking at a map or a view or a Kandinsky.

Louis Pasteur once wrote that “Chance favors the prepared mind,” so maybe we can look at what we can do to improve our chances of running into an old friend somewhere.

Short of having Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map (it would have to be specially enchanted to filter out creepy intentions) to identify friends in the immediate vicinity, or neurotically checking in to places on Facebook, we’ll just have to count on luck—which makes for better magic anyway.

Our best chances then lie with noticing people already in the same place at the same time.

So first things first, you need to put your phone away. I know, I know. But really. All the world is made apparent to us via our perceptions. It’s already being filtered through our senses and brains before it reaches us—the world isn’t going to seem bigger and more interesting if you send it through more funnels—the news as interpreted, written, edited, published, shared, and finally viewed on your phone on the steps of the Taj Mahal, while your best friend from 6th grade walks by, googling for a restaurant on her phone.

“All day long, you are selectively paying attention to something, and much more often than you may suspect, you can take charge of this process to good effect. Indeed, your ability to focus on this and suppress that is the key to controlling your experience and, ultimately, your well-being.”
—Winifred Gallagher, Rapt

Map detail 2I was recently at the Linate airport in Milan, waiting to pick up my daughter. As I looked through the faces, ready to pick out hers, people coming through the gate started reminding me of friends and acquaintances—this person’s eyes, that person’s hair, the way that guy walked. One woman looked so much like a nanny the girls had a few years ago, I had to do a double take—it was not her but it absolutely could have been an older sister.

Our brains are wired to recognize faces—one of our oldest skills, in fact. “At as early as four months,” Max McClure writes on the Stanford website, “babies’ brains already process faces at nearly adult levels, even while other images are still being analyzed in lower levels of the visual system.” So even if a few decades have passed since we last saw a friend, our face-recognition ability gives us a very good chance of spotting them, but you have to put down your phone and pay attention. Even if you don’t spot anyone you know, people watching is way more interesting than anything up on the Huffpost right now.

 

 

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book review

Short Lists: Books April 2017

Books I’m reading

1.  The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
2.  Zealot by Reza Aslan
3.  Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
4.  Strategy by Captain B.H. Liddell Hart
5.  The Ruined Map by Kobo Abe

 

Tao Te ChingBooks I’ve Read More than Once in the Past Year

1.  The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
2. Tiny Beautiful Things, Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
3.  Tao Te Ching by Lao Tszu
4.  300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
5. Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

 

 

Recent Favorites

1.  Tiny Beautiful Things, Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
2.  300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
3.  When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
4.  American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5.  Vox by Nicholson Baker

 

ObstacleRecent Favorite Audio Books

1.  The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
2.  The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene
3.  But What If We’re Wrong by Chuck Klosterman
4.  The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
5.  Getting Unstuck by Pema Chödrön

 

Satanic VersesBooks I need to reread

1.  Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
2.  1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3.  Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
4.  The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
5.  Vertigo by W. G. Sebald

 

 

Books currently on my nightstand

1.  Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
2.  The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
3.  Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
4.  The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour
5.  Start Where You Are by Pema Chödrön

 

 

Last five books read

1.  Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, translated by Gregory Hays
2.  This is How by Augusten Burroughs
3.  You are a Complete Disappointment: A Triumphant Memoir of Failed Expectations by Mike Edison
4.  Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed
5.  Seducing the Demon by Erica Jong

 

 

Last five books read on kindle

1.  300 Arguments by Sarah Manguso
2.  The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
3.  Levels of the Game by John McPhee
4.  The Art of War by Sun Tzu
5.  Tiny Beautiful Things, Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

 

Last five poetry books I’ve read from

1.  On the Pulse of Morning by Maya Angelou
2.  New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver
3.  When One has Lived a Long Time Alone by Galway Kinnell
4.  Inferno by Dante
5.  The Captain Lands in Paradise by Sarah Manguso

 

Graphic Novels

1.  Maus by Art Spiegelman
2.  The Sandman by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
3.  Cages by Dave McKean
4.  V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
5.  Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

 

Books currently on our coffee table

1.  The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects  by Giorgio Vasari
2.  Exactitudes by Ellie Uyttenbroek and Ari Versluis
3.  Cy Twombly: Centre Pompidou
4.  Luigi Ghiri: Pensiero Paesaggio Thought Landscape 
5.  Jean-Michel Basquiat: Mudec

 

all art is propagandaThe Next Five Books

1.  Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
2.  The Ending of Time by Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm
3.  Against Everything, Essays by Mark Grief
4.  Dry by Augusten Burroughs
5.  All Art is Propaganda by George Orwell

____________________

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60s
Essays

Intimations of Immortality

Recollections of Early Childhood (after Wordsworth)

— • —
My father fainted when the doctor began stitching up my tongue. I was four.

— • —
I remember lying on the grass one summer day, watching the clouds drift into shapes, and seeing this huge Chinese head lean over the edge of a cloud and look directly down at me. We looked at each other for . . . minutes . . . hours . . . days?

— • —
When you’re five and it’s cold and Christmas Eve and you’re driving to your grandparent’s house—the moon following beside your car over the frozen wheat fields of the Idaho panhandle is such magic that you try to capture it in poem for years and years and cannot ever quite.

— • —
My father took me rock climbing with his buddies. They had a rule: If you stepped on the rope, you got spit on. That day, I was wearing a light-blue short-sleeved Idaho Vandals sweatshirt. I was 7.

— • —
In my 30s, I was putting together a book of my paternal grandfather’s memoirs for him to give to the family. I was stunned that it taken me so long to realize that he was actually horrible, insecure little prick.

— • —
My uncle, when he was a teenager,  got into a fistfight with my grandfather. I often weigh this against my own experience of not having thrown a punch at my father.

— • —
I started walking at nine months—which I’m sure was a nuisance to my eighteen-year old parents. I got my first stitches shortly thereafter—it involved a vase at their friend’s house and I got them just above my left eye.

— • —
When my paternal grandfather found out that his son had impregnated my mother—both were 17—he shamed my father so hugely and so completely, I think he never recovered. I heard this story for the first time at my father’s funeral.

— • —
My family story is a train-wreck occurring for generations over decades. Did I jump off in time?

— • —
When I was four, my mom and my aunts took me to a drive-in movie. I was supposed to sleep in back. I did not. The movie: Rosemary’s Baby.

— • —
I remember very vividly scraping the living bejesus out of both knees at the age of five, while riding a pedal fire-engine at a friend’s house.

— • —
When I was five, my mom would put me on the bus in Moscow, Idaho and my aunts would pick me up in Lewiston.

— • —
I would spend weeks of summer at my grandparents house—the single A night baseball games were well-attended, totally electric, and it was the best temperature of the day. I’d go with my grandfather. I’d take my mitt.

— • —
Best summer memory of my maternal grandfather: going out at night with flashlights to catch earthworms in the flowerbeds we had watered before dark. Honorable mention: Driving the golf cart at the country club and bowling at the alley he owned.

— • —
My grandmother tried to teach me how to whistle with a blade of grass (I still cannot do it, alas).

— • —
When I was very young, I spent a lot of time in Lewiston with my Grandmother. Those moments were totally lived in the present. I wish I remembered more. I think my mind has become too organized by time since then. But I still have these memories of walking to the store to buy licorice and Mountain Dew (back when the bottle had hillbillies on it).

— • —
I have a very distinct visual memory of touching a hot stove burner the first time. It was totally a science experiment. Lesson learned.

— • —
When I was six, I dropped a rock over the fence onto my friend Bryce’s head. It was also a science experiment. I am stunned over my lack of regret at the time.

— • —
When I was nine, and at school, someone entered our house—he didn’t take anything but he did pee on the floor.

— • —
In second grade, I told Tami that she was my favorite girl. She proceeded to march me around to her friends to have me repeat it. Lesson learned.

— • —
In second grade, at recess, I found myself surrounded by 4 or 5 girls. Lisa Sanders kissed me. I had a crush on her for years after that. Maybe even still.

— • —
My grandmother kept a stash of JFK 50-cent pieces in the freezer. She gave them to me on my eleventh birthday so I could buy a 10-speed.

— • —
It took me ten times to pass beginner swim lessons at Mission Pool in Spokane.

— • —
Elementary and Junior High Crushes: Peggy, Tami, Lisa, Shari, Denise, Joette, Debbie, Cindy, Teri, Yvette, Debbie, Suzy, Tari, Annette, Donna, Wendy, Anne, Sue, and JoAnne.

— • —
In elementary school, I ran home from the bus stop everyday one year. I cannot remember why.

— • —
In elementary and junior high school, the male teachers had hack paddles. Some of them lovingly carved in the school’s shop to leave special marks—initials in many cases— on young boy’s asses.

— • —
In sixth grade, I was often found sitting in the hall for being a smartass. I know, big surprise. I always just avoided the hack-paddle.

— • —
In ninth grade, I was 5’2” and weighed 100 pounds at the first of football season. I weighed 92 by the end of it.

— • —
To hell with the time-space continuum—if I could go back in time I’d beat the shit out of at least 9 people, including my father and several teachers.

— • —
Fights were held after school at the pump house. The fierce recess passion had usually died off by then, but word had gotten around, it’d became a spectator sport, and the show must go on.

— • —
My brother launched a perfect toss of the bat from home plate toward first base where I stood after an easy out. The bat spun in slow motion like the bone tossed into the air in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The cut that followed was not as famous as Kubrick’s.

— • —
You cannot line-item veto shit from your past. Alas.

 

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Inferno
Essays

Why I am Not a Christian: Aphorisms

Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian was the first philosophy book I bought (in 1980 at the University of Oregon Bookstore) for my own edification.
Illustration by Gustave Doré: Dante’s 9th Circle of Hell.

 

             — • —

I am certain the ego does not survive death.

             — • —

Consider how surprised we are when a pope acts like a follower of Christ.

             — • —

There’s nothing like the verbal contortions of the rich as they try to explain what the “camel through the eye of a needle” verse of the Bible really means.

             — • —

I can totally imagine Jesus throwing up a little bit in his mouth every time Mitch McConnell utters the words “Christian Values.”

             — • —
Yes, I know there is unlikely to be many cases of acid reflux in Heaven. Think of it, if you can, as symbolic.

             — • —
If the Republicans could rebrand Jesus, would they keep anything?

             — • —
Would the Democrats rebrand him?—or does the hippie-Jesus thing just work for them?

             — • —
The Democrats are surely as uncomfortable as the Republicans with the story of Jesus expelling the merchants and money changers from the Temple.

             — • —
Jesus has been rebranded many times, of course, as it seems unlikely that he, a jew living in Middle-East, was a pale, flaxon-haired, proto-hippy with an adorable little gentile nose.

             — • —
Think of baptism as a ceremonial washing of the brain.

             — • —
You cannot demand a literal interpretation of the Bible, and then cherry pick verses to suit your needs, all the while, praying to high heaven that no one notices the embarrassing parts you’ve wrapped in plastic and hidden in your basement freezer.

             — • —
If, in the year 325 AD, a tree fell and took out the building where the Council of Nicaea took place, killing every participant who could pronounce Christ divine, would we still have all these damned Christians around today?

             — • —
A conception considered immaculate occurs without mess or pleasure, thus considered by Christians to be optimum.

             — • —
Christianity = Victim Worship.

             — • —
The self-righteous are generally repugnant bullies, but the ones who speak threateningly about eternal hellfire might as well be dipped in shit.

             — • —
What a god-fearing man actually fears is what his neighbors will think.

             — • —
Christianity bestows power to the victim. Or at least gives them some material to mouth off with.

             — • —
If someone put a gun to my head and made me choose a religion, I would pick Buddhism—but perhaps I’d make that choice because—living in the US for most of my life—I generally have not been exposed to that many self-righteous Buddhists.

             — • —
I think reincarnation is more ridiculous than Christian Heaven, although more interesting as a literary conceit.

             — • —
The afterlife is procrastination’s big imaginary friend.

             — • —
Will Heaven lose some of its luster for the most judgmental of Christians? Or will they simply adjust their range to include what’s available?

             — • —
What kind of ratings would a reality television show based in Hell, shown in Heaven, get? Off the fucking charts, right?

             — • —
Anything lasting an eternity is bound to become hellish sooner or later.

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Ashe
book review

Transcendent Sports Writing: John McPhee on Arthur Ashe and Bill Bradley

“Physically loose, and mentally tight.”

This was Arthur Ashe’s motto and mantra, which I came across while reading Ryan Holiday’s The Ego is the Enemy—a book I’ve read three times in the last year. It’s currently my second favorite book—it’s also my second favorite Ryan Holiday book—The Obstacle is the Way being my favorite. 

I love many things about Ryan Holiday’s books (I’ll write more onHoliday in a column down the road), but the one thing I’d like to point out here is that I am never at a loss for things to read after reading one of his books. I always end up with several books I feel I have to read next.

Levels of the GameSo I went questing to find books on Arthur Ashe. His Days of Grace is in my queue. But I spotted Levels of the Game on Amazon. I had enjoyed John McPhee’s book on Bill Bradley’s basketball days at Princeton so much I decided to read that next.

Arthur Ashe was in many ways the Jackie Robinson of Tennis. Except, as McPhee points out, there were many many good players in the Negro leagues that would have performed well in Major League Baseball, all things being equal. Which, of course, they weren’t. Jackie Robinson was chosen by Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers because he thought Robinson was mentally tough enough to endure everything that would be thrown at him—the angry crowds, the racism, the calls that would go against him, the physical cheap shots that players would take at him. But Arthur Ashe, as a black tennis player, was peerless.

So like the boxer, Joe Louis, who was a master at keeping his emotions in check in the ring, Ashe kept his opinions about the umpire’s calls to himself.  He channeled his energy into hustle and focus. Besides making him more fun to watch—not only are tirades not entertaining, they are are embarrassment to tennis, to sports, to all mankind—it kept his focus on what he could control, making him harder to rattle. He’s the opposite of bitchy players like Jimmy Conners or John McEnroe.

McPhee: “A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background and comes out through his motor mechanisms into shot patterns and characteristics of play.”

Levels of the Game is structured around the 1968 U.S. Open semi-finals match between Ashe and Clark Greabner. The book follows the points of the match, adding in reflections by the players on a moment by moment basis, as well as biographical information about their upbringing, their families and the paths that brought them to this match. Graebner is the all-American boy type. Strong and hard-hitting, handsome, and well respected by people in tennis including Ashe, who was a friend and Davis Cup teammate. Graebner is given equal time by McPhee and seems likable and someone you might rout for—except maybe against Ashe.

McPhee: “A tight, close match unmarred by error and representative of each player’s game at its highest level will be primarily a psychological struggle, particularly when the players are so familiar with each other that there can be no technical surprises.”

It’s hard not to like Ashe. He’s an underdog, has obstacles to overcome, his play is described as fluid. His confidence fluctuates, and when things start going right for him, he begins taking chances with his shots. McPhee, writing about a turning point in the match: “Ashe is now obviously loose. Loose equals dangerous. When a player is loose, he serves and volleys at his best level. His general shotmaking ability is optimum. He will try anything.”

McPhee successfully interjects their memories next to his description of the game. He shows how a point here and a point there, how just a few inches, could have really tipped this match. But the main thing you get out of this book is how Ashe’s stoic attitude gives him his best shot to win the match, win the crowd, the respect of the judges, and even win the admiration of his opponents. He deals with details but he doesn’t sweat the small stuff. He controls what he can control, lets go what he cannot. As the match unfolds and Ashe loosens up and his confidence grows—its an amazing thing to read. “Physically loose, and mentally tight” is totally how I’d love to live my life.

 

Sense of Where You AreAfter finishing Levels of the Game, I immediately reread A Sense of Where You Are, McPhee’s book about Bill Bradley’s senior basketball season at Princeton. First off, this is a really great basketball book. His descriptions of Bradley’s moves, the offense and defense of the game are precisely and eloquently done. He really zeros in on Bradley’s main strengths—discipline and concentration. McPhee describes how Bradley, not the most physically gifted athlete, deconstructs a move, his reverse pivot for example, breaks it into it’s component parts, then focuses on his footwork, then on the shooting motion, and finally putting it all together into a devastating, hard-to-defend package.

“His creed,” McPhee writes, “which he picked up from Ed Macauley, is ‘When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.’”

Here’s McPhee description of Bradley’s warm-up routine: “In Philadelphia that night, what he did was, for him, anything but unusual. As he does before all games, he began by shooting set shots close to the basket, gradually moving back until he was shooting long sets from 20 feet out, and nearly all of them dropped into the net with an almost mechanical rhythm of accuracy. Then he began a series of expandingly difficult jump shots, and one jumper after another went cleanly through the basket with so few exceptions that the crowd began to murmur. Then he started to perform whirling reverse moves before another cadence of almost steadily accurate jump shots, and the murmur increased. Then he began to sweep hook shots into the air. He moved in a semicircle around the court. First with his right hand, then with his left, he tried seven of these long, graceful shots-the most difficult ones in the orthodoxy of basketball-and ambidextrously made them all. The game had not even begun, but the presumably unimpressible Philadelphians were applauding like an audience at an opera.”

Both books transcend a sports book categorization. The sport parts are precisely written and are informed by the biographical, psychological, philosophical aspects of the stories. These are books that a sports curmudgeon could enjoy. Finally, Arthur Ashe and of Bill Bradley are humans you can learn from. If you could work toward what they were really amazing at—discipline, focus, being fluid in the moment—you’d totally be a more effective, more completely realized human being. And your backhand or hook shot would be vastly improved.

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The Liar’s Dictionary

The Liar’s Dictionary first appeared in Emergency Horse magazine 100 years ago!
With a tip of the hat to Ambrose Bierce.

 

Afterlife
Procrastination’s imaginary friend.

Allusion
Acknowledged plagiarism.

Alternative
Contradictory, contrary, opposite.
Archaic: a choice or possibility, as in reality or not.

American
One who pretends that excrement does not exist and then spends an entire evening watching it on television.

American Dream
Trivial pursuit.

Artist
One who talks about doing art.

Astrology
The belief that although weather patterns cannot be predicted a week ahead, emotional states of humans as influenced by the stars, can.

Baptism
A ceremonial washing of the brain.

Bible  A book that documents, in detail, our virtue and our enemy’s vice.

Bigly
An American horror film about a petulant toddler who is mysteriously granted a wish by an arcade fortune telling machine called Putin Speaks and wakes up in the body of a 70 year-old orange businessman.

Christianity
The name of a large religious cult composed mostly of the enemies of Christ, named so as to discredit him and cast his deeds into oblivion.

Christmas
The day on which the capitalists celebrate the birth of their savior, Santa Claus.

Citizen
A flag-hugger when he is at home watching television. A patriot with his mouth shut.

Classy
Gaudy and inarticulate but rich.

Compliment
Acknowledgement of another’s likeness to oneself.

Democracy
Government by the wealthy.

Dumb
One who cannot speak.  Also one who shouldn’t.

Eccentric
A nut who has money.

Fair
Getting more than your sibling got.

Feel good
A type of book or film that causes one to feel nauseated.

Folk Music
A type of music, often acoustic, which extolls the sensitivity of the singer.

Free
That which accompanies a purchased item.

God-fearing man
He who is afraid of what his neighbors will think.

God-given Talent
An ability which the creator of the universe has favored an athlete with so that he might buy swimming pool, drugs, and hookers.

Immaculate Conception
A conception without mess or pleasure, thus considered by Christians to be optimum.

Job
A character in the Old Testament whom Jehovah made miserable simply because he could.
The word now means source of employment with the employer taking on the role of Jehovah.

Lie
The truth told by democrats as reported by republicans (and vice verse).

Life-style
That which one affects in absence of having a life.

Lite
A term used on products to attract those who like to indulge and yet still be self-righteous.

Miracle
A “recorded” event in which the laws of the physical universe are repealed temporarily.

Most
Almost.

Musical
Opera for Americans.

Muzak
A collection of sounds used by business owners to express politely their contempt for mankind.

Nonsense
Any opinion differing from your own, reasonable or otherwise.

Orange
Black.

Overtime
Time spent working over that which was allotted, for which the government is paid.

Peace
The maintenance of the status quo.

Performance Art
Any performance in which the art has been removed indelicately.

Personalize
An activity similar to branding, differing only in that a brand is used to mark a valuable possession.

Pessimists
What idealists who call themselves optimists call realists.

Pussywhipped
Being overly susceptible to your cat’s atrocious needs.

Religion
Mythology with good propaganda.

Sex
To atheist heathens, one of the exemplar ways humans show love and affection for one another.
To the religious, how human reproduction is accomplished.

Sinner
He who is acting as you would act had you the gumption.

Small Talk
An activity that allows those who have nothing worth saying to say it.

Spanking
The sound of one hand clapping. See Zen.

Tourism
An activity that allows Americans to watch television in different parts of the world.

Travel
Tourism’s embarrassed father.

Valentine’s Day
The designated day for romance invented by florists and gift card manufacturers to relieve people of their money one day of the year and their responsibility of romance the other 364.

Vanity Plate
A metal automobile identification handcrafted by criminals for idiots.

White Supremacist
A caucasian who, having discovered in himself no redeemable qualities, makes one of his skin color.

Zen

 

 

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Essays

No Surprises Here: Trump is the Real Deal

Originally, I had a different plan for this blog. It was to be a collection of personal, literary, philosophical essays. Which will still likely happen—someday. It was taking me a while to get it off the ground. Mainly because I am out of writing-shape. There are other reasons, which I’ll get to as I continue to write this column. In the meantime, Trump is spazzing out.

Right now though, as I sit here in Milan, looking over my Facebook feed, I’m thinking, “Shit, everything’s fucking nuts over there.” But it is Facebook and of course my feed is fed by a bunch of liberal, outspoken, thoughtful, atheists—my favorite kind of humans. Looking over the Guardian, the New York Times, CNN, etc though, I’m not finding anything too very different.

Here’s my view from Italy:

1. Trump is the Real Deal

Generally, as long as I remember, the political system has used the same operating system. Sure there have been updates and the apps have changed, but the US political machine has largely traveled on the same track, with a Democrat or Republican pennant signaling the different administrations. This feels different though. This is a different OS. I feel like the Republicans have wanted to do this kind of shit for years. The large-scale immediate changes against women, against healthcare, against immigrants, against the environment, against science, against intellectuals—you know they wanted to do this but were worried about the backlash. Now they’re waiting to see what sticks to the wall and what is actually way too far. They are incredibly waffley about Trump. They want their agenda but don’t want responsibility for the repercussions. Now they’ve unleashed a force they can’t control. They will be unable to get the jinn back in the bottle (oh, wait, that mythology is likely to be banned soon).

The new scary shit: censoring the government scientists, threatening martial law, blocking immigrants, wanting to control the internet, wanting to shut journalists up—to quote one Mr. Byrne: “this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around.”

2. Honey Badger Don’t Give a Shit

We saw this during the election, so it’s no a surprise he’s putting his foot on the gas now. Lies and Facts are the former paradigm. He knows what he wants to be true, so the plan is just to keep hammering at it.

“The honey badger doesn’t care! It’s getting stung like a thousand times. It doesn’t give a shit. It’s just hungry. It doesn’t care about being stung by bees. Nothing can stop the honey badger when it’s hungry. What a crazy fuck! Look, it’s eating larvae, that’s disgusting.”
—Randall, from The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger

Fact-checking is busy work for liberals. We’re not going to change his behavior by pointing out his errors. His disregard for politics as usual is as informative as it is scary as shit.

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

3. Trump Could Totally Lose His Shit

So what happens then? Mike Pence is probably more controllable but he’s still a crazy, right-wing Christian motherfucker. He might be better than anarchy—sure, there are people that think anarchy would be a perfect shift-into-neutral mode for this country but I absolutely do not trust the most efficient power-grabbing group—see every dystopian novel ever.

4. His cabinet is terrifying.

And white. And unqualified.

5. Even Conservative, Opportunist, Warhawk Dick Cheney has Spoken Against Trump

“I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from,” Cheney said on a Monday appearance on the radio show. “A lot of people, my ancestors got here, because they were Puritans.” —Dick Cheney

6. Now is not the Time for the Democrats to Prance Around

It’s time to put on your pussy-hats people—actually, it’s time to put on your pussy-helmets, and sharpen those pussy ears—and get some work done. It’s time to be solid and strong and not be an unorganized bunch of wusses, over-beholden to corporate dollars. Who knows what new parties we’ll see emerge in the next couple years. The Democrats should not take anything for fucking granted. Trump won because he appealed to a white working class that had not been taken seriously for a long long time. Also, the amount of people who were not inspired enough to vote is a failure of the imagination of the Democrats.

7. Do Not Burn Out, Do Not Grow Numb

It’s only been a fucking week. Maybe he thinks we’ll burn our bulbs out after a couple months. It’s quite a pace to keep up but boy would it suck to tumble lazily into the River of Complacency. How do we keep this up until we get the job done?

8. World Citizenry

I don’t know about you but I have friends from all over the world. I have friends I have met from the University of Washington’s Human Center Design and Engineering Department, from my wife’s international work teams, from traveling, from friends of friends—from every continent. They are far more important to me than how well our governments play together. As E.M. Forster wrote: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” So far, Trump’s mainly signed a bunch of executive actions (although it looked like he was ordering dino-nuggets and fries from a kids’ menu) but the action going on at the airports—blocking immigrants from entering the country—is the simply first domino going over.

 

It’s not time to see what Trump will do. He’s doing it. We see it. It’s not time to compromise and work together. This is not a Bush or Reagan level threat (or if you’re conservative, it’s not an Obama or Clinton level threat). For those of us who have compared any of these people to Hitler, we were wrong about that. Hopefully, we aren’t the boy who cried “Hitler,” too many times. Because, this reads more like a coming-of-age boy-becomes-a-dictator story, than any of those previous ones.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, by all means, read your 1984, your Handmaid’s Tale, your Brave New World, your V for Vendetta, your Origins of Totalitarianism. But it’s time for us to stop filling our Facebook feeds up with See-What-He’s-Done-Now outage. I get it. I’ve done it. I did it earlier tonight.

What’s next though? We’ve tried out all sorts of forms of protest since the sixties. How do we protest in a way that gets shit done—that continues to get shit done? He has to be stopped without bringing the chaos. We are vulnerable. That’s going to get worse, probably a lot worse. It’s time to sharpen our wits people. We’re already in it deep.

 

 

 

 

 

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