Fitter, Happier
Democracy should spread on its own accord, by choice. But I guess President Bush made it clear in the 2000 elections individual choice — votes — a democracy do not make.
Sound familiar? I wrote that sentence exactly four years ago today, in the hours just subsequent to Rumsfeld’s beloved “shock and awe.” The post concluded:
And so, here we go. Godspeed the 19-year-olds in harms way. And God bless the 24 million Iraqis soon to feel the might of our “liberation.”
Four years later, The Washington Post reports that, while statistics are fleeting, some numbers are certain: 3,197 U.S. military deaths, 38,661 Iraqi military deaths, at least 60,000 civilian deaths.
To date, the Iraq war has cost U.S. tax payers nearly $500 billion (with a “b”).
Meanwhile, in America, life goes on. I wrote the following on March 19, 2003, but I have a hunch that — “surgical strike” and timeline notwithstanding — I could write the same sentence tonight after work.
Moments after MTV News leadership sent most of the teams home, what is now being refered to as the “surgical strike” began. I was tipped off by the VP of the department running down the hall top speed yelling into the newsroom “Something’s happening.” We were live on air within 15 minutes, and stayed live for just under two hours until 11:30. After putting the website to bed, I walked home, logged on for one last check, and went to bed around 2. I was up at 8, and back into work by 9, where we had just enough time to meet and post-mortem Wednesday night’s live coverage before the next volley began, and we raced down into the studio again. We were on the air for almost three hours, until 3:45, then again at 7.
Adrenaline not withstanding, the whole thing feels quite sad. The sound of those first cruise missiles exploding was chilling. I imagine being there, in that city of 6 million, finally having fallen to sleep as dawn approached, and being jarred by that sound, that un-Godly thunder. It’s so grave. So frightening. So real.
Yet, as I walked home from work tonight just after 10, two days into this thing, this Life During Wartime, folks were leaving the theatre and stumbling drunk through the rain like any other Thursday night. What gives? Are we making TV and websites for others in the media? Does no one else care?
So, congratulations, America. Or, Happy Anniversary. Or, Rest In Peace.
And I’m really sorry.
The Gloaming
Abbi and I walked down Broadway in silence, our breath trailing somewhere behind. Save for the rogue plow and off-duty cab, the snow-covered, ice-choked city was still asleep.
Late Friday afternoon, and as the streets locked up with frozen rain and snow and the airlines threw in the towel, I watched online as eight Amtrak trains between New York and Philadelphia sold out in almost immediate succession. I sighed, lifted the receiver to my ear, and dialed my mother’s phone.
“How’s our patient?” I asked her nurse.
“Well, she’s still in post-op, but the doctor said it went really well,” Elizabeth reported. “Are you in Philadelphia yet?”
And so I broke the news.
The truth is, I was somewhat relieved. Because, the truth is, I was a little angry when my mother first asked me to come home for her surgery. ‘I’m thirty-five,’ I thought. ‘I’m not your husband,’ I thought. ‘And I just got engaged; this time is supposed to be all about Abbi and me.’
See, the whole thing jammed a bunch of buttons. Guys with single moms may know what I’m talking about. The rest of you may be able to empathize. It’s not rational, or reasonable, it just is what it is. I have a 61-year-old single mother. Sometimes she needs me. And sometimes that pisses me off.
Initially, I considered not going home. I thought, ‘I needed to make a statement, to set some boundaries.’ Cooler heads, though, prevailed.
“Listen,” my friend said, “I understand that you may have some issues or whatever, and those are probably valid. But medical emergencies trump everything, yunno?”
Another chimed in, “God forbid something go wrong.”
And so, somewhere around eight o’clock, as most of New York hunkered down in the face of a sucker punch of a Nor’easter, I slipped my laptop into my messenger bag, lifted the collar on my sport coat, and headed uptown. Outside, Times Square was downright hostile. The sidewalks were mobbed with wide-eyed, bewildered tourists slogging like cattle through the wintry mix. Hail, sleet, rain, snow and ice exploded through the air like fiery shrapnel. I squinted through the icy assault, and dashed for the subway.
* * *
It’s remarkable just how much liquid the human stomach can hold. The volume is especially dramatic when in reverse. That is, when thrown up. Which is precisely what my mother did within two minutes of Abbi and my arrival at Pennsylvania Hospital Saturday morning.
“Sorry, kids,” she said between bouts of nausea.
“It’s just bile,” she explained, slipping into nurse mode. “It happens.”
It’s unnerving to see one’s parents vulnerable. It’s worse when they’re ashen, immobile, and hooked to an IV.
The hospital wasn’t anything like “Grey’s Anatomy.” It was cold, horribly generic, and institutional. Between the furniture, the staff, and the linoleum, it was almost wholly out of time.
Abbi and I spent the afternoon making vaguely nonsensical small talk when my mother was awake, then whispering and reading magazines when she was asleep. Around four o’clock, as her color began to return, and her sentences began to make sense, we wheeled her to the car, and drove her home.
Pulling into Leopard Lakes, the pond was thawed and full of waves. Lantern Lane was unplowed and strewn with fallen branches. Turning down the driveway, we were greeted by a sheet of silvery ice. I slid the trick to a stop, stepped out, and walked carefully across the ice towards the house. I opened the garage door, then looked towards the car to see Abbi picking herself up off the frozen ground.
Through a groggy, Dilauden haze my mother slurred, “She slipped.”
Abbi (who arose unscathed) and I helped my mother inside, then spent the night steeping tea, making beds, fluffing pillows, and fetching prescriptions. We fell asleep on the living room floor watching “Flicka” on demand.
* * *
I woke this morning to the sound of birds in the back woods, and water bubbling through the creek. I pulled on my jeans, sweater and boots, and walked downstairs. My mother was wide-awake and — under the influence of Vicodin — prattling on like a coked up chipmunk. I took a few tugs on my coffee, responded sarcastically a while, then said, “Yunno, even Chris — who’s know me a few years less than you — knows I’m not very talkative in the morning.”
Outside, the sun had broken over the trees. I stalked around the yard snapping photos. The lawn was coated in a thick, impenetrable glaze. The driveway was an ice rink three inches thick.
I have never been one to shovel snow (or ice). As the younger brother, and now as a city dweller, a guy rarely has to sweat these things. But my mother being post-op, and her First Wives Club friends set to arrive within hours, I resolved to address the situation.
It took me all day. The ice was stubborn. All morning, I’d periodically break from conversation, pull on my boots, and return to the task. It took four applications of rock salt to even begin break up my small driveway glacier. The black asphalt began to break through the ice as the sun tracked westward, and our return train’s departure edged closer. I hacked and chipped with the shovel, then shattered and spread the chunks to facilitate their demise. As I splayed a final heap across the slowly warming blacktop, I turned my head towards the sky and thought, ‘Wow. That is some blue sky. I wonder if it’s really that blue? Or if it’s my sunglasses?’
My mom was still in her robe when Abbi and I left. The color had come back to her cheeks. She held my face in her hands and said, “Thank you for coming home. I know it wasn’t easy.”
I smiled and said, “No problem.”
* * *
Just now I paused a moment as I stepped from the 72 Street subway station into the crisp evening air, and pulled off my sunglasses. Broadway was clear of snow and ice. The sidewalk was coursing with pedestrians. And above me, a fair dose of bright blue still shone through the gloaming.
Random Notes Volume XIV
I’ve taken to doing speed work in the mornings. Basically, I sprint a quarter mile, then recover for a half mile, then do it all again. It’s supposed to make me faster, and thinner; alternating intensity helps one lose weight faster than a steady pace.
This morning, as I rounded the top of The Reservoir, The Fray’s “Over My Head” blaring in my ears, I looked down on the hazy skyline, and felt a huge sweep of emotion. If I hadn’t been in a full-on sprin, I might have started crying.
In a good way.
Walking back from H&H and Starbuck’s, I thought to myself, “It’s all about the anthemic rock these days.” If I’ve listened to The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” once in the last few weeks, I’ve listened to it a thousand times. Songs like these are key. They’re broad, sweeping, and mid-tempo — like my life. Anyway, here’s an excerpt of this morning’s playlist:
Begin The Begin – REM
Over My Head – The Fray
Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol
This Is Your Life – Switchfoot
Lady With The Spinning Head – U2
Truth is — the practical specifics of wedding planning, the merge and move notwithstanding — everything is copasetic… as soon as I get home from work. Here at The Network Of Fun, we’re stradling a paradigm shift (as evidenced by yesterday’s big Viacom/YouTube news). To that end, I find my packet of take-home reading getting thicker and thicker. Here’s last night’s:
The Web 2.0 Bubble (Atlantic Monthly)
Media’s Focus Narrowing, Report Warns (LA Times)
Has Success Spoiled NPR? (The Washingtonian)
At Google, The Search Is On For A New Approach to Old Media
Hip-Hop Is Rock ‘n’ Roll, And Hall Of Fame Likes It (NY Times)
YouTube’s Fate Rests On Decade-Old Copyright Law (ZDNet)
The White-Castle Ceiling (NY Magazine)
I’m not complaining. It’s all good. I keep having these moments where I’m rushing through the city, and the light’s just right, and the music’s just right, and I look around a think, “Huh, look at you. Who’d have guessed? You’ve kinda’ turned out allright.”
Close Your Eyes (And Start To See)
Sam said I buried the lead. The truth is, it was a double murder.
The subject line read, “Benjamin Wagner Invites You To Rock And Muthafuckin’ Roll!” The details were as follows:
Host: Benjamin Wagner
Location: Rockwood Music Hall
196 Allen Street, New York City
When: Sunday, March 25, 7:00pm
Phone: 212-477-4155Join Chris Abad, Tony Maceli, Ryan Vaughn and me as we perform tunes from my “Heartland,” “Love & Other Indoor Games,” “Almost Home” and “Crash Site” albums, plus new songs from my forthcoming release, “Giving Up The Ghost,” plus a cover or two for good measure.
Also, celebrate my engagement to Ms. Abbigail Keller exactly two years to the date and at the very venue at which she tapped me on the shoulder, introduced herself and said, “Good show.”
Sam is better known as Samantha Critchell, Fashion Editor for the Associated Press. She and I attended Syracuse University together. In fact, we lived in the same freshman dorm. She’s seen me at my worst, including at least one occasion in which she found unconscious (too much Mr. Boston vodka) and covered in magic marker scribblings.
Sam emailed yesterday to congratulate us, and — like any true journalist — make a few comments on my Evite copy. To her credit, she didn’t chastize me for dropping the F Bomb on 347 unwitting invitees (including, I would come to find out later, singer/songwriter/guitarist Chris Abad‘s boss), but she did point out my lapse in journalistic priorities:
So you bury the news that you’re engaged!?!
Congratulations. We knew this would happen after our picnic. It wasn’t a question of if but when. She’s a very lucky girl. (I know you’re going to say that you are a lucky guy, but let me give you a little credit here.)
Of course, I didn’t occur to me that my random Evite would constitute breaking news for many of my closest friends. Sometimes I forget that Benjamin Wagner Dot Com isn’t everyone’s home page. It did occur to me, however, that I was scooping myself on the title of my next CD, “Giving Up The Ghost.”
I was in the subway just a few days prior to releasing “Heartland” when, out of the blue, the phrase came to me. Somehow it summarized everything that I was (and still am) going through, specifically, letting go of all of the dreams, fantasies, and delusions of youth. I’m not relinquishing the ones that drive and motivate and inspire me, I’m casting out those that haunt me, that torture me and keep me up at night. You know the laundry list: the record deal, Grammy award, the cover of Rolling Stone, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the house in the Hollywood hills — things like that. These aren’t the things that sustain us. They’re distractions, false idols, golden cows. They’re a ruse.
I was listening to Terry Gross interview on of my musical heros, Michael Stipe, on Fresh Air this weekend. Of course, he and REM were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last night. On the surface, it’s everything I dreamed of as a kid. She asked him (as most interviewers, including myself have) “What impact did it have on you always being the new kid in the neighborhood?”.
“The positive aspects are that my family are very close. When you’re forced to make friends all the time it kind of makes you come together as a unit. We were a great loving family and we still are.”
‘If only I’d heard him say that when I was a teenager,’ I thought to myself. ‘Imagine all of the heartbreak I could have avoided!’
I helped Chris put together a bunk bed for Ethan on Sunday afternoon. It was one of those classic Ikea challenges, where you lay everything out on the floor, determine what’s missing, and forge ahead into your three hour construction project. As it was taking shape, Chris and Jen began to move furniture around the room. I took Ethan and Edward into the living room to keep them out of the way. Naturally, I grabbed Chris’ guitar, and Ethan grabbed his, and we began strumming.
“Name an animal,” I said.
“A lion!” Ethan replied.
“And what’s the lion’s name?” I asked.
“Daddy!” he said.
So there we were, Ethan and I, sitting on the corner of the couch, singing “The Lion Song” (“And the lion goes ‘Roar!’”) for our audience of one eight-month-old. And it was as meaningful, as inspiring, and as rewarding as any school auditorium, house party, or hip venue I’ve ever played.
So I’m giving up on the day dream. I’m giving up on the coast. I’m giving up on you, baby. I’m giving up…
I’m giving up the ghost.
How The West Was Won (And Where It Got Us)
I just got sidetracked by a flashback to November, 2004.
Bush had just stolen another election. Heather had just been published. And I had just released “Love & Other Indoor Games,” moved to 80th Street, and hit rock bottom.
I read those words now and shiver. I remember being That Guy. I remember finding myself drunk in the middle of Brooklyn at six o’clock in the morning on a school night after another Smith Family show. I remember defining myself by my songs, and an audience’s validating applause. I remember blundering through one relationship on top of another. I remember the drama, the heartache, the uncertainty. I remember it as an especially cold, dark and almost sinister time. Not surprisingly, then, I don’t miss one single part.
Shortly thereafter, I made a very concerted effort to sort my shit out. I resolved to grow up a little bit, to embrace a bit more solitude, to take a vacation or two, to find a spot where music fit into everything but wasn’t everything. Shortly thereafter, I resolved to keep out of relationships until I could keep my relationships out of the paper.
And so, these days I hail a cab early. I define myself more broadly not in how many songs I’ve written, records I’ve sold, or shows I’ve played, but in how well I’ve loved friends, family, and strangers. And these days my next New York Times appearence is far more likely to be the Vows, not Modern Love.
Still, this afternoon found me sorting my shit out again. Today, I began preparing for what Abbi has come to jokingly refers to as “the merge.” In three weeks, her one thousand square foot East Side apartment and my 800 square foot West Side apartment will be merged into our 750 square foot Hell’s Kitchen apartment.
And so I dragged three bags of t-shirts, sweaters and sport coats to Goodwill. And so I left a dozen DVDs on the stoop, and hauled three dozen books to the library. And so, downstairs in the trash compactor, eight boxes of CDs — my CDs — await incineration.
It’s not, of course, about the stuff, though. It’s about all of the things that we bring with us, packed and unpacked, seen and unseen. It’s not about what we were, but what we’re becoming.
Come to think of it, maybe it always was.
West Of The Fields
I don’t generally mind signing my name to checks, contracts and the like. I pretend I’m signing an autograph, and let the loops on the B, W, and G (which are the only distinguishable letters in my signature anyway) go wild.
The wee hours of this morning, though, found Abbi and I scribbling our names twenty-six times. Each. In duplicate. Which comes to one hundred and four signatures total (two, come to think of it, for every week of the year).
Abbi and I signed our lease. One hundred and four times.
“It’s official,” I said. “You’re stuck with me.”
I celebrated with a big ol’ cup of coffee, and a day-old Beard Papa cream puff. Mmmmm, for breakfast!
Anyway, our new building, The Westport is located in Manhattan’s tony (kidding) Clinton district (which I prefer to refer to as Hell’s Kitchen). The website describes the building thusly:
Located just steps from Central Park and Columbus Circle, in the heart of New York City, these stunning contemporary apartments offer the sophisticated New Yorker a superb selection of a spacious, high-tech designer homes, luxurious hotel-style services and amenities, condominium-quality features and finishes, plus the convenience of an absolutely unsurpassed walk-to-everything location.
One former neighbor described it a bit differently, “an average New York apartment tower: not architecturally distinctive, just a run-of-the-mill building with a relatively handsome facade.” Which is fair enough. They were throwing up a lot of those brick boxes as Millennium approached, in contrast to the Miami Beach style glass towers en vogue (and absolutely financially out of the question) these days.
Which is fine with me. I just wanted a clean, dry place with a view to eat, watch tv, record some songs, and sleep. So when Abbi and I would walk through a place, she’d be looking under the sink and in the cupboards, while I would walk straight to the windows.
Fact is, the place isn’t much to look at from the outside. But it’s a doorman building (whatever that’s worth) with an elevator (you’re welcome, Dad), a roof deck, and a gym (my buddy, singer/songwriter and hoop dreamer Chris Abad, who lives down the street, was like, “You know they have a basketball court in the basement, right?”).
Either way, we’re in. We move into our south and west facing (get this, Midwest) 800 square foot one bedroom (with walk-in closet and terrace) unit on April 1 (no foolin’).
Funny this is, The Westport is literally across the street from Chris and my very first New York apartment. When we moved here in 1995, the lot was a one-story taxi garage. Years later, shortly after Chris moved out, the garage came down and Related Properties began building The Westport. More than once, I sat on my fire escape and watched the construction. And more than once, said construction woke me up, and prompted Daily Journal entries like this one dated March 22, 2002:
Standing in the Roseland mezzanine looking down on Ryan Adams lurching and jerking beneath the strain of his ego’s creation, I was at once envious and contented: It’s just a few short steps from the Mercury Lounge to Roseland. Is it enough to come close? To know you have the songs, the band, the chops, and the where with all to make it? Or is there a point, ever — Madison Square Garden? Royal Albert Hall? The Grammy Awards? — when it’s close enough to there (wherever there is)? And what’s the cost? Do you burn bright, then burn out? Or keep a slow and steady flame flickering definantly against a steady gale?
Handing out promo CDs (in this case, “Crash Site”) as the exhausted audience filed out into the cold night afterwards felt like a bad episode of VH1′s “Bands on the Run.” One guy yelled “We’re from Texas,” his red leaflets scattered and blowing across the sidewalk. A singer/songwriter stood in the corner with a suitcase of CDs, giving away his dream for free. Bandmates railed about “the competition,” elbowing me out of their way. Like sharks in chum-filled waters, folks snarfed up my messenger bag of CDs. My last one went to an especially assertive — and wasted — older guy in a Bryan Adams “18 ‘Til I Die Tour” t-shirt.
This morning, the sun spills over Hell’s Kitchen, the piledriver slams it’s relentlous, mercilous rhythm, setting its foundation deeper and depper and deeper, one cold hammer blow at a time.
Ends up the pile driving had a raison d’etre: too much bedrock. And ends up other neighbors — like CBS, Sony Music Studios, and The Hit Factory — were equally nonplussed. This explanation from www.wirednewyork.com:
While project teams often face many hurdles in the design and construction of a building, in the case of 500 W. 56th St., it was the site and its logistics that created the toughest task for this project team.
From the beginning, excavation and foundation work ran into rock. Not just a little bit of rock, but a large amount of rock that did not show up in geotechnical information and was therefore unaccounted for in design documents, explained Bob Schwartz, a project executive for Plaza Construction, the project’s New York-based construction manager for this $75 million, 400,000-sq.-ft., 25-story, 371-unit apartment building.
“Pile driving,” added Schwartz, “had to be coordinated with our neighbors, many of whom have television and recording studios. On numerous occasions, we had to interrupt construction so they could record segments for their weekly broadcasts.”
And so, some thirteen years after moving to 447 West 56th Street as an unemployed, single bachelor, I’m moving to 500 West 56th Street as an engaged media executive. I’ll be paying roughly three times the rent of the old place across the street. But I’ll be gaining a large amount of rock.
One can never have too much rock.
I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)
She said yes.
The question, it could be argued, was a long time coming. The concept, it could be argued, has inspired almost every song, every blog entry, and damn near every conversation prior to this one. For me, it was never a question of whether I’d get married; my parent’s divorce hadn’t sullied the institution altogether, and plenty of sane people I know have seemed to pull it off. Instead, it was the obvious — when, and to whom — and, more essentially, how will I know for sure?
Somehow, over the course of the last few months, the former has become superfluous. I love being with Abbigail. We run in Central Park, then prowl local dives for burgers and wings. We order sushi, use an ottoman for a dining room table, watch “Heroes,” and never once does she bristle when I ask for the third time, “Now who’s that character again?” I love watching her ably navigate my idiosyncratic family. I love watching her with Ethan and Edward. I love watching her sleep. And I love watching her read, or write email, or solve a crossword puzzle. There is something natural, simple, and comfortable between us. I know for sure because I feel it in the furthest corner of my heart, in the stillness of my pulse, in the depth of my bones.
And everyone can see it. My father said, “There’s been a sparkle in your eye and a bounce in your step since you two met.” My sister-in-law Jennifer said, “If you don’t hurry up and marry her, Ethan will.” Even my mother chimed in approvingly.
And so, the first weekend in January found us trolling for apartments. The following weekend found us browsing rings at Tiffany & Co. A few weeks later, this Thursday morning around six o’clock, to be exact, found me here in my apartment writing this (then deciding not to post it until the deed was done):
I woke up startled. My heart was pounding in my chest. My stomach was churning. Outside my window, a gauzy, waning moon was setting. The clock read 4:39.
I lay there a while rolling everything over in my head. I picked up the ring at lunchtime. I didn’t want to hold onto it for more than a day. I knew it would burn a hole in my pocket. And I didn’t want to blow the plan. I’ve been arranging it for weeks. I’ve been readying myself for months. Years. My whole life. This is it. Today is the day.
In just over an hour, we will meet at Bethesda Fountain as we have for dozens of morning runs prior. There — where east meets west, where Central Park’s formal lower third meets its wilder upper reaches, there below Bethesda, Angel of the Waters — I will drop to one knee, and ask Abbigail to marry me. Later, when it’s settled in, I will whisk her off to Rose Hall, Jamaica, for the weekend.
The plan, hatched over months with legions of advisors (my parents, my brother, CJ, Jon, Jason, Michael, Ron, Fish, Rob, and Josh), co-conspirators (Rosalie, Stewart, and Nidhi) and support crew (Jonathan, Jacki), came together with Rube Goldbergian precision.
I left my apartment as dawn broke, and ran through The Ramble towards Bethesda. At 7:15, as the sun peaked over the East Side, she jogged into view. I took a deep breath and reminded myself, ‘Kneel, then ask. Kneel, then ask.”
It was, on the face of it, a quick jog like a hundred jogs before.
“How far do do you want to run?” I asked.
“Not far,” she said. “I have to be at work early.”
“Actually,” I said, “You don’t have to be at work at all today. Or tomorrow.”
She looked confused. Then she spotted the glimmer of the ring between my thumb and forefinger. I dropped to my right knee, and spoke…
I don’t know what I said, exactly. And I might not tell you if I did. We agreed afterwo\ards that it was semi-coherent, and maybe even somewhat articulate.
Either way, she said yes. Twice. (I wanted to be sure.)
Then I told her we were going away to Jamaica (chosen for its non-stop proximity and afternoon flights) for the weekend.
Standing there together, hugging in the morning’s first light, a woman walked by and said, smiling, “What a nice way to start the morning.”
Best part of it all?
Abbi still wanted to go for that run.
A few hours later, we’d spoken to our parents (all of whom knew the plan), packed our bags, been driven to the airport, climbed aboard Air Jamaica, and jetted off for Rose Hall. Upon arrival, we are greeted with the musky smell of paradise, and whisked off in black Town Car complete with a fully-chilled bottle of champagne. By the time we hit the Ritz Carlton, we are giddy and giggling. The head of PR and Chief Concierge greet us at the door, and usher us through the place like rock stars. Our room is a club level, ocean view suit with two decks overlooking the Carribean.
We spend four days and three nights eating jerk chicken, drinking Red Stripe, playing Crazy Eights, and trying on the word “fiance.”
We were — we are — very, very happy.
* * *
On the beach, I discover that I am the only person at the resort not reading a best-selling murder mystery. Instead, I’ve opted for Chuck Klosterman’s “Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs,” a title which drew its fair share of raised eyebrows, and, it could be argued, hits a little close to the day job for a beach read. Why not just pack Season One of The Real World into my carry on and lock myself away on the air conditioned fifth floor club lounge?
Klosterman cracks me up, though, and so I find myself sitting in a chez lounge a few feet from the ocean laughing out loud. Example:
The Empire Strikes Back” is the only blockbuster of the modern era to celebrate the abyssmal failure of its protagonists. This is important; this is why “The Empire Strikes Back” set the philosophical template for all the slackers who would come of age ten years later. George Lucas built an army of clones that would eventually be led by Richard Linklater.
The Ritz Carlton brochure reads, “First we make the world revolve around you, and then we gently slow it down.” Which they do. In spades. So most of the time, I don’t really think many Klostermanesque thoughts. Instead, I close my eyes, and take it all in: The slow, steady rush of the waves; the rustle of the wind through the palms; the ringing of a sail lines on a mast; the ruffle of a billowing beach umbrella; the low, throbbing bass of a distant raggae tune; the dull thump of a pickup volleyball game; a dozen meaningless conversations; a baby’s cry; laughter; and the distant roar of a jet carrying sunburned passengers back to their chilly hinterlands.
In Jamaica, I come to discover, grown, local men walk around singing to themselves. I like that. I think it speaks strongly of them, and their culture. After a few days, I began to join them in spontaneous song.
Later, en route to the airport, our driver inquires, “You know the word, ‘irie?’”
I tell him that I don’t.
“It means, ‘Everything is fine, mon.’
And it is.
* * *
In the seconds, hours, and days following my engagement to Abbigail, I am somewhat surprised to find that not much has really changed. I love being with her. I love running with her. I love watching her sleep. There is something natural, simple, and comfortable between us. And I know for sure because I feel it in the furthest corner of my heart, in the stillness of my pulse, in the depth of my bones.
Still, there is a new groundedness, a new centeredness, a new quietness that I couldn’t have anticipated. I know that we have no idea what we’re in for. But I know that everything is fine. Everything is irie; I have a partner in crime, a teammate, a roommate, and a friend.
In fact, she’s asleep in the bed behind me right now. So if you’ll excuse me…
Rose Hall, Jamaica
March 1st, 2007
