post 652? (yeah, let's go with that), in which mkf waxes philosophical

from a recently rediscovered email i'd written some time ago to a handsome young man who'd asked me why the right one never seemed to come along:


apropos of your existential question:  i was thinking last night about my maternal grandparents--how they met in rural west texas, and, after a brief courtship, married in 1918.  she was 16, and he 20.  they were incredibly young, incredibly inexperienced, and neither had ever dated prior to their meeting.

when i think about the odds of an arrangement like that working out--two kids, living in one of the most sparsely-populated regions of the world at that time, where the pickings were, needless to say, very slim, meeting at random--i'd give 'em about a zero-percent chance of even liking each other, much less anything beyond that.  and yet, the opposite turned out to be true.  their love was immediate and enduring, and by all accounts (and i've heard many), they enjoyed the happiest and most devoted of marriages.

of course, they had several things going for 'em:  they'd both grown up fast by necessity; they had similar backgrounds, similar values, compatible goals--oh, and chemistry (they were both fine young animals).

but they also had something else going on--something which, on its face, would appear to be a great limitation, but which i've come to believe might be the greatest gift of all.

but how do i put it?  lemme go at it this way:  from time to time, and most particularly since i've started writing myself, i'll go pull up an old handwritten letter or essay by someone like jefferson or madison, struggle through the archaic script, and marvel at the clarity of thought expressed therein--the clear, cohesive, flowing line from beginning to end, unbroken and unmarred by strikeouts or rambling incoherence.

and then i'll consider what it takes my spoiled, techno-modern ass to produce an average blogpost--the editing, overthinking, deleting, backspacing, cutting-and-pasting--and i just laugh.

those writers of the past--even the mediocre ones--could spit it out mostly right the first time because they had no other option--they had to organize their thoughts, focus their efforts and be at their best in a way modern writers with all their fancy tools and toys can't even begin to approach, simply because their primitive medium was unforgiving.

i think it was the same with my grandparents--there was no internet in their world, much less casual dating or, god forbid, divorce.  their primitive medium was unforgiving, and thus they were forced by circumstance to bring their A game to the effort.

oprah winfrey used to ask her guests, "what is the one thing you know for sure?"  had she asked me, my one thing, arrived at after many years of experience in the field, would be the belief that humanity handles scarcity far better than it does abundance.

so, you might be wondering--by way of all this, am i trying to tell you that you should just quit yer bitchin', pick one and make it work goddammit?  no.  because, unlike my grandparents, we've eaten from the tree of knowledge, you and i--we know what's out there, what's at least potentially possible, and have been mass-marketed into the belief that we won't be "happy" until we find just the right needle in that big ol' haystack.  cheery thought, no?

keeping my options open,

mkf

p.s.  needless to day, jefferson would be appalled at the amount of editing that went into the production of this email.

*     *     *     *     *

and yeah, i know, i'm like a dog with a bone with this "scarcity v. abundance" thing, but with every passing year, it just gets truer and truer.

post 651 (or thereabouts--fuck, i can't keep track), in which mkf relates some existential angst

[fine--you want personal, i'll give you personal (god, why didn't i stop drinking an hour ago)]


i had really been dreading this bathroom remodel planned, perpetrated and suddenly sprung upon me by my mostly-absent landlord/roommate and his girlfriend (see? he's not my lover), fearing the disruption of my sacred routine, but turns out it's not been so bad.

in the first place, it means i'll finally be getting a showerhead that's positioned to hit me at somewhat higher than mid-stomach level, so there's that.

and showering at the office has turned out to be an unexpected treat--thick, turkish towels, endless hot water, and who knew attorneys kept such nice triple-blade razors and designer shaving balms in their (unlocked) lockers?  (j/k, sorta)

but the best part has been getting to know gary, the (hot 58-year-old) contractor, because what a pleasant surprise and font of useful knowledge he's turned out to be.

first, you gotta understand:  i hate contractors, and i came by that hatred honest.  after years of watching 'em fuck up my carefully-rendered details on job after job, to the point where i was 86'd from a jobsite for throwing a hammer, not at, but near (which point i stressed over and over as they dragged me away) a contractor early in my architectural career, ol' gary has been a welcome breath of fresh air.

rescued from mcdonald's drudgery at the age of 17 by a builder/uncle who first saw his potential, gary has become a master of many trades who takes tremendous pride in his work, and has delivered far more on this little job than he'll ever be paid for.

i first laid eyes on him when i stumbled bleary-eyed outta my bedroom at the crack o' nine a.m. last monday, to the sound of pounding demo hammers, noted his studly form as i pushed past him on my way to the kitchen (because i'd already gone out back and peed behind a tree).  he wandered in behind me, watched me mix my morning shot-o'-cayenne-in-warm-water eye-opener, asked me why the fuck i was drinking that stuff, to which i merely looked up at him with a bland expression, raised my left fist with index finger curled, and then shot it boing! straight up in the air.

he said, "no shit?", and even after i warned him he'd have to work up to my dose, demanded i mix him one just like mine, downed it, and then doubled over, gasping, while i laughed.

and with that, we were tight.

i've had many conversations with gary since that day, and have grown to like him more and more.  he's my age, had his wild time, grew up, got married, got land and horses, had kids, and now has grandkids.  and his family's his whole goddam life.

as i type this, i'm wrecked because the 23-year-old i fucked yesterday stood me up tonight.

dream, baby

[yeah, i know, but i don't feel like getting personal tonight]

roy orbison was a weird guy, and an even weirder performer.  he'd walk out on stage looking neither left or right, oblivious of the applause, stand stiffly in fronta the microphone, deliver the goods, and then when he was done, leave the stage looking neither left or right, oblivious of the applause, the same way he'd come on.

but, my god, could the man work magic with a song.

in 1987, having faded to obscurity in the public mind and towards the end of his life, he was approached to do a "greatest hits" live concert for television, and when word got out, the biggest headliners in the music business at the time clamored for the opportunity to accompany him onstage.

the show was intimately shot at the ambassador hotel's legendary coconut grove nightclub (which would also soon die thereafter), before an audience of hollywood's best and brightest, and the resulting masterpiece would not only revive roy's career, but go down in history as one of the all-time great live performances, and one that i--who generally hates live concerts--would have given my left nut and two inches of my dick to have attended.

as hard as it would be to pick a favorite from the show, when "dream baby" came up on shuffle tonight at just the right moment of (semi) intoxication, i immediately flipped over to youtube, grabbed the video, watched it a few times, felt my mood elevate immensely, and dashed off this post.

originally released in 1962, i liked the song, but had never considered it one of roy's best--that he'd somehow missed something in the arrangement.  well, 25 years later, he found it.

accompanied by bruce springsteen on lead vocals (whom i'd never thought of as even remotely sexy before i saw this show), with elvis costello, j.d. souther and jackson browne coming in behind, and k.d. lang, jennifer warnes and bonnie raitt providing the oohs and aahs--and all of whom flew in that night and ran through it once before shooting, btw--this is, to me, as good as it gets.

if after watching it you don't agree, then all i can say is, you're either a clueless whippersnapper, or your pleasure centers are wired very differently than mine.

[and naturally, after ascertaining that the video was embeddable before writing this goddam post, and then writing the post, and then embedding the goddam thing, youtube informs me it's "restricted", so you'll have to watch it here]

or maybe you should just have a couple stiff ones and watch it again.  and again after that.  and again after that.