ad astra!

Like People In History is one of my favorite novels. I first read it when I was 17 years old, and at that time it had a profound affect on me. I like to re-read it occasionally, sometimes small parts of it. The follow passage describes how Roger, the book’s protagonist, meets the love of his life, Matt. I think it’s a great passage from a great book.

        …There, below me, not twenty feet away, in the poetry section, holding a book in one large outstretched hand, while he turned a page with the other was—I would have sworn it—the Archangel Ariel himself, his wings folded up, hidden away somewhere in a U.S. sailor’s eyebright middy and thirteen button “broad-fall” flap-front trousers.
        In an unexpected dimensional shift, his eyes moved to the other page, tilting his head suddenly in another direction, and now I could see the single black curl falling across his Alcibiadean brow, the total roundness of of those large dark eyes, every tanned plane of that amazing head.
        I felt a sudden burning in my breast and recalled St. Theresa of Avila had written of being struck in the heart by a blazing dart of Divine Love, and the paradox of enduring such Sweet Agony. So shocked, I had to lean against the walkway railing.
        The sailor must have caught my sudden motion in his peripheral vision: he looked up suddenly, and dimensions shifted again. His direct gaze was so intense it was as though someone had suddenly pulled the blazing dart down through my torso and out of me again via my urethra.
        My head spun, but I managed to get to the far wall, where I found a seat and dropped my head between my knees, glimpsing Daliesque visions of his individual facial features as they fled and cavorted and chased on another through a Palladian cathedral of pastel-hued clouds
…
        I managed to stumble down the stairs to the main floor, hid myself under the edge of the balcony, where Alistair had returned to Faunce and the Goose, fooled around straightening a volume or two here and there among the gardening books and something new on bargello, and sort of wandered nearer the sailor, half circling him all the while, ready to flee at the slightest sign of disinterest.
        From this close, he was taller than I’d expected. Six feet, almost six one. Big shoulders. Incredible deltoids, biceps, buttocks, and thighs outlined and simultaneously gripped by the tight cut of his sailor suit. I found myself thinking the term ‘animal grace’ had been coined just for him. He was still holding the book in his hands, reading it. I tried to make out the cover and thought it might be a recent anthology of poetry. He shifted his pose in place, and it was like continents gliding across the surface of the planet—and that Michelangelesque face!
        Just as I was thinking I can’t possibly do this, he peeked over the top of the book at me. Almost inhumanly silver-eyes set in a bed of black lashes.
        ”Hi,” I said, held my breath, and moved to one side of him, adjusting various books on display that didn’t at all need adjusting.
        He half smiled. Surprisingly small teeth. Was about to say something.
        ”You’re fine where you are,” I said, about to pass by. Understatement of the century.
        He put down the book. It was the anthology.
        ”I should probably buy this,” he said in an even-toned baritone. “And not just stand here reading it all.” No accent at all. Certainly not from the West of South. Yet not from the Bay Area.
        ”No problem,” I said, trying to move away, yet magnetically held by his field of attraction. At that moment, I realized I would have said, “no problem” if he’d demanded to remain where he was and behead passing customers. Then, in a flash of unexpected poise, I added, regarding he book he’d been perusing, “It’s supposed to be a good sampling.”
        ”Is it?” he asked, so intensely naive and questioning I stopped about a tenth of my fidgeting.
        ”It’s supposed to be better than the Oxford Book of American Poetry. Of course this one has English poets too.”
        ”What about this Auden? He considered English or American?”
        He held out the book, and I saw the lines “Lay your sleeping head, my love/Human on my faithless arm.”
        I must have blushed, because he said, “What?” and pulled back the book and read the page. And half snorted a laugh. “That one’s pretty good. But I like this one better.” He showed me “Fish in the unruffled lakes.” “You?”
        ” ‘Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle…’ ” I quoted the title from memory.
        ” ‘Upon what man it fall/In spring,’ ” he continued. “Yeah, I like that one too. You don’t think it’s strange?”
        ”I always thought that particular poem was pretty strange. For example, here,” nervously pointing, and now so close I felt sea-deep within his ambience, his smell like toasted wheat bread that’s not yet cooled, “in the second stanza, where he writes about deeming of going and home and kissing his wife under a sheet, then instead he wakes and sees ‘Bird-flock nameless to him; through the doorway voices/Of new men making another love’ …”
        ”Oh!” I suddenly said aloud. I’d for the first time realized what Auden must have meant with those phrases. “Oh, he must mean…” I stopped myself and began to blush. Gays, Auden must have meant, I thought but didn’t say. “New men making another love.” Opposed to a wife. What else could it mean?
        ”Mean what?” the sailor asked and read aloud. ” ‘…new men making another love.’ ”
        He looked up, those remarkable huge, pale, silver-gray eyes so extravagantly set in dark, long, curled lashes, and seeing me red-faced, he too must have suddenly realized the words’ import, since he too began to color.
        Which meant that against all expectations, all possibilities, all percentages, all fears of it not being so, the sailor must be gay too!
        I couldn’t believe it. I almost levitated off the imported Albanian rose-red marble floor.
        In that moment I felt us connect. It was as if a double-sided grappling hook and suddenly been flung and caught under each of our sternums, grasping tight into bone, biting deep into vital organs.

I wanted to take a little time and write about a man I once loved. It’s been almost ten years since we broke up, and over 12 since we met. We were both quite young back then, I was 20 and he was 23. Even though it’s been a long time since I’ve seen or talked to him I’ll still think of him from time to time when something reminds me of him. It’s strange the way memory works: pearl onions will always remind me of Carson, and Dairy Queen will always remind me of the day we broke up. Even a summer breeze at just the right temperature can take me back to one of the summers we shared.

I first met Carson in a chat room online. It’s fairly commonplace for people to meet from dating sites these days, but back then I think it was still an oddity. He lived in Kalamazoo, an hour or so south of Jenison, where I lived with my mom at the time. I don’t remember if we’d chatted for days beforehand or if that was the first time, but I think it was February 25th when we first met. It was a warmish night for February, no snow but some fog and rain. I remember listening Moby’s album Play while driving the hour down to Kalamazoo to meet Carson at a Steak’n Shake on West Main. I got there before him and had brought a book to read in case he didn’t show. At least that way I could have something to eat, read a little, and then head back home. Carson showed up a few minutes later, wearing a sweater he told me would be “red like Christmas” and also with a book (I brought Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, he brought The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, a biography of mathematician Paul Erdos, by Paul Hoffman). I remember so many little details of that first meeting, but I’m not altogether sure what we talked about, probably because we talked for so long. We spent something like the next eleven hours talking, from probably 9pm to 8am, and it’s still probably the most memorable ‘first date’ I’d ever had.

We stayed at Steak’n Shake for a little while, and then went to Boogie’s coffee shop because I think that was where I’d said I wanted to go in the first place. I had spent time there with friends on my previous trip to Kalamazoo and liked the place. They were open all night, so it allowed us to sit there for all those hours, just talking. I remember the fogged-up window pane to my left, and how we’d both played with the last little bit of coffee in our cups, swirling it around and letting in dry into grainy brown spirals. A girl came up and started talking to us; I remember she mentioned something about bandanas and Carson was concerned that the one he wore on his head while he was out running might have something to do with gang colors.

Once the sun had come up we went back to his place for some sleep (I slept on his couch, I swear) and then after we’d gotten up he took me to University Roadhouse for lunch. One of us got a salad with mandarin oranges on it, I don’t remember who.

After that we had a conversation in his kitchen (“All important conversations happen in the kitchen,” he said) and I left to go home with his cell phone and text pager numbers. Again, I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I think there was some plan to see each other again at some point.

That was our first meeting. I think for me it was definitely what they call love at first sight, but for him I don’t think I’ll ever know. I know that the sensible thing to do seemed to wait a number of days before talking to him again (a convention I still don’t quite understand) but I think I made about a day or so. Looking back, I was definitely crazy about him, probably with an emphasis on the crazy. There was one time when I had a free Tuesday evening and drove down to that Steak’n Shake and left him some messages. I think it was around 10pm by the time he finally got them and showed up, feeling bad, but I explained to him it was okay, since I had studying to do, and was the one who was crazy enough to drive down on a whim. It was that night he played Nine Inch Nails for me—a lot of the quiet, instrumental songs—and explained why he loved music so much.

I remember things got serious when he let me come spend some time with him over Spring Break in March. He still had work to do at Western, so I was left to my own devices during the day, but once he’d got home we’d cook dinner together and watch a movies on his old television. There was one day I spent reading King Lear in its entirety at the Water Street Coffee Joint and bought on of their t-shirts to commemorate the occasion. I still have it to this day.

So much of that time I can’t really see to remember and after 12 years and having spent so much time in that apartment of his it all seems to run together. What I do remember in those early days, before that week and before we’d started really dating, was the anguish I felt waiting to hear from him. All that uncertainty and angst while I was still unsure if he even liked me at all, and wondering when I’d be able to see him again. Needing to see him again. I’d sit at a coffee shop or somewhere writing what are no doubt really terrible poems (numbered 1 through 47) about the experience. The first period we dated I remember there was a lot of waiting—waiting for him to be off work, waiting for my car to carry me to Kalamazoo, waiting for the weekend when I could see him again, waiting for him to call. The waiting was terrible, and the relief when I finally saw him again was indescribable.

We dated officially from that March until we broke up in the early summer. The exact date I can’t recall, but it was horrible and ended with both of us in tears. He was wearing this green soccer jersey that he loved. I think it was sometime in June, because it was definitely before my 21st birthday. That breakup rocketed me into a pretty severe depression. I spent the summer of 2000 feeling mostly lost. I slept with and dated a few people, but really the anxiety and depression kept me from really feeling anything. If it wasn’t for my mom, my friend Brad, my professor Milt Ford, and my therapist, I don’t think I would have made it through.

Somehow, and I don’t remember what happened exactly, but by Labor Day weekend of 2000 I was back in his apartment watching movies. Dark City was one of them, the others don’t come readily to mind. We had long conversations those three days about love and relationships, about what it meant to have another person in one’s life, and what we’d both learned in therapy that summer. At one point we were outside watering his hanging baskets as the sun was setting. He wrote his initials with a wet finger on the railing of his deck. I said his full name to him, and he was surprised that I remembered his middle name. I told him right then that I knew I’d never forget him.

Sometimes in the early summer the setting sun will cast just a certain light, and I can see Carson stopped on the wooden stairway deck behind his house, grilling vegetables on his little camping grill.

After that weekend we were on again and would be a couple for almost the next two years. Eventually he lost his job at WMU and moved in with me in Grand Rapids. I’m trying my best to remember when that happened, I think it was October of 2001; I know it was before the election that year because I remember waking up some morning before it’d all been decided and asking him if we had a President yet. There are, of course, several scenes that I can recall from our life together both in Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids. What I remember the most was the Christmases—in particular one day when we went and cut Christmas trees with Tom, who we rented our room from. There was a Valentine’s day when we decided to forgo dinners and such, and just went and bought things for each other we’d like. He got me a poster of Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night. I can’t for the life of me remember what I got him.

We broke up the week after Fourth of July, 2002. It started with a walk to Subway in Eastown (center of the universe), and ended in an argument. He’d been trying to decide to break up with me for awhile, and offered all sorts of excuses and said some horrible things. Once that conversation was over I ran a few blocks away to Milt and Gary’s house, where they tried to comfort me. Gary told me “it takes two people to be in a relationship.” At some point they sent me back home, and Carson asked if we could go to Dairy Queen.

He moved into the basement and we’d spend the next three months trying to ignore each other. Occasionally I’d pick him up from the bus stop, or we’d eat something together.

Sometimes I wonder if I really properly processed our breakup. Three months later my mother would pass away, and I pretty much fled from Grand Rapids in the aftermath. By some twisted coincidence I settled in Kalamazoo with Todd, who I’d only known for a few months but decided to move in with. I think because that relationship with Todd was so awful and I would spend the next several years in a tailspin of grief over my mother that I never really found myself feeling too terrible about breaking up with Carson once my mother was gone. Her death seemed to signal a very final end to that entire period.

During a cold Kalamazoo winter in 2003, I was in the front room of the house I shared with Josh, Jay, and Joe. I was struck by something that reminded me of Carson, and wondered what he was doing, but found myself not wishing us back together. I’ve certainly longed to have those good days back again, but that’s just the power of memories.

But his influence is still with me to the present day, from a lot of the music I still listen to (without him I don’t know that I would have ever gotten into Nine Inch Nails) and some of the food I cook, products I buy, and even some phrases I use in my speech. It’s amazing how some people leave parts with us long after they’re no longer in our lives. Surely of course I remember the good times more than the bad ones, but I can conjure up a good fight or two just as easily as a sweet moment or fun night out we shared together.

I’ve never fallen as hard in love with anyone else as I did with him, although it’s true to say that falling in love is different with every person. And my youth probably had something to do with it as well. And I’ve yet to have a relationship that felt as important as that one. The last one I had with Aaron came pretty close, but the distance and our different directions in life kept it from going much farther than it had by the time Aaron and I had broken up.

I’ve only spoken to Carson a handful of times since we broke up, but have heard about him through other people here and there. It’s been years since we’ve talked. He popped up on Google Chat in February of 2010, almost ten years to the day we met, but we didn’t say much. I still email him every year on his birthday, for no good reason, and I don’t know if he still uses that email address. But I suppose it proves my words from a dozen years ago true.

the secret is

                        i left because

i couldn’t bear to see you fall in love

                        with someone else who

                                                                 wasn’t me

i don’t think anyone but me has ever understood
what it feels like
to almost
love
you

I am a huge fan of This American Life. And for some reason, perhaps because Wednesday begins the season of Lent, I spent some hours listening to a few of the This American Life episodes that cover religion, specifically Christianity.

Don’t get your hopes up—I’m not converting—I was just seasonally interested. Part of it I’m sure has to do with the Republican primaries, where half the population gets to decide which particular religious zealot (real or imagined) they’ll vote for in the general election.

I don’t really have that strong of an opinion about religion in politics (which is distinct from church & state) as it’s an important part of many peoples’ lives (mine, too, just not how you’re used to). And after all, the Pew Forum reports that over 78% of Americans identify themselves as Christian and 39% of Americans attend a religious service once a week or more.

So while it’d be interesting (-slash-refreshing) to see a non-religious (or non-Christian) person elected President, religion in general and Christianity in particular is still important to a lot of us, and while some people would rather fight against and argue with religious people I think it’s pretty important (and better) to understand where people are coming from, even if I think their beliefs are foolish, silly, medieval make-believe nonsense.

For your listening pleasure, here’re those TAL episodes I mentioned:

290: GODLESS AMERICA
Originally aired 06.03.2005

At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a “Biblical world view” in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place.

304: HERETICS
Originally aired 12.16.2005

The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he’d worked for over his entire life.

77: PRAY
Originally aired 09.26.1997

Can the secular world and the religious world understand each other?
We ask that question while visiting Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Pastor Ted Haggard at the New Life Church has put in place a project to pray in front of the home of every person in the city, systematically, block by block and house by house. He’s also helped organize a 24-hour, 365-day-a-year “prayer shield” over the city; all-night prayer vigils; and more.

147: A TEENAGER’S GUIDE TO GOD
Originally aired 12.17.1999

It’s an odd fact of religious life in America that in this country founded by Christians, in which a majority of people say they believe in God and identify themselves as Christians, that so many religious Christians feel they’re an oppressed minority. They say the media doesn’t share their values. That secular institutions undermine their beliefs. And the job of raising Christian children, they’ll tell you, is like trying to do God’s work from behind enemy lines.

I realize I’m a bit late to the party with this one‚ it seems like everyone I know who’s going to has read the book and everyone I know who’s going to has seen the film. I’ve only seen the first half of the original swedish-language film, but I’ve just finished the book. I’m not sure yet if I’ll watch the film.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, it’s more of a statement about the story itself and its use as source material for the film. The book is well-written enough; at least the English translation. I’ve no clue as to the original’s style but I can only assume that the translation sought to mirror the original. While Larsson does his duty in writing a thriller and manages to urge us to turn the page (the principal point of a thriller being to defer the grand revelations as long as possible while also weaving and twisting the plot sufficiently enough to keep us entertained) I found some of it to be a little tedious. I think it’d be possible to catalogue every meal that the main character eats (perhaps I could write a tie-in cookbook). And I’m not sure what the use of brand names in the book is all about. I suppose it’s just any other detail that Martin Vanger has a Dell laptop and Lisbeth prefers a PowerBook. I’m not entirely sure if those little details matter, but I’m still troubled by even bigger details: that of Lisbeth Salander herself.

The book’s original title in Sweden was “Men Who Hate Women” which is perhaps a more descriptive title about the actual subject of the book than “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” as a lot of the book leaves Salander and her dragon tattoo in the periphery. Sure, without her Blomkvist wouldn’t have been offered the Vanger job in the first place, and without her help the central mystery of the novel would’ve have been solved‚ never mind the more diabolical mystery that creeps up in the middle of the book. But I found myself questioning the nature of her character. I’m not sure it’s important for the story that she’s the character Larsson wrote her as. We need her to be a really good hacker, but I found her tortured soul story and the main-plot-deferring revenge tale a little much. When Salander is considered, the novel might as well have been titled “Women Who Hate Themselves”.

Salander’s abuse and revenge are perhaps meant to be a redemption for all of the women who are wronged in the story, but I find that its violent nature somewhat unsatisfying. It’s good to have a strong, smart woman as a redeemer in this story, but I find Salander’s strength to be somewhat wanting. It could be her fractured self esteem that I’m unhappy with, and the way this problem makes for a rather unsatisfactory end for the book. She does play out a clever comeuppance for the villain of what amounts to be the frame story of the novel. But I wanted something more from this girl with a dragon tattoo. I’m not sure what exactly, but I wanted her character to come up with more than just revenge with a dildo and retribution through a bank account.

The frame story is another thing. It’s what gets Blomkvist into the Vanger mess, and what Larsson laboriously spends the last few chapters of the book bringing to a dull conclusion. Having the main character rocket to national and even international success might satisfy readers impressed by brand names, but after the atrocities that play out over the course of the book I found it to fall rather flat, and just managed to drag the book out another 100 pages after it’s central mystery had been solved. I think it’s because the central story came to such a shocking and sudden conclusion that I found the latter half to be so uninteresting. I’ll admit that a story like this needs something of a happy ending, but this wasn’t a happy ending I was entirely pleased with. That Salander is able to walk away at the end rather than pursue what she finally decides she’s after, rather than stand up for herself and how she feels also betrays the strength Larsson was trying to give her.

All in all, I found TGWTDT to be a mostly competent thriller, with a mostly compelling mystery in the middle and an ending I didn’t particularly care for. It left me wishing the book had been written somewhat differently, but not regretting I’d taken the time to read it.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is available in both electronic and tree-book formats through all major retailers.

The first pharmacy I worked in was one of the highest volume retail pharmacies I’ve ever worked in; for a time we were one of only 2 pharmacies in town, and the only one open on Thanksgiving. This was also back in the days when Meijer had no problem paying to have a full staff, so there would be 6 or 8 of us all working on Thanksgiving.

One Thanksgiving I worked we had a great big spread back in the pharmacy. A whole long table full of thanksgiving, all the fixings, and more. Normally we’re not allowed to have food in the pharmacy, but that was a rule that was let slide more than once. We’d just gotten it all set up and opened for business when I turned around and there was Fred Meijer! He’d let himself into the pharmacy. My first thought was we were all going to get in trouble! This wasn’t just a bag of chips or a box of cookies, but a whole spread for all of us who were working.

Fred reads my name tag and says “Hi Paul! Thanks for working the holiday!” I was stunned and could only manage a “You’re welcome, sir.” Then he turns around and sees the our table, back around the corner where customers couldn’t see.

“Why, that’s quite a spread you’ve got there!” He says and my boss invited him over to make up a plate. A little while later Lena came by and got herself a plate, too.

I’d seen Fred a few times before that, and met him several times after that. I’d helped him with his prescriptions (He’d always call in and say, “Hello, Fred Meijer here!” in a cheerful voice) several times. He was always personable, friendly, and while no doubt a shrewd businessman, he always took the time to thank his employees for the job they did.

Fred was proud of the store that had his name out front, and he wanted you to be proud of it, too.

He was a role model for how to treat customers, too; he may have had over 200 stores with his name on them, but he always acted as if the one he was at was his only one, and whatever customers he saw were his only and most important ones.

In the years since Fred stepped down from the day-to-day operation at Meijer retail has become a much more cutthroat, bottom-line business. With the passing of Fred Meijer, the old fashioned friendly neighborhood market are even further behind us.