Coming Up For Air

Gina and I made for an odd pair. Aside from the wheelchairs we rode in and the fact that 20 years ago we traveled with a little band of fellow residents in an inpatient rehabilitation program for about a month, we had nothing in common. Black. White. Democrat. Republican. New to the adult world. Experience in the halls of power with the stories to prove it.  Close-cut Afro. Opie Taylor haircut. My vague notions of changing the world through politics so as to avoid getting a real job but with no concept of confrontation contrasted sharply with her willingness to name the Opie Taylor haircut and assertiveness to volunteer to pay for its updating. With that same assertiveness, she told me I needed to make the most of my party's ascendancy. I basked in the attention. I also wanted to make it clear that as a very recent college graduate, I was a man of the world. To prove this, I brought Gina a photograph made with a congressman for whom I interned. I undermined the effo

Wizened political sage from The West Wing Leo McGarity intoned, "Presidential elections are won and lost on one square foot of real estate." Pointing at his wrinkled brow, Leo designates the crucial space. "Up here." The campaign to rejoin the 95 or 96% of you who are employed, or for anyone trying to navigate the crucial barrier from outsider to insider, is also maintained in the mind before it is waged anywhere else. Since a career as an actor or actress seems to be one long job interview, that might explain the state of mind the late, blessedly candid Carrie Fisher opens up to us in The Princess Diarist . "It's not nice being inside my head," she admits. "It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live in here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else." Me too. Unemployment increases gratitude for breaks from the same old

Good writing and mutual frailties can connect us with people whose labels are different from our own. Great writing made it possible for godfather of rap Kevin Lee to make the week's biggest impression on me as this sheltered, preppy white guy comes up for air. In "Street Sense" in the issue of the New Yorker magazine dated December 18 and December 25, Kelefa Sanneh. "Lee," Sanneh describes, "is forty-six, an age that offers some advantages of its own." Lee says of his professional influence on youth culture, "With this gray beard I'm a O.G. When I say something, they listen – like, 'Oh, the O.G. must have been through it." The Bible says as much, signifying gray hair as my crown. When I look in the mirror at the same graying whiskers Kevin Lee sees, I'm gratified for the confirmation that some of the youth culture I hope to influence in my next job might have the same reaction. If being the O.G. and owning up to it, rather tha

"It is a wonderful experience," reminisces Thomas Merton in his spiritual memoir The Seven Storey Mountain, "to discover a new saint." Even more delightful, I consider as I come up for air, when that saint's name is Patrick. The middle-aged male, or at least THIS middle-aged male is not noted for adding friends so readily and enthusiastically among the fellowship of the saints, which is how the Bible refers to the Church. THIS saint, Patrick, might have made himself a candidate for canonization by my decidedly egotistical standards just by reading what I wrote and offering feedback. See how benevolent I can be, I say with the President on The West Wing, when everybody does what I want? This saint, Patrick, grew in my good graces by what he wrote after commenting on this blog. His two words, "Keep smiling," were more impacting than a passel of mine. If there is a personification of the Sesame Street game show host Guy Smiley, it has never been me. Pho

An eight-year-old who enthusiastically tackles a book on how to care for his dog is likely to get my attention. An eight-year-old so intent on the wisdom his book offers that he fails to notice when the actual dog needs to actually go outside is likely to keep that attention and be on my mind when I come up for air to consider the week's events. Jonah can be excused for his lapse. Books are a great source of widening experience. Still, I wonder how often people who have been around longer than Jonah choose a favorite, familiar format from which to get most of their input about life and then, purposefully or not, ignore everything else. Closing in on another year of reading or listening to at least 250 books, I'm sure I've missed my share of dogs in distress. That is, I've missed opportunities to actually use what I learn in order to benefit others whose presentation may not be as ordered or as efficient as the page sequence or high-speed, on-demand narration of a book.