love letters from my 34th summer

It may come as a surprise to you that I, unmarried and single, am giving you advice about marriage. But you are my closest friend, and though I can’t be there to witness your nuptials, I would be remiss if I didn’t chime in with some encouragements and warnings. The fact I have never been married should probably cause you to take the following advice with a grain of salt; but it is a fact, I must insist, that makes me no less right. Without further preamble let me begin.

1.) Ignore everyone’s advice (except for the person that wrote what you are now reading, but including any self-help-newlywed-books-for-couples-to-read-together that people will give you as a wedding present because they are too cheap to buy you a rice cooker and too lazy/thick too write the definitive marriage guide which of course you now are reading).

If you were trying to get thicker, fuller blooms on your rose bush you might ask the nice British lady across the street with the lush flower garden for a little advice on water and soil, but we are talking about marriage, man. Look around you. Nobody has it completely right. For thousands of years men and women have been trying the best they can to coexist without driving wooden stakes through their sleeping partner. And do you think that pasty, smiling couple wearing matching chambray shirts on the dust jacket of your wedding present, fresh off the ”couples retreat 2007” tour, has stumbled on the magic potion? What about the lady with forty-five cats who keeps telling you to never go to bed angry and always keep things interesting? Nope. Her cats are inbred, and so is her advice.

I’m telling you to handle this how you have handled everything else in your 32 years on this earth. Wing it. You are a smart guy, or I wouldn’t let you be my best friend. Figure it out. Try. Fail. But keep trying. Keep talking to each other. Don’t be so busy thinking and obsessing about ”it,” the marriage, that you forget to have one. Otherwise five years from now you’ll be rushing home from work on a Friday because that’s your planned Make-Your-Own-Ice-Cream-Sundae-Night, and you and I won’t be friends anymore

2.) Argue Often and with Gusto, but in Private.

Apathy kills more marriages than Larry King. And nothing gets the blood moving like good old-fashioned argument. Give and take is healthy. Disagreement means you are both thinking, and both involved. Revel in your difference. Remember, if two people always agree then one of them isn’t needed.

Am I saying you should scream at each other, walk out of restaurants, throw bowling trophies (never come to a marriage without mysterious trophies-even if you have to buy them at a yard sale), or behave like the cast of Real World 2? No, of course not. Good, sound and calm arguments preclude all of the above. Good arguments prevent bottled up explosions and sulking.

When I used to wait tables, I was blown away by the amount of sulking men in the world. Is this just an American thing? Has Oprah emasculated us that much? Usually, I would wait till the woman was in the bathroom, before smacking the man open-palmed across the face. Then I would buy a shot of tequila and make the now red-faced sulker drink out of a dirty shot glass.

“You’re a man,” I would whisper right before she returned. ”Act like it. Don’t make me follow you home and smack your face again.”

I made really good tips on those occasions, and nobody ever complained about the service. Later the men would return to thank me for saving their marriage/relationship/job and promise to name all their children after me (Jamie is versatile in that regard.) So don’t sulk. Argue, then move on.

3.) Try not to die.

Many a music career has been bolstered by a timely death. Most writers wish they could cash royalty checks from beyond the grave. But death really harms both comedy careers and marriages alike. Dying tends to make any healthy marriage suddenly stale and one-sided.

To put it in plainer terms, my friend, it’s time to start taking better care of yourself. You now have someone else to think about. So quit trying to kill yourself with Bacon and Bacon Hot Pockets. Seriously, don’t die, or I will smack your face.

4.) Keep Picking Your Nose, But Stop Wiping It on the Bathroom Wall

Maintaining your sense of individuality while maintaining a healthy marriage can be difficult. As couples get older often they are not viewed anymore as two separate people, but suddenly they become one person (Bradgelina for example). This is one of the most scary aspects of marriage to me.

There are certain things you do that make you uniquely you. Don’t change these things. Be proud of them. There are other things you do that also are unique, but you may need to change them. Part of being a human being is growing, learning, and evolving. I think marriage is a wonderful excuse to stop being child, but don’t grow up so much you become unrecognizable.

I think it’s healthy for a married couple to pursue interests exclusive of each other. In other words, get away from each other some. Have some time for you. And don’t change…except for all that annoying stuff. Change all that.

5.) Laugh Till Milk Comes Out Your Nose

People say all the time, “I married him because he made me laugh,” or “I am looking for somebody with a good sense of humor.” I want to know where all these funny, laughing people are? People get married, have a couple of mortgage payments and all the sudden, life isn’t funny anymore. It’s very serious actually. And all that laughter is gone. What happened? Please keep being your laughing, silly selves. It will make me happy to see you guys growing old together, still belly laughing, still grinning, still spitting your drinks out at restaurants.

6.) “Love means always having to say you’re sorry.”

Hah! Get used to saying it. The proper response from now on is either “Sorry” or silence. But I have no idea when to use which. That’s why I am single. Oh yeah. Don’t go to bed angry, and always keep it interesting.

I wish you both all the best. I send you both all my love and friendship. I promise I’ll be there for your guys…just not when it’s important like your wedding day. I am so happy for you, and am smiling like an idiot even now as I write this. Congrats and all the very best.

‘True Love’

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

I took the following pictures several months ago. Because I was busy planting mint, weeding lettuce, and sleeping at my friend’s farm I haven’t had the chance to post them until now. You have all seen pictures of helicopters. I am sure some of you have seen pictures of cheese and crackers. However I am quite confident nobody has seen pictures of helicopters and cheese and crackers together.

Why am I so confident? Because I invented the genre. Go to Flickr. There is no Helicopter/Cheese/Cracker group. One reason these pictures are so rare is because people never have them all together at the same time or the same place. You could Photoshop those things together, but that would pathetic. Photoshop makes my blood boil, so don’t get me started. Anyway, think about it. Lot’s of people have had crackers and helicopters, or cheese and crackers, but never all three at once. And if they did, it wouldn’t occur to them to make a life-changing-word-view-altering-statement via avant guard photography like it did me.

My mom told me once that I had an eye for photography, and I thought she was just being nice because she was my mom. But no, as it turns out, she has an eye for people that have an eye for photography. She’s right, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.

Another person on the boat, who shall be known as The Near-sighted Medic, saw my genius and decided that since cheese and crackers and helicopters was my thing, he would be a pioneer in the world of sliced sausage and helicopters (see picture below). The results were uninspiring. One of my friends did get a picture of me holding up his rainbow-shaped sliced sausage. I look like I am trying to help because I am nice, but really I am thinking: “I am thirty-two years old, I am holding a piece of rainbow-shaped sausage as a helicopter flies away for a Near-sighted Medic, I don’t even have health insurance, and I will die alone.” Later I told The Near-sighted Medic I wouldn’t be able to talk to him anymore because I didn’t support his vision, plus I didn’t like him making light of my new life’s work. I still had two more weeks out there with him. Thankfully it wasn’t awkward because he couldn’t see me unless I was within a two feet radius of his thick glasses.

I have lost a lot of weight since that picture, so I don’t need a lot of people commenting how fat I am now. I saw I had problem and stopped eating so much cheese. I am almost back to my normal/sexy weight. Oh and just so you don’t think I am limited in my cheese and cracker genre, have a look at this fast boat, cheese and cracker picture. Coming soon to a fine gallery near you.

These days I find myself back on a boat. Work, despite harshing my mellow, is a welcome distraction from deep inside my brain. It seems, sometimes, when I am sitting around doing nothing, waiting to go back to work, I think about the beautiful mess/ ugly structure my life has become. I am happy to working again after over two months off. Seeing the words “happy” and “work” so close together makes me wonder what I am talking about.

So the plan is to work through the summer and maybe some of the fall. I am not sure yet. Then I will move to Chengdu, China. There in Chengdu, China I will resume Doom in China. I will finish my novel about China. I will also be more diligent about updating this. I hope.

So this boat is pretty nice. I have a cabin to myself, with internet in-cabin. The gym is huge, so I have been carefully getting ripped. The vessel is large. The crew seems laid back. I am not certain how long I will be out here, but at least I am on such a nice big boat.

I want to thank those of you who patiently come to my little coffee-stained page hidden in the back of the internet. I realize I don’t reward you often enough with updates, inspired writing, or exciting news. I do appreciate your kind words and the knowledge that a few people I have never met show up occasionally to read my writing. Thanks.

Sandra Seeden was lying on her back again and the crowd was going crazy. Straight overhead she saw the Chinese flag hanging from the rafters was clearly. She pivoted her head slightly to see the American flag that she knew was hanging opposite, but it was blocked by the referee’s perfectly round pot belly. Then, for the twentieth time this evening, she made her way back to her feet, shook her head, and tried to locate her assailant. Yes there she was—a boyish-looking Chinese girl adorned nattily in red headgear, matching boxing gloves, and the hint of a smile. Sandra wasn’t in pain; she was just irritated at getting knocked down so many times and the crowd’s never ending glee over it. She didn’t understand that.

  The waiting had been the worst part, and that’s how she knew this wasn’t some bad dream. Dreams, even very bad ones, move much more swiftly than this. She had arrived at the arena a good two-and-half hours ago. She saw all the television cameras outside. She even saw a few of the other American kick boxers. They had looked through her. They were serious male kick boxers. Obviously they didn’t care for her presence. She didn’t mind. Kick boxers were at the bottom of her list entitled “Eligible Intelligent Men.” For those were the only men for her. So she had waited and waited. After she gotten bored she had wandered out of her dressing room to watch the pre-match festivities from the tunnel. And for a while she had wondered if there would be any kick boxing at all this evening. Maybe she had misunderstood.

  Every five minutes the ropes in the ring were pulled apart so the next petite singer dressed in shiny, ruffled polyester could climb in and pay homage to Celine Dion. It went on and on and on, interspersed only by children dressed in blue silk dancing with swords pretending they were stabbing each other. I bet those children are encouraged to run with knives, she had thought. Later the children had laid down their swords and were pretending to kick box each other. The crowd had cheered when one of them had messed up and fallen without being kicked. Cheers of encouragement? She didn’t know.

  Finally some official looking people crawled in between the ropes and begin to make speeches. She had seen this sign before. She knew she would be fighting within the next hour. The first official looking man’s mic didn’t work. But he acted like he didn’t notice and droned on anyway. This “speech” was then supplied to the audience, in English, by a shy-acting, skinny, young, Chinese man. He switched the microphone on before he began. Haltingly spoken English had washed over the building. She had gone back to her dressing room then.

  The blaring sound of Nelly was her cue to enter the ring. As she made her way to into the ring, she decided that she hated Nelly and the entire town of St. Louis. She hoped that something bad would happen to St. Louis because of Nelly. But then she supposed something bad happening to St. Louis would be redundant.

  The crowd had clapped politely for her. That is what this was. A Chinese/American kick boxing friendly. The only kicker was that international kick boxing ruled would not be observed. This was China, and they would be fighting under Chinese kick fighting rules. In Chinese kick fighting grabbing another fighters legs is completely legal. Actually, rather than just being legal it is the main way to score points. Other kick boxers not accustomed to these rules don’t fare so well. Imagine if biting ears would get you ahead on the scorecard under international boxing rules. Mike Tyson would have enough money to act really insane—Howard Hugh’s insane. In this system boxers without the appetite for soft cartilage would be penalized. So foreign kick boxers came to China, refused to fight the Chinese style, then went home having forfeited their belts.

  She didn’t really know about any of these kickboxing rules first hand. She had heard the other American fighters complaining about it in the hallway. She really didn’t know anything about kickboxing. She was actually just an ESL teacher. Two days ago she had told the foreign liaison at her middle school that she would help out at an “important cultural exchange celebration”. Today she was being thrown on the mat repeatedly in this nationally televised event.

  Next time, she thought, I won’t sign my teaching contract until I see the English translation.