​It’s what happens after Donald Trump wins the Presidency that should concern the GOP. Trump won’t be the only big ego in Washington. Congress, even should it remain solidly in Republican hands, is not a mere rubber-stamping institution. Inevitably, some portion of Trump’s agenda will meet resistance from GOP legislators. It happens in every presidency: a president coming at odds with his own party.
 
How will Trump respond? Will there be collegial comments about their honest differences? Will there be talk of the necessity to compromise? Reconciliation? Or will Trump respond as he has responded to every confrontation and hurdle he’s faced so far in his presidential quest: with bluster and venom?
 
Or, to put it another way, how long will it be before President Trump, never one to politely brush off a conflict, calls Paul Ryan “a loser”? How long will it be before President Trump tells his supporters that he wishes someone will “punch” Senator Mitch McConnell “in the face”?
 
God bless Mitt Romney. Back in 2012, Trump was one of Romney’s most vocal and public supporters. I remember reading articles how Trump flew to Boston for what was supposed to be Romney’s 2012 victory celebration. Presumably, Trump thought Romney would have made a fine president. For Trump though, loyalty is fleeting. Those same articles about Trump flying into Boston for the victory celebration had Trump demeaning Candidate Romney by the end of the evening, once it became apparent Romney had lost the election.
 
Just today, Trump said, “Mitt Romney... was one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.”
 
A few months ago, Trump talked up his friendship with Senator Ted Cruz. Lately, however, Trump’s been dishing up a tweetstorm of unsavory and demeaning comments about Cruz.
 
Ted Cruz isn’t going to win the Presidency. But the downside for Cruz will come in 2018 when his Senate seat is up for re-election. You better bet those disparaging Trump comments will be used against Cruz—both in the primary challenges he’s likely to face and in the general election.  Mark my words: Trump has laid the groundwork for Cruz’s eventual 2018 Senate loss.
 
And so it will be with every other congressional GOP leader and subordinate who dares to stick up to Trump on even the smallest, most trivial matter.  Trump won’t contain his anger. Trump ain’t a flat-Earhter; he’s a scorched-Earther. He cares nothing for principle, nothing for the Republican Party.
 
Today’s Washington Post editorial states, “A political party, after all, isn’t meant to be merely a collection of consultants, lobbyists and functionaries angling for jobs.”
 
This speaks to a certain cynical transactional impulse, the idea that the Republican Party has come around and made peace with Trump’s candidacy out of hope that, when elected, their tacit support will be rewarded with sinecures and patronage jobs. Call it jobs for peace. Call it what you want.

But I call it misguided.

​What strikes me about this is the presumption that establishment GOP hacks might actually expect jobs in a Trump Administration. I don’t see that happening. I don’t see Trump hiring anyone within Washington for substantive positions. The reason he’s running for president is because he DOESN’T TRUST Washington. And Trump’s not a stupid man. If he’s running against Washington, as he has been, he’s not going to suddenly hire Washington once he’s elected.
 
Instead, he’ll hire his New York sycophants, however initially unsuited they will be for their tasks. He’ll hire the people who are solely owe their positions to him, not GOP party hierarchy.
 
Frankly, if the GOP party hierarchy was just a collection of political hacks “angling for jobs,” I would think they’d be smart enough to connive for a nominee who’d be most likely to guarantee them those jobs. But then again, it’s also probable, given how the GOP has botched the last couple of national elections, that Republicans just aren’t smart enough to realize just how disruptive a Trump Presidency will be to their long-term interests.

Readers of this blog may have noticed in my recent posts references to some novel revisions I've been making.

I've actually worked on-and-off with this material for several years. An agent who saw two drafts last year emailed me last month asking if I was still working on the novel, saying he'd like to see it again if I revised it. So, of course, I went back to it. Going back over the notes he sent in response to the previous two drafts, I was able to get a good feel about what more I needed to do. 

A few minutes ago, with some trepidation, I just emailed the latest revision to him.  I really like how the novel has changed, and how it's built to a more operatic ending. Hopefully, the agent will like it too.  Who knows? Maybe the third time is a charm?

Errata: My "Why We Need Snow Monsters" essay was published earlier this week in Entropy. It's a fun little piece, I think. Breughel and Neanderthals and Tolstoy, O My!  If you're interested in giving it a peek, click here.

Last night, working on one of my novels, I typed, "The preposterous was the last refuge of the desperate, a form of magical thinking to confront everyday futility."

I stopped, paused, considered what I wrote. I am not in the habit of crafting artistic statements of intent, but it struck me as the perfect mission statement for most of the characters I write about.

And about myself. Here I am, well past the age when you would expect me to know better, and I'm still trying to craft the one perfect novel that-- gasp!-- might save the world. 

Yeah. Preposterous. Preposterous that, in this age of video gaming and declining patience with the written word, reasonable people might still think that it is the novel that can save the world. And preposterous, given the many times I've come up empty on this endeavor, that I still think I might be able to write that novel. 

Within the past 48 hours, I've talked with at least two other writers who, in varying stages, are deciding whether, in the face of rejection and debate about the efficacy of writing, they should still press on. One has published a couple of novels. The other, a poet, revealed to me that she just won a fairly major award that she still can't publicly announce. We've all, through our careers, have received just enough encouragement, just enough acceptances and wider acclaim to have reason to believe we're reasonably talented. (I say this knowing that, of the bunch, I'm probably the least decorated of the three). We write because of our own internal rewards we receive when drafting decent sentences, crafting decent images, and (as preposterous as this sounds) constructing meaning within our work.

But it's still preposterous. Years ago, like many others, I believed that if only I could land a story in X Journal, if only editor Y would take notice in me, if only Agent Z would represent my work, somehow the heavens might part and, lo and behold, a wider audience would take notice of me.

It still hasn't happened. 

Years ago, while interviewing a former business associate of baseball star Lenny Dykstra (in conjunction with a nonfiction piece I was writing), I came across one of Einstein's lesser-known theories: the theory of insanity. According to Einstein, insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Each time I begin a new project, I think of that. As in, "Hey Dumbass! How many novels have you tried to write? Why do you expect this to be any different?"

Efficacy issues. That's what I sometimes battle against. I suspect many others do, too.  As in, if the net result of spending hundrends of hours writing a novel is rejection, wouldn't it be wiser to invest that time in something more sensible? Like looking at silly cat videos on YouTube? 

I remember reading TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD in high school. I remember the spirit of suspense as I tore through it, and the idea that I was reading a form of extended wisdom that wasn't exactly available through other mediums. Our teacher told us the novel's history and its supposed impact on race relations and civil rights in this country. It was a novel, we were told, that helped change the preposterous Jim Crow laws, helped bring about greater equality, helped make the world a better place.

I took FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM with me on the one and only time I visited Europe. I knew little about the book so it still surprises me that I took it along with me. Perhaps I thought it was thick enough to fill my two-week vacation. My wife and I were going to Italy, a vacation capped off with a whirlwind 24 hours in Milan. I didn't even know that Milan was the primary locale on Eco's novel. And yet, as we crammed in visits to La Scala, The Duomo, The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and the Santa Maria Delle Grazie (the convent where Da Vinci's THE LAST SUPPER still hangs), it was like I was experiencing a sense of deja vu-- I had read about these places and inhabited them so thoroughly through Eco, it was like I was visiting old lost friends for the first time.

These two touchstone literary moments are among the many that have formed me, as a person, and as a writer. I suspect anyone who's ever tried to write a poem, a short story, a novel, an essay has similar moments. I suspect I'm not the only one grieving Lee and Eco's loss today. But I'm also filled with hope-- not that I perhaps might offer through my writing a similar touchstone moment to others, but the hope that the next book I pick up to read will again provide that touchstone moment for me.

ADDENDUM: I should add, I haven't read GO SET A WATCHMAN, Harper Lee's early MOCKINGBIRD draft that was released last year as a sort of sequel to her classic. Rather than being the fair-minded attorney who is bent on seeing that Tom Robinson (an African-American) gets a fair trial before an all-white jury on a trumped-up rape rap, GO SET A WATCHMAN portrays Atticus Finch as a racist who attended Klan meetings.

Most reviewers panned GO SET A WATCHMAN for its politics. However, reviewers also pointed out that, when compared to MOCKINGBIRD's lucid and lyrical prose, GO SET A WATCHMAN just was not very well written. When I read this, it made me love Harper Lee even more. The book that came out as GO SET A WATCHMAN was written before TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.  To borrow Anne Lamott's pungent phrase, it was a "shitty first draft." And yet, rather than give into Einstein's insanity theory and abandon the project, Harper Lee must have worked tirelessly at her second draft to make is shine so wonderfully. 

I've been leaning Hillary for months. Last night, walking to my car after attending a literary reading, I realized why: I trust her to fight. I trust her to battle, wage war, get what she wants to get. Not just in the intra- and inter-party skirmishes between now and November, but for the entirety of her Presidential term.
 
Eight years ago, like many progressively-minded Democrats, I was bamboozled by Obama, thinking that because he was more authentically left-leaning than Hillary, he’d be a better candidate. But Barrack, as relatively good has he's been, was not a fighter. He wasn't even, really, an idealist. Or a utopian. Bernie, at least, is an idealist. But I don't think he's a fighter, a brawler, a take-no-prisoners crusader. Anyone can jump on a soapbox.
 
We like to believe that Presidents are made in November. That’s a lie. Presidents are made on Inauguration Day and what comes afterwards. Presidents aren’t the sum total of their campaign promises; they’re the sum total of their accomplishments. In order to accomplish things, you need to be willing to take a punch. You need to be willing to fight. Hillary’s that fighter. No one has taken as many punches, and withstood them all as admirably, as Hillary Clinton. And no one in the Democratic Party is willing to fight as ruthlessly as Hillary Clinton.
 
 
Many Hillary supporters perceive electability as her greatest asset. However, for me, that’s a non-issue. I'm not convinced Bernie would lose in November—most of the polling data shows Bernie would likely win in a straight-up race against Donald Trump—but he'd lose just about every legislative battle during his term. He’s not built for a brawl. And he's not made for the ugly business of coalition building. He's not made for reaching across the aisle and nailing down an expedient single-issue commitment from an adversary who otherwise disagrees with him on almost every other issue imaginable.
 
A couple of years into his presidency, Obama pretty much shirked the battles he should have been waging. I think he was genuinely taken aback by the intransigence of Republican legislators and the animosity he provoked in many sectors of the country. His oratory was fine, at times even fiery, but too often he wrung his hands and opted for non-confrontational high roads. Or moan that his powers to affect change were limited vis à vis the political realities he faced. I respect Obama. I respect his intelligence. But hand wringing ain’t the most effective trait when called upon for leadership.
 
I can’t ever imagine Hillary wringing her hands.
 
Bernie, I’m not so sure about. Yes, on the campaign trail addressing cheering throngs of like-minded voters, Bernie expressions passion, concern, and a powerful left-leaning vision for change. But a Presidency isn’t a campaign trail speech. The Presidency requires a day-in, day-out battle.
 
Hillary is battle-tested. For many many years, she has been one of the most aggressively progressive figures on the national stage. For 20+ years, she’s stood up to the Republicans’ foulest slurs, their worst and most idiotic conspiracy theories. The reason Republicans fear her is that they know she has the intelligence, and the persistence, to stick to her guns and effectively strategize routes towards legislative accomplishments.
 
Let’s be honest: as compelling an agenda as Bernie Sanders lays out, how many people believe he’ll be able to translate that into effective change? Will there be enough legislation victories to balance out all the utopian ideas that don’t stand a snowball’s chance?
 
To put it another way: Hillary’s going to be able to accomplish a lot more than Bernie. You know that. I know that. Her vision isn’t as far-reaching as Bernie’s, put she’s got more brawl and a finer, more astute political skills.
 
The other thing to consider is money. And coattails.
 
As I mentioned earlier, I believe Bernie is electable given that his likely Republican opponent will be an odious bully. But just because Bernie can win a November election does not mean he’ll have the down-ballot coattails to sweep other Democrats into office. Because of the perceived taint of Sanders’s “socialism,” Democratic candidates in purple and red states will distance themselves from him. Republican attack ads with paint viable Democratic congressional candidates as being Socialist Dupes. That’s not going to help our party’s chances in taking back the Senate.
 
Money.
 
Fact: No one—but no one—raises money like a Clinton.
 
Bernie’s people like to believe money is a dirty word. To some extent, I agree with them.
 
However, a sitting President becomes his or her party’s Fundraiser-in-Chief. They don’t just raise money for themselves; they raise money for the good of the entire party. As the Democratic Presidential nominee, Hillary will be called in to raise money in Senatorial, House, and Gubernatorial races. Bill and Chelsea, both effective fundraisers in their own right, will be out there, raising money and winning races for Democrats.
 
Money, sadly, matters. Coattails matter. But, more importantly, what happens next January after Inauguration Day matters most. That’s why I’m supporting Hillary.
 
Errata #1: Last night, Aubrey Hirsch gave a fantastic reading at Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center. Reading selections from her short stories and her nonfiction pieces, I was impressed by the range of her work. One audience member commented that he thought the voice Hirsch uses in her nonfiction and fiction remains constant. I didn’t see that as much. Instead, I was impressed by how remarkably different, tonally, her approaches were between the genres. Hirsch employs a wonderfully quirky dazzle in her short fiction.  But in non-fiction, her voice and vision struck me as more penetrating. Both are amazingly compelling.
 
Among the pieces she read was a short story-in-progress about a kidnapping. The piece seemed so real, and so complete, with a perfect arc. And yet, she explained it was only a first draft. I was startled to learn afterwards that, in its present form, it was only about 500 words long. A piece of flash fiction. As she read it aloud, I had in my mind’s eye a perfect vision of the story, its characters, and its emotions. To accomplish all that in 500 words is truly amazing.
 
Errata #2: Another piece of my non-fiction (“Why We Need Snow Monsters”) will soon be appearing in Entropy. It’s a mash up of Yetis and Breughels, complete with digressions about depression and Tolstoy and phantasmagoric short fiction. I’ll post a link next week when the essay’s online.

(2/22/16 addendum: The link to my Entropy/ "Why We Need Snow Monsters" essay is here.

​Last week, while praying an “Our Father,” I got to the “...and lead us not into temptation...” part, it occurred to me that the biggest temptation I yield to is engulfing myself in a sense of hopelessness. So this year, for Lent, I’m giving up the sense of hopelessness that’s been dogging me for years. It’s really been doing me no good, and it’s about time I shrugged it off, no?
 
Errata: I’ve been writing what I hope will become a series of essays about my earlier indulgent attitudes towards fine cooking and how these attitudes have changed since having children and becoming under-employed. Just yesterday, Entropy published the second essay in the series—“Escarole.” The first—“Chicken in a Pot”--appeared (also in Entropy) a few weeks earlier.
 
As some readers of this blog know, many years ago, before my wife Alison and I had children, we had, materially-speaking, a pretty good life. We both earned good salaries. We spent freely on ourselves, took nice vacations, and ate really, really well.
 
Today, we have three children and downsized incomes. It’s really hard sometimes for me to fathom the lifestyle we once enjoyed, how immodestly we spent on things that, to my present self, seem like frivolous luxuries. The disparity between my past and present lifestyles is just so vast.
 
I’ve been working more on the novel I spoke about in my previous blog entry, but I’ve also been playing with the next essay in this series. As long as I don’t allow myself to succumb again to that evil sense of hopelessness, hopefully both will be completed in the coming weeks.

Read the comment sections on online blogs. Whenever there’s a discussion of something that Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton said, people come out of the woodwork with the cruelest insults, calling Hillary a ‘fat old cow’ or criticizing Michelle’s butt rather than actually addressing what Hillary or Michelle said. It’s sickening, really. And anyone who dares comes to Hillary’s defense is met with the same cruel insults. What must a young woman considering a career in public service think when she sees stuff like that? I mean, why would anyone willingly want to go into the public arena and try to make a difference in this world if it just means submitting yourself to junk like that? And I swear, as divisive as Trump or Barack Obama might be, I’ve never once seen someone attack them for not being Hollywood handsome.

I've been working on a novel, again, that examines the role of gender politics in the 2008 Presidential election cycle, so these thought have been on my mind a lot lately. It's disheartening to see that, at some level, the problematic sexism that existed in 2008 is still with us in the Hillary v. Bernie campaign. There's a really good Vox article about this that I just came across. 

ERRATA #1: I was thrilled that Entropy chose to publish a piece I wrote about when  Hurricane Isabel plundered through my neighborhood. If you'd like to read "Hurricane Night, 2003," the link is here.

ERRATA #2: So this novel I'm working on (see above). I've been working on it for years upon years. Different drafts have examined the material from a variety of different angles. I've added characters, emphasized different things, but the second half of the novel has remained fairly consistent throughout the many drafts I've churned out.  Someone who's seen two of these different drafts has asked me to pursue the material further. Last night, it finally occurred to me that the entire second half of the novel (i.e., the part of the novel from which the rest of the novel developed) just ought to be jettisoned. I just wished I had come to this realization, say, a few years earlier!

I’m just devastated. Earlier in the week, in the aftermath of a snowstorm that shut down our community for days, a 13-year-old girl went missing. Police believe she left her house willingly, crawling out her bedroom window in the middle of the night after first pushing her dresser against the door to hinder anyone from interfering with her escape. Police further believe into that cold night she carried with her a blue Minions blanket.
 
A blue Minions blanket.
 
Every time I think about what must have happened, I picture the girl scooting out of her window into the cold of the night clutching that blanket for warmth. A blue Minions blanket. Cartoon characters. Think about the innocence of a little girl who would carry that blanket. It almost breaks my heart.
 
There’s more to the story.
 
The girl recently received a liver transplant. She required medications to prevent her body from rejecting her new liver. Two pills in the morning, one at night. Without her medications, her body would start shutting down after a couple of days. On Friday, her father told a local news reporter that, “At this point, I know she’s sick. She’s hurting. She’s probably already into convulsions. Her liver is shutting down as we speak.”
 
Earlier today, an 18-year-old Virginia Tech freshman track and cross country runner was arrested and charged with the girl’s abduction. We’ve seen enough predator situations in the past to know something like this was possible, but it still boggles the mind. News reports indicated the girl participated in Facebook “teen dating” forums, and I could imagine how she and her alleged abductor met online, him a star college athlete and she a vulnerable Middle School student hungry for affection and attention. She wouldn’t have known he was a predator. I imagine she must have thought she was running off with some dreamboat, a charming gallant who would treat her with gentle respect and declare, Lancelot-like, his undying love. She probably thought she’d be back home in a matter of hours; otherwise, she would have taken her medications with her.
 
Hours ago, the girl’s body was found in North Carolina.
 
Last year, one of my sons went to the same school as this girl. When a tragedy like this happens to a child in your community, and you've got children of your own who you're trying desperately to nurture into a healthy, happy adulthood, you just feel so lost and helpless. Like, if something like this could happen to another child (who I'm sure was loved as deeply by her parents as I love my children), surely something equally as tragic could happen to my own children.

 
IT TAKES A VILLAGE. Hillary Clinton gave that title to her 1996 book-length meditation children and families . At the time, the title was controversial. Conservatives and would-be conspiracy nuts raised a ruckus, claiming the title signaled Hillary's intentions to somehow nationalize childcare. Or that it was somehow dismissive of a parent's role in a child's life. Bob Dole (remember him?) famously said, “With all due respect, I am here to tell you, it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child.”
 
Back then, not having children myself, I had a romanticized view of parenthood. A super-duper self-sacrificing parent, ever-vigilant, ever-wise, was all any child needed, I thought.  
 
I was wrong.
 
As soon as my first child—Stephen—was born in 1999, I realized many people outside our immediate family had the ability to shape and form his life. The obstetrician who delivered him at birth. The nurses. Our sweet neighbors who cooed at him when we took him out on stroller rides. Pre-school teachers. Baby sitters. Grandparents. Uncles. Aunts. The doctors who would later diagnose him as being on the autistic spectrum. A veritable village of therapists, school aides, classmates, educators, and school administrators who would come to get to know him.
 
A month after Stephen was born, my wife and I took him to RFK Stadium, where we held DC United season tickets. After DC United scored the soccer game’s opening goal, I jumped up in the air, holding Stephen. Thousands of other people were in the stadium, all of them screaming, high-fiving each other, raucously celebrating the goal. Any one of them could have done something stupid—fallen over their seats by accident and knocked him down, or accidently  spilled a beer on him in their celebration.
 
My wife, sitting next to me in the stadium, was furious. She said I ought to be more careful with Stephen.
 
“Why?” I asked.

She looked at the people around us. “Anyone here could just grab him out of your hands when you’re holding him like that.”
 
At the time, I thought she was crazy. Crazy in an over-protective loving-mother kind of way. But she was right. I was so trusting of those around us, not thinking it possible anyone would do something so crazy, so deliberately evil. We are all like this. Trusting. Each day, venturing out of our houses, we trust the strangers we meet will be rational if not caring individuals. We trust our fellow motorists to control their vehicles; we trust pharmacists to fill our prescriptions with the right medications; we trust random strangers will not pick-pocket us when we’re in grocery store check-out lines; we trust our fellow classmates and movie-goers will not reach into their backpacks for an assault rifle while we’re engrossed in a college lecture or summer blockbuster; we trust the village.
 
One psychopath/sociopath/criminal degenerate can undo in a few hours everything that can possibly matter to you and your child.
 
A parent, of course, can do many positive things for a child. My last blog post said as much. A parent can feed the child, teach the child, provide positive re-enforcement when the child is feeling down on him- or herself.
 
A parent can provide a blue Minions fleece blanket for the child to treasure.
 
However, regardless how vigilant that parent might be, he or she cannot always prevent someone else from the Village from snatching that blue Minions fleece blanket. Or worse.
 
 
 
 

Arsenal fans to the core, my son Sebastian and I caught the first half of the 2014 FA Cup Final from a hotel room. Arsenal was widely expected to demolish their opponents, Hull City, but eight minutes into the game, they were already down 2-0. Moments later, they nearly conceded a third goal. Arsenal looked wretched, wobbly on defense and unconvincing on the attack.
 
It was, coincidentally, Sebastian’s thirteenth birthday, and we were in North Carolina, where his Roanoke Star SW U-13 club was playing in a soccer tournament.  After Arsenal scored a goal on a fantastic Santi Cazorla free kick, we had to go to Sebastian’s next tournament game. His team was playing well, winning games by comfortable margins. This was Sebastian’s first season playing travel soccer. He had been invited onto the team after excelling as a rec league goalkeeper for several years but it soon became obvious to all, coaches and Sebastian included, that he wasn’t going to be able to unseat the team’s starting goalkeeper. The life of a second-string goalkeeper can be frustrating. In order to get game time, Sebastian tried to develop as a defensive midfielder but he needed to improve big-time on his ball skills. And his pace. And his stamina. His coach would put him in for a couple of minutes here and there, but his shifts rarely inspired confidence.
 
Later that night, after his team won another game, Sebastian and I returned to the hotel room and watched a sketchy Russian-language download of the rest of the FA Cup final. Though Arsène Wenger, Arsenal’s legendary manager, had been with the club since 1996 and had steered them to several major championships, speculation was rife he would be sacked should Arsenal lose.  Throughout the game, even after Arsenal scored a second goal to tie it up, Wenger displayed the grim countenance of one whose stomach acids burbled ferociously. Eventually, thanks to an inspired Olivier Giroud back heel pass to set up an Aaron Ramsey shot, Arsenal scored the winning goal in extra time. Wenger would later label this the “most emotional” of all his championships; by all rights, the club could have folded after falling behind by two goals so early into the game, yet they hung on, showing tremendous calm and patience.
 
Later that night, while Sebastian slept, exhausted by the two games he played, I surfed through all the articles I could find about the FA Cup Final. Somewhere along the way, I stumbled upon an interview with Mikel Arteta, Arsenal’s de facto defensive midfielder. Sports fans often imagine a losing coach’s halftime talks to be fiery foul-mouthed rants challenging players’ manhood, yet Arteta singled-out Wenger’s halftime address for its nurturing message. According
Arteta, Wenger told his players that he was proud of them. He told them that he believed in them, and if they believed in themselves, they could overcome the halftime deficit.
 
Wenger’s halftime speech was a piece of psychological brilliance. 
 
“He told us to stay calm. We had done the most difficult thing, which was to score the first one [after going two down] so now the game was open, we had plenty of time to do it, we could not rush it,” Arteta said. “It was brilliant, I think the lads continued to play and we showed a lot of experience and composure.”
 
The next morning, on Sunday, Sebastian’s team fell behind very early in a game against, frankly, inferior opposition.  For a while, his team looked likely to get an equalizer at any moment, but as the game wore on, their opponents fell into a well-organized defensive shell.  In youth soccer at his level, it’s very rare for a player to remain on the bench for an entire game, yet that was exactly what happened to Sebastian. His team pressed and pressed, sacrificing defense for offense. Tactically, it made sense for them to play without a deep-lying defensive midfielder (Sebastian’s position), especially since their opponents were content to merely clear the ball out of their own half every time they got a boot to it.
 
Sebastian’s team lost, 1-0. It might have been the only time that season his team failed to score a goal.
 
After the game, Sebastian’s coach bluntly told him that he didn’t play because he wanted to only use players who could “influence the game.” Driving back to the hotel, Sebastian was totally devastated, his eyes red and puffy and nearly sobbing. He berated himself for not having more talent, berated himself for every poor touch he had on the ball throughout the season. Normally a happy go-lucky kid, he was utterly despondent.
 
It was one of the crisis moments when I really felt, as a father, that my words could make or break the course of his life, one of the few times that I felt called upon to utter words of brilliance. Which is a good thing, because brilliance and me aren’t really compatible.
 
Luckily, immediately I thought what Mikel Arteta said about Wenger’s halftime talk. I told Sebastian how proud I was of him for practicing hard throughout the season. I pointed to the incremental progress he had made in improving his ball skills, his positioning, his passing. Although the end product might not yet be there, he was improving. Rather than dwell on the liabilities he brought onto the field or the ways he still needed to improve, I talked about what he was doing right. Since Christmas, he was working out at the gym on the days his team wasn’t practicing to build up his strength and stamina. He worked out regularly with me, too, working on his shooting and dribbling skills. Quite possibly, all together, he was working out more than anyone on his team. I told him how proud I was of his past achievements, both on the field and off. He was growing up to be a fine young man, and I was so proud to say he was my son.
 
Because of how the tournament brackets were set up, Sebastian’s team played in the championship game despite their loss.  I should have been excited for him, and for his team, but I dreaded what would happen with Sebastian if the coach elected not to play him again.
 
Amazingly, and perhaps employing some psychological brilliance of his own, Sebastian’s coach  put him in the starting XI for perhaps the only time that season. And it ended up being more than just a token appearance for Sebastian. He played well, and with confidence, and there was nothing about his game that afternoon that screamed liability!!! By the time he was taken off for a breather, his team was up 2-0. Later, in the second half, I think he assisted on a goal. He could justly take pride for helping his team win.
 
That was two years ago. From time to time, I wonder what would have happened had I responded differently when Sebastian was down on himself. I could have said, Dude, you just gotta work harder!  Or stuffed his head with empty plaudits. Or perhaps suggested maybe he should wake up and realize he was never going to be Mesut Ozil or Aaron Ramsey or any of the Arsenal stars we watch every week. But what he needed was confidence, something any father should be able to provide their child.
 
Errata #1: Sebastian has kept up with soccer. He now plays primarily as a winger. Last weekend, he dribbled through and around three players to score in a 6-2 defeat. I’m proud of him. I’d be proud of him even if he never touched the ball again.
 
Errata #2: Earlier in the week, Entropy published a cooking-related memoir-ish piece of mine called “Chicken in a Pot.” It contains a really good recipe for the title dish, which I originally found in Cooks Illustrated. Give it a look if you’re hungry for something to read. Or if you’re just plain hungry for rustic chicken dish.
 
Errata #3: Also, yesterday the latest issue of Passages North arrived in the mail. Which really excited me because it contains a short story of mine called “Chimpanzees.”  It's one of my more bizarre stories (first line: "The chimpanzees aren't chimpanzees but sock puppets we stain brown with shoe polish and accessorize with googly eyes") but, in a weird way, it's probably one of the most personal stories I've ever written, one that comes close to expressing a lot of things I've been feeling over the last few years.

​I really owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many editors—including Timston Johnston, Robin McCarthy, and Matt Weinkam—who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me make this a better story.  Thank you!
 
Errata #4: Last night, around ten o'clock, my kids and I walked around our quiet neighborhood. Dusted with snow, the streets seemed almost luminescent. Not a car was out, not even a mouse. And the only sound we heard on our quiet little walk was when, a few blocks away, a grumpy old man burst from his house to cuss out his dog for wanting to come inside from the cold. ‪#‎creepy

The first Bowie song I ever knowingly responded to was “Beauty and the Beast,” an album track off HEROES that, upon its release, was briefly on medium rotation on an album rock station I listened to while growing up.  I would have been in middle school at the time. The song, with its distorted electonica and dangerous propulsive beat, was unlike anything I’d heard. Until then, I’d been nurtured on a diet of Beatles albums and—gag—Captain and Tennille.
 

In my adolescent reading of the song, “Beauty and the Beast” was about chaos and civic unrest:
 
Something’s in the way
There’s slaughter in the air
Protest in the wind
Someone else incited*
Someone could get skinned
Pow
 
There’s a disjointed lyrical sense throughout the whole song, as if the singer’s thoughts were refracted through a prism.  He’s experiencing the ominous present moment of “weaving down a byroad.” Danger lurks in every lyrical crevice—“Someone fetch a priest”—and yet the singer seems to be struggling with his moral compass.
 
“I wanted to be good/I wanted no distractions/Like every good boy should.”
 
Back then, in my early teens, this was exactly what I was feeling, and yet I had this conclusive sense that by merely stating this wish for goodness, I was in fact admitting that the quest for goodness could never be entirely successful.  Within the song’s menacing musical background, evil lurks, infecting everything and everyone within its soundscape. The singer sings, “Nothing will corrupt us,” but it’s more of a wish than a promise. Beauty lies within the beast of this song. And a beast lies within the song’s beauty.  Both are alluring, tugging at our attention, and like the song says, “you can’t say no” to either.
 
I grew up in a chaotic household. My father would disappear for days only to re-emerge as a drunken howling figure at three in the morning, berating me for not being stronger, smarter, more industrious.  Apparently, in his eyes, I was doomed for failure.  And then, still reeking of alcohol, he’d demand that I’d hug him and he would weep maniacally, saying he was sorry he wasn’t a better father.
 
He, too, my father, couldn’t say no to the Beauty and the Beast.
 
I wanted so bad to believe there was beauty, and goodness, within the chaos of my household.
 
 
 
*Only now, decades later, as I’m double-checking these lyrics online, do I realize I’ve been misinterpreting them for all these years.  According to several online resources, this line is really “Someone else inside me.” All this time, I imagined them being, “Someone else incited.” As in, incited a riot. But now I’m realizing my mistake. 

Yesterday, Ellie, my fifth grade daughter, told us her class talked about 9/11 during social studies.  As part of her homework assignment, she wanted to interview me about what I was doing that day. 

 

So we talked at dinner about 9/11 and it got a little bit emotional.   Ellie wasn't alive yet, but my wife and I and our two young boys lived in Arlington VA.  At the time, I worked in the tallest building in Arlington and I could see the Pentagon burning from my office window.  We smelled the smoke for days.  My brother had worked in New York’s World Trade Center for a Japanese bank and I spent a good part of the day thinking he was dead.  

 

It was really a surreal & horrifying day for us.  Even Stephen (who was then 2) was affected.  He was home with Alison at the time, watching television newscasts endlessly show clips of the World Trade Center towers collapsing.  I came home that morning after our building was evacuated, and I stepped into the living room and watched Stephen build a tower with his blocks and then knock it down and say, "Tower broken."  

 

In the DC area, it was absolutely gorgeous that day.  I had bought a tricycle for Stephen a few days earlier, but hadn't yet had the time to assemble it.  So I went into our backyard and screwed the handlebars and wheels in place and then had Stephen try it out.  After I was out for only a few minutes with Stephen, Alison came out on our deck and told us to go inside-- area newscasts were warning people in the area to stay inside to avoid the burning jet fuel fumes and smoke, which some people were saying had the potential to damage lungs.  There were so many unfounded rumors going around town that day of other planes being highjacked, of other buildings getting hit.  WTOP, the local news radio station briefly reported that the State Department was hit.  

 

We lived less than a block away from our church. That evening, we went there to pray.  Until we got outside, we hadn't realized everyone in the neighborhood was doing the same thing-- even those who didn't attend our church.  Inside, the church was as packed as it would be for a normal Sunday service.  The priests performed an unscheduled mass.  So many of us thought we lost friends and family that day.  So many of us feared more catastrophes in our near future.  We all just had this spontaneous need to reach out and pray and for God's protection and blessing.

People I knew made small and large changes in their lives.  My best friend decided to get a dog, a gorgeous golden retriever named Jack that brought comfort for many years to him and his wife.  Other people moved out of the DC region and opted for less hectic lives elsewhere.  I remember having horrible conversations with my wife, telling her that the moment she heard of any other terrorist tragedy in our region, she was to pack our boys in the car and drive off to my parents’ home in Arkansas.  We stockpiled safe supplies of water and canned food in our house, loaded up on batteries and flashlights.  Almost every day, for months, rumors spread of other terrorist plots.  We read internet reports about what, exactly, a “dirty bomb” was and learned that if we covered our basement windows with plastic sheeting, we could survive such an attack.  Or so it was thought. 

Mostly though, we learned to live with anxiety as the constant force in our lives.