I’m not going to start this blog with an apology about how rarely I blog. If I were hitting you everyday and apologizing each time, it would not change the fact that I hit you every day, would it? No. So let us just not speak of it at all.

I am one of those people who spends some time reflecting on New Year’s Eve. I don’t want to be. I have tried not to be. No getting around it, I just am. I’m not severe about it. I mean, I’m not kicking myself all night for not being who I thought I would be when I daydreamed in middle school. Much. Mostly, I take a quick inventory and try to motivate myself to go in one direction or another.

The first time I remember really putting any thought into it I was six months past college graduation and waiting tables at Cha Cha Coconuts. Even if I had been any good at waiting tables, I think that job would have given me cause for self evaluation. As it was, I knew I had to get out of that situation and fast. I stood at the top of the St. Petersburg Pier, watched my customers stumble about, groping and kissing and singing that song while the fireworks went off, and I cried. I cried just enough that it motivated me and I did get out of there. (Briefly, I moved on alright- to a short career as a cover band singer, to a new apartment, and to an abusive relationship. The following New Year I played in that band at a house party for some people who had no teeth but had recently won the lottery. Yeah, that motivated me too.)

So, I’m 41, and it’s about to be a new year. I just had a baby, so resolution or not there will be weight lost. I would like to resolve to keep my mouth shut at work (bwah hah hahah!) That will never be accomplishable. I try that one and fail every year. I would like to resolve to take piano lessons. I don’t have a piano. There are other resolutions I should kick around and shoot down, but I’ll do it on my own time.

Last year I didn’t reflect at all for the first time in many years. Last year on NYE I got engaged. He proposed moments before we left to walk to the party down the street (oh how I miss living a block away from people I love). I said yes, and we happily strolled to our friends’ house. Before midnight struck, way before, we had to leave the party because I wasn’t feeling well. Before midnight struck I was back at home and I knew I was having a miscarriage. I took a lot of Aleve and passed out as James watched the ball drop on his iPhone and told me Happy New Year, and that he loved me.

A month later I realized I was already pregnant again (5% chance, my ass), and we were looking for a new house and starting a new life.

So I didn’t make any resolutions in 2011, but 2011 seemed to sort of make them for me.

I don’t know what I’ll be thinking about as the clock strikes midnight this year. (Maybe a scheme will begin to brew to get a smaller dining room table and squeeze in that piano…) I’m very happy with my new little family. But who out there is ever totally satisfied with the person that they have become? Who doesn’t reflect on that? (All my exes, hah ah aha hah…) No, really. Seriously. I hope I’m struck dumb with realization.

There is a dog room and a cat room. The dog room contains stalls and cages built into the walls along with large, wheeled fourplexes for the young and the small. Also in the dog room is an endless peal of barking, howling and scratching. The cat room is more like the section in the old Woolworth’s where they sold the goldfish and parakeets. Basically there are aquaria but with grillwork instead of glass and within the grillwork are tiny mewling bits of fluff, at this time all nameless. Little cards describe them briefly with a guess at their breed and a good estimate of their age which is given in weeks or months. In a dog cage in the cat room there was one enormous middle-aged creature who had already enjoyed a breadth of life far beyond what his cave-cat ancestors could have expected. His name was Arthur.

With the coloring and dimensions of a healthy penguin Arthur was an old man on the pediatric ward. Unlike the youngsters he already had a name and a history on his cage card. It was related so; Arthur’s family added a human baby and they did not feel they could any longer give him the attention he requires. Loosely translated this means that Arthur WAS the baby until an actual baby made its coming plain. Do not disdain the people who named Arthur then turned him in to the authorities after eight years as the receptacle for their love. Housecats can and do kill babies, ignorantly seeking their little chests as a warm place to sit. But however wise or just the change it is unlikely that it was explained to Arthur’s satisfaction.

He was skittish, released into the playroom he dashed for what little cover there was. Even the lady who fed him every day couldn’t coax him out, instead he cried as if he were trapped in a well. Sought, he fled and would only be drawn out with patience but in the open he was a sight to see; twenty-two pounds of turgid muscle, tuxedo style and dandruff. “Oh, you’re playing with my big boy!” the lady observed. Doesn’t he get into the room much? “People bring him out to meet all the time but somehow they never do the deal. He’s been here the longest of all of them now.” And you know what that means. So, although I had little inclination to replace The Rat, a long-haired night hunter who had finagled his freedom by urinating on me in my sleep, I decided that this was Arthur’s lucky day. I was the governor and called in a reprieve.

They give you a cardboard carrier for a cat. Arthur stepped right through it so they gave me a big, plastic dog carrier. He seemed well suited to high-rise living. Unlike his predecessor who had been the parking lot king at my old apartment, Arthur showed no desire to learn of the outside world. It was enough to watch the occasional flock of pigeons tear past the windows. The tiny dogs across the hall terrified him although he never saw them.

Arthur loved company, girls especially, but hated commotion. He liked to play in his water but mostly he loved to sit on a human being and press his snaggle tooth across some virgin flesh. He was often alone. I’m not at home much. When I had been away for a few days he always wanted attention more than anything else. Only once did he ever really complain. After I had been gone for a while and came through the door he came out from his hide and walked glumly to his food dish rather than to me. He looked over his shoulder and let out one, disdainful, weary hiss but it was nothing some canned food and a long shoulder massage couldn’t paper over.

Some months ago he quit eating and took up barfing but it seemed to pass. Then he lost weight dramatically, deteriorated and finally needed some real medical attention. He was treated with great competence and obvious humanity at the vet hospital down the street and proved to be something of a curiosity. They never could come up with a full diagnosis but the prognosis was another matter. Fluid drained from his puffy carcass returned in a matter of days so any serious improvement was not in the cards.

The end was not bitter. Arthur got a half hour or so of the one thing he ever craved: attention. He must have gotten used to needles in the last five days as he seemed to not feel this last one. He purred and purred, more quietly and yet more quietly. I thought it was over when his head slumped down on the stainless steel but no. As I tried to close his eyes he looked up at me and licked his lips with the nibbling sound, tucked his feet under and settled in for a nap.

“The biggest surprise in a man’s life is old age.” Thus spake Leo Tolstoy, who made it to 82.

It is hard to disagree, especially if you find yourself, as I do, on the cusp of three score and ten, the so-called Biblical age. Of course, old age is not surprising in the sense that it is unexpected, but rather that it turns out to be so different from what you may have expected.

When I was young and found occasion to ponder the prospect of growing old, I tended to think of it in terms I can only describe as airbrushed: the hair would turn a lustrous gray, and the lines in my face would deepen in just such a way as to suggest a certain gravitas. I failed to factor in the slight paunch and the somewhat sagging cheeks, to say nothing of the exquisite aches my knees have lately been visiting upon me.

But the biggest surprise, at least for me, has been how much my past is tending to impinge on my present. I am not an especially sentimental person, so I am not much given to nostalgia. I’ve always been more interested in what’s going on now than in what happened whenever. But recently, just about everything I lay my eyes on has reminded me of something in the past.

I found this both puzzling and not altogether pleasant. In fact, I didn’t find it especially pleasant at all. Then, last week, I read something Alan Watts wrote that seemed to have some bearing on it:

We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past is going to happen next, and so we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn’t explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship, and eventually disappears.

That is certainly true of my past: Most of it has largely disappeared. So what am I to make of these various bits and pieces that seem to be floating to the top of my consciousness all of a sudden? What Watts says leads me to think that they have been with me all along.

Most of what happens to us on any given day we leave in our wake. But not everything. We take some things along with us. We accumulate as well as discard. As Faulkner noted, a lot of what happened in the past isn’t really past. It’s the ingredients of who we are.

But you can only accumulate so much for so long. At a certain point there are things you just aren’t looking for anymore. The result is a definite change in perspective. You really do see things differently.

I have noticed, for instance, that when I see a young woman these days I am more aware of her imperfections than I ever would have been when I was her age and looking for that someone a young woman like her just might have been.

This is more than just surprising. It is downright unnerving. You suddenly realize that you have arrived at ripeness. But ripeness is the point of climax, after which comes the dénouement. The ripe apple’s days on the bough are numbered.

I think this is may have something to do with why the late work of great artists becomes spare. Superfluities may be permissible, even necessary, when one is learning a craft, but eventually they simply get in the way.

So I surmise that, as I grow ever older, a process of paring down is in order. Little else needs to be taken on and a good bit needs to be discarded.

That is not exactly surprising. What is surprising is that this ripe you turns out to be so different from what you may have expected that you have to make an effort to get to know him.

I was probably 9 or 10 years old? I was already working on our family’s vegetable farm full-time in the summer, and my cousins and I were making boxes (this process involves this big, stapler machine — at least for the ones that hold the heavier produce). Anyway, as we were working, we noticed that a baby bird had hopped  under the packing shed. This thing was little — barely could open its eyes — and we were worried that it would get hit by one of the forklifts. So, we found a small box, filled it with those cloth-like paper towels that come in a box (rag-in-a-box, I think it’s called?), and then maneuvered the baby bird into the little refuge we created for it.

At lunchtime, I brought the bird home with me in the box. I left it on the back porch and explained what had happened to my mother. My mom always had a soft spot for animals (probably where I get my over-the-top compassion for them), so she tried to help me figure out a way to help it. We decided that if we took bread and soaked it in water, it would be enough to simulate the regurgitation feeding he’d get from his momma and hopefully it could sustain him until we were able to get him to a vet. We got a glass of water and a slice of bread and walked out onto the lawn with the bird. However, our efforts were in vein–although the bird did stretch up its neck and opened its mouth for food (it was *that* young), the bread *just* missed its mouth and the little thing ended up running/hopping away into the bushes where we couldn’t get to it.

I spent the rest of my lunch break looking for the bird, getting more and more upset as my lunch hour went on with the little guy nowhere to be found. My dad had been irritated about the whole ordeal to begin with — the fact I had brought it home with me to begin with, the fact my mom and I were trying to feed it soggy bread, the fact that I was getting more and more upset as I realized the implications of what would happen to the bird now that it was alone and had no way to be fed.

I did my damnedest to hide my tears and sadness when I got back in the pick up truck to head back to work. At first we rode in silence, but after a few moments, my dad asked me if I was familiar with the “prime directive.”

“No,” I muttered to the dirty windows.

He went on to explain that the Prime Directive was the most prominent guiding principle in the voyages of Star Trek, and this rule stated there could be no interference with the planets/species they encountered on their missions. I had no idea why he was explaining this at first until we finally pulled into the yard at the shed, the cloud of dust from the dirt driveway finally settling around us.

“So what I’m saying is… sometimes no matter what you do, you aren’t able to save the things you want to — sometimes you can’t control the things that are painful. Sometimes you just can’t help the bad things from happening… But that’s OK. Sometimes, they just need to happen.”

And in that moment I learned many things: that life was complicated and brutal and filled with situations that just couldn’t be fixed. That sometimes the only way to properly handle a situation was to realize we have no control over it. Most importantly, I realized that my father was an actual person — not just my “dad,” but a sympathetic, thoughtful human being who knew that in order to allow me to learn the things I needed to, that he too needed to take heed of the Prime Directive. He knew I needed to experience the pain that came from learning a difficult lesson firsthand, that he would have to wait until after that difficult lesson was learned to provide me comfort.

Happy Father’s Day, dad. Thank you for allowing me to grow, to live, to love, to make mistakes, to succeed, to laugh, and to cry — to learn all those wonderful and heartbreaking life lessons– with your guidance, but without your interference.

Live long and prosper.

10. A honeymoon bed with handrails

9. A defibrillator

8. A subscription to Penthouse

7. That new STD iPhone app

6. A copy of Kama Sutra for the Infirm

5. A collection of naked TSA photos

4. A tuxedo with a built-in adult diaper

3. A Viagra Pez dispenser

2. A Playboy calendar with only May and December in it

1. A Rascal scooter with a “Just Married” sign and tin cans tied to the back
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

In discussions about art, we babble constantly about “quality” as if it is the determining factor in terms of what is “good” or “bad”. Some say that, for instance, Mozart was a better composer than John Williams could ever be. Or, we might dismiss Norman Rockwell (a mere illustrator) in comparison to, say, a VanGogh. We read a novel, and we nit-pick, saying: Steinbeck is sentimental; Dickens’s plots are too neat. A ballet choreographer might look at kids dancing for change on the street and he might say, “Unsophisticated. That’s not art. It’s ‘pop’ dancing.” But, in the end, what does all of this mean? As I have suggested lots of times, isn’t the measure of art in the way it directly affects us? How important is the “quality” of the work? One can (and I certainly do sometimes) marvel at an artist’s craft, but is great skill necessary for great art? Is skill necessary at all?

That said, I do believe that most of the time great art is, at least in part, the product of excellent skill on the part of the artists. But I also believe that someone who doesn’t know what the hell he or she is doing can come up with something great.

This idea (which is nothing new if you are kind enough to keep up with this column) became, once again, vivid for me as I looked over some artwork done by my first grader’s class: self-portraits. Here, you see very little skill. These are kids, after all, no older than seven. But isn’t the work just plain delightful?

Doesn’t it move you to laugh?

Doesn’t it warm your heart?

Doesn’t it make you grin a wry grin to see a kid’s cheeky impression of himself?

After all is said and done, for me, art exists to communicate the truth about what is inside the artist. It exists to teach us lessons about the human soul that can’t always be put into words.

Maybe we need to judge less and feel more.

You don’t need a master’s degree to make art. You don’t have to have graduated from Pratt or Julliard. You just need to be able to find that thing; that earnestness; that sincerity that draws a line of pure energy from your soul to that of your audience.  That’s where artistic magic lies. As you can see above, kids do this without thinking about it. When we grow up, we think ourselves out of being honest sometimes — mostly as a result of self-consciousness.

As a songwriter, I used to be constantly aware of how much “cooler” other writers seemed compared to me. (Not in terms of their personalities but in terms of their work. In general, I’m, like, the coolest guy ever.) For a while, I tried to write hip; I lamented my Romantic approach — my love of melody and, well, beauty. Not until very recently (maybe as a result of coming to grips with being an artistic nobody who is likely to remain so) did I learn to just be honest. If I’m not cool, I’m not cool. But I’m not going to lie.

There are so many times in life when we look at children and lament what we have lost since the days on the swing-set. But not all of it is lost beyond hope. If we shed the layers of self-consciousness, the inner child, cliched as it may seem, is just waiting to shine through.

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday.

I just learned that my great Aunt Molly, one of my grandfather’s remaining siblings, passed away yesterday.

It took some time to process this information after I received the phone call from my cousin. I would be lying if I said we were particularly close –- it has easily been a year-and-a-half since the last time I saw her, since her health began to decline and she went into an assisted living center.

But Aunt Molly used to be one of the regulars at the Adult’s table growing up, and a sense of importance and regality surrounded her and the fact that she somehow out-adulted my own parents. I am 27 now, but Aunt Molly always seemed to be the same age: old –- old enough to seem delicate, but never in jeopardy of dying. This though, comes with almost 2 years of decline since the last time I saw her -– between reality and the memories I kept carefully preserved from it.

I can’t help but smile at my use of the word “delicate” to describe her in any capacity. Although each one distinct, beautiful, and in youth, even glamorous, “delicate” has never been a word one easily associated the Wuillermin girls of that generation (although the others are questionable, that trait that obviously remains dominant). So, even though to me, Aunt Molly was always old, she hadn’t been actually, and from the stories passed down, she had many suitors in her time beyond her husbands (yes, plural). I never remember seeing her without her make up on or her hair done–the thinned salt and pepper strands teased like she just came from the beauty parlor.

Aunt Molly had a way of just saying things–saying what came to her mind, without much time to sugarcoat it (ahh, genetics…). The last time I saw her, she called me over to her table (we were at my aunt’s wedding reception) to ask me if I was pregnant (I was sporting a rather flowy top). But in between her candid –- and oftentimes unwanted–observations, she told me numerous times that she thought I’d “go far in life” and that I had a “good head on my shoulders.”

I’d also be lying if I said that the incredible sadness I’m feeling over the news is solely limited to my aunt’s passing. In some ways, I know this was a relief for her. I know the past few years had not been kind, and through the tangled grapevine of family information, I had heard that she had articulated her hope for death. My hope now is that she is at rest, that she is at peace, that angels have led her in. But beyond her death, I find myself wrestling with the overwhelming feeling that something else is slipping away, quickly and quietly –- I am grappling with this urgent reminder that time is limited and soon the generation I held in such regard will be gone: soon an entire level of my family tree, of my recollection, will no longer exist in the flesh.

It’s easy for me to get caught up in the pain of that, in the overwhelming sense of loss and my inability to stop my life from changing. I have been hitting a point in my life where I am realizing the quickness and significance of these changes and how many more are yet to come. I would be lying once again if I said these truths didn’t terrify me. I do not want to see my family fade. Aunt Molly, along with the other “old timers” who have already passed –- my Aunt Lee, my Uncle Joe, my beloved grandfather –- to me, are the “roots” of our family tree. They are the foundation, the “first” generation -– the story keepers, the secret holders, the all-knowers. And with every loss, with every passing, I feel like my history unravels, destined to soon only exist in the faded photographs found in a shoebox at the bottom of my grandmother’s hallway closet.

But I force myself to remember the cyclical nature of all things, most importantly, life. We all continue, all age, all die, so the next generation can do the same.

We lose love, but we replace it with new love… Like the branches and leaves on a tree: they serve an important purpose for some time, their beauty and strength admired by the outside world. But, eventually, they must fall, fade, die, break, to make room for more growth, for more beauty. Our family has lost another “old timer,” but through my cousin, his soon-to-be wife, and their unborn child, there is already promise of a new life waiting in the wings. So it’s not a matter of our family fading, or even being replaced -– it is a matter of it expanding, growing, and maintaining its spirit and legacy after this life is over, through the eyes and memories of new members.

It is not a matter of forgetting or being forgotten: we have not let go, but we must move on. We must grow.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my favorite week of the year – the start of March Madness, St. Patrick’s Day, and my birthday (the 19^th). I told my mom last night that if this happened when I didn’t have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school, I would have probably exploded into a fiery ball of beer, blarney, buffalo wings, and brackets. But alas, I am turning 35 years old, and indeed have a child, responsibilities, a mortgage, and graduate school. If I were to explode this year, it would be full of stress, bills, research papers, and a trace amount of beer and buffalo wings.

This is a milestone age of sorts, and not a fun one like 18 or 21. On one hand, I am not turning 40 and being called over-the-hill yet, but I am also not turning 30 and having a party thrown for me where I wake up in my boxers having no idea where I am. I guess I can take solace in the fact that I am in the middle of my 30’s, but am frustrated that my friend Dr. Emmett Brown has not perfected his DeLorean time machine yet. And it’s not so much that I am upset about turning 35, it’s more like I can’t believe it. For Christ’s sake, I am still not exactly sure what I want to be when I grow up!

I work at a college, and that can serve as both a gift and a curse. It is very exciting for me to walk onto a college campus every day – a million times better than working in some faceless corporate park. I can honestly say I have never dreaded work since I have been here at Drexel. But at the same time, it can be a bit depressing when my age is reminded to me. Like when playing pickup basketball in our campus athletic center, I am trying to complete with kids who were born when I was a scrappy and pimply high school Junior Varsity athlete.       

The thing is, I still feel young. And I’d like to think that I still look young. According to my mom, I dress like a 16 year old boy. That’s probably because I do – I have a huge disdain for collared shirts, and I shop at surf and skateboard stores for my clothes. I guess I act young too, because I still love going to concerts and especially since I am planning on trying to skateboard again once I lose 30 pounds. I definitely don’t want Jack to grow up too quickly, but I would be lying if I said I can’t wait until I can play catch with him, shoot hoops with him, and beat his ass in Madden 2023 on Playstation 6.   

I have never been in a rush to grow up, and can be my own worst enemy in acting grown up. But the entertainment world and my parents are not helping the cause much either. My two favorite bands from high school and college, Urge Overkill and Buffalo Tom, are putting out albums and touring this year. And my parents, who have always lovingly referred to me as their very own Peter Pan, bought me the Christmas gift that every boy dreams of – a shiny new bicycle. It was the best Christmas morning since 1985 when I got a boogie board, a Tyco Turbo Hopper, and Laser Tag.

I do realize that my age is advancing, and as I am getting older, the one thing I truly cherish are the friends I have. I am lucky enough to say that my closest group of friends has been the same since I was in pre-school. The great thing is, they all have their own wonderfully bizarre links to childhood. Since they are all professional gentleman, so with respect to them I am not going to name names here. But one owns a BB gun and has a Lee Harvey Oswald-esque level of accuracy with it, one has a pet turtle with one eye who he has owned since age 9, one has a motorized Go-Cart and quad bike, and one makes music videos of his three year old son. (Oh, wait, that’s me)

I also think I am getting wiser, or maybe I should call it more jaded – enough where I to see right through people. Including myself, when I went through the period where I read Bukowski and frequented art house films. I wasn’t trying to get laid or anything doing that stuff, I guess it was my half-assed attempt at seeming cultured. I try my hardest not to sound like some grumpy old man, saying everything used to be better. Because I think there is a ton of great music out there. And while I do think rap and hip hop was better in the early 90’s, I don’t dare say it. It just seems too ridiculous for me to make any claims like that since my closest brush with “street-cred” was working at an Enterprise Rent-A-Car office on the border of Camden and Pennsauken.

 Ben Folds once sang “everybody knows, it sucks to grow up”, and as much as I used to agree with that, I don’t think it’s so bad anymore. I am looking forward to watching Jack grow up, growing old with Cailin, and seeing where the journey of life takes me. And it all starts this week, with a celebration of my life, college basketball, and St. Patrick’s Day where not only do we Irish embrace the stereotype as wild drinkers, we revel in it!

I never thought I’d write a “kids today” blog — especially not in my 2nd blog out for this site. In fact, I had another blog practically written, one I anticipated polishing up once I got home last night until I happened to catch the earlier train  from work and happened to sit next to a group of high school boys so insulting, so incredibly ignorant, that I spent the rest of the commute composing this very blog in my head.

I am familiar with and accept the notion that “boys will be boys” — in fact, I sometimes am willing to let downright not-nice-crassness go because of it (with a blue velvet Virgin Mary perched above the toilet in my guest bathroom, who the hell am I to judge on crass?), but these kids went beyond even my limits.

It started innocently enough, ragging on each other, finding ways to push each other’s buttons. Of course this led to questioning one another’s masculinity by way of their sexuality. I don’t appreciate this kind of banter, but I get it. In the mind of a boy (or, sadly, many grown men), if you’re going to low-blow, go right for the nuts. But this wasn’t about fucking around for the sake of fucking around — this was about going for blood and spewing a lot of hatespeech in the process:

“You’re a fucking faggot–you know that? A fucking faggot. You tried to kiss my cheek. What kind of nigger are you, anyway? I don’t kiss other niggers — I kiss bitches!”

And no matter what this alleged cheek-kissing kid said, no matter how temporarily the conversation veered, the Boy Who Cried Striaght kept at it:

“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with? What kind of nigger are you? Why the fuck are you such a fucking faggot? You realize you’re a fucking faggot right? I just wanna fucking beat your ass.”

Now, I’m not going to debate the use of gratuitous cursing or  the N-word. I feel by disallowing any word, you give it a greater power than if you accept it, which is why I have no problem having a potty-mouth of my own, and admittedly, freely use the slang terms for my own ethnicity at leisure. So, I don’t judge them for that — but it was  the emotion behind it that railed against every part of my being. Every time one of them called the other a “nigger,” there was such a palpable, hateful force, I caught myself flinching.

This also made me realize the anger and hatred they felt was not just reserved for others: their lips didn’t just snarl when they talked about the “faggots” or the “bitches” they had “one-and-done”d. No, this anger seeped into every bit of their life, in every part of them — for others, for themselves, for all the things they didn’t understand and didn’t want to.

More interestingly was the obvious discomfort their presence brought to the other passengers. No one dared question them or asked them to quiet down or stop saying such offensive things. Everyone averted their eyes and shifted uncomfortably in their seats, scurrying quickly past them on their way to the exit when their stop had finally come. I understand this spoken rule; it is the rule all commuters know: keep your head down, your eyes averted. Don’t make contact on the train. Don’t engage in the crazy.

But at the same time, this gave these boys more power. With every passing moment, they realized their hold on the other passengers and knew they were free to engage in their animosity more loudly, more aggressively. The more time passed, the more obscene they became, and the more the rest of us pretended to ignore it. By the time they exited the train, I was angry — angry that I had to listen to that for the majority of my commute, angry I didn’t try to do something about it.

There are plenty of logical reasons that I didn’t, reasons that I am comfortable with accepting: trying to talk down to a large group of riled-up half boys/half men is no small feat — and considering their view of ”bitches,” hearing anything out of my mouth probably would have been dismissed before half the words were even out. Beyond that, I was intimidated by this group — afraid of their energy, afraid of their complete lack of respect. Maybe it’s justification, but being aware of that disconnect made me feel like this was truly a crew of Lost Boys, unable to be saved by me — or anyone else.

Admittedly, I could have  put on my headphones and tuned them out. I could have shrugged them off and chosen not to subject myself to the 40 minutes I listened to their self-inflicted hate speech. But a part of me wanted to listen — a part of me was waiting for them to reach a redemptive moment where I could still see their innocence, still see something relatable, or human, or compassionate. Sadly, that moment never came.

If anything, they found a way to attack my senses on a deeper, more fundamental level.

As the Boy Who Cried Straight continued to verbally defecate on the alleged cheek kisser, as insults about hairlines, clothing choices, word choices, bodily function, and physical appearance flung back and forth, peppered liberally with “fucks,” “shits,” “niggers,” “assholes,” and other crudely constructed phrasings, one particular mudsling stood out:

“Look atch your ugly face — you look like Herbert the Frog or some shit.”

I did a Google search to be certain there was not another famous frog out there of whom I’m unaware. And unless this little homophobic shit stain was showing the one remaining soft spot left in his heart by way of referencing a beloved book from his childhood or a random YouTube clip (which has nothing to do with “kissing bitches”), I’m pretty sure this little prick managed to make Jim Henson roll right round in his grave.

After today, I understand whole-heartedly why so many children, gay or straight, feel even more uncomfortable being themselves than what’s normal for puberty, why depression drives so many kids who shouldn’t even think about suicide to hang themselves in their bedroom closets, why the horrors of middle school or high school truly are horrific. If I had to endure this kind of hate-fueled mental rape  for  8 hours a day, 180 days of the year instead of the mere 40 minutes to which I was subjected to it, I don’t think I could make it without breaking either.

The experience had a two-fold effect on me: all at once I could feel my ovaries recoiling, reluctant to ever want to release any egg that could potentially spawn into a human being so devoid of respect, love, or consideration as the ones I witnessed yesterday afternoon. I never want to have to accept the possibility that good parenting be damned, my child could somehow be swept into that awful mess of a mindset.

But, at the same time, I felt a new-found desire to procreate — to do my part to raise the next generation to be the antithesis of those boys, to raise the child who understands the importance of respecting others, who wants to make sure others are accepted, who wants to somehow champion for others when they’re not really even sure how to champion for themselves. I don’t want my children to have to be exposed to such ugliness, or to live through it, but I want to instill in them the things they need to survive it, to prevail despite it. I will teach them to accept others, no matter who they are or what their color is or who they choose to love, to never use words that are driven by hate, to respect women, to treat others with kindness, to know — and be mindful — of other people’s breaking points and sensitivities, to speak in indoor voices on the train, to not keep their feet in the aisle while other passengers are trying to pass by. My children will be the beacons in a bleak night. They will be the ones who restore hope in the older generations, who are polite and listen and say things worth listening to — not because they are so sensationally bigoted, but because they are thoughtful, and funny, and kind. Most importantly, my children will know who the fuck Kermit the Frog is and will never use his name in vain.

Recently, I found myself thinking of Caterina Valente, a singer who had some hits back in the ’50s. One of those hits was “Jalousie,” by the Danish composer Jacob Gade. This may not be the only tango written by a Dane, but it certainly is the most famous one. In fact, “Jalousie” is one of the most popular songs ever.

I mention this because a few days after Valente’s named popped into my head — for no discernible reason — I happened to hear an instrumental version of “Jalousie” on the radio.

Then, the next day, I heard on the radio tenor Jan Peerce’s 1945 recording of “The Bluebird of Happiness,” a song that both my mother and grandmother, for some reason, detested. And the day after that, I turned on the TV very briefly to check on the Mummers Parade and, lo and behold, just then mention was being made of “The Bluebird of Happiness.”

It was all probably the merest coincidence. Either that, or an unusually trivial example of what Jung called synchronicity — events not causally connected but having some connection in terms of meaning. Only I can’t think of what the meaning might be in this case.

I can say that, as I grow older, I find my memory casting up odds and ends from my childhood, and I must confess that long-ago time seems often more real to me than the intervening years. I remember my grown-up and professional years well enough, but they have lost something of their relevance, like a newspaper from last month.

I have been wondering why that might be, and what keep coming to mind are some lines from T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”:

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
 
In childhood, as well as in our teens, we construct an imaginary future for ourselves. I know I did. I have even had the good fortune — I suppose it was good fortune — to have an ambition conceived when I was 15 become a reality. I thought then that writing for a newspaper about books would be a great way to make a living. And that is pretty much what I ended up doing. And, actually, it was a great way to make a living.

But maybe I should have done something else. I have no idea.

Anyway, the disparity between that imaginary construct that we build when we are young and the reality we experience later is necessarily considerable, since we can’t possibly know, when we are building our construct, anything of what is actually going to happen later on. Oh, we can dream of running away to sea, and we may, as soon as we are able, do just that. But we cannot possibly know what it is going to be like to do that … until we do it. And we are likely to discover that dreaming of the sea and being at sea are two very different things.

The disparity, though, seems more sharply defined when one can look back on both one’s childhood and youth and the years that followed. Life looks very strange when most of it lies behind you — as it also did when most it lay before you.

But the two strangenesses are not at all alike. The earlier strangeness was of possibility and opportunity, the later is a mix of some accomplishment (if one has been lucky) and disappointment.

But the strangest thing of all that I notice is that the earlier version of myself — the one that built the construct — seems more real to me than the one in between, the one that did the things that have come to define my life. I think that is so because — to use Eliot’s terms —the reality of the latter falls so far short of the idea of the former.

And what about now? There isn’t much left to come, of course, and the inevitable end draws ever nigh. Oddly, I may have less of a clear and distinct sense of myself now than at any time in my life. Even odder, I do not find this especially disconcerting, since it seems perfectly in harmony with how I have come to look upon life and the world: as things we do not come near to understanding, for all our philosophy and science. I have become enthralled over how unanswerable the fundamental questions of being are.