As you by now can tell, blogging has been sporadic of late. The life updates I would offer periodically from time to time have been more or less non-existent for a couple of reasons: primarily because my life is not that interesting and secondarily because the issues of the day are more what readers have come to expect on these ramparts. But with Labor Day weekend now upon us, it seems appropriate to offer a few thoughts on life's tour de force and the new adventure law school has become.
In many ways, my six year stint in New England more than acclimated me to the Yankee spirit of the region—quite nearly to the point of feeling like an honorary New Englander. In fact, I proudly sport my Boston Red Sox hat even here in the desert. Accordingly, moving west has provided its own set of adjustments in relocating to a new place. More than anything law school here has marked a severe shift in course. As some readers know, I had long intended to return to the dusty Oklahoma plains I still consider home. Some of you may recall that in the dead of an icy winter and in the midst of a turbulent fall, I had only want for the lazy days of my youth—blue skied and accented by the soft, white of a cottonwood tree. Instead, I have exchanged overtime cottonwood trees for Boston foliage and ultimately that for cactus. Thanks to a generous, unexpected opportunity, my return to the dusty plains has become a sojourn in the Sonora Desert.
How quickly change can come.
Unsurprisingly, it remains far too early to offer any assessments of law school or of life in Tucson. Every trip to Wal-Mart is an adventure in itself. In fact, Arizona drivers generally have helped to increase my faith in God. I count it tremendous blessing to return home each day unscathed. At any rate, I have long maintained that my life's only constant is change and this latest chapter proves no different.
In keeping with my blogging predilections, an article in today's New York Times by David Brooks offers a few long-term assessments of things I hope to avoid. Brooks writes wryly about the human condition and its relation to middle age. Admittedly and hopefully, I am far removed from his target audience but the piece offers a couple of nuggets about life which are worth considering. His point is less an ode to vacations and more a reflection on ourselves. This money quote pretty well summarizes my own recent attempts at introspection:
I think it was Abraham Joshua Heschel — after he broke off with Reinhold Niebuhr and formed Jefferson Airplane — who observed that though the ancients counseled, "Know Thyself," in 87 percent of actual cases, profound self-knowledge is not transforming. It's just disappointing.
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Fair enough. Moving here has taught me that life is as much about the doing as it is about the thinking. "Knowing thyself" is a fine goal but sometimes it is the actual doing that counts most. Or to follow Brooks' analogy, take that mountain vacation. Get the dog instead of the hermit crab. Or go to law school rather than trying to figure it all out.
And so it goes.
For those interested, or mildly amused, below is the
article in full as published in today's New York Times:
August 31, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Go West, Old Man
By DAVID BROOKS
Every year we go to the beach, and every year it becomes more obvious that beach vacations are a metaphor for the human predicament. For while in his soul the contemporary man seeks to realize the loftiness of his essential nature, in actual life he finds himself whacking a ball against the windmill arm in an eternal game of mini-golf.
Middle-aged man seeks the spiritual grandeur of a mountain vacation, but is trapped in the saltwater taffy of a beach vacation. He seeks to ride a dude ranch horse among whispering pines and timberline silences, but society is structured such that he finds himself in a piercingly loud ski-ball arcade surrounded by “Party Like a Rock Star” T-shirts and eating a funnel cake.
Not that there is anything wrong with funnel cake. It is the only food left that hasn’t been captured by the Alice Waters/Whole Foods set.
Nobody is making organic, locally grown, zero-carbon-footprint funnel cake.
Still, man seeks something more. And so I repeat my theme: No decliningly virile American man should be content with a beach vacation when a mountain vacation is more in keeping with his inner longing. No middle-aged man of a certain girth should be wearing bathing trunks around adolescents when he could be wearing riding chaps around livestock.
We all, you see, have two summer selves.
Our greater summer self is the mountain self, which is spiritually and physically robust, in a Robert Redford/Horse Whisperer sort of way. Our lesser self is our beach self, which is a banal bimbo-ized version of the person we think we are.
Our beach self munches on cheese fries while browsing through “You Were Better-Looking on MySpace” T-shirts along boardwalks that are basically strip malls of unnecessary objects. Our beach self suffers from sandzheimers syndrome, which is manifested by the tendency to spend hours staring at oncoming waves while making scientific observations like, “Here comes a big one.”
Our beach self is ruled by a spiritual Gresham’s law — every aspiration becomes three degrees trashier than it used to be.
Once, kids were lobbying for a pet dog. Now they are lobbying for a pet hermit crab.
Once, adults were hoarding blue-chip stocks. Now they are hoarding 4,500 video arcade prize tickets in hopes of getting a dayglo Megadeth poster.
It even infects northern Europeans. It was on beaches there that I first came across the menace of Belgian cultural hegemony — the tendency to take everything erotically charged and make it boring. For it is on northern European beaches that middle-aged burghers unaccountably strip off their clothes. If you want to do permanent damage to your libido, go watch 1,000 aging Germans eat bratwurst naked on the beach.
If Vincent van Gogh had taken beach vacations, we wouldn’t have the masterpieces dotting the museums of the world. Instead, van Gogh would have discovered body surfing. He would have concluded, without any actual evidence, that he was really good at body surfing. He would have imagined that people along the shore were admiring his form as he got pounded into the sand. Instead of “Bedroom at Arles,” we’d have a pale guy nursing a piña colada and showing off his chest abrasions.
I think it was Abraham Joshua Heschel — after he broke off with Reinhold Niebuhr and formed Jefferson Airplane — who observed that though the ancients counseled, “Know Thyself,” in 87 percent of actual cases, profound self-knowledge is not transforming. It’s just disappointing.
And this is never more true than when the beach self takes over. There is a boardwalk game near where we vacation where you roll balls into holes to try to get your mechanical horse across a track faster than your 11 opponents. You pay a dollar a game and if you win you get a stuffed horse worth 75 cents. My beach self has played that game for 15 years, and I have never once gotten up without secretly wishing I was playing again.
In my heart, I’d be happy to play that game 11 hours a day at the cost of several thousand dollars, and the only thing preventing me is that the Slovakian girl behind the counter might conclude that American men are pathetic.
Is this really the way we want to spend the summers of our lives? Am I going to spend every August of my declining years sitting on broiling sands feeling inferior to the lifeguards? In fact, probably.
It’s the human predicament.
Note to Dave Brooks: If per chance you are a fan, feel free to put in a good word with your editors. Law school will pass in but three short years. I'm always a pundit for hire. Or if you would prefer the entire text not remain as posted just let me know.
Donor to Democrat Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and financier of the Democrat Party, Norman Hsu, was re-booked this afternoon on charges of grand larceny. 
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