My Mind...

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...wanders.

Swearing Redux

Three different people have openly called me out.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt...these are the words with which the the road to disappointing your friends and family is paved.

I have no intention of teaching my son to swear. I don't think it's cute or funny when a three-year old says shit.

He's going to hear bad words, probably sooner than I did - and I learned so early I don't even remember how old I was when I first heard someone say fuck. (It's all uncle Eddie's fault...he's 6 years older, so when I was only 10 I was regularly exposed to the world of a 16 year-old in the late 1970s...and that's all I'm gonna say about that.)

What I was trying to say (apparently I was unconvincing) was that of all the concerns I have about Jack's future, swearing is way down the list.

I'm not sure what, exactly, bothers people so much about potty language. It's not like swearing is the kind of thing that can keep a kid out of college (unless, of course, he swears at someone). Hell, swearing got Joel Goodson into Princeton. (There I go, defending swearing again.)

Seriously, I'm not condoning swearing amongst toddlers. Or even pre-teens. But teenagers, in any country in the world, are going to hear swear words. What's a parent to do? I accept it, and I plan to be an active participant in my son's life. When he says those words I won't over-react and wash his mouth out with soap (does anyone actually still do this?), or yell at him. I plan on helping him understand what's meant when people say these things, that words are almost never to be taken lightly, that you should mean what you say.

I can pretty much guarantee that even prince William has heard his share of people use unprincely language. In England, swearing is almost the national pastime...and unlike the U.S. they have a seriously long past time...they invented that damn language and they swear like, well, drunken Englishman.

Dog Days

It’s the middle of July and the only thing I want to see in the high 90’s are fastballs, but the warm summer is hitting its stride (just like the Cubs ) as we approach the All-Star game and the temperature is a near-record 96 degrees.

I’ve started reading three different books in the last week and I’ve put them all down. Between Jack, work, and day-to-day distractions (it’s amazing how quickly laundry, mail and un-returned phone calls can pile up) I don’t seem to be able to focus on anything for more than ten seconds – books, movies, conversations, even sleep exist in a world of fits and starts and seemingly endless beginnings without a single conclusion (it’s a near-miracle I can finish this sentence).

I still have an uncanny ability to amass scraps of paper with notes for current and future projects. Receipts, envelopes, the corners of newspapers are scrawled in barely-legible pen scratchings, occasionally disintegrating in the pockets of jeans tossed into the hamper and jackets hung in closets months ago.

The summer makes me lazy. I know I’m supposed to love it. As a Chicagoan I’m almost obligated to look forward to these balmy (muggy, sticky, sultry) days and nights as if they only come once a decade like some constantly deferred birthday party. But I don’t. I prefer it cooler, rainier, greyer; maybe it’s my eastern European lineage. Not all the time. But if I had my way it would be 58 degrees with passing fronts of enormous clouds, clouds as big as entire states stacked like plumes of chimney smoke.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to “cool off” to 89 degrees.

October can’t get here soon enough.

My First-Born Son

26 Letters

Language.

Foul language, foreign language, body language.

"Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols."

Whatever the fuck that means.

It's all inadequate; feeble, really, when you think about it. In English we have 26 characters mashed together into combinations that are supposed to represent everything - every object, every distance, every thought - every emotion, sensation, color, sound - every vein of every leaf, every crest of every wave, every sea creature, mammal, alien creature imagined or real. EVERYTHING that ever was, is and will be.

That's a lot to ask from 26 letters. But it's what we have, so it's what we use.

As for what we will teach Jack the one topic that seems to come up most often is swearing. I have to admit I'm torn. As anyone who knows me can imagine, I believe words have massive power (for both good and evil) so they must be wielded with caution and as much precision as possible.

At the same time, I'm not particularly enamored of the parochial and hypocritically pious nature of American society and am just as inclined as anyone (more inclined) to say fuck-all in front of anyone I goddamn well please.

I'm not going to encourage it, but I don't plan on making a big deal out of it the first time Jack says 'shit' in front of grandma or 'fuck' in front of the neighbors. If he's a perceptive kid he'll learn how and when to use it, just like you and me and millions of other verbally responsible adults.

Crossover post.

Writing Is Re-writing

Keep saying it to yourself. Writing is rewriting.

When the inspiration seems to have drifted away, or to another idea, remember: Writing IS rewriting.

Pick an inspirational font, put a fancy border around the page, and in 120-point letters type it and print: Writing ... is rewriting.

Put it on a bracelet: W I R

Whatever you do...don't forget it.

Writing. Is. Rewriting.

The End Is Very Fucking Nigh*

Thanks to Cormac McCarthy (the greatest living American writer) I’ve been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic bender lately.

I’m reading The Road for the third time in the last two months. I’ve never read a novel more than once, though I’ve re-read parts of books, namely Walden. I’ve re-read short stories and poems, I’ve watched a handful of movies multiple times, but the time investment for a novel is so massive and there are so many books I’ve never read that the impulse to go back to a novel I’ve read simply isn’t that strong compared to the impulse to read one of the thousands of great books I haven’t gotten to yet.

28 Days Later (which I loved) was recently on television in anticipation of the release of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later (which I can’t wait to see).

Though I’m a (relatively) firm believer that there’s an impending global catastrophe on the way, I can’t say that I’ve been doing much planning for it. I’m not hording water, I haven’t collected a cache of weapons, I don’t even own one of those batteryless, hand-cranked flashlights.

The impending apocalypse has not dimmed my enthusiasm for the future, as evidenced by the fact that we recently got a puppy and we’re having a baby. Babies and puppies have a way of softening the blows of harsh reality.

What would I do if hordes of marauding cannibals or troops of zombies began shambling through the streets of the world?

Frankly, I have no fucking clue.

But I have some great fiction to offer me some suggestion.

*Graffiti on a church wall from 28 Days Later