Joltin'.

I'm finally digging into the type of book I've long been wanting to read, a biography of Joe DiMaggio (The Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer), and I thought I'd give a little opinion — in part to chronicle the 500-page book for posterity, and in part to convince the people who may have once followed my blog that I am not, indeed, dead.

I'm about halfway through so far, and the picture of Joe is a sad one. Along the mantra of "Don't be motivated by fear; be motivated by hope," he hangs a failing grade from even his youth. The man is so driven by not making mistakes, not falling short with money, not succumbing to others' expectations, not letting anything out of his grasp, that much of his life appears to be that of a caged man.

Joe's career choice and most of how he lives after that come from this fear, but of course with a man as talented as Joe DiMaggio, the fear is but an ugly speck in his aura of defiance. Even though he may have lived most of his years scared of running out of cash or not being perfect, he transformed that fear into performance with such skill that most people watching just found him amazing.

That seems to be the larger tale for most great athletes: Demons so dark that the star is driven to push harder, jump higher, hit longer, be better, win more than anyone around. We laud them, follow them, and try to emulate them ... most times not knowing that their otherworldliness is not so much a heavenly bent as it is shadows of pain, failure, or exclusion pushing a man.

The fans who remember Joe recall a man locked in, devoted to winning. He stood solid in the batter's box, and in his quiet and strength he always had the right focus to be a superior hitter. He scrutinized and planned from the outfield, doing the large bits of work ahead of time to see where a hitter was going so his legs could easily handle the rest. He relentlessly kept his brain on winning, winning, winning, and styled his regimens and attitudes around that goal, and the glory that came with achieving it.

Would Joe have been this Joe if not for the World Series bonuses he was chasing? What if he wasn't pushing each year for a better salary? What if he didn't feel the need to be known as better than Ted Williams? Would Joe have ever even pursued baseball if he didn't think it could pay him well?

Where would those fly balls have gone if he wasn't obsessed with being the perfect outfielder? How about the batting crowns, MVP awards, and championship rings — or the legs shredded from ferocious sliding, the failed marriages, and his otherwise loveless and injured life?

Do you have to court the darkness of pride, fear, and hunger to be truly great?

Jerry West's book, West by West, seems to think so. Kobe Bryant's trophy case vs. LeBron James' happy zone backs up the thesis. Tiger Woods' altered landscape suggests that genius needs its ingredients just right — and on its own terms.

Can you be a winner without the killer instinct? And are the great ones' greatest talents really just their ability to keep their demons dancing on a row long enough that they can harness the bitterness, rage, and shortcomings into one giant burst of awesome?

Hope it's worth it, fellas.

Ode to Overachieving

I got into journalism because I wanted to be able to have hands in all of my interests at once: writing, editing, design, sports, philosophy, current events, culture. It turns out that you often only get to do two or three at once, and the rest fall away when you find yourself wanting to eat or sleep instead.

The most depressing part about having a blog that you can't consistently keep up, though, is that it chronicles your insufficiences. Yes, I haven't written since Nov. 23, and even that piece was a recycled piece from a whole year earlier that I only finally got up because a friend asked for it. Yes, I haven't written about sports much since I left my last sports job. Yes, I have virtually nothing about culture up here.

Yes, I have about five pieces total that are about things I really want to write about: you can search by labels, by dates, by archive, but no more will appear than the ones I've taken time to write.

So, my ode to overachieving: I've gone through everything in life faster than most people and sometimes better than most people, but blogs and such make me happy to say I can't do it all. I'm happy I spent that time eating, sleeping, and being with friends. I can always find time "later in the week" for world domination. (Here's to you, Liz Lemon.)

There will be life.

The struggling Christian bows her head at Starbucks, tears in the eyes and despair in the heart because — despite her best intentions — she has hurt someone again. In a world where she has felt so much pain, and been mistreated so many times, she couldn’t stop it. When treated wrong, she lashed out again — in furious anger, biting words, searing jabs. Her ugliness was thrown in their faces, and they were hurt. And the soul that was just trying to patch itself up from so much pain has now made someone else feel just as shredded as she. She didn’t want to hurt them; she just wanted the pain to go away.

But corrupted life is better than no life at all.

The disgraced father bows his head and tightens his hands, the pit in his stomach and hole in his heart growing faster than the fruit of his efforts. A sin done years ago is back, taunting him. It has found his children, screaming at them with the shock of his past. He has become a lesser man, a shell of a soul, a carrier of wretchedness. And now, in the season when the scab was supposed to be fading to a scar — forgiven so many times now — it is being ripped off and picked at. Insufficient as a man, failing as a father, fallen as a soul, he just wants to escape the pain.

But corrupted life is better than no life at all.

He is by the ocean, surfboard stashed by his sandals, with the salt wind blowing through his perfect hair, over his perfect face, down his perfect body. But in the lap of wealth and talent, the emptiness grows – the gap that is never edged by enough beautiful moments, not hidden by the comfort of many who love him, not filled by the answers and truths he’s been told are it. To keep living means to keep finding those bits of happiness, only to have them crushed by the overwhelming feeling that it is not enough. The soul still aches, the brain still wonders, the heart still hurts. He just wants the turmoil to stop.

But corrupted life is better than no life at all.

She is successful, at the top of it all, a mastermind at both her craft and among the people she knows. A job never comes that she can’t do, a contest she can’t win, an idea she can’t best. Advancement has never come up short; the answers are always there. Yet, for all the achievement, a pause. More answers only lead to more questions, deeper questions, worse questions — questions of never really feeling love, of being so close yet not really being able to grasp life, of the heart falling limp while the brain is twirling. She just wants a friend, a real hope, an idea that maybe this doesn’t have to be it. She wants to switch the twirling off.

But corrupted life is better than no life at all.

She didn’t mean to walk to the beat of her own drum; she didn’t ever really know she was that different. She was happy, alone, running in her imagination and doing what she knew best. Do this and it will be better, they said, so she did. Help here and you will be great, they said, so she did. She saw pictures and ideas and words that made her heart skip, her brain explode, her feet float. She ran after them, moving them here and adding them there, making beautiful little worlds. But when she came outside again, the faces were different. She was still doing this and being better, helping here and being great, but for some reason it wasn’t enough. For some reason there was disapproval now, a looking down on her little works of art. The beat of her own drum was frowned at, as if it was some horror she had made to subvert the world. She tried to help and only made disasters. She spoke the only things she knew and was chided for being so wrong. She was good enough not to get help, not to get extra love, but not good enough to win praise. She was one vote away from victory, one letter from being accepted. She was unwanted, incomplete, and she didn’t know why. And she just wanted the unapproving looks to go away.

But corrupted life is better than no life at all.

He usually doesn’t know what to say, but he tries. He tries to be friendly, tries to help, tries to listen. Usually it just makes it worse. Every attempt at better just makes it worse.

They put up buildings with good intentions, programs with high hopes, but now those visions have been taken and polluted. They’ve been spoiled, used for evil causes. They’ve been adulterated into schemes that look the same but have no good within. They’ve been misunderstood.

They’ve killed, maimed, and murdered. An entire nation eliminated. Children’s hands cut off. Dictators withhold food. Politicians take away basic decency. The mentally ill fall into the streets; the handicapped cower to the back of the room. The dumb are scorned, the weak are ridiculed, the wanting are left behind.

They build entire societies on hurt and waste and oppression. Generations go by without hope. Children become adults to feel pain and die. Good men suffer for fools. Strong men see life wither to feed the lazy.

But in the darkness, a soul stands up.

After years of hurting others, the girl realizes that hurt can stop. Crying in the coffee shop from the residue of her anger, she looks around her and decides it will stop. She will fail so many more times, but today she will succeed at least once. She will choose to help, not hurt. And somewhere, somehow, life will be affirmed and grow. There will be green.

The father gets out of the truck and takes a deep breath of fresh air. He shakes his head clear of his mistakes and determines that, despite all of the pain he’s given his wife and sons, he still has something to give them tomorrow. There will be love; there will be red.

The young man digs his toes into the sand and clenches his fists, chasing away his doubts. If he has mastered the sea, he can master his mind. For all the darkness in his heart, there is a wide open sea, waiting to be explored, asking to be enjoyed. There will be blue.

In her office, the successful woman closes the book. She puts away the notes. She stops looking for answers. And in the quiet, staring out her window at the beautiful lights of the shrouded city scape, she lets herself smile. There will be orange.

The little girl runs from the crowded building and staring faces, runs fast, into the wide open field. She builds castles and dreams up stories. She throws flowers to the wind. She calls her mood joy. There will be yellow.

The boy tries to be friendly one more time. The organizers put together one more program. The missionaries build another church. A martyr stands up in the street. A revolution fills the square. A resistance hides the oppressed. A remnant fosters life. A hopeful youth calls for change, that this world could be different, this generation saved.

Because corrupted life is better than no life at all.

Together they work, often alone, often wondering, often unsure. They make green and red and blue and orange and yellow. A rainbow forms.

And God says, this is my promise; this is my sign. I will never remove life from this earth completely. This world will not be destroyed. When you see clouds, you will also see my rainbow. It will remind you of this promise — that no matter how much hurt there is, how much decay, how much hopeless and destruction — life will never disappear. Some kind of life is always worth it. You may doubt, but trust me. And when you wonder, when the rain comes and clouds gather, just look at the sky.

Because corrupted life is better than no life at all, and life is the most beautiful thing.



first written 11.12.MMX

When I Become Me

Who will I become?
What parts of me are out there, waiting to be formed from?
Against which colors will the new me be sketched?
Into what saga will the patterns of life be etched?
Who will I become?

What will I be?
What rumblings of something greater will explode into me?
When the water pulls back, the dirt shakes off at last
What parts of personality will emerge from a shaping past?
What will I be?

Whose hole will I fill?
When I am finally me, who will catch me in the wishes of their will?
As the rough edges give way
To a more beautiful polished way
Whose hole will I fill?

How will my heart look, complete?
How will I shine when it's no longer wonder, wish, repeat?
The focus now is on the fire, the ripping change and die
But I prefer the light of morning, the no more question why.
How will my heart look, complete?
When I become me.

When you return to righting

I never want to be one of those people who vomits life into a blog, or who shares too many details, or who talks because they have nothing better to do.

I don't even want to be one of those people remembered for posterity. Destroy your photos; let my words catch the wind. I'm far more interested these days in making life better for the people around me, and I increasingly find less time to write when trying to do that. (And often failing.)

So, why write again? Well, if this be a return to writing, let's consider it also a return to righting — an attempt at doing right the best I can, in hopes that one of these days real good and real righteousness will show up. (Psalm 37.)

So, I will write, and much of it will be crap. Some won't make sense. Much may mislead. But I'll be writing, and maybe some of it will stick, and maybe some of it will help.

Because, the more I'm convinced I've got nothing to give, I always have these wily words going through my head. And so, confusing God of this world, Who seems to relish dropping me in situations where I do not fit and do not find any bit of me in strength, I will write the words You have insisted stay in my head. As all else fails me, the words remain, and so I right the best I can.

This post is one at least I'll look back on with regret: Too emotional, right? And so it begins. I am an emotional being, and I was born to an age where my friends are blessed that I can dump the musings into a blog that no one will read rather than on their ears.

A drowning poet is all I've ever had.

The Girl in the Picture's a Blonde

A simple melody
Reminds me of what it's like
For me to be me (for me to be me).

The girl in the picture's a blonde
It's got to be that way 'cause I'm,
I'm not very strong.

I had a fight tonight
With the only One that I've
That I've ever loved.

He forgives and forgets I know
But I'm so tired of oh,
Of oh being so.

More tears tomorrow I'm sure
But the Son will come, will come
Will come and bring more.

The girl in the picture's a blonde
But I'm not afraid
'Cause I won't stay long.
I won't stay long.

7.24

Could you come? Could you come and color my world?
Would the shades be bright enough to change it all, even for a picky girl?
If we hang the simple sayings, the clippings, and the hues
Will it change the space enough to chase away my blues?
Could you come? Could you come and color my world?