Re: The Most Immediate Post from 2007, Before I Ceased Blogging

The case that I pulled an all-nighter for was eventually tried to conclusion. We sort of lost and sort of won. It's odd to think of it now. My firm has changed quite a bit since; the principal difference is that I'm now nominally a partner.

Claire and I expect to have a baby girl come September. In anticipation of her delivery, Claire purchased me two books as a pre-emptive Father's day gift. I have read the first sixth of one, and I haven't yet read the other; both are written by women physicians, and both are directed to the relationship between a daughter and her father. I can honestly say that the book that I am currently reading is lame. I don't want to sound like a douche, but lady pediatricians who write books about fathers and daughters are, from my admittedly limited sample size of one, on the shrill and solipsitic side. Topic sentence (repeated throughout first sixty pages of book on frequent basis): YOUR DAUGHTER IS GOING TO BE A WHORE (unless you do your job)!

Not instructive and not pleasant to read.

It worked!

I don't understand how the internet knew that it was me, but I was not required to log in or provide two forms of identification as a precondition to posting. Neat.

I thought I would check in.

It's been more than four years. Some things have changed.

Eh.

I’m in the midst of an all-nighter at work. My first, surprisingly. I've come close, but I do believe that tonight's the night I finally make it happen. My brain is functioning, from a cognitive standpoint, at a less than optimal level. For some reason, I’m also feeling very whimsical. If the right (or wrong, depending on one’s perspective) song pops up on my ipod in the next five minutes, I just might feel pumped up enough to tear my diplomas off of my office wall, shatter their frames on my desk, and wipe my ass with them.

Cafe Martinique.

So I haven’t posted in awhile. This is partially because I’m beginning to doubt the practicality of having a blog that’s available to, oh, everyone that has an internet connection. But I do like memorializing my progress through life. Why a diary wouldn’t suffice, I’m not entirely sure. It’s easy to chalk it up to egotism, but I’m not certain that the mere act of publication to the masses is a sufficient explanation. Maybe it’s because diaries are totally gay (and not in the hate-crime sense, but more in the, “I’m fucking old, so in accordance with the ancient vernacular that thirty-year-old relics are wont to employ, gay = lame, but not because I don’t respect the same-sex anal” sense).

My job has been murdering me. I often think about killing myself. Claire hates it when I say that, but I think she should cut me some slack because I’m too stupid to articulate the sentiment any other way. Suicide is no laughing matter, and when I say I want to kill myself, it’s not with the same desperation that motivated my use of the phrase eight years ago. Because back then, I think I actually did want to kill myself. Now, it’s a bit more light-hearted. I basically mean that I wouldn’t mind taking a nap for a month or eighteen years. Because I’m tired dude. Boss be sweatin’ me.

On that note, I’m happy to say that being betrothed is treating me well. I was concerned that I’d freak the fuck out, but it’s been quite settling. I need to exhaustively write about the trip at some point, but for now, I will offer the following advice: don’t stay in Nassau if you want to propose to your lady as the sun sets over the atlantic. The sun doesn’t set over the ocean when you’re on the east side of an island. Waiting another day to see how things work out doesn’t help because, as I’m told, the sun will move from east to west every fucking day of your life. There apparently aren’t any exceptions to this general rule.

We sealed the deal at a restaurant on paradise island. It sounds cheesier than it actually was. Everyone asks me if I got the staff involved in the proposal. I didn't, because I have class. So I asked and Claire accepted. She was happy enough to cry. I think. Happiness and mortification aren't exactly the same thing, but it's hard to be discerning when you're emotionally ignorant. Shortly thereafter, our waiter walked over with our dessert. I was moved as well, but not crying--like Claire--because I have no soul, and in any event, I'm not exactly a pussy. As the waiter asked us if we needed anything else for the evening, I couldn't help but worry that he had surveyed our table, noted Claire's tears, and concluded that I was beating my lady's ass on a regular basis (he hadn't seen the earlier proposal or noted the ring). Which was kind of funny to me when I thought about it later.

Love is so short and oblivion so long.

In keeping with my series of "blog for the nostalgia" posts, this is a poem that I fell in love with nearly ten years ago. I hadn’t thought about it in a long while, but when asked by a friend to choose which, among three poems, she should read at a wedding, I went with the Neruda. Which led me back to this. The sentiment expressed is more or less foreign to me at this juncture in my life. I’m apparently in a very good place. But I’d rather not forget that I once read this poem and was moved enough to cry like a little bitch. So in memoriam of my former self:

Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Because Eddy asked.

I downloaded Pat Benatar's "We Belong" recently. It's quite possibly my all-time favorite pop song. I listen to it on my walk to work; it gears me up for a full day of lawyering. The tune reminds me of when I was passionate about life, or as I like to say, fucking crazy. I don't think I've ever told anyone this--aside from Claire--but the night that one of my ex-girlfriends broke up with me, I jimmyed my way into her building with a credit card, in the hope that my persistence would lead to some sort of reconciliation. It didn't, imagine that. Which, as it turns out, was fine. Because had we reconciled, I'd likely be less than two years away from paying my first child-support payment. But in any case, I miss my former self, if only because he had the capacity for great emotion.

I've been much more ambivalent about my life's calling lately. For the past year, I'd been operating on the presumption that I was going to make partner and practice the law for the next two or three decades. I don't know what happened exactly, and I don't think it was the expiration of my twenties, but I've been considering, more and more seriously, a hasty departure from the law. My closest friend at work is probably a bad influence. He's someone who's never felt the sense of desperation that comes with leaving behind a good paying job for the unknown. It's not that I'm fearful of washing out. At this point, partnership is more a matter of wanting it to a greater degree than the competition, and being willing to make the sacrifices that are expected of you. But kids, apparently, enjoy the human touch. That, and I don't like the stress. It kills me that I'm required to worry so much about stupid fucking bullshit that, from an objective standpoint, doesn't mean jack shit to the client. The devil is ostensibly in the details, which should make sense, but guess what--it doesn't. When your client's defending 200 depositions for a lawsuit and 80% of the deponents are fucking nobodies, the thirty hours in two days that you killed yourself to bill while preparing one of those nobody's deposition outline isn't going to make a lick's difference when, 30 months from now, the case gets settled before trial.

On the other hand, I consider my friend to be a little spoiled by life. No workplace is perfect, that's why it's fucking work. And there are a lot of shittier things to do for a boatload of money than lawyering. It's funny how we only remember certain random things about our lives; how we let specific and otherwise nondistinct events define us. I had this conversation a long time ago with a law firm associate who was more junior than I am now, when I was a law office monkey. I was bitching about bates-labeling and how it was beneath me. The attorney had been a friend of mine and his reaction was not expected. He reamed me out. In his opinion, I was being a whiny little bitch--nobody was making me work this job and while I was here, I might as well be grateful and do a good job of it. I was doing better than the poor bastards working the lunch shift at the lake forest burger king, and those dudes had families to care for. He told me to ball up and shut my yap. Which stays with me to this day. So who knows. If years from now, I'm able to co-own a yacht with any of you, know that 50% of your luxury vessel was underwritten by my soul's demise.

Turning thirty.

On the eve of my thirtieth birthday, my firm had a Cubs outing for its summer associates. Although I had a brief that I had to turn around that morning, I managed to catch the last third of the game because of a rain delay. The game itself was lame—Maddux gave his typical post-Braves era quality start (6 IP; 4 ER), and the Cubs lost without so much of a peep in the later innings. This summer has lacked the hedonism of last, mostly because last year's interns were all burgeoning alcoholics, and best of all, promiscuous. So the after-party in Wrigleyville wasn't much of an after-party, and I bailed around 6:30. The year before, by contrast, I rambled around until 10:00, ate a burrito in the hope of sobering up, hopped in a cab home, puked my burrito, showered, and drove to the airport to pick up Claire. So this year was a bit more sedate.

During my walk home, I decided to swing by the comic book store adjacent to Shiroi Hana. They've been marketing a 125 issue lot of X-Factor for the last year. Not surprisingly, no one's bought it because: (1) most little kids don't have the money, or the vested interest, to buy a bunch of comics which likely pre-date their birth; and (2) most adults have self-respect. I, on the other hand, don't give a shit, particularly when I'm drunk. Even the hipster with the buddy holly glasses manning the counter gave me a funny look; I shot him a look back which hopefully conveyed—"what the fuck's your problem; I'm not the foolio that works here."

The issues that I bought were published from 1986 to 1996, which was nine to nineteen for me. X-Factor was the first real comic that I followed religiously. The first issue that I ever bought was #4, on a post-church Sunday afternoon at "Catfish Town," Baton Rouge's ill-conceived circa-1985 main street rejuvenation project. We had gone to café du monde and I was flush with a sugar rush from several beignets. I think my parents were reluctant to buy it for me because there was a (somewhat) scantily-clad hei ren in leather on the cover. But they did, and the rest is history. Ten years of comics turned out to be heavier than I thought it would be. After triple-bagging them, I struggled home on the el, stopping along the way to pick up Claire in the loop (who incidentally gave me the same look that comic book store guy did).

Reading them again was odd. I hadn't remembered how obsessive I was as a kid, when I read and re-read a single issue dozens of times during the thirty or so days between one month's offering and the next. Jonathan Franzen wrote an essay once about his father's alzheimer's disease, and the physiological basis for human memory. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I do remember that it was neat and that he used the science as post-modern allegory. Long story short, you'd be surprised to learn the extent of the stupid shit that you remember, or at least think you remember. As I sit here today, I'd have to look up the rule on the number of interrogatories you can serve in federal court, even though the issue has routinely come up in the four years that I've been a practicing attorney. But I still have vivid memories of certain comic book panels which I haven't set sight on in fifteen years. What the fuck. It wasn't so much the actual memory of those images which stirred me, but the sentiment that they evoked. I can't really articulate it well, but if pressed, I suppose I'd call it something trite. They just made me really fucking happy in a way that's alien to whatever satisfaction it is I derive from life now, as an adult.

The pub crawl the next day was a bit of a letdown. I didn't hit as many bars as I intended to, and the endeavor wasn't nearly as nostalgic as I imagined it would be. Most of this was due to the number of people that tagged along. In ten years, I'll likely streamline the group so that we can more realistically comport with my one bar, one drink, one hour schedule. Claire and our first-born child will suffice. By the time 10:30 rolled around, I wasn't particularly drunk, but I had a massive headache and needed a nap. On Sunday, Claire surprised us with a sailing charter. It rocked. I later went online to check out lessons, but there's apparently some unspoken exclusive rich white people mafia when it comes to sailing. The cheapest I found were around three grand for 20 hours of instruction, which is not reasonable.

After less than a week, I can't say that being thirty or being back on the wagon is particularly fun. I've been plagued by an immature compulsion to throw off the bourgeois chains of my current life, quit my job, and do something that makes me really happy. Which is just about the stupidest shit I've ever thought in my entire life. As for sobriety, watching other people drink makes me really nervous. I don't know if that's some sort of dt precursor, but it's weird.