Looking back

"The Heels broke my goddamn heart," my friend Jesse said in June 2006. Carolina had just lost to Oregon State in the College World Series championship on an impossible throwing error. Baseball sucked for an entire year. I couldn't watch the pros. I went to minor league games for the cheap beer and barely watched the games. I made little effort to get out and throw, and when I did, it gave my girlfriend a black eye.

Baseball was supposed to redeem itself this year when the Heels tangled with the Beavers yet again in the championship series. I made the requisite solo road trip to Chapel Hill, but the boys in blue fell over in two losses. Baseball sucks again. The Heels broke our hearts again.

Heels fans are freaks. We don't talk if we lose. I couldn't release the vibe, so I left Chapel Hill without looking back. I had never done that before.

Lightning tore through heavy rain on I40/85. I searched for a solid frequency before I got back to the Charlotte area, but this was the only song that poked through the static. I looked back. But the Heels still broke my heart.

"Country roads, take me home
to the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain mama,
take me home, country roads."
~John Denver

23

Maybe I am vain. My girlfriend suggested the possibility while I inspected my left nostril, which is considerably smaller than the right. I think the imbalance occurred after a reconstructive surgery several years ago. Were my nostrils uneven prior to that event? Surely I would have noticed. Either the surgeon is at fault or I became vain in in the summer of 2002.

I wasn't actually inspecting the size of the nostril but rather the hairs coming out of it. What is it with my twenty-third year? I'm sprouting the stuff from my nose, and I'm ready to buy a family pack of Nair if it exists. My girlfriend told me not to use the word sprout. She says sprouts are edible, so I'll call them hairs.

Tail between my legs, I went to Eckerd to pick up the tweezers. Now I know what it means to be a man. Welcome to puberty 2.

I will give periodic literary reviews this summer. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe will be worth your time, but I honestly think the film was more polished. Read the book if you're looking for a few more dreamers to go with Ray, Moonlight and Mann.

I started The Catcher in the Rye yesterday. Salinger's writing style is great. He rambles like Kerouac, but I don't mind listening this time.

Pick 1

Writers write. People read writers. People talk. Writers listen. Writers write. Is that the progression? My two recent commenters increased my audience by 200 percent. The quantity of readers does not matter, but the quality matters immensely. The same is true of writing and writers. Hello, Sara and Ms. Richardson.

I decided on something big today. The many variables weighed heavy. The pro-con list would have looked more like a flow chart, so I did not make one. Instead I threw all the information together on my drive home from work and let it mush. The decision popped out of my head and hovered above the dashboard like a lottery ball. I sat at the I-85 ramp red light, looking at my ping-pong impossibility that towered above the frenzied balls below.

Not having a heart would be too easy. Not having a head would be too damn fun.

Ceremonies

My friend, Kim, got married last weekend in the eye of a hurricane. She used to stay up until the wee hours, helping me study at Carolina. I saw a dear friend very happy.

My sister graduated from Harvard yesterday. I strolled the Cambridge streets without aim all day. I will do the same tomorrow.

This new life of ease gives me time to read. I am halfway through W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe. I will try to remember the name Karin if I ever have a daughter.

I will now retire to my sister's air mattress, which requires several inflations each night.

"The process is all so slow, as dreams are slow, as dreams suspend time like a balloon hung in midair. I want it all to happen now . . . I want whatever miracle I am party to, to prosper and grow: I want the dimensions of time that have been loosened from their foundations to entwine like a basketful of bright embroidery threads. But it seems that even for dreams, I have to work and wait. It hardly seems fair."

~W.P. Kinsella