That About Sums It Up …

/ J. Thorp / 9 Comments

Over many years, people have advised me to think about my future. Generally these conversations were about thinking about the next job and maximizing earnings. I was constantly contemplating grad school and dream jobs.

Yesterday in a moment of startling candor (startling to me), I typed this to a friend:

“My only dream these days is to eventually secede from civilized society and live a life of quiet solitude with my wife … my only contact with the outside world: four exceptional children (three boys who respect girls; one girl who respects herself) and the occasional book-length manifesto released to moderate critical acclaim.”

Don’t get me wrong: I love my current job. What’s next? Hopefully something completely different, by the sounds. Does Jodi share this dream? Depends on the definition of solitude, I suspect …

Fool for April

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: I wrote this April 1, 2004, while headed to work. Jodi was working for Cargill at that time, and pregnant with Trevor. That April, unlike this one, was sunny and warm. I’m listless in this grey haze today, and I sincerely want to spend the next several days with my family, doing nothing. No such luck, I’m afraid.

I’m on the bus this Thursday morning. We’re not yet underway — fellow commuters straggle in in twos and threes. Cars, I mean — everyone drives his or her own car to the Park and Ride; every one a good American. At least we’ve embraced the bus to get us from here downtown, right? Folks are smiling this morning, sleepy but not tired. I know the feeling.

I’m a fool for April. Growing up in Michigan, or Minnesota for that matter, you know March is bound to be a mess of slush and mud. Like November, it’s going to be blustery and cold, with a fair chance of snow or sleet.

But April! It’s like a whole new world this morning — not a cloud for miles, the sun’s high in the sky already, and I drove the old pickup in this morning in a sweater and sunglasses. April Fool’s or not, I can’t help but but have hope that spring may have sprung at last.

Mornings like this, it feels like the world’s great eye opens wide and bright and stares back at us in wonder — what strange creatures are these, queued up and bound downtown to sit in cubes and punch keys on a morning made for loving, sleeping long and late, stretching, smiling, and blinking in the sunshine? Is the weekend rain any wonder? The heavens weep at our investments, our invented urgencies, and our ignorance.

The ache has returned — that tight pit in my stomach that strains to contain my urges (selfish and otherwise) to escape this race and return home, buy flowers along the way, call Jodi home feigning sickness, lay out clean sheets and open all the windows, nap through lunch, eat late, pick up the kids early, and sit cross-legged on the floor with our sons and daughter, laughing as mommy soaks in the tub, the bubbles spoofing her round belly and popping in the attempt. Another day, another dollar, another baby on the way. The world should pay parents to stay together at home with their children. Leave the hard work to the young and ambitious, and the planning to elders, who have can see the big picture by virtue of being closer to heaven.

It’s both selfish and selfless, this urge to wrap my arms around these dear friends and hold them close. We are all brothers and sisters, though positioned at times as adversaries. A sister of mine recalls a verse: Owe no man anything except respect. We are all worth less than we let on and more than we’ll ever know — less because those things we often emphasize in ourselves matter least to those around us, and more because we’ve no perspective. The mirror distorts, the camera frames — only through contact and interaction are we manifest truly. Only in love, or lack thereof.

Trevor, Thinking …

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

We did a bit of running around this morning. Trevvy does some of his best thinking in the minivan, so when he saw the first group of motorcycles on the road, he said, “Dad, I want you to get a motorcycle!”

“Really?” I said, thinking Talk to your mother.

“I want you to get a reawwy, reawwy long motorcycle, so everybody in the whole world can ride on it!”

He didn’t say much else until the ride home. Then he said, “Dad, I know how to spell DVD. It spells D-V-D.”

“That’s so easy,” said Emma.

“Yah,” said Trevvy, “because there’s two Ds and a V, like this: D-V-D.”

Exactly.

No Change to Spare …

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

This presidential election is said to be about change. Some say nothing ever changes in politics. I tend to be more optimistic than that – but then, these gems:

“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

“Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.”

“When you have no basis for argument, abuse the plaintiff.”

“The more laws, the less justice.”

And finally:

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”

All of these nuggests are credited to Marcus Tullius Cicero, who lived from 106 to 43 B.C.

It could be a long millennium …