Category: Uncategorized (So Far)

Burning Man 2015 impends. This year, for the first time since 2011, I’ve been feeling the call to go. Over the past few weeks, that feeling has gotten more intense.

In response, I contemplated a plan to get me there. The plan was built around the assertion that I have something to offer Black Rock City, that I have a gift to bring. (And I do.) Bringing the idea to fruition in the two weeks between now and the start of Burning Man would be pretty unlikely, which isn’t in itself a reason not to try.

But a couple of personal interactions this past weekend told me I’d be wise to wait another year, that another year’s growth would give me a much better foundation for a return to the playa. I could also then build on the idea (which I will detail in the days ahead) with a much higher likelihood of success.

As the plan relates a lot to what I’m doing with Free Refills and where I intend to take it from here, I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks here exploring the idea, especially in the context of where Burning Man has taken me in my life and where I hope it’ll take me from here, and perhaps vice versa as well, that is, exploring Burning Man in the context of the idea.

In doing so I want to be laying down the groundwork for some broader work, in Free Refills and elsewhere, that I intend to start bringing to fruition in the weeks ahead.

A few days ago I spoke of the personal growth I’ve been so fortunate to experience over the past year. One of the things I’ve had to confront in myself is a tendency (from way back) to get involved in exciting, passionate relationships that ultimately drain my energy.

With that in mind, I’d like to mention that my Tottenham Hotspur begin their 2015-16 Premier League campaign against Manchester United tomorrow.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Greatest Day was not the bottom.

On the Greatest Day, I learned that the universe would send me the help I needed, I only needed to ask for it.

It is very hard to ask for it.

The bottom was the day my heart hurt too much to ignore. I said, No more. There is no further to go on this path. I am making changes now, or I will surely die.

The bottom was the day when I had to ask for help.

That was August 3rd, 2014.

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That day I was shattered pieces wrapped in skin, and I called people dear to me and I asked their help. I told them what I was experiencing and how I was thinking about moving forward and I asked them if my thinking was clear enough that I could trust it. I was in deep stress and anguish and I knew furthermore that my own decisions had gotten me to this place in my life, and without their feedback I didn’t know if I could make it safely through. So I asked for help.

It was hard, my god it was hard.

I made a lot of changes, and quickly. There was no time to dabble. I put everything on the line.

And in the midst of all this was the night at poker when Jerry mentioned that he’d been struggling for many years to write his book, and I said, “I think I can help you with that.”

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I look back on that time and it’s like I see another person’s memories through my eyes.

I said that to Jerry recently, that things are so different now it’s like I’m a different person.

Jerry said, “You are. You are a different person.”

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That was a dark time, and I lived much of it in the dark. In that stress I could only sleep a little more than four hours in a night. I’d wake up at 2:30am and sleep would disappear into the dark and I would lie there for hours.

Now, sometimes I open my eyes onto the light of breaking dawn and I start my day with a smile.

I think we begin at the end.

Roger Federer loses the Wimbledon final to Novak Djokovic in 4 sets, 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3.

In a piece that aired before Federer’s semi-final match against Andy Murray, ESPN commentator Jason Goodall says that, if anything, Federer is playing better than he was in 2003, when he first won Wimbledon. Goodall even has some pretty sophisticated data to back it up.

At the end of that segment, when they cut back to the commentators in the studio, one of them briefly mentions that Federer’s success this year is despite the change in the court surface, which has slowed the game and caused the ball to bounce higher. All the studio commentators agree that the higher bounce plays into the hands of his rivals.

Still in reverse chronology: The first I ever heard of this slowing of the courts in tennis’s major tournaments was a piece by Brian Phillips on Grantland from June 19th, 2013. In it, though Phillips notes that Federer won all of his major tournaments after this process of slowing the courts was well underway, he asks, “Is [Federer’s] cool, thoughtful game actually helped by slightly slower play? Or is he such a phenomenal talent that he won 17 majors while the organizers of his own sport were essentially working to help his biggest rival?”

Now let’s fast-forward, to I think it was just before the match began, when Chris Fowler, John McEnroe and Patrick McEnroe mentioned how strongly the crowd was in favor of Federer, and how hard that must be for Djokovic.

And I thought about that the whole match long. Because I felt the same way. I wanted Federer to win so badly I realized I was expending energy trying to influence the outcome.

(Which is maybe slightly silly, because Boulder, CO, is 4,700 miles away from London, England, and because I was watching hours after the match had actually ended. Energetic effects may travel over great distances and even forward and backward in time, but…it’s still probably not the most effective use of one’s energy, don’t you think?)

So let’s go back to the end. Djokovic won 7-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-3. I wanted Federer to win so badly that I woke up in the middle of the night and felt a wistful sadness sweep through me like a breeze. Match reports today use phrases like “ruthless efficiency.” Brian Phillips describes Djokovic as cyborg-ian. Which all leads me back to this: while I was watching, I thought a lot about what it is about Djokovic and what it is about Federer that had Federer by far the fan (and my) favorite. By all indications, Federer is a nice, sort of aloof fellow who plays tennis spectacularly well. By all indications, Djokovic is a friendly guy who plays tennis spectacularly well. If anything, Djokovic appears to be more immediately likable–as a person, anyway–than Federer.

Which suggests that one of two things explains Federer’s greater popularity. One possibility is that he’s won more Grand Slams than anyone else ever (among the men, anyway), that he’s pretty consistently called the best tennis player ever, and so he’s the sentimental choice. People want to see him win one more major because he’s getting old (he’s a few weeks from 34 now, whereas Djokovic recently turned 28) and every year that passes it becomes less likely. Please, Roger, we’re saying, win one more and stave off my fears of my own mortality for a little longer.

And I’m sure that plays a part of it, but I think the greater part is the second thing, which is that Federer’s tennis is by far the more beautiful. Federer plays tennis like a musician, the angles and spins of his shots dashing off with Mozartian exuberance. He plays like a dancer, with the racquet as his partner. His shots are so beautiful, I’d marry them.

Djokovic, on the other hand, plays like a machine built not just to play tennis but to put to rest any further arguments about which is superior, flesh or metal. It’s beautiful the way modern war weapons are beautiful. His shots are like laser-guided.

Throughout the match, I kept thinking back to the announcers pointing out that Federer is by far the more popular player, that the crowd, at the event and elsewhere, was very much rooting for him. And I kept thinking back, too, to Brian Phillips’ piece about how Wimbledon has slowed down so much over the years, diluting Federer’s strengths and playing up Djokovic’s. And I kept wondering if maybe the tennis powers-that-be did the wrong thing. Now, Djokovic beat Federer pretty soundly over the last two sets, and so perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if Wimbledon were still played on the surface of old. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered if they played Wimbledon on a surface of polished mirror. Perhaps Djokovic, six years younger in a sport that sees its age-related decline hit earlier and more sharply than most, would have prevailed no matter what.

But if that’s not the case–if the boundaries that define the game have been tweaked such that the fans’ favorite loses, and in a slightly different world–a slightly different world that we could easily create–it would have been the other way around, and the victor would have been the player who played more beautifully, then hasn’t something greater been lost?

How seriously can I take myself as a hardcore soccer fan if I don’t write something about the Women’s World Cup final and the U.S. team’s famous victory?

While four goals in the first 16 minutes is obviously a deep outlier of an occurrence, it wasn’t as accidental or as just-lucky as it might have seemed. Watch the first two goals. Pay particular attention to Carli Lloyd’s initial positioning and her movement on the plays:

Did you catch that? Did you see how on both goals Carli Lloyd moved from a substantial distance away to a pocket of empty space that was exactly where the ball ended up? Those weren’t accidents, those were plays. The U.S. coaching clearly noticed a particular weakness in Japan’s set-piece defending and set up those plays to take advantage, and boy did they. The ball found Carli Lloyd in each instance because it was supposed to.

Now just five minutes in, and Japan were down 2-0 and deeply shellshocked. In serious competition, with so much on the line, it’s not easy to regroup emotionally and energetically after something like that, and during the time it takes to return to balance (or as balanced as possible, once you’re way behind like that), it’s not unusual for things to go from bad to worse.

Bad to worse: Normally, Azusa Iwashimizu would manage to clear Tobin Heath’s deep cross, but instead she was late to react and just popped the ball up into the air so that Lauren Holiday could smash home that volley. (And what terrific composure Holiday showed there. It’s the easiest thing in the world to blast that shot 19,000 rows into the stands.) Normally, Ayumi Kaihori isn’t quite so careless in her positioning, but now Japan were down 3-0 and her brain was doubtless a jumble of electrical static, and–well, you saw what happened next. (You should watch it again. It’s awesome.)

And just how on fire was Carli Lloyd? When she missed a free header wide a few minutes after the chip, for what would have been her fourth goal, she looked almost surprised. “You mean I can miss?” the look on her face seemed to say. She was well-deserving of the Golden Ball.

A great win for the USWNT and a lot of fun to watch. Good job, USWNT, you are all the belles of the ball.

“Gratitude is well worth expressing,” I said a couple of days ago. It bears repeating. The practice of gratitude allows us to center ourselves in the positive feelings that remain in our body after a given experience. It allows us to be aware of how we’ve changed.

I’m grateful for many things about the trip and during the trip but for now I want to simply say that I’m grateful for the trip itself, for the simple privilege of having gotten to experience it.

It’s not going to stop being useful, and I don’t intend to leave it behind during future trips, but I think having access to the Internet pretty much everywhere creates losses elsewhere. Something is lost when I don’t follow up my question to the guy at the bike shop about the best local trails by asking about the best place to get a beer.

(At least I asked about the best local trails. I could have relied on the Internet for that, too.)

A few brief observations.

I got on email once, to look up flight information it turned out I’d already saved. So essentially I went 26 days without checking email, and it was awesome and actually really easy to do. I missed nothing of much importance. The implication for future behavior is substantial.

I checked Facebook exactly zero times, and that was easier still, and I’m sure I missed nothing of any importance except for the messages people sent me on my birthday, the email notifications of which I glanced at in my inbox and which made me smile and which I will answer, each and every one, because getting a “Happy birthday!” from someone, even if it’s someone I never otherwise hear from, always makes me smile. (Gratitude is well worth expressing.)

Not to suggest that I attained some kind of disciplined monk-like purity with respect to the electronic devices that fill my life and slurp up my time. The laptop had to come so I could do my writing, and there’s no problem with that, but I also spent a surprising amount of time playing Game, which yes that addiction has returned, and I even sat outside on a lovely day in Gig Harbor and played a little Hearthstone. Are these the kind of things one does when one is out exploring the world, away from one’s usual patterns, breathing deeply, spending every minute of this so-far glorious summer outdoors, attempting to live in the moment? Apparently it is.

And the smartphone, the goddamn smartphone, how tied to that asshole I was. Look, it’s a profoundly useful device, I can’t deny it. The number of times I used it to get around an unfamiliar city, or to find the best route (not always obvious) between Here and There–super useful. (Yes I had a road atlas, but it doesn’t fit comfortably in my pocket.) And it was nice to be able to send and receive text messages, and it’s good to have a camera in my pocket all the time, and being able to ask about the best local restaurants and stuff was regularly useful. So I’m glad I had it.

But I don’t like being such a slave to it. It’s just…there, constantly demanding attention. “Hey, look over here!” it would say. “Maybe someone texted you!”

“But I’m driving,” I’d tell it.

“I don’t care!” it would say.

And because it was so useful and because modern smartphone battery life is the mayfly of the electronics world, I had to be careful to remember to charge the thing, which isn’t really what I want to be thinking about when I’m watching darkness fall at Delicate Arch or trying to comprehend the height of Mt. Rainier or imagining the great glacier that clearly once filled (not that long ago, geologically speaking) Turnagain Arm. But if I wasn’t careful about putting it in airplane mode in these remote places, it would slurp down charge searching for signal, and if there’s one thing more annoying than carrying a useful smartphone, it’s carrying a useless dead one.

At the very least, next time I will take a watch. I needed to check the time regularly enough, and having the phone as my only timepiece made it puff out its little chest in self-importance. “Just try leaving me in the glove compartment,” it would say. But it got a little too cocky. Next time? “Twenty-five dollars at Target,” I’ll tell it, pointing to my wrist.

Westley: To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.

Prince Humperdinck: And then my tongue I suppose. I killed you too quickly the last time, a mistake I don’t mean to duplicate tonight.

Westley: I wasn’t finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.

Prince Humperdinck: And then my ears. I understand, let’s get on with it.

Westley: WRONG! Your ears you keep and I’ll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, “Dear God, what is that thing!?” will echo in your perfect ears.

My first night back, I heard our dog Mango (whom I missed terribly) jump down from the couch around 4am. There was something funny about the sound of her movement, which in the middle of the night usually indicates that she’s throwing up.

Came downstairs and sure enough. Partially digested food on the cowhide that I hate but that Debby won’t get rid of and…this…this…well…

I took a photo of it, because it simply defied description. But Free Refills is a classy joint, and I just can’t bring myself to post the picture. You’d never believe it was vomited rather than defecated.

The only thing to call it:

Exactly.

No fucking idea what it was. It was possibly the grossest thing I’ve ever seen, and keep in mind that I just drove across Wyoming’s roadkill-smeared highways.

It’s good to be home.

[Apologies that the video doesn’t stop after “…mass.” I tried and tried and tried to get it to work, but the video embed won’t accept that kind of URL.]

Originally published here on July 5th, 2013. While you’re over there on Jay’s Bon Mots, why not scroll down and read some of my dad’s posts?

Our Fourth of July Tradition

It was a Fourth of July tradition in our house for my dad to put on a record of Sousa marches and let the neighborhood know that patriotism was alive and well in the Lanin household, so yesterday we did exactly that.

We listened to the “Washington Post March,” “Hands Across the Sea,” “The Invicible Eagle,” “Semper Fidelis.” We listened to “The Liberty Bell,” and I told him that even if I live to be 106, I will never not cheerfully associate that march with Monty Python.

But of course our favorite is “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He used to air-piccolo to the feature piccolo. (You know the one I mean.) And over the softer third theme, what’s known as the trio, he taught us to sing a silly song, which I will now teach you:

So be kind to your web-footed friends,
For a duck may be somebody’s mother.
They live in the fields and the swamp [here pronounced like ‘stamp’]
Where it’s very cold and damp.
And you may think that this is the end.
Well it is.

I sang that to him yesterday and he laughed like hell.