Thursday, April 17, 2003

I was heading to bed and doing my nightly "check to see if Kansas has a new coach yet" look-in at ESPN.com.  Found this article: http://msn.espn.go.com/page2/s/whitlock/030417.html Kansas fans and all defenders of Dean Smith should read it.  I will now confidently cheer for even Cincinnati over UNC.   10:13:10 PM    Let's hear it. []

A couple of nights ago I stayed up late (Digression number one: staying up late is the only way I get any time to myself nowadays, unless the unthinkable happens and both girls nap at the same time. This is the reality of having a 2 year old and a 3 month old) watching "The Cider House Rules" on AFN. It's a good movie, I think, though it still pales in comparison to the book (Digression number two: but The Cider House Rules is still, at best, John Irving's second best work after A Prayer For Owen Meany, which is my favorite novel in the world. I'm not sure if Cider House is better than The World According to Garp or The Hotel New Hampshire. I love Irving.). Anyhow, watching the movie reminded me of something about the book--a line, more specifically. It's one of my favorite lines in any book, I think, and certainly one of the most powerful. Here's the line: "What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parentheses." I love the self-referential writing imagery of this--the notion that life is a text we type up, and that some people invariably end up set aside, as parentheses are designed to do. Beyond that, it's a true statement. It is very difficult to accept the way that people float in and out of your life--and not the people on the fringes, but sometimes those at the very core, or at least near it. When I think back, the parentheses are common: Kenny Hauschild, Todd Robinson, Dan Wicker, Ryan McElroy, Brian Loy, Tim McKinney, Wendy Karn, Bret McClendon, Dave Richardson, Warren Bleeker, Kiva Garen, Scott Betz, Biza Repko, Will Repko, Steve Donald, Chris Fox. I'm not feeling badly about this, nor do I have any illusion that my situation is even slightly different than anyone else's. However, it's strange to look back and see where things have gone. It's also strange to think about who's next--are there people presently in my life that are very important to me that are going to join this list? Perhaps. Probably. If you are currently one of the most important people in my life, the best thing you can do to avoid this fate is to mail me twenty dollars.     1:01:17 PM    Let's hear it. []