Author: Michael

My old friend, Erica, just came back from the Peace Corp. I haven’t seen her for a year… exactly. The last time she was here, it was for Carnaval: she had taken free drum lessons in years past, and had timed her trip home so she could perform with her class.

I don’t know what excuse I had for missing it last year. Then again, I had a fairly active social life this time last year, so maybe that was it.

But this year, I was out the door by 8:30 am with seven rolls of film and my wonderful new lens. Turns out I didn’t bring enough film. The costumes were breath-taking (and sometimes downright naughty). I couldn’t stop taking pictures. A few, I think, will turn out. I’ll share them in a week or two.

That is the question
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of publishers and editors,
Or to hold my words to friends and family, and by doing so, conceal them.

A bit pretentious, yes. But I like playing with words.

I was stuck next to a frat boy on the plane Friday evening. He wanted to chat so badly, it must have hurt. He didn’t care who, he just needed to chat. The fellow to his left feigned sleep. I pulled out my laptop and manuscript. Mistake.

I was rude, but didn’t want to be too rude. So I told him what I was working on. He asked if I would publish it. No, of course not. But why, he had to know. I wouldn’t tell him. I don’t think I could have found a better way to keep the conversation alive. Damn fool, should have pretended to sleep. Definitely shouldn’t have told him I was writing a book about the West Bank.

But why won’t I publish? I’ve been thinking about it the past few days. Simple. If Janet Wolinetz could imply I’m an antisemite, anyone could. What better record to defame me? What surer way to attack my character? To reverse the logic of the old Arabic saying "the enemy of my enemy is friend," the "friend of my enemy is my enemy." You can’t be both. You can’t find a mutually beneficial solution. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is zero sum.

I will shortly have a new boss–someone I’ve talked to maybe six or seven times, and who works remotely. Still don’t entirely know what my job is.

I also lost 85% of my budget.

With my mom cleaning out thirty years of collected junk in her P*******n home in preparation to moving to a much smaller, 2BR condo in Portland, and the recent sale of my father’s stamp collection, I’ve been thinking about going through my baseball card collection one more time. I probably have 20,000+ cards. All of them are from the years 1982-1990, so almost all of the players on those cards have since retired.

The cards are stuffed in card-sized cardboard boxes, sucking up space in my closet. Half of those are complete sets and special packages. The others are just loose cards worth pennies, and not worth holding on to if I move again.

So, since I was in a glum mood anyway and didn’t feel like wandering about the City, I perused my collection with a pricing guide looking for valuable cards I missed in the 1990s. I ended up putting twelve boxes, probably 10K cards, in the recycling bin. I’m sure I threw away some slightly valuable cards, but none of them could have been worth more than $1. I found several more rookie cards, including a huge bunch of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson cards (they were mediocre pitchers the years I collected).

What always amuses me about my collection, though, are these two rookie cards from 1986 and 1987. They’re just below, scanned in. Notice how skinny and whippet-like these young home-run kings were then? Now, you can get big in the gym, but… well, you can come to your own conclusions.

I lost my best friend this afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever tried as hard to hold onto a friendship as I did with this one. I knew I couldn’t hold onto it forever–the end was inevitable, and I’ve known that for months. But when it would end wasn’t clear, and I held onto it as long as I could.

Anyway, my mom and I talked this morning, about life, about losing my best friend, and, as always, a little bit about Joe. When I got off the phone, I recalled one of the quotes Joe had placed in his little "commonplace book" about death: "Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." (William Butler Yeats)

It prompted me to dig around for quotes on friendship.

• Aristotle: Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.
• William Blake: It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
• Henry David Thoreau: My friend is one… who take me for what I am.
• Michael Tucker: Forget your enemies. It’s your friends you frustrate that cause all the problems.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: A friend is one before whom I may think aloud.
• Samuel Butler: A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage–but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
• Nora Ephron: What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or
  form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part
  always gets in the way.
• Anonymous: Good friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget.
• Richard Bach: Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

I’ll miss her. Best friends are hard to find.