Today is Sunday, <quote-01>the last day of the regular season<quote-01>. The Dodgers finished 43-17, a .717 win percentage, the highest of any National League team in more than a hundred years. Get this: nobody cares. All that has ever mattered for this team and their long-tenured stars begins Wednesday at home.
Wednesday. Hump Day. As in, will the Dodgers finally get over it?
Already the nerves set in. I don’t know how much you’ll get out of me this month, boys—October and all. <quote-02>I bet 90 percent of my absences as an instructor have come in October<quote-02>. 2017, of course, was the exception; the lone silver lining of all those morning classes was that I was free to be at Dodger Stadium in the evening. The absences that year came in November, when Conch’s heart gave out.
Those were rough days. <quote-03>I remember her calling me in tears from the hospital, confused about the emergency procedure she was about to undergo, essentially saying goodbye<quote-03>. What a miserable feeling, sitting at a desk in a just-dismissed classroom composing an email cancellation for your next bunch, sick to your stomach that miles and miles of rush-hour traffic stand between you and your mother, frightened and alone in perhaps the last moments of her life. Of course, by Guy Night, she was in her chair surrounded by the thirteen of us as always. All’s well that ends well. <quote-04>Who’s ever to know how bleak things were there for a moment?<quote-04>
I remember you remarking to me that holiday season how wonderful 2017 must have been for us, Hoke. “New job, new baby, Dodgers in the World Series!” The first thing I thought of was that Tuesday afternoon drive from Orange to Upland, heartbroken that no one was with my mother before they put her under.
“<quote-05>Yeah<quote-05>,” I think I said.
Again, how were you to know?
This drive is what came to mind when I read those brief paragraphs from your last letter, Wuck, about baby Ben’s too broad shoulders, about the brief but intense terror of that moment. Everyone sees the photos of the healthy baby, the happy family, but few will know your suffering, where your mind went if only for a minute. That’s life, though. I, for one, rarely grant others access to my sadness; I can be sad by myself. Then again, I rarely grant others access to anything unless requested. Permission not forgiveness, right?
Anyway.
Before I beg off, I figured I’d touch on a sentiment I glimpsed in a couple of your comments last go-round, Hoke. The first remark was in reaction to Wuck’s regrets about the timing of his kidney stones. You wrote, “All this makes me want to hang out with you and Sarah—and Benjamin—soon. Just knowing you all more, through story, and your reflections on yourselves[,] I feel both more compassion and more familiarity with you all, like characters I want to hang out with more closely now.” The second was a piggyback comment wherein you, following my lead, wished Wuck and company love, “especially after this journey you let us in on.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think these are perfectly reasonable responses. But in reading them I was struck by how differently I feel. That is to say, there’s not much I’d rather do than hang out with the two of you. “The height of vacation,” I think I called it, imagining the three of us in a river together with the sounds of a ballgame in the air, <quote-06>a rich meal and late-night ahead of us<quote-06>. That was as true in January as it is today. On one hand I ask, “Should I feel closer to you both after all of this?” On the other, “Is that even possible?”
I suppose I am a devotee of Thoreau in such matters. Actually, I’m surprised I haven’t quoted this passage from Walden already, considering the opening salvo on letter writing. Nevertheless, here goes:
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage […] And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? (<quote-07>1854<quote-07>)
In this particular case, “the principle” is my decades-spanning affection for you both. When I think back on these letters—the ups and downs, the blessings and recriminations—nothing stands out to me as a revelation, as anything more than familiar testament—the “instances and applications” of Thoreau’s description—to this affection. This is not to say, of course, that I haven’t enjoyed “the myriad instances and applications,” even despite my reputation as a reluctant phone conversationalist. I’m no fair-weather friend, after all—no bandwagon fan.
I mean, sure, the bandwagoners enjoy that final championship contest. They’ll get a shirt, maybe. Buy a hat. They’ll talk shit to acquaintances whom they know are Angels fans or Yankees fans. They’ll remember and recall the big stuff: Gibby hit that homerun, Orel was a beast.
But that’s not who I am. I want to know the sub-plots, the secondary characters. I want to remember Jay Howell getting tossed from the Mets series for having pine tar on his glove, Mike Scioscia’s just-as-improbable dinger off Doc Gooden, Mickey Hatcher hitting almost .400 in the World Series. Would I eventually have learned the fleeting drama of broad baby Ben? Probably. But I’d never know of bit players like Baldski Grumpanov the OB or not-so-funny Lindsey and her vagina spotlight.
The more shared memory the better. And so—in truth—I am grateful for these letters.
Still, none of it makes me any fonder of you, Wuck. Nor does learning the specifics of the Lulo debacle make me any fonder of you, Hoke. <quote-08>Where do we go from ten?<quote-08>
Maybe this all hearkens back to your “brother or friend” dilemma, Hoke. In the end, perhaps, I esteem both of you—as I do, say, Pat and Tom—as brothers. As long as I draw breath, you have a place to stay, a seat for dinner, an eager ear. As I’ve said before, there’s little either of you could do to change that.
Am I a fool to think others’ affection so steadfast, so <quote-09>principled<quote-09>?
A while back, Hoke, you mentioned <quote-10>how close you felt we’d become when we were working<quote-10> on Wanted and Tetherball Chimes. The words you chose seemed to imply <quote-11>that we were no longer<quote-11>. I wondered, where did that closeness go for you? You’d mentioned as much in passing in years prior, I seem to recall. Is this why I agreed to write these letters with you both in the first place?
It’s like this: I haven’t swung a bat since March. The last season I played, I batted .882 and led a league filled with bona fide meatheads in OPS. What’s more, these stats matter to me; I take pride in them. And yet, I haven’t so much as touched any of my six softball bats since lockdown. That said, I have every confidence in the world that once I pick one up again, I’ll be barreling line drives almost immediately: “Laser. Laser. Double in the gap. Dinger. Double. Dinger.”
I think this is how I feel about my closest friendships: that we’re just good. <quote-12>But are we?<quote-12> I don’t want to appear negligent, much less apathetic.
As I write this, I try to imagine the two of you in a similar predicament. What’s the longest you’ve gone without, say, <quote-13>picking up a guitar<quote-13>, Hoke? Did you worry that the ability and love would leave you? What about you and, I don’t know, Bach, Wuck? <quote-14>Do you ever worry you’ll return to the sheet music and find yourself no longer up to the challenge?<quote-14> Or did the both of you put in enough time and effort at some point in your lives to not have to worry about such things—planting the seeds, caring for the first growth, ensuring the roots took hold?
Maybe I’m too much like those Sierra Vista Scotch Pines for my own good, their trunks predictably embedded in the southeast corner of that Southern California park, grateful always for a visit but otherwise happily remote—evergreen.
I bet they’d love watching Benny the Jet grow up beneath their shade.
You know, the third Karate Kid film is kind of a clunker, but there’s a lovely little subplot where a bonsai tree uprooted from its home along a ragged ocean cliff begins to die in Miyagi’s greenhouse. After risking life and limb to acquire the tree for his dear friend, Daniel ends up replanting it at the end of the film, Miyagi at his side.
"Good spot, Daniel san,” Miyagi tells him. “This tree <quote-15>now choose<quote-15> how it <quote-16>grow<quote-16>.”
<pull-quote>I bet 90 percent of my absences as an instructor have come in October<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Priorities.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>If there's a home playoff game to attend, I attend. A couple of times, though, particularly when the Dodgers are on the brink of elimination, I've cancelled class to pay proper attention and, if necessary, nurse my wounds.<p-comment>
<p-comment>"Personal necessity," they call it.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>I remember her calling me in tears from the hospital, confused about the emergency procedure she was about to undergo, essentially saying goodbye<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>how did you fare during this call?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>A-<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Who’s ever to know how bleak things were there for a moment?<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I'm so sorry, man. Part of me wishes we had the friendship where you would call me, call us, within days and unload, weep, describe this shit. I only heard perfunctory comments about the procedure, the parachute tissue in her heart that snapped, haha, let's go play handball, etc.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I get this. I hear it even from Kristen. It's just that such sharing doesn't make me feel any better. Does that make sense?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Well, it makes sense now that I kinda know you better, through these letters. You've been an enigma to me for decades. But in these letters, how you've kindly, thoughtfully, and rather courageously walked us through many of the backstage worlds where only you go . . has been kind of what I've hoped for, without knowing it, every time I get on a plane and fly home. I usually return confident of the fun I had, but not sure if I know any of my friends any better. So I go back to the jail, where the circles of laughter also break into occasional sincerity and reflection.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>Yeah<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Exactly.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Can you imagine me instead responding, baby boys on our hips while waiting for your luggage, smiling wives at our sides, "Actually..."<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Well, if I'm staying the night in your home for a week, I'm assuming there might be dozens other opportunities to talk as friends.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I get it. There's just nothing in me that yearns to share such things out of the blue. I mean, if it comes up in conversation, fine. I concede that it might be interesting if it's related to the topic of conversation.<p-comment>
<p-comment>But sometimes I feel like people want me to share for them and not for me. This seems...off, no?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>That sounds like a shadowboxing with your childhood therapist. For me, as your friend, I just want to connect with you because I love you. I want more of you because I so enjoy when you share the top shelf stuff you carry within. This seems like what a friend would want . . . no?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Absolutely. I think I used earlier the analogy of a Wild Card apologetically rendered up in a game of Uno. When I needed you to eat a gnat, I asked. This deep emotional stuff is your bag, bro. All you had to do was ask.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Is it really just my bag? Maybe it is.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>It's not mine, baby.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>a rich meal and late-night ahead of us<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>meals with sarah as she spends the entirety of her energy feeding ben in his initial weeks have been a really wonderful part of this period. she’s allowing me to get the sleep that she is not, and my days are filled with all the household duties that i wouldn’t be able to as effectively perform if not for getting the rest she isn’t, and the meals are a highlight. i make sure each one is special: place the ribs atop the rice in the center of the plate, shave some of the parmesan on the salad, garnish the eggs with some parsley, balance a pyramid with the bacon. i know i won’t always have the time for this, but it’s nice now.<p-comment>
<p-comment>she walked by the kitchen island the other night and snagged a slice of garnished tomato off of the cutting board. she occasionally does this with bacon on her way to the bathroom in the morning. it makes me furious. i’m making a plate for you here! don’t just come grab stuff without asking! mind you, had she said, can i have a tomato slice? i would have said, of course! have two! i think of hoke sharing murph’s letter with rachel.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Dude, render unto the MVP.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>yeah, i suck sometimes. our kid does this, however, and i’m gonna speak up.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i’ve gotten in the habit of setting aside little bites for sarah along the way. i’ll make an extra piece of bacon and plate it for her off to the side. better to not give someone the chance to disappoint you, i suppose.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>This sounds like Murph's rage at my sipping off the water bottle that was his in the Utah fridge. I'm with MVP Sarah all the way: when you are in community with those you love, tomato cuttings and water bottles aren't Private Property. They are part of the oxygen and furniture space of life together. I would tell you both to pipe down.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>and i would offer that you could go fuck yourself right off, hurt that the one for whom i’m building a castle would rather live in a shed. do you want us to play in the rubble heap of public property? because i can build us a mansion if you give me a minute. not only will we have a better place to play, but should you lose me, you’ll have a monument to my love for you to remember me by.<p-comment>
<p-comment>i jest. of course. as i did with sarah, i’d tell you plainly how you hurt my feelings.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Maybe you and Murph would make good roommates?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Listen, motherfucker. Wuck was making the bacon for her; let the fucking MVP have a strip if she wants one. Like you, I am team Sarah here.<p-comment>
<p-comment>As for the water, THAT WAS MY GODDAMN WATER, the only bottled water in the entire fridge, purchased and saved for the end of that very night, set aside for the calm after the storm of the wedding day and as a reward for all my hard work, vouchsafed for slow refreshing sips on the patio before bed, and you just snatched it up and gulped despite the fact that you absolutely knew it was not yours for the drinking. There is no way to reframe this tale in which you are not a MOTHERFUCKER.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I already admitted it was yours, above. The rage is what's so interesting to me, on both your tomato/water hoverings. Like I said, some folks who think the same about domestic details make good roommates.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You can be a lot like one of those wooden mannequins used for figure drawing sometimes, Hoke.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>How so? Slim, maleable, plyable, easily manipulated, becoming whatever people want me to be, obedient, blind, and with great joints?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Goddammit, you're so fucking lovable. I just want to punch you so hard in the arm.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I meant you're a dummy. Dummy.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>1854<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>This is one of the saddest tissue samples of a lonely, lonely heart I've ever read. He begins with why he doesn't like letters, but gets in his head about how bored with the news he is. The loudest part is his silence around who those letters were to. He was a misanthrope, possibly, who ended up not straying far from his mom, who made him cookies to take back into the woods.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>It's so trendy right now to pick on Thoreau.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I know. I read a good article in the New Yorker or something earlier this year saying that. But the trendy critiques mainly allege Thoreau's experiment in rustic solitude was hypocritical. That's not my beef; I think he was sincere as hell. I actually love him. While all you fuckers made fun of Walden during junior year, I giddily brewed a pot of tea and savored each chapter, sitting on my bedroom floor. Such reflection! To "read books as intentionally as they were written"! To escape the suburban lives of "quiet desperation" and ask better questions . . . I still follow his dream, in many ways. <p-comment>
<p-comment>I'm just saying I think Mr Pretty Journalling was deeply lonely, and not warmed to human beings. Maybe he lost someone early on, and he carried a grief his whole life.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Sure, fine. But, perhaps ironically, I read in this quote a desire for actual in-person interaction. We know now, after all, that he stole back home every weekend for a chat and some pie with mom.<p-comment>
<p-comment>And as you've admitted in a previous letter, there's not much worse on a person's mental health than absorbing every bit of news.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>there’s a lot i like here and a lot i don’t. for instance: what does one write of if not the instances and applications? isn’t all else theory?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I like it for the same reason I like the Henry James' advice I quoted months ago.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>remind us here.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>"Be one of the people on whom nothing is lost."<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>nothing? a call to oversight, this.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Well, the full quote is "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost."<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>Where do we go from ten?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>put it up to eleven. / eleven. exactly. one louder.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>principled<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Maybe I'm rich in "places to stay, seats for dinner." I grew up with them in spades. I've amassed an annoyingly long roster of more of them, and I don't always return the invites that follow. <p-comment>
<p-comment>Across the miles, as you've admitted, you don't talk on the phone. So barring a writing project, all I got is when I'm in Upland once a year. And then, I usually don't find "an eager ear." When I do, maybe on the odd chance we toss a softball and you humor my terrible off-throws and chase them down the block, I'm so happy I don't know how to say it. <p-comment>
<p-comment>Now my screen is getting blurry while I type.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Perhaps you confuse my shorthand with these other "Christian" invitations. If you hit hard times, bud, I'd take care of you and yours for as long as you needed.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I see your loyalty there: the dutiful boy to take care of a loved one in crisis, to step up. And you really did that with what we now know as Walkoff Weekend, right when I needed it. Maybe I'm wondering about when there's no hard times.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Isn't it that it's harder to get time off from the wardens of our lives unless shit is real?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>You just named my disease, how I became addicted to friends in crisis for too many years. Rachel and my therapist and one or two other good friends encouraged me to find way to invest in the healthier friends I already have. That seemed so boring, routines of shallow male pastimes that have left me disappointed most of my life.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Sober Chris is now the one leaning into these letters Wuck suggested: I have some bandwidth to gamble, time to invest in noncrisis, nonpastoral, nontoxic relationships that maybe can hold more of me.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Are you familiar with this exchange from the movie Tombstone?<p-comment>
<p-comment>"Hell, Doc. I've got lots of friends."<p-comment>
<p-comment>"I don't."<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>how close you felt we’d become when we were working<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Did you not?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Yes. But I feel that close still, that familiar and secure.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>isn’t part of all this the shared work itself? the enjoyment of engaging in an activity with someone else? i think of laborers working side by side, never exchanging a word. without the other there would be an emptiness. we share so much without sharing a thing.<p-comment>
<p-comment>think of playing catch with dad.<p-comment>
<p-comment>the worry isn’t so much that one might not still feel familiar or secure, but rather that time is passing and we aren’t together.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>that we were no longer<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Those were wonderful months, editing each others' stuff, hearing your voice and energy several nights a week. I remember pacing the silent, dark train tracks in Missoula--my Razr flip phone pressed to my ear--by the loading dock's security light, for hours as we talked. I'd read entire chapters of your book to Rachel our first year married. It's true. I miss those wonderful evenings.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I miss almost everything about 2011.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>But are we?<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>You frame the question well. Of course we're good. Status as friends and affection has not moved backward. But to use your parallel: the span of time away from the bat, did you not miss it? Did you not feel as close for a while? It's not a matter of doubting or worrying, it's just a missing, an awareness that NOT feeling that swing for many months is different--inferior--to the months of dingers. My question, when I risk hinting at it, is more like, Why are the at bats so hard to come by?<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Yeah. This is a good response. Even now imagining the bat in my hands in the on-deck circle excites me. And yet, the thought of taking practice swings in the garage does nothing.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<pull-quote>picking up a guitar<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Two weeks ago I took Abram to the big music gear shop to get some fresh acoustic strings. But I was distracted by my teenage dream guitar: a 60's Fender Jaguar, mint with tortoise shell, hanging on the wall. They made a new Squire (cheaper) model of it. Two days later I came back, ready to purchase. I couldn't stop the momentum after that: found a stellar Fender Blues Jr tube amp on OfferUp that night, took the next day off work (the boss in my head very begrudging), drove through the smoke-headache freeway to the garage of a guy with a Don't Tread On Me yellow poster on one wall, and came home to fall in love all over again, overdriven reverb and all. <p-comment>
<p-comment>Did I worry about my guitar relationship all these years? No, never thought of it. But did the guitar part of my life, my heart, my self, my story, suffer? Now that I'm playing again, I realize the answer is Yes. I so missed this.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Rad.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>But now I do worry: if I have any new songs to sing.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>worry all you like, but you know the answer to that silly question. and mint-colored guitars are kick-ass. a songwriter friend of mine got a tele in that shade a while back; i was all sorts of jellies. there’s a cool, easy sex to the shade—equally confident and vulnerable.<p-comment>
<hr><hr>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Boy, I love this, Wuck. Huge high five and another round on me.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>wait no no i can’t. no really, i’ve got an early morning tomorrow. i know i know i’m the worst. next time. you can get me next time. c’mon let’s have a smoke before i go.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Done.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>Do you ever worry you’ll return to the sheet music and find yourself no longer up to the challenge?<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>without exaggeration, every time i sit down at the board. this question has come up at a very opportune moment, as i’m a week into allowing myself a daily hour at the board with bach. an hour, then that’s it, close the board and the book and walk away. i’m extremely undisciplined in my creative pursuits; i’ve always thrived on the inertia of the moment. these letters have taught me to do otherwise. my experience with playing bach this last week has been, i kid not, inexplicably different. there’s a palpable joy to it, to the expectation, as well as the experience. these things are a practice; they should be approached as one would approach god: with humility, reverence, and devotion. to compare such endeavors to a batting average, to the result, would be to miss the point. how good do you want to be? how deep do you want to go? because it’s bottomless in there.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>That's how devotion works. Different than batting practice.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>For the both of you, yes, because you're very poor hitters.<p-comment>
<p-comment>.882, motherfuckers.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Seriously, though, hitting is exactly like this, you fucking snobs.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i don’t understand. you think if I were a better player i’d desire less time at the board?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You do not understand. Correct.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>now choose<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>While in Japan with my dad during that raw Lulo season two years ago, I quickly took to asking about different Japanese characters and phrases. I learned that there aren't really tenses in Japanese conjugations: no future, no past tense. All same. All verb.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>seventies-science-guy-mind-blown.gif<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>grow<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I'm grateful for this letter, Murph. It's the letter that forces to the surface so much of the fire that has brought me this far writing you two. A couple letters back, every sad paragraph I hit enter-enter after, was for me an extended reevaluation of who my friends really are.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote><pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
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<pull-quote><pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
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<pull-quote>the last day of the regular season<pull-quote>
<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>listening to orel and joe call the last inning, i felt the whole of the moment. they seemed at a loss, like an anticipated date that ends too early with the whole of the evening left ahead—somehow here too quick, and gone too soon. joe asked orel for a concluding remark, and orel’s stoic benediction fit the mood. he affirmed the team had the stuff, if any team ever did, but remained cautiously optimistic about the month ahead. i’m sad these two won’t be with us for the final stretch, although the network hacks will also somehow be appropriate. it'll be us against the world, and on silent. may the streets run with blue.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>As the pentecostal pastors in Guatemala say, "Amén . . . y amén."<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Does the congregation repeat that? Echo the second "amen?" I want to properly perform my part here.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>No, the pastor holding the microphone, head bowed, just doubles the Amen. I always try to hide my smile, because I always hear it as--in the words of Ramon--adding sauce to the taco. Latin American evangelicals need to be MORE Christian than the Catholics and everyone else. Amen . . . y amen!<p-comment>
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