the american league wild card game is on mute, half a cold decaf on the table. it’s the first day of the postseason, or at least the first day of this new bullshit wild card round in this new bullshit postseason format. the astros won their game, along with the rays and the white sox. yankees and indians are just getting underway.
i’ll need to start making dinner in an hour or so. i’m trying to have it ready for the start of the debate. tonight’s is the first of the four.
i’ve been writing to the two of you in my mind throughout the days, days filled with domestic duties while sarah tends to ben. i’ll be listening to a podcast, and suddenly i’m reminded of something one of you said in your letters. there’s a beauty in how the connection maps onto whatever i’m doing at the time as well. oh, this is good, i’ll think, i should stop and get this down. i can become overwhelmed by my desire to share the moment. i was out forever with cooper this morning, waiting for him to do his business. sarah gave him a knee bone yesterday to occupy him while i was in the city; those things always back him up. all the while i wrote to you in my mind.
you know, walking cooper used to be sarah’s responsibility. i’m not a fan. i mean, didn’t i used to get paid to do this shit? i wouldn’t own a dog if it weren’t for sarah, especially in this city. a dog eats up too much time. besides, cooper needs a backyard. no, you know what? scratch that, he needs fields of space to run around and other animals to play with. he’s a terrier, for crying out loud. i hate having a despondent dog around the house, <quote-01>but what am i supposed to do? tell sarah i think the dog is too depressed? insist that he’d be happier elsewhere? she thinks it cruel to own an animal and then give it up, but i don’t know. if you know there is better out there for him, maybe keeping him is worse<quote-01>. we can’t give everything that we love <quote-02>the full attention required<quote-02>.
i went around and around with your henry james quote while i was out with cooper this morning, murph. i was reminded of something i heard from louis ck about regret. people who say they have no <quote-03>regrets<quote-03> sound conceited: i’ve done everything right! look at me, i’ve made all the right choices! aren’t i something?!
it’s tough to tell whether or not we’d be happier if we’d chosen a different path. an adoring fan once told the violinist isaac stern, i’d just give anything to be able to play like you. / would you practice for hours a day every day for twenty years, he replied. a dickish response, but nevertheless, <quote-04>i see his point<quote-04>.
i probably shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about such things, i suppose. just walk the dog, man, my murphian pragmatist says. just listen to sarah when she wants to talk, says <quote-05>pastor hoke<quote-05>. <quote-06>right, and probably when she doesn’t want to as well, i think<quote-06>. it’s not like you’re, what, fighting the dog for money? you’re doing fine, wuck, murph chimes back in. <quote-07>i’ve remained skeptical of therapy since starting it earlier this year, but recently i was able to define at least one reason why: i don’t want to be building new neuroses<quote-07>.
i wonder if this isn’t what i’m doing here. perhaps i need some distance from your gazes as well. <quote-08>perhaps i’m too close to these letters<quote-08>.
after cleaning the bathroom earlier, i continued to write to you in my mind while i showered. i somehow followed the disparate threads to elon musk’s neuro-link or whatever it’s called--the whole direct brain-to-brain communication thing. oh, i remember: it was in fantasizing that i might simply upload for the two of you the letters i’d written in my mind throughout the day. <quote-09>what would those letters look like, i wonder<quote-09>. is it possible i’ve done myself a disservice in brainstorming so many hypothetical letters before sitting down to the task at hand? to think of all the times hoke must’ve written the lulo story <quote-10>in his mind<quote-10> before composing it on the page, my goodness.
i should be giving you both my full attention here, not interrupting the work with my expectations for what the page is supposed to look like. so much for editing, i hear you sigh, murph. don’t tell me how to celebrate christmas, another <quote-11>murph in my head retorts<quote-11>. as i meander from thought to thought, <quote-12>you wonder where i’m headed, hoke<quote-12>, and what points i’m trying to make.
well, to return to cooper: is it myself i see when i’m certain he’d be better off elsewhere? is it sarah? hell, perhaps it’s ben. perhaps i feel totally unqualified to father a child. these are horrible thoughts; i hate that i indulge them, but as soon as i find reason to tune them out, another voice arises to question my reasoning.
perhaps my sin is simply in <quote-13>sharing them here<quote-13>, i don’t know.
i need to start dinner now. sarah was supposed to be taking a nap, but she’s passed through twice, once to get water and once to use the bathroom. the yanks are up three in the fourth. funny, because if they win, that’ll be three of the four top seeded teams a game away from elimination. what a joke. you’re right about our nerves, murph; this is gonna be rough. i was texting with my dad last night, and he said he’s not gonna watch this series. there’s more than a little of his father in him, not wanting to play games he knows will rile him up. <quote-14>a certain courage there, i suppose<quote-14>.
yanks just got another across.
i’ll be back after the debate, after i take the dog out.
...turns out the evening got away from me. i figured i’d wait to get back to writing after my commercial audition tomorrow morning, but i can’t sleep. i’m scrolling back through all the back and forth on the dodger thread that happened during and after the debate, getting myself riled up all over again. not sure how much of this you read, hoke, but there’s not much here--just people hearing what they want to hear. i posit the online climate that facilitates trump’s popularity is more dangerous than the man himself, and folks wonder if i don’t want to see him remain in office. whatever. let them wonder.
<quote-15>i suppose if i had a firmer a grasp on my thoughts, i wouldn’t be as upset by them being misunderstood<quote-15>. a group thread isn’t the format for <quote-16>nuanced conversation<quote-16> and neither are these televised debates--if you can even call them that. we know these events to be antiquated and ineffectual; still, we tune in for the theater of the thing. i must admit, <quote-17>i did not expect trump to run the show off the rails as dramatically as he did<quote-17>. i don’t think any of us did, at least not to the extent that he was able. <quote-18>unflappable in his brazenness, he was<quote-18>. what must the conversations look like in the biden camp today? i‘ll be curious to see how and if biden adjusts his approach--curious to see how and if i adjust mine on the thread.
the morning is starting to show around the edges of the blackout curtains. i’ll have to be getting ready for my audition in a few hours. the anticipation of work is probably contributing to my restlessness. so many concerns in competition. if our record-setting season ends by losing two out of three to a below 500 team, i swear to christ. twelve runs the yankees got last night. twelve.
...but we knew we could count on the indians to lose homefield advantage, ‘m i right? (delayed groan) fuck you very much, you’ve been a horrible audience, goodnight!
i hate to say it now, on the morning of what feels like a must-win game, but after reading your letter about the first leaves of autumn floating into the river, hoke, <quote-19>i thought of the quote murph texts us at the end of every season, of bart giamatti’s leaf-clogged drains and rain-slick streets<quote-19>. i later followed the path of those leaves around to the other side of summer, to spring’s end: a park bench beneath a row of flower laden acacia trees, the opening of the musical carousel.
you’re right about there being no wind, julie says. the blossoms are jest comin’ down by theirselves. just their time to, i reckon.
i figured i could use the leaf-clogged drains and these falling blossoms to juxtapose abram and the salmon at the river with the dodgers. i loved those lines from carousel the first time i heard them. i didn’t think the blossoms comin’ down by theirselves could be beat, then... just their time to, i reckon. i can’t remember if i was out with the dog or taking a shower or what, but i thought it could work as a benediction of sorts, an acknowledgement that the time is at least ours, whatever comes.
sarah just turned toward me in her sleep. ben has been fussier than he was the first couple weeks, but he’s sleeping pretty well tonight. sarah found a white noise track online that is supposed to mimic the sonic environment of the womb. <quote-20>it works surprisingly well, despite how fabricated the sounds<quote-20>. the heartbeat resembles the slow clip-clop of horse hooves, and the shushing vocalizations--meant to mimic the ohm of ears underwater--bring to mind mechanical breathing machines. we are lulled away by the apocalyptic soundscape of death’s tired and unprogressive trot aside a pair of ventilators.
i have to try and close my eyes for a minute. i hate that i’m all over the place here. whatever it is i need to say, i’m not saying it. <quote-21>i’m sorry for that, boys<quote-21>. maybe i’ll get something better down after my audition. then perhaps i’ll be able to sleep.
<pull-quote>the full attention required<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Interesting. Love less, I guess I would say. Then again, that comes easily to me. Just a few slices in this here pie.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>What a line. And meditation on parenting, as little Ben squirms on your lap, Wuck.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>regrets<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Maybe we finally find ourselves in a place of happiness and wish to profess our gratefulness? I have many regrets, yes, but I shudder to think where my life might be had those moments gone differently.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I say three cheers for regrets. What if someone like Trump argued he had no regrets, because his mistakes made him who he is today? I wrote my commencement speech for my College of Arts and Letters at Berkeley along these lines: we can't be critical thinkers of history if we can't begin with our own regrets. My speech came in second in the selection process. I was edged out by a single mother who put herself through night classes testifying to the power of education to transform a family history. She had the entire outdoor Greek Theater in emotional silence. It was wonderful. Show, don't tell.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i see his point<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I wonder how easily the violin came to him, if he demonstrated remarkable talent and prowess early on. Probably this person meant they wished they had such talent.<p-comment>
<p-comment>What a colossal waste of time it would be for a marginally talented violinist to spend all those hours a day. Go plant a tree or something. Volunteer at the hospital. Christ.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i think about such things in my bach playing, whether i’d do better to go plant a tree or something. to first approach this material in your teens is to be late to the game—learning the art of the fugue in midlife? why bother, it sometimes seems to me. are there more rewarding ways to spend my time, or are there not? i wish it was as simple in my mind as it is for you on the page.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Well, I don't think you're about to embark on hours and hours of practice every day for the next twenty years, so...not the same thing. If you enjoy banging out the Bach, bang it out, bro.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Knowing your specific love of trees, Murph, makes me hear that retort with a new quality.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>pastor hoke<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I think Rachel would like me to take this pastor's advice more often at home.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>right, and probably when she doesn’t want to as well, i think<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Try to be the person on whom nothing is lost.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i still wince at this quote, but yes. indeed.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You wince at everything.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i’ve remained skeptical of therapy since starting it earlier this year, but recently i was able to define at least one reason why: i don’t want to be building new neuroses<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>This is representative of a moment in your letters where I'm ready for you to dive in headlong and you instead close up shop.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>recently, my therapist pointed out how, for me, excellence cannot be achieved without an accompanying sense of shame. i can follow multiple threads here that are all interesting, however i’m not sure how helpful.<p-comment>
<p-comment>take bach: i want to be able to enjoy bach without needing to be him, but i also want to be realized, be the best that i can be. this is gonna sound silly, but what if i’m supposed to be bach? this isn’t not the philosophy behind orthodoxy concerning christ, no?<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>So you didn't fire this guy yet, huh?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i'm uncertain if i want to continue. i enjoy being stimulated, having my points of view challenged, but maybe therapy isn’t the place for that. everything i want seems to get in the way of therapy’s purpose. and what is therapy’s purpose? unless there’s a specific illness to treat, i’m not sure that i know. have i matured in my understanding of myself enough to be able to weather the anxieties that crippled me in college? probably, right?<p-comment>
<p-comment>i’ve chosen a difficult profession, and i often feel like i don’t know how to navigate the terrain. it is here where i feel the most ineffective. i’m not sure therapy has any answers for that.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Is therapy, in the end, treatment? Maintenance? Prevention? I'd imagine how it could fuck up some happy (if not completely healthy) people who don't really need it. An unattractive scar is still healed or something.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I agree with you that making the present-past connections sounds important (and maybe is for, say, a certain kind of a writer) but probably isn't for most people.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>In my understanding, most therapists will begin the first session with whatever the presenting issue the client brings. The bad reputation psychoanalysts, specifically, have--as opposed to mental health therapists--is that they and their clients play expensive, high-minded, endless literary analysis on the couched client's limitless field of play. For decades.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>high-minded, endless literary analysis, you say? kind of sounds like my idea of a good time.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>perhaps i’m too close to these letters<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I think examining your one precious life with two childhood friends is a good thing. Might the discomfort suggest you're doing it honestly?<p-comment>
<p-comment>Isn't any therapy at its best a process of getting out of our isolated heads, opening the locked doors to other people we trust?<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>what would those letters look like, i wonder<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Man, the essays I've written in my head!<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>in his mind<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I hardly did at all. My anxiety has fixated on a few of the insane moments, for months. But I had to keep locking it away, so careful not to leak the story in the wrong company. I probably avoided writing it in these letters so long because I was so blocked up--that is, had done none of the "drafting" you imagine here. Once I started with the more intimate texture of the story--the prison spread of food at the cabin, or leaning into his shoulder in LA before everything broke open--I couldn't put the plug in it. First draft poured for pages. <p-comment>
<p-comment>That's why these letters with you guys have been so good for me this year: I've spent years planning/prepping/drafting several different books. Then I get this exact paralysis you're talking about. But these letters? I have no idea what I'll write about until I sit down, read both of yours, pour some coffee, and ease into enjoying whatever comes up for me.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>murph in my head retorts<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>All I'll say is that if you invite people over, you should have a menu planned, maybe an activity or two.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>and hopefully have cleaned the bathroom.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>This goes without saying.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>you wonder where i’m headed, hoke<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I've heard one of the marks of progress in therapy is when you can internalize the regard of your therapist out in your day to day life. Not that we're therapists, of course. But I think it's interesting: a process of spending time in relationship with good voices, such that those minds/voices can continue being a helpful counterbalance inside your head. Hopefully, this becomes a gaze of love we can internalize, and so we're always the beloved.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>the gaze of love. oof, i like that a lot.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>sharing them here<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Hell no. The opposite. You naming those thoughts, putting words to those feelings, is like laying a bat to a fastball.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>a certain courage there, i suppose<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>This was the crux of my existential crisis during Game Five of the 2017 World Series: "why do this to myself?" Probably if all his best friends were on a text message thread devoted to the Dodgers, he'd resolve to watch.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i suppose if i had a firmer a grasp on my thoughts, i wouldn’t be as upset by them being misunderstood<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Crack. Another homer.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>nuanced conversation<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>This is why I wanted to start these letters! I'm rarely on the text threads anymore. "We can't give everything we love the full attention it deserves." This is a better format for me.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>the medium is the message.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>That's pretty fucking demonstrative, Wuck. Did you make yourself wince?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>soon as i said it. scary shit.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i did not expect trump to run the show off the rails as dramatically as he did<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>So did it pass your favorite metric of theater? Were you surprised?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>it did. i was. a theatre of cruelty, but theatre indeed.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Thinking I'd miss something, I watched. I should have just trusted Thoreau.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>unflappable in his brazenness, he was<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Sociopathic narcissism. Did you see the video he posted to social media before he went on his little hermetically sealed ride Sunday morning? He actually appeared presidential in the first seconds before devolving into his true form. Couldn't sustain the persona for even one minute.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I think narcissistic personality disorder is a more common diagnosis than we normally consider it to be. Once you see it in its obvious form--like a bird in a documentary, or in an Audubon field guide--you start seeing it everywhere. To watch our president is to watch Lulo at work the last two years, as the evidence for both of them keeps piling up. It's astounding.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>yeah, i’m still of the mind that we remain necessarily unaware of some of our own hypocrisies here. there’s a little lulo in all of us.<p-comment>
<p-comment>a seemingly strange thread to mention this, but thinking on those who refuse to acknowledge this characterization of trump, i'm reminded of our disagreements here in these letters. it’s rarely facts we can’t agree on; it’s values. to listen to another is to hear what the other values, seems to me.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Sure, we have different priorities in what we value, us three. How would you rough-sketch our three differences, now that you've observed us in these letters this year?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i’d put you over there, and murph on that side, and i’d have to probably be somewhere around this area. you’d be blue, murph red, and i yellow.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i thought of the quote murph texts us at the end of every season, of bart giamatti’s leaf-clogged drains and rain-slick streets<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Lay it on us, Murph.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>On the eve of our first playoff game? You're on drugs, bud.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i got you, hoke:<p-comment>
<p-comment>it breaks your heart. it is designed to break your heart. the game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. you count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>Yeah. I don't know that I'd share it in an ultimately victorious season. In a way, a World Series trophy prolongs endlessly that championship summer, deposits a bit of indelible summer warmth deep within us for withdrawal when needed most.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Gibby's dinger exists both online and in my memory to make my arm hair stand on end whenever I require, a wholly blissful feeling like a ray in space, never capped by an endpoint, never meeting the "but then" of autumn.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>beautiful, murph<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>it works surprisingly well, despite how fabricated the sounds<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>A brisk walk through the neighborhood would always sort Grammar out during a fussy bout. I'm remembering now that our 2017 NLDS victory walk was just such a stroll, taking him out for an hour to let Kristen fill the tank.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Yep. That's what inspired the book I'm still procrastinating to write--walking a fussy infant-Abram around the block at midnight--the early draft pages I showed you both two years ago. Shared memory now.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i can’t wait to strap this little guy to my chest and do stuff.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>#dostufftogether<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You got that ergobaby at the ready?<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i do! andy sent me his. i don’t have the infant insert, but soon as ben hits 12 pounds, i’m good to go.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>We have that infant insert somewhere if you're keen to get started. Let me know.<p-comment>
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<pull-quote>i’m sorry for that, boys<pull-quote>
<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Don't be. I commented more here than most letters. You're talking to us, reaching out for conversation with two friends a deeper part of you is growing to trust. God bless Professor Murph for deploying these comment bubbles on my first letter last Jan. It's become a really rich conversation.<p-comment>
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How to customize formatting for each rich text
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<pull-quote>but what am i supposed to do? tell sarah i think the dog is too depressed? insist that he’d be happier elsewhere? she thinks it cruel to own an animal and then give it up, but i don’t know. if you know there is better out there for him, maybe keeping him is worse<pull-quote>
<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I guess I side with Sarah on this. If you sign on for an obligation, you fulfill that obligation. The dog's unhappy? Oblige better. This very much aligns with why we still have a turtle over here. Kristen would have deposited it in some pond years ago.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>if that turtle took three hours out of your day, day in day out, you might think of the pond differently. when ought one to reframe their approach to an obligation?<p-comment>
<p-comment>i try to picture the situation at its most difficult to unpack, its most troublesome. perhaps we are at odds here, murph. perhaps you rather prefer packing things up. i don't know. i’m thinking on it.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>I think your second sentence here, Wuck, says it all. I'm with you.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>a) Did you not realize the responsibilities that come with owning a dog?<p-comment>
<p-comment>b) I think these letters might speak to my eagerness and ability to unpack things.<p-comment>
<p-comment>c) A prayer for you: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot unpack, the courage to unpack the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Amen . . . y amen.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>i’ll rephrase. i think we are indeed each interested in the unpacking. here’s a proposal for the differences of approach (this could get real bad real quick; wish me luck): murph looks to affirm his beliefs, to broaden the supporting structures beneath them. his approach is the easiest to understand. hoke looks to connect between beliefs, not to uproot his values, but rather to understand them anew. ultimately, he too seeks to affirm them. it’s possible what i enjoy is uprooting my systems of thought. yet even here, i’d claim i am like you both in my desire to affirm what i know.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>I envision us as three ice skaters.<p-comment>
<p-comment>I have a favorite pair, know my strengths on the ice, and am content to navigate the frozen pond in familiar ways. Every time I've fallen it was for good reason, as I'm quick to tell you.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Hoke also has a favorite pair but will ditch them for the latest and greatest model from time to time; he is a naturally gifted skater but occasionally sloppy, happy to go out of his comfort zone on the ice and fine if someone sees him fall.<p-comment>
<p-comment>Wuck spent the whole summer rollerblading in preparation for the pond to freeze over but is now in the sporting goods store debating if he wouldn't rather give curling a try. The salesgirl is cool as hell and thinks he'll like it. He'll question his lifelong relationship to ice all winter.<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Best thing I read all month. That's it for my morning.<p-comment>
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<avatar-wuck><avatar-wuck><author-name>Wuck<author-name>
<p-comment>to quote myself, there’s a lot about this that i like, and a lot that i don’t.<p-comment>
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<avatar-murph><avatar-murph><author-name>Murph<author-name>
<p-comment>You don’t say?<p-comment>
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<avatar-hoke><avatar-hoke><author-name>Hoke<author-name>
<p-comment>Still dying over here: "He'll question his lifelong relationship to the ice all winter."<p-comment>
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