I ain't better, but I feel it
Miscellanea #52: On boyhood, how to do everything, local heroes, and more
After missing last week with a post-Mardi Gras flu, I’m following up this week by sharing a short piece of writing from about a year ago.
I ain’t feel special no more, and that’s a good thing. Because — I thought I was. Thought I was different and unique and mostly better. It comes with the territory, this terrible story. We tell it to ourselves, a refrain well-rehearsed in the halls and stalls of our boyhood. Our boyhood is a place we’ll always be, I suppose.
You’d say that’s a bad thing, but it ain’t that way either. There are layers here. Mud and footballs and sisters and angry tears. A bucket of emotions and colors that can only mix into a shit brown, a color that makes us laugh. Boys will be. What I’m sayin’ is, though, is that I no longer feel better than — and that makes me feel better.
I bet you that humble takes a lifetime and a half. And I’ll tell you now, between you and me, that they didn’t give me the half. But I got mud. And football. And sisters. And angry tears. And I ain’t better, but I feel it.
How to do everything
Neil Postman’s advice on How to live the rest of your life — “Instead, if you interpret Postman’s specific guidelines on a figurative level as well as a literal level, you can derive abstract general principles that continue to be applicable to everyday living in useful ways.”
Ron Padgett’s poem, How to be perfect
How to make friends as an adult — “…it takes between 40 and 60 hours to form a casual friendship with someone in the first six weeks of knowing them; between 80 and 100 hours to transform a casual friend into a friend; and more than 200 hours to transition from friends to good or best friends.”
Down here
Watch the Pharmacist on Netflix
Bonus: Will the Millennial Aesthetic Ever End?
Tune in
Latest addition to the rotation is Kevin Krauter’s new album, which is great: