It's on now.

The Writing of...Portrait of Artist in Early December

It was March 2000, and I was living in Athens with the Scotts. We had moved in with one another during the holidays of 1999. I really had no idea what I was going to do with myself, or how long our shared living situation would last. I think all of us were just trying to buy ourselves some time before something resembling what we thought of as real life began. I don't want to speak too much for their feelings at the time, but I will say that there was a constant sense that our living situation was temporary, meaning we knew we were on borrowed time from the beginning. That is representative of how volatile our collective friendship was, and probably also reflected how volatile we were as individuals. There was a sense that we were all there because we had nowhere else better to be and were hoping that we might stumble onto something that would give us some semblance of normalcy.

Part of the reason for the volatility of our living situation was that we were all stubborn writers, and wanted nothing more than to have time to write, and oftentimes this meant we were living off of thin air financially. So, at the time this story was written, the cracks were starting to show on the delicate nature of our living situation. To put it simply, there was an acknowledgment taking hold in the house that it was all about to fall apart, and I think the Scotts and I were starting to realize that our time together was growing short. And given our financial shortfalls, we were heading toward dangerous waters. There was something incredibly sad and sudden about this realization.

All of a sudden rent wasn't being paid. Bills were stacking up and being largely ignored. The worst part was that these financial woes were weighing heavily on our personal friendships. Tense silences were beginning to develop and envelop our normally rich, textured conversations. Also, we just weren't being very kind to one another, which really was a tragedy. We knew we understood each other in a way that is not easily duplicated. We stopped acknowledging the rarefied air that we breathed together, and so we started suffocating in that house.

From this, I began to search myself for what this time would ultimately mean to me in retrospect. It was obvious at this point that Sarah and I were going to be together in the long term. We had already decided to move to Cleveland, where Sarah was going to continue her education. So, this bachelor arrangement of mine with the Scotts, and even the old untethered freedom that I had experienced with other friends in general, would be forever altered. I was about to enter into a world of new responsibilities, and I had to address, in my own mind, how this would affect my friendships. There is a clear distinction that needs to be made between a youthful bachelor existence and the acceptance of a more domestic life. Things were simply not going to be the same.

This was a reflective time for me, and this reflection took me, eventually, to an image, an image of a young man standing at a large window. The man standing at the window was both me and not me. He was at the window, looking out at the snow, the reflection from Christmas lights blinking on his naked torso. This was an image that I wanted to explore through the prism of a future reunion of old friends. How would a group of friends react to this image after years have past, and the individual from the image--a once integral member of their circle--had been absent for years.

This is how I began Portrait of Artist in Early December. It was the third installment in my Weekend Stories series, and it is a story of nostalgia, a story that lives in the recognition that the world as I knew it was about to shift into a different gear. I was wondering how I would be seen by friends in the future, and how I might view my friends from the prism of the future. That being said, the artist in the story is not necessarily me. It is me, but it is also an amalgam of my friends at the time, and represents the feelings I had toward them.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this story was written because my journals were so sporadic during this period, but I am guessing that it was written on March 17 and 18th of 2000. At the time, I remember being quite proud of the piece, even reading it aloud to the Scotts soon after it was completed. However, as I looked at it again recently, I didn't feel that it held up the way I hoped it might. This is the first of the weekend stories that I really believe shows that it was hurried by the time restriction. More than a few of the sentences are poorly constructed, sometimes to the point of losing the thread. And there are times that reading the paragraphs are like watching a tennis match, bouncing from one point to another with a clumsy casualness.

Overall, though, I am posting the story because I think that the story carries the point I tried to convey, that we romanticize our youth, and most of all we romanticize those that have stayed young as we age. In other words, we mythologize the characters from our youth whom were lucky enough to escape time through the decoration of our memories.

Read Portrait of Artist in Early December

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McCain is a Loser

I totally agree with Jay Ackroyd about McCain here:

1) He's a terrible candidate. He's undisciplined, incoherent, ill-tempered and can't read a teleprompter.

2) They're running a terrible campaign. They haven't picked a logo or a slogan yet, and lime green jello is still in the running as their color scheme.

3) He's way behind, already, and right track/wrong track is at 14/80.

I've been telling my wife for over a month that John McCain has about a 5% chance to win the election. I still feel that way. The only reason I give him 5% is that there is always a chance of something completely unforeseen happening, and, to be frank, the completely unforeseen is all the McCain camp has going for them right now. Otherwise this election is going to be a route.
No matter how hard the media tries to make it into a horse race, Obama is riding in a jet plane and McCain is riding an old-timey big wheel.

Obama and McCain: 5 Months Out

Now that Hillary has relinquished her death grip on the Democratic Party, we can start to focus on the actual election.

This is my prediction for how the race looks to me today, meaning this is how I think the race will look in five months from the prism of today.

Obama: 323, McCain: 215

*If you are wondering about Nebraska being purplish, it is because Nebraska awards its electors by congressional district, and I believe the district neighboring Iowa will go to Obama.

Yea, It's Still Over

Funny 'cause it's true.

It's over....Really

Finally someone in the media finally acknowledges what has been apparent for the past month--Hillary will not be the nominee.

From Politico:

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Two More Reasons to Hate Hillary

There's the new "Red Phone" ad that is straight out of the Republican playbook of playing on the nation's fear.

Thankfully the Obama campaign has a firm response:

"Sen. Clinton had her red phone moment. She had it in 2002 — it was on the Iraq war — and she and George Bush and John McCain gave the wrong answer."

And then there's this:

The Texas Democratic Party has taken an interesting step for the upcoming hybrid primary/caucus: Asking the campaigns not to sue. "It has been brought to my attention that one or both of your campaigns may already be planning or intending to pursue litigation against the Texas Democratic Party," wrote party attorney Chad Dunn in a letter. "Such action could prove to be a tragedy for a reinvigorated Democratic process."

According to party officials speaking under anonymity, the threat of a lawsuit has come from the Clinton campaign, during a conference call between the party and the campaigns. "Officials from Sen. Clinton's campaign at several times throughout the call raised the specter of 'challenging the process,'" according to one source.

Which party's nomination is she running for?

The Hillary campaign has officially turned me into a Hillary-hater now. I can now say, without reservation, that if she were to steal this nomination away now, she will never get my vote.

Hostile Hillary Goes Bananas!

Stick a fork in her. She's done.

C-r-a-z-y.

Hillary Sees the Writing on the Wall

It's over, and her campaign already knows it:

Inside Clinton's inner circle on Friday, the feeling was that the Thursday night debate in Austin was unlikely to slow Obama's momentum from 11 straight primary and caucus victories. Some supporters said they had discussed how to raise with Clinton the subject of withdrawing from the race should she fail to win decisively on March 4. One option was to wait a day or two and then dispatch emissaries to former president Clinton to urge him to make the case.

One adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said Obama's 17-point Wisconsin victory on Tuesday had started to sink in as a decisive blow, given that the state had been viewed weeks earlier as a level playing field.

"The mathematical reality at that point became impossible to ignore," the adviser said. "There's not a lot of denial left at this point."

Despite Clinton's public pronouncements of optimism, this adviser said: "She knows where things are going. It's pretty clear she has a big decision. But it's daunting. It's still hard to accept."

The sooner she gets out, the better for the party's chances in November. Obama and the DNC need a clear shot to make hay over all these new McCain developments. The longer Hillary stays in the race, the media's attention isn't as focussed on the Obama/McCain match-up.

Hillary Messes With Texas

This from Hillary:

"I think it's important for the DNC to ask itself, Is this really in the best interest of our eventual nominee? We do not want to be disenfranchising Michigan and Florida. We have to try to carry both of those states. I'd love to carry Texas, but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are."

Gee, I hope no Texans heard that.

D'oh! She said it during the taping of the Texas Monthly Report, a highly watched Texas television program.

(Good catch from Al Giordano over at The Field)