The creepy guy

On the way to his executive function coaching session on Sunday, we passed a guy in his 20s walking down Curtis. Pale guy, blonde hair. Graham said that he often saw that guy walking right about there when he left school to walk home from Phillips, that the guy never said anything to anyone, and that he was a little "creepy." As we went past he looked at our car with a faint smile of recognition.

Fact is, the guy looked like he might be neuroatypical in some way himself. Who knows what the guy's deal is, maybe he's slightly schizoaffective and on meds, maybe he's autistic himself, maybe he's... whatever. Certainly we have no evidence of him ever having done anything to harm anyone. All we know is that he walks around fairly regularly by himself, so the odds are pretty good that he's lonely.

I explained to Graham that "creepy" is a pretty strong word and that we really don't know much about him at all, but that these kinds of names were how the cycle of isolation and shame envelops people who are different. Probably we should talk to the guy sometime. But then you run the "friend for life" risk that sometimes can happen when you pierce that veil, as kind of happened with the autistic genius math triathlete who lived across from David and Carol in Princeton. He didn't know how to make small talk and move on, so I'd get trapped in a 20-minute conversation every time I said hello.

Life is complex.

Knocking on doors

Went canvassing in Roxboro yesterday. Knocked on 46 doors, all of them in an almost exclusively African-American neighborhood just up the road to Hurdles Mill from the off-site build housing community that we built in 1989. I say almost exclusively, because there was one white guy moving in, a guy wearing a cowboy hat and with a handgun in a holster on his belt. He was driving -- oddly enough -- a Mitsubishi hatchback with a sticker on the back that said something like "It's not the violence you are willing to commit that matters -- it's the distance you are willing to travel." Maybe that's why he had a smaller car instead of the regulation issue F-180, he needed better gas mileage so he could go get violent in places further away. I'm not sure how long he's going to enjoy his current neighborhood.

Other than that it was a good day of knocking on doors. A mix of conversations. I was working with a woman who was down from Brooklyn for a couple of weeks. She had worked as an editor at The New Yorker for a couple of decades under all the regimes -- Shawn, Gottlieb, Brown, Remnick -- and we knew a bunch of people in common. And she liked to travel to canvass, which is cool. She was a little shy about physically knocking on peoples' doors, not always best when you are calling on octagenarians and/or people who are watching TV in the afternoon, as many often are.

But we had the full range of conversations. There was the super-thoughtful guy who was taking a break from replanting a Japanese maple and said that he liked to vote the candidate and that he didn't like all the divisiveness of today's atmosphere. But then he said that Trump was an unbelievable asshole who was dragging us through the mire. There was the guy who was sitting alone watching a black and white TV in an incredibly overheated room eating something from a can, who had some sort of an intellectual challenge, perhaps from birth, perhaps from protracted subtance abuse. On his wall were magazine cutouts of the Obamas, but also Beyonce and women in bikinis. But he was deeply disaffected, talking about basic suspicions that all politicians were corrupt and how this guy would come in there and tell that guy to do this...  I talked to him about somebody sending a bomb to Obama's house last week and how I grew up next to Josh and he was straight, but I don't know if I got through. It was hot as fuck in there and I needed to get out and keep moving. There was the 60ish woman who was clearly a little tipsy at 4:30 and said "I done already went up there and voted, straight Democrat. That young man Quincy been coming by here looking to give people rides" (actually it's Quinton, Darryl Moss's campaign manager)

Most people didn't know much about the 6 amendments on the ballot. It was hard to present a cohesive case in the short time we had, and it felt manipulative to just say "the party says vote no," but in the end that's the nature of it, and that's the gamble the Republicans are making, that people are just so caught up in watching whatever the fuck it is that is on TV that their people will vote for the amendments while less-informed Democrats will be intimidated and say to themselves "well that doesn't sound so bad" and either vote yes or not vote at all.

Between Knausgaard and me

Grinding slowly through volume 6 of Knausgaard, particularly since I had to take time off to read Roger Lowenstein's history of the Fed (which I admittedly haven't finished), because I was on the road a couple of weekends ago and nobody is stupid enough to lug a book as fat as volume 6 on a plane.

I have assiduously resisted any and all commentary on the book, mostly because I don't want anything to come between me and it. For most books this is wise practice. If you have faith enough in your own opinion of what your are reading, it is better to let that opinion grow on its own, rather than be shaped by others. And for me the key thing is that I have confidence in what I think precisely because I understand full well that what I think really isn't important. This blog is read by maybe 15-20 people, so it's not really influential. On the other thing, that I think, the fact of the act of thinking, that is important, and it is what allows me to be effective in the world. Though, in the grand scheme of things, that too really isn't important.

In any thing, the reason it is important that relatively little come between Knausgaard, his narrator (basically himself), and me is that his is the most naked of voices. All is laid bare to the reader, or at least he makes as earnest an effort at bareness as any have made. Much of it, admittedly, kind of sucks as you read it, and I'm sitting there like "just speed it up Karl Ove," or "trim it down Karl Ove," but I have put myself in for the ride, so it must be done bare backed. Reading criticism would be like donning a condom, but there are no STDs to be had.

There is only the question of time.

"Fall break"

Natalie is home for Fall Break from Yale. I don't remember having one of those, but I'll take it. It has been a nice, quiet time.

Wednesday we had family dinner with granny, then Thursday I took her over to Duke where she, Susannah, and Eleanor had planned to spend the night with Dora. It was particularly nice to hear the excitement and glee in Natalie's voice when I dropped her off at Dora's East Campus dorm. As I''ve mentioned, the social transition into college hasn't been lightning speed for her, so it means a lot her her to hang with her besties.

Last night, with Graham in South Carolina at a robotics competition which granny was thankfully able to chaperone, we stayed home and had a good dinner (including meat! increasingly a rarity -- for good reasons) and then Natalie and I got under the blanket on the couch and watched some more of Ken Burns' PBS series on the National Parks, which is still kinda slow and deeply repetitive. But there are interesting anecdotes, for example the extent to which early efforts to bring together a National Parks Service within the Department of Interior were informal and privately funded by Steve Mather and whoever else he could get to donate money.

But we watched it nonetheless, and we were warm and shared footrubs, and then we went to sleep. While we were watching Leon came out and sat with us, which is something he only did because she was there.

Today she and the girls are headed to the State Fair, despite the rain. She seems to be making some progress cleaning out her room, which is soon to be Graham's room. For the time being, it is actually Leon's room, as it is the place where he is most at home and even somewhat receptive to being pet by me and Graham.

Subpar tennis

Z whumped me good at tennis yesterday, payback from the prior time, when I took him. My play wasn't as good as it had been last time, but mentally I held up. I accepted the fact that he was just flat out making his shots and wasn't making mistakes, whereas I was not and was, respectively. So I didn't flagellate and thereby handicap myself, which is a small but welcome triumph over the demons that befall me from time to time.

And there will be a rematch, oh yes there will.

A fine day to canvass

Yesterday evening, after we got home from dinner after power was blissfully restored to our home (knocked out by Hurricane Michael), I asked Graham if he wanted to come canvass with me in Roxboro. Surprisingly enough, he did!

So off we were in the late morning to my mom's hometown, and a beautiful fall day for canvassing it was. We were supremely fortunate to get a knock list which was entirely in downtown Roxboro, so we didn't have to get back in the car at all until it was time for lunch.

So we walked around knocked on doors. As usual, there was a range of types:

• The white guy, actually the only white guy we spoke to, who came to the door in socks but holding his shoes. Graham said he was a gamer based on the multiple screens visible from the front door. Certainly he was very resolute in saying the he did not vote, did not want to "get involved in all that."
• The young woman who had no idea elections were coming up but who looked sufficiently serious and grave when I told her that they were coming and that they were important. I think she got that the six proposed constitutional amendments were stupid.
• The older lady, whose apartment reeked of cigarette smoke, who very gladly took the materials I offered and promised to study up on the candidates online. I encouraged her to tell all her neighbors, and it seemed like she might.
• The young guy, atypically engaged for a 25-year old black guy, who was very appreciative, but whose friend who had just come up on the front porch as we approached, but who was not registered and largely couldn't be bothered. I gave him a gentle nudge to register, told him his vote was important, and as we were walking away I heard him say to his friend: "that dude was like your mom or something."
• Then there was Duane, an 8-year old who had a cold bottle of lemonade, who told me that "Grandma" lived in the derelict-looking house on Foushee Street, and that we probably shouldn't go up on her porch, where he had seen "green blood." But then he came up on there with us when we went up the stairs. Turned out it wasn't his grandma, and the house was probably empty, but he saw some spooky eyes come up to the window while we were up there, and he had lost a toy in her yard but then it ended up in his closet.

Then on the drive back I almost lost my glasses and was freaking out a little at the store in Hurdle's Mill that has the good slaw, but then Graham helped me find them. Whew!

Adjusting

Parents' weekend in New Haven was very nice. We had been looking forward to it immensely and it was beyond lovely to see Natalie and revisit the old town, to show her places we had gone and to see where she is settling in: the ultimate club team, the Branford Buttery, to hear about her classes, to visit art shows, etc.

And yet. When we left on Sunday she was rather sad and, on the one hand, that infected me. On the other, it made me feel good to feel so needed by her. But since then she has been largely unresponsive to my trying to reconnect with her, except a brief call when she was confused by an odd text that I had gotten but which seems to have been intended for her.

She is of course distancing herself because she needs to, it is healthy. She has gone off to college and lives over 500 miles away and needs to fully stand on her own two feet. My brain knows that perfectly well, but it is hard for the rest of me to accept it because the last couple of decades have been dedicated significantly to her. This is just a continuation of what began just before she turned 9 when she decided she would no longer snuggle with me "because I'm growing up" (a direct quote -- see here), and since then I've always looked for ways to stay close to her even as she separates. Parks and Rec, sushi, used book stores, hiking, theater, etc.

It's just hard.

The Port Authority Authority

Had to take a bus from the Port Authority terminal on 42nd yesterday out to Montclair, NJ.  I hate the Port Authority. It is a singularly confusing place, a veritable rabbit warren, though remarkable in its own way for how it routes thousands of commuters a day in and out of the city, like the tiffin-couriers of Mumbai. If not quite as cool.

But if you don't know the place -- and I don't -- it sucks. So on a Sunday, when the information desk was closed, it was doubly confusing. But the markets, in their ineffable way, stepped in. An older African-American guy, maybe not homeless, but not rich either, was there to help idiots like me figure out what bus to take. He knew how to operate the information screen and interpret it, and he kind of knew where was where in New Jersey (another arcane bordering on occult science, even for those who have lived there).

And in the middle of it all, I got a call from Mary saying I had sent her the boarding pass for the wrong flight (I hadn't).

So this guy helped me out, and I gave him two bucks. I could have given him one, but I also could have given him five. Then he went right back over to the screen to help somebody else. That is hustle.

Easter egg

Mary has been working diligently in the yard pulling up Japanese stilt grass by hand, and while she was at it she came across and old and faded pink plastic Easter egg, which she put in the path that leads to the basement door. I came across it this morning when I went down there to get a ladder, and I got choked up a little, as it occurred to me that we might be fully done with Easter egg hunts.

The level of enthusiasm for them had trailed off in recent years as the kids got older, but I'm pretty sure they did them right through Natalie's high school years. Towards the end, Natalie would hide them for Graham, and vice versa, with one getting the front yard and the other the back. It was still a nice tradition. But they are likely done for now. Until we get some grandchildren going on! No pressure.