Randoms: The Block

I feel like I’m starting all of these posts with apologies. We last published four weeks ago and we haven’t even left the comment section open. Heck, some of our commenters can’t even connect their old browsers and comment when it is working. Things fall apart.

Our bigger issue is the block: the block on creativity, the block on leadership, the block on caring. We haven’t been writing. I don’t want to care about anything. I spend all my time working, burying my head in a book or video game, or doomscrolling. Gah, the doomscrolling. What did president baby do today? How many people are Leeroy Jenkinsing the ‘Rona? Did DeWine finally mandate masks? What fresh hell hath the police state wrought on people? How is China tightening the screws in Hong Kong? How much money did First Energy bribe the Ohio Republican Party for their bailout? Looming over it all is our growing national incompetence at doing anything productive: coordinating pandemic response, a sane schooling plan, or buying spare parts for military equipment. Let’s not even talk about mitigating catastrophic climate change… Doomscrolling often devolves into me dragging randos on Twitter, getting so angry that I foam at the mouth as I thumb type incoherently, or castigating Mallory Factor.

It’s not healthy. But it’s hard to resist, and then it is hard to feel an overwhelming sense of doom and helplessness. I take solace is my walks. Once a day, twice if I’m lucky, I take my dogs, and my daughters on a walk around the neighborhood, something I never did before the Covid spring. (We added a second pooch in May. Our first dog is a mostly housebound mop of hair who barked at squirrels through the window and was out on his lead a few times a day. The exercise and the friend have been good for him). I enjoy the sun, the haberdashery involved in not searing my dome, the absence from a phone or computer screen, actually using my muscles (at least the ones below my chest – God, my arms have atrophied), waving at my neighbors, feeling the heat, seeing the boys chase the birds and squirrels till they hit the end of their leashes, and trying to prevent dog fights or their opposite with other hounds we pass. It’s a pleasure to talk to the only humans I talk to face-to-face: my daughters, my wife, my mother-in-law (who lives down the way).

It’s funny how our conversations go. They usually involve yelling at the dogs for stopping to sniff every post or patch of grass on their daily sniffari, praising them for a good poo, and fighting with each other over whose turn it is to pick it up. As an owner of a solitary small dog I was content to let Percy’s meager droppings decompose in the far reaches of the back yard (or collect it all off my concrete porch a week after a hefty snow – my dog’s a wuss). Now that I’m ambulating around the neighborhood once or twice daily with these boys, I spend far more time talking about the frequency, volume, and smell of each movement than I ever thought possible.

We yell out the names of our roles on each step of the process as if they’re royal announcements, complete with the accents of British aristocracy.

“Poop bagger!!!” is both a title and a demand for action from whoever’s turn it is to protect the sanctity of their hand inside the bag, reach down, grab all the little bits of business, invert the bag, and tie.

The Boys

Our new guy, Desmond, is a tiny Shiba Inu who spent the first three years of his life studding in a cage in T-county before they surrendered him to the Tuscarawas Humane Society. He’s learning how to be a dog again, and every time he does any type of business he scratches at the grass with his back feet with the fervency of Thumper the rabbit to clean his tootsies and then takes off running with a giant grin on his face, till he catches the end of his leash and flips around. Though, more often than not lately one of my girls takes off running with him in her flip flops to praise him while he bounds.

“Poop butler!!!” intoned by someone left behind summons the schlub (me) who’ll daintily clutch the bag using as few fingers as possible and convey the package to the nearest disposal site: either schlepping it all the way to the trash bin back at home, or surreptitiously leaving it in a random tote left out for the day’s collection – as long as no one is watching.

My ten year old has a whole hierarchy of titles she’s devised for graduates and members of the royal poo-cadamy who tend to our princes. (The school’s motto: “we’re No. 2”). Man, I spend a lot of my day dealing with doo.

We talk about other things too, of course. My oldest failed her first driver’s test so she has to retake it next week. My daughters prattle incessantly about the Last Airbender which they’re racing through on Netflix. My wife laments the unending failures of peoples’ bodies and the bureaucracy of providing health care. I bitch about sitting in the same seat for nine hours a day and going numb to the void of communication. We talk about President Cheeto, roll our eyes, move on disgustedly, and bitch about maskless fools attending the ridiculous amount of graduation parties in our neighborhood last weekend. We go over all the things we won’t do: eat indoors at a restaurant, attend even an outdoor party maskless, fly in an airplane – especially to Florida…

“I miss going to the movies,” I tell my wife. There was something about the ritual of the cinema: scanning for a showtime, buying popcorn, mocking the commercial you’ve seen 20 times, getting goosebumps as the lights go down, panning the previews, whispering to her that you know the twist as squeezes your leg and tells you to “shut up.” It’s not much of a sacrifice, and we’re doing pretty well.

The closest we got to anyone we know getting sick was a couple of her Grandma’s cousins who passed in the same weekend a couple months ago. They were in their late 80s, but they died alone. We’ve protected my wife’s 88 year old grandmother like she’s the Pope. She lives down the way too. We’re all doing better than many.

My depression has mostly been under control. I got back the 90 minutes of my day I spent commuting (mostly doing the above), though I miss the drive and I rarely listen to music, podcasts, or the news anymore. More than anything it’s the malaise that gets to me. The steady slide into idiocrasy seems inexorable as we flit from one mismanaged crisis and disaster to the next with nary a day to reflect on the prior. This is, of course, how autocrats inure us to reactions to their incompetence and callousness: with daily outrages and then blaming the press for its constant knee jerk outrage. Ugh. I talk about that too: managing existential dread. Probably not as often as I should.

So I enjoy my walks, and some days, like today, I don’t talk much at all. I just enjoy the slight mugginess of a cloudy summer day in Northeast Ohio as it threatens rain. I watch the birds scatter from the trees as the dogs scamper close. The other afternoon, in the blazing sun, I saw three buzzards circling high overhead. I wondered what carrion they spied. I’ve had my adventures: tracked down the owner of an elderly lumbering Bernadoodle, kept my boys from eating a lawnbound sparrow chick that had fallen from the nest (which I’m sure was promptly eaten by something less domesticated), listened to a man rant his evangelical testimonial to another from a block away. Life in the ‘burbs, man. Thank God for social distancing.

I love Orwell. One of my favorite essays is Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, in which he discussed our long Covid spring and one of its few redeeming features.

Is it wicked to take a pleasure in Spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible, while we are all groaning, or at any rate ought to be groaning, under the shackles of the capitalist system, to point out that life is frequently more worth living because of a blackbird’s song, a yellow elm tree in October, or some other natural phenomenon which does not cost money and does not have what the editors of left-wing newspapers call a class angle?

…People, so the thought runs, ought to be discontented, and it is our job to multiply our wants and not simply to increase our enjoyment of the things we have already. The other idea is that this is the age of machines and that to dislike the machine, or even to want to limit its domination, is backward-looking, reactionary and slightly ridiculous.

…Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?

Sign me up for that ridiculousness. It fuels my biggest fear about getting back to “normal” while uncapped natural gas wells, abandoned by bankrupt frackers, spew methane into the greenhouse: we won’t have a normal to get back to. The  insects die. The algae blooms from the heat and runoff in the Great Lakes. The hurricanes come faster and earlier. If our myriad moderate problems seem insurmountable, our giant looming ones seem impossible. As much as Orwell ended his essay on a note of optimism, the natural world we take for granted seems irreparably stressed.

How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

The Earth will still go round the sun, even if we blow it into a million pieces. The question we have to ask ourselves is, “will we?”

—

Given all that, it’s hard to muster the will to talk about the idle Cavaliers or pore over the draft. While conjecture about one’s favorite sports team doesn’t completely fill the void cause by existentialist dread, it is unbelievably satisfying to write and have people read your work and respond. For that I thank you all and for sticking with us, despite our glacial publishing pace or the particular self indulgence of pieces like this one.

There are so many things I want to write about but the timing, energy required, and opportunity seem hard to grasp. I want to write about things like the unicorn that is Aleksej Pokusevski, whether Ty Haliburton will be able to shoot off the dribble, whether James Wiseman is worth any hype, whether Obi Toppin is physically capable of backpedaling, whether the Cavs should be trying to tank for 2021, whether the Cavs have a “plan,” if Kevin Love or Tristan Thompson will be in Cleveland next season, how fun it might be to watch all the ex-Cavs in this year’s offs, what the Tribe should change their name to…

I want to write things like Colin McGowan’s Suspended Indefinitely series or things like L. Graeme Smith’s The Decadence Machine: the single greatest thing I’ve ever read on the Warriors’ “dynasty,”

If we do not address the fundamental rot at the heart of ourselves, if we do not solve our insecurities that can both power our ambitions and taint our successes, then we will find not a grand new frontier, an unexplored age, a fulfilled life, or a vigorous society, but rather a conquest that does not last, does not diminish all that is still wrong in our world and in ourselves. Did Icarus notice, at the height of his triumph, that his wings were already dripping away? Durant wanted to be mythologized, and he’s become a cautionary tale instead.

Understand what remains in victory and what does not. The championship, whatever that is for each of us, that coveted Inner Ring, yes—trophies on a dusty mantle. The longing in our souls stays too, though. Maybe you’re lucky/blessed/talented enough to Win It All. The celebration has happened. The champagne, that joy ejaculate, has been sprayed. Now it pools on the floor and its residue clings and rots, and, sticky as it may be, it cannot root us or the world to that glorious moment. And so we need more, ever more. Happiness was here, and then another moment came; we desire decadence, and it is our undoing.

What then to do? Eschew adoration and seek to be sound craftsmen, and, in so doing, improbably find satisfaction anyways.

I do not know how to fix our society, to arrest our collective decline, to solve any individual unhappiness. But inculcating a spirit of self-confidence, resilience, quiet hard work, and delayed gratification can’t but enable the rejuvenation of our hearts, upon which all else follows. If decadence in society is selfishness at scale, then selflessness multiplied is a cure worth trying.

But there’s only so much time and energy. So we’ll get to what we get to.

—

It’s weird that rays of hope (or at least escapism) and competence can pierce the din of national dismay. One little ray is the NBA bubble, which stands as a probable model for how things are going to have to get accomplished at least until we get a Covid-19 plan. The bubble has survived due to rules, resiliency, administrative competence, and luck. Sure it’s had it’s moments, like when Richaun Holmes broke quarantine for chicken wings or Dwight Howard doubled down on stupid (well, that’s not really unique to the bubble). Silver and Co. have managed to hold it together and do something despite the challenges.

A few weeks ago EvilGenius and I shared some letters that we ultimately decided not to publish on the wisdom of the NBA restart. I’m somewhat pleased that some of my thoughts panned out.

I worry a lot about the end game of these protests and how to keep the momentum going towards real change. Too many times we’ve put window dressing on the issue of police brutality and systemic racism, and hoped that it would go away. It won’t. But I also know that without structural economic changes creating real wealth in the poorest urban neighborhoods, things will not improve for anyone.

I very much worry about what happens when the unemployment checks start running out in August.

A generous $600-a-week federal boost to unemployment benefits is set to expire on July 31… Other forms of federal aid, such as forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans to small businesses, will likely also be exhausted by then.

Revolutions are built on hope, but they’re also built on money. And yes, most NBA players can afford to take a pay cut. But is it fair to tell a 2-way player making 60,000 a year to give up a quarter of his salary? That’s a significant pay cut and a huge blow to his ability to make a team and enhance future earnings.

When unemployment starts drying up, things are going to get scary economically. Does an industry that can conceivably work safely owe it to the nation to give it a go just to drive economic activity? Don’t forget that coaching staffs, drivers, trainers, camera operators, broadcasters, ad agencies, journalists, housecleaners, cooks, and so many more have taken pay cuts or will be on unemployment if they’re not working these games. It’s not a huge number in terms of the nation, but it’s real economic activity that wont happen if they don’t play.

There are so many things that could go wrong, and so much work and thought that has to be done to make it go right, that I can definitely understand the, “just cancel the damned thing” sentiment. But as as trivial as sports seems, trying to earn a living and create something beautiful and memorable is worth an earnest effort if the people putting forth that effort deem it so.

Black lives matter, but beyond that, black autonomy, independence, and decision making matter. As the players look toward the NBA and the NBAPA’s plan, I trust NBAPA head Michele Roberts’ guidance.

It’s not a question of play or not play, It’s a question of, does playing again harm a movement that we absolutely, unequivocally embrace? And then whether our play can, in fact, highlight, encourage and enhance this movement.

That’s what they’re talking about. They’re not fighting about it; they’re talking about it.

This is one of the biggest decisions of these men’s lives. Whatever decisions they make individually, and as a group will be the right ones.

So far, given the focus they’ve brought consistently to Breonna Taylor’s murder and issues of policing and racism, it appears as if they’ve found a balance. May we all.

LeBron James on Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and speaking out on racial inequality pic.twitter.com/hJFwePA61B

— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) July 24, 2020