Back From Jenny

Marriage Is An Agreement Between Two People To Watch Each Other.

In addition to hiking a little over fifty miles (less than usual, but we had lots of bad weather), playing in our kayak, and hanging out with great friends, I was able to finish three books over the two weeks we spent in Jackson Hole.  Our morning ritual, fine tuned after twenty years of going up there, lends itself to that.  We get up around six.  I shower, dress in hiking or kayaking clothes, grab Kathie's tea cup and go over to the lodge to fill it with hot water.  I bring it back, grab whatever book I'm working on and head back to the lodge to sit in front of a fire and read until someone--David, Joe, Terry, or the wine couple from Napa--shows up.  Then I close my book and we chat until Kathie arrives and we go in for breakfast.  I manage to get almost an hour of reading in every morning and a little more in the afternoon when we are resting up on Bluebell's front "porch" after that day's activities.

The first book was Zero K by Don DeLillo.  It is, for a DeLillo novel, a disappointing story told by a man whose father and step mother are in the process of arranging for their bodies to be "frozen" until some time in the future when the world is more hospitable.  Of course, this is a DeLillo novel, so the story is mostly a vehicle for the author to make random comments, some quite thrilling, about the ephemeral nature of everything.  I thought it was mediocre (if you know DeLillo, you of course appreciate the monumental arrogance of that statement), so that is all I'm going to say on that topic.

I finished The Insides by Jeremy P. Bushnell with two days to spare.  It tells the bizarre story of two ladies who possess magical qualities and are on a collision course over the broken off tip of an Excalibur kind of sword that when made whole will be able to cut through time and space and alter history.  It was a fun read, but the ending left me cold.  Too clever.  That's all I want to say about that.

The book I would like to talk about is The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder.  It is about 22 aging men who have been getting together every year at a Ramada Inn kind of place where they meet in a kind of mini-convention and reenact the play on Monday Night Football where Lawrence Taylor breaks Joe Theisman's leg.  Anyone who has seen that play knows instantly what I'm talking about.

It is a wonderful idea for a novel that really focuses on the increasing worries of aging men and all the insecurity that brings.  It is hilarious and wise.  I will cite one example of that wisdom and let that speak for the rest.

One of the guys, Jeff, had a theory about marriage.  "All it is, he said, and he said he learned this too late, but all it is, is watching someone and having someone watching you."

I love that idea.  At first glance, it sounds like Jeff is trivializing the institution, but the more he talks about his theory the more beautiful it becomes.  Kids are watched all the time, at least we can hope so.  Parents watch their kids fill up their diapers, eventually sit on potty chairs, cut molars, make messes when they try to feed themselves, go to soccer games, get humiliated, get hurt, become elated.  They watch their kids go through school, figure out how to be friends, grow up.

But people stop watching when a kid grows up.  Sure, parents--good parents--never stop watching, but it isn't as immediate, at least not to the grown up kid being watched.  Marriage is basically an agreement that fulfills that watching void.  But it isn't the big stuff that we watch.  Everybody sees the big stuff.  It is the little stuff.  I watch Kathie come home frustrated after another meaningless meeting at Metro, or after a bad haircut.  I watch her dig weeds in the garden, make green chili, or marinara sauce, brush her teeth, redo her nails.  The thing is that none of that stuff is particularly interesting to watch, but that's okay because she's watching me do the same boring shit.  And her watching and my watching gives each of us validation, makes each of us appreciate our significance just like when we were children.

If, in addition to all this shared watching, there is love and/or great intercourse, intellectual and sexual, well, that's a bonus.  But it's the watching that matters.

"You're not in a movie, Jeff said.  He said that over and over.  Nobody sees you, he said.  He said that's why people pretend they're in movies.  People say they want privacy, but they would actually like a camera put out in their cold backyard at midnight, pointed through the kitchen window while they make a school lunch for their kids.  They want someone to just notice, Jeff said.  He said that's what marriage is for.  Otherwise, he said, honest to God, we're all just like penguins at the North Pole doing it all for no real reason."

I love the idea of this.  I love the idea that Kathie and I have spent 40 years together pointing our cameras at each other.