A Brief History of the Ecstatic

The suburbs are not, in fact, a hothouse for extraordinary lifetimes.

But you know this already.

What you may not know is that when the right sequence of doors and windows and garages and mailboxes are opened in the typical New England suburb, an interstitial vacuum is cracked open into which something of great significance must be placed--a noble ideal, a terrible secret, a sense of the vanishing sublime--and from which something neither ordinary nor, to admit it, entirely illustrious must emerge.

Something of dubious significance, to be sure--but also, at its best, of an unapologetic integrity, for having been no less and no more satisfied with How It Is than any human in this cantankerous-nee-dark existence has any right to be.

Something either the sum of its parts or, more probably, a recycled and reconstituted byproduct of those parts, none of which independently should do much to fill up a single entry in this journal, unless, of course, they are embellished with the most hideous form of bullshit.

Something ineluctable to, to, to--well, to something else of type and tail as yet unknown.

Something short and poorly-attired.

In this instance, me.

I was born in the Cradle of Liberty (Concord, Massachusetts) during the nation's bicentennial, a fact which undoubtedly would have marked me as a red-blooded, patriotic American but for the fact that, regrettably, I became an ardent Democrat as the years wore on--that is, began to love my country as an adult loves an ideal, not as an infant loves a teat.

To approximately half my countrymen, this makes me only slightly better than a Communist axe-murderer with a virulent hatred of apple pie and two slaughtered chickens for feet.

I attended a public high school, was (so they say) last off the waiting-list at Dartmouth College in 1994, and breezed into Harvard Law School in 1998 on the strength of an LSAT score of which I remain, to this day, entirely incredulous.

I was the only student in my law school class, to my knowledge, irretrievably set on becoming a public defender after graduation.

There was surprisingly little competition for this accolade.

I scorned the platoons of corporate recruiters which razed the Harvard campus from time to time--attended not a single lavish dinner provided by them, nor a single interview organized by them, nor a single information session oh-so-torturously manned by entire jackbooted-and-besuited squadrons of them--and tumbled head-long into a life-long pursuit of justice, dignity, valor, honor, and a whole host of other expletives not fit to be uttered within several harpoon-lengths of the nation's grievously-flawed criminal justice system.

My debt-to-income ratio is obscene.

I am not sorry for this.

I am sorry I played Little League baseball so goddamn many years, only to develop the comically-rare condition dubbed "Steve Blass Disease" in the final game of my final season. To this day I cannot throw a baseball; as a youngster, I had perhaps the best throwing arm on every baseball team I ever played for, including two All-Star teams, two summer touring teams, and one unforgettable stint (.200 batting average, .500+ on-base percentage) in an under-16 Cape Cod League. I used to cut a fine figure in a baseball uniform: something like a potato which has been stepped on, half-eaten, re-heated, and then shot from a cannon.

I am sorry I never found a way to better incorporate my love of radio into my professional career as a trial attorney. In the past ten years, I've been color commentator for a men's college basketball team, a disc jockey specializing in obscure late-60s psychedelia, the host of a sports-radio talk-show, and a featured news analyst for an Air America Radio affiliate. You'd think a man who's made a career (criminal litigation) out of hearing the sound of his own voice would find more outlets for same than the courthouses of southern New Hampshire, certainly given the preceding history--yet to date I've been spectacularly unsuccessful in being named the full-time radio voice of a major professional sports franchise, and the sports world has done something less than beaten down my door with offers of same, or promises of free money, or loans of a "company car," or photo shoots for the much-longed-for Wheaties-box placement--as if anyone eats that soul-liquidating, county-jail-tasteless monkey-shit anymore.

In other words: a) radio became, for me, a lost love after college, and b) given my deep affinity for the musical group The Yellow Balloon, the fact that I have never in my life done any illicit drugs is absolutely astounding.

But it is true.

I am sorry it took me so long to discover the joys of poetry. I first became a "poet"--of the napkin-scribbling, cloying, self-immolating (figuratively) sort--in law school, mostly to stave off the stultifying boredom of an academic institution more likely to desiccate one's brain via degrading, corrosive, and thoroughly avoidable misuse than stimulate it with anything approaching an imaginative impulse. I became a "Poet"--of the proud, stoic, self-absorbed, sure-footed sort--well, never, really. But I publish from time to time, and even get paid for it on occasion. [See sidebar].

At $30/page it's surprisingly competitive with the typical public defender salary.

If I publish three poems a year I can even afford the large cup at Dairy Queen.

I am not sorry to have eaten snails in Paris last year, though I am entirely sorry to have not remembered doing so when my fiancee, Ginger, pointed same out to me this evening. I proposed to Ginger there--in Paris, that is, last September--which I do, unlike the curious consumption of snails at a restaurant called Les Incroyables, at least generally remember.

I have done shockingly little that is known to be good to do.

I have done shockingly more than I ever thought it would be my lot to do.

And what remains ahead?

Something in between my lot and my dreams, I hope, and a peaceful death.

Let this space be a hothouse of ideas from which, by the quickest route, comes action.

And let this space not take itself so fucking seriously, starting now.