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[dixonspeaker-blog]

My Girlfriend Cries Whenever She Hears ‘New York State of Mind’

My girlfriend cries whenever she hears Billy Joel’s ‘New York State of Mind.’ I don’t cry when I hear it, but that’s probably because I’m not from New York like she is. I’m from Pennsylvania.

. . .

I was in class during 9/11. I was in 5th grade. It was back to school night and I remember this because it was cancelled. They didn’t tell us it was because of 9/11, though. They kept that part a secret for the time being. Mr. Porter just passed out pink sheets of computer paper with messages typed in black ink. We could read them but the language was broad and indirect, written in adult code impossible to decipher in our young minds. It contained phrases like “the unfortunate events” and “during this difficult time.” It had phrases like “heartfelt sympathies” and “direct you to our resources.” This meant nothing to us. It might as well have been written in Chinese. I think they chose pink to make it feel more friendly, But what it did instead was capture the emotion of the moment, which was hysteria.

. . .

The first time I went to New York City was a month later.  We went with my Aunt Pat and Uncle Danny and my cousin Kyle. They felt it was important for us to see it with our own eyes I guess. We took a limo up there from Pennsylvania because my Uncle Danny knew a guy. It was easy because no one was there.

The sidewalks were clear. Times Square was blinking its lights in silence. There was no traffic. Everyone had left, fled or fleeing in fear or else to be close with their families wherever their families were. Many people were also dead.

It felt to all of us an appropriate time to go. Our small family careening through the Holland Tunnel in a discount stretch limousine while everyone else was getting out. We were members of a contrarian flow. A well known Wall Street adage was to “buy when there is blood in the streets.” It could have very well been first uttered in those towers. We didn’t see any blood when were were down there. Maybe it had already been cleaned up.

. . .

Downtown everything looked like shit. The streets and sidewalks were black with soot. The buildings were black. Cars weren’t allowed anywhere close. Windows were shattered high up in buildings that seemed miles away from the attack sight. I thought about what was going on.

I remember trying to count broken windows as we walked. I was to think about the expense, human and economic. I just walked and counted, not understanding a thing. There was a fence covered in pictures. There were too many of those to count.

. . . .

I stood there thinking about where I am now in relation to when I was ten years old looking at those pictures. Hard to say. There’s a welcome center now. There are metals rails to line up within for guided tours. There is a line for large groups.

There is an underground mall now. The roof shoots out of the earth with tangled claws like a shell buried in the sand. I had good sushi down there but it got too crowded during lunch. There is a giant square pool now. You could stand all around it and watch the water flow in from the sides until it drops into a black square pit in the center and out of site. The pit looks big enough to drop a car into. I imagine some look into it and are consumed with fear.

There’s now one tower instead of two. It’s taller than ever. I stepped out of the elevator on the forty-fourth floor into a lobby with glass doors at either end. There are different names on each. Real estate is at a premium now. They share a floor with a publishing agency of some kind. I stand right up against the window and look north. I try to study everything that I can see. I see the Empire State building and the tall rectangle building I don’t know the name of the one that’s very thin. I see the modern looking tower with the jutting floors that I was under just a few weeks prior.

“Well,” I say, “ this is a view.”

“I can’t never seem to get this site to work.”

The receptionist behind me has her face right up against her computer screen. She is typing away.

I look into the distance past the city and into the indiscriminate sky. I have to drive out there later. Tomorrow.  I have to drive out there tomorrow and negotiate the bridges and exits and merges and bypasses which are myriad. Success was far from certain even with a GPS device. It required cunning. You had to outmaneuver your own destiny out there. Today is Halloween. Beyond the city is a place called Valhalla.

Valhalla, New York.

. . .

I think about driving up there tomorrow and how I will have to pass the exit where years before was the exit I got off at night to break a girls heart. We chose a strip mall off the highway where I-95 meets Route 1. There was a nail salon, an indoor driving range, and more importantly a Bonefish Grill. We had been there twice before. Once during the week early on when we wanted to see each other and once later on when we felt like we had to.

. . . .

I tore out of work after my shift. It was a fifty call day and I was happy about that because I felt it appropriately added to the misery of the day. Like more weight pushing me down into the calm and pointless zone. That’s where I was when I was driving. I turned off the radio and listened to my car’s engine as I thought about what I was going to say.

“Keep it under an hour and then get the hell out of there,” is what my friend Dave said.

“Don’t linger.”

“You say what you have to say and then you’re gone.”

When she pulled up she got out of her car. She had sunflower seeds and candies in her hand tied together with some colored ribbon. That is when I knew it was going to be worse than I thought.

We decided to talk in her car, which was a crucial victory for me because it allowed me to run if necessary.  She spoke first and laid out what she decided were some facts. She said she still thought I had a drinking problem, which was bullshit. She talked about distance. She talked about weekly hikes in mountains we could find between our houses. She talked about the internet. She talked about starting to practice yoga and she told me she bought a mat earlier that day. She moved through her talking points. She took out a note card, held it in her hand like she was giving a speech. She closed with saying she wanted to try again and looked over to me. I, after a short pause, told her that I did not.

“What.”

It was quick and sharp and she looked at me like I had said something outside of what she believed to be possible. .

“What.”

I had to repeat myself.

The rest of the night was spent talking her off the figurative ledge. The windows clouded up with warm and tired breath. I blew pasts my hour cut off by 150%. She leapt onto my lap and I felt her slick tears fall all over my face.

. . .

Two months earlier large hives began to appear all over my body. I saw specialists. I got bloodwork done. I took shits into a plastic hat and scooped them into vials and drove with them in my car on the way to work. The doctors could never figure out what was wrong with me.

. . .

Eventually I got out of the car. I walked swiftly over to my own, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot. What I did next was my biggest mistake of the night. I looked back. I looked back and I saw her body convulsing in the back seat smashing her face into her headrest. She smashed it over and over again. I sped out of the parking lot before I forgot how to drive.

I made a few wrong turns but couldn’t stop until I had been driving for twenty minutes and pulled into a boarded up gas station. Everything was dark. I took a few breaths and when I thought I was feeling better I plugged “Home” into the GPS. Two hours. It was eleven o’clock. I pulled out of the lot and drove away.

When I was back on I-95 I rounded a soft corner and was assaulted by a wall of flashing red light. I eased to a stop. Four police cars were parked across the highway. One, two, three, four. I remembered that Obama was flying into Philly that night. I was stopped twenty miles north of the city and I was impressed by that kind of protection. As I sat there I became sad again very quickly.

I called Dave just to hear someone else’s voice. I parked my car on the highway and told him about the night. Red and blue lights came and went as I sat still in a place I would more than likely never sit still in again.

. . . .

Of course they both had to come down at the same time. I think it was DeLillo who wrote that even though there were two towers, when viewed they were seen as only one thing. My father was in upstate Pennsylvania when it happened and said they could see the smoke rising way off in the distance. Everyone rushed out to see. Smoke rising like out of some hole in the earth. Or else trailing high up off the end of a big cigar.

. . . .

During my first session I am challenged by a woman who looks frustrated and bored. She questions my numbers, questions my facts and figures. She is texting as she speaks. Rapid fire texts one after another. She tells me she is texting her accountant. I see her text scroll on and on in the reflection of her glasses. When she receives a response she turns her body to the room and speaks. She tells everyone the accountant had texted her back, and he confirms my facts and figures. Heads nod in agreement and the room seems pleased.  It is confirmation that I am a professional, and not some loon. I’m not surprised. I knew the accountant would agree, because I didn’t make these numbers up. I got them from the same place the accountant got them from. We all get them from the same place.

. . .

I have to rush out of there after my last meeting. I have only an hour to get to Penn Station and catch my Amtrak. It would take some precision. Where was the closest subway? Where were the most direct routes? Were they on time, was there construction?

I step onto the elevator and look at my phone for the first time in hours, because before that I had been concentrating. I have two missed texts from my girlfriend. The first:

Are you ok?

And then:

I just saw the news

I text her back:

What news

Then I close out of my text messages.

I am in the elevator now and going down fast. There are five or maybe six others with me but everyone is silent and into their phones. I pull up Twitter and see that ‘Manhattan’ is trending. That’s me. I scroll through my feed in search of the action amongst the reaction. Someone had taken a truck up onto the west highway bike path and began running down pedestrians. There were already some people killed, apparently. There were gunshots seen and heard, apparently. I look around the elevator in search of some sign. But what I see is nothing. Just the faces of people who look like they want to get home. We reach the first floor and everyone gets off and walks away.

. . .

In the lobby everyone is going home. They look tired and unafraid. I check my phone for updates but see the same stale information from moments before. High glass doors line the south side of the building. I stand in the  lobby and look out. Individuals are rushing left, right, in, out. They walk like they know where they are going. An ambulance with its lights on speeds north. There is no siren and everything seems very quiet. Before I left the offices above my contact told me to exit the building on the north. I got them mixed up but didn’t realize it until weeks had passed.

I don’t want to leave the building. I think about years before in Mr. Porter’s class and my visit to New York as a child when it was dust and broken glass and dried blood, dead fires. Here I am now. There is a security guard standing outside, taking in the mild temperature. He looks my age, maybe younger. I push open the glass doors to talk to him. I begin speaking before I know what I want to say.

“Is. Is the-”

He responds without even glancing in my direction.

“Yeah that’s over.”

. . . .

When I met the old girlfriend in the parking lot of the Bonefish Grill, in addition to the sunflower seeds and candies she also brought a paper bag filled with works of art she had created for me over the years. The art was previously in my possession. She was a talented artist but chose to study accounting in school. I always suspected that this was some source of pain for her. Earlier that week she drove two hours in the snow to my house and ripped the artwork off the walls without saying a word. I looked on in silence, as if inside some nightmare.  I felt like her and I had been rocketing towards the end of the universe, and in that moment, as she tucked a hand-carved clock under her arm, we were at the very edge. One more word from either of us would have pushed us off, forever. There was a portrait of Faulkner in the bag she gave me. A painting of the cover art of Radiohead’s In Rainbows. When I got home late that night I walked around my house and hung all of the artwork back where it belonged. They still hang there today. It’s good art, I don’t see why that should change.

[dixonspeaker-blog]

6th Grader’s Weren’t Allowed to Play Sports

By Dixon Speaker

For Paulette Speaker

6th graders weren’t allowed to play sports. That was the rule. Maybe they wanted us focusing on the radical transition from elementary school, where one teacher taught all subjects in one single classroom, to the middle school format where 8 different teachers taught their own specialized subjects in 8 different classrooms. This was difficult, especially for young boys who latch onto any new distraction like rodeo clowns to a loose bull. Or maybe the reason was something simpler, like they didn’t want us playing contact sports with 8th graders who were significantly more developed than us. In football, for example, the middle school league was called “The Unlimited League,” as in, wow, that guy who is about to hit Dixon looks like he weighs unlimited pounds. I did play Halfback in high school, and during one game a missed down block by our center created a free sprinting lane for Garnet Valley’s 315-pound nose-tackle. I’ve never been struck by a moving car but this was the closest thing to it. Anyway, regardless of the reasoning, the rule they had was no sports, so everyone in 6th grade had to find other things to do. For me this created a problem. I played a lot of sports growing up. You could say my life was made up of finding ways to pass the time between games. Most 6th graders just went home and played with their brothers or sisters. This wasn’t an option for me. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I still don’t. On top of that, both my parents worked full time: My Dad travelled 3-4 days a week selling purified natural gasses while my mother worked until 6 o’clock at night as an executive in a furniture company. So every day after school I took the bus to Mom Mom’s. Mom Mom’s house was located literally on the edge of a cliff, sandwiched on the other side by a busy highway that she would never dream of letting me cross alone to seek out comrades in the surrounding neighborhoods. I was therefore left to occupy myself at Mom Mom’s cliff-side abode, which had several acres of fenced-in backyard to run through, but no other children to share it with. There was only so much a 12 year old child interested in sports and videogames and a 70 year old woman who grew up with a pet raccoon could do together before they both got bored. I had to find something to do with my time, and what I decided to do was to try out for the school play (This was allowed. No sports, but any and all other after school activities were acceptable). The play that year- the “fall drama” as they called it- was an adaptation of The Little Rascals.  You can guess what the play was actually about, because I don’t remember. I was not an actor. I was never in a play before. No one in my family had any type of performance background. In fact, the only time I remembered stepping foot inside a theatre was once when I was very young. A bearded man in a yellow costume darted across the stage and terrified me down to the most central whispers of my being. I cried so hard my mother had to take me home early. A picture of that man remains vivid in my memory, even today. I joined the play anyway. I had a The Little Rascals movie on VHS tape that I would watch from time to time. Also, trying something foreign and failing badly still outweighed spending every day after school alone watching Disney in a dark corner of Mom Mom’s house. Now, before trying out for the play you have to think about trying out for the play, which was much more stressful than the tryouts themselves. Being in the school play was not considered “cool” by any standards, something I was very much concerned with in 6th grade. Middle school was a weird time for me. There was a lot of figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be going on, and I knew precious little about either. What others thought of me, how I appeared, was something that consistently occupied my thoughts. It was this type of thinking that lead to the events of this story. The day before tryouts I was approached by one of the deans, Mr. Sag. We locked eyes across the hall. I knew that I was toast. Mr. Sag was old, so old that he actually taught both of my parents when they attended that same middle school many years before. Pennsylvania teachers got generous pension benefits, at least they did back then, so it was common to see strange old men like Sag in schools throughout the state. He shouted my last name as he approached me. Speaker! I didn’t say anything, just stared up at him and blinked. He was a big man. His face was a slab of wet meat hanging in a butcher shop. I heard you’re trying out for the play he said. Well, I was, you know, just thought I. His eyes fired up and he took a step closer. His head blocked all the light in the hall. He took a deep breath before he spoke. Are you an athlete, or are you some thespian? Spit flew out of his mouth in all directions. He stomped off without waiting for a response. I turned slowly just in time to see the back of his enormous head bob down the stairs and out of sight. Students were walking all around me but I might as well have been standing alone on the moon. I was impressionable and crushed to pieces. I sat quietly through the rest of my classes without answering any questions or writing a single note. I went straight to the bus after school. At Mom Mom’s I ate a TV dinner and watched Disney in the dark until my mom picked me up at 6. In the car I told her I had changed my mind. I didn’t want to try out for the play anymore.

Halfway through school the next day I changed my mind again. Screw Sag, I was trying out for that damn play. When the 2:30 bell rung I talked a bit with my friends and by three I was headed to the auditorium. It felt strange to walk the empty halls. Like I was in the same place only very far away. Another universe, maybe another time. How the tryouts went is unimportant. I forget what it is they made me do. I don’t remember rehearsing any lines, so I probably just had to read something. I got a speaking role but it wasn’t a big role and I wasn’t even a real Little Rascal. My character was just called Dixon. When the thing was over I walked down the hill to where the busses picked us up. These were called the “Five O’clock Busses,” and they had and different numbering and routing system than the traditional busses that took most of the students home at 3. The Five O’clock Busses were for kids doing activities. I asked around that day and found out what bus dropped me off closest to my Mom Mom’s house. I had not thought about being dropped off on the wrong side of the busy highway. You’ll soon see why that didn’t matter. As I stood there, a bus which was not my bus careened into the loop and stopped abruptly. The door swung open. I looked up into the bus and saw a large woman with long blonde hair wearing a baseball cap. Her hair was flying all around. She scowled down at me. I immediately recognized this woman. Her name was Millie. I knew her because she drove me to preschool and I was her first pick-up of the day. We grew close and even had a song we would sing together until we reached the second pick-up. In elementary school I turned heinous one day and she had to pull the bus over. We never spoke again until this day. She shouted at me to get in. Silently seated on that bus, bumping forward, hands in lap, the few seemingly minor decisions and the radical consequences they created began to set in. It went like this: The night before I told my mom that I was definitely not trying out for the play. So, to her, life would proceed as usual and I would take the bus home after school to Mom Mom’s. The next day I changed my mind- now this is key- and didn’t tell anyone. If something like this happened now the change of plans could be easily communicated through a simple text message. But when I was in 6th grade cell phones were just starting to be widely distributed, and I didn’t have one yet. So I stayed after school without telling a soul. It’s also important to know that I never did anything like this. I was a thoroughly responsible child, exactly where I was expected to be at the time I was expected to be there. You can imagine the shade that descended over my poor Mom-Mom’s heart when the bus pulled up to her house that day and she watched the doors swing open, then swing slowly closed, without her precious grandson exiting. Slamming shut, they sent an impossible sadness throughout her house and therefore her life as well. This set off a series of events that moved very quickly, all while I was sitting in the middle school auditorium waiting to read my lines. Mom-Mom called my mother and told her I didn’t get off the bus, and probably that she suspected someone snatched me and that I was more than likely dead. My mom, trying to remain calm, thought to herself that I just changed my mind about the play. She called the school to check. The ladies in the office told her they could call for me on the PA system and tell me to come to the office and they would call my mom back and tell her that I was all right. In many cases that would have been the end of it, but for reasons unknown, the PA system in the middle school couldn’t be heard in the auditorium, something both of the ladies in the front office were unaware of. So, when they called my mother back 20 minutes later with the news that I had not shown up, the assumption by all parties was that I was not in the school at all. This was when my mother began to panic. She quickly flapped her arms at her desk, something she does when scared. She called my dad, then Mom-Mom again, then the school again, then several friend’s houses where I could have been. When these searches turned up empty she called the school again and it was decided that all they could do was wait to see if I somehow turned up at The Five O’clock Busses, and if I did then Millie the bus driver, who knew both me and my Mom Mom, would make sure I got onto her bus and make a special one-time drop off at a road near Mom Mom’s house. If I didn’t show up at the busses I guess they would have called the police. As I got off the bus I saw Mom-Mom’s  El Camino sitting on the shoulder up the road like a cop car on a stake out. When I got home later that night there was a newly purchased cell phone sitting on the kitchen table. . . . This was one of many events I lived through while I was younger but couldn’t fully understand until I was older. I needed distance before I could evaluate the true emotional recourse of the thing. What I immediately thought was a gross overreaction I now look back on and view as a reasonable response. Of course they were going to worry. I’m their only son. My mom still tells me to this day, “I don’t have a replacement.” Even when all signs pointed to a non-event, pointed to the likelihood that I was safe, when intense love is present, it makes perfect sense to be attracted to that worst thing, to losing that love. I believe that’s what my mom and dad and Mom-Mom experienced that day, and over time I’ve learned to love them back for it. . . . I don’t know much about life, but what I do know is that it’s something like a river. You may see different sizes, shapes, speeds, but what’s certain is that it’s always flowing forward. To resist is a temporary exercise. Water finds its way. What I have also learned about this river is that although a great distance may exist between points, it can look quite the same. The beginning can resemble the end, the end the beginning. What one experiences now is not the only time the river may break in that direction. It returns to itself. At least I think it might. This is what I mean. In 2015 my Mom decided to move to Spain for a month. She wasn’t feeling particularly happy with her job, or possibly even her life (she never said this explicitly), so in the evenings she would click through Airbnb listings in Barcelona. She would even click the heart buttons, relegating them to her “favorites” so she could go back later, look at the pictures of Spanish rooftops, and for a few moments imagine herself living in a foreign land, and by extension inside a life filled with slightly more adventure. An exercise like this is probably common inside of American homes. Perhaps your mom or dad is doing it right now. And it would have forever remained an exercise if my cousin and I weren’t living with my parents at the time. My cousin was taking nurse anesthetist classes at Penn, so Monday through Friday she would stay with us in the suburbs and commute into the city by train. She slept in my childhood bedroom with a floor to ceiling baseball mural on the wall. With Cait around we would sometimes get into the wine during the week if we were bored. One of these nights we all ended up in my mom’s office, cups in hand, ooh-ing and ah-ing over saved Airbnb pages. There was one we knew was her favorite because she had shown us before, it had the best reviews, and the host spoke English. A few moments later she had her credit card out and was asking us both if she should just do it, to which Cait and I responded with a resounding yes. So she clicked the button and just like that she had a flat for a month in downtown Barcelona. My father wasn’t present for the booking and didn’t find out until several weeks later, and even then not from my mom’s mouth but from a girl I was dating at the time. It’s not that my mom didn’t want him to know, it’s that she had never done something like this before. She was waiting for the appropriate time to break the news. Well, my father didn’t get mad because he is a sweet, sweet man. Instead he decided to support my mom’s leap of faith decision by joining her for a week of the trip. When that happened I decided to join too. How it happened was both my mom and her sister would fly over and stay for a week. This was a big deal for my mom. She had never been outside of the country except for her honeymoon in Mexico and one time to Canada, and those don’t really count. Even though she didn’t admit this to me until her sister had left and she was alone for a week, I knew my mother was scared. Making big changes when you’re older has got to be scary for most people. It’s probably because you’re not as dumb as you were when you were younger and therefore not as invincible. The second week my mother would be alone, and I would fly in for the third week. The fourth and final week my dad would come and we would all be together as a family. When my father arrived she arranged for a car to pick him up at the airport and drop him off in front of the apartment. It was the same driver who dropped her and her sister off on the first day of their trip. There was an elevator in the flat but it was old and small so he carried his luggage up the stairs. When he entered he was out of breath. Rooms are scaled differently in Europe. You can tell if you see it. It’s as if everything was measured with a different ruler, which I guess is true. These optics, coupled with his outfit, a nondescript athletic material shirt from Walmart, a blank hat, cheap sneakers, all made him seem like even more of a gigantic white person than he already was. Like Gandalf inside Bilbo Baggins’s house in The Shire. Sweat poured down his face as he unpacked his bags. When he was finally settled in my mom laid out some olives and cheese and we drank wine and talked about our trips. It was still early and I had a few places I wanted to see downtown. There was a café where Hemingway and other Ex-pats supposedly drank, some church with interesting origins. We decided to part ways. I would head out on my own while they finished unpacking. They would see a few things and we would all meet back at the apartment for a short siesta. So that’s what we did. A friend told me that everyone should travel by themselves at one point in their life, but I forget why he said everyone should do it. I remember the afternoon being extremely quiet in a city full of noise. I talked to no one. Soon enough the voices of the city began to fade. I felt light and detached, like when I would go sit in my car during my break and stare out into the brown grass moving carefully in the wind. After a beer and a long sit in an alley that I could never find again, I headed back to the flat. Honestly, I missed my parents here, even if it had only been a couple of hours. I had reached a period with my parents that would last for a while longer but not forever. Like two planets coming into view every night for a few days across a warm and cloudless August sky. This is a period I hope everyone gets to experience with their parents but I’m afraid too many seldom do. A time where you are no longer too young but they’re not yet too old. When you can drink together, make jokes together. When no one takes themselves too seriously. With this thought I bounded up three flights of stairs, heart fluttering in my chest, full of hope. I flung open the door and when I saw their faces it was this same hope that came crashing down.  

She told me the story backwards, starting with the result: My father had been robbed. It happened right away. The entire afternoon while I was meandering narrow streets buzzed on pinkish wine, they had been dealing with crisis. After he unpacked they left the flat for the subway. They were going to the city center, possibly following the same route I had taken just one hour before. To get there you had to transfer lines at one of the busiest stations in the city. They boarded a car on the yellow line and were followed by a throbbing mass of bodies. Person after person squeezed into the car, bumping them, touching them, limiting the space in which they could not only stand but also even breathe. My mother was wise to the thieves of this city. She had all of her belongings inside of a zipped and clipped handbag lined with mesh steel. She could have used it to block a bullet. She had it tucked up into her armpit. Now, the extreme caution she took on her part she transferred to my father, but the focus fell on his physical well being instead of his belongings. As people smaller than him piled into the car, he stood there swaying like some giant who misplaced his mammoth. He looked at my mother and smiled. Hold on to something, she shouted, just before the train jerked forward. I’m sure she envisioned him toppling over as the car took motion. He was in the middle surrounded by bodies, so he grabbed onto the only thing he could, the ceiling rack above his head. The car rounded a soft curve. Bodies and limbs pressed against him like a lung. The car came to a stop, the doors opened, and the throng of people leaning against him (all small women, incidentally) filed out of the car. The doors closed and the subway continued. My father’s wallet, which had been held in a zipper pocket of his cargo shorts, was gone. He felt its absence as the car left the station. And that was that.   My dad alerted my mom, who stood in shock as the last week of her trip exploded in her mind. They rushed not home but to the Barcelona Crowne Plaza. My dad had memorized its location before stepping foot onto the plane. He was a Holiday Inn rewards member, and inside a network hotel he felt more comfortable, he felt at home. Without acknowledging those working at the reception desk he marched directly to their business center where he used their phone and internet services to cancel his credit cards and place alerts on all of his accounts. He printed out pictures of sensitive documents he had emailed himself before the trip. On his way out he did acknowledge the staff, but only to ask them to call a cab for him and my mother who had been sitting quietly in the lobby, still very much in shock. They bought several bottles of wine next door before both trudging up the steps to the flat to drink and forget. To try their best to, anyway. This is how I found them. As they told me this story emotions grew inside of me. Not sorrow, not fear or panic. What grew was an overwhelming sense of frustration. Not in them, but in myself, at the thought that if I wasn’t off on my own, if I was just with them watching, this could have all been prevented. And as we sat there for a few more hours, as my mom and I poured glass after glass of wine, as dad moved from counter to couch and slowly fell asleep, whatever energy or forces that existed between the three of us changed. What I saw and felt were not two people who for 25 years existed as protectors. What I saw for the first time were vessels of some new responsibility. . . . My father recovered from the robbery and was able to enjoy the rest of the trip. I was extremely proud of him for this, another new emotion. Two days later they were off on their own again. We were to meet in a central plaza at two o’clock. At 10 minutes past they still hadn’t shown up. I began to sweat. I kept looking at my phone even though I had no service. Dreadful scenarios formed in my head. But as my mind raced I saw them turn the corner, smiling and holding hands. I told myself to relax. I told myself that they would be okay and I began to believe it. Would I continue to worry? Of course. But I knew it was an emotion I could learn to accept. On the second to last day of the trip I took the subway to the far north end of the city, the last stop on the purple line, and I went to the beach. I spent the day laying in the sand reading Charles Bukowski stories on my Kindle. A very old couple placed their bags next to mine. The woman put on a white swim cap and they waded into the shallow waves to perform calisthenics. I finished my book and when I looked up again the old man and the old woman were dancing hand in hand along the shore. There was no music, just the roar of the breakers slowly crashing at their feet. I looked at the couple and I thought that to worry was not so bad, because behind that worry were embers of love. As I looked down the beach I saw myself dancing, real slow, very old. And what I felt again was hope. Hope that one day, when my parents are gone, when my aunts and uncles are gone, there may just be some youngster sitting on some faraway beach, listening to the sounds of the same waves, worrying about me too.  

[dixonspeaker-blog]

Leaving in 20

A younger version of myself would have told you it was my mother who caused it. She texted early on Monday asking me to call her. I thought she wanted to recap the weekend. Liz came with me to my parents’ house for the first time. My mom did get in a few brief words about the weekend but those were poorly disguised softeners to the true intent behind her call, and she is a damn fool if she thought I would be tricked by this attempt. I’ve known her my whole life. The real reason for her call was predicated upon what almost all of our calls are predicated upon. The insatiable need to harp on me. This call was dedicated to my health. A recent biometric screening, my first ever actually, had delivered empirical results stating that my cholesterol was “a bit high,” and I was foolish enough to let this information slip over pre-dinner drinks on Friday night. I imagine my mother hearing this news while watching my body transform into my father’s body right before her eyes. In her text that morning she did ask me to call her, but when I did, it began with her incredulous to the fact that I had called so early. I figured you would still be asleep she told me. You need to make sure you are getting enough sleep, she said. She had noticed bags under my eyes that weekend. I needed to make sure I was taking care of myself while I was on the road. My efficient, young-man genetics weren’t going to be around my whole life to bail me out. Look at my father. Could I receive packages at my house? Yes, I lived in a city not a conflict-zone. Good. She was going to be sending some type of pill for me to take. They are a natural substance that will help with my cholesterol. I told her okay and if she sent them I would take them. The conversation was ending. She said text me where you are staying when you’re in Chile so I know where to send the cadaver dogs. This is an absolute favorite saying of hers. That’s three weeks away, I said, I’ll talk to you before that. I love you too. Bye bye. When we got off the phone she had accomplished her mission objective, and I thought way more about all of my meals for the rest of the day than I would have liked. And then, and for this I have no one but myself to blame, I let this sensation of feeling awkward, of feeling slightly off track, to linger inside of me and carry over into the following day. And that is where we are now. . . . Due to an aggressive travel schedule, I had not traveled out to my office in weeks. By this point any semblance of routine was completely decimated, sailing off somewhere beyond the rings of Saturn. I am, if anything, someone who travels from A to B to C by relying on a series of routines. I like systems, I like logical organizations, and I certainly like my carefully thought out routines. In the absence of these things I trend towards forgetfulness. I woke up feeling like my mom said I looked. I felt the bags under my eyes as well. I don’t know what they felt like exactly but I felt them nonetheless. While still in bed I took my phone and looked at a picture of myself from the weekend and saw the bags there too. I pondered the possibility that they would remain there for the rest of my life. I closed my phone and got out of bed. These were all of the things that happened after that: I went into the bathroom and had an unsatisfying bowel movement. I got into the shower and found my bottle of body wash empty, so I tossed it into the wastebasket that still had no bag lining it because both my roommate and myself are lazy. It added to the growing pile of Q-tips, tissues, and dental floss that one of us would eventually have to fish out by hand. I grabbed another bottle of wash from the bottom drawer, which I only found after opening every other drawer. This extended search caused tremendous amounts of water to drip onto the floor. I left the bathroom without combing my hair, giving me the sensation of being clean and finely groomed only to find out this was not the case, adding to the sense of foolishness and discomfort that I was already feeling. I chose a shirt that was too small making it difficult to tie my shoes. This difficulty lead to not leaving enough lace on my left shoe to double knot them, something I have to do or else the whole thing will come undone right as I’m about to enter or exit the subway. It was as I bent over this shoe that I noticed something that would throw the rest of my day off its axis entirely. Before each business trip I always do two things. I pack my suitcase the night before, and I plan my wardrobe around my shoes. For this trip I decided to wear my new camel-shaded light brown shoes. I bought them in December.  They’re the type of shoe hip, young, business professionals were wearing and they were the first pair I’ve purchased in this style. I bent over and noticed that the rubber sole of the shoe was beginning to peel off by the toe. Despite knowing next to nothing about shoes, I was certain this peel would be impossible to repair. The only solution was to promptly slam dunk them into the garbage. This discovery caused the universe to rearrange itself around me in such a way that I seriously considered choosing a new set of shoes for the trip, even if this meant having to up end and repack my entire suitcase on the spot. In the end I decided to do my best to ignore the deformity and wear them anyway. Part of me hoped it would become worse throughout my travels, adding punctuation to my growing misery. I grabbed my wallet, watch, keys, left the room, realized I had forgotten my phone and water bottle, went back to get them, grabbed my coat, and headed downstairs. My roommate was standing in the living room so we left together. I took the subway to Suburban, became impossibly thirsty, and reached for my Hydro Flask water bottle that I kept with me at all times and was absolutely essential for any business trip where I would be presenting. I discovered that I had left it at counter. F--k. I made the train just in time, but that meant not being able to get a coffee. I spent the train ride tired, thirsty, and confused. . . . Once in the office I was able to re-center myself. Things were back in order. I was able to make sense of what was in front of me. Accomplishing work, no matter how mundane, always has that effect. I like to check off boxes. I ate some breakfast, booked a shuttle to take me from the office back to the regional rail station later that day, and settled into a nice flow of creating presentations and firing off emails. Exactly what I wanted to do. At noon I had lunch with my boss. At 1:50 I began packing up my things and at 2:00 I was standing on the curb ready to be picked up. Five minutes passed and the shuttle still had not arrived. They were typically very prompt. I turned to go inside and as I was turning I remembered something, and this act of remembering came upon me like a large dark cloud moving quickly across the sky to block out the sun. Shuttles from my office to the train station could only be booked at 10 minutes to the hour or 20 minutes after the hour. These are the increments, odd as they are. The shuttle booker was explicit about this, repeating herself several times as I undoubtedly half-listened while performing other tasks. I knew at this moment the shuttle had passed and was not coming back. I asked the man at the security desk what I should do, and immediately regretted doing so because I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer. And I didn’t. He told me to call the shuttles again, which I did, and they told me they couldn’t send any over. They couldn’t have said this with less care. My options were now to either march upstairs and ask my boss’s boss for a ride, or call for a Lyft and hope they could get through security, pick me up, and get me to the train station all within the next 20 minutes. I called the Lyft. A serious fear was beginning to crawl over me. My phone vibrated and showed me that the driver was 10 minutes away and driving in the opposite direction on the nearby highway. Nice. He kept going, making it clear that he was pulling the trick where you simply drive farther and farther away from the pick up point and wait for the requester to cancel, which I did. Precious time was lost. My throat tightened even more.  I called another Lyft, which I knew at this point had no shot of getting me there on time. He was 6 minutes away, but got to me even quicker. Remarkable. I directed him through campus and expressed to him the urgency of speed.  He was certain we would get there on time and chatted with me calmly as drivers will often do. He was right, and we got to the station with minutes to spare. On the train I threw my suitcase onto the overhead rack and pulled out my Borges. I began to fall asleep. I had been riding the regional rail to and from my office for well over a year now, and there was a time when half-sleeping during the journey and waking up just as the train pulled into my station was a daily habit. Then, about a month ago, I was tired enough to fall into a very deep sleep and missed my stop. I haven’t let myself sleep on a train since. So I tried my best to stay awake, reading the same sentence of my Borges over and over again, taking breaks to look at the trees quickly moving by. The landscape between the last stop on the R5 and 30th Street Station is extremely barren. There are a few homes but mostly dirt and waste. I had only read a page or two of my Borges because of how tired I was. This always left me annoyed. I occupied my mind by thinking about the large Dunkin Donuts coffee I was going to get at the station. When the train reached the platform I gathered my backpack and coat and rushed off. I had only 25 minutes until my Amtrak to Connecticut. The platform was busy so I had to weave around people to get to the stairs. And it was as I reached the stairs that that black cloud rushed back in from what seemed like out of nowhere but I now realize was just off in the distance.

…I left my suitcase in the overhead rack…

I whipped around and sprinted back towards the train, but the doors were already closed. I saw the dead eyes of the ticket-taker through the window. He shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly and turned away from me as the train pulled out. I allowed myself 5 seconds of internal rage, a napalm flash setting fire across my brain. I had no choice but to think quickly. I scanned the moving train for identifying markers. The sign said Doylestown. I turned and raced down the stairs. Near the trains at 30th there is an information desk that I had never taken advantage of before. The man sitting there had a beard and there was no one else around. I LEFT MY LUGGAGE ON THE TRAIN TO DOYLESTOWN! I shouted this at him. He spun around in his chair, swift as a ninja, and snatched a brown phone off the wall. He mashed several buttons and handed the phone over. Tell them what happened he said and immediately turned back to his computer. A woman on the phone said hello. I left my suitcase on the train that just left 30th street and it was the R5 from Paoli but now it’s going to Doylestown and the bag is black and it’s in the rack on the first car. I was leaking confidence that I had made myself understood. The man looked at me again and shouted train 655. Train 655! I said. First train! The woman on the other line immediately hung up. I stared at the man in front of me and handed him the phone. She hung up I said. He put the phone to his ear and said hello, listened for a second, and then hung up. Did she hear you he asked? I think so, I don’t know. Let me try the next station, he said, they will definitely catch it there. The next station after the next was Jefferson, a good 15 minutes away. My Amtrak was leaving in 20. This now meant that my bags weren’t going to Doylestown, which would have been catastrophic, but I was probably going to miss my train and end up having to rent a car and drive 4 hours to Connecticut. A woman approached the counter while the man was on the phone with the other station. Without pause, she asked him for directions to Market street, and she did this, mind you, while it was fully visible that this man was on the phone, which enraged me, especially because this phone call carried life and death ramifications for me. Again I was forced to act quickly. I stepped in between this woman and my man, blocking him from view. I told her to head all the way down the ramp behind her, turn left, and go out of the station. She left at once. This was technically correct, but it also would have been correct if I told her to turn right, because 30th Street Station sits ON Market Street, which continues on either side. I didn’t ask for specifics, I just wanted her out of my sight. The man hung up the phone. He told me he spoke with Jefferson and they would get the bag there. All we could do now was wait. A moment later the phone rang. Suburban! Black suitcase with a green Samsonite tag. Yes! I hung up the phone. The man shouted at me, Take the train to Temple! It leaves in two minutes, track 3! I sprinted up the stairs. On the train I stood next to the door. In 15 minutes my Amtrak would leave the station I was now leaving. There was hope, but even the slightest error would ruin it. It needed to be perfect. I was the first one off. I knew where the lost and found area was because I left my keys on a train the summer before, so I tore-ass across the platform and bounded up the stairs, across the station, and through another set of doors into the customer service room. No one looked at me as I entered. I interpreted this as a bad sign. I tried to look frantic and hurried. Eventually I spoke up. I’m the one who lost the bad I said to no one. The woman at the desk looked all around her and then at me. He eyes were blank with indifference. Just as I braced myself for the bad news another woman appeared from around the corner with my bag in her hands and a little slip to sign! I already had my ID out so I showed it to her and scribbled my initials on the slip. I looked at the woman at the desk who must have read my face and she said plainly to take any train on track three of four, and I banged out of there and back down the steps to the platform and hopped on the train just as the doors were about to close! The whole trip took me less than 10 minutes, which left me enough time to buy that coffee I wanted before getting on my train, where I grabbed a strong beer from the dining car and kept all of my luggage directly in my line of sight.

[dixonspeaker-blog]

Books I read in 2016

“What have you read lately?” is a question I often get, and I almost always draw a blank when I have to answer on the spot. So, here are all the books I read this year, and my brief thoughts on each:

Sexus by Henry Miller

The first of his Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy. Not my favorite Miller novel, but would recommend to anyone interested in becoming a writer. Some love Miller, some hate him. I love him.

Americana by Don Delillo

Really liked this novel. Book about a young business executive who decides to travel around the country making films. Typical Delillo humor and style. Would recommend to anyone currently working in an office on the verge of a nervous collapse.

The Secret Miracle: A Novelist’s Handbook by Various Artists, Edited by Daniel Alarcon

Couldn’t love this book more. Compilation of questions about writing and the creative process from many different authors. Some well known, some not well known. Would recommend to anyone interested in writing or art. Perfect book to keep on nightstand

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

I think his most accessible collection of essays, and probably my favorite. His power of observation is just so good. Extremely funny.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon

My first Michael Chabon Novel. Hard-boiled detective story set in an alternative-reality-USA where Jews are resettled to Alaska after WWII. It’s a page turner. Would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys crime fiction or dystopian fiction.

Naked by David Sedaris

Non-fiction stories of Sedaris’s childhood and life. Hilarious. Incredible wit. Anyone who likes to laugh at what they read will enjoy this book.

Stop-Time: A Memior by Frank Conroy

I read this because David Foster Wallace said it’s the book that made him want to be a writer. Funny, interesting, and reads pretty quick. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

One of those books everyone should really read. Every page contains a quote about life you could hang on your wall. This book is about love and life. 

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Another book that I felt I had to read. It’s like 9999 pages long. It’s classic storytelling, so if you enjoy old fables you would probably enjoy this book. Faulkner said he read it once a year, I probably will never pick it up again unless it’s to prop a door open or beat someone with. 

On Writing by Henry Miller

A collecting of Henry Miller excerpts about writing and the artistic process. If you REALLY like Henry Miller like I do you might like this book, or if you are interested in becoming a writer. But there are better books about writing out there. 

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetho

This is a non-fiction book about the human sexual experience written from an evolutionary psychology perspective. It questions a ton of the current assumption we hold about sex and monogamous relationships. This book my make you depressed. I loved it. 

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

I have so much to say about this book that it would triple the length of this entire post. So I’ll keep it to this. It’s about a tattoo artist who finds a critical essay written by a blind man about a photographer who makes a documentary about his house that when measured in length, is larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Yes, that’s what it’s really about. It’s the best book I read this year, and I’ll be rereading it once a year for the foreseeable future. It’s as thick as a bible and I read it in a week.

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

George Saunders is one of the great short story writers currently living. This is on of his collections. Most stories are science-fiction-esque and set in the immediate future. Lots of societal commentary, and they’re usually very funny in a sort of depressing type of way. If you like Vonnegut you’ll probably like Saunders a lot. 

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Pynchon’s most highly regarded novel and a defining novel of the post-modernist movement. It’s a bear to get through and like most Pychon novels, extremely confusing. It’s set in London towards the end of WWII, and I guess you could say it’s about bombs, spies, and secret government organizations. It will time-hop without warning and there are like a thousand characters. This book is a challenge, but probably worth it. 

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read Coates’s writing in The Atlantic and this novel won the national book award. My friend and I both decided to read this as a sort of summer book club. It’s a sort of non-fictional autobiography in the form of a letter from Coates’s to his son about his experience of growing up black in America. It’s very interesting if you care to educate yourself about that sort of thing like I wanted to. I think Coates is one of the best writers in America right now. A good place to start if, like me, you find yourself only reading books by old white dudes and you want to add some diversity to your consumption.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

I read this because I heard some podcasters describe Coates’s Between the World and Me as a sort of stylistic copy to this book. This book by Baldwin is non-fiction, and is I guess like a plea or outcry to America about the current racial climate. It’s a very important piece of civil rights literature. 

Bend Sinister by Vladamir Nabokov

A novel about an an oppressive dystopian government in a fictitious European city. Your prototypical Big Brother state-controlled society novel. Pretty good I thought. If you want more 1984-type dystopia fiction, this one is for you. Also filled with tons of puns and puzzle-like word-play that Nabokov is known for. 

Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

I wanted more Baldwin after The Fire Next Time so I decided to read the rest of his major novels. This one is a coming of age tale about the son of a preacher discovering his religious identity. This book probably parallels may of the religious struggles Baldwin experienced himself. Baldwin’s prose is always on point, but heavily religious books can train on me. Still very good.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

This is Baldwin’s contribution to the movement of Ex-Pat literature out of France. It’s about a young American male who falls in love with a waiter in Paris. Again, although fiction, I believe this book draws deeply from Baldwin’s personal life, being gay himself. I liked this book a lot. More than Go Tell in On a Mountain. But I also like a lot of the novels written out of France by Americans.

Paper Girls Vol 1 by Brian Vaughan

This is a comic book, or “graphic novel.” I just watched Stranger Things on Netflix and found this on a list of books to read if you were craving more Stranger Things-type-stuff. It’s about these girls who run paper routes (Paper Girls) who stumble across alien forces from outer space in their home town. You could read it in a day. 

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Pulled this off the same Stranger Things list. Vintage Bradbury. It’s about a evil carnival that comes to a sleepy backwoods town and terrorizes it’s residents. It’s a page-turner, and great for anyone who enjoys spooky stories. 

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman

This is a very strange book. It’s non-fiction. Klosterman writes and thinks about very straight-forward questions that are rarely discussed because of their profound simplicity, or because they are held as universally true. Questions such as “What if we are wrong about our ideas of Gravity?” and “500 years from now who will be viewed as the best musical artist of all time?” This book is good for anyone who likes to sit around and think a lot. 

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

This is collection of short stories by Carver. He’s one of the best in this area. He was one of the pioneers of the “Dirty-realism” literature movement. Stories about simple everyday families living every day life. 

Tenth of December by George Saunders

This is another collection of stories by Saunders. All a little sadder than In Persuasion Nation, in my opinion, and slightly less science-fiction-y. This book, to me, touches our life a little more, which is maybe why I found it somber and sad. I loved it. Would highly recommend do anyone. 

Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

Three separate novels by Beckett known collectively as The Trilogy. These novels are about men who have lost their minds. I don’t know how else to describe them. Beckett fans will love them, others will find them very bizarre. 

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

This is a novel about a novelist who leaves the world of literature to become a sportswriter. This was also what happened in Richard Ford’s real life. I like this novel because it’s probably how I would writer a novel if I ever write one. I love Ford’s writing style. That’s personal preference. 

Alright boys and girls that’s the list. Some quick closing comments. In 2017 I’m going to make a conscious effort to continue to expand the diversity of writers that I read. Not because I feel like anyone should HAVE to, but because I believe if I want to some day be a better, smarter reader and writer, I owe it to myself to continuously seek out different ideas, and that means seeking out different points of view. For me, 2016 was largely about learning more about myself, and one way I tried to do that was by reading authors through who I saw a little bit of myself. So, being a white guy, that meant reading novels by white dudes, naturally. I hope to expand my horizons next year. I hope you find this list useful, even if that means just finding one book that you may want to read. 

[dixonspeaker-blog]

One Man’s Thoughts on the Kaepernick Situation

White people shouldn’t tell black people how to protest.

[dixonspeaker-blog]

All Men Must Die: Why Male Viewers are Dead Wrong About Arya Stark

My train pulls into Suburban at 8:35. I’m standing up against the door with my hand on the lever. The ticket-checker is frowning at me through the glass. The train halts, the doors open, and I race out. I send one last scowl towards a middle-aged man still helping his elderly mother in a wheelchair off the train. They delayed us at Swarthmore. It’s 8:40.

I’m on my bike blasting down Pine by 8:50. I’m pissed at myself for spending the day at my parents’, even though I promised my Mom I would dig up a tree for her birthday. Note to self: Next year just get her another teapot. I pull up at 8:58. I bang open the door with the lifted front tire of my bike and shuffle in. My friends are already in The Cocoon (two large couches pressed together, front to front, to form a type of super-bed with sides. Super comfy, super secure). They’re covered with blankets. Three heads slowly rotate right, make eye contact, then rotate back. I hop over the side and slither in. Lights off, volume up. It’s 9:00 PM.

As the intro sequence plays our faces settle into a sort of slack-jaw expression somewhere between rapture and meditation. They have bowls of Ramen Noodles resting under their chins and take small sips as Westerosi and Free cities flash upon the screen. Their faces are soup-eating-faces. The music ends, the screen turns black, we hold our breaths.

I do not hear horses, I do not hear birds, I do not hear the clank-clank-clanking of iron and steel. In fact, I do not hear the TV at all. Instead, I hear the frustrated, fury-filled sigh of my best friend sitting next to me. Arya Stark is on the screen.

We know that Season 6 will be the penultimate of the series. We don’t know WHERE we are going, but we know how far we still have to go (a long way). We know how many characters are left, and how many storylines require wrapping up, a wrap-up we crave. We know that with an opening sequence that seems to get longer on a weekly basis, and a writers’ commentary that similarly seems to encroach more and more on the show’s back end, we are looking at episodes that are about 50-55 minutes long(!) and feel even shorter. All these forces create a sort of high-anxiety viewing experience where each week is an exercise in economy. Every. Second. Counts. Even one small scene that is deemed superfluous or unnecessary evokes a growing exasperation, because that means the storylines we hold more valuable get less time. Time that this season seemed to disappear like sand through a sieve.

And this is why, as that great sigh is released, and my friend’s eyes slowly turn to mine, I do not see the excitement or wonder I would expect to see as we experience some of the very best television of our lifetime. Instead, eyes locked now, I find rage staring back at me. Rage that exists not only because the time he so desperately needs is being taken from him, but because he knows that I will enjoy that time. He knows that during the next several minutes we will witness two different stories: I will watch Arya Stark, and he will watch a girl he wishes did not exist.

Now here is the truth. In that moment I hated my friend. Deep, galactic hatred. And the following day that hatred only grew as I stared into the toothy smile of my coworker as he recapped his favorite parts of the previous night’s episode. I knew the descriptors and phrases he uses every time Arya makes an appearance were soon to follow: “Pointless.” “Nothing happens.” “She affects nothing.” “Could be done in two episodes.” “Explain The Faceless Men and The Many Faced God. You have no idea, do you?” “She sucks.” What makes this show great is the overflow of excellent characters along with the scope of the plot. Complexity and nuance can be found in both. There is plenty to chew on, and there is something for everybody. Now, debate occurs over all storylines, but I feel that dissenting opinions amongst viewers typically aren’t TOO far off from one another, and those opinions are often grounded in preference and taste. But what is it about Arya’s story that creates such polarization? During episodes where she is the focus, why are so many viewers standing at The Wall in prickly displeasure while I bask upon Dornish shores?

Them

Me

To put it plainly: Why do men hate her so much?

(And yes, my use of “men” here is intentional, because the hatred, frustration, distaste, whatever you want to call it, towards Arya, comes overwhelmingly from males)

Before I sat down to write this thing, I asked myself a question, a question that I always ask myself before I sit down to write: Is it me? Am I the problem? Am I missing something, or seeing something that isn’t there? Am I projecting some unconscious desire or agenda onto those around me, setting out to argue upon some point or points that in fact do not exist? Am I the one who is wrong here? Answer: No. I’M NOT WRONG. Everyone else is wrong. All of you men, and you women if there are any of you, are wrong, and here is why. . . . Arya is a character. Like Danarys, like Tyrion, like Jon Snow, Arya exists as an individual within that world, who connects with her own morality, draws her own conclusions about the world around her, and uses those conclusions to drive her own choices and actions. Now, those who halt their viewing experience here may leave underwhelmed. Her morality and thoughtfulness may not seem as complex as others, the conclusions she draws about the world may seem less profound, and her actions certainly have much less of an impact on the Game of Thrones universe than the actions of the other “primary” characters. To STOP your analysis of Arya at the character level is a massive mistake. Why? Because her storyline is steeped in metaphors that drive the PRIMARY QUESTIONS AND THEMES that Game of Thrones attempts to ask and present (And hear me now: this is UNIQUE TO ARYA’S STORY ALONE).  I won’t say the show is groundbreaking in terms of the questions it poses about humanity and society, and I won’t even say that the metaphors within her story are so subtle and complicated that they can be understood by only the trained and scholarly eye. But I will say, that in an action-packed, blood and sex filled Sunday evening television event, these smart and refreshing storytelling devices can be easily overlooked, especially by the male viewer who routinely “tunes-out” when the possibility of action or sex is eliminated, which is frequently the case in Arya’s scenes.

1. Arya exists as a physical representation of our viewing experience.

After six seasons of countless battles, deaths, crosses and double-crosses, I would argue that there are three major “events” that have driven a majority of the show’s action: 1. Robert Boratheon traveling to Winterfell to ask Ned Stark to serve as Hand and Ned’s agreement to do so. 2. The beheading of Ned Stark, and 3. The Red Wedding. For all of these events, Arya was there, watching, just like us. The Silent Observer. She sat atop a wagon, high above the crowd, as King Robert and his envoy entered Winterfell. She witnessed her father’s trial and beheading while crouched upon a raised statue in King’s Landing, and she was there at the Red Wedding, just in time to see Grey Wind’s severed head mounted to Robb Stark’s corpse as he was paraded through the camp. Like us, the viewer, Arya plays no part or has any influence over these key events in the story. But she is there, and that is no coincidence. Her presence is always EMPHASIZED, and she is used as the viewer’s reference point for the framing of each scene. 

Now, in addition to serving as our lens through which we witness the story, Arya also represents the process through which we interpret and derive meaning from these events. Throughout the entirety of Arya’s story, sight, vision, and truth, are motifs brought forward again and again. As early as Season One, former first sword of Braavos, Syrio Forel, tells Arya, “My tongue lied. My eyes shouted the truth. You were not seeing… Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of swordplay.” Interpretation and meaning can never be absolute. Arya, like the viewer, is imperfect, and her understanding of the world is constantly challenged and refined, much like ours should be. In the episode “Breaker of Chains” in Season 4, after he steals a pouch of silver from the farmer who gave them food and shelter, Arya shouts at Sandor Clegane, “You’re the worst shit in the Seven Kingdoms!” to which The Hound promptly replies, "There's plenty worse than me. I just understand the way things are. How many Starks they got to behead before you figure it out?"

One point I want to reinforce here, which makes Arya special in a way other characters are not, is that these themes and metaphors examined through Arya are BIGGER THAN THE SHOW. They provide commentary on the world around us. What is living but bearing witness and developing our own sense of meaning? The meaning we extrapolate is not always best, but to continue to live is to continue to discover. In season 5, when sent to the docks to perform reconnaissance on ‘The Thin Man,’ Arya asks Jaqen H'ghar what she will see, and Jaqen replies, “How can a man tell a girl this? If he knew what she would see there would be no reason to send her.”

For those of you who find this metaphor underwhelming, or even to be a stretch, remember how Arya’s role as a viewer is teased out even further during Season 6. When Arya is sent to scout Lady Crane (A task that we can’t help but speculate is another piece of misdirection on Jaqen’s part, much like the Thin Man assassination led Arya to Meryn Trant) we undergo a sort of meta-fictional experience where we watch Arya watch the play, which is an event, or a series of events, that we along with Arya have witnessed before, and we know in this instance to be an incorrect portrayal of what actually happened. The inclusion of this whole plot-point in the story is a direct commentary on the power of storytelling to inspire action (Arya leaves the Faceless Men as a result), and also raises questions about our understanding of history, and the sense of duty and honor we derive FROM that history. We get a little of this when Bran Stark witnesses his father’s true actions during the killing of Arthur Dayne at the Tower of Joy. If the rules and constructs in place around the world are established by a history that we believe to be true, what happens when that history begins to crumble? 

2. Duty, honor, and tradition built the Game of Thrones universe, and Arya’s story questions all of it. 

Arya’s very first scene in Season 1 shows her sitting, literally, in Sansa’s shadow, halfheartedly participating in a needlepoint lesson as she listens to the men practice sword-fighting and archery in the yard. From the beginning, we are shown a world Arya feels she falls outside of, a world where she feels that she does not belong. Again, this is a concept that is reinforced METAPHORICALLY as the story progresses and Arya moves further from society both physically and emotionally. We see this first, and most simplistically, through her desire to learn the art of sword fighting. After receiving her sword, “Needle,” from Jon, Arya says, “Sansa can keep her sewing needles. I’ve got a needle of my own.” Syrio Forel’s first words to Arya are “You are late, boy.” When Arya responds that she is a girl, Syrio states, “Boy, girl, you are a sword. That is all.” Within the Game of Thrones universe, this attitude is inherently problematic. Feminism does not exist in Westeros. Every person, based on birth, has their own role, their own place. High-born men rule or fight, low-born men serve, and women by and large serve the men, in one way or another. There are of course a few exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions exist largely because of genetics and circumstance rather than the characters’ own doing: Lady Olenna: Family Power Cersie: Family Power, Sexual Power Sansa: Family Power, Sexual Power Brienne: Physical Power Daenerys: Has Dragons Arya has no power. She’s small, she’s weak. She’s too young to use sex as a tool. She is a Stark, but as the younger daughter she is not in any real position to use her lineage for her own benefit. If we are keeping track of traits and features working in Arya’s favor, her list extremely short. 

What starts as an emotional distancing from “female duty”, a distancing driven primarily by Arya herself, turns quickly into a PHYSICAL distancing. Upon leaving King’s Landing after her father’s death, Arya takes on the role of Ari, an orphan. “Ari the orphan boy,” says Yoren, “nobody gives two shits.” This theme follows Arya throughout her journey culminating in her arrival to The House of Black and White. She joins, or at least receives extensive training, from the followers of The Many Faced God, a group that holds “becoming no one” as one of it’s core tenants. In Season 5 Arya asks Jaqen who he is. His response: “No one. And that is who a girl must become.”

For many viewers out there, for my close friends certainly, this is when Arya’s story becomes EXTREMELY frustrating. This is where I began hearing arguments that her story could have been condensed into two or three episodes, this where I began hearing calls for her to be cut from the show all together. Listen to me now: These viewers must be cast aside. They’re opinion, while they are entitled to it, is simply incorrect. They are the people who have no concept of symbolism, they are the people who have no eye for nuance and metaphor. Actually, they are probably the type of people who don’t read books. When Arya is on screen during season’s 5 and 6, while these viewers scroll through Twitter impatiently waiting for the next sword fight, they are missing the most powerful and thought provoking questions raised ANYWHERE across Weteros, The Free Cities, and beyond.

3. The House of Black and White: Duty and Religion in Game of Thrones

“Families. Gods. Kings.” These are the beliefs Tyrion tells Danarys he has spent his whole life being taught (Season 6, Finale). These are the constructs that shape the Game Of Thrones universe and the actions of the characters and the decisions that they make are largely due to a sense of responsibility or “duty” to one of these three buckets. Fulfilling your duty to your house or your king or your God brings you honor, and honor is what you want. That’s how the world works. Now, if you watch closely you’ll see that these constructs of honor and tradition are frequently challenged. 

In a particularly inventive sword fight during Season 1, Bronn serves as Tyrion’s champion and fights Ser Vardis of the Veil. After running his blade deep through the top of Ser Vardis’s collar bone, through his heart, stomach, intestinal track, Bronn tosses him out The Moon Door like soiled linen down a laundry chute. High atop her throne, Lysa Arryn shouts down to Bronn, “You don’t fight with honor!” Bronn, as he gazes out the Moon Door, responds, “No, but he did.” Arya's story serves the metaphorical purpose of presenting a character that lives outside, and even in direct opposition to, the societal constructs of Family, Gods, and Kings. It’s visible in a general sense through the broad strokes of her storyline. The momentum of the plot removes Arya further and further from the society world she was born into. “Family” becomes a danger to her wellbeing, so she has to take on the role of an “orphan.” And not just any orphan, a boy orphan removing her not just from her connection to her family, but her role as a female as well. This all occurs as a preamble to a time where this disguise becomes a reality after her mother is killed at the Red Wedding. This “distancing” is further emphasized when Arya joins The Faceless Men, where, apart from the Daredevil-style physical training in Season 6, her indoctrination consists primarily of cruel mind games that serve the purpose of completely disconnecting her from her former life. This takes place psychologically, but also physically, when she tosses her belongings into the sea. “A man wonders,” says Jaqen, “How it is that “No One” comes to be surrounded by Arya Starks things?”

Arya’s also serves as an atheist, nihilistic response to a world where religion and the church function as pillars that hold up the realm. I don’t think Arya believes in God. In fact, I don’t think she believes in much of anything. In Season 3 when Beric Dondarrion asks Arya “Who’s your one true God?” Arya’s response is “Death.” Death. This is not pure dramatics. It’s what she really believes. Death is God because death, to Arya, is final. Death ends everything. Later, in Season 5, Jaqen tells her, “There is only one God. A girl knows his name. And all men know his gift.” The camera then pans to a shot of a dead man. I won’t claim to know who The Many Faced God is for certain, but Death is as good a possibility as any. Anyone who grows up in religion encounters the classic question, “If there is a God, why do bad things happen to good people?” In Season 6 Jaqen responds, “Does death only come for the wicked and leave the decent behind?”

Am I right about all this? Who knows. It’s largely speculation. But what I do know is that the Arya’s storyline has me ASKING these questions. It has me thinking about God and purpose and spiritual meaning. Are these questions answered? Kind of. When Arya’s life is viewed as a literary foil, it brings to light a pervading motif showing us that an attachment to societal constructs, to family, to duty, to religion, can be EXTREMELY detrimental. In fact, in Westeros, it can get you killed. 

The principle examples here are Stannis Boratheon and Tywin Lannister. Much like his older brother, I don’t think Stannis wants to be king. Unless it involved killing them, to say Stannis lacked people skills would be an understatement. He was a gifted and greatly feared battle commander, but when it came to ruling over people outside of times of war, Stannis seemed displeased and uninterested. Why then did he try to hard to take the Iron Throne? Why did he kill his last remaining brother and set fire to his only daughter just to marginally increase his chances of victory? “I never asked for this,” Stannis tells Ser Davos in Episode 8 of Season 3, “no more than I asked to be king. We do not choose our destiny. But we must do our duty, no? Great or small, we must do our duty.” Stannis is a man of singular vision. He views the world through a lens colored black and white, right and wrong. There is no CHOICE. His destiny is predetermined. It was his DUTY to simply fulfill it. And it was this duty that got him killed. 

Similar in attitude and demeanor, Tywin is driven wholeheartedly by a related societal construct, and that is a duty to the legacy of House Lannister. They are ideas really: Legacy, family names. What tangible value do they have? Are these the ideas that you should feel connected to? Are these the value systems that should steer the direction of your life? To Tywin, these ideals are ALL that matter. If you remember, Arya spends a chunk of Season 2 at Harrenhall as the cupbearer to Tywin. During a particularly excellent scene in Episode 7, titled, ironically, “A Man WITHOUT Honor,” Tywin describes his understanding of legacy to Arya. He says, “My legacy will be determined in the coming months. You know what "legacy" means? It's what you pass down to your children, and your children's children. It's what remains of you when you're gone.” Tywin is smarter than Stannis. In terms of military excellence, there’s room for debate, but when it comes to maneuvering the political landscape of Westeros, Tywin has few peers. But his death is a result of his own doing. He feels disgraced by his youngest son Tyrion. Although he does give him some level of responsibility within Joffrey’s regime, he more or less treats him as a mistake. Yes, Tywin’s wife did die while giving birth to Tyrion, so that’s part of it, but the other part is that with Jamie in the Kingsguard, the continuation of the Lannister name falls on Tyrion. Tyrion IS Tywin’s legacy. As a dwarf within the Game of Thrones universe, it is clear that he is not an ideal heir. Tywin’s legacy, what he will leave behind after he is gone, is, in his eyes, a drunken, womanizing, dwarf. The resulting anger and frustration on Tywin’s part gets redirected towards Tyrion, and this horrible treatment, building upon itself throughout Tyrion’s life, culminates in Tyrion’s decision to murder his father. If Stannis and Tywin did not live their lives in sole dedication to these constructs, they may have made very different CHOICES. Maybe Stannis never tries to take the Iron Throne. Maybe Tywin decides to treat Tyrion with respect. And as a result of those different choices, maybe they are both still alive.

  4. Arya Stark: What’s the point(y end)?

If you’ve made it this far you’ve made it to the end. Congratulations. If you’ve made it this far you have read through a laundry list of, quite frankly, indisputable evidence of the various ways that the nuances of Arya’s character elucidate the myriad of metaphors and themes that Game of Thrones contains. But again, this essay is written to turn her critics, so I would be remiss if I didn’t entertain the possibility that some may still sit here and say, “So what? She doesn’t do anything. What’s the point?” And they’re right… partially. Arya really doesn’t do much in the physical sense. She moves around quite a bit, but in terms of tangible impact on the events of the story, there is no major character that makes LESS of an impact than her. BUT THE SHOW HAS MORE TO OFFER THAN THE PHYSICAL. THE SHOW HAS MORE TO OFFER THAN THE TANGIBLE. In addition to the battles, the sex, the exotic settings, and the political intrigue, the show presents powerful and interesting ideas about LIFE, and those ideas simply wouldn’t be there if not for Arya. Her storyline of both subtle and overt metaphor ENHANCES the rest of show’s storylines when they are placed in conjunction with one another. Her storyline BRINGS OUT themes and ideas that you can actually take with you out into your own world after you leave Westeros. Perhaps none of these themes are more important than the final idea I want to present.

Arya’s story displays the power of choice. The societal constructs I laid out in Section 3 of this essay have one primary connecting attribute. They take away your power of choice. They prescribe to you your life. They tell you what roles you must fill, what position you must hold, what god or gods you must follow. And through so many characters in this show who meet such gruesome fates because they follow these constructs so blindly, the show serves as a reminder of similar forces in our own lives: What schools we must attend, fields we must study, jobs we must take, houses we must buy, people we must marry. But Arya is different. Arya CHOOSES to be different. 

Choice, however simple it may seem, is the greatest combatant to these forces that seek to lead us down what is maybe not the wrong path, but a path that is not our own. At Harrenhall, when Arya fetches water for the Lannister army, she says to Jaqen that she had no choice. “You did,” he says, “And I did, and here we are.” When Arya meets him again at The House of Black And White, she tells him she has nowhere else to go. “You have everywhere else to go,” he says. She could have stayed in Westeros, in the presence of those who would tell her what to do, who to follow, where to go, but she chose The House of Black and White. She chose a path that provided no direction, that told her nothing about where she was, or where she must go. She chose a path that that would begin and end wherever she wanted it to begin or end. That path, for better or for worse, is HER path. No other character can say that. Not one. So, to the male viewers out there who still can’t stand Arya because you can’t relate to a female character and don’t even care to try. Because she is young, devoid of sex, and doesn’t display her power through overt, physical means. Because she doesn’t make enough of a TANGIBLE impact on the show’s greater story. I ask you this: Are YOU on your own path? Are you unique? Are you different? Are you like Arya Stark, or are you just like everybody else?

[dixonspeaker-blog]

My Timeline is Full of Discussion on Senseless Murder Across the Nation and All I Want to do is Write About Game of Thrones

Since I have no idea what I’m doing, I spend most of my time LOOKING for what to write about rather than doing any actual writing. So, two weeks ago, after a particularly delightful season finale of Game of Thrones, FULL of payoffs and fan service, I thought, This. This is it. I can say something here, I can finally write something that my friends will want to read and talk about (And I still might!).

Excited to change the world through my sharp and original insight, I spent the next week at the office re-watching scenes on Youtube on one screen (I work in finance, I have two screens), while reading along with the episode scripts on the other screen (The accents can be tough, and Youtube closed-captioning is ass). The research got away from me, and one week of study turned into two, which I was fine with, because, again, this delayed doing any actually writing. So, as my email inbox became fuller and fuller with unread inquiries from coworkers asking why the hell I wasn’t doing any work, so did the pages my Moleskine notebook with quotes and underlines, arrows and asterisks.

Then the police shot a man named Alton Sterling to death on Tuesday morning just after midnight, with a video for us to watch it happen.

Then the next day the police shot a man named Philando Castile to death, and there was a video for us to watch it happen.

Then the next day a man shot and killed 5 police officers at a demonstration in Dallas, Texas (Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarripa, and Brent Thompson are the names according to CNN).

And just like that, all of the social medias I use were full of the voices of everyone I knew and everyone they knew providing critique, commentary, opinion, and analysis, on a pile of bodies still warm to the touch.

I spent a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter last week, WAY more time than I would like to, reading what my friends and connections had to say. I took screenshots of the best and the worst and discussed them with my friends. I swam around in this national dialogue for a while. Yet, what still took up the majority of my mind’s real estate, what I still found myself contemplating right after I woke up and right before I went to sleep, was Game of Thrones, and I found myself asking, “Well crap, how the hell am I going to post my opinion NOW?”

I didn’t feel good feeling this way. And I didn’t feel good not because I didn’t care. Because I did care. I cried when I watched those videos, as I’m sure you did too. I didn’t feel good because I didn’t care MORE, because I didn’t care as much as I thought I should.  

Why?

I don’t know. Was it because I didn’t know the victims? No. I have the Internet. I can know them now more than I ever could have before. Oh, and I also watched them die.

Was it because I’m self-absorbed? That my precious article and precious opinion was going to be some gift to mankind that would transcend today’s tragedies that soon enough will be yesterday’s tragedies when tomorrow’s tragedies become today’s? Maybe. But I don’t think so. I’m not that smart, and things I have to say aren’t ever that great.

As I write this I still don’t know. But if I had to guess, it has something to do with distance. Distance from where I am and where they are. Not a geographical distance, although that’s true too, but a distance more general and fluid, existing in both physical and emotional space. A distance so far that even attempting to think about crossing it seems as impossible as the traverse itself.

I found out about Alton Sterling and Philando Castile when I read about them both on Twitter Wednesday night. I was in Rittenhouse Square, eating free-range boar mixed with organic quinoa (snapkitchen.com), drinking mojitos, and watching Orange is the New Black. For a long time all I could find was commentary on what happened in place of what actually happened. For a long time after that I thought #philadocastile and #altonsterling were referring to the same thing. For a long time after that I had the two tragedies mixed up, and thought Alton Sterling was in the car and Philando Castile was the one selling CDs on the street.

And while those 5 police officers were shot down on Thursday night I was in South Philadelphia drinking beers at a bar on the roof of what was Edward Bok Vocational High School, one of 23 schools in Philadelphia that shut down in 2013. I read about the shooting an hour or so later on my phone while eating a cheesesteak.

There is a distance here.

A distance between the black man who has to sell CDs to eat, and the white guy who threw away his CD collection 5 years ago because they were worthless and taking up space.

There is a distance here.

A distance between the mother who wears a shirt with her dead son on the front, and the white guy who sees that shirt as a “black person thing” because there is no one for him to put on a shirt because none of his friends or family have ever been murdered

And there is a distance here.

A distance between men at work who get shot and killed for the actions of a few men, hundreds of miles away, that they have never met, and a white guy at a desk, making better pay, whose toughest decision day in and day out is what to get for lunch.

Can this distance be bridged? I don’t know. How do I answer this question if the distance is so great that my life will be the same no matter the answer?

As a white guy, I find myself in this surreal state of protection. Like walking through a warzone surrounded by some barrier of vibrant light, allowing for a calm viewing of the explosions, of the shrapnel buzzing overhead. It’s a state that makes me feel comfortable, and grateful, but it’s also a state that makes me feel numb, detached, lazy, and always a little sad.

Sad that I can drink to excess and scream like a mad man in the street without consequences, and others cannot. Sad that no matter who is elected president of our country my life will be the same, while others’ lives will not. And sad that some people spend their time thinking about how they will eat, where they will sleep, and if today is the day they may be shot and killed, while I spend my time thinking about Game of Thrones.