I Like Sad Songs

Oh, Eva Cassidy. You kill me.

And it can't be easy for a dead woman to kill a living man-- but you do it, and you do it swiftly, surely, but without an ounce of cruelty or malice. To be killed beautifully by your air-like voice is a blessing, a fate I accept with open arms. Your renditions of "Dark Eyed Molly" and "Fields of Gold," well, they're quite simply too much.

I like sad stories.

I like to read about Roger Ebert battling oral cancer, bereft of his voice (thank you for posting that, Adam) but never his words. I like to read about people, far braver than I, doing battle with demons in the dark and trudging their way through an unfair, mean, shitty world. I like reading about people who are introspective and sensitive and maybe even a little brooding. I like these people, and I like their stories. I like it when they triumph, and I like it when they fail. I doubt they do, though.

I like religious paintings.

I don't exactly know why, but I do. I'm not religious, and I'm certainly not the religion of most paintings that are featured in art galleries. One time I went to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. and I fell in love with a painting called "St. Jerome & the Angel" by Simon Vouet. There's St. Jerome, old as hell, sitting at a desk and trying to write, and there's this angel bothering him, trying to get his attention, and Jerome is giving him this look like, "Jesus Christ, will you leave me the fuck alone already? I'm trying to write a shopping list here and I've forgotten whether I want brown eggs or white eggs. Now fuck off already."

I love that painting. For some reason, I also love paintings where some saint or whatever is collapsing in the arms of some beautiful woman. There's a lot of those in art museums, and I love every one of them.

I can't stand depictions of the crucifixion, though. It's like-- enough already with that shit.

I like winter clothes.

I'm not particularly fond of winter as a thing by itself, but I do love that the temperature necessitates that we bust out our corduroys and our sweater vests and our blazers and our overcoats and our hats. In the summertime, I look like I have an eating-disorder. In the winter, well, I can wear what I really love to wear. I don't like that the world's boobies are all hidden away, but it's okay, because I have a toggle-coat from Brooks Brothers, and wearing it makes up for that.

I like old cars.

You've heard this rant before, so I'll spare you. All I'll say is that I don't care that they're inefficient and unsafe and unreliable. Fuck that, man. Fuck all that.

I like who I was.

I was a very sweet boy. When I was a little boy, I was very sweet, and the world made sense. The only thing I was really ever scared of was my parents dying, or me dying, and I was able to be reassured that this wouldn't happen for a long, long, long time. Today, I'm scared of everything, and nothing placates me anymore. My wife's arms and legs wrapped tightly around me under flannel covers at night is a big help, though.

I like blogging.

Sometimes it's a challenge to come up with new material every day, but not often, and this is a very good substitute for never making it as a paid writer. Nobody tells me what to do or when to do it, and, though most people recognize this blog as "funny," I don't feel any particular pressure to be funny, or to shield my blogdience from the tenderer moments of life. In fact, I don't feel any pressure at all.

I like my house.

Sure, the dishwasher is from 1964 and there's a hole in the kitchen ceiling, and the 1st floor toilet makes funny sounds when it flushes, and the lilac tree was felled by the blizzard, and they painted our bedroom the wrong color, but when my key slips into the lock after a day of work, it's like Eva Cassidy is singing, right through my heart.