I'm going to take a break from talking about traveling for just a minute or two and talk about something that happened a couple days ago. I beg your indulgence. The biggest problem with traveling is that you only get to see the world as it flits by you or when you have a second to catch it in the rear view mirror. It can be a very one-sided experience, which is why you simply MUST have a friend to nudge in the ribs and say "Oh my God, did you see that?"
The point I'm trying to make here is this: while I'm out here in the world, trying it on for size, stuff happens outside of my experience. Most people call this the "news" and get it in huge servings in America. And, like always, I am generally unaffected by what happens in the "news". People get hurt. Wars get fought. Governments argue. Sports teams play games. Some local lady or kid or group of kids does something neat and we all go "aww" and feel better about ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather. You know the drill.
Occasionally, something stands out. For me, it's usually the stuff that most people flit right past on their way to the comics section or the Sudoku page. Stuff like China suspending talks with the U.S. or that the Mexican government is allowing Russian nuclear subs to perform war games off their coast. The small stuff, really. The same stuff everyone reads and absorbs as "the way it is" and moves on with their lives. I obsess about these things. But it's rare when something major happens that is so important to me it actually takes me a while to process.
When George Carlin died, I was somewhere in the middle of nowhere, driving with my mom, my wife, and my best friend through the Yukon territory in the dead of night without another living soul around. The text message came through to my phone and I announced it to the people in the car. There was a weird feeling that swooped in on everyone in that car. It was palpable. I think it hit my mom hardest since she had known him longer than us and had the pride and privilege to have introduced me to the guy. We drove on for about 10 minutes in pure silence before someone suggested we stop and pull over for a second. It was a good idea: it gave us a chance to think about it, say some nice things about the guy, and have a laugh or two before continuing on.
I tell you this story because it's about the process of grieving that occurs when you don't really know someone personally yet have had them in your life for a long time. When Richard Pryor died; when Johnny Cash died; when Michael died, we all felt that same way: like we knew them well enough to grieve for them and remember the accomplishments that made us know those people in our own way. I think that this, more than any amount of paparazzi hounding or schadenfreude or celebrity worship is what makes bonds of our feelings to each other. We share these people and their work. That's what ties us together. We are thankful for what they've done for us and to us and we honor them in whatever way that we can.
Well...
You know that song "If a body catch a body comin' through the rye"? Anyways, I keep picturing these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy and all but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
Speaking of crazy... I will probably get sued if I don't cite my sources on this page and I'm sure my wife will be reading this with a shake in her head that I had to stoop so low as to quote an entire passage to make my point rather than continue on with the heartfelt sympathetic originality I had going for me when I started this missive. But, to tell the truth, fewer things said in literature have ever meant more to me than what you just read. To this day, even now, this is the ultimate truth: whenever I find myself frustrated with the ongoing task of bashing my head into the brick wall of ignorance I think of poor Holden and his snide, callous, fearful disillusionment weighed and balanced only by his purest desire to do the most insane thing he can think of: the right thing.
Critics may think what they may. For my money, Salinger knew the kind of hopeless hope that I feel pretty much every day of my life. Admittedly, I think it's a pretty egotistical thing to relate to Holden in any way so I won't presume to know or understand what Salinger had in mind when his most notable character decided to say such a thing. And yet, in one paragraph, I can still tap into the angry, frustrated teenager I was when I first read those words: the skater punk fuck-off who knew too much and nothing at all and who wished the world could be better because it should be. The powerless wanting to do right. I truly believe we can do such great things together, you and I...
Hey, you may say I'm a dreamer but I've got it on good authority that I'm not the only one.
...
R.I.P.
J.D. Salinger
1919 - 2010
We now return to your regularly scheduling programming.
-d@n
P.S. ... to the Salinger estate: please don't sue me. Thank you.
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