I am recovering from a peculiar muscle spasm in my hip. While it’s easy to dismiss a muscular ache as far less extreme than a heart disease, or cancer, the fact is, when you’re in so much pain that you can’t move without an electrifying jolt of agony ripping through your body–you must learn to play the hand you’re dealt.

I don’t know what caused this spaz attack. I don’t remember stressing those muscles or doing anything that would put my body in a state of panic. I had to see a doctor and take a steroid and a muscle relaxer, with regular doses of acetaminophen. This made it very easy for me to sink back in a dreamy haze.

It also made walking more fun, and interesting, than sitting.

Up until this spasm got me, I’d spend hours in my comfy chair, playing solitaire, zooming around the Internet, checking the news, listening to lectures, planning vacations and–every once in a while–writing! Like most people, my waking world came through a screen, with music from two small speakers on either side.

Suddenly I couldn’t sit in the chair for more than 20 minutes without spazzing out. I was either on my back, in bed, with a heat pad roasting the sore spot, or I was on my feet, standing or walking the dog.

I found that the illness created a new space. Instead of spending hours sitting down, experiencing the screen world, I was back to reading (a 600 page biography of Mary McCarthy) and walking so slow I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful things were. While there was nothing especially new about this space, I explored the novelty of it.

And, when I wasn’t yowling from the pain, I noticed how much time I had been wasting in my chair. More than that, pain limited the time I could spend in the chair. I couldn’t just wallow in the digital universe. I had to do what was needed and then pull myself up and away before the pain returned.

If I had a choice, I wouldn’t have wanted the spaz to visit me. Who would invite an illness, or any punishing period of discomfort, even if one were told that the result would be a small, but significant increase in understanding, gratitude and joy? We live in times when it is difficult, even dangerous, to believe what we’re “told.”

But I didn’t have a choice, and I am still suffering, though the worst of the discomfort is behind me.

I can’t stay in this chair for long. The new space is calling.

“If I don’t say it, it appears not to be said.”]–jazz musician Nicholas Payton

I discovered Peyton during my plunge into “anything New Orleans” music. Payton is from America’s first city of music, and references it in his recordings. He played a version of himself in the HBO mini series Treme. He also makes smart, frequently thrilling music.

The quote above came at the beginning of a blog post he wrote on Adele winning the Grammy award for best album instead of Beyonce. You can read the context there.

I don’t watch award shows and try not to think of them. Yes, they do bring attention to the people who win, but, if you examine some of the winners and losers (this would include the larger group of worthy achievers who weren’t nominated), you’ll find an uneven series of decisions. Those that please you tend to reinforce your opinions–“this person is so good at what she does AND she won an award!” Those decisions that don’t please you, or require more explanation and qualification, may alienate you. “THAT person won? For what?!”

I once did a lecture series on the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. In researching the series, I learned that both prizes were created by peculiar men. Nobel was a brilliant, self-educated inventor and industrialist motivated by guilt after an obituary writer blamed a death on the invention of dynamite. Pulitzer was a driven, moody Hungarian immigrant who ran sleazy newspapers (“yellow” journalism was born at the New York World, referring, not to sensational stories, but to the appearance of a popular comic strip, The Yellow Kid) that crusaded against big business interests. He later became so sensitive to sound that he could not live or work in New York. He retired to a sound-proofed chamber on a private yacht and may have died insane

These men have endowed the most important of the world’s many, many prizes. Winning one changes your life, even if granting the award ends up embarrassing the people who gave it to you, as in the case of numerous Nobel Peace Prize awards to people whose solutions to such problems as the Arab-Israeli conflict prove ineffectual. As many critics have noticed, most Nobel literature prizes go to writers (Bob Dylan?!) whose great work is behind them. Many awards in the sciences are given long after the discoveries have been made.

The Pulitzer casts its light on work published within a year. Prestigious publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post have full-time staffers who do nothing but fill out applications for these and other awards. When an article I wrote in Philadelphia Magazine that slammed the Educational Testing Service’s biased and hypocritical standardized college admission tests, I didn’t know that there was a National Association of Secondary School Principals. Not only did the association exist, but a staffer at Philadelphia Magazine made sure they saw my article and they association gave me an award!

It was then that I learned that awards have something to do with supporting the values of the organization that gives the award. Test scores are among many ways high school principals are evaluated. So it was in their self-interest to send a plaque to the writer who showed that some of these tests are more about the ability to take a test than the talent a principal may have for furthering achievement.

Winning that, and other awards did not bring the life-changing calamity. It gave me the chance for publishers to call me an “award-winning author.”

Those fond of Jacques Derrida’s ideas about language can ask where, exactly, is the excellence that is being cited? Is it in the work? Is it in what the work does to people who experience it? What about work, like that of the Impressionists, that was damned in its day but is now recognized as of the highest value? Could awards be one more “binary”–an abstract ideal in which extremes of good and bad, high and low, in and out create an imaginary hierarchy of scale which we use to define ourselves?

Payton’s comments about Beyonce and Adele are more about the importance, influence and prevalence of black music. To me, his opener–“If I don’t say it, it appears not to be said” is most interesting because of what it says about the necessary audacity of artistic achievement.

We all have moments when we want to respond to what happens–we want to say something, do something, play something, make something.

And then we ask ourselves, why should we respond? Who cares about what we say or do? Who will pay attention? What if what we play sounds awful? What if what we make is deficient in some way, and a snarky critic points that out?

I ask these questions of myself, and of my work. The work doesn’t happen until I’ve asked these questions, and discovered that, like most “big” questions, they can’t be answered with any certainty, and that attempts to answer them are, at best, hesitations.

Sooner or later, you must say it, do it, play it, make it, write it. And then, you look back and realize that asking those questions was part of the creative act. That little bit of doubt, of fear, of trembling at the edge of the diving board, inevitably leads you to wonder what would happen if you didn’t do this. Would things be the same?

Nope.

And off the diving board you go.

Unseasonably warm weather inspired me to dig my sandals out of the closet, put them on and take the dog for a walk.

Unlike my first pair of flip flops, which existed merely to make a percussive smack whenever I trod on a linoleum tile floor, these sandals have soles that mold themselves  around my feet. They adjust to me.

But, because I hadn’t worn them in a while, I was more aware of them now than I was at the end of last summer, when I had grown accustomed to them occupying the space between myself and most things below.

Or do they? Having recently read about Zen koans–paradoxical statements or questions that defy rational closure–I moved slowly into a blustery spring morning and–

After I noticed the grass sparkling with dew

After I wished I could step gently on the gleaming sunlight reflecting on the small pond, and follow that glistening path to a magical place

After I picked up the dog’s environmental contribution

I came up with a koan that began as a question: when does a shoe fit?

Does it fit when we put it on? “When” suggests a specific moment, and we can presume that fit changes over time. We can also agree that the shoe should fit when we are in a store (my second job was selling shoes) and one pair feels the best on our feet. So why is it that we will walk out with a pair that doesn’t feel best, but pleases us in other ways? The price must also fit. Or maybe we’re weary from trying on so many pairs that we just grab what’s closest?

We’ve all owned shoes that fit better when, after a few days or weeks, they’re “broken in.” What about those shoes that fit so are no longer aware of the shoe as we walk, run or stand still as we imagine all that is above us?

A quick, easy and insufficient (from a Zen point of view) answer to “when does a shoe fit” would be, “that all depends by what you mean by ‘fit.'” For example, if fit can be understood as equivalent to a fixed standard, one can measure the size of a foot and find a shoe that has been made to conform to that size. Assuming the manufacturer is competent, the shoe will match the size.

But, as so many of us have discovered, the standards manufacturers use to fit feet vary somewhat. I’ve found shoes made by one brand fit more reliably than shoes by another.

Does the fit have something to do with function? An athletic shoe that conforms to a size could be inappropriate at formal, workplace and recreational occasions in that it may fit, but it won’t make you fit in.

Then there is style. Some people will acquire a shoe, a piece of clothing, a car, a house, a mate–because they like the way he, she or it, appears. Appearance may transcend style when the object fulfills a cherished fantasy. Think of those elderly males who adorn themselves with “trophy” brides, or  the enormous suburban palazzo that borrows the architectural motifs of English country houses but sits on a half acre of lawn too close to a major road and costs too much to heat? Or that growling muscle car that might tear up a racetrack, stuck in traffic, and costing more to maintain and repair than the owner may afford.

We all have made accommodations for people, places and things that don’t quite fit–I’ve seen people putting band-aids on their feet or adding foam inserts to shoes that obviously rubbing them the wrong way. We have also made great changes to replace those that don’t fit, with something that might. Does “fitness,” then, mean a state of being in which accommodations, or replacements, are not necessary?

Philosophizing on material goods can seem precious on a bright spring morning with a dog tugging at the leash. One may not see the dark clouds coming in, promising rain that will be felt differently in sandals than waterproof boots..

I don’t have an answer, but I’m grateful that I can ask the question.

I try to visit a hotel’s “health club” at least once during a stay. I push open the door, observe how the exercise machines have been shoved into a space that, if the hotel is older than twenty-five years, was not intended for them. A video screen typically hangs on the wall, tuned to a sports channel. . If the place has a pool, a thick cloud of scented humidity makes me want to shut the door, go back down to my room and order a pizza.

Guilt compels me to return, in exercise gear. If the place is unoccupied, I turn down the loudness on the video screen so I can hear the music squeaking through my earphones. I usually start with an FX machine, or something similar, because the range of movement is ludicrously simple and, after about ten to twenty minutes, the endorphin rush kicks in and I remember how exercise banishes the grumps and makes you feel good to be alive.

On Presidents Weekend my wife and I stayed at the Fairmount Copley Plaza, an old, beautifully restored Boston Back Bay hotel that has a health club on the roof. The health club didn’t draw us there, but we ended up on the machines Sunday morning.

We stayed at the Copley Plaza a few years ago when my son graduated from college, and we loved the hotel. The lobby has a an art gallery with Matisse, Miro and Picasso prints. The walls and high ceilings reflect the neoclassical palaces that Bostonians of another era copied when they connected their sudden American good fortune with European aristocratic privilege.

During our first visit we spent most of our time in Cambridge attending the graduation ceremonies and the celebrity in his cap and gown. We did have an afternoon of escape: a trolley ride down to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but our time there was limited.

Our other trips to Boston had been similarly filled with obligations, complications, cares and concern, thanks to a principal’s capricious decision to make me coach of the school’s speech and debate team. I told him I had been dropped from my school’s debate team because I had done a William Shatner impersonation during a speech. This did not matter and, because I wanted to make everybody happy, I took the position.

I knew nothing of high school competitions, though I learned soon enough that Harvard hosted one of the prestigious tournaments in the country on Presidents Weekend. The cost of transportation and hotel rooms was quite high, so only the children of the more affluent parents could afford the trip. I was told that my expenses would be covered by the “debate mom” who was in charge of finances. I paid for my wife’s plane ticket. She came along as a judge.

The hotel the debate mom had selected was in an old Hyatt shaped like a ziggurat dating from the era when the chain when for dramatic, John Portman-style lobbies and glass elevators. It stood on a picturesque turn of the Charles River, and was closer to MIT than the Harvard campus. A cab ride to Harvard Square was way too expensive, so kids had to take vans and shuttle buses that were delayed in the bad traffic made worse by piles of snow. Being certain that the kids were awake, fed, and on their way to more than 20 locations in a city that wasn’t exactly friendly to underage children (I had reviewed a book about a horrendous Cambridge child kidnapping and murder), and back at at the hotel would have been more than enough to bring on the heart attacks I eventually suffered. On top of that, I was expected to judge competitions, make sure the kids on medication took their pills AND keep them out of trouble.

This last task kept me awake at night, which was fortunate because I got an early morning call from the front desk that my room had not been paid for. The debate mom decided not to. I fixed that with my credit card, but I could do nothing about the food poisoning my wife contracted from airport fast food.

Still, I found time to go to the hotel’s exercise room, which was down a long corridor extending toward a parking garage. I gave myself a few precious minutes on the machines, and gazed through the windows toward the city of Boston which seemed so peaceful and serene after all the debate turmoil I had to supervise. I wondered, would things EVER get better?

They didn’t quite get better. I found a less expensive hotel for another debate trip that was on the public bus route. My team went on to become the best in the state, after which I was relieved of the position by the principal because he wanted me to “concentrate on my teaching.”  I decided to leave the school and concentrate on my writing and, two heart attack’s later, my wife and I had a long weekend in New Orleans. I suggested Boston as a follow up. With my son out of college and no speech and debate obligations, we could merely enjoy the city. We returned to the Copley Plaza with no fixed plans, other than a haircut for me.

We had coffee in the Boston Library’s beautiful Map Room, found a barber for me, had a late breakfast at Flour (a superb neighborhood bakery whose cookbooks I’d reviewed, ate recklessly, saw the Singer Sargents in the Museum of Fine Arts, wandered the nearby shopping mall, watched a public protest, walked from Copley Square through the Common to the North End and back (pausing along the way to have a Boston Cream Pie at the Parker House Hotel, where the desert was invented), caught the sun going down over Commonwealth Avenue and, finally, went upstairs to the hotel’s rooftop health club, where I found a free F/X machine and started moving my arms and legs to the predictable movement when–

I looked through the window across the Charles River and saw a hotel shaped like a ziggurat–the Hyatt of fret and worry! Here I was, in a place that, despite subsequent ups and downs, was so very much better.

And yet, if you asked me back in the debate days if such a thing could ever happen, I wouldn’t have believed it. During this, and a few other times when I wished for great change in my life, I could not see a logical, believable path to the future I wanted to inhabit.

I did have a song to keep me company. It’s from Bruce Hornsby, and it’s about something different from my experience, but the chorus rings true:

“Some fine day
You will find your way

Across the river…”

May we all find our way some fine day.

I’m coming around to the notion that old things just may save my life.

Not that my life is in any danger. It’s more that, with some exceptions, I’m no longer interested in what’s new.

Part of this has to do with the learning curve that new objects bring. I don’t want to master a set of procedures–that includes new passwords–before using something. I don’t want to register my purchase on-line. I don’t want fumble through a long series of instructions so I can “personalize” my experience. Add to that, I’d rather not “take a quick survey” that tries to categorize how I may, or may not, feel about an object, that typically ends in an enticement to “sign up” for things I don’t want.

I certainly don’t want to manipulate my possessions from a distance by using my cell phone, neither do I want a corporate entity monitoring everything I do. Oh, yes, I know the argument: I’m getting what Bill Gates called a “747 jet for the price of a pizza” so I should lay back and think of England as these corporations have their way with me? No, thanks.

Besides, I make my own pizza, from scratch.

These don’t-wannas may sound lazy, but they have a biological root: as we age, the mix of brain chemicals that make it easy to learn new things…loses its strength. It becomes even more frustrating to change your way of doing things, master a skill, learn a language, etc. Experiencing this frustration may have benefits: a learning mind is an open mind and, in some studies, the awkwardness and self-conscious stress that comes from trying something new helps us deal better with the daily ups-and-downs.

Why, then, are “old things” more compelling? Part of this has to do with a slowly building appreciation for what goes into making the stuff with which we surround ourselves. Give more than a glance at movies, fashion, cuisine, music and other aspects of our “popular” culture, and you easily develop an appreciation for “craft,” that is, the skill, or a skillful aspect, that you appreciate as part of the work. Craft, such as thrilling movie special effects, a song’s ear-worm hook that you just love, the fruity blast in Beaujolais Nouveau, the way a shirt is cut to permit free movement, can sometimes redeem an otherwise inferior effort, and our experience of craft is historical: the more we sample, the more sophisticated our taste becomes.

An essential element of wabi sabi is the transitory nature of experience, objects and life in general. So, while we may savor an aspect of craft, we must also acknowledge that it is made for the moment: what may thrill us at one point in our life, may not (and maybe should not) at another. Things fade, wear down, wear out, develop scratches, scars, stains, wrinkles, rust. What is regular loses symmetry. What is sharp becomes blunt. What is blunt may take on an edge. These can be considered defects if all you want is an object that performs the same function without any change, but wabi sabi (and, when you think about it, any scientific perspective) holds that is impossible. If these changes are more than a mere loss of function, what, then, could they be?

Here’s where traditional Japanese ancestor worship comes in. Perhaps the visible changes an object acquires create character, singularity, uniqueness and (this is a favorite possibility) latent advantage?

And then there’s the strange sense of the sublime we get when we see something old that has presence. You find this in some museums that show old Japanese bowls, tea pots or furniture that definitely doesn’t look new–it’s been places, but there’s something solid about it.

The closest thing we have to wabi sabi in America is a love of antiques, but, even then, it’s different. Antique collectors value the object, be it a snuff box, a chair, a clock, a dollhouse or a car, as an anachronism, a thing that is outside its time and, because of its maker, its rarity, its previous owners, the way it fits into the buyer’s collection and its possible resale price.

And, we know that many things that are called antique, are intended to appear that way. Like our pre-washed clothing, they are treated to appear older, though they’re sold new. The spirit of what made pre-washed clothing popular was wabi sabi. The result was just another thing to put on a rack and sell.

Wabi Sabi is a Japanese esthetic that does not merely value old things, but also things that are apparently flawed and worn down. Like many esthetics, it’s risky to talk about it out of its political, cultural, moral and religious contexts. While it arose in Japan, allegedly influenced by Buddhist ideas of impermanence, suffering and immateriality, the Japanese made it their own by finding a spirituality in old things. We see it in bonsai, pottery, some forms of pictorial art, sculpture, furniture, music, theater, food, landscape design, architecture, clothing and martial arts: an appreciation of uniqueness as a totality of experience,  contradictions, inconsistencies, “flaws,” and an inexpressible sublime.

There are no mistakes in wabi sabi. There is a similar presumption in transcendent ideals of nature: that we are part of a natural order whose perfection we cannot fully understand, but we must ultimate accept. What appears to be in error, or defective, may even be a gift.

Of course, wabi sabi is not a dominant esthetic in Japan. Since their defeat in World War Two, they are just as fond of complexity, newness and the disposable “freedoms” of  American globalism: if you don’t like it, if it breaks, if it bores you, just throw it away.

I found out about wabi sabi back when I studied Japanese culture in college. I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ve explored its martial arts, tea, food, art, poetry and religion. I’m aware that the same country that produced the tranquility of zen and the “unami” of tempora, sushi and ramen, can also bring down the hell of World War Two upon the world. That barbarity may be in all of us. What would wabi sabi say to it?

Perhaps it would find, in nature, a relentless cruelty in storms, earthquakes and disease. And then it would ask, do we see this cruelty, when we look at a sunset, or the reflection of the moon in water?

We need a little wabi sabi in these new, cruel times.

Because I live in the outer orbit of Washington, D.C., I don’t know anyone who isn’t effected by the change of national administrations. Regardless of who you voted for, or if you failed to vote, we can all agree that the transition has not been smooth.

I believe men over 50 will find something to enjoy in so much turmoil, and that is a return to clothing that we can actually wear. While I am not a fashion fiend, I can’t help but notice that “slim fit” suits, slacks, shirts and sweaters are gradually migrating to the clearance racks, to make room for roomier versions.

I can’t say for sure if men’s clothing designers were influenced by President Obama. Contemporary “slim fit” suits can be traced back to the puny Duke of Windsor, who, as Edward, Prince of Wales, became the male fashion trend setter of the 20th Century. Fred Astaire, the balding, big-eared, funny nosed actor who made ballroom dancing–and life during the Great Depression– seem effortless on the screen, had special suits cut so he could do those incredible routines which, you should know, he practiced ten hours a day for three months before doing them in front of the camera (Ginger Rogers complained that her feet bled after a day of rehearsals).

Thin, trim and athletic, Barack Obama looked good in slim fit suits. He chose dark blues and grays in muted patterns. He wasn’t quite as skillful as good as Astaire at gliding over the political potholes that await any elected leader, but he definitely dressed for the part.

The current President has never worn slim fit suits and, with the exception of a few photos of him in white slacks on golf courses, it’s hard to think of him in anything but dark blue business wear. Back in the 1980s,  as a journalist covering Atlantic City (where, we must never forget, he made his national reputation by turning his name into a branded cult, beginning with his books, then extending to a board game and bottled water, which you would get for free if you gambled heavily at one of his  four eponymous casino hotels)  I learned he favored Brioni ready-to-wear suits and that he never, ever exercised. When one of us asked him how he keeps in shape, he said, when in restaurants, he ate “small portions.” A rumor floated about that his favorite food was canned Spaghetti-O’s.

This was during the 1980s, when the only thing that mattered was making money. Men’s fashion ballooned to outlandish proportions with padded shoulders, billowing trousers,  top coats so wide they filled an entire door frame, shiny “power” ties and, for the office crowd, suspenders that clung to fitted shirts like racing stripes. The celebrity spotlight had shifted from the artists and New Age health gurus of the 1970s to the CEOs who swaggered down the corridors of frivolously decorated office buildings. If you, as I did, ever interviewed the real estate developer who is now sits in the White House, you would remember him assuring you that he wasn’t worried about what you wrote, because any publicity was good publicity.

Back then I didn’t have much to spend on clothing (the print “media” pays its truth seekers very little, which is probably why reporters of real news, like public school teachers, are so proud of what they do, and take umbrage when the chronically uninformed suggest that anyone could do their jobs). My father bought most of what I wore to dress up occasions. He enjoyed going to the dark and dusty Stanley Blacker warehouse in North Philadelphia, where he’d pull suits off the racks for himself,  my brother and me. Later, he introduced me to the joys of used clothing. I’ll never forget finding a dark, billowy Brioni suit in Cocoanut Grove thrift shop–for TEN DOLLARS! Unfortunately, it had been made to fit a taller man. Cutting it down to fit me would cost more than I could afford.

Clothing designers tried, and failed to change men’s fashion when they added a third and fourth button to the suit jackets and rolled the shoulders downward. The “buttoned up” look worked for men who worked out. Everyone else appeared as if they couldn’t breathe, much less sit down to dinner without undoing every button, which made the jacket hang like twin slabs over their trousers. When suits became so tight they restricted movement, men discovered the tyranny of fashion designers whose clothing looked great on swaggering models who did little more than starve themselves and practice their snarls.

Though some women are accustomed to wearing clothing that makes them physically uncomfortable, I am not, and I was grateful that the three-button jacket (with that little notch at the front where the end of the necktie tie would hangs out) became a staple of used clothing stores. I could try them on, laugh, and put them right back.

But I’d see the stuff worn in newspapers and magazines and, though I never had the physique of an action move star, I’d wander into shops and want to try some stuff on. It did not fit. Not even a little. Not even with tailoring. I felt awful, I looked worse and left the shops pleased that, as a writer, I could churn out words in blue jeans and knit shirts.

Another mens fashion mistake was causal business attire. It arrived, not as an antidote to male clothing anxiety, but as a complication. I began to see lots of polo shirts cluttering the used clothing store racks adored with corporate logos. Across the front were little rips and scratches where the metal clip on the lanyard scraped against the fabric. The few times I had to go into office buildings, I saw that the workers with real status didn’t have to wear corporate logoed clothing. No, they wore Banana Republic, J Crew, Orvis, LL Bean, and–for that corporate retreat–Tommy Bahama–perhaps so their status would be immediately recognized.

The tech companies did away with that, as if clothing was unessential, just a thing you grabbed so you could go out in public and NOT look like anyone over 30. Think of Steve Jobs in carefully faded jeans and dark, French intellectual turtlenecks. Did he do that because celebrated Harvard drop out Bill Gates wore suits and shirts with ties? Jobs is the tortured saint of the 21st century, a visionary who had temper tantrums over typefaces but was smart enough to understand that if you alternatively inspired and bullied other people into creating things that made others lives more fun, interesting, efficient, imaginative and less cluttered, you might make up for deep feelings of inadequacy relating to your childhood and failure to graduate from California’s most exclusive university. Then another celebrated Harvard drop out, Mark Zuckerberg, made a T-shirt and hoodie a corporate uniform, as if he were still going to classes and eating breakfast cereal from a box after that billion dollar stock sale.

Washington, D.C. will never be Cambridge, MA., or Palo Alto. It isn’t merely because everything Jimmy Carter wore looked as if it didn’t fit that Republicans are nostalgic for Ronald Reagan, who, well aware of how costumes can make or break a movie, was good in everything he wore: suits, tuxedos, flannels and gabardine trousers while chopping wood. Like Robert Mitchum, Reagan never let his clothes wear him.

President Bill Clinton went to Oxford, the world’s most famous academic institution, but he liked to be the guy everybody wants to invite to the barbeque.  He wore basic tailored sack suits, but he was more often seen in plaid shirts, shorts and faded jeans. President George W. Bush, a taciturn man who liked to go on long runs, looked small in suits, in the same way his father, H.R., looked narrow. Both favored baseball caps, polo shirts and military flight jackets prominently featuring with the presidential logo. Unlike his father, whose image was that of an amiable Kennebunkport squire palling around with the yachting types, rather than a steely, severe CIA chief, George W. played the Texas ranch owner, in jeans, cowboy shirts and a ten gallon hat.

Then, faster than the financial crisis of 2007, the White House was home to a skinny guy with big ears who could make really great speeches. Was “slim fit” a hope we could believe in?

Among the more obvious unbelievers was former House Speaker John Boehner, a rugged, Republican whose suits emphasized the massively contentious defiance he brought to the job. You just wanted to see the son of an Ohio saloon owner challenge the Democrats to a donnybrook.

His replacement, Paul Ryan, who is up early every morning taking calls while on a treadmill, has his suits cut closer, almost, but not quite the slim fit of the former President. The effect is not equivalent. Ryan is photographed in dark solids. Obama liked muted blue and gray patterns.  Only once, when he was being prepped as the new steward of Republicanism, did you see him in jeans and a flannel shirt, and that was with the family that he said he’d rather spend his time with than go to fundraisers for party causes.

When Ryan is speaking, he is the quieter,  his face is a mask hardened from being the “grown up” in the room, always holding back about what he’d really like to say and do.

The new president, with most of the Republican establishment, has not changed his “look” in years. He  seems to have retained a taste for dark, padded suits, with bright red or blue striped ties that draw all attention to his face, and his hair.

My son just bought two “extra skinny” suits. He and his girlfriend go for long runs. He looks good in them.

But, sooner or later, the bell-shaped figure may toll for him. Fashion designers have already adjusted the cut and sizes of shirts and jackets–“classic fit” has returned for those, like myself, who can’t, or, if I’m to be charitable, choose not to display a snug silhouette. There’s something to be said for being able to sit down without popping a button, or raising your arms without the shirt tail riding up over your belly.

Perhaps the fashion world hasn’t been influenced by the political broom sweeping through D.C., but more because apparel sales have been down for many years and it’s really difficult to charge $500 for a hoodie. The few people who might buy a suit or sport jacket would rather not have it wrap their arms so tightly that you an see if they’re wearing a short-sleeve shirt underneath. Some of them may be like me, men “of a certain age” who have a few years to go before retirement forces them to count every penny, and, they either have a job where a Costco polo shirt won’t cut it, or they may want to dress up once or twice and not wear a jacket that looked just fine when Johnny Carson wore while doing his monologue.

We’ve been spoiled by jeans and polo shirts. We like the fact that cargo shorts make our butt and legs disappear, ending in your calves and forelegs, which tend to put on muscle, and not fat, in our later years. Some of us go into clothing stores, not because we need the clothes, but because we wonder if putting on a new jacket or suit might…change everything.

We may not buy anything when we’re browsing the racks, but maybe, just maybe, this time we can put the jacket on, and it will fit.

During my stay in college, I discovered that some of my professors had written books that were published and available for purchase in the campus bookstore. Because I aspired to the writing profession, and dreamed of people buying my books, I bought some of theirs, asked for an autograph and then did my best to read them.

What did I learn? That some academic publications, even from impressive university publishers, are badly edited. Beyond prose densities, specialized vocabulary and the kind of righteous, barely edible flavor of reminiscent of my first efforts at baking bread, the text itself showed spelling mistakes, missing words, fumbled punctuation and what appeared to be a proofreader’s urge to punish the author for the pain of reading the work.

That, and so much of what was sold was reconstituted versions of the very lectures I had attended, sometimes with jokes intact. A conclusion: that some of the necessity to publish had to do with the same compulsion that makes an artist make a self-portrait, as if to say, this isn’t me, but it looks like me. It never occurred to me at the time that publishing was a chore that academes had to do, to bring prestige to their employer and, perhaps, establish themselves as something more than the creator of entertaining intro courses, intellectually stimulating seminars, and that rare but intense faculty office discussion that clears up confusion about the paper topic, the final exam and that other question that I had that nobody could answer.

It was so awkward when I asked my favorite professors to sign their books. I usually ambushed them at the end of a lecture, when they were putting away their notes while their brains had left the building. There followed an awkward pause during which I could not explain that I wasn’t trying to curry favor as much as I was genuinely paying forward an expectation that someday, something like this would happen to me.

They signed the book to me, “a student” with some odd and impersonal blandishment–that I should succeed, that I should keep asking questions–or a date, as if this incident was now historical, to be included in my professor’s biography, or, perhaps, mine.

I no longer have the signed books. Some were destroyed when water filled the basement of an off-campus house where I had stored them. Others were culled in moves.

And, yes, I had a chance to do book signings, which, when they’re in a bookstore, or at a writers conference where you’re one of a thirty people with a product to sell. Sometimes you show up, all ready to personalize your literary toil, and you find out the store or the conference doesn’t have any copies of your book. I know other authors who have signed someone else’s book. I don’t quite have that chutzpah.

Usually they have a stack of copies and some nice person has put them on a folding table in part of the conference room or store that–you hope–that generates some foot traffic. You suddenly find yourself on par with those people who wander the country with collapsible booths where they sell strange, weird, sometimes wonderful but usually odd things that you can’t imagine yourself ever wanting in your life.

You get to know the evasion tactics of people who don’t want to buy your book but must pass by to get to someone whose book they want to buy. There’s a second pause when someone hesitates beside the stack of copies and I force myself to make contact with a person I don’t know. Must the shy guy that I really am become an AUTHOR? What should I say or do to interest this person in making a purchase? Or should I just let it all go and not worry?

I’ve put in places where customers fear to tread, far from the section where people would normally go for a book like mine. So I would hang around in the section and see what people where examining. If the book was similar to mine, I’d make contact and talk about mine.

I know–that can be obnoxious. But it also can be fun. Most people still find some novelty in meeting a published author.My first job was working in a bookstore, and, as a science fiction enthusiast, when I saw anyone hanging around the section, I used my genuine love for the writing to overcome my shyness.  I’d ask them what they liked and try to steer them toward my favorite authors.

When my first novel (which wasn’t science fiction) came out, I was very personable at greeting people at signings, trying to start up a conversation and NOT caring if they bought the book, knowing that the bookstore or conference that was hosting me DEFINITELY wanted every book to sell, not so much to make money (though that always has something to do with the arts) as to avoid having to box the books up and send them back. Also, those authors whose books sell well, for whatever reason, are more likely to welcomed back when their next book comes out.

But then I did a “twin” signing with another author who, instead of talking to people about his work, raided the bookstore’s cookbook section and copied out recipes for Italian delicacies (this was, alas, pre-Internet, though the contemporary equivalent of this aloofness would be noodling on a cell phone). He grew increasingly irritated every time someone walked away with my book without buying his. He became so angry that I was afraid he’d keep everyone away, so went to some friends who had come especially to buy my book, slipped them some cash and begged them to buy his book. They did, and the guy settled down, just a little bit.

Of course, I encountered  a third awkward pause when, after the prospective buyer finds out who I am, what the book is “about” and what the critics said (I printed out some favorable reviews and, I must confess humbly that I am lucky most of the reviews of my efforts have been favorable), that person just doesn’t want to buy the book. Sometimes they have reasons, sometimes they don’t, and I know I should accept this because I am definitely not interested in most books published. When you go into a supermarket for frozen peas and somebody’s selling canned corn that he personally grew, harvested and packed, you shouldn’t feel obligated to add to your shopping cart.

A few times I sold all the books in my stack. I felt just great. I had done my bit. I had made a dent in the number of copies that publisher printed. Surely, I was on my way and my next book would be published to even better reviews and stronger sales and maybe, just maybe, the publisher would send me around the country?

Didn’t happen. My second novel was too different from my first. A few years later, a sequel to the first was published, and there I was, standing in front of a stack of books, dealing with awkward pauses, grumbling fellow writers, people who were looking for the cookbooks and did I know what section they were in?

Then, at the end of every signing, I autographed the remaining copies because the publisher told me that, unless you’re a celebrity, autographed books are considered “damaged,” so, if you sign every copy before you leave the store, the store can’t return them.

So I signed every copy and then, when I ran out of copies of my book to give away, I ordered some from the publisher. I opened the box, picked up the first copy, opened it and saw the autograph.

At least the signature was mine.

I’m thinking of turning off the word processor and going back to pen and paper. That would add difficulty to anything I do for publication or distribution, because much of that requires a digital translation.

What inspired this thought? Not the disadvantages of word processing, though they are worth stating.

1. It’s too easy to change things. So easy, in fact, that you waste time mulling over the names of your characters, or place names, or whether you’ve described enough, or should delete this and that. You end up making too many “improvements” that rarely move the story forward. I spent ten years working on a novel for mostly that reason. Did I make it “good” enough? Some people liked it.
2. It’s too easy to lose things. This post is a revision of an earlier one that died when my internet access crashed. I don’t know why it crashed. The only thing that was saved was the first line. My first novel was eaten several times by a faulty hard drive. The drive crashed so often that I developed an irrational fear of page 161,
3. It’s too easy to be distracted. Any time I need to find out what a piece of furniture could look like, or get an idea of a location or historical period, the internet is a few clicks away and, an hour or two later, I’ve found out half a dozen things, checked e-mail, learned the latest news and, not only is my writing time nearly over, but the energy I had for stringing (if not slinging) words is ebbing. It’s been proven that the blue light from digital screens can be overstimulating. Some writers thrive in work spaces cluttered with music, noise and other distractions. For me, it’s controlled stimulus: music I like, a comfy chair, a window open to let in the breeze on temperate days, a window closed when the neighbor’s dog is barking or lawns are being mowed and, at most, a dictionary for spelling. Anything else is something else.
4. You have to learn how to do things you don’t want to learn. It took me several years to master WordPerfect, a free gift with a long-ago computer purchase. I gave it up some years back, but I find Microsoft Word institutionally dull. Yes, I know you can liven up with themes, but dull is dull. Every once in a while I either hit the wrong key or something crazy happens and I can’t figure out how to fix it. The need to fix it interrupts the flow. This doesn’t  happen with paper and pen.

What inspired this grumble was the death of our dishwasher. Purchased a few years ago when we triumphantly upgraded our kitchen appliance, it went the way of the previous dishwasher: a motor wore out, whose replacement would cost about two-thirds of what a new one would cost.

We went out and bought a new dishwasher. We had to wait a few days, which meant washing dishes by hand–something I did for most of my youthful, on-my-own existence, which included working in the Oberlin College dining halls, where I did just about every job, including pot washing.

The physical effort involved in cleaning cutlery and cookware can be much more enriching than grumbling at the dried, scuzzy crust your dishwasher can leave on glassware. It’s another connection to the ways in which you please and care for yourself and those you feed. It’s a pause after the meal, or sometime later, when you engage in the restoration of order–you clean things, wait for them to dry, put them back where you found them and, maybe, appreciate what you have a little bit more.

Most writers would agree that writing is too often about the effect the work creates on people, critics, institutions or businesses that are supposed to shower you with fame ‘n’ fortune, or, at least, give you some justification for existence. It’s easy to forget that writing is not so much a process, with a beginning, middle and an end, as it is a continuity: a thing you live for and that, at its best, lives through you. Part of the way you notice (and, perhaps, savor) that continuity is to come in contact with the stuff that you need to write.

For most writers, this stuff is abstract: it’s experience or revelation or discovery that has slipped uncomfortably into memory. The discomfort could be excitement, obsession or just an urge to purge, but it’s still abstract: it’s inside you, somewhere, and transferring it into a thing on a screen becomes putting it somewhere else.

Writing on paper is putting it right there, in front of you, where the distractions, impediments and complexities of what we now call “technology,” don’t exist. You can look at those pages and know that you’ve made them different.

You’ve made your mark. And even if it isn’t good enough, or requires more research, or editing or what editors like to call “some small changes,” it’s still yours. Though machines may have made your pen, pencil or paper, machines had nothing to do with what you have done.

By hand.

It isn’t the obligation of science to deliver truths that make us feel good. A trope of the Enlightenment thinkers was the arch, but frequently devastating use of textural analysis and the scientific method to eliminate superstition, faith-based presumptions and “traditional” ways of understanding, frequently leaving us disappointed but, like a reader at the conclusion of The Hound of the Baskervilles, relieved that mythical monsters cannot exist in a modern world.

And yet, neuroplasticity has the potential to give us all a positive, even optimistic trust that some things in our largely Newtonian universe can change for the good. The term, coined by Polish scientist Jerzy Konorski, refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt to injury or dysfunction by rewiring itself.

Until neuroplasticity was identified and established as a fact, people assumed that we were born with our brains more-or-less intact, and that brain cells that died off were not replaced (a convenient explanation for numerous diseases that were called “senility”). We were stuck with the brain that we had at birth, and that, after a pubescent blossoming of skill, it was all downhill from there.

Of course, some stroke victims recovered their speech and loss of movement, usually after arduous labor. This was explained as other parts of the brain developing heightened sensitivities, or otherwise “taking over” for the damaged sections.

No one was certain that the brain actually changed itself until near the end of the 20th century, when examinations of brain tissue showed growth and adaptation up until the moment of death. What did all this neural reconstruction mean?

Simply put, this rewiring is a kind of learning. We can not just improve old ways of doing things and acquire new skills, we can actually change the way we think. That means altering habitual, counter-productive ways of understanding ourselves and others.

Neuroplasticity is a physical proof of cognitive therapy, in which some mental illnesses can be treated by changing the way you think. Instead of waiting (or fearing) that the worst things will happen, or reacting with explosive anger, or despair, you imagine good things happening, peaceful intent and a general hope that things can get better.

And the brain responds by rewiring itself to incorporate those thoughts.

So, I’m going to apply some of this to my creative obstacles that, while being somewhat typical for a writer, are strong enough to stop me from writing.

Wish me luck!

“I guess there is no worse thing for a writer than to get the idea that his work is important. It seems to me it would make for an ‘important’ or pompous tone. I don’t know whether it has got me or not but I’m working on something now that certainly isn’t important yet is very difficult, a little study in humility.”

–John Steinbeck, in a letter about what was to become Of Mice and Men.