awesome awesomeness that is too awesome

a lifetime ago, when the baron was young, she thought she'd grow up to be an academician of the lit-crit variety, reading lots of fiction and theory and writing lots of insightful things and papers and essays (for publication and conference presentation, of course, because that's how it works when you choose the ivory tower route).  she decided this for herself after reading 'the great gatsby', but before realizing a number of things about the world of literary criticism: that everyone, BUT EVERYONE, had done some kind of scholarship of fitzgerald; that 'gatsby' was the most well-mined of all of his works; that literary criticism is a hard racket to break into; that sometimes the best and most interesting cultural commentary isn't necessarily reflected in the fiction written by entitled white men.

so.  that dream.  out the window.  ahem.

the baron, though, still has a thing for 'gatsby', and for fitzgerald.  (tangentially, on one of their first dates, the husband took the baron to see fitzgerald's grave.  she knew then he was a catch, but a CATCH!)  she rereads 'gatsby' every so often - her well worn high school edition - cringing a bit at her nascent literary critiques.  it still gets her, the story, the writing, the sadness, the ending - that damn green light.

----

sometime in the 1980s, the baron and the brother were gifted a nintendo gaming system.  the graphics seemed, to the baron, light years more sophisticated than the atari she had previously played.  they had, maybe, three games?  super mario brothers, tetris, and something else... she can't remember exactly what.

over time, the brother became quite good at those first games, and over the years has become a very, very skilled player of video games.   for the baron, who has painful memories of playing against her  brother during his late adolescence, the original nintendo system remains her favorite. 

(painful memories you say?

the baron: i don't want to play.

the brother: come on.  come ON!  mortal kombat is great.

the baron: i don't want to.  you always kill me right away.

the brother: i won't.

the baron: really?  ok.  how do i make my person jump?  or kick?

the brother: [starting the game] it's easy.

the baron: how?

the brother: it's easy.  figure it out.

the baron: but. how.

the brother: dude.  did you see that?  i just pulled your spinal cord out.  cool.)

----

someone else likes 'gatsby' too, and some old school nes.  the baron's been at it for two days and can only yet get past level 1, but reader?  it's kind of awesome.

the long goodbye

reader, some of you know that the brother was recently here for a week's visit, having called the baron 6 days before his date of arrival to say, 'hey. i have a week off. can i come visit?' the baron and the husband were - of course! - delighted that the brother chose to spend his free week with them... he is, after all, a super easy house guest, requiring essentially no entertaining; more often than not, they'd find him in the sun room, deep into his book.

the baron became quite accustomed to having the brother there, seeing him at lunch and cooking for three at dinner. he is, as ever, good company, sober and silly and sentimental and spiritual all wrapped up into one really tall package. the only drawback to having him there came when he and the husband would jointly decide to rebuff the baron's requests. her personality, though forceful, is not enough to overcome the likes of this (their response to her request to take a picture of the two of them):

the husband: really?
the brother: come on, the baron, do we have to?
the husband: he's too tall. i'll have to stand on a stump...
the brother: hey, you know what we should do? we should do it like in 'lord of the rings', like gandalf and frodo!

the brother: i'll stand back here...
the husband: ok.

the brother: lemme see that picture.
the husband: that is great!
the brother: that's so good! it's exactly right!
(hearty laughs all around. the baron did not participate, but could be heard to mutter, 'stupid'.)


the week's visit passed too quickly, as all good things do, and the brother left last thursday. *sniff, sniff.

but can you play basketball?

this weekend, the baron finished her re-watching of 'veronica mars', season 2, and moved on to season 3. she was three or four episodes in - an episode where wallace is having a hard time balancing his mechanical engineering schoolwork with his intense basketball schedule - when she recognized someone on the screen. not one of the series regulars... not wallace, or the guy who plays the coach, or the guy who plays wallace's best pal on the team... someone else.

reader, she recognized someone from her own life, someone she's written about before... the brother!

it had quite escaped her memory that the brother played an extra on 'veronica mars' during season 3. any basketball-centered episode, you can bet he's there in the background. he's even in some of season 3's cafeteria scenes, but it's hard to pick him out.

anyhoo, the baron recommends that, should you be watching the third season of 'veronica mars', you be on the lookout for number 14.

and, if you were wondering... no, he can't really play basketball.

4 minutes to 10

the photo above was taken the other afternoon. unless you, reader, are either privy to some kind of psychic insight or you were standing over her shoulder as she took this picture, the baron is guessing you won't be able to tell where this photo is... after all, one tire doesn't say much.

it's the husband's car, on the curb at the national mall, in front of the air and space museum. it turns out that one cannot legally park on the curb at the mall until 10am! the husband had driven the baron and her brother to the museums for the day, parked the car and headed off to work with a "wait here until 10 so we don't get a ticket!"

the time was 4 minutes to 10, and no ticket was issued to to the silverado.

jonathan

today, the baron is thinking about the brother, her brother, he who is currently flying over an ocean or maybe some land mass, toward new jersey. he has spent the last few months in india, calling infrequently, emailing now and then, and no doubt having an excellent time. he was there studying yoga, taking and teaching yoga classes in a mountain town called dharamsala. the baron and the husband have long wanted to visit india, and are both impressed by and jealous of the brother's experience.

there's something else, though, some other feeling the baron is having in regards to the brother's trip. she is feeling envious, to be sure, but also happy and content. these last two puzzle her, and she has been thinking hard about why she should feel happy and content at the brother's travels.

she has decided that it has to do with her relationship to the brother, how it has changed. it has to do with her memory of their teenaged years, when they could scarcely stand to be in each other's company. their views on everything (including life and music and family and friendship and even tedious things like haircuts) were VASTLY different. in her recollection, the only thing they could agree on was the mutually exclusive nature of their futures - as in, 'you won't be in mine and i won't be in yours, and thank god for it.'

those were dark days. so dark, in fact, that she did not even know they could get better, but then, something funny happened. the baron moved to silver spring, maryland, to go to school, and left her mother and brother behind with nary a backward glance. she mostly stayed away too, coming home for holidays and occasionally in the summer, but by and large she was gone. her life and attentions were elsewhere.

it seems now that her absence was the thing that allowed the brother to become his own person - though she recognizes the arrogance in taking credit for the brother's growth. but, arrogant though it may be, she thinks it's the truth: that she left, and the brother - unfettered and alone and no longer limned out against the background of his older sister - was able to come into his own.

and he has.

he has become an intelligent and caring man, 27 years old now, with a natural curiousity and a fresh way of looking at the world. indeed, his perspective frequently impresses and surprises the baron. he is patient and foul mouthed and sometimes smelly, and also kind and capable of making a delicious cheese sandwich - which he often did for his sister, unasked, when she was lately in town for a visit. he's remarkably open-minded and accepting of the baron's choices (even when she has been vocally opposed to his), welcoming the husband and the dogs into his life. he's a well-rounded person, see? and all of this, the baron knows, has NOTHING TO DO WITH HER. she had no influence on him, other than to leave him alone. she claims no credit towards making him the good, good person he is today. in her memory, she left for school and when she came back 5 years later, he was changed.

she cannot even fashion a pithy sentence or two to tell him how she feels, though she so badly wants him to know that she admires and respects him. instead, the baron can only wait for his plane to land in new jersey, where he'll catch a train to union station, and will be collected there by the husband. the three of them will have lunch together, and dinner too, at one of their favorite restaurants, and all the while the baron will hope that in her casual conversation ('how was the flight? and the food? and the locals?') he can hear how proud of him she is, how delighted she is to call him brother, how she just can't get over the fantastic man he's become.