By Me:

Bird Gun

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms:

“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

Dear Father and Mother,

Let me start by being candid and forthright in my reasons for writing the two of you-- to thank each of you for your admittedly increased patronage of me as of late and tell you both why you should continue to pump capital into me. More than that, I also want to explain a little bit about why I think this support is a good, healthy thing.

Okay, fine, you’re right. The skeptics will say that this was prompted by the recent purchase of a round-trip, weekend ticket to Mallorca on the Visa Debit Card into which the two of you jointly deposit a monthly allowance, but you know what I say? Fuck the skeptics. Let’s dream big here, people. Let’s go for the gold. And anyways, plane really was the cheapest way to go. It was 60 Euros round trip, which if you stop to think about it isn’t very much at all. But the problem is that I just got back from Paris which I flew to at very inconvenient times to save money but still costed 110 Euros, which if you stop to think about too, really isn’t that much for me to get a chance to see Paris again now that I’m old enough to actually appreciate it. But it just adds up, you know? And then there was the train police, who told me that I had to pay a 40 euro fine because I didn’t have my ticket stub which I really had purchased, but also had thrown away before I got on the train because I figured it was only used to get me through the turnstile. I put up a fight with the train police guy, a valiant scene-causing one, because forty Euros is a lot of money-- that’s like sixty bucks-- but he said he’d get the real cops at the next station and let them handle it and even if I had done that and given myself a chance to get out of it I also had a flight to catch.

But I get it, I really do, you guys are very good and generous with me and I do realize it and I cannot thank you enough. I actually feel very guilty about it because you two have provided me with such a good and solid and happy upbringing, a part of which was founded on money. And it’s not that all or even most of that upbringing was founded on money, but sure, realistically, some of it was. You paid for great schools when I could have gone to good ones for free and I never had to ask if I could buy a book and my friends could always take whatever they wanted from the fridge. The scary part is that now a part of me feels like someday I need to provide my own kids with an equivalent standard of living, and that’s hard because each of you has done well, and it’s a lot to live up to. But it’s even scarier because already I feel like my choices of careers are narrowing down and my decisions are growing limited because to guarantee that I am able to give the standard of living that you have given me...well, that's a lot to guarantee. And I don't know if it's completely fair either, because in the field of science I think each of you was able to be what society defines as successful without compromising a whole lot on what you wanted to do for the world. For me I don't think it's that easy and I don't know if I can have both. So what if I want to do something where I can’t guarantee that success? Am I being selfish? Neither of you ran off on some strange tangential path and risked what I would later receive. For that matter, neither of you received half of what you would go on to give me. So why on earth would I have the right not to put myself in a position to give to my children at least as much as I have been given?

I don’t know. I still haven’t figured that one out.

So then, logically, I should break free right now, this second, because by accepting this kind of money from each of you I am encroaching on my own liberty since everything in this world, in some way or another, has to be paid back. And I’m not saying that has anything to do with either of you asking for anything back but I just mean it’s a weight in my stomach and I know and remember that it is there and I will for a long time, maybe forever. But breaking free monetarily isn’t that easy either, because money also means freedom and I want to be young and do things like go to Spain and Mallorca, where, by the way, you can do this really amazing thing called deep water soloing where you free climb up a cliff face that leans out over the ocean and if you fall you just fall into the sea. But I don’t know... It’s hard and I want to be independent but then I see a book on the kindle that I really want and will read and will learn from but it’s 11.95 with just the push of a button.

And I work, summers at least, I have since I was sixteen, and the job pays well and isn’t hard but somehow this last summer I was bored with it and being unhappy to make money I wasn't then using didn’t seem all that important; but I'm certainly using it now. And I made some, I did, but it ran out quickly, more quickly than I paid attention to, and then I really wanted that camera that would let me take photos to put on the blog, which I also think was a valid and useful and constructive purchase that came at a great time but that shit’s still expensive, you know? And these other kids, I’m looking around and not all but some planned better than I did, and I feel bad about that, really bad, but what should I do now that I'm here? To get a menial job now would undermine the investment you have already made in sending me here because the education I receive abroad is technically inferior, yes, but there are other sorts of education that are just as if not more important that have to be experienced and seen to be learned. So I'm working on learning those things but I'm not going to learn them washing dishes. And I'm not saying that there's nothing to learn from washing dishes but I am saying that it is a different lesson that even if, someday, I do end up having to learn-- now is not the right time for it.

I don’t know. I owe you each more than I can pay back anytime soon and there is still a lot of semester to go. So I offer my collective birthday and Christmas loot as a minor down payment on this loan of yours-- and really, there is nothing I would like more from either of you than being here, but still, that doesn’t quite do it. You shouldn’t even be obligated to give me those gifts so I shouldn’t be leveraging against them. That’s what caused the bubble to burst, right-- people investing their Christmas gifts before they had them? Is that what a derivative is? But it just shows that this is all a part of a bigger and more important realization-— you’ve been investing in me since I was born. Feeding me was an investment. Housing me. Clothing me. Educating me. You did all of those things, every single day for so many years, and I’m really only figuring it out now. How am I ever supposed to pay that back to you? I don't think I ever can and I don’t think I am ever completely meant to. Like I said, I'm supposed to pay it forward and perpetuate the human race and maybe even our relative wealth (because that is the easiest way to ensure survival and comfort and even some freedom in this world) but more than that, I think you really just gave it to me for me, to make me happy and secure for when you wouldn’t be able to do so for me anymore. It was an investment for the good of the investment itself. But how can I ever put that same stock in myself, that same faith, that same willingness to wait and watch and pour in more and more without ever seeing the numbers come out of the red or knowing that they will? That's a lot of pressure and I've felt the weight of it in every thing I've ever done that I didn't do for me.

So how do I pay you back if a literal compensation is not what either of you are after? That's a hard question and I've thought about it a lot. I think the answer has something to do with what I’m doing right now. This getting out. This freeing myself. I don’t think I’m going to live a prototypically normal life but I think it has the potential to be an interesting and maybe even special one. That’s not a normal opportunity and it was you two that gave it to me by giving me these experiences and the background to understand them (and a pretty clean slate as far as inheritable genetic diseases go) and teaching me how to think and challenge authority and ask questions. I wasn’t going to wander after college, I wasn’t going to be one of those kids, I was going to make money and be successful and get you a return on what you put in as quickly as I could so that every Christmas I could come home and show you the quarterly reports that my eighty hour weeks had brought you, but I’m not going to do that now because I've decided and or figured out that you invested in me and not what I would do; so now it's my job to figure that second part out.

So yeah, I know, the end of the line is coming soon, and it should. I’m getting a little too old to mooch off you two in the way I do. I respect and realize and accept that, because it’s a part of the investment too. It’s a part of teaching me to figure this stuff out on my own and if I talk about money like it doesn’t mean much or anything or everything then why don’t I really try to live without it for a while? That’s fair; that's reasonable. And when that day comes (and I know it’ll come soon, too soon, and that scares me) I will. I try now but it’s too damn hard to do when you have money that you can spend because, as you can clearly see, my thoughts are noble but my will is weak and I really want to go rock climbing in Mallorca, for which a 60 euro flight seems exceedingly reasonable. I have money that I can spend because you two are good and sweet parents that want me to have fun and grow and be safe and I try, I really try not to be expensive as I do those things but it is hard and I struggle and I am working on it. I feel like a fat kid who eats a big bowl of ice cream and enjoys it like they don’t enjoy anything else in the world but the whole time they're eating they feel guilty and gluttonous and they aren’t sure if it is even worth it but it's just too hard for them to stop while that silver spoon is still in their mouth.

Lots and lots of love,
Your son,
CL.

I was in Paris this weekend.

It is a city only like itself. I ate pigeon and saw paintings and on Saturday night I wound up at a bar that was far too much of a ‘scene’ for me to enjoy or fit in. I met a Swedish architect who didn’t seem to like it either and was a little bit crazy in a good, unfiltered way. She worked for a famous architect (who I had not heard of but the others I was with had) who she said was an asshole even if he was a genius. She wanted to leave Paris as soon as possible and were it not for her work she would have already done so. She said the city was dirty, its people arrogant and smelly, and the unnecessarily socialized infrastructure generally inefficient. She told me the other places she had lived, which were many, and gave me a reason why each one of them was better.

The next person I met was an Australian fashion designer who had moved to Paris six months ago to start her own fashion line. Admittedly I had met other people after the Swede and before the Australian but they, like everything else I exclude from my memories, do not immediately suit my simple and basic literary intents. Anyways, the fashion designer was dressed very fashionably and I asked if she was wearing clothes from her own line. She told me no, that what she designed was much fancier, and then she wrinkled the end of her nose just enough to tell me she was displeased with the question. I asked her how long she was planning on staying in Paris and she said forever. That’s a long time I told her, which I thought was a pretty good answer. She said that since she was a little girl playing dress up she had always dreamed of living in Paris and now that was actually doing it her life was like that dream. She said it in the way that a bad actress reads a line in an okay play. She asked if I spoke French and when I said no the look on her face made it clear that that was the last straw. I said bye and left before she could do the same.

Then I met some Wharton Business School guys. One was from L.A. and the other was French. The French guy seemed like a sleazy French guy and the one from L.A. reminded me of that kid in elementary school who would always buy the old toy the day before everybody else brought in their new toy. As a segue to talk about his salary, he asked the French guy about the appropriateness in France of discussing salary. The Frenchman said it was completely off limits and then promptly told his. They seemed awfully young to be so boring. For that matter, they seemed awfully stupid to be so rich. They gave me friendly, warm goodbyes and invited me to meet up with them at the club where they were headed. I said I’d maybe see them there but first I had to see about some things. Then I took the metro and walked up a hill to stand with all the others who had already done the same and look and watch and smile at how the city lit up at night.