Little helper

Today, I had the coolest little experience.

I was sitting in a cafe with a cup of coffee, trying to kill some time. I had an appointment at 11 a.m. but it was only 10:15, and so I decided I’d hang out at the cafe, get some coffee and play chess on my MacBook until I had to leave.

Now, the chess program that comes with the MacBook is very powerful, and I sorta have a rivalry with it. The program doesn’t make any mistakes, per se, so you really just have to overpower it to win. Your play must be sound and aggressive.

I had the white pieces and I therefore made the first move. After a few minutes the program and I were deep into the game and I was lost in thought. Just so you should know, the computer and I were in a “French Defense”-type position. In such positions, the board is pretty cramped with pieces and players are forced to do much maneuvering before any attack can be launched.  

After move 12, I had gained the “initiative,” meaning I had a slight advantage and was controlling the flow of the game.

Anyway, so there I was, deep into the game and doing well, when this cute little kid -- he must have been 9 or 10 -- just sorta floated over to my table. 

I really had no idea where he came from. He was a small, mixed-race boy with light-brown skin and frizzy black hair.  I think he walked into the cafe with a white woman.  

At any rate, before I knew it, the boy was right beside me, looking at the game on the screen.

I didn’t really mind -- although, admittedly, having this curious kid right by my side was a little distracting -- and I just kept on playing. When I’m into a chess game, I don’t stop to talk with anyone.

But then he started talking to me.

“Spielst du Schach?” he asked, German for “Do you play chess?” I said, "Yeah." Then I asked him if he played. He said he also did, and we went on looking at my game.

I told him what I was aiming for, what my strategy was. My bishop and my queen,  I said, speaking in German and also using hand gestures, were working in tandem and were taking aim at black’s pawn on h7, the pawn right in front of black’s king. 

After I told him my strategy, he recommended a move; he recommended that I use my pawn to chase away the black knight on black's kingside. After all, he reasoned, this knight was protecting the black king from checkmate.

I told my little buddy that I appreciated this idea, but if I actually put it into practice, it would be a waste of a move because the knight would be able to retreat to a square where it could still protect black from checkmate.

But then he said something really, well, sweet, I guess. He said in German, “Let’s just see what happens.” And even though I knew the move he was proposing wasn’t the best, I appreciated his curiosity, so I made it. 

And, well, yeah. The black knight retreated to the exact square I thought it would. Yes, you could have called it a pointless move. But, then again, maybe the move wasn’t such a pointless one for my young friend.

At any rate, with the black knight now settled into its new defensive outpost I tried to find some other attacking moves. I found a few good ones, but I didn’t make any of them without consulting my little friend first.

And together, we forged on. I told him my thoughts on the game, he his.

I tried to find a way to win; I really did. But it was a bit difficult because, even though I wanted to make the moves I wanted, I also didn’t want to discourage this kid by not paying attention to his ideas. And so what wound up happening was I made some of the moves he recommended despite my better judgment.

And, well, because I did this, our initiative started to disappear. The computer stabilized its position and things began to look bad for us. But that was OK, I thought, because by that point, I had to leave the cafe and get to my appointment. 

I told my friend that I had to go and therefore we unfortunately couldn’t finish our game. But he asked me to stay just for a little longer. He wanted to play more. I couldn’t help but find a few more minutes.

Owing to the fact that I knew the game was totally lost at this point, I let him take over completely. I let him make a move that invited a nasty check from the computer. Even though the consequences of making such a move were obvious to me, he was totally dumbfounded. But that’s OK.  

And then, finally, I saw what the computer was setting up for. It moved its bishop to c5, and now had our king directly in its crosshairs. The computer was setting up for the coupe de grâce.

My little friend, though, still didn’t think the game was over. But I told him in German that we were in serious trouble. “Uh oh,” I said,  “Wir haben grosse Probleme. “We have big problems.” I told him to look at the enemy bishop on c5 and how we would be in “discovered check” -- a very bad thing to be in -- once the enemy rook moved away from the square right near our king. The end was clearly close.

But still, my buddy was not discouraged. I pointed to the bishop and I showed him how the enemy had coordinated its pieces to checkmate us.  And then I said, “Guck mal. Wir sind tot. Aber es ist schoen.” “Look, we’re dead. But we’re being killed in a very elegant way.”

Finally, the little fellah saw. “Ahh, ya,” he said. “Schachmatt” – “checkmate.”

And so I moved, and then black moved its rook, just as I had thought, and indeed we were checkmated. 

After looking at the screen for a few seconds, just to see exactly how the deathblow was dealt, the little kid joined his mom or guardian -- I’m not exactly sure who this  woman was -- and I said, “Chess is fun” in German, and he agreed.

I then cleaned up around the area where I was sitting and said goodbye to them both.

It was the coolest little experience.  

My rejected poem

Here's a poem of mine that recently was rejected by the New Yorker. I think it's good, damn it.

Judgment

Ring-ring!

Yes;

Speaking;

This is he...

But never.

God, never.

Please, please never.

It is him.

Simple but very cool

This footage I found on YouTube of Nirvana's 1989 Bleach tour is super interesting. Though the video pretty much just shows the band on the road, doing their thing, and the moments that are captured might seem mundane, I feel like the video feels kinda special. If anything, it's a testament to the coolness of technology. I mean, video cameras capture and can transport us in an instant back to these moments that probably would have otherwise just fallen through the cracks of our fingers like fine sand.

Check it out. I think the video gets really cool around 1:34, when Krist says, "We should move in our stuff before it starts raining."

Funny how things work

Normally, I don't usually write about the dreams I have. Everyone knows dreams are crazy and everyone's dreams are crazy. So it's not usually that interesting. But last night I had a dream that was, well, yes, crazy, but also gives a lot of insight into how the mind and things work. So I'll tell.

It all started on Friday night -- in real life now -- when was I sitting in someone's living room. I was hanging out with a bunch of people, we were all drinking wine and I was a bit buzzed. As we sat there, someone recommended we put on a British sitcom. At first I moaned because I just never found British humor funny.

Anyway, this person, a girl, eventually put on the show, and, as I had suspected, I didn't find it funny. It was all, well, British. But the girl kept on raving about it. I told her I didn't get it. Then I told her that I wondered if it was me. Did I just not get it or something? Was British humor an acquired taste? I just didn't find any of it funny.

This girl said that she didn't think that British humor was an acquired taste, but she did say that if you watch British sitcoms, you really have to pay attention to find it funny. Another person in the living room chimed in and said, "Yeah, you're not going to turn on a sitcom like this"  -- referring to the one on the TV -- "and go in the kitchen and cook yourself dinner while keeping an ear on it." They both agreed you really need to pay attention.

Sensing that I was still a bit frustrated with this answer, the girl said, "Well, in all honesty, maybe it's not good to start you off with this kind of show. It's a bit sophisticated." So she quickly went to YouTube and found something that she thought was simpler, a British humor skit that was perhaps more accessible to an American.

She clicked play. The skit all about this guy who goes fishing at night. And something strange happens. This guy, he's fishing and he is out there on the water and all of a sudden some sort of fish creature, some sort of ugly, scaly, half-man-half-fish, drag-queen looking creature with seaweed on his head jumps on his boat.

The creature guy, whose wearing a pink tutu, mind you, exposes himself to this man and a ray of light  shoots forth from his genitals and hits the man in the eyes. The ray of light knocks the unconscious. When the guy wakes up, he is now in the swampy lair that this creature, this loathsome, detestable funky creature calls home. 

The guy tells the fish man that he wants to leave, that he has places to be and wants to go home but the swamp-thing stalls. The creature tells the guy he should have some Bailey's Irish Cream -- it's pretty much the only thing this creature has in his "home" -- and he has bottles and bottles of it! 

Anyway, the two talk and the creature -- who says his name is Old Gregg -- suddenly asks the guy -- "Do love me?" And the guy flatly answers no. But then the creature says, "Do you think you could ever love me?" Again, the guy says no. The creature keeps going, "Do you think you could learn to love me?" Same response. Then the creature finally says, "You do love me." The two argue and the guy finally says, "I find you slightly pathetic, so deal with that." The creature, slightly stung, says, "Maybe I will deal with it, hmm. Maybe I'll deal with it the way I dealt with Curly Jefferson!" and points to a spot in the layer directly above the guy's head. The guy looks up and, directly above him,  a few feet up, is this guy, like, glued to the ceiling, dead. The dead man's face is a bit mutilated and frozen in a horrifying grimace. 

So the guy, now scared and probably fearing for his life, says, "You know what...maybe I was being a bit hasty there when I said I didn't love you." Just as quickly as he said he didn't love him, now says, "Perhaps now, in this light, with you, in the tutu, and the...water playing off your...seaweed...maybe I... could love you. Maybe I was lying because sometimes when you do love someone you...say you don't because...you're playing hard to get, playing a game." 

Eventually, after a little more talk and a musical number that the two perform together, the creature says that he'll take the guy back above ground, back to dry land, the real world, if he agrees to "take my hand" -- which is really a flipper -- "in marriage." 

Seeing a way out of this hell, the guy agrees, and the creature puts a ring on him and the two go back up to the real world. The skit ends with the creature in a wedding dress standing on top of a moving van driven by the guy. (Don't ask.) The creature, standing up there on the roof, wind blowing in his sea weed,  lifts up his skirt. His genitals again emit a ray of light and he gives off one final, thunderous shout, "I'm Old Gregg!"

After the skit ended, I was bewildered. I didn't think it was really very funny -- all right, maybe a tiny, tiny bit. But I really thought it was strange, almost disturbing, that people would actually think such a skit was funny. "What's up with those people in Britain," I thought.

Anyway, skip ahead a little to later in the night. I get home, brush my teeth and go to bed. And I have this dream. And in my dream, I'm telling my mother about having watched this skit. I'm saying, "Ma, you should have seen this British humor skit that I watched. It was really awful." And then I start recounting the details. The guy, the freaky fish creature, his swampy lair. And then I start telling my mom that the only thing that this creature has in his lair is bottles and bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream. I tell my mom how the creature keeps on offering his "guest" more glasses of Irish Cream. 

And, all of a sudden in my dream, that seems kinda funny. 

And then I tell my mom how the fish-man suddenly asks his reluctant guest through blubbery, red lipstick-painted lips, "Could you love me?" And how the guy dryly says "No." And how they go back and forth with that. OK, I think in my dream, that's actually pretty funny. Then I tell my mom how the guy gets scared by seeing the last person who refused the fish-man's advances and how the guy then quickly changes his tune and says, "You know, I think I could love you...Maybe I was just playing hard to get."

And all this starts to seem really, really funny. As I tell my mom all these details, the skit, in fact,  seems more and more like a riot. 

So yeah.

Now skip ahead to my waking up today. I wake up and I realize that I had this dream, and I think to myself, "Holy crap, was that skit funny? I think it was. I think it actually might have been one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time." And I really, really want to watch the skit again. And so I do. 

And now I think it's funny as heck.

But first I had to recount the details in a dream and think they were funny in a dream before I could process it all and think it's funny in real life.

***

Here's the actual skit. Let me know what you think.

Dexter Filkins

When I was in J-school at NYU, I took a profile writing class. The final assignment in the class, which was awesome and was taught by the singular Meryl Gordon, was to write a magazine-length profile story. I chose Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Dexter Filkins. Filkins, who at that point had been writing for the New York Times but now writes for the New Yorker, had spent many years in Iraq, covering the war for the Times. But the war and being so far from home took its toll on Filkins, and I found that compelling. I wrote the story, got an A in the class and shopped the article around to lots of magazines. But  no one bought the piece. However, an editor at New York Magazine wrote this to me, "Your story is well done, but so much has been written about Dexter in the past year that I think we're going to have to pass." Although he rejected it, I thought that was kind of cool. A "well done" from a New York Magazine editor.

Anyway, I figured this piece I wrote on Filkins should see the light of day. So below I'm posting it in its entirety. Hope you like it. 

By Chad Smith
 

DEXTER FILKINS IS trying to narrow the distance between two worlds.

In one world, he’s in Falluja with the marines battling for the city — bombs exploding, machine guns roaring, commanders barking orders, “Move!”

In the other world — the one he’s actually in at the moment — the world of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Filkins stands in front of a rapt audience. It’s early autumn and the New York Times foreign correspondent is here at the Harvard Bookstore on Massachusetts Avenue to read from his new book, The Forever War, an on-the-ground account of his last 10 years reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Like most of the book’s passages, the one Filkins chooses tonight is gripping and honest. And suddenly at the Harvard Bookstore, the remote starts to feel too immediate.

“Gunfire rang out and we scrambled for the walls on the side of the street,” Filkins reads, as he looks out on a room packed tightly with serious-faced college students in crimson and professors in tweed. “The insurgents knew what they were doing; they were bracketing us with their shells, dropping them from left to right. They were falling now, exploding in titanic crashes, more closely this time. I’d seen mortars in the movies and even in Iraq but never this close and never so big. Their booms were crushing, and I imagined the shards of metal flying away from each shell. I felt sure we were going to die if we didn’t move, and I felt sure we would die if we did.”

At forty-seven, Dexter Filkins just may be one of the bravest — or craziest — men in journalism. As a leading Times correspondent in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, Filkins earned a reputation for his willingness to push physical, personal and logistical boundaries to near breaking points, if that’s what got the story. Best known for his dispatches from the blood-stained battle of Falluja in 2004, Filkins has extensively reported on the Muslim world and the war on terror, registering scores of major scoops for his newspaper. But it’s come with a price: Filkins’ personal life and emotional health haven’t gone unscathed. In some instances, his bold actions in the field have terrified colleagues, and in one case, the push to get the story resulted in a death. Still, many say, Filkins has gone to these lengths because that’s what it took to get the full picture to the readers back home.

A few weeks after the reading in Cambridge — a college town Filkins called the “quietest place on earth,” which may not be bad considering he wrote his book there on a fellowship in late ’06 — Filkins is in Manhattan. He’s agreed to stop for some coffee before heading to his newspaper’s headquarters in Midtown to learn what his next assignment will be.

Right on time and wearing his signature attire, black blazer, collared shirt (no tie) and khakis, Filkins is holding several Iraqi political posters rolled up under his arm, which he wants framed.

The Forever War has received across-the-board critical praise for its scope, its humanistic insights and the proximity with which it was written to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the book, Filkins describes everything from the bathroom habits of 6,000 marines, to the jihadi death threats his colleagues received, to the skyward eyes of a mortally wounded American soldier. Filkins is pleased with the reception, he says, but admits that the readings have left him tired.

“It’s draining and it’s exhausting and the war is a difficult thing to look back on because I keep finding myself in the middle of it, reliving it.”

Filkins, whose wispy, honey-brown hair is a bit more unkempt today than usual and whose grey circled eyes weigh down his otherwise boyish good looks, says that in each of the 17 cities to which he’s traveled for the book tour, he’s worked from the minute he’s landed to the minute he leaves — reading, signing, holding discussions, talking on radio shows and TV news programs. “It’s just a lot."
 
Certainly, this chink in the armor, the fatigue, wasn’t there six years ago when Dexter drove into Iraq alone in a rented car from Kuwait: The U.S. was invading and Filkins believed the best way to get closest to the story was by riding behind the tanks and sleeping in the desert.

But that was then. That was before the three and a half years of waking up day after day to car bombing after car bombing. Before nearly having his limbs torn off by an angry mob. Before the warm blood of a fatally shot marine splattered on his face.

Even so, there won’t be time to rest. Later, after the coffee, Filkins will visit the Times and learn that his editors have no intention of easing up on him. They’ve chosen the location for his next assignment, and it’s no safe place.

FOR THE PAST 11 years, it’s been this type of rhythm — a rhythm of departure and return, risk and relief, war and peace — that has come to define Dexter Filkins’ life. It began in 1997 when Filkins was working for the L.A. Times as a general assignment and political reporter. At the time, tension was flaring between Pakistan and India over nuclear weapons. Filkins happened to have a master’s in international relations, and the L.A. Times decided to take a chance on him, sending Filkins to head the paper’s bureau in New Delhi. The post would eventually lead to his foray into Pakistan and Afghanistan for stories.

Filkins would be one of the first to report on the Taliban. The extremist group even invited him in 1998 as a western journalist to watch an execution of a criminal in a Kabul sports stadium. Eventually, the Taliban expelled Filkins from Afghanistan after he started filing stories about its increasing brutality.  Filkins’ reporting from the region would make him a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. It would also catch the eye of the New York Times. In fall 2000, the grey lady recruited Dexter and brought him to New York. But he wouldn’t be staying in the city for long.

“I was in the New York Times newsroom one day and 9/11 had already happened, and it was one of those things where the foreign editor was walking by me and we started talking, and he was like, ‘Wait, you’ve been to Afghanistan, right?’ and I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ They pretty much sent me on the next plane over.”

By the winter of 2001, American forces had attacked Afghanistan in retaliation for September 11, driving the Taliban, said to be harboring Osama bin Laden, from power. Filkins, now back in Afghanistan after the American military’s intervention, said he was inspired by the Afghan people’s reaction. With the Taliban gone, most were rejoicing.

So as Dexter drove that rented car from Kuwait into Iraq during the American led invasion — he had volunteered to go and report — he thought the Iraqis would have a similar response.

“I had to drop that notion pretty quickly….I had no idea what I was getting into, but nobody really — well, nobody did.” Filkins was entering a world that would consume him for the next three and a half years. 


IN EARLY 2003, the New York Times, much like the other media outlets that had descended on Iraq after the invasion, was trying to find the best and most efficient way to report from a war zone whose journalistic parameters were still taking form.

Initially, reporters filed their stories from hotels, as they had in previous wars. But this war was different. In this war, reporters were no longer considered neutral; they were considered instruments of their states and thus targets. After a series of bombings rocked several downtown hotels, the Times rented a compound near the Tigris River and moved its reporters there.

Though this compound, known as the Baghdad bureau — it was where the reporters worked and slept — sat right across the river from the American Green Zone, the compound, militarily speaking, was in the Red Zone, the unknown and danger zone. As time progressed in Iraq, the difference in terminology would become clearer.

“One time a bomb sent part of a radiator from a cement truck crashing down 30 yards from where Dexter and the rest of us did our writing,” said John Burns, a senior New York Times foreign correspondent who became Baghdad bureau chief in 2004.

Meanwhile, it seemed to some that living in this kind of chaotic, stress-filled environment only stirred Filkins into working harder and at a more frenetic clip. 

“What struck me about Dex,” said photographer Ashley Gilbertson, who first met Filkins at the Baghdad bureau in early 2003, “was he always had something happening. He’d be working at the most feverish pace on one story, exhaustively reporting it, and at the same time, he’d be researching and talking to people for a dozen other stories.” Gilbertson, who’d been working around Kuwait during the U.S. invasion, said he’d never seen anything like it. “Dexter was intense and came across more single minded than any other reporter I’d met. I think that came across as manic initially — I thought he was crazy."

A year later, Filkins and Gilbertson, a tall Australian who was 25 at the time of their meeting, would team up to cover the battle of Falluja. There they’d be bound by a personal tragedy.


BY THE TIME John Burns, a puffy haired, sharply eloquent Englishman officially began running the bureau in 2004, the Times in Baghdad had found its groove. It had hired a half-dozen translators and about 18 Iraqi “string” reporters. These string reporters, scattered across the country’s various provinces, would relay news as it broke to their American colleagues in Baghdad. The New York Times even hired a cook as well as several Iraqi drivers who were well acquainted with the country’s main streets, back roads and alleyways. Several of these Iraqi employees were armed, which would prove crucial.

As 2004 progressed, the violence in Iraq was skyrocketing, all hints of a civilized society were dissolving, and Al Qaeda fighters were streaming in through Syria. But Dexter Filkins still ventured from the Times’ compound — which by then had become well fortified with 25-ft blast walls and razor wire — so often that, between 2003 and late 2006, his tenure in Iraq, Filkins’ byline appeared on the front page of the New York Times 162 times.  

During his time in the country, Dexter Filkins talked to hundreds of bereaved victims of violence; he interviewed insurgents, walked the halls of Saddam’s former torture chambers, watched a thousand men bow in unison at daily prayer, and mingled with throngs of people celebrating in Baghdad after the country’s first free elections. He sped through the desert in a convoy with Ahmad Chalabi and his 100 armed guards. He reported from Mosul in the north, where American soldiers were often ambushed; from Najaf in the south, where politicians strove to reach accord with insurgents; from Ramadi in the center — in the Triangle of Death — where a lone battalion of marines hunkered down for weeks in claustrophobic quarters, determined to hold the city.

“Dexter was matchless,” said Burns, who already had over 30 years’ experience as a correspondent for the Times and had reported from several war zones before assuming the position in Baghdad. Filkins says he was driven unmercifully simply by a desire to understand every part of the story.

“The whole time in Iraq, I was just trying to figure things out. That was my passion. But the story was so insanely complex that even if I wanted to stop, I couldn’t. When I’d finally unlock one door, I’d find there were a hundred other smaller doors behind it. I had to keep going.”

One of the few who knew just how determinedly Filkins worked in Iraq was Warzer Jaff, his translator and right-hand-man for over three years. On a lavender-skied rainy afternoon in Manhattan recently, Jaff, who now lives in New York City, sat down in an Upper West Side diner and talked about the time the two shared in Iraq and Filkins’ level of dedication when it came to journalism in that country.

“Sometimes we’d go out to these places that were so dangerous doing one interview could get you killed,” said Jaff, a fit 38-year-old, originally from Kurdistan. Though the New York Times initially hired Jaff in 2003 as a translator, he played several other roles, too. Jaff had been a Kurdish guerilla fighter who fought Saddam in the 80s and 90s. Working for the Times, he was known as someone unafraid to draw his gun to protect a reporter’s life. Jaff continued:  “We’d spend the whole day in these dangerous places and probably interview, like, 10 or 15 people. And I thought at the end of the day, ‘OK, this is great, we did great.’ And then we’d go back to the bureau and Dexter would start writing and would be like, ‘Fuck. We don’t have the story.’ And I’d be like why and he’d say, ‘No, Jaff. We don’t have it. We didn’t get the right quote. We have to go back.’”

In addition to the peak standards Filkins required his journalism meet, John Burns said that Dexter was the best because his reporting techniques often worked so effectively, especially at press conferences. It got to the point where some of Dexter’s American colleagues in the room even took to mimicking him, Burns said.

“You’d have Dexter walk into one of these Baghdad press conferences, looking all disheveled, running his hand through his hair as he’d ask his questions, and he would just take the microphone and he’d say,  ‘Hey, man’ — he was addressing a four-star general — ‘Hey, man, I’m just trying to figure this out, I’m just a little confused.’” Once Filkins had the general’s attention, Burns said, he’d hit him with a follow-up question that was “dead on,” shooting straight to the matter. The effect was jarring and often those Filkins addressed would fluster. The tactic, Burns said, had a tendency to shake loose otherwise closely guarded bits of information. “Dexter is good at disguising how bright he actually is.”

Some of Dexter’s other techniques may not have been so readily adopted. For example, Filkins was known to dress up in traditional Arab garb so he could head into neighborhoods so perilous he almost certainly would’ve been harmed were his true identity discovered. “No one looks less like an Iraqi than Dexter,” said Burns from London where he now heads that city’s bureau for the Times. “But there Dexter was, in his keffiyeh and dishdasha, about to get into one of our armored cars.”

The war gripped Filkins so fiercely, Dexter recently told Vanity Fair, that when he was sitting on a flight returning to the U.S. from Iraq in 2003 and learned from a stewardess, mid-flight, that Saddam Hussein had just been captured in Iraq, “I turned into a lunatic. I literally tried to convince them to turn the plane around in the air.”

Upon landing in Miami, Filkins immediately flew back to Jordan; from there, he drove the 500 miles through the desert to reach the Times bureau. Shortly before reaching the bureau, however, Filkins got into a car accident and nearly paralyzed himself. The next day, after being fitted with a neck brace, Filkins went to Al-Dawr to see Saddam’s spider hole for himself. Upon arrival, insurgents opened fire on Filkins’ car and his driver sped off. It one of his closest calls but it certainly wouldn’t be his last.


DEXTER FILKINS IS standing at a lectern inside Politics and Prose, a neighborhood bookstore in Washington, D.C., telling another packed audience a story he’s told 100 times before. It’s a perfect little story. It always gets a laugh and helps Filkins illustrate how uncertain and dangerous the landscape was in Iraq for western journalists.

“So I’m in Iraq,” Filkins says, looking out at an almost all-white, fifty-something crowd here for the reading at this bookstore not far from the White House. “I’m about to sit down for an interview with a Sunni sheik, Sheik Achmed. And it’s just me and my translator, Warzer Jaff. And so Sheikh Achmed has tea and sweets brought out for us, the whole thing. But before the interview starts, Jaff and Sheik Achmed start talking in Arabic. And it’s a long conversation, and I was getting a little impatient and I said, ‘Jaff, what’s going on?’ And he told me to hang on. And at one point the conversation got very heated; it was almost like an argument. And finally Jaff said, ‘OK, now you can ask your questions.’ So Sheikh Achmed and I had a wonderful talk, it lasted about an hour, and he brought out more tea and more sweets, great.  In the way back in the car, I said, you know, ‘Jaff, what were you talking about with Sheik Achmed for so long? It was frustrating.’ And Jaff said, ‘Oh, he wanted to kidnap you. I told him he better not even think about it.’”

The crowd breaks out in laughter, and Dexter shakes his head, amazed himself at the story.

Even Jaff, as he sat in that Upper West Side diner, had to laugh when he heard how prominent the tale is in Dexter’s arsenal.  “My God did it get close,” he said.  But later, as Jaff would think back to just how many risks he and Dexter took together, and how dangerous most were, he’d stop laughing.

“Let me tell you something, so many times with Dexter we were this close to getting killed,” Jaff said and held two fingers an inch apart. “Sometimes he had no idea how close we were."

One of those times was in summer 2004. Filkins, Jaff and a driver, Walee, were headed back to Baghdad through Falluja after working a 12-hour day when they spotted a teahouse on the side of the road. Though it was months before the marines would storm the western-Baghdad city by fire, Falluja, since the invasion’s beginning, had always been one of the most dangerous places for foreigners in all Iraq. Though Jaff was a translator and Walee a driver, both men carried guns. Without Dexter, walking into this teahouse wouldn’t have been a problem; with him, the equation changed completely. Plus, Jaff added, it didn’t help that Dexter “looks so American” and has body language like “an army guy.” Nevertheless, the three walked inside the crowded teahouse and Jaff went to the bathroom to wash his hands. Right before doing this, he told Walee specifically: “Watch Dexter.” When Jaff returned, Filkins was gone. Walee had turned his back for a second.

“And I look around and I just almost went crazy, and I was ready to take out my gun or something. My God. He didn’t have any idea how dangerous it was, what he just did,” Jaff said.  “I went outside the teahouse and I found Dexter near the road on the phone with the foreign desk in New York, talking loud in English. About twenty men had begun to surround him as he talked, but he didn’t realize because he was too involved with New York. And these Falluja guys in the parking lot looked crazy, and they were just ready to kill him — it was very easy to kill someone in Iraq — and all these guys were whispering about him, and I swear if he stood there for another 15 minutes, he was gone. They would have just put him in something and taken him away.”

Ali Adeeb, who worked at the New York Times Baghdad bureau from 2003 to 2006, managing the 18 Iraqi string reporters for the paper, said that when Dexter is in the field, “he focuses 100 percent on the story. He forgets everything around him and sort of loses contact with his surroundings. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s the way he operates.”

After an especially deadly series of car bombings at the Baghdad headquarters of the International Red Cross in 2003, Dexter wandered into a plaza in the area packed with hundreds of Iraqis; he wanted to do some reporting. Before Dexter knew it, the crowd, hysterical with anger over the chaos sweeping their country, and noticing an American was in their midst, set upon him.

“People started clubbing me,” Dexter writes in his book. “Someone stripped the phone from my hand, then my notebook and others grabbed my arms.” Walee, Dexter’s 6-foot-8-inch driver, noticed what was happening and pulled Dexter back from the grip of the crowd, saving him from what Dexter has said was certain death.

Sometimes, Filkins’ bold actions pushed his colleagues past their limits. On a hot afternoon in 2005 in the northern Iraqi city of Kadhimiya, Filkins was working on a story with another of his translators, Yusra Al-Hakeem, when about 20 men wearing all black and each holding a machine gun — the Mahadi Army — showed up to the city’s government center, where Dexter and Yusra were waiting to get an interview. Mahadi Army members began staring at Dexter, and Yusra, who had worked on many dangerous assignments, had a uniquely bad feeling this time.

“I was starting to get really nervous and something in my gut told me to get out of there. And Dexter saw how nervous I was and he said to me, ‘focus.’ And I said, ‘Dexter, I think we should go.’ And he said, ‘Yusra, please, focus on the story.’ And I said, ‘What about your safety, Dexter?’ And he said, ‘Fuck my safety!’ and I shouted back, ‘Fuck your safety, but what about my safety?!’”

In retrospect, Yusra, a sprightly and petite woman with great brown eyes, said she understood why a group of men with machine guns wouldn’t unnerve Dexter, who had already reported from the battle of Falluja. Still, even a year earlier at that battle, Filkins wouldn’t let fear deter him. The only difference was in Falluja someone got killed.


ON NOVEMBER 15, 2004, Dexter Filkins and Times photographer Ashley Gilbertson were embedded with 150 marines from the 1/8 Bravo Company, as it launched an assault on Falluja, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad that had evolved into an insurgent stronghold.

Day after day Filkins filed stories from the battle; it was reporting that would win him a George Polk award. He and Gilbertson were traveling with Bravo Company — on foot — as it fought a ferocious house-to-house style battle with insurgents. The goal was to capture the city, and both sides were taking heavy casualties.

That afternoon, The New York Times, over satellite phone, told Ashley it needed a photo of a dead insurgent for a story. The marines, at this point, had overtaken a large part of Falluja but were stationed now at its outskirts. Ashley and Dexter asked a marine commander if they could go back into the city for the photo — they had heard there was a dead insurgent lying at the top of a mosque’s minaret. The commander agreed but assigned a detail of soldiers to the journalists for protection. The group now walked back into the city, smoldering and in ruins, and headed for that minaret.

“We came to the door of the minaret,” Filkins writes in The Forever War. “Ash and I stepped in to go through the door when a pair of marines stepped in front of us. We’ll go first, they said. The first marine put his hand out...” The marines recognized that, even though the reporters were brave for wanting to go right in, it was their job to lead the way should any danger lie ahead. The two soldiers started up the minaret’s narrow, winding stairs. Gilbertson and Filkins were in tow.

“The shot was loud inside the staircase, and I couldn’t see much, because the second marine was falling backwards, falling onto Ashley, who fell onto me. Warm liquid spattered on my face...the first marine was struck…he was dead.”

The journalists were right: There had been a dead insurgent at the top of the minaret. But there was also a live one with him. As the lead marine, Lance Corporal William Miller, walked up the stairs, he was shot in the face three-quarters the way up. Later, a lieutenant in Bravo Company acknowledged that Miller would still be alive had the Times not wanted the photo but he also forgave Filkins and Gilbertson, as did most of the men in the company. “It’s a war; that’s what happens in war” is how one soldier put it, Filkins writes.

Since then, Dexter has tried to make peace with the incident and has visited Miller’s family, who wasn’t angry at him, he writes in The Forever War. Miller’s parents actually thanked Filkins for writing such an honest and full account of their son’s final moments. They said Filkins’ story added feeling and dimension, two things the military’s cold written report lacked.

On the tragedy, Ashley said:

“I think about the kid every day….I see a shrink, and, yes, sometimes we talk about him [Miller]. I, like Dexter, continue to cover the story, and that's one way of coping, and I've been focusing a lot on working on stories that might help the vets. I'm trying to humanize much of the death and killing in a way American's can relate, by photographing the rooms of the fallen marines and soldiers. I'm also focusing on post traumatic stress disorder and suicide. I worked for four months on a story about Noah Pierce, who did two tours and came home and shot himself.”

Not only would both journalists have to carry around this new burden upon returning home, but Filkins would now have to do it without the support he once had. The war had put major strain on some of his personal relationships, and after 10 years of marriage, Filkins underwent a divorce in 2005. During his tenure in Iraq, he writes in The Forever War, “I lost the person I cared for most.”

That person was Ana Menéndez, a Cuban-American journalist and author Dexter met at the Miami Herald, his first major newspaper job, in the early 90s.  In 1995, the two married and, for a long time, Menéndez tried managing her career around Dexter’s. When Filkins went to the L.A. Times in ’95, Menéndez went to the Orange County Register. When the L.A. Times sent Dexter to India, she came along, and when the New York Times, on account of Filkins’ knowledge of west Asia, sent him to head the paper’s Istanbul bureau, she also accompanied. But when Dexter traveled to Iraq in 2003, Menéndez finally had to stay behind. She dedicated her first novel, which came out in 2004, to Dexter who was in the war zone. Eventually, Ana said in an e-mail message, the circumstances would prove too difficult.

“Ours was an ordinary marriage, subject to ordinary pressures and challenges. Our story was exciting in many ways, but ultimately it succumbed, like any other, to the great levelers of distance and time,” wrote Menéndez from Cairo, Egypt, where she’s on a Fulbright scholarship, lecturing at the American University and learning Arabic. Menéndez said she’d read Dexter’s book; she was glad things were turning out well for him. “I’m thrilled for his success — happy that the difficult years he lived through could be transformed into something sublime and even beautiful. And happy because I lived much of that story with him, and it’s my story also.”


DEXTER PRICE FILKINS was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on May 24, 1961. His parents, Helen and Cedric, met when they were stationed in southern Frankfurt after World War II — she was a club director for the U.S. Army, Dexter’s father was a lieutenant. After moving back to America the two lived wherever Cedric’s job with General Motors dictated — first in Queens, New York, then Cincinnati.

When Dexter was eight, his parents divorced. Helen, not having much money but too proud to move back to her parents’ home in Madison, Wisconsin, took the family — Dexter, his older brother Rick and his younger sister Louise — down to Cape Canaveral, Florida, because, Helen said, the cost of living in this small town near the Kennedy Space Center was cheap.

“It turned out to be a great move,” Helen said over the phone from her home in Florida where she still lives. “The kids couldn’t have been happier because the weather was so good.”    
      
Dexter grew up playing midget football and little league and also had a passion for running, which would never leave him, even in Iraq. Though Dexter still talks to his father, Cedric didn’t play much of a role in raising him. But that didn’t seem like a problem

“Dexter’s very independent and my mother was really a saint and acted as both mother and father,” said Louise, who now works for the Center for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C. “Besides,” she added, “Dexter was always too busy and had too many friends calling to worry about that.”

At Coco Beach High School, Dexter was voted most popular and elected president by his senior class. Later he went on to the University of Florida and won a scholarship to study philosophy and international relations at Oxford. It was there that Dexter decided he wanted to become a journalist. “I sort of backed up into it,” he once said in an interview with C-Span.

Helen, however, said she knew her son would be a writer, even from an early age, and could point to a specific moment.

“One day, when Dexter wasn’t home, I think he was about 12 at the time, I walked into his room. And on his desk there was this essay. It was about a trip he’d just taken to visit his father. And I read it and it just blew me away. It was so descriptive and it was letter-perfect. I couldn’t find one error.”  (And Helen had a sharp eye: she had been a writer for the Kennedy Space Center as well as a college English teacher.)

Louise said that when her brother was younger he never mentioned outright that he wanted to become a reporter, but it seems a natural fit, considering his upbringing.

“When our family sat down at dinner it was like the ‘McLaughlin Group’: we all talked about politics and what was in the papers. And Dex was always — you know this was before computers, the Internet and cable news, so basically it was just Time and Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report — and he was always reading one of those.”

While Dexter wasn’t too much of a risk-taker growing up, there were hints he might grow into one if the opportunity presented itself.

“I remember one year he went on a trip to Washington,” Helen said, “and he called me up and told me he had just climbed Mt. Rainier. We live in a place that’s about six feet above sea level. What did he know about climbing mountains?”

“Well, there was this one book,” Louise added, “it was our favorite growing up. It was called Men of Daring. It was published in the early 30s, and it was about, like, just all these cool men — Teddy Roosevelt and Winston Churchill — all these sort of renaissance guys, these adventurous guys, and Dex just loved this book and wanted to be like one of those guys; we all did.”

Though Dexter actually went on to become a “man of daring,” his sister and mother say they wish he just wouldn’t be that daring. They worry dearly for his safety, even more now after having read The Forever War.

“Boy is that book something,” Helen said. “He risked his life and I’m glad it’s over. But I was horrified when I read it. As his mother, I should get a medal. You know, there really should be an award just for mothers of sons in war zones. The worry. It’s terrible."

Louise had a similar reaction. “The book was really hard for me to read. I got to see just how many times Dex escaped being killed or hurt. And when I’m reading the book, that’s my brother, it’s not just a journalist. And, you know, some of these stories I’ve heard over the years, and then I read them and I say to myself, ‘Oh my God, it was worse than I thought.’ It really stays with me.”

Though the family tries to stay in touch, mostly by e-mail — Louise and Helen both have Google alerts set up to tell them of any news Dexter’s filed or when a new book review on The Forever War has been published — having a relative who’s a foreign correspondent is difficult.  The last time the whole family was under one roof was about three years ago, Louise said.

Rick, Dexter’s older brother, who works as an attorney, still lives in Florida and helps Helen who is 85. Still, Helen said, she wishes she could see Dexter more.

“We know the New York Times believes that Dexter is their man but maybe one day Dex will come back home. We hope soon.”


BACK IN NEW YORK, Dexter is checking his watch, anxious to get over to the New York Times for his new assignment, anxious because he barely ever has any time these days — or ever.

In a week he’ll be on the plane to Amsterdam. The Forever War is being translated into Dutch and five other languages, and he needs to make an appearance for the publisher.

Dexter’s finished his coffee and is now on to the bottle of Pepsi he brought with him. Filkins has even been known to drink Red Bull first thing in the morning to get, and keep, him going. As he talks about the war and what it’s all meant to him, he takes extra deep breaths, as though he’s trying to clear a tension that has built in his chest. Mostly, Afghanistan and Iraq have left him with mixed feelings. What he’s sure of, he says, is that the general mood in America today doesn’t resemble that of a nation at war, which upsets him. Dexter says he’s even loath to talk about his political beliefs on Iraq and Afghanistan. He sees it as punditry, an indulgence.

“These wars aren’t about me, they’re not about you and your opinion, they’re about the people who are fighting them, and the problem for me with America is that nothing is asked of the average person, of the typical American, to do anything. We haven’t had to pay higher taxes, there’s no war bonds, there’s no draft, there’s no nothing, and so, therefore, what are these wars? They’re something we argue about.”

Dexter brightens when the conversation lands on all the friends he made in Iraq, many of whom were Iraqi employees for the New York Times. In several cases, Filkins — in ways large or small — helped his friends “get out.” Dexter wrote letters of recommendation for two veterans of the Baghdad bureau for scholarships to study journalism in New York. Both got it. In fact, Warzer Jaff, the translator, had been on the phone with Filkins minutes before he sat down that day on the Upper West Side to recount the risks the two took together. Filkins had been pleading with him to consider accepting a scholarship at Harvard — a scholarship Filkins was trying to help him get — instead of going back to Iraq to work as a reporter.

As for going back to the country himself, a country that Filkins adopted a great respect and affinity for — he even said he now loves Arabic music — it doesn’t seem likely, though he does admit missing Iraq, especially after he first returned to the States.

“When I was there, I was thinking about home. When I finally did get home, I found myself wanting to go back.”

Ashley Gilbertson said he understood what Dexter meant. “Those of us that stayed have a real sense of mission on the story. It’s almost hardwired, that we need to be there, to see the story firsthand and relate it as honestly as possible to the people back home.”

During Filkins’ tenure in Iraq, he saw much death, sometimes on a daily basis. However, Dexter says it hasn’t traumatized him but did admit to having a hard time when he first got home, in late 2006: “I was pretty numb to everything, I wasn’t interested in anything. It took me a long time to come back to life. It really did. I was pretty tired, I was pretty worn out.”

Still, Dexter was able to point to a moment he knew he’d make it.

“I have some really close friends that I’ve known for many years, and they go surfing in Costa Rica every year. And I hadn’t gone in many years, and then in 2006, I went to Costa Rica and met my friends….It was surreal; I had been in Iraq for so long and seen so much destruction and so much violence, but then suddenly I was eating beans and rice and driving to the Pacific Ocean. The tropics helped bring me back. They’re just full of life and color, the sea breeze. That’ll save anybody.”

Filkins’ sister, Louise, said she still had her doubts.

“I think to most people, Dexter’s still the same guy. But I think, to some degree, it’s affected him deep down — probably in ways we’ll never know.”

Walking from the coffee shop near Times Square and heading toward his newspaper’s headquarters a few blocks away, Filkins doesn’t look back. When he arrives at the New York Times, and the elevator stops on the third floor, he’ll get off and walk over to the foreign desk, where he’ll finally learn his next assignment: Afghanistan. Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurging and stepping up its car bombings, where American and Afghan forces are under siege and the future looks opaque. It happens to be terrain Filkins understands better than most, and he knows that’s why he has to go. “But am I excited?” he’ll later ask. “I’ll tell you one thing, I would have been a lot more excited 10 years ago.”

Guns

So on Saturday, I held my first handgun. I have to admit, it was a bit exhilarating. But the whole experience was a bit strange, too, and gives some insight into how I think.

I was working on a story that brought me to a pawn shop. The pawn-shop owner was super nice and helpful. I hadn't gone to the store to write about guns or anything like that, but when I expressed interest in the handguns that were in the back, in a glass display case, one of the shop's employees asked me if I'd liked to see any of the guns. I said sure. Then he asked me if I'd like to hold one. Again, sure.

First he allowed me to hold a black and silver Smith & Wesson, 9mm handgun. It was very heavy and the first thing I thought was, wow, this is a Smith & Wesson. This is, like, an American gun. Many Americans, I'm sure, take pride in this company.  After all, this is top-notch American manufacturing.

The pawn shop employee -- a super nice and bright kid -- told me about clips and safeties. He articulately explained the difference between automatic and semi-automatic handguns. (You have to keep squeezing the trigger for a round to fire on a semi-automatic.) I was grateful he never pointed the guns in my direction when he showed me their features.

Then we moved on to other handguns.

We got to a revolver. It had a rotating cylinder that held six bullets and looked sort of modest, sort of old-fashioned, if you will. He told me that several decades ago, police in the US used to use such guns. But to be honest, the only thing that I could think of was that this gun, this revolver he was showing me, looked incredibly similar to the gun that was used to kill John Lennon.

Lennon was killed by a Charter Arms .38-caliber revolver. I once saw a picture of this gun. I remember a feature that stuck out to me was the shortness of its barrel. The barrel of the revolver that the pawn shop employee was showing me was also incredibly small -- shorter than a pinky, really.

The next thing that the pawn shop employee said about this particular revolver, which he'd put down on the counter, perturbed me a bit.

He said that such a revolver isn't that accurate because it has such a short barrel. He said that you have to be really close to your target, when using this gun. Otherwise, your chances of hitting the target aren't really that great. I thought about how John Lennon's assassin stood about six feet behind him.

We moved on. It was really interesting to see how small some guns are. Heavy, but small. He showed me a Glock, an Austrian-made gun. He told me that Glocks are very durable and dependable. They cost about $250, used. I couldn't help but be reminded of the many rap songs -- I used to listen to rap -- which mention Glocks. So these were Glocks, huh.

I held a few more handguns, even pulled the slide back on one. I asked which weapon was the top of the line, and he showed me a small black pistol, which was pretty heavy. He said that this pistol, which was made by Springfield Armory, had three safeties on it. He liked this feature because, well, safety, is important.

I agreed. But all I could think about was the fact that in the summer of 2011, a drug addict in Long Island, who wrote on his Facebook page that he loved Springfield Armory guns, walked into a pharmacy and cold-bloodedly murdered four people -- a teenager, a 33-year-old woman, the pharmacist and an old man -- with a gun made by Springfield Armory.

Sure, it was exhilarating holding a handgun for the first time. Frightening, too.

Frame of Mind

You know, it's crazy: the frame of mind we're in at any given moment has such a strong influence on how we perceive and interpret things.

Let me clue you in as to what I'm talking about. The other day, my aunt bought me a present. She put it in a bag that was from Talbots, the women's clothing store. (Don't worry, it was a gift but it wasn't from Talbots.) Anyway, I looked at this bag several times, and several times I noticed the graphic located on both sides of the Talbots bag. I thought nothing of this graphic. The bag subsequently stayed on the floor of my apartment because I was too lazy to throw it out.

Yesterday, I learned that the mother of a best friend of mine died. I knew I had to call my friend after getting the news from a mutual friend of ours. I sat on my bed and stared hard at the phone for a second before calling him. Anyway, he and I talked for a while about what happened. During the course of our conversation, I slipped down from the bed to sit on the floor. As he and I spoke of his mother, of her last days, of the shock of it all, of mortality, my eyes happened to fall upon that Talbots bag — it was right in front of me — and the graphic on it. This time, though, my eyes didn't just glaze over the graphic.

Indeed, the frame of mind we're in at any given moment has a strong influence on how we perceive things.

Poems

So I've been writing poetry for a pretty long time. I've written poems on lots of themes and things. I remember one of the first good poems I wrote. I was 16. The poem was about a girl named Rachel Scott. This girl was a victim of the Columbine massacre. Something about her story hit me. So I wrote a poem. And over the years I've just continued to write about things that hit me. Anyway, I don't usually post my poems, but I figured why not. Below are some poems that I've written in the last year. And I promise I'll try to dig up that poem about Rachel Scott sometime soon.

*

I recognize it in you

I recognize it in you
Because I see it in me.

Whether you're sad or happy

I can read your tone with ease

And read deeply in your smirk

Expose the tablets of your heart

With little work.

I can shoot the breeze with you

If I see it's your desire

Or square off toe to toe

If I feel you've got the fire.

I can read your eyes, you know
I can read your brow
And your laugh is like an open book
That's open to me now

I hope you know it's not a joke
And that it's plain to see

I recognize it in you
Because I see it in me.

*

I'll write a bit of poetry

I'll write a bit of poetry
Some solace in the night
The nighttime breeze comes through my room
A black cat to my right

All these things I do not know
Staggering, profound.
Thunderclaps and rain
My heart a pound pound pound

What tethers me to you
Is it something in my soul?
Something in my nature?
No sense in letting go?

I'll live and then I'll die
Without really having known
Something in my nature
Something in my soul.

*


I really don't care what you say

I really don't care what you say
I'm still convinced love saves the day
I still believe that when evening falls
And shadows climb my room's four walls
Love will hold me in its arms
And ward off all the world's ill charms
And with the day, I'll find the strength
Cause love will pull me on. 

*

Existential angst

I've got this huge burning intensity inside me
What's this feeling that I feel?
A pocket full of anxiety,
A lightning rod wheel
Chugging, chugging, chugging
A fighter plane, a tank
A ramrod or an oil rig.
Existential angst.

*

A melancholy feeling comes at night like sad instrumental music you can place your own words over.

*

The postman asks, Priority?

The postman asks, Priority?
As if there's any other way
For me love's number one
A few more dollars I can pay
A few more hours I can spare
Believe me it will pay
The postman asks, Priority?
My god, of course, I say.

*

All of us need anchors

All of us need anchors
We don't want to be adrift
To feel life alone
To feel as if we've missed
Our calling in another
Hold this heart, hold mine
All of us need anchors
In sea, in space, in time.

Remembering Jessica Mena...

Below you'll find a free form kind of piece about my friend Matt's sister, Jessica, who died in 2009. The piece, when it gets down to it, also deals with the impressions that people leave on us. There are several sections to the piece. I think it's worth the read. I hope you do too.

On a recent morning, I woke up and was able to remember a dream I’d had during the night. The dream was about Matt Mena, my childhood friend. Dreams are strange and sometimes, after we wake, we remember only snippets or individual scenes from them. When it comes to this dream I recently had, I remember only one scene.

I was sitting along the edge of a round, aboveground pool (the type often seen in people’s backyards) and my feet were in the water. I was wearing a bathing suit and was taking in the sun. Matt Mena was sitting next to me. We weren’t talking. It seemed as though he was just keeping me company. I had a sense of impending dread. Dread. This was the dream’s pervading feeling.

Anyway, as I sat there, I looked in the water. Now, this pool, it was very, very deep. Usually aboveground pools in people’s backyards are eight feet deep, max. The pool in the dream seemed bottomless; it was more like a void.

At any rate, there I was, just sitting on the edge, peering into the water with a sense of dread. The feeling turned out to be founded. From the deep, I saw someone beginning to swim toward the surface. I kept my eye on him. He was getting closer and closer. Though he was swimming to the surface, I first espied him when he was quite deep. Don’t ask me how he was able to hold his breath for so long, but he managed. Anyway, I knew why he was swimming to the surface. He was coming for me, to pull me under. I was certain — insofar as people can be certain in dreams — that these were his intentions. I was also certain that this person wanted to pull me under as a prank. I’m not sure, however, if he wanted to drown me. It felt more as if he wanted to pull me under to be funny.

Now, this person swimming to the surface, he knew Matt. In fact, he and Matt were friends. I’m not sure if I were friends with this person but I was certain he and Matt were. Anyway, I was watching him swim upward and before I knew it, this person was moments from breaching the surface, from reaching me and trying to pull me under.

But I was ready.

I had a firm grip on a pipe that was fixed to the pool, near its edge. I knew that this person in the water was about to try and pull me under, but I wasn’t going to let that happen; I was prepared. Anyway, the person finally breached the surface and started tugging on me. But he couldn’t budge me. And he knew it. He had to quickly rethink his plan.

He turned to Matt, who was sitting next to me, and said, “Help me....Tickle him" — referring to me, of course — "Hit his hand!” This person was trying to enlist Matt into helping him drag me into the pool. When I noticed this, I was a little concerned. I knew he and Matt were friends. But Matt and I were friends, too. Anyway, as I sat there, holding on to this pipe — the only thing preventing me from succumbing — I turned to Matt. I wasn’t sure if Matt was entertaining the idea of helping this person but I wasted no time nevertheless. I said to Matt, “Don’t you fucking dare.” Matt then looked at me and his expression said everything. It said that he was by no means about to help this person pull me into the water. His expression told me that he wasn’t even entertaining the idea. Matt was on my side. And I wasn’t, in the end, pulled under.

That was the dream.

Anyway, that morning, the morning on which I woke from this dream, I had an urge. I’m not exactly sure why I had this urge, but it probably had to do with the fact that I’d just dreamt of Matt; it probably had to do with the fact that Matt’s noble actions in my dream reminded me of the strong bond he and I once had. Anyway, the urge was this: to write about Jessica, Matt’s sister. Jessica died of a drug overdose in the winter of 2009. But you would never have thought it. In fact, I never knew Jessica had a drug problem or even took drugs. Anyway, I had this strong urge to write about Jessica after waking up from this dream the other day. So here goes.

*

I can’t remember when I first met Jessica. To me she always seemed pretty young. I was three years older than she. I must have met her in late 1994 when I was 12 because that was the year I became friends with Matt. I must have met Jessica at Matt’s house, at his mother’s second-floor apartment in the Great Neck Terrace.

Jessica had a caramel complexion, sort of like Matt. Unlike Matt, though, who has frizzy hair, Jessica’s hair was straight. It was black, too, and I remember her wearing it long. Her eyes, if I can remember right, were the color of her skin. Like caramel. But I’m not really sure. At any rate, her eyes were light. Jessica always seemed very calm, too. Her voice was smooth and soothing. She spoke at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace. I was never sure why she spoke this way, but it sounded fine and it was completely natural to her; there was no affectation going on.

I remember her room at her mother’s apartment in the Terrace. It had a fire escape and it was always very messy. A mirror hung above a long cabinet across from her bed. I think her walls were painted magenta. Anyway, Jessica was often on the phone when I came over to Matt’s house. (I started coming over often in 1995.) Yeah, I remember her frequently being on the phone or out when we — as in Matt’s friends — came over. She was never too interested in Matt’s friends. She’d always speak to us, but she was never interested in involving herself in our circle. She certainly never dated any of us; at least I think she didn’t. Jessica always had her own friends. She was always very popular. However, it must be said that she could be reticent and she didn’t always seem that extroverted. Therefore, I did wonder at times how she had so many friends. Not that she wasn’t a likable person, she was, but she seemed more the type who wouldn’t be that interested in making a ton of friends. Still, she had them.

Jessica would always ask you a few questions if you were to come to Matt’s house while she happened to be hanging around. She seemed to be interested in you, but, as I mentioned, not that interested. Still, it must be said that, when Jessica asked you a question, it never seemed as though she were simply trying to make conversation. It never seemed like she was talking to you out of a compulsion to be polite. She was asking those questions because she was interested.

To be honest, I don’t have that many memories of Jessica before she entered her first year of high school. I was a senior when she was a freshman at Great Neck South High. I remember that she was in my first period keyboarding class, which I took my senior year. Jessica sat next to me, at the computer to my left. I think I might have even cheated off her during a test once or twice. I remember Jessica as a decent student. I remember always thinking how strange it was that Jessica had entered my high school. She always seemed so young. I always felt as though I was much older than she was, and it was always a bit odd seeing her in the hallways.

However, when I did see her walking in those hallways, ignoring her was impossible. If I’d see her walking, and if I wasn’t too much in a rush, I’d always look her way....I’d always acknowledge her. I also remember that she, too, would always acknowledge me. Most of the time we wouldn’t even say anything to each other. It was usually just a look. We’d make eye contact and sort of grin. But it was nothing flirty. It was more a look that said, “Well, well, well...what trouble are you causing?” Or perhaps the look — and we’d always maintain strong eye contact when we passed each other; we’d maintain eye contact for as long as we could — said, “Oh, you again. God, it’s kind of strange seeing you in my school, but it’s cool.”

Whatever the case, we’d always acknowledge each other. Jessica knew how close Matt and I had been even though Matt and I had grown apart a bit during my high school years and she knew that I’d had a pretty big influence on him. I sort of got Matt into graffiti. In fact, I think I was the person who originally helped Matt get in touch with his “bad” side. At any rate, Jessica knew I was no angel. The expression she had on sometimes when we passed each other let me know this.

Ah, Jessica...what else? I remember that I went to a house party, which Jessica also attended, during my senior year of high school. As mentioned, I always felt as though I was a lot older than she was, and true to form, I remember saying to Jessica at this party that I couldn’t believe that I was partying with her; after all, she was so young, right? She and I were in the backyard of this house and we were sitting on lawn chairs facing each other and it was night. I remember saying that I couldn’t believe that I was drinking a beer with Matt’s little sister at a high school house party. I can’t remember what her reply was but she must have in some way played down my comment. She must’ve replied with something cool. She probably told me it really wasn’t that big of a deal, then changed the subject.

I also remember that Jessica was supposed to study psychology in college. I remember thinking that I thought that that would be a good pursuit for her. You were never able to really get inside Jessica’s head. It was always hard to read her. People would also say, perhaps somewhat jokingly, but still, that Jessica was good at persuading people, that she had strong powers of persuasion. I guess I could see that. It always seemed as though she was always able to read you; that she could see inside you, if you will. Whether this was true or not, I don’t know. However, it felt that way.

I saw Jessica for the last time on an LIRR train heading toward Manhattan. She was sitting with some guy, some guy whose likeness I can’t at all remember. I was traveling on the train alone that day. Jessica and this guy happened to be sitting a few seats away from where I’d taken a seat. Jessica noticed me, I think, and came over. She sat next to me and we started talking. She seemed very interested in what I had to say, more interested perhaps than she ever had been. She seemed very interested in what I was doing with my life. She was asking more questions than usual — though not too many — and she seemed very interested in the answers. This must have been 2008, the latest.

Anyway, we talked for a while and then she and her friend got off the train somewhere in Queens, though I’m not sure where. I really can’t even tell you what we talked about exactly. Our conversation must’ve centered on what she was doing with her life and my journalism. Anyway, I remember that she looked good, healthy. She looked the same way she looked when I first met her — thin, with a soft smile and long black hair. Her voice was still smooth and calming and she still talked at a slightly-slower-than-normal pace. I remember she had a nice smile on when she said goodbye to me that day. I also remember that she maintained eye contact with me for a little longer than someone else might have. She maintained eye contact with me for just a few moments longer, similar to the way she would when we’d pass each other in the hall in high school. And, just like all those times in high school and even before, she seemed to posses an ability to see what was inside.

Slowly Read and Dream

I’m not a critic. Never have been. When it comes to journalism, my thing is writing stories. Let the stories speak for themselves, you know? But that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy critiquing; that I don’t go over things in my head — song lyrics, an actor’s mannerisms on screen, brushstrokes from a Rothko painting — and think about why I believe those things are good, bad, terrible or profound.

With that in mind, I want to share with you a poem that I like; one that I long ago memorized and feel is far superior to many others. The poem is William Butler Yeats’ “When You Are Old.” Now, I can’t say when I first came across this poem, but I can say that I remember being awed by its crushing beauty. I want to share something that I like best about the poem with you, but first, without further ado:

          When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
          And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
          And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
          Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

          How many loved your moments of glad grace,
          And loved your beauty with love false or true,
          But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
          And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

          And bending down beside the glowing bars,
          Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
          And paced upon the mountains overhead,
          And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

In addition to the incredible way Yeats mixes melancholy ideas and images ⎯ love fleeing, a quick, sorrowful expression ⎯ with those that are happier ⎯ a photo album, the comfort of a fire place ⎯ to evoke a feeling of pure nostalgia (a mixture, mind, you, that is quite effective. After all, why do you think that the Beatles song “In My Life” is so popular? It, too, melds sadness with happiness with heartbreak and hope, four feelings that for the most part mark our lives on earth and characterize our relationships with each other), there is something else at play in “When You Are Old.”

The way in which certain words rhyme — or sort of don’t rhyme — in the poem, which was written in 1892 for the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, a woman Yeats loved but who would never marry him, is reminiscent of one of life’s truths.

Read the first line of the first paragraph. You see how it ends at the word “sleep”? O.K., now read the first paragraph’s last line. You see how it ends at the word “deep”? These two words rhyme, of course. But had you realized that while reading the poem?

If you’re like me, you read the word “sleep” at the end of that first line, thought — because, after all, this is a poem — that you were soon to read a word that rhymed with “sleep,” like “beep” or “creep” or, even, why, yes, “deep.” However, by the time you actually reached “deep” at the end of the fourth line, you’d totally forgotten that there was a word at the beginning of the stanza that shared that “ee” vowel sound, and were no longer anticipating the rhyme. The rhyme, so to speak, had been lost.

Nevertheless, it must be mentioned ⎯ and I think you’ll agree if you read the poem a second time ⎯ that a relationship still exists between “sleep” and “deep,” just as a relationship exists between “grace” and “face” and “bars” and “stars” even though these words don’t seem to rhyme when the entire poem is read in one shot. 

The vowel sound of each last word on each first line faintly echoes when you reach its supposed counterpart at the very end of each stanza.

In other words, even though the rhyme “isn’t” there, it sort of is, in a very slight, almost hardly traceable way.

So what’s the meaning behind all this? Well, here’s where the critic part comes in.

We all know that poetry is all about expression; that poets don’t only use words to express meaning, they also use meter, rhyme, punctuation, even the appearance of the words on the page. Yeats, in “When You Are Old,” does this non-rhyme rhyme, this echo-of-a-rhyme technique, for a reason.

He wants to emphasis that nothing in life is eternal and the poignant sadness of such a fact. By making sure in the poem that that rhyme is lost, or gets lost, he wants to draw attention to the way the things we love in life leave us or become less a part of us.

Think of it this way: When we recall all that we love in life ⎯ the beautiful things, the things rich with meaning, with poignancy ⎯ they arrive in our consciences in a powerful way. But for how long will  ⎯ can?  ⎯  these memories be so powerfully felt? Furthermore, how long will we have the opportunity to love the people we love or experience things that are meaningful? It might feel like forever sometimes because life, especially in the moment, can feel quite rich.

But time marches on. And we can’t escape, nor should we forget, time’s eroding powers. Furthermore, we should never forget how time has the power to transform our consciousnesses and snatch people and opportunities from us. Time erodes life, no matter how poignant life seems sometimes.

Yeats reminds us of this fact through his poetry.

Through that lost rhyme, the one that almost vanishes on the way from the last word of each stanza’s first line to the last word of each stanza’s last line, Yeats reminds us. Even though something beautiful exists, it is eventually lost. The rhyme itself erodes to the point of near extinction. Only a faint echo exists when we arrive at the last word of each stanza. Similarly, only a faint echo of the things we love might exist at the end of life, no matter how rich or beautiful or saturated we believed them to be or how intensely we once felt them.

Although this idea is sad, it’s also natural. Life passes and time erodes things. Eventually, we’ll turn around to look at the things we love and, though it’s no fault of our own, they’ll hardly be there. Just an echo of it all. 

It’s like walking out onto a narrow walkway made of rock with someone you love. It’s sundown and the two of you walk out on this path, one that extends from a high bluff, hundreds of feet above a crashing sea. And then, for some reason, you walk ahead of your partner; perhaps something strikes your fancy and you just walk ahead. The sun is beautiful and warm and casts a bronze glow on the rocks and the water and the grass. And you’re absorbing the view and enjoying it, and you turn to mention something to your love, perhaps some sweet remark. But when you turn, you see your love is gone; that you’re standing out there on that pathway alone. Just you and the hardly perceptible essence of something that had been there only moments ago.