{"id":429,"date":"2008-06-04T11:06:11","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=429"},"modified":"2008-06-04T11:30:32","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T16:30:32","slug":"trepidation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/06\/trepidation\/","title":{"rendered":"Trepidation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhere is some writer’s well-constructed remark — if I knew where to start searching I’d be there — about the fear of no one ever reading you is only slightly scarier than the thought your works are being read.<\/p>\n

Relatives who live many states away, I learned on a recent family reunion, read me with some regularity. They won’t care about local or state affairs so how can I upload a Brick<\/strong> about my home that’d interest them?<\/p>\n

Ozark friends and acquaintances occasionally mention they’ve read some recent Brick<\/strong>. Maybe I write too intimately about my home, family, or personal history and once-hidden emotions. Do I blunt revelations either from fear of being misunderstood or explaining too well?<\/p>\n

Colleagues within my company, on many tiers, rarely acknowledge Brick<\/strong> to my face, but I recognize its IP addresses when I check my site control panel’s statistics. My company has no direct policy<\/a> on non-work blogs of employees so not knowing if I cross some line causes, well, delays. I’d call myself lucky, but my hard-won judgment on staying this side of the moving line<\/a> has worked so far.<\/p>\n

You could call them blocks, all of them. They keep me from posting with regularity when they get the better of me.<\/p>\n

Then I see my friend Nick Masullo. He’s got a rapid form of multiple sclerosis, forced to retire<\/a> from a cool job in 2003. He still writes songs and even a regular column for the alt Fayetteville Free Weekly (no hyperlink as it posts inconsistently)<\/small>. Sunday, Nightbird Books hosted a release party for his latest CD and also a book<\/a> of those columns. Nick hasn’t walked for ages, and it’s been some time since he’s been able to play guitar. More recently he’s given up on even warbling those lyrics of his. His sight is going. But he played emcee with perfect timing, introducing his songs and essays, as well as their musicians and readers.<\/p>\n

That same day, CSPAN2\/BookTV<\/a> ran a short hour with Michael Kinsley. The commentator and editor is 57 and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s<\/a> at 42. Kinsley and Masullo — even to people whose politics strongly vary — how can their fortitude not be admired? It’s a cliche to say Nick inspires me every time I see him. But cliches generally contain truth. That’s how they got that way.<\/p>\n

That may be so but what is it exactly? I watched Nick and his close friends (I’m well in the middle distance, knowing his wife<\/a> better) on stage trying to figure it out. Can’t say he’s a lot smarter than me. Sure can’t say I side with all of his political stances or that he always defends them well. Kinsley has us both beat on IQ and facileness, even put together then doubled.<\/p>\n

Nick’s wise but not a sage, even with the opportunities that his forced convalescence gives him for lengthy contemplation. As I heard the songs and columns, and his improvised whispered asides, I saw something. He’s not entirely at peace with his prognosis but he’s accepted it. Not only that, his sense of humor has only increased (Ginny moistens his mouth with water from a small spray bottle, and he tells the crowd he never goes anywhere without his “vodka splash”). His love for others is not tinged with envy or bitterness (sure, he’s bitter about the MS and lack of resources for it despite this being 21st-century America). He calls himself lucky for having some resources, worrying only about people without health care.<\/p>\n

Nick simply lives the life he’s got fully, with wit and compassion. Kinsley trucks on, being influential on a national scale. And little ol’ me worries that a quickly written blog entry won’t always be on target, knowing after decades of writing that polished and repolished essays misfire unpredictably, too. If I or anyone prefers life’s usual treadmill to the risks of expression, well look at Nick.<\/p>\n

Everything’s a gift. Every thing is a gift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhere is some writer’s well-constructed remark — if I knew where to start searching I’d be there — about the fear of no one ever reading you is only slightly scarier than the thought your works are being read. Relatives who live many states away, I learned on a recent family reunion, read me with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":258,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/carve-buchwald-on-rushmore\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":0},"title":"Carve Buchwald on Rushmore","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A great columnist passes. It's Art Buchwald, about whom I wrote nearly a year ago, when he'd been in hospice just a few weeks and well before he recovered enough to get thrown out. Actually he was a part of my master's thesis of spring 2003, which researched the apparent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":659,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/09\/the-server-ate-september\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":1},"title":"The Server Ate September","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, kids, here's a lesson -- back up even files other entities are saving for you. Here's what I learned from my service, Hosting Matters: The primary drive on this server failed over the weekend, and all sites were restored [on Sept. 22] from the last error-free backup, from Aug\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":80,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/06\/14-people\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":2},"title":"14 people","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Thursday 9 June 2004. A terrific quote I've recently found and logged in my Commonplace Book (filed on the home and work computers) is: \"Art is not art if only 14 people know about it,\" said by Joni Mitchell, quoted by Jacquelyn Mitchard. (Mitchard is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/a-block-is-not-a-brick\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":3},"title":"A block is not a brick","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, July 13, 2005. So what I do is just admit my fear. Look at this gap in time: days since the last Brick, feels like a month. Why? A lack of topics as well as a lack of opinions? No. It was the feeling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/07\/the-dickens-with-harry-potter\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":4},"title":"The Dickens with Harry Potter","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 27, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Wednesday, July 27, 2005. Three cheers for Harry Potter and his inventor. J.K. Rowling may well be this generation's Dickens. I'm not saying she is a perfect novelist or storyteller, although yes I am implying Dickens can be difficult, especially140 years later. But enough about\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3921,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/11\/brick-endorses\/","url_meta":{"origin":429,"position":5},"title":"Brick Endorses …","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I don\u2019t get this stuff about sports\u00adman\u00adship. You play to win, don\u2019t you? Say I\u2019m play\u00ading short and Mother is on first and the bat\u00adter sin\u00adgles to right. Mother comes fast around sec\u00adond with the win\u00adning run \u2014 Mother will have to go down. I\u2019ll help her up, dust her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"DiamondBrands Greenlight\u2122 Strike Anywhere Kitchen Matches","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Strike-Anywhere-Matches-300x169.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}