About Me...

My idea of "arriving" is having a front porch and time to sit on it | I once thought I had a good grasp of things | Trees and waves are not that different to me | A perfect evening for me is: a stiff drink, a stack of records and the company of a good friend; or an outdoor baseball game on a perfect spring night; or being with Jamie | I once worried that if I didn't plan the perfect honeymoon, my newfound wife would leave me. I was 8; my tentative plan was a safari - I even drew pictures of us riding on elephants. As it would happen, Jamie and I never really had a honeymoon, and surprisingly, she hasn't left me over it | I find writing stories to be a lot like drawing a picture; the page never turns out quite as well as you imagined it would | I have never smoked pot | I seldom read genre books and usually regret when I do | I like cold air against my skin | I grew up listening to vinyl, wishing my dad would replace our collection with CDs. Now I'm forgoing CDs for vinyl. Some things change; some things wait for us to change | My mother used to make me watch every State of the Union and Inauguration | I'm learning to withhold, though I'd rather be sharing | During a block party when I was young, my mom asked if I'd join her for the line dance. I said no. She offered me a dollar. I still said no. I've never turned down a dance since | I should've been a rock star. Books will never compete | There is little as wonderful as clean sheets after a hot bath | I always take my coffee and whiskey neat | I’ve seen Clapton play “Cocaine” | It’s important to me that my wife and I have a “connecting” conversation everyday | I was able to sit in on the U.S. Supreme Court on the first day that Chief Justice Roberts delivered a decision; it was also on one of the final days that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor delivered one of her final decisions | I never feel close to God than when I’m lost in nature | Until I went to high school, I started every day with my mother reading to me and my siblings | I don’t need to mean everything to you, but I do need to know that I mean a lot to you | I sometimes dream about being an outlaw, owning only my bike and what my bike can carry | I have almost a religious love for record stores, bookstores and great bars | In most regards, I try, but not as hard as I could | I have a profound love for adventures, both big and small | I don’t discriminate when it comes to beer | My father once said to me, “The first time I told my father I loved him was to his grave, and I never heard him tell me that he loved me.” He looked at me then and said, “I love you, I do. And I want to hear you say that you love me too” | I don’t remember meeting my wife; we were young and probably at family camp | I’ve seen Neil Young play “Rockin’ in the Free World” | I’m of the opinion that we need to give ourselves permission to try things and to be willing to look stupid in the process, though I sometimes struggle with both. Convictions, as it turns out, are not the half of it | I think there is nothing more attractive in a person than reverence | It’s hard for me to accept that I will never be everything to everyone close to me, and even harder to accept that they don’t want me to be | I don’t understand poetry | I proposed to my wife by bringing her to our bridge and having, at the stroke of midnight, a canoe filled with white roses, candles and a wedding ring come floating out from under us | I will never nurture, mentor, befriend or love as many people who have nurtured, mentored, befriended or loved me. But I will try | I’ve seen John Prine and Emmylou Harris play “Angel from Montgomery” | Most of what’s making this list is what’s on my mind at this particular junction in my life | I drive really well, probably better than you | I am trying to understand how fiction works | I’d almost always rather be bicycling about | Most things are more fun with the company of my wife; but not anything to do with baseball | My father once took out the garbage only to realize when November arrived that he had thrown away all of our hats, scarves and gloves | I batted .490 my senior year | Line by line, I am figuring out how fiction works | I have never wanted to live anywhere other than Minnesota since the day Paul Wellstone died | I have the unfounded worry that the Coliseum will fall down before I get to see it | I have two mottos: 1) Michael's is my Home Depot, and 2) Just because I don't like construction doesn't mean I don't like construction paper | I once forgot to run on a suicide squeeze | My wife once turned me and said, “Do you think people think I’m kidding when I tell them I want to be Spider Man?” | I have an amazing capacity to eat | I realized that books had been written while trying to count every book in my parents’ house | I will never get used to rejection | I have picked up hitchhikers, but never hitchhiked myself | I have a fear of being abandoned and in no large sense have I ever been abandoned | My family used to walk on Christmas Day evening around Lake Calhoun, stop at Café Wyrd for coffee or hot chocolate, then continue on to Cheapo for records | I love having a tattoo and think I’ll probably get more | I love swimming and climbing trees and sea-worthy sailboats | Canoeing away from our wedding on a still night was when I realized I loved being married | It meant a lot to hear my dad say: "John relies on me for everything. He will never feed himself, change himself, put himself to bed or do any of the things we do for ourselves. It has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life to do these things for him” | I waited to have sex until my wedding night; my wife waited too | I love being a student, both formally and informally | I firmly believe good music is good music, and I am trying to abide by that | I was there when Johan faced Schilling and went five shut-out innings, struck out a baker’s dozen and, alas, the game was won via a walk-off slam by Jason Kubel in the bottom of the twelfth when the Twins were down by one | I was meant to be in love | I’ve seen B.B. King play “The Thrill is Gone” | I feel insecure that I will never be able to give birth | I spend more time listening to music than just about anything else | I don’t like gambling | I am not sure how to feel about my growing sense of skepticism when it comes to the church | I would like to know how David James Duncan felt when he finished “Brothers K,” if he knew what he had just done | I sometimes read a book in a day, but then go a month without reading a book at all | I have only occasionally seen my father confront anything, which is probably why I confront everything | I believe lists are both useful and not me | Once, while taking one of my “walking away” pictures, I was able to capture a lightning strike | I believe someday there will be a book with my name on it | I am comfortable with ambiguity and skeptical of absolutes | I once spent a year reflecting on the word “worship,” then the next year on the word “reverence.” This year, I’m reflecting on “lonesome” | I used to think grammar was spelled with an E | My first girlfriend and I had the same birthday; I was a year older | Every place I visit, I take a picture of me walking away | I was born on my parents’ living room floor during the Carter Administration | I don’t like having a job and can’t wait for the day I can bid them adieu | After telling Sam, the boy I have taken care of four almost five years, that I was going to be on vacation for two weeks, he teared up and said, “Who’s going to take care of me?” | I write better when I’m drinking, and this remains true even when I wake up the next morning and look at what I’ve done | I was once alone in a room with President Clinton | I need encouragement and to be told that I am loved and appreciated | A day without a nap is an incomplete day | I would happily give up writing for one Major League at bat | I once went to Scrabble club and met the midwife from my birth. As it would happen, she remembered me; could even remember my birthday | I love peanut butter and eat it almost everyday | There are times, usually when we’re standing face-to-face, when I feel like I’m seeing my wife for the first time. When this happens, I am amazed and cannot look away | I felt a greater loss when “Boston Legal” ended than when “West Wing” ended, and I have never gotten over the fact that “Arrested Development” ended | I believe I'm very close to where I should be | I so admire Virginia Woolf | I used to go with the women to the antique stores while the men stayed home and watched football | I’ve seen Dylan play “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” | I find a profound sense of freedom in Vonnegut’s “So it goes.” | My dad once offered to hold my slingshot while I used the outhouse. When he used the outhouse, the slingshot fell in. He fished it out with a stick, but it was never the same | I have two thousand books and as many problems, but at least I've got two thousand books | I think often about what it would be like to be able to play an instrument or dance well or have a motorcycle | I love teaching, but not being a teacher | I remember when MacDonald’s put their sandwiches in Styrofoam containers, and I remember how my mother would plead to have our sandwiches delivered on napkins | After getting married, my wife and I loaded our ’87 Corolla and moved to New York City. We had very little money and no jobs, and, as it turned out, an apartment with a broken sink, a toilet that didn’t flush and barely enough room to stretch out | I go to a lot of shows, but not nearly as many as I’d like | Finding something to connect over never gets old | I find it hard to give people a complete picture of me | I’ve seen Springsteen play “Thunder Road” | I love spontaneous gifts and handmade cards | I sometimes imagine what it would be like if it weren't 90 feet to first | I am seldom as moved as when I am witnessing a man cry | If it’s not late into the evening already, I’m wishing it were | I am all too aware of the distance between you and I