by Panio Gianopoulos
Dear friends,
A few days ago, as I was toweling off after a shower, I noticed a small jar of pomade in the medicine cabinet. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed inside; it smelled good, so I rubbed a little in my hair. Then I went out to get breakfast with a friend. When I came home a couple hours later, my wife saw me and said, “Nice haircut!”
“I didn’t get a haircut,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she said.
“Yes…?” I said.
If you haven’t been married, you may not understand the hesitation in my reply. After all, either I got a haircut or I didn’t; this isn’t some reality destabilizing quantum physics-y it’s-a-particle-but-also-a-wave-depending-on-the-viewer situation.
And yet, marriage also introduces its own reality destabilizing field—not malevolently, or in a passive aggressive sad sack “take my spouse please” way—but because living with someone for years teaches you just how unreliable our memories can be. Thanks to the gentle interrogations of my fact-finding wife (hello, sweetheart), it turns out that I have misremembered lots of things, most of them trivial, but every time it’s a little unsettling, regardless of the significance. (And now that my kids are getting older, I also have them chiming in with their amendments and corrections.)
All of this is just to say that, if you’re feeling a bit confused while reading this email, fear not. You are not misremembering. My intermittent little newsletter looks very different. For a number of reasons, both logistical and aesthetic, I’ve switched things around quite a bit.
I’ve also settled on a name for my newsletter, at last. There were a couple other contenders, including one which was decidedly more literary (from a quote by Franz Kafka), but then I thought, the line between literary and precious is already paper-thin, maybe Kafka’s not your boy. And thus, The Companion was born.
The Call of the Catchprase
Last issue, I wrote about my NY-to-CA cross country drive with my daughter, Mathilda. One story I left out to keep things short (and because it’s a little embarrassing) occurred when we were traveling through Arkansas.
We’d left the hotel early in the morning, skipping breakfast, and now it was hours past noon and my stomach was roiling in protest. But unlike the previous days, there were no convenient rest stops every sixty or seventy miles along the way. Somehow the GPS had led us onto a quiet one-lane road that wound up and down bare yellow hills, with almost no signs of human existence in sight.
And then, after turning yet another corner, the road suddenly straightened out, and up ahead, shimmering into view, was a Subway. Now, ordinarily, this vision wouldn't excite me. Subway is low on my hierarchy of fast food restaurants—above desperate plays like Jack in the Box, KFC, and, the-dumpster-known-as-Arby’s, but way below In-N-Out or Five Guys or even McDonalds (which I know isn’t even really food, just colorized, salted, industrial putty and reconstructed pesticides, but, mmm, those fries).
After hours of a stomach-gurgling drive, however, I was delighted to see that loopy, 90s-era desktop publishing quality yellow and green Subway logo, and I pulled into the lot, almost flinging myself out of the car. I asked Mathilda what she wanted (she opted to stay behind, supposedly because she couldn't find her shoes but really, I think, because it was her first opportunity of the day to be away from me), and hurried inside, my arrival announced by the jingle of a bell, perched mistletoe-like above the door.
The woman behind the counter was in her early twenties, wearing a college sweatshirt, and I replied to her friendly greeting with a slightly too loud “Hello!” It’s my eager, quasi-ecstatic follow-up, however, that even now, perplexes me.
“It’s fixin’ to storm!” I cried.
I had never before, in my life, said the words, “It’s fixin’ to storm”—nor had I ever spoken to a stranger with a fake, would-be Southern accent. Furthermore, I’m not not even sure that “it’s fixin’ to storm” is something anyone says anywhere.
Mercifully, the woman behind the counter just went with it, and started talking about tornadoes. (Fun fact: Arkansas gets hit by 39 tornados a year on average, with the height of storm season in springtime, when we were traveling). Then we switched to the topic of quartz (Fun fact 2: Mount Ida, Arkansas is the quartz capital of the world) and soon enough I was back on my way.
Despite my flirtation with public humiliation in Arkansas, months later it still takes all my restraint not to cry out, “It’s fixin’ to storm!” whenever I enter an establishment. It just feels good...
In Memory of Bob Ringwald
I’m very sad to report that my father-in-law, Bob Ringwald, passed away last week. He was a wonderful man, a loving father, and a tremendous musician (piano, banjo, guitar—he could play just about anything). I'll miss his booming voice and bawdy sense of humor. My wife wrote a heartfelt obituary about him for The Sacramento Bee if you'd like to know more about his remarkable life.
Reading List
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul
As the editorial director of The Next Big Idea Club, I have to familiarize myself with a lot of nonfiction books: over 300 books a year. Naturally, I end up skimming many of these. The Extended Mind is the rare book where I didn’t skim even a single sentence. In fact, I read the book a second time, pen in hand, underlining the many amazing insights about how our bodies, as well as the things ands spaces around us, have a profound effect on how we think and feel.
Pity the Reader: On Writing With Style by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. & Suzanne McConnell
Written by a former student of Vonnegut’s, this is a small, smart, and entertaining book of wisdom. A few of my favorite lines:
“Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”
“Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.”
“Literature should not disappear up its own asshole.”
Euphoria: A Novel by Lily King
This was both a national best-seller and an award winner so maybe you’ve already read it—somehow, I’d never heard of it until a friend recommended it to me. Set between the two World Wars and inspired by the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is the story of three young anthropologists caught in a passionate love triangle. It’s intelligent but not boring, atmospheric but not florid, and full of piercing, eternal insights about human nature.
Goodbye!
My daughter, Mathilda, took this during our trip, despite my insistence that the angle was weird.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the latest (first?) issue of The Companion. It took me a surprisingly long time to put together, so the next one probably won’t be for a few months…
Until then, I’ll sign off with some more advice from Kurt Vonnegut, pulled from his novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
“There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
