The Bowling Man

What He Knocks Down. And What We Do About It.

THERE IS A MAN BOWLING, a man of some size, and his bowling balls are sizeable, too. They are not standard size, 12 or 16 pounds, they are 30 pounds, each of them. Now, the man is not bowling down one alley, he is bowling down a dozen alleys, and sometimes more, and all at once.

At times we think he is just playing a game, a crazy game, and that his single-player sport amuses him, pleases him, while most of us just watch, scratching our heads.

At other times, we’ll say, No, he is not merely playing a game, he’s going after these pins in all these lanes in a fury -- but with a smirk on his face -- and his aim is not simply to knock down ten pins on a dozen different lanes almost all at once.

His goal is to obliterate these pins.

He wants to take down all of them, or at least 80 of the 120, or more – it’s always more with him. And then he will accordion his arms or clap to himself, as if he were age 9 or 10, when small acts of destruction were not only rebellious kid stuff, but its own twisted reward.

The large bowling man does this every day, knocking down pins we thought were just fine upright, or not worth bowling over, of little importance. Or, worst of all, he knocks down what’s of great importance to the clear majority of us, so making the bowling man seem nothing but mean and spiteful, and whatever is the opposite of respectful. There is nothing careful or considerate in how he hurls these balls.

AS FOR THE REST OF US HERE, we write about the bowling man, or mock him, or compare him to a long-dead German or a hanged Italian, or we throw darts with amusing imagery and pithy phrases.

But mostly we write and we write some more.

We may view our words as nets and catapults. We intend that which we craft to act as a talisman, combining protection with a way to fire back. On a good day, after a few good paragraphs, our private sense of being keyboard warriors is more than a symbolic act.

We fire up metaphors, we analyze — fiercely and sometimes in razor sharp detail. We inform and we forewarn one another, as if he is soon arriving, or just around the corner. Of course he is already here, here for over 10 years (50, in the public arena).

We know he’s here. The destruction has already begun. And yet we can scarcely believe it still.

So, we hit the keys, and come up with portents and signals of warning, and we wonder what he will do next. We ask: Which pins will he knock down today?

WE REFLECT as a group and look back, often, at least once a week, to understand how he came to this position in the first place. Who let the bowler in, anyhow?

When we’re not curious, we’re furious. With some bitterness, we ask and re-ask: What’s wrong with nearly half of us? Really. Allowing this to happen, and twice?

On occasion, we ponder our national schizophrenia.

How could this nation follow the class act of a thoughtful point guard with a grubby golfer who cheats? Why O Why did we say, Sure, come in again! to such a vengeful and malicious takedown artist. What mass madness might this be?

Such that, in round two of his one-man wrecking ball slash bowling tourney, we must ask not what’s wrong with him, but what in God’s name is wrong with us?

SO, WE WRITE to figure it all out. To figure ourselves out.

Thousands upon thousands of cottage authors are writing about the man every single day. Then we share what we write with one another. Sometimes we nod in great agreement, and sometimes we engage in heated debate, as if the fire of our passions or our small, flinty frictions will melt the awful cold winter of our current reality. Of him.

And then, after we debate, we write some more. It’s as if many of us are thinking, “Give us another week or two, and we’ll have it all figured out!”

We wish. And yet we write, and we explore. We pen, and we probe. We cease not from our explorations and damnations, our spitballs and our gleaming analysis…

While he bowls. Three lanes at once, eight, a dozen. He throws the great circular weight, and down goes a bunch of pins on Thursday, just like they did on Tuesday, and the week before, and the week before that.

THERE IS A MAN BOWLING. He throws strikes and gutter balls. He throws wildly and then surprisingly smoothly. He throws because he can’t seem to stop throwing. And the man knocks down pins daily, so many pins, and we are as astounded as we are troubled, and we say so. Often. Actively. Colorfully.

But he keeps bowling. Every damn day.

And so far, with all our eloquence and examination, we don’t know how to stop him.