Garp, Fascism, And Parental Failure

Dad

Nothing is funnier to me than a reply to someone saying no by saying yes like:

Benn: Shanks, no.

Shanks: Shanks, yes!

oh

A PROUD DAD RIGHT HEREEEE!!!

tom: “what will you miss about him?”

james: “the days when he would just produce total magic that would make you go, oh my goodness. putting a car on a road with such precision that just left all the other drivers around him with no option but to sort of surrender to what lewis was doing on the road. the ability to make a tyre last and last and last, even while telling bono it wouldn’t. […] the drama that goes along with having him as a team mate. just the delivery of brilliant, brilliant performance. i’ve said before i think he’s the best racing car driver there’s ever been, and i still believe it.”

tom: “and that’s coming from a man who has worked with michael schumacher!”

james: “another utterly remarkable person. it’s a parlor game we can all indulge in endlessly without resolution. but if i, gun against the head, had to choose the best person, i would pick lewis.”

—Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

i think every time someone says "sebastian and lewis are/were the nicest guys on the grid" mark webber and nico rosberg feel a great disturbance in the force and have to sit down for a while

it never fails to amaze me how interlinked lewis and nico’s pasts are. being teammates for years and best friends since you’ve first seen the karting track—that’s a bond you can’t just lose immediately.

their old karting prinicpal had said that they were too connected. 15 years, and they’ve become enemies? he did not even entertain the idea. they can never be enemies.

nico begged his father to make a team in karting so they can be teammates. lewis injured himself and had a broken arm, so nico did his setup for him. their first and last press conferences were just the two of them. lewis was there when nico got his first podium, and nico was there when lewis got his first podium, first win, first title—always there to support him by the sidelines. sometimes even next to him on that podium, when the stars aligned.

and then nico moved to mercedes. when nico won his first race, lewis was incredibly proud. even when lewis beat him in the title fights when they finally were teammates like they dreamed of, nico still congratulated him. never failed to. even when he retired, he still cheers lewis on and celebrates his wdc wins—but just not as his friend and family anymore like he used to be. just as another face in the crowd, another reporter.

they knew each other so well that nico knew how to play mind games on him, knew where it hurt. lewis knew him so well that he understood why nico retired, despite how many refused to understand.

even now, you cannot mention their careers without talking about the other—their rivalry going down into history as the one that set off the silver war. try to erase it, but it is only nico’s name that is engraved in between lewis’. tucked in between and breaking what would have been a consecutive streak.

their names are forever engraved next to each other. they share the most number of front row starts in formula 1 history — a staggering amount of 44 times. how poetic that it is and will forever will be the same number that lewis drives his car with. even in this, lewis has the upper hand.

this red string tying us together will choke us both before we learn to cut it off harshly. We’ll try to untangle each other from it and see how even seperated, the marks it leaves behind an absence too heavy to ignore. always there, always missing something.

all we can do is marvel at the imprint it leaves behind, yearning for what was before. back when we did not know how to hurt each other. back when the fabric of the thread was nothing but the woven joy and secrets we held for each other, before we learned to craft it, sharpen it—into a weapon of our own design.

to be loved is to be known, and you knew me—didn’t you? but each man kills the one he loves, and i fear that we were never the exception.

Guy of all time Doodles