EVERYTHING

It started like this:  I couldn't sleep.  My head hurt.  I walked the hall.  In the bathroom I bashed my knee on the vanity.  My teeth hurt.  I felt my head.  A knot, two or three.  What is it?  What are they?  In the morning, I was exhausted.  I couldn't get out of bed.  In a day or so I recovered but spiked a fever.  My knee was lividly, shockingly bruised.  Nothing else, chills.  But then it started again.  Head.  Teeth.  Unspeakable fatigue.  The doctor said, see your nail beds...they're all one color.  Look at mine, contrast.  I want to do a blood test.  Diagnosis. Biopsy.  Diagnosis confirmed.  Things went very quickly.  Few options, little discussion.  Actually, lots of discussion, but just spinning wheels, no grain to grind.  Here? Somewhere else.  When?  Soon.  Move to Baltimore, commute to Baltimore?  Move.  Then commute.  10 months of poison.  Miss thanksgiving.  Infections.  Fevers.  Blood so thin vaso-pressers hung.  Remission.  Two years.  Good years.  Great years, with gnawing dread of relapse.  Then,  relapse.  Back to Baltimore.  Trial.  Trial failed.  Standard salvage.  Standard salvage failed.  And it was brutal.  Torture.  10 mos of poison distilled into two weeks.  No choice.  Down to my last.  More fevers.  Steeper, stranger fevers.  Fevers with nightmares of shrinking, shrinking, diluted, what? Self?  Too small.  Way, way too small, smaller than sand in space bigger than space.  The infinitesimal versus the infinite.  Terror dreams.  And infections: Gram negative, fungal.  Nasal biopsy, gum biopsy.  At any hour.  There was no day, no night.  MRI.  Scans.  Infection came millimeters from gray matter, the point of departure.  What time is it?  It doesn't matter.  Surgery.  The surgeon said successful.  Surgeons always say successful.  Another one.  The surgeon said successful, truly.  Yes, success against infection.  Disease still galloping to the gallows.  Refractory disease.  This is a synonym for incurable.  They sent me home with oxygen and a special potty.  How long? I asked.   Weeks.  Months. Hard to say.  But no more?  Probably not.  Sorry.

New trial.  But first: qualify for new trial.  The lowest point.  Lowest.  I gave up.  It's the truth.  I quit.  I didn't have anything left.  Couldn't do it anymore.  I wanted to go home.  I knew what that meant.  Still wanted to.  Could only figure I deserved it.  But for what?  I don't know.  Something. . .something.  Wanted to go home; it was probably gonna be hard, hurt, wanted to get it over with.  Qualified anyway.

New trial works.  New trial is a miracle.  New trial is 9 hours away.  Six months of weekly trips nine hours away.  Flights.  Cancelled flights.  Hotels.  Taxi cabs.  Diners.  Chinese food.  Donut shops.  Cellophane crackers.  Remission.  Transplant.  Transplant is worse (repeat: worse) than above but with hope. Drugs and drugs and drugs and drugs and a suppression of the self, a scrambling, blotting, eclipse of the self.  And the blessed German woman, just like me whoever I am, was.  Sorta.  Pain, loneliness.  So so lonely.  Suffocating solitude.  Even with people, lonely, desolate.  Far far far away.  Who am I?  How did this happen?  What will happen to...where is everyone? Who are the people?  How could I have done this to my wife?  What is this?  The asking asking asking echoing off the canyon walls of my heart ceaselessly, keeping the brain awake.  4, 6, 12 days.  No sleep.  More drugs.  Day by day.  You might live.  But what kind of life will it be? Who are you?

Still working on those, but I came home.  A year ago today.  My wife's birthday.

In this time people told me: the names of doctors.  Herbal cures.  They were so, so sorry.  Told me not to worry.  They told me God had a plan.  That everything happens for a reason.  They wanted to help.  Some wrote, but didn't say anything.  Some said the perfect thing, naturally without trying, without words even.  Some wrote letters I read over and over and over and so many times that to unfold them now makes me nauseous with transport back to that time, still I can't throw them away.  Some said they were coming to see me or were going to call.  But didn't.  Some came to see me but the visits were hard.  They wanted to see me, but could only look at me.  Some sent greeting cards and emails.  They said:  I can't believe it.  I'm sorry.  I can't believe it.  Im praying for you.  They told me you should give your life to Christ.  You should get right with god.  You should ask forgiveness.  Some of the people who said stuff like this were well-meaning and sincere, if you can imagine, and some of the people who said these things were guilty guilty people probably hoping for a way out.  Some people sent blankets and food and slippers.  Some people asked after me.  It was a death watch there for a while.  In the darkest days, some just came to see what it looked like.  They had good pretenses, honest covers, but think how powerful curiosity can be.  Some people think a dying man is a medium, a hotline, a stigmata.  They just want to know, hear, touch the hem.  Some people, plenty of people, enough people--I call them friends--did it just right.  They fixed my house.  They watched my kids.  They helped pay bills and they didn't want any recognition and they didn't pretend that they wanted no recognition.  They just did it and said, forget about it.  They sat with me, hours and hours and hours and hours.  If I was asleep or awake, they were there.  They didn't need anything, they just sat or read or talked or didn't talk.  They traveled very far just to sit with me.  They knew flowers don't rally and hams don't count.  Not the way we want them to, the way we wish they would.  They're not wrong but they don't matter.  Lots of people, you're probably one of them, understand a dying man is just dying and might need company, his house cleaned, his wishes heard, his memory stoked.

Look, people say and do stupid shit.  I'm one of them, the people.  I say and do stuff I regret.  I don't get it right.  We don't mean it.  It's takes work, getting it right, and you could still get it wrong.  You have to concentrate.  You have to be honest with yourself.  The self is such a sucker, so easily lied to, so easily deluded, drugged.  And honesty is hard or it seems that way.  But you can get better at it.  You can improve.  You have to practice.  Be honest.  Not mostly.  Totally.  Unvarnished.  All the way.  HONEST.  Don't flinch.  If you know, say.  If you don't know, say that.  Most of the time you don't know.  We don't know.  Face it.  Admit you don't know.  You can take a guess, you can say from past experience, but you dont know.  You might want it a certain way, wish it, pray for it.  But that's not knowing.  It's okay not to know.  We don't know.  And that can drive us back, make us angry, defensive, agressive, protective, stingy, hesitant.  Don't do that.  Be honest.  And generous.  Give and give and give and give.  It's not really that simple.  That's a tricky part:  There's nothing simple, nothing's cut and dried.  Its all wild and complicated and nuanced and messy and sometimes there's no right, only wrongs.  But being honest and generous is the right place to start.  Start at the right place.

I had a notion to give some of those people a piece of my mind.  Tell them what I think of advice and cures and prayers and oh man ....but I don't want to do that anymore.  I don't know.  I don't know.  Don't blame.  Be kind.  Love everything.

Certifiable

Last week Matt and I attended a USA Weightlifting Level 1 Coaching Certification.  My score on the final exam was 95%.  Matt, 98% (spread is within the test's margin of error, but I easily admit Matt's easily 3% better than I am.)  Our level of satisfaction with the course, instruction and weekend overall:  exactly 0%.  I now know why the United States fails so miserably at weightlifting on the world (i.e. olympic) stage.  The material was dated, the instruction poor at best, the facility cramped and the barbells junky and few.  (the food is terrible and portions are small!)  Could have dealt with far worse space/equipment if only there was good material or decent instruction, if only we were learning anything at all.  Anything at all.  Really, there was not one thing to feel good about, save that I had a good friend along with me.  Tuition, travel, lodging, food...all down the drain.  One thing after another to let us down.

Pretty much everybody knows, or should know, a good athletic foot position is toes-forward.  Early on many people squat with their toes turned out so that their knees can track over them.  Knees-out helps the femurs generate torque and lift the caboose--it's a squat.  Toes-out solves the torsion problem positionally but the position presents a big compromise: now your feet are in a not-so-athletic position and you run the risk of motor-patterning a bad foot.  Ideally, one squats knees out over straight toes, generating torque muscularly and maximally.  This requires strength and flexibility and those can take some time to develop.  We tolerate less-than-ideal foot position to keep the knee safe and maintain balance, but we're ever cultivating more umph, better mechanics.  Never under the delusion that it's ideal.  Try this:  stand with your toes forward and heels down.  Squeeze your belly and your butt.  Relax.  Now turn your toes out and do the same thing, belly & butt.  Get it?

Right.  So.  Day one lesson, lesson one.  We had not even gone over a dead lift, you know, the way you pull the bar off the ground (only later did we realize we would NEVER COVER THE DEAD LIFT.  Imagine teaching someone to dive w/o making sure he knew how to swim or even put on trunks) when someone asked about the feet.  Strong woman, eager to learn, worried she was too duck footed.  Matt and I glanced at each other.  We both had an uh-oh kind of feeling from the classroom.  Instructor says:  Oh yeah, you gotta let your toes point out.  And then demonstrates a "good" toe-out position.  Yeah.  See if I have straight toes, I get pulled forward. (BECAUSE YOUR FLEXIBLE AS A 2x4 YOU CLOWN)  More demonstrating, AS IF HIS OWN SHITTY MECHANICS were proof everyone else needs shitty mechanics too.  Oh my god.  Matt and I were in a race to show a good toe-forward, torso-upright squat, avec balance.  Matt beat me to it (3%) and his squat is better anyway, but I can squat with my feet forward, knees out, torso upright, and balanced.  I know I can b/c I've been working at it for a goddamn YEAR (or more).  Guy in our group kinda went pop-eyed at Matt's pretty-near perfect squat and promptly left our group.

There was an assistant coach who squatted with knees in.  No lie.  Lots of people do, but none that call themselves weightlifting coaches.

They didn't like how Matt throws his head in the snatch (he uses it to open his hips better than you've probably ever seen hips open).  It is true that often this will lead to pulling the bar away, but Matt does not.  They still wanted him to fix it.  It became clear by the end that they could find no other fault, so they held on to the one they thought they found.

The only thing they could coach me to do was "shuffle my feet," that is, they wanted a wider landing position.  Fair enough, but plenty of drill work is done in the jumping stance (this was all empty barbell work).  And if you remember a Coach's Eye vid I posted a while back, I diagnosed my own (what I thought at the time) foot fault.  Actually as I've been studying/thinking through the problem, I think I'm so right-dominant that under load, my right foot shoots (shuffles, their word) out farther 'cause it can.  I've since seen it in some other (much stronger) power cleans.  My point here being, I got plenty of things to work on but my coach this weekend wasn't really up to the job.  If he was even aware of having a job.

They look down their noses at CrossFit (despite the fact that 80% of the class trained at boxes).  I knew they would and am not really troubled by it per se.  I try to live and let live and honestly, I think weightlifters are some of the most athletic humans to ever roam the planet.  But the "you can't do 30 snatches" criticism of CrossFit is stupid.  AND I find the doctrinaire debates so enervating.  Yawn.  CrossFit has it weirdnesses, but it has pretty much saved the sport of weightlifting in America.  The sport of weightlifting doesn't know it.  Watch Froning do Isabel.  You can do 30 snatches if you're fit enough to do 30 snatches.  Turn your toes out it will help balance you, if you can't get your torso upright.

There was no, I mean NONE, talk of conditioning.  Just lift weights.  with your toes out so you can balance.

The cert was in East Stroudsburg.  That's in the Poconos.  So is the Pocono International Speedway.  There was a NASCAR race on the same weekend.  The gene pool in the Stroudsburgs is more like a test tube.  Add to that the world's largest spectator "sport" whose main corporate sponsor is big tobacco and it's very easy to assume natural selection can be not so selective.

There's gotta be a big take away from the weekend, even if I have to go meta-meta to find it.  Right??  I'll keep thinking and let you know...

Dicky Betts played an outdoor concert.  Sound system so bad, I couldn't recognize one song.  Local cover band doing all the Journey hits.  And Billy Joel.  I'm really starting to worry myself, how my disgust of Billy Joel is starting to wane.  Seriously.  But I'll save it for another post.  Or, better, maybe not.

Thought I might get into some nutrition stuff today, but that's probably enough.  I'm over it, have recovered.   HG and I have been pretty serious OUTLAW followers for the last two weeks.  Loving it. What I really love is having my training partner back.

Last one:  in the classroom they showed a clip of Pyros Dimas in London setting world record in the snatch.  He happens to throw his head out the back of the building.  One student commented; no engagement from instructor.  Shoulder shrug.  Later, in a little quizz-ish back and forth (that was so 8th grade and annoying b/c it was them and totally could have worked if it was cool and edifying but whatever) instructor asked "what can happen when you throw your head back in the jump?"

Matt: "world records."

Don't splash the wall. Don't splash the men.

Good friend of mine, a mason of very great talent, is stacking the bricks around a million dollar home out in the county.  The neighborhood is thick, green and lush with arbor vitae, chemically treated lawns and  young moms making a sport of stroller pushing.  In-ground pools, underground electrical hookups, service vans in the driveways.  The job is on a corner lot, carpenters and plumbers inside, masons out.  Some of the masons enjoy spectating the sport of stroller pushing.  The owner of the place is a doughy Italian straight out of a mob movie, track suit, accent and everything.  He even knows something about masonry, (brick face and stucco!) just enough to make himself a nuisance.  The brick on this job are all 12" which is like the tall-boy or pounder or 16-ouncer of brick.  The bond (that's a mason's word for the pattern the bricks make)  is a very attractive pairing of sorts that suits the longer brick.  The corners should start with common 8" bricks but the doughy Italian insisted on 12's, no one knows why, except he is buying the bricks.

Up until the day I arrived, the laborers, not to say craftsmen, were some Amish boys.  They were referred to as round-hat wearing mother-fuckers because they did not possess the same skill as their English counterparts and were costing the job time.  I found this curious as it seemed to me one of the stereotypes for the sect (among others less pleasant) was that they were artisans or at least handy.  "Maybe with barns or something.  This here is a house with electricity," it was explained.  The Amish had committed fireable lapses in performance, but their father owned the hydraulic scaffold.  They were not present this day, which is one of the reasons I was.

A mason tender is sorta like a valet but not so well dressed.  The tender does all the tasks that will keep the mason on the wall, plying his craft.  The most important rules are: don't splash the wall.  Don't splash the men.  These can be distilled into the tender's commandment:  don't splash.  Other tasks include carrying stacks and stacks and stacks of bricks.  A stack of 12"s goes about 90 lbs., shoveling mortar (masons call it mud) into the work trays.  A shovel  of mud probably goes 40 lbs but takes about twice that force to remove from a big tub of it.  Pick this up, move it over there.  Cutting bricks on a giant masonry chop saw.  Because my buddy's working speed is about twice that of a hard, fast worker, he sets his chop saw up on the ground so that to use it you have to kneel in front of it like you're making a prayer.  You are actually, to keep your fingers.  Every time I prayed to the chop saw, someone from another crew would come up and watch, adding to my anxiety over ruining a 12 inch brick.  When the saw spun down they'd give me some instructions regarding the job site.  I said okay a lot and laughed coarsely when they said shit like "havin' fun yet?" or asked me if I'd seen the woman with the stroller.

The other thing a mason tender does is take guff from masons.  Guff for standing around, for mixing the mud too wet, for mixing the mud too dry, for not mixing the mud, for letting the mud boxes get too low, for filling the mud boxes too high.  It doesn't really matter if these offenses are actually committed, the tender takes guff for them anyway.  The upside is you get to hear stories about the working life of masons:  The time there was no work.  The time so-and-so's fingers got cut off by the scissor lift.  The time dude had a bucket of sand dropped on him from three stories.  The time there was no work anywhere.  When the boss fell off scaffold.  The new guy had his wall section torn out brick by brick by the foreman.  Once when no one had any work and we rode our motorcycles to the union hall in the rain. The time a line of fifty dollar bills was clothes-pinned to the the top of the wall, waiting for a crew to brick their way up and claim them.  The day we did 800 brick.  900 brick.  Put up a Target warehouse in 10 days.

I wish had a skill nobler than taking guff.  A trade, I mean.  I'm always a little ashamed at myself around  men that do high-skill physical work.  Like I'm wearing silk underthings and someone's bound to find out.  I offered to run the mixer and make up a new batch of mud. (why the boxes were low, for pete's sake)  Sand, mortar, water.  I've made waffles before.  The mason gave it some thought, said maybe next time, he didn't want to risk jamming the mixer.  would've called him a dick if I wasn't so damn impressed by the way they use a trowel.   I pointed out the stoller babe making another lap and earned a couple points.

Four- five hours tops.  Dirty, hungry, happy that I did not embarrass myself.  No more than usual anyway.  My buddy asked me what I had lined up for the rest of the day.  A wave of shame splashed over me.  I'd planned on going to the gym, but it sounded so callow, puerile, silly in my head.  "Exercise," I said. "You know, fake work."

not a businessman, a business, man

He rode his bike to Sturgis.  South Dakota.  We followed him--my brother, Naughton and I--through Ohio and Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, hell you know your geography.  Past the Chicago skyline, past corn as far as you could see, past the plains the plains, the aptly named plains.  Past whole horizons of sunflowers high a man's head, each with the same cant toward the sun so it was hard to decide if they were many things or one leviathan thing.  Before we left we had to talk him out of the .38 on his person.  "In case there was trouble."  Nate said, "Is it loaded?" And he said, "Why the hell wouldn't it be?"  Actually, we all refused to make with trip unless he disarmed.  Extortion pure and simple, he's rarely talked into or out of much.

We met in 8th grade.  Naughton's mom give him lifts home from wrestling practice.  Home was way the hell over there pretty close to Duboistown.   Eleanor, his mother was in a wheel chair, but she was in charge.  She scolded him and scolded him.  JIMMY! Watch your mouth. JIMMY! Don't leave dishes in the sink.  JIMMY!  That's too loud.  And every time, Aunt Josephine, tittered behind her hand, which burnt the boy to the ground in anger. Yuhzha! he'd yell back, for that was the aunt's family sobriquet, GET IN YOUR ROOM.  Sometimes she'd do as commanded, usually not because it was too much fun to watch him burn.  We all loved to see him get fired up.  Still do.  Josephine was Eleanor's sister and well into adulthood had the working intellect of an 8 or 9 year old.  Sweet as pie, totally dependent on her family, and boy did she have the nephew's number.

Yeah, so.  The boy never was one, really.  Caring for his elders, running a household when most of us would've been stumped by a two-hole outhouse.

And lookout.  Did he run it. The kitchen spotless, the basement clean and fresh smelling.  The car was an early-mid 80's Chevy (Malibu if memory holds).  Interior got a bottle of ArmorAll every week, needed or not.  Vinyl surfaces so shiny and slick they made vinyl seem like a good option.  Antimacassars on all the seat positions.  Fix them please as you exit the vehicle.  From my house to school there was time for Arrowsmith's version of Come Together if you waited in the parking lot so as to enter the building just as the 1st bell was ringing, which we did, oh, every damn day, refusing to give them an extra second of our precious time.

So smart-alecky smart if a chemistry lab was being graded by result, he'd start at the bottom with A-grade result and work the bitch backward calculating values/amounts/ratios/Avegadro's number as he went, conceiving a perfectly fictitious experiment.  And get an A for himself and anyone who copied that lab.  He couldn't do it alone.  The way I helped was by turning the pages of the most current Playboy and keeping the radio tuned.  Where were you on Sunday nights Sept '87-May '88?

I made him mad ONE time.  I thought the crotchless biker panties he found at Sturgis were some kind of gag--poor choice of words--joke.  They were not, hence the anger.  They were actually for someone.  Ahem.  Well, they ended up funny, eventually, just like i first imagined.  I can't say i'm sorry, because i know he values the truth.

You can call him late, say, "come quickly."  And most of the times he'll do it sober.

He talks to my kids like they're human beings, not cartoons.  And when we were kids we made him talk to the parents, straight laced, responsible kid, first in the class, he was perfect cover.  So after his and Wyatt's last pow-wow.  The school teacher called me with a heads up:  Wy-man seemed to have learned a good amount about certain Steeler quarterbacks and sex crimes, real and imagined.  Sorta outta left field for the Potter kid, not typically his issue (though he has plenty)....  yeah, teach, I hear you.  See the thing is, well, we have this friend he's visiting a lot b/c he's leaving the country.  Heart of gold.  24kt. (like his Rolex President)  Very dear to us.  But, well, he's ....I need a good word for...he's feral.  He just is.  And like that lilac bush you don't dare touch because lilacs oughta BE wild, I'm not changing him.  But I will talk to the boy and make sure he is debriefed and no more Uncle Jimmy stories make it back to school.

Threw up in the water fountain at our wedding hotel.  Grabbed only one pregnant woman's ass.  Every superbowl he pays me one handle of Jim Beam as restitution.  This will continue until one of us dies.  Goes to an eye doctor three states away.  Has two vintage cars.  Buys boots that squeak.  Hoards cash.  Thinks BudLight is made by trappist monks.  About as religious as a turnip, yet, actually made us wait in the car while he went to confession (i can only figure they allow installments).  Apparently some kind of asphalt expert.  NORAD went to DEFCON 4 when he landed in Saudi Arabia.  On the phone to the poor woman who merely worked the phones at the trailer joint, he said before he hung up, "ok, Shirley, well get your deal-making pants on, I'll be there shortly."   Wears belt buckles the size of pie plates.  Has a man crush on Ricky Rudd.  Using his kitchen to archive about the last decade of the Washington Post, Sunday paper edition.  Makes background checks.  Drives bank tellers nuts.  Has been found wandering the streets around Pimlico after the Preakness, TWO YEARS IN A ROW.  Only one of those years involved passing out, getting badly sunburned, and relieved of personal possessions.  Will talk your ear off.  Has hair-brained politics.  Maybe the worst diet imaginable.  Poor exercise habits.  And is, I've said, quite, quite dear to me.