Claves de la Pura Vida

Doing some U2 with the boy:  Rattle and Hum, track 8 "Silver and Gold."  Am I buggin' you?  I don't want to BUG ya.  The boy's head boppin, taking it in.  (He's an Edge fan.  As he should be.)  Big satisfied smile of nostalgia from me.  In that moment I saw, and dissociatively realized I could see, the album from about seventeen angles, one for every couple a years over the dam since I first heard it and had it on repeat.  I smiled b/c it was like discovering a little room in my mind the way you sometimes find a fiver in an old coat pocket. Hey look at this.  Perspective is certainly one of the finer benefits of age.  I remembered exactly how encouraged I was by Paul Hewson's defiance and just as exactly I remembered how that encouragement  morphed to exasperation at what I later thought was his glib earnestness.  I likewise sighed the first time I heard Smells Like Teen Spirit and now I don't roll my eyes at the song so much as at my own early-20's angst I thought the song was release valve for.  What was first my thrill at hearing "Okay, Edge play the blues" and David Evans's answering licks later melted-grew-educated (?) itself into a gentle but definite nose-wrinkle because, well, it's not really bluesy.  And then, with all that happening in my head, being 20 and 30 and 40 at once, my son says out loud, "You know without the Edge, I don't think U2 would have had as many hits."  See, there's hard work, perseverance, always room for improvement and so on (thank god.)  And then there's talent:  Shit you can't learn or get better at.  You're just born that way.  I think the hard work angle counts for almost all success and happiness, but only a fool would deny talent's role.  Honestly, the stuff that comes out of this kids mouth.  This morning he was preening over his new bike, teaching his sisters up and down, a thing about which he knows next to nothing, but hell, he's right so often you can hardly blame him for taking a flyer on stuff.  The odds are in his favor!  The oil on the chain?  That's like lotion for the metal.

But so like, all you need is a distinctive voice and a shredding guitar player.  (The First Key. discovered over morning coffee with JZ in Costa Rica) I tell this to Wyatt.  It's my job to pass these things to him.  Just a hobby to pass them on to you.  He stares at me.  Not with incomprehension.  With deep interest.  He knows how to listen.  Man, the kid can LISTEN.  By which I mean focus, think, concentrate.  As long as you're not telling him to clean his room.  And he's thinking: what does this mean, could this true? or is the big dummy pulling my leg again?

Bono and The Edge, I say.

He smiles.

Robert Plant, Jimmy Page.

Bigger smile. Knowing laughter.  "Yeah.  Lennon McCartney"  Totally excited now.

Who's voice, who's guitar?   [Silence]  Ahh, gotcha.

Lennon's guitar.  MOSTly.

Okay.  Jagger.  Richards.  Stones

HA HA. Yeah. Totally.  [thinking thinking]

I pause to let him in, but can't help blurting out David Lee Roth/ Eddie Van Halen

Who's that?

80's rock  Van Halen.  You've heard them, in my weaker moments.

Yeah, okay.

Steven Tyler, Joe Perry [god help me]

Who's THAT?

Aerosmith.  Walk this Way. [okay, yes, I admit I tried to sing/rap it]

Oh, yeah.  I know that one [so there.]  WAIT.  [Finger pointed] he goes: Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt

[I only know Armstrong.]  You know GreenDay's guitarist?

Uh-huh, yeah.  Didn't you?

I thought Armstrong played guitar.

Yeah, but it's like punk.  You gotta count the bassist.  GreenDay is all bass anyway.  The bass is like the lead.  For them.  [mouth drums baseline to Longview(!)]

[Now I'm laughing, wondering where the person next to me came from.  Really.] How about this one:  Jack White and . . . . .[Waiting for him to fill it in]

. . . .muh-uh-egg?. . . NO!  Jack White [claps!] Jack White and Jack White.  HA.  Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Springsteen!   HAHAHAHAHAHA.


After we landed in Costa Rica we rented a car, made a bee-line to the coast.  Checked in.  Trunks on! All but sprinting to the water.  Hearing the surf.  Smelling the salt.  Hot stepping the sand.  NO WADING.  GO!  Get in the .. . dive. . .splash...sunglasses.  ZWIT.  Gone.  BIG frown.  Sad Face. RayBans.  Polarized. Unleashed.  Bummer.  Damn.  HAHA, the OCEAN.  In the surf shop you can spend hundreds and hundreds on sunglasses.  Name brands.  Expensive advertising.  Models.  I've always been a top of the line sunglasses guy.  Why? WHY WHY WHY?  Vuarnets.  Revos.  RayBans.  quick tally:  a number of dollars on lost-scratched-smashed-person and wave-stolen sunglasses that gives me a sick feeling.  For the lost $.  For being a dope.  SICK.  Sure sure, I have reason to believe my eyes were more sensitive.  Since my ordeal they definitely are.  Sunglasses are not so much an accessory as headache insurance, grumpiness prevention.  But like, three hundy on sunglasses?  This is stupid, right?  vain for sure.  Did I mention stupid?  If you run like a kid into the surf with any regularity.  At the surf shop you can also grab a set for 800.  Colones, that is.  That's 4 bucks. (The Second Key. discovered WAY too late in life)  They don't resist scratching nor probably even waves, but two $2 bills!  And the two or three times a week you misplace them you don't get a hollow feeling like you can't find the car payment you like to shade your eyes with.



I take the kids to gymnastics training once a week.  Wednesdays, pizza night.  A lot of the parents sit and gawk or fawn at their progeny.  Some kinda come to be SEEN, which is sorta funny and sad and, I don't know,  keeps my nose in a book or a magazine or texting some of the readers of this blog.  We were late out the door one day and the nearest thing to hand was Whitman, Leaves.  Whatever.  Grab and go.  Reading amid the chalk dust and top 40 radio and parent patter I come across this (The Third Key. found just sitting there in the intro or preface or whatever and, Like, why did no one put me on this before? Sheesh): This is what you shall do:  Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . .

This ain't an exercise blog no more but have you been working scapular retraction? (The Fourth Key. I'm copyrighting this one)  For reasons I won't get into, I've been slaving away at handstand progressions for the last several months.  Deep into the training I started doing dislocates or pass-thru's:  take a two handed grip on a pvc or bat or broom handle or whatever.  Pull the stick overhead and back behind.  Then return up and front.  After each pass bring your hands closer and closer together to challenge joint mobility.  You can also do this prone, on your belly, too.  It locks your t-spine down and forces you into a shoulder only movement.  You can do it with an over handed grip and an underhanded (and internally rotated) grip.  The closer you can get your hands the more/better excursion you have of the joint. The shoulder.  I started with a pvc.  Standing.  Prone punched me out.  Couldn't do it.  8oz pvc pipe: nope. Uh-uh.  Undergrip even harder.  Over the last couple months I've worked up to a 20lb bar, 5x5, prone.  Here's the thing(s): you have to develop the raw strength to pull the bar up and back with straight arms.  You have to develop the mobility to bring your hands in at least inside the collars of a barbell (or like distance).  You have to learn and practice the motor control to shrug up and pull the scapulae back.  It's a huge project.  You don't get better at it without doing it.  In one sense it is one of the most un-functional movements.  Rarely do we find occasion to pass thru with a stick.  What would be the point?  But in another, and I'm saying more important, sense it is the MOST functional thing you can do.  If you appreciate using your arms for anything besides keeping your sleeves straight.  I had been plagued by a fair amount of chronic sub-scapular pain.  Along with the pass thru's i've been working on better shoulder stance (back and down), better posture while driving and I've gotten some ART on the shoulder and T-spine.  Haven't had pain since I graduated to the 20 pounder.  Scapular retraction requires, motor control, range of motion, and strength.  You can buy all three with time spent at the pass thru.  I've heard tell on the internet of gymnastic twerps doing reps with a 45lb bar.  Prone.  It's astonishing, really.  a 30lb bar might as well weight 30 tons.  If you own shoulders, you ought to be doing prone under- and over- grip dislocates.  It'll do wonders for your overhead lifts, your handstands and it will simoniz your  rotator cuffs.  You heard it here.

To recap:  shredding guitar/distinctive voice, cheap sunglasses, Uncle Walt 'graph, scapular retraction.  There are a few others, but this should be enough to get you started.  Oh, and don't write stupid food blog posts trying to be a food website content provider.  It will be frustrating and embarrassing and a waste of time.  Stick to telling people the important stuff.  I desperately want to take them down but feel to do so would lack integrity and I'd rather be ashamed than false.