For my fourth cab ride with death I flew to Costa Rica. Playa Jaco, south end. Low tide. 9'6" foam core glass board, dual fins. We'd been warned that the ollas were no bueno, but figured even a bad day of surfing beats a good day of fishing. Surfing is not really an athletic activity. Athletic components, sure. But if you can do a burpee you can get on a surf board. The skill is knowing WHEN to get on the surf board. Wind, wave, speed, direction....as in comedy, timing is everything. The more you know, the better you are. I call this an intellectual pursuit, engagement with. . . nature is a pretty tired word at this point. . .I'm gonna say, the planet: communion of the earth with its moon. The sea and firmament and what they make together. You should care about these things...deeply. Be aware, however, that these things do not care about you. Surfing will kill you, or worse. No man is an island but everyone is a peninsula, bounded on three sides, sky, water, land. Think what a joy it is to cross the causeways, swim in the sea of sky, the sea of land, the sea of seas. Spelunking, a plane ride, open water swimming. It's here we are reminded (taught?) our proper place in the order of things. We mean nothing. Gravity doesn't care. It's got far more important things to do, like fight entropy. You're gonna die you know? And the sky will be cobalt, the seas wine-dark, the mountains towering. Study these things not to bring meaning to your life, but to remind yourself where you came from, where you're going.
But so we'd been warned the waves just weren't coming with any regularity then. They can be hard to read when the pattern is obvious; take away the pattern and you're playing roulette with forces that turn boulders to sand. Actually we'd been told it was no good. Now I know what no good means. I got on a couple. A couple means two. They were breaking at different spots and closing out fast, difficult to stay with. Every once in a while a a big swell would would look promising but an off shore breeze would stand it up tall, too tall, and the top would just drop, no curl, no break. Just a terrific jutting up and instant water fall. Not a backyard koi pond waterfall. A class 5 rapid waterfall: crashing and pitiless. Pitiless. You are not a factor.
Fortune loves the brave. Misfortune loves the flinching, the double-clutching, the hesitant. I began paddling for what would turn out to be and attempted murderer wave. Paddle 1-2-3-4 look behind, 1-2-3-4 look behind. 1-2-3-4. oh. no no no. Turn the board. Not this one. Starting to get picked up now. Up or down? dive underneath or try to squeak overtop? All the while still getting picked up....overtop, quick quick quick you can make it. damn. Uh. Oh shit. NO. WAIT. Get UNDER. NO. Getting off a breaking wave you fall. You fall OFF the water. You fall as far as the wave is high. Six feet, maybe eight. Go stand on top of your extension ladder. Jump.
I fell off the wave and in front of my board. The wave gave me my board in the back, right on the traps. I heard a crunching noise. I was inside something unspeakably furious and violent. My head and hands and feet were going in unknown directions in no relationship to each other. I had control of nothing but my breath. I could hold my breath. HOLD. HOLD. My limbs, my thoughts, they weren't mine. They belonged to the wave. Very bad, I thought. Very long I whispered to myself. I wanted to pull for the top. I didn't know where the top was. It didn't matter, my arms weren't mine. God this is too long. I remember thinking that. THIS is TOO long. HOLD! I gotta come up. I should be up by now. Where the fuck is up??!! Damn. Awful. Panic. Terror. NO NO NO. HOLD. NO.
Breakthrough. Oxygen. Half oxygen, half water. Damn. Choke. Gag. Still not great. Another one. Not as bad. Whew. Hold. You'll be on top soon. I'm on top. Coughing. Why can't I swim? More seawater. Jesus my neck. Pull the leash. HOLD. Find the board. Get on the board. Another one. Hang on. Damn. HOLD. Can you stand? No. HOLD. Find the board. Hold onto the board. Don't get on it. Another one. HOLD. Hold the onto the board, let it push. You're gonna live. You're alive.
Seriously: go outside. Cardinals are singing. Wisteria is blooming. Thunderstorms. Earthworms. Zephyrs. Cumulonimbus clouds. We're alive and it's amazing. If you're not amazed, you're sleeping. Wake up. It's late.
In our house we call bacon magic because it is magic—salty, sweet, chewy, crispy, tender, silky magic. One minute you're hungry, the next you are picking your teeth in a food buzz, lucky, smart and good looking. Viola.
1. You can bake bacon. This is not news, but it bears repeating. The eggs need your attention more than the bacon, but bacon ignored can lead to flaws. Cast iron has hot spots. Frying pans make a mess. Put some foil on a rimmed baking sheet, put magic slices on the foil and bake until you reach your desired level of sorcery.
2. You can eat "raw" bacon. You can eat eggs raw too, doesn't mean you should. Here's the logic: we get our bacon from a charcuterie, local, pastured, honest and good. Tony, the charcutier hot smokes the bellies and then slices them thick and thin making magic. Internal temp reaches 150+, way beyond the perishing point of the trichinella round worm which wasn't even present in the pastured, heritage belly anyway. Part of the magic of magic is linked to it's preparation. Render some of the fat. Brown some of the sugar present in the flesh. Make it crispy, but not too. This is proper bacon. If it is hot-smoked and artisanal you could dispense with the heat—I just love knowing it's possible—but it's better if you don't. If you have store-bought cellophane bacon you also have a bonus of nitrate slurry, liquid "smoke" and conveyor line hog belly. You don't need to cook this either, if you follow me.
3. It's easy to make at home. Not cook, make, produce, go from belly to bacon. If you have the right equipment, know what to do and do it right, homemade bacon is a snap. You need a smoker, a meat lug, plastic wrap, ingredients. A meat slicer is optional but super handy. It goes like this: get a 5lb piece of belly. Coat it in a dry brine. Wrap it up tight in plastic wrap. Tighter. Tighter. Good. Put it in the lug, put the lug in the fridge. Put a weight on the belly: a cast iron whatever, a brick, another meat lug with floor tiles in it. Flip the belly once a day. Re-weight. After a week or so, remove the belly, rinse and let dry uncovered in the fridge for a day. This is called making the pellicle which you will learn all about when you research what to do and how to do it right. When the belly is ready, hang it in the smoker at about 200 degrees. Drink beer, contemplate the smoke and its groovy shapes. Sic transit gloria mundi. Drink more. Don't peek in the smoker unless you want more beer because peeking extends smoke time. Tell some good ones, stories, jokes, lies, whatever you got. When you're at temp you got bacon. Behold the ham of god which taketh away the sin of store-bought.
4. Bacon sausage is a real thing. I've had it. It's a naturally-cased, fresh sausage, made with bacon, even better than you can imagine. A little bit Houdini, a little bit Penn and Teller. Amalgamated magic. See your (or my) charcutier.
5. You can deep-fry bacon. But don't.
Couple other food-ish posts on this blog, in case you were looking:
Our species figured out a long time ago that in the absence of animal flesh, grain + legume = tasty, satisfying protein work-around. I'm no anthropologist but guessing this is why just about every culture has a version. The combo gets you all the amino acids, i.e., a complete protein. Apply a good method and well-chosen ancillary ingredients and you find deliciousness. The mixture is SO tasty and satisfying that for many it is not a work-around but the default. They're not wrong. How do you make beans and rice? It's really very simple: how do you make a gin and tonic? The recipe is the name. And it's engagingly complex: what KIND of beans and rice do you want? American? Asian? Caribbean? There are headings to take, options to weigh, decisions to make. I'll help you get started.
On the beans axis you have the usual suspects: red, black, pinto, lentil etc. A pounder bag of beans is among the cheapest, easiest, tastiest foods available. On the rice axis you also have familiar elements: long, short, white, brown, wild, aromatic. White is usually first in line, but make what you like. Organize your thinking around the intersection of choices while keeping in mind additions, including meat and veggies, but also simmering liquids and spices. Here are some time honored versions. The only thing you MUST do is this: make 'em scratch. You know why. You know how.
Moros y Christianos: Black beans (the Moors) and white rice (the Christians) are an ecumenical church for your palate. Garlic and cumin are pretty much essential. Onions and tomatoes and peppers make nice additions, if you have the inclination. I'd been making this, my gringo version for years with much self-satisfaction. Cuban neighbors moved in next door and I proudly took them a batch. They were touchingly polite, but kinda like, amigo, why all the stuff in mix? Their version, which I swoon for, was quite spare: the black, the white, garlic, cumin, green onion garnish, much dryer than you'd think, but so right. The perfect cerdo side.
Hoppin' John: Black-eyed peas over (usually white) rice, American southern, low-country, awesome with collards and begging for Tabasco. Black-eyes are beans, thanks, or a sign you need headgear. In this version give all your love to the beans, serve them over a properly prepared rice. Cook the "peas" with the trinity (onion, celery, bell pep), garlic, thyme, bay, bird stock. A ham-hock is almost always called for, but country ham, bacon or just lard won't be downgrades, just variations of sensational. Play around with it. Gallo Pinto: Spotted cock bird, or rooster if you call an ass a donkey. This is the Costa Rican national beans and rice dish and not to be missed. Black beans usually, pintos, of course, if you like. Similarly to Moors and Christians, these can bear many additions, but more often you find them unadorned save for some garlic, cilantro, lime. Cook beans. Cook rice. Combine and garnish. Keep them on the dry side and you'll keep on the authentic side. Don't let authentic get in the way of good, however. Fill a morning tortilla with gallo pinto and eggs and you'll eat enough to skip lunch. Red beans and rice: The pinnacle, really. Traditionally a Monday meal that could cook all day without much attention while you did the laundry and ironing. I don't laundry or iron. What you do is your business. Red beans and rice is a sacramental meal in our house. Use top quality kidneys, trinity, garlic, thyme, bay, your best chicken stock, a ham hock. Think like you're making a bean stew because you are. Simmer long and slow. When the ham hock is falling apart you're almost there. Pull the fibula and tibia out, chop up the ham, put it back in the pot. Reduce to desired viscosity. I like to think, "if this were soup would it be too thick?" If the answer is yes, that's just right. If you have andouille on hand it is evidence of your surpassing intelligence and good taste. Dice it up, throw it in. As for the rice, plain old jasmine won't let you down. Cajun boiled rice with lardo butter is heavenly. Pop-corn rice is hard to find, but sooo worth it. Garnish with quick-pickled red onions and all your trouble will seem so far away.
The list is hardly exhaustive. More like a greatest hits than a survey. The deep cuts will call for different simmering liquids, more exotic spices, new kinds of beans. Jelly? Coffee? Coconut milk will get you to the Caribbean and points east, where you might end up using saffron. Lentils and rice. Green beans and rice. Make it up as you go along. Let them come to you in a dream. The world is our legume and grain mixing bowl.
You's guys oughta fire the content provider of this here blog.
I used to see months and months between blog posts on other less-respected blogs and just shake my head in reproof. Shaking your head is wagging your finger when no one's there to see you wag your finger. Nowadays I see months and months between posts and I nod my head knowingly. It's hard, making the donuts. Especially when the donut maker is trying to make, like, good donuts. I guess I felt pretty good about the last couple posts, felt like I was getting close to saying something important well. Problem being, that's some deep water for me. I have never regretted minding my own business. Spouting off about dying and living and parenting, these could easily be construed as minding NOT my own business. I'm not back-tracking or soft-shoeing what I wrote. Hardly. I have some courage in my convictions, a lot actually, but I, well, I don't know; did you ever have just one more beer than you really needed and you go past diminished inhibitions to talky-talker guy? And then you quit drinking for the night, by will or circumstance, and you come down pretty quickly and you think, jeez, I wish I didn't blabblabblab so much? Have you ever done that? Well I have to say I find myself kinda drunk on being alive sometimes. Lately. Since, uh staying alive. And I'm deeply interested in how to do it well. Be alive, that is. Live. And I'll talk a blue streak about it. I mean it, and it's the truth, at least in the moment for me. But then I sober up and go, man, I hope they don't think. . . .
See for instance like the "I mean it" sentence? I mean that to say "I mean (am genuine and honest about) the blue streak when I'm saying it. Follow me? The sentence, however, could be read as simple emphasis: "I'll REALLY REALLY talk your ear off". And I sorta mean that too, but the ambiguity is rather poisonous to MEANING anything at all. I could (and regularly do) lose a big chunk of an hour thinking about how that plays out between written and read. And if something so simple has those layers of meaning and intention and understanding and complexity, how much more difficult are our daily lives with people we love and care about, with things at stake? Things are always things at stake. Welcome to the stream of my consciousness. All which, you've figured out by now, is my way of saying sorry for taking so long updating the blog.
But anyway, after we got the deer butchered we hung hams in the root cellar. The jerky was gone in about 4 days. Nate and Dad and I took a swing at Sopperessata. I capped the skull, and the antlers are mounted in the dining room. I left the hide in tact on this one, a little touch that creeps Heather right out. It's a little too close to taxidermy for my taste, to be totally honest with you, but I like bones. I like antlers. I don't really think of them as trophies. Only Heather fills that role. (and some others but I don't want to embarrass her). I think of them as monuments or memorials. Momento mori. Sometimes I just can't help myself.
And below is me getting pinned by 300 lbs. Rep before that I stood up with 285. It felt so good I almost tried to make it for a double, but instead I racked it and took a crack at 3. Not this time. So close I had a giant wave of disappointment not making it. Until I remembered 285. This is so like me. Hurray, 285!!! BOO, you putz, you cant even squat 300!? The good news is I got over it pretty quickly. The kind of thing that, last year even, would have rattled me, ruined a good workout. I expect with the new year many of you have set goals and mapped out steps to achieve them. Good for you.
Here's me not minding my own business: throw away your goals. They're not good for you. They're enslaving you and robing you of the joy of movement (my new term for exercise). Seriously. You sit down and you think carefully about what is possible and then add just a few more pounds, subtract a few seconds--a sign to yourself that you're serious and committed. Sound familiar? Let me ask you this? How much you squat? Dead? Clean? Mile time? 2k row? You know these numbers? Yes. You do. Don't lie. You know all these numbers and more within 15 seconds and 10 lbs. You know where you're at. You spend any time at all exercising, you know how good you are. Exercise journals make me laugh. Does anybody need to write this stuff down? I sure as hell don't. What's important gets measured. What's measured gets remembered. Better yet, does not need to be remembered, is just known. You tell me the workout, I'll tell you how much, how many, and what time. Guessing you are the same way. Maybe you're not; if you don't know, you don't need to know, it's not important enough. Yet. When it is, you will. Not for nothing, I notice golfers are like this. They remember the order of shots on DIFFERENT HOLES IN ROUNDS PLAYED YEARS AGO. Me, I can't remember but one or two of the dozen shots after I took a drop. I don't really get that wound up about golf. But I can tell you how many unbroken handstand pushups I can do, kipping and strict. How many I've done at different times in my training and certainly whether that was enough to beat Cope or not. I remember very well the day very early in my transplant recovery when I looked up at a set of rings and could just feel in my shoulders I had a muscle up. I knew it. Chalk, false grip, kip, boom. TWO! We know these things so well we know them a priori, without testing.
So the goal-setting, chasing is funny business to me. It's a little Kabuki theatre: write down the number, the big-bad number, chase the number, kill the number, write down new number. It's inauthentic and worse, misplaces emphasis. Our goal is to train with joy, move and breathe and goddamn enjoy being alive. I can squat 285lbs. Not a lot. But a lot for me. Most I've ever done, Jack. You know what my goal is? 286. And when I get 286? 287. Your goal is to do more, faster, better. Who you kiddin? Why don't we just say, I want to be better? That's a good goal. Think if we could all achieve that goal. We can.
I want to be better. At everything. That's my "goal" But what I really want to do, my goal is to enjoy the work, enjoy the progress, The process, teach someone else how to do the same. These are the things I want to work on. If your effort is consistent and your movement is sound, you'll adapt, you'll make progress. The numbers and times will take care of themselves. Trust me.
But ff I say, in a very doctrinaire, psychology-today, passbook savings kinda way "my goal is to squat 300 lbs" all the time I spend beneath 300 or missing 300 (see below), I'm not good enough, I kick myself and set myself up to miss training days, avoid hard work, cherry pick work outs or . . . wait for it. . . set NEW DIFFERNT goals. OR, as soon as I squat 300, I check the box and let all the air out of what was by all other measures a pretty good training day, and start chasing another number. Am I the only one? I can't be.
I guess what I'm learning and trying to tell you is to make being happy training THE goal. Just training, working, hard. Work for work's sake. Because you're warmer than room temp. Find real joy in movement, at the lactic threshold, in squeezing so hard your nose bleeds. It's happened. Missed the rep, but man THAT's time under tension and some kinda PR. In the new year I've been training gymnastic movements with much vigor. I'm basically at the beginning. The very very very beginning. It's humbling and hard and everyday I leave the gym, muscles trembling and central nervous system fried. I could say Im training to do a front lever and a straddle planche and so on. This is the way my programming is set up. But really what I'm doing is learning to move, teaching myself body control, staying limber and getting stronger in ways that are beyond functional, they are elemental. I like to think I am writing my own user's manual. Yeah, I want to do a flag someday. Whatever. Tomorrow I want to do one more hollow hold than I did the day before. And if I can't, I want to squeeze harder on every one that I can do. Maybe my nose will even bleed.
Head up head up head up
Sorry again for the delay. I want to say it won't happen again, but I'd rather be honest with you. I'm off to Central America for a little R & R, touch some monkeys, wrestle some crocs, maybe try to stand up on a surfboard. There's always room for improvement.
In the '20's Bertrand Russell wrote an essay or gave a lecture that later became an essay called Why I'm Not a Christian. I read the essay in my 20's to much effect. To be sure, I had been trolling the literature for arguments against religion. I was studying philosophy. I was learning logic. I had lost my faith. And I was eager to stage mini, one-person rebellions against just about any authority source; to hear what Nietzsche called the hollow sounds of all the idols. Of course I found Russell compelling.
Following his logic, I wasn't a Christian either. And I was grateful to have some help sorting out why. Most convincing was his point that a system which threatened EVERLASTING damnation, torment and anguish (hello, hell) as punishment for just one lifetime of wickedness was seriously athwart any normal idea of fair, not to mention kind or loving. And what of a life lived well, i.e. un-wickedly, but simply un-believing or un-accepting of the "truth" of said system? Forever damnation just the same. Murder costs you eternity. So does jaywalking. The whole thing just didn't/doesn't add up. The system is built on fear and that, too, seems anything but kind and loving—Things we might reasonably expect from a moral code, whatever it happens to be. In fact, it seems the opposite, predatory and vicious even. To Russell's point I added my own objection: I just don't BELIEVE Christianity. Most of the Christians I knew were frauds if not outright criminals. The crusades, the inquisition, abortion clinic bombings. What the hell. Christianity seemed coercive and destructive in practice and untenable in theory. Belief, I think is as much an emotion as it is a decision. I mean, look, the story of the risen Christ, redemption, everlasting life. It's a blockbuster. I love it. Love it. It makes me cry. It's so damn moving, I WANT to believe it. I just don't. Virgin birth, life after death, someone doing me the solid of saving my worthless soul, hell, just the idea of a soul. . .so cool, so so cool. So not believable. To my mind. God so loved the world he gave his son? Please. I'm a father. I think a god should save his son. Good father's save their sons. Yes, yes, I understand: faith. But it doesn't bridge the gap for me. I have faith man walked on the moon, though it could all be a hoax. I have faith in dinosaurs, though I never petted one. I have faith in other galaxies, though I've never been to one. Some repositories of my belief, my faith, (I realize I just conflated them, kinda my point) I have evidence for. Others, the evidence is pretty damn slim if existent at all. Belief is a confluence in the mind and absent ANY of the constituent streams (hunch, intuition, experience, conscience) belief is missing, faith is missing too. For me anyway. So what does one do lacking belief? How is that generated? Can it be constructed? Is that the same? Just SAY that I believe it? SAY I have faith? This is otherwise known as a lie. A fear generated lie. "The leader is good, the leader is great." Just ACT as if I had faith? This is an elaborate lie or a fiction. My life would actually be a LOT easier if I did believe. I would if I could. But I can't so....so what? Hell for me? That's what Christianity says. Come on. Can that be right? I have been far from perfect in my life. Angry? Guilty of that for sure. Jesus got angry. Stupid, certainly. Too many times to count. Wrong? Talk to my wife, there is a preponderance of evidence. But bad? Evil? Deliberately injurious to others? Uh, no. Not really. I'm a little embarrassed at how good I try to be. But I don't believe, which, as I say, is more like a reflex to me. I believe in the ice ages. I do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster. Too bad, so sad, into the lake of fire with thee. There's something wrong with this. Right? Can I get an amen?
While I'm at it. Eve was SO set up. Why wasn't the serpent banished from the garden before he had time to whisper to Eve? What's Eden doing with a SNAKE?? Why did he go to Eve? Why didn't god want us to be like him? Why couldn't we know good and evil like he did? God so loved the world he gave his son, but could not deign to share his divinity with his creations? This is perfect love? Omnipotence? Pull one string and this thing unravels pretty quickly. Actually, it DOESN'T unravel, It really tells a much different story. Tru dat, boo. Again, I love the story. Plangent chords on my heartstrings, but BELIEVE? I believe it the way I believe in Sasquatch. I believe in the story qua story, and its meta implications, what it says about the storyteller, but not the object per se. I hope you see, maybe even share, my dilemma. Well, I don't hope you share it, but you might share it.
Still, only a fool would deny human spirituality. And I try not to be a fool. Sometimes successfully. Add to this equation: children in my charge, a life threatening illness, the power of guilt cultured and incubated very early on. About the guilt: I was raised in a particularly virulent strain of Christianity (faith healing, speaking in tongues. Yep. True fact. No snake handling. We did not handle snakes.) About the children: I don't want to raise my kids as Christians, but neither do I wish to pass on my hatred suspicion of religion. One would be as bad as the other. I want to equip them with the power and autonomy to make personal and idiosyncratic decisions. About the threatened life: Put it to you this way-- some people could call you and say they're coming to visit and you'd do nothing but anticipate their arrival. Other people—let's call them more "important" or more formal—call to announce a visit and you might tidy up a bit. Pick up your socks, maybe empty the sink. You might do so happily, you might resent it, you might not bother yourself too much thinking about such things, but you'll do it nonetheless. When the reaper calls--and let's agree that not everyone gets a warning call AND that might be good and that might be bad---man, you will scurry around your house polishing everything that could possibly shine, you will scrub your toilets, pump your septic, throw away the marital aids, clean the attic and the basement and dust under the beds. You might even re-arrange your furniture and act like it's been that way all along while rubbing out carpet palimpsests.
I did the scurrying thing. I panicked. In panic, you don't think too well. It's hard to get things done. It's impossible to tell where you live let alone clean your mo-fo house. When the nurses asked me my religious preferences, my churlish and cynical and panicked answer was "Buddhist."
This is how, in my scurrying, house cleaning, severely depressed, pole-axed state, I came to have days and days and days worth of long meandering talks with a Zen monk, Terry. They say everyone gets the horse that suits him. The man himself could be several blog posts. Just not this blog post. Know that he was decent, kind and I came to believe, wise. He was well-read, articulate, compassionate, funny and not really like what I then imagined a monk would-should-could be. Certainly not a Zen Buddhist monk. He wasn't even bald.
I told Terry my dilemma. I said, I'm afraid I might go to hell, but I don't believe what I'm supposed to to stay out. He said, "You want to know what to do?" "YES!" I said. He said, "We all do." And he chuckled. And I chuckled. And then we were laughing like hell. Laughing with tears down our cheeks. Laughing and crying. At the same time. Not a happy sad. Not a sad happy if there is such a thing. We were laughing in our bellies and weeping in our throats. Then he said, "You're haunted by ghosts of your past, but your past is past. It's nowhere, It's nothing, It doesn't exist except in your fear. Start with breathing. Just breathe. Think about your breath." I played along. Not reluctantly, but not enthusiastically either. I just did what he said. It would have been impolite not to. In this way Terry taught me to meditate. I learned to meditate. I said, "I'm afraid." Terry said, "You're allowed to be. But you don't have to be. Quiet your mind."
I worked on quieting my mind. It was hard. My mind was very loud with dying noises and not making much sense. Prior to learning that with Terry, I had done a fair amount of reading on Eastern thought. I knew I wasn't a Christian but knowing what you aren't isn't the same as knowing what you are. I wanted to get things right. I believed in logic, in the rational mind, in humans, in being good. I came to think the whole point was to keep thinking about it. I am curious, I like to read. I learned a good bit of Buddhist thought but I wouldn't have called myself a Buddhist any more than I would have called myself a woman. Meditation it turns out, is a pretty useful practice, rather like knowing how to be hungry. It's a skill you can carry with you everywhere, use it when you need it. I needed it a lot. I got over my fear. That's not exactly accurate. I got good at not being dragged along in a current of fear. I got good at observing my fear and going about my days, however numbered. I was still cleaning house, still making ready for the reaper's visit, but I was actually getting somewhere. I wasn't panicked. I came to real BELIEF about what was important, about who I was, about what was true. See, sorry, not even that is true. I didn't come to BELIEVE. I became less unsure, I learned enough, had a big enough hunch to make my bets. Part of me still wanted Christian salvation. I mean who doesn't if it's out there? But I couldn't sign the papers, I couldn't claim what wasn't true. I had this very real passage through the anguish of an accused witch. She could save herself by copping to the witchcraft charge, but then she'd be a liar and unable to live with herself. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to go to hell. I still couldn't believe. I took it as proof that I didn't believe. Meditation vanquished the ghosts. It quieted my mind. Helped me know what I believed.
So, but here's the thing: I learned how to meditate but I don't really meditate. Not anymore. I don't fast anymore either. There's too much living to do. And the guilty Christian part of me felt guilty about THAT. It's endless, right? It's okay though. I've had breakthrough. I don't feel guilty about it anymore. I feel pretty good about it, actually. Liberated. Free. At peace with things. Sorta how I can't really call myself a writer, but I write all the time—I can't really call myself a Buddhist, but I practice. Turns out I practice a lot. Terry taught me breathing meditation. In. Out. In. Out. Thoughts will pop up. It's your mind, It's supposed to think. Let them go, leaves adrift on the current downstream. Meditation teaches you mindfulness, being present, really present, inhabiting, occupying this moment right here. It teaches you that even in death we are safe. It occurred to me while hunting this fall that exercise, high intensity interval exercise, is also a really effective way to focus on the most important thing: your breathing. I'm just tickled by this idea. Exercise is breathing meditation. There's nothing else but your breath. God please another breath. Now I know why I'm so drawn to it. It's my practice. It quiets my mind, makes it okay to die and reminds me I'm alive. If you see Buddha breathing hard, he might have just done Fran.
And THEN after a really good meditation session on the C2 rower this egg broke on my head: Hunting is about as mindful as I can get. The wind and light and leaves. The sounds, the smells. Studying the world in front of my face. Watching. Watching. I was trying to understand why hunting for me. Not was it right or wrong, I was past that. Just Why? I knew I liked it and it was more than like, it was something I felt I had to do. But I wanted to understand why. For a long time I've wanted to know. And the draw to do it and understand it has been much more powerful since transplant. I'm starting to get it. It's the now-ness. The mindfulness, being present. The colors of autumn. The moment in every dawn that is like dusk, of every sunset that is like sunrise. The cheekiness of chipmunks. The caution of foxes. Susurrations of the jack pine. Oaks creak and cottonwoods sway. Leaves can skitter or lie mute as stone. Hickories give away their seed stock. The haughtiness of wild turkeys. The intelligence of crows. How nixy the Jay. The torrid rutting buck and the smell of earth making itself beneath your very feet.
Suck in your portion of oxygen. Study nature. Meditate and be mindful.
Kids are great. Wife is a gold star. This month is 18 for me, post transplant. Boston says I'm in good shape. My 2K time quarrels with that assessment. Learning charcuterie in Elizabethtown. Hunted all of the PA archery season. Training with JW again, with humility and gratitude. Deadlifting and squatting and breathing hard if not fire.
Adeline says to me just as innocently and sincerely—I'll say vulnerably for reasons I hope are clear by the time you're done reading—she says, "Dad, how do you think about hotdogs?"
think, think, think about hot dogs....Nothing, nada. "Uh...not sure what you mean, honey. They're okay, I guess. How do YOU think about hot dogs?"
"I think the hot dog is the person and the bun is the bed and the ketchup is the blanket keeping her warm."
Looks at me, big, tender doe eyes, like her mother's "How do you?"
"I think THAT's the way I'm going to think about hot dogs from now on."
"Yeah. It's a good way."
One idea is parents are charged with the care and education of their progeny, their creation. Parents, not to be too blunt, can be more or less up to the task. We all know people who we wish were better at their job, or at least worked harder at it. What's more, we have all been in the situation when one of those people was ourselves.
Another idea is that children choose their parents. They pick us out and in demanding our attention and effort turn us into the people we ought to become. This could be construed as an airy-fairy, new age take on things. There is plenty of confirmation in the animal kingdom for the first idea. The second is highly subjective, incorporeal and unscientific. But I find it useful anyway. Science is an important tool for understanding lots of things, hematologic malignancies for instance. But it is not so good at making you a better, parent, spouse, friend, hell, just better. I like the second idea because it reminds me to stay open to what my kids have to teach me, what I have to learn. Yeah, I've gotta teach them, but, honestly, I haven't found a better way to teach them than letting them see me struggle to learn things myself. I went through a large portion of my adult life in an essentially defensive, adamant posture. Zealous about and committed to my own beliefs, opinions and predilections. When I was right everything was fine, though I was not a very gracious winner. When I was wrong, I was very uncomfortable and not very gracious in defeat. You may know other people like this and call them dicks or sob's or just simply hard to get along with. You'd be right.
What grave illness and long meandering talks with a Buddhist monk on my deathbed taught me is the defensive posture, the adamant stance, isn't really brave, it's cowardly. It hides the self from real connection and assumes we can avoid vulnerability and still be happy, or even right. Quite the opposite, rigid stances, unyielding attitudes will frustrate you and frustration will lead to sadness. About this, the Tao Te Ching:
A man is born gentle and flexible; at his death he is hard and stiff. All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life; dry and brittle in death.
Stiffness is thus a companion of death; flexibility a companion of life. An army that cannot yield will be defeated. A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind.
The hard and the stiff will be broken; the soft and the supple will prevail.
this is a lesson that it took me 40 yrs and catastrophic illness to learn. I'm ashamed at how slow a learner I am, but now that I've learned it, I'm not letting it go and I'm extra motivated to tell it again and again to the people closest to me. We all want to be happy and healthy in our lives. Duh. I'm finding you have to have faith that there is a WAY to be happy and then you have to roll up your sleeves and build that WAY. The way will probably involve you being honest about your deficits, loving yourself anyway, and then loving everyone around you despite their deficits too. Maybe not, this is not certainty, it's experience. Your experience may be different. I had to be pretty frank about the things that shamed me in my life, the things that weren't my fault (getting sick) and things that were (failing as a writer) And then I had to work on accepting things as they were/are. The conceit of this post is: Accepting=living with vulnerability. That monk told me the Tao is "the way things are." And happy people are happy because they learn to accept, embrace even, the way things are.
Couple weeks ago I got an email from a dear friend I met in the hospital, same malady, slightly different circumstances. He too had a bone marrow transplant, but he has relapsed after two years. Yeah. I made two honest-to-goodness friends inside (a stat I now find alarming and evidence of how truculent I could (can) be all while believing I was just being trenchant) One of those friends died last year after two BMT's, The other faces staggering odds. I am vulnerable. You are too. We are vulnerable. Pretending we are not is an exercise in fiction and keeps us from happiness. About the time of the call, I was hit with a wicked flu bug. (One of the reasons this post is so late) I couldn't train, sleep, think clearly. Fevers, for obvious reasons, just FREAK me out. Had two or three days of walking fever. I was pretty much convinced I was sick, REALLY sick, again. Turns out it was the flu. I have what the docs call a naive immune system. I didn't used to get poison ivy. Now I do. Mosquitos? Oh my god. Over the course of your lifetime you build up a little immunity to the bugs in your region. This year I had dozens. ON EACH LEG. I get the flu for two weeks. Yeah, vulnerable. I had a crash course the first half of October in cozying up to my vulnerability.
But it turns out that this vulnerability (physical) is the easy version. Our mortality is always lurking, we can pretend not to know (especially in our twenties) but we KNOW. The hard vulnerability, the kind I'm trying to cultivate and encourage you to, too, is the more quotidian, inter-personal, nagging and emotional kind. Think of Adder's comment: How do you think about hot dogs?? How open, honest, risky even. The fact is that for a long long time, I insulated myself, avoided this kind of vulnerability. I think I have always been able to show this side to my wife and it's very likely why I fell in love with her. What I'm learning is there is much hay to be made putting yourself out there, being honest and genuine and, well, vulnerable with people not your spouse. People you know a lot, a little, complete strangers. Honestly, part of me hates the blog. SO subjective. SO me for godsakes. But part of me believes it's good for me. Be vulnerable. Give of yourself. People want connection, empathy, understanding, love. I know I do. I don't want to die alone.
One of the places I've been exercising my vulnerability, so to speak, is the market where I do most of our food shopping. It goes like this: Smile. A lot. (this is a BIG step for me). Talk to people. Not small talk. Find something meaningful to say. Try not to be weird, but work at connection. (god, just describing it is almost nauseating to a part of myself). So the vegetable ladies are friendly, attractive, I always feel a little weird, but whatever, be vulnerable. One day, one of them pretty much is laughing at me. Openly. Not sure why, but you know, fly is up, hat is on so my hair cant be THAT bad. Next time she says, Hey I'm Amy. Hi Amy. I'm Chris. She laughs at me. I go with it. Maybe I'm just a goof ball and people can't help themselves. She says: that's funny, that your name is Chris. Is it? Yeah, see we call you (other veg lady joins her) Superman and Superman's name was Chris. Christopher Reeve. So I'm about as red as a tomato and pretty much speechless. They go almost in unison, No it's a good thing. You know, superman. Amy gives my arm the Charmin squeeze. Last week we weren't laughing at you we were laughing at her: they point behind me to woman running the amish nick-nack stand. Woman gives a toodle-oo. I pretty much want to disappear. I'm so embarrassed I just want to turn to vapor and blow away.
I go home. Tell my wife, whose eyes roll out of her head. And I have to say: Um, I get that I'm supposed to be flattered. But I'm not. I'm kinda humiliated. I mean, I just want to buy carrots. Can I meet a buxom woman who tells me her name is Anna Nicole and laugh and say, hey that's funny, because you got big tits. It's a good thing. Honest. ? Heather was way too delighted by the whole scenario. Promised me the whole thing was part of her next gender equity lecture. Whatever.
Next time at the market: Produce stand. Amy says, hey how's it going? Super, i say, You? She smiles. Super. I always say super. And I get WAY WAY embarrassed all over again. Damn. Maybe superman because I always say super. I have NO idea. I can convince myself of either conclusion. Telling the whole story to you: Vulnerability. It's hard. Work at it. You'll be glad you did.
The hotdog is the person, the bun is the bed, the ketchup is the blanket keeping her warm
News here is: within the last week or two I have tied or surpassed most of the weights I relapsed at. Snatch, squat, front squat, jerk all new lifetime tops. Clean, dead, bench right around or a little under PR's. Gymnastics and rowing lag at bit, but not worried as I haven't really been focused on them and they're still coming along. This is not so much exercise talk as it is a report that I am hale and healthy. Some nagging issues, but they are just the price of doing grisly transplant business. 14 mos to build myself back. Thanks for your care and concern. Feels very good to be where I am: with my wife and children, surrounded by you all. There's always room for improvement but we should savor the successes too. I count this a pretty big one.
Speaking of rowing: big birthday row today to kickoff the C2 Fall team challenge. (if you'd like to join us, post to comments or shoot me an email. There's still time.) I did "Row 1" and "Row 2" events from this year's Crossfit Games. That's a half marathon with a 2k check time. I was awed by the times posted by the competitors. Almost every male posted a sub 7 2k. Winning half times were frightening. I went at it trying for a current PR 2k and a sub 1:40:00 half. Got the first 2k in 7:40 and went on to finish the half in one hour 38:43. Beating Lucas Parker!!?? If you're a Crossfitter, you'll want to test your fitness with this event. Let us know how it goes.
Almost PR'd my shotgun time. Instead was DQ'd. Judges awarded the win to Courtney for excess spillage. Unintentional. It just shot out. Maybe next year.
My thinking goes like this: Three chief suspects for my illness. 1) Genes: born with the disposition to have rogue blood. 2) Environment: exposure to some nasty stuff somewhere along the way, factory jobs, agricultural chemicals, New Orleans post-Katrina, the list is not endless, but it's frighteningly long. 3) Metabolism: I ate pretty standard American diet for 35 years. I was obese for a fair percentage of them. 260 at one point. People have different tolerances for hideous diet, smoking, alcohol, long phone calls and other stuff that's bad for you. Short tolerances get expressed different ways. Some people are the life of the party and die in a car crash. Some people get cancer.
Of course the suspects aren't necessarily discrete actors. Obviously. One could be born with a yucky chromosome, drink some benzene swimming in the river and have a diet that affords little opportunity for cell repair. One is probably gonna come down with something catastrophic. Where does the fault lie? Well, the suspects are in collusion. And you don't have to work too hard to think up other scenarios. My point is suspects one and two--working alone or in conjunction-- I can do very little if anything about. Statute of limitations ran out on these guys a long time ago. They are beyond reach. Number three, metabolism, if it had any role to play is still largely under my control... jurisdiction, to really stretch the metaphor.
I was fat, some of you may remember. For a long time. I ate what everyone ate. Meat, Pasta, Bread. Did I mention pasta? Vegetables were like a garnish. Fruit? meh, what else you got. Fast food? loved it. For four years, I ate McDonalds, Burger King or Wendy's AT LEAST three times a week. I was teaching and coaching at a school in the middle of nowhere. Really, it was the capitol of nowhere. Our cross-town rivals were an hour and twenty minutes away. For every away game we took: equipment bags, med kit, envelope of 5 dollar bills to give to the kids when we stopped for food. Fast Food. Always. At least three times a week.
One day I turned my head and felt my cheek on my shoulder. My fat face. Really creeped me out, and then I started noticing all the ways adipose tissue starts to show up besides in the mirror. Jiggling. Sweating. Goddamn I'm fat. 260. That was it. I was a wrestler, I knew how to lose weight. Well, let's say I knew how to MAKE weight. I starved myself. Ran a ton (little pun, there). Sweated it all off. Not all. 40 pounds. Got down to 220. People said I looked good; what they meant was better. I felt better. I thought: It's not the food, it's the fast food. This was before Fast Food Nation, before Morgan Spulock. I swore it off. never again. That was 1997. I have had exactly three fast food feedings in 16 years. Two egg McMuffins on early morning drives. One filet-o-fish and fries: I was with a VERY FAMOUS poet (how's that for an oxymoron?) we'd been bird hunting. What a time, awesome guy, freakin' WAY famous (for a poet) he goes: lets grab some grub. Sure, thinking Mt. Washington, Fells' Point, beers, steaks, food. Nope. The golden arches. The clown with the house for cancer patients. He even offered to pick up the check. Hey, awesome, put your wallet away, I'm just gonna kick you in the balls. You know, as a friendly gesture. I did not know how to say to famous poet: Sorry awesome poet guy, great dog, good birds, beautiful over-under, thanks for the trip but I ain't eating that shit. I said: Uh, I'll have a filet-o-fish, i guess. (half slice of cheese is a nice touch.) Interesting question: what's the least harmful food on the McDonald's menu? gotta be the coffee. without the bird lime creamer.
Shortly after fast food, I gave up soda. Say, '99. Weight trending in between 220 and 240. Still way too heavy. Still so far from healthy a mile run might have crippled me. But I was oblivious to health. I knew strong, or what I thought was strong. I could bench press 300lbs. My screaming rotators would wake me up in the night, but I could move some weight if allowed to lie down first. I didn't want to be fat. It seriously bummed me out. I tried to lose weight. Years and Years. I'd starve. Exercise. Lose a few. Think, maybe this time. . . and then get two entrees with rice at the Chinese take out. Kung Pao, General Tso's. When I was 31 I ran a marathon and trained with a National Championship wrestling team. Terrific shape. For me. At the time. Routinely ate a pound of noodles after long runs or just a hard practice. They were all hard practices, these guys were prep champions. The assistant coach (that's me) was a slob. I think I actually gained weight while prepping for the marathon. Trained right up to within a week or two of second marathon. Finished a twenty miler and said, no mas. Still 240. Size 38 pants. 48 Jacket. 18 freaking inch neck.
It went on like that. Too heavy. Sometimes fit or less so. Sometimes strong or less so. In 2008 I could rep 225 in the bench 15-20 times. But i was starting to hate exercise. There was no upside. Go beat your brains out, feel like a sissy on the stairmaster. Stay fat. Do all the work, get zero of the benefit. In 2009 I switched to high-intensity interval training. I liked it, it was a lot like wrestling practice. I tried the zone diet: Weighed and measured all my food for a month. peeled off 20, 30 40 pounds. 200lbs. First time since jr year in High school. wow. 200 pounds felt amazing. Pull ups!! In the strength to weight ratio you can increase the numerator or you can decrease the denominator. Suddenly, although not all that sudden at all, I was not fat. I was kinda pleased. It wasn't the exercise--though I was doing plenty, more than ever, even more than marathon training. It wasnt the exercise because I'd been exercising hard for 8 or 9 mos. without so much as a pound lost. It was the zone. Changed my diet and Blammo, I couldn't keep weight on. As long as I kept to 40-30-30% Carbohydrate-protein-Fat, I couldn't keep weight on. Interesting. I knew the percentages and obeyed them. In my heart I knew it was the no bread part of carb portion. The only way you can keep to those percentages and not be starving all the time is to get carbs from vegetable sources. Eat dense, processed carbs and you're gonna be hungry and probably cheat. Eat green fibrous, low glycemic carbs and it might not be as tasty but you wont be hungry all the time. got down to 190 and stalled. Seemed like "my" weight. But without putting too fine a point on it, I wasn't exactly lean. Still a handful to grab around the middle. Meh. I felt good.
But if I lost 15 more pounds how many pull ups could I do? Next I tried intermittent fasting. I was a wrestler, or to use the clinical term, former bulimic. I knew how NOT to eat. I was gonna try NOT eating for a while. One, Two and three day fasts. One is a party trick. Two is challenging. Three? You do three and you've done something. Something very very difficult and stupid. Three day fast is a force coupler for natural level meanness. Makes you so mean and rotten dumpsters are like flower beds. Turned me into satan. Tell you the truth though: long fasts are instructive. I learned what hungry really is. You're usually not hungry. You're thirsty, or bored, or coming down off your insulin high. Don't trust me, give it a try. One or two-day is probably plenty.
Of course in this time I got sick, underwent 10mos of therapy, had a two year remission, relapsed, battled back, got a hard re-set and began recovery. Here's what I'll say about that time with respect to diet/nutrition and maybe this is the point of this shotgun blast: at one point I was 145 pounds, looking every bit the cancer patient that I was. ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE POUNDS. (!) I held on to my low-carb diet for a LONG time, too long truth be told, and then finally let it go. Was starting to believe the disease was refractory, which it turned out to be, and I started eating bread, ice cream, cereal, all the goodies. Oh man could I do unspeakable things to a bag of Oreos. Right before I threw in the diet towel, one doc said: you gotta eat something, you need to keep some weight. I said: what for? She said: I see your point. Do it anyway, just in case. So I just started eating whatever, whenever. It felt like giving up. It was in some small but important way. I gave up eating the way I had come to believe was best because I didn't think anything was going to make a difference, uh, save me. So: I'm getting chewed up by disease, by inactivity, by fatigue, by "therapy." Im 145 pounds, but--check this: pants that I wear right now, today, at 190 did not fit me. THEY WERE TOO SMALL. I gained "weight"--that is, I got thicker, fatter in the middle and legs and caboose. No muscle mass to speak of, that was melting away on the couch, but I was fat again. True fact. Metabolism.
So now I'm eating very low carb. I sorta flirted with it before--I see now that I was flirting with it. I'm guessing Im around 20g/day. Mostly from fruit. But pretty much 0g of sugar. Added sugar. Once or so a week I have 1/4 cup of rice. In my head I know all about rice. In my heart...I don't know, can 2 billion people be wrong? I think (I hope) I tolerate it better in the absence of sugar. Low carb, slow carb, whatever you want to call it. I don't weigh and measure, I don't fast, except when I do. Some mornings I eat six eggs before I have coffee, I'm so hungry. Some days I go 'til noon with out more than just coffee. Sometimes you get caught in a jam: hungry, nothing to eat. Ever been to an airport? State sponsored exile from real food. Before, I would have caved, plugged my nose, made the least offensive choice--Kind Bar or something of that ilk--and made do. Now I just don't eat. I can do that. I know how. Missing a meal or three isn't the end of the world. You aren't gonna dry up and blow away. If there is no food I find acceptable, I don't eat. Put your foot down. Make a stand. What's acceptable? Meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts, fruit, cream. Will some corn sneak in? In August, in Lancaster County? You bet your ass it will. A roll every once in a while? Sure. But no sugar. I'm not naive, I know it leaks into some stuff but I am vigilant. (looking at you "natural" peanut butter, and KETCHUP for chrissake) There's sugar in fruit, I know that. There's also a ton of fiber and water and it's real food. And when I say I have fruit, I mean I have maybe two pieces a day. Yesterday I had a peach that was so good I thought I was eating god's ass. Eat a peach is right. Thank you Allman Brothers. Peaches are the warp speed lever to nirvana. And a very good trochee.
I've sorta developed this superstition about sugar. Went to a friend's house for dinner the other night. Took some Cannoli as a gift. Great cannoli, made daily, filled to order, by real eye-talians Mental. Didn't have one. Wanted one. Allowed myself one. Couldn't eat it. Felt like bad luck. I'm also admitting my motivation is different. The stakes feel pretty high. Fuck that. They are high. You know that poker game for change, coin money? You hang around, hope to catch a card on your gut-shot straight. What's 50 cents? Sure. Why not? But a big-time game? No limit, black checks?. You play differently, you guard your bankroll. you try to stay alive.
I hope this is all fairly straightforward. Hopefully instructive, edifying. It's not the butter it's the bread. It's the sugar. Remember that starches break down into sugar. Chew up a potato chip, spit it out onto a napkin. Wait 10min. Taste it. Yeah I know, gross. Could you kiss yourself? Taste it anyway. What do you taste? Sweet. Your saliva has started the conversion to sugar.
And, But, So: I was faced with the dilemma: what to do with my kids. For most of this story, I ate the way I ate, Heather played along with certain allowances. (Looking at you Smartfood popcorn.) And the kids ate kinda, sorta the way we did. But jesus, cereal for breakfast? Treats from friends and school and relatives and Hey, let's go get some ice cream. Sure, who can't get behind an ice cream run? Only an ogre. In a jam for dinner? You make a lotta friends with pizza. And then it sorta washed over me in the organic cereal aisle: a moment of panic. Try to find one, "good" organic, "healthy" cereal with fewer than 5 grams of sugar. HOLY CRAP. You can't just try to side step sugar. You gotta actively, vigilantly avoid sugar. Step one is just stay away from anything with a label. (I mean, nice of the government to insist on all that data, but...if you gotta check, the news probably ain't good.) Their (the kids') health was WAY more important than mine. If I was gonna hold myself to a standard, believe that some diet was better for me, then what kinda derelict would give his kids second best? Desserts ended about 6mos ago. Cold bird. That was hard for oh, about three nights. And no more sandwiches. That took a bit longer to adapt to. But we adapted. It's still hard to have a hot dog (grass-fed, uncured) without a bun, grandmothers still make cookies. That's what grandmothers do and we oughta be grateful. But we are careful. Patient and relentless. Bruce Lee said be like water. This is what I take him to mean. Patient and relentless. take small steps. Dont stop taking small steps. There is always room for improvement.
Stealing a page from the Sant playbook we recently instituted the weekly breakfast menu. MON: smoothie day, zero added sugar. TUES, oatmeal, touch of honey allowed. WED: fruit and cream. THURS: eggs and bacon or sausage Fri: cereal 5g sugar max. This has cut our (their) sugar consumption by gosh, gotta be 80%. They sleep better. They wake fresher. Not so much whining in the morning. Am I imagining it? Seeing the results I hoped for? Maybe. I don't think so. They also eat more. More meat and cheese and vegetables and Dad can I have an apple please? Yes you may. Apple juice? What are you, nuts? I've even seen them lean out a little, maybe a product of just growing, maybe better diet. They are wiry, lively little cusses. My life's most important work. It's not just my job to feed them, it's my job to make sure they know how to eat. One final tip: pork rinds. Crunchy, tasty, 0 carbs.
Maybe this all comes across kinda preachy and finger-wagging. I don't mean it to. I'm just trying to pass along what my experience has been, with the idea it might be helpful. You should exercise. You should eat right. You should decide what those mean for yourself. The exercise program that you can't stick to is the same as the diet you can't follow--just thought experiments with very little data. This is what's worked for me. Answers and results will vary. Be patient, be relentless.
I know this ain't no exercise blog anymore, but I couldn't resist. The vid above is a 170 snatch. Most ever. EVER. There's also a 205 clean and 205 jerks for a triple. The youtube is giving me fits. If i cant post or embed i will try to provide links.
Got this one sketched out and realized it reprises a portion of an earlier post, but I hope with more texture and nuance. The topic is important enough to me to say to you as many ways as I can think of. Don't feel cheated. Thanks for checking in.
Took the kids to a small-potatoes amusement park last week, Knobles Grove. You may know the ubiquitous radio ads if not the park itself. It's up in coal country, an easy 40 minutes from the homestead, by which I mean hunting ground, by which I mean parents' house. I'm in my 40's and home still feels like someplace I gotta go to get to, not depart from. Don't get me wrong, I never feel truly at ease or even that I'm where I'm supposed to be unless H and the kids are with me, and the last year or so has gouged that into sharper relief for me. BUT, like Dorthy learned, there's just no place like home. And for what that's worth, I think the north country is growing on my kids this way. Camp Potter really is a place to stretch your legs, find a project, read a ton, cook a big meal, watch the sunset, listen to the thrushes, catch a fish, shoot a turkey, nap under the sound of rain on a tin roof or stitch together some workout with pull ups and car pushes.
But I digress. The amusement park. I grew up going to Knobles. Once or twice a year someone— parent, neighbor, relative—would organize a trip. This is where my fast ball was clocked at 49 m.p.h. a feat I have been unable to live down in 28 years. Great bumper cars, decent haunted house, hideous food (but in a comforting way), and wooden roller coasters. It's got a retro, throwback feel. Like say a '30's depression carnival. Quaint, little homely, fiercely independent. You buy tickets for the rides. Tickets! It's rather like an anti-hershey park. The old-timey carousel with scary-looking horses has a hundred-year old, deafening steam organ and if you go around on a perimeter steed, you can snatch at rings offered to the riders from a telescoping, mechanical arm. Once per ride someone pulls the brass ring, a little bit of hoo-ha, a pat on the back, small moment of personal triumph, next group please. It's a pretty easy thing, grabbing the rings, but it's made somewhat challenging or at least anxious by the RIGHT-NOW element and the lurking idea that if the ring doesn't come free your arm will be avulsed from its torso to hang bloody from the telescope. You gotta out-rig your horse and ride almost side saddle and something about it feels death-defying to a kid. The rings are steel and most, most, most of the time you get nothing but steel and when the ride is over you lob the steelies back into the mouth of a lion painted on canvas over a receiving bucket. Getting the brass ring, well that's all luck of the draw but i've seen it missed, so, yes, luck, but you still gotta perform. As it happens, my first time, at maybe 10 years old, I got the brass ring. AND I got it again, in high school. A sweet salve after getting roughed up by the radar gun. You can't give your crush a fast ball, after all. Has any other human being ever snagged the brass ring twice? Seems silly to even ask.
On the Monday of my prodigal return to Knobles I'd had enough of the kiddie, round-they-go-take-a-picture rides and led us all over to the Phoenix, wooden roller coaster par excellence. The closer we got to ride time, the more times we got to see ride-done cars pulling into dock, the more fear started to worry the faces of Wyatt Agnes and Adeline. You can stay as buoyant and carefree as you want, but when a kid makes up his or her mind about what is going to be fun and what is going to suck, all your overly-enthusiastic smiles or doubtful looks are not going to dissuade. So: Five of us, a ride away, screaming patrons, screeching wheels, a loudspeaker gargling (important?) instructions. My three decided this was going to suck. Additional problem: 2 to a car. Wyatt, sorry, has to ride with stranger guy—totally cool and avuncular, but completely unknown—one ride cycle ahead of his family. It'll be fine, just wait for us on the other side. Another person might have reconsidered, thought through a different strategy. Or just listened to his wife. I am not another person. Nope. Wyatt, go with strange guy, you'll be fine, time to fly little bird. Ags, with me. Ads, with mom. It's gonna be FUN dammit. But I confess to feeling like a LCVP tailgate guy, Utah Beach.
Wyatt goes off with stranger danger and the forlorn look on his face must have been the look of all those poor orphans they shipped out west on trains 100 years ago. Welcome to Nebraska, kids, the tableland. Click Click Click up goes the coaster train. SCREEEAAAM, down goes the coaster train. Welcome to the Phoenix, you can't rise from the ashes without first burning to cinder. The stricken look on Wyatt's face upon return pretty much vaporized whatever thin thread of courage remained with the girls awaiting their turn and now desperately pleading to be manumitted from the orphan train and its awful master. I gave the boy a big, searching, suggestive, thumbs up across track. Thumbs up? Thumbs up? Thumbs up, right? He looked at his sisters and his sisters only and like Nero must have to other gladiators about to die, gave a unambiguous hell-ward-pointing thumb. Last thing Heather does is give me an eye roll so large and aggressive I got a little woozy. Last thing Ags says to me before the bar comes down trapping us in our death cabs: Im only doing this 'cause you're making me.
Doubtless you love a good wooden roller coaster ride as much as I do, all shaky herky-jerky and sudden. Well, the Phoenix does rise again. And again. I had my arm firmly around Ags to lessen the violence, but, sweetheart, it's a wooden roller coaster. She couldn't hear my comforting talk for the abject screaming the whole trip. At some point the g-forces sucked the chewing gum from her mouth into her long hair. Adders screamed as well except when abrupt changes in direction closed her teeth on her tongue making it bleed and making her parents out to be some kind of criminals.
And for a brief moment I might have thought about or regretted not being another, softer guy. But what we were dealing with and what this blog post is about is fear. See, we had this moment, Wyatt and I—in Maine—fretting about jumping from the boat into the icy Atlantic. And then we had another (still in the middle of it, actually) having to do with the contact part of football. And the girls and rock-climbing, and swimming and the list goes on. . . to include wooden roller coasters, the deep end and hell, even the dark. No one's out to raise cowards. No one. I know that. I'm trying to turn the screw even tighter by teaching my kids how to confront, to deal with, to live in the presence of fear. So they rode the Phoenix at gunpoint or close to it. Football is actually another good example. Most kids when they start pee-wee don't know how to hit. They're afraid of contact. And with good reason. It just runs counter to everything they've learned in their life up to that point. Run into something as hard as I can? For what? What about "be careful, watch what your doing, you're gonna get hurt?" Nah, those are off the table now. Sic 'em. I remember very clearly liking being a football player WAY more than actually playing football. I liked the gear and the esteem (it was central PA) I didn't like the contact. I was afraid. Eventually, we got a good coach who taught us how to hit, gave us confidence and what I feared I soon embraced. I'm trying to be my kids' good coach. One of the beauties of football (there aren't many, but this one goes a LONG way) is that it will make lots of room for someone small and slow. . . if they are fearless. In this way it is much like life.
See when I was going to die, I was gripped by a hollowing-out, blinding fear. Racing pulse, panic, constantly on edge, unable to reason or see past the next hour. Sleepless. I have very little memory of this time, save the fear. I feared heaven because the idea seems painfully boring. I feared hell because it seems boringly painful. I feared simply ceasing to exist because, well, this one doesn't really need an explanation now does it?—and that oughta tell you something—but who leaves a good party in the middle? The thing is, I didn't die as soon as I thought I might. I just hung around dreading moment to moment. Terrific, paralyzing dread. You have known real fear: it is work. It's exhausting. You breathe hard, you're contracted and tense. Here's what happens if you stay in that heightened state too long: you wear out, you get tired, you see the state for what it is—just a state, that you can ignore. I'd like to claim some epiphany, a cloud-parting moment when I realized some secret, touched the rail, or solved the riddle. I can't. I didn't. I just got tired. Tired of being afraid all the damn time. I couldn't keep it up. I had to go on living. Even if living meant dying. I finally saw that you can choose not to be afraid. It is not gravity or something ineluctable. It's not even an emotion, though it often comes in emotional costume. It's plain and simple a choice we make. Sure, sometimes something will give you a start, take your breath, catch you unaware. But honestly, even that doesn't happen to me much anymore. Guess it's why a roller coaster offers such appeal, even more than before: Thrill, virtual, play-pretend fear. I'm not really afraid anymore. Im just not. You don't have to be either. I know I could get sick again. I could. In fact, right now, the odds are I will. Those are the breaks. But I'm not afraid. Not of dying. I was. Terrified. Sobbing, dreading, tortured and beggingly afraid. Mainly, I think, because I didn't know how to. Die, that is. This was the great gift of my ordeal: I learned how to die. I had to, I was out of options. But I didn't die. I don't know anything about being dead, but I know about dying. To die you have to be humble and thankful and accepting but you also have to be brave and resolute and trusting. The lesson I snatched from the arm of eternity is you gotta be these things to live, too. The better you get at all these things, being thankful and humble and brave and trusting, the easier your life—and death—will be.
So what I feel emboldened to teach my kids and tell you is that fear is poisonous. It's an energy sink and a waste of time. Bad things are gonna happen. So are good. Those potentialities are in tension and constitute the pith of our time alive. Fear is only a force coupler for the bad and a dilution of the good. Rid yourself. Go about your business, unafraid. Im not talking about being reckless or stupid. I'm talking about choices that are easy to forget are ours alone to make.
At the end of the Knobles day we stopped at the carousel. When it was our turn I was at the back of the pack. All the horses filled up, namely the perimeter horses, from which one can try for rings. Ah, I thought, I'll just help with the kids and ride inside, standing next to my horse. But something pulled me back. I waited: behind the gate, first person in line for the next ride, while everyone else I was with went around. Heather gave me a look like....you can imagine the look, and I deserved it. But you can't get the brass ring from the inside. Everyone dismounted, exited the ride. I went in with the new group, picked an outside horse, feisty looking, flowing plaster mane, spiraled pole shooting out his back, one hoof tucked as if initiating a jump. My party waited outside for the 43 year-old to finish his fake pony ride. Steel, steel, steel, steel. Four steels rings. Do I have to name alloy of the fifth? Does ANYONE know ANYONE who's claimed three brass rings in a lifetime?
