#5

It might be part of the story.  It might not.  In case it is, I'll tell you that last Saturday night Dr. Girvin and I moved some furniture.  That's not a euphemism or code for anything.  No wink.  No nod.  Furniture: tables, chairs, sofas.  Moving: you get one end, I'll get the other.  I'll go up the steps backwards.  Watch your hand.  It's tight through here.  I backed into a door jamb carrying a table.  Sorta pinched my non-dominant hand (L) between the table I was carrying and the door frame.  Ouch.  Keep moving.  Did NOT drop the table or need to stop.  Really had no reason to give it another thought.

Except Sunday morning I woke up with terrific pain in my thumb.  I've broken a couple bones.  I thought: this hurts bad enough to be broken.  How did I break my thumb?  Went to one of those quick med places.  Clean, little wait.  Half the co-pay of an ER visit.  About half the doctoring ability.  Meh, get what you pay for.  X-ray: negative.  Thumb NOT broken.  Went to bed fairly pain tolerant, woke up a sissy.  Huh.  My thumb REALLY hurts.  Why?  Bruised, the half doc said.  It didn't look bruised.  It was kinda red and stiff.  And hurt.

I went home.  Feelin' kinda cranky.  Started shivering.  Why's it so cold in here?  H and kids: "It's not really cold."  But I'm freezing.  If you're a reader of this blog, you know that random fevers FREAK me out.  Fevers are not good.  Least of all, unexplained fevers.  Fevers w/o explanation get filed under catastrophic illness.  So I took some Motrin and six blankets and shivered away.  Getting ready for the worse.  Didn't sleep all that well.

In the morning, my hand looked like I had a goalie glove on.  I did not have a goalie glove on.  I wear my goalie gloves only when I'm knitting.  And I never wear just one goalie glove.  I'm not a poser.  But my hand: wow.  Swollen.  Hot.  Stiff.  Red.  Went about my day.  Sorta.  What is wrong with my hand?  Should I get a blood test?  Driving with one hand is my default.  But when you can drive with ONLY one hand it's harder than you think.  Around noon noticed that the hot red color of my hand was making tracks up my forearm.  I'm not a doctor, but it didn't seem right.  Much as I hate hospitals, seemed like the time to go.

The triage nurse said, come with me.  Speedy service at the ER is always a bad sign.  I had a 103 fever and BP was 86/60.  These are bad signs too.  The first doctor took a look.  At this point the red tracks were up in my biceps.  She said:  Just a minute.  It wasn't a whole minute.  In about 45 seconds she was back with like 7 doctors.  And student doctors.  And a couple nurses.  Felt like an Eakins painting, Agnew Clinic or whatever.  Head guy spoke up:  you're gonna start IV antibiotics right away.  I said, sorry, presentations in my class at the art school tomorrow, doesn't really work for me.  He said: if you don't start treatment right now, you won't SEE tomorrow.  Those tracks are headed for your heart.  If they get there you're done.  Done is short for done living.  Doctors are known for their colorful language.

So I give him my arm.  the other arm.  My IV arm and say time's a wasting doc.  Tick tock.

But first, I want an MRI.  Then we'll start the meds.  FUT BIRST:  just so you know, if the infection is in the muscle you will need surgery tomorrow.  If it's in the bone we might need to take your hand.  You should know this and be prepared.  It's very serious. . .

TAKE MY HAND?!  Take it where?  My hand goes with me.  I go with my hand.  That's the way hands work.  You're doctors, you should know this.  TAKE MY HAND? What the Christ?  Christ only got nails through his hand.  They didn't TAKE his hand.  TAKE MY HAND?  I parked in handicapped thinking I'd be out in a jiff, not because I thought I'd be handicapped.  Handicapped is short for Cap-in-hand, like a beggar out of Dickens.  Without a hand you can't hold a cap for people to drop change or lint into.  You can't be handicapped without a hand.  You can only be one-handicapped and that sounds like something from golf.  Doctors suck.

But the machine is in motion.  You can't stop it.  The giant wood chipper.  For bodies.  The giant body chipper, doctors nurses, tests monitors, insurance, hideous food, sadness, loneliness, despair.  wonder how long it'd take to get a one arm pull up?  And just so you know:  you don't have to wear the hospital gown.  It's just how they make you feel helpless and needy.  It's part of the control.  Don't wear it.  Say:  I'm not wearing that.  And give 'em the finger if you need to.  They can't make you wear it.  Don't wear it.  But, so: MRI.  Ever done one of these? Not really much to recommend them.  They're loud and cold and usually mean something's wrong.  But there was headphone music, anything I wanted as long as it was country or western.  From the MRI they whisked me right to a room in the hospital and stuck me.  Commence the miracle of modern medicine.

Except it's not really a hospital in the common understanding of a place to go with competent medical care.  It's more like a really expensive, bad hotel.  Say the Highmark Hilton and smirk to yourself.  Don't smirk to others.  Smirks are very easy to misinterpret.  All the rooms in the Highmark Hilton have TV's and video games that other people come in and play while you're trying to sleep.  It's weird because you're part of the game.  The people come in and do things to you and watch their progress on the screens of the games.  And all the games are too loud and the people playing them are not very good at the game.  However, there are stunning rooftop-vent views.  The beds are awful and the mattresses are rubber coated.  Frankly I don't know how they get away with charging so much per night.

Instructed to wear an Ice pack on the hand, I had to keep begging ice.  This is apparently below most staff's pay grade despite the fact that the Highmark Hilton calls itself all inclusive.  They give you a bracelet for free drinks and everything.  But ice and ice getters are scarce.  And when it comes it's not frozen water, it's a cold gel pack thing.  Good enough but goes room-temp way faster than frozen water.  So you ask for a lot of cold gel packs.  This goes on into the night.  Nurses aid says at one point, sorry not frozen yet.  Huh?

Yeah, we don't have any more, they're not frozen yet.

Um, It's a Hilton, go find some. Please

Sir, you'll have to be patient.  (pun not intended, not smart enough to pun).

Look, I have medical orders to maintain ice treatments.  Please find me some.  The aid would really like me to understand how demanding and unreasonable I'm being.  I'd really like the aid to stop acting like I'm asking the recipe for Coke.  I need ice.  It's like aspirin.  You can't tell guests at the Highmark Hilton you're out of aspirin.  Or ice.  Sorry no ice?  In a hospital?  Even a bad one?  My Yelp review will not be pleasant.

Antibiotics are really a wonder.  Blue mold.  What a discovery.  But really opiates are the oil in the engine.  Antibiotics save your life.  Opiates make you not so cathected with your life.  Win-win.  I like morphine.  I do.  I call it sister morphine.  Nah, just kiddin' that was Keith Richards.  But I do like her.  And cousin oxy.  Rumor is if you crush up oxy and suck it up your nose you will loose your house and car and wife and kids and eat from dumpsters.  Or go on with your successful career as a right wing radio host.  Praise god.

And the food at the Hilton is, well, there is no food at the Highmark Hilton.  Imagine a place that expensive without food?  Weird!  They shove hot objects around on plates but it's not food.  People eat it but it's not food.  They even refer to it as food, but.  You follow me.  I don't like to eat not food.

Spoiler alert: I am typing this with two hands.  Antibiotics ate up the "infection."  That was the fancy term the doctors used.  Saw several of them.  Not one of them saw it twice.  Each one asked me the same questions.  Like: Do you think it's getting better?

"Uh, I thought you'd have a more informed opinion.  I'm a little concerned about the continuity of care.  Every shift someone new looks at my arm, asks the same questions, says the same things.  No one seems to be in charge."

"Well, I can understand why it looks that way to you Mr. Potter, but what you need to know is we talk about you.  A lot. [headed for exit]

I don't know what you'd say, no one's seen me more than once.  What data would you discuss?"

I will put a note in your chart that you'd like to discuss this further with someone. [hand on door]

Why can't I discuss it with you?

[Gone]

I had a good friend bring me real food and a couple others visited.  And some of you called.  It was all touching and poignant but I don't really like hospitals much.  I hate them.  Hate only begins to describe the emotion I have for hospitals.  I'm starting to hate doctors too.  Even nurses who are like angels, are starting to chap me.  I think I might be like the aboriginal men who die if they are taken out of the wild.  Except just for hospitals.  I feel myself dying in hospitals.  No more hospitals.  Please.  I can only survive outside of hospitals

There ain't no moral.  No lesson.  Except I have good friends and a long suffering wife and brave kids.  I called Boston and didn't get an answer.  But last year when I got a pneumonia they said, you have the immune system of a toddler and the mobility of an adult.  You're gonna run into some stuff you shouldn't.  Like close-out 9ft waves and bacteria.  My immunity is naive.  That's the clinical expression.  I kinda like the term, unexpected but apt. What I regret is what it means.  Like I'm a hayseed.  First time in the saloon.  Girls?  In the back?  That do what??  My cells are like: hey pretty bacteria, let's do something we'll regret.  Oh, no.  What are you?  Call 911.  Where's the medicine?  Where's the morphine?

Rilke says the point of life is to get devoured by greater and greater things.  Kerouac says if you own a rug you own too much.

Here's to finding the greater things and moving less furniture.

SEVEN SPANISH ANGELS

Making Chili the other night, kinda falling in love one more time with the chili and the making: Chopping onion the right way, sweet-talking garlic cloves out of their clothes, bacon about to make me a star (I'm already super.)  Stir, taste, think of where to go just a little further, 'cause there's always room for improvement .  Of course: eggs.  Over easy.  Fry iron, leaf lard, brown bug-fed ovoid beauties.  Prep and time it just right and you can have hog fat smiling up at you as your diners wash up.  They'll sit down to a bowlfull but stretch them out just a tantalizing moment more--maybe say a poem--while you fry huevos up one at a time, over-just-easy-enough for frictionless release. Let that white spot slip like a tipsy woman's tongue into the meat and make union.  Sometimes it breaks.  It's not a perfect world—you're just trying to make it that way.  And you were gonna break it anyhow, so the yolk honey can make a sauce x a sauce—sauce squared—that just should not be talked about.  It should be eaten and that is all.

But while I was keeping my workspace tidy, singing too loudly for anyone's comfort but my own, I heard a certain classical guitar lick that always makes me stop for a breath, double check heart is still caged behind ribs.  

He looked down into her brown eyes and said, Say a prayer for me
She threw her arms around him whispered, God will keep us free
They could hear the riders coming he said, "This is my last fight
If they take me back to Texas they won't take me back alive"

Song has always had a hold of me somehow.  Remember hearing it as a kid and wondering what the story was.  And marveling how brave the man.  How strong the woman.  Now I admire them no less but I also swoon for how compressed the story: setting, plot, character and dramatic action in about 50 words.  Immediate emotional impact.  About the impact: more so for me now.  My wife has brown eyes.  Have made a stand or two I didn't think I'd tell about. I know how futile defiance can be, yet how unpersuasive futility . The riders are always coming.  It's true, you can hear 'em.

There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun
They were praying for the lovers in the valley of the guns
When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared
There was thunder from the throne
And seven Spanish angels took another angel home

My Ray Charles phase lasting as long as my Willie Nelson phase, I might as well go ahead and call them favorites though I don't like lists.  Put the two together and you get something very fine and lovely and if you don't feel anything upon hearing these voices you must not have feelings.  I got it together pretty quickly in the kitchen--chili simmering and all.  Salad to chop.  But I was giving the words my all, trying to sound like a blind, redheaded stranger. Proud and embarrassed and intoxicated with the feeling like how from a solid place to stand you can let your heart soar.  Soar like a kite strung through the wind, humming, music for to dance.  I find such hope in the angels praying for the lovers.  Who knew angels could pray, or needed to?  Altars and valleys.  Real and metaphoric.  Dude did not go back to Texas.  Did NOT.  Salvation if no mercy.

She reached down and picked the gun up that lay smokin' in his hand
She said, Father please forgive me I can't make it without my man
And she knew the gun was empty and she knew she couldn't win
But her final prayer was answered when the rifles fired again

See, women are smarter and better in case you didn't know. She wants to go with her man but the riders won't shoot her unarmed.  So she arms herself, with an empty gun, and finds Grace and mercy. . .under fire.  Like every love story ever.  The good ones anyway. Cephalus and Procris, Romeo and Juliet, Pyramus and Thisbe, Bonnie and Clyde.  I was just about as high as the moon when the girls came in the kitchen wondering what was for dinner.

There were seven Spanish angels at the altar of the sun
They were praying for the lovers in the valley of the guns
When the battle stopped and the smoke cleared
There was thunder from the throne
And seven Spanish angels took another angel home

    Chili.  Salad.  Fixin's.  Sound good?
    Mmmm. Yeah.  Is this a sad song?
    Sad? well...I can smell the spent powder, feel dust in my throat.  And the clouds.  Angels don't come without billowing white clouds.  Meteorologists have proven the cloud/angel connection. Yes.  Yes. It's sad, but it's hopeful too.
    What's it about?
    A man and a woman.  They love each other very much.  But they are in trouble.
    Seven-year-old stares: keep talking, this sounds serious.
    The man has done something wrong.  But they are so in love, the woman and the man, she's done nothing wrong, but she loves him very very much.  Men are coming to get them and punish the man for the wrong he's done.  But the riders, they are not good men, they are corrupt.  The man knows this.  He just wants to go home with the woman.  He won't stand for the judgement of people who are corrupt.
      What's corrupt?
      Uh, bad on the inside, bad for real, even if it looks ok, looks good on the outside.
      Hmmm.  Hmmm.
So then I cue the song up again from the top and I sing it to them and talk it to them too and hit pause here and there along the way to make sure they get what's happening, even acting it out, explaining with urgency, feeling myself plunging even deeper into the story, the story subsuming me, the connection of the lovers, the universe letting them flap at loose ends and at the same time holding them tight as they need to be held.  This is the way things are: beautiful and terrifying.  The riders are coming, but you can still do what you want.  And by the time the rifles fire again my eyes are wet and I'm embarrassed as hell, like oh you big dumb sap, but I can't help it.  And the girls are right there with me.  Big raindrop tears and just stricken looks on their faces. And oh my god, what did I just do? Is this terrible or beautiful to make them cry like this?  It's both.  I think.  Now.  Judge for yourself. You should always judge for yourself.  I wrapped them up in a huge hug, heads tented together, tears mixing, let the song play out.  Long silence.  Big deep breath.
       Agnes:  that's terrible, why did you let us listen to that?  That's not appropriate.
       Adeline (sniffing):  Yeah.  Why?
        I'm sorry.  It's sad.  It's terribly sad.  But it's good too, right?
        How is it good??
        Because the riders didn't take the man back to Texas.  The woman and the man are together.  The angles came and got them.  They are still safe; they're just not here.
        Slow accepting nods.
       And it's okay to be sad when things are sad.  Happy when things are happy.  Sometimes things are both.  Count on the people who love you to help you sort that out.  That was an awesome hug, right?
      Yeah.
      C'mon, right?
      Yeah. You're right.  Another hug.
      Dad?
      Yeah?
       Is there sour cream for the chili?


C'mon help me now

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.

SURPRISE!

So anyway, two years today.  Two years post-transplant.  Feels like a lifetime ago, and kinda like it was yesterday. And even a little like it was 2 years ago.  Ever get the overwhelming urge to weep for no apparent reason?  Like the cosmos just wanted tears. . . from you?  How about the inexplicable urge to laugh? Like you just heard the funniest goddamn thing ever, except you're alone or with someone but nothing particularly funny is happening?  Yet you're laughing. . . in your belly.  How about at the same time?  It's very heady, a sharp sense of vertigo.  Jesus, it's so high up!  You can see for-EVER.  Wind doesn't blow through the sky. The wind IS the sky.  That's me, like, a lot.  Couple times a week.  Start to think, or try to stop thinking and ...what the hell is so funny? What am I laughing at?  Oh, please, what am I NOT laughing at? It's all just a marvel.  A marvel really and suddenly my eyes are blurry and my throat stings and I'm crying like—I'm not crying like anything— I'm just crying.  And laughing.  At the same time.  And very confident in both the happy and the sad and the sappy and kinda tipsy.  And whew.  Will this ever stop?  I hope not.  It's so wild.  It makes me feel like I understand something.  That's what it feels like: understanding something complicated and abstruse and I don't think it can be explained.  Explaining kinda mucks it up.  You have to learn it, you must learn it to have anything remotely resembling a chance, a prayer.  But it can't be taught, which is funny and sad.  Go learn it.  It's like a secret. . .inside a secret. . . inside.

It can't be taught, but I'll try—for you: it's all sound and fury, without meaning.  Which is totally funny: gag's on us.  And it's gonna end.  You're gonna die.  And that's crushingly sad because, yeah, its only sound and fury but it's all we got.  And, but like your death won't mean anything either. That's Funny and sad at once.  It will seem like it does or should mean something, your death, but it doesn't.  It won't.  Not to you anyway.  WOMP WOMP.  Next contestant.  It doesn't mean anything except what you make it mean. Wanna make it mean god?  Go ahead.  Make it mean god.  There are worse things you could make it mean.  Like stuff or money or yourself: stupid fucking vanity, arrogance, hubris, selfishness.  Those would be terrible things to make it about, but plenty of people do, have.  It's your hourglass, you know the way these things work, right?  Sand leaks through the pinch-point.   You can't see the top, above the pinch.  You can only see the bottom, the sand that's accumulated.  But you're on the clock.  Make it mean something.  That's the job.  Make it mean something.  Ever seen a Buddhist sand painting?

There's probably something wrong with the culture or our collective upbringing or just us since we make the culture and raise ourselves.  Something wrong that you gotta go half your life to figure this out.  Or maybe it's me.  Maybe I'm the defective part.   I don't care.  I like that it's flawed or broken or whatever.  Or I am.  It needs work.  I need work.  I'm a fixer-upper.  The demo is done, torn down to the studs, a good plan, a good crew, plenty of money, awesome decorator.  It's gonna be great.  It just might take a while.  These kinda projects always do.

See that right there is what you call a mixed or better yet tortured metaphor.  Evidence of its larger point, however. (things need work, there's always room for improvement, work on them) Which is kinda cool, tortured but self-fulfilling.  I'm letting it stand. I can't really talk about it any more.  I've got too much work to do.

The joy and fulfillment I've known in the last two years are beyond expression.  Thinking about it makes my nose run.  A lot of that has to do with the simple fact that I'm here typing to you.  I know: it's not even that simple a fact, but it's true, I'm here.  A lot of it has to do with the people out there (you) that read this blog or maybe don't really read this blog anymore or never read or will ever read, but are nevertheless my friends, the people in my (and their own) meaning-making exercises.  I want you to know that: that you're responsible for my survival  and my joy and fulfillment.  I am completely ready to die.  I know that sounds like melodramatic or maudlin or too something, but that's how it is (not melodramatic or maudlin, just ready).   I don't want to (die) but I could.  And I've never felt freer or more at peace.  Or more grateful.  Or more fiercely in love.  Did you know love could be fierce.  It can! Raah. (that's a tiger noise.  a love tiger).  I wonder how could it possibly get any better and then the next day comes, better somehow.  Don't know when the sand expires.  Could be sooner in my case--must stay honest about that—but damn, there are no bad days because even the bad days are good days.  really really good.

Just imagine if someone told you to write a poem.  Write a poem, a good one, it will be the most important thing you can do with your life.  It will be the meaning of your life.  It'll be good for you, define you and good for those around you and this is what you should do: write a poem. Give it all you got. This is the key, the poem.  Okay?  Okay, got it.  Poem.  Check.

Except, what's a poem?  That was me.  Embarrassing but true.  I'm still so far.  Oh, golly.  So far from the man, the person, I want to be.  But now I know what a poem is.  I know the person to be, work at being.  I know what meaning is and how to try to make it.  You probably do too.  Hell, you've probably known all along.  You coulda clued a brother in...but don't sweat it.  I'm here now.  Start the party.   Sorry I am so late. I'm a slow learner.  A late bloomer.  Late to my own funeral.  Late to my own (birthday) party.

the finger pointing at the wave is not the wave

Chop Wood Ride Water

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.

5 things you didn't know or you might not have known or maybe forgot or that I just wanted to say about bacon.

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:

http://pottercjp.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-we-think-about-when-we-think-about.html

http://pottercjp.blogspot.com/2013/09/take-gun-leave-cannoli.html

Beans and Rice (Short Course)

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.

300

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.

Why I'm Not NOT a Buddhist

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.