THOSE CHAMPIONSHIP ROUNDS - 12/23/2022

I am drawn to controlled violence, men who have trained themselves way deep into muscle memory where instinctive movements are designed to both dispatch and protect when triggered.I find Mixed Martial Arts brutal, artless, ugly,  awful to watch. You may feel the same way about boxing, but where you see a brutal artlessness, I see grace and tactics, footwork, astonishing resilience, interior strength, superb  conditioning, incredible courage.To do in the ring what it is harder, often forbidden, to do outside of it - to fight back, to pull it up from the floor and go for it because the alternative is to give in and that is no longer an alternative. It's the heart, not the organ but the soul of the person, his spiritual guts. In the ring to compromise is to lose.

Boxing is a passion of mine, about the only sport I follow, probably because it was something I shared with my father. Back in the fifties, from St. Nicholas arena, Gillette blue blades brought you the Friday night fights in living black and white TV, whooping at Carmen Basilio, an otherwise dogged fighter, who "blocked with his face." Other names from that time - all legends - Kid Gavilan, Sugar Ray Robinson, La Motta, Two Ton Tony Gillento, Emile Griffith (who beat an opponent to death in the ring because the guy, a Frenchman, called him a faggot)-so many guys out there half naked fighting their hearts out."You can run but you cannot hide", said the great Joe Louis. That's the part: you cannot hide. Everything you've got and haven't got is out there for the world to see. There is no one to help you. You either fight your heart out or you quit, and you do not quit. There is no time out. My favorite movie line comes from DiNiro as LaMotta after he's been beaten to a pulp by Sugar Ray Robinson. He's bleeding and barely able to stand, still up but hanging on the ropes. Barely able to speak but still defiant, "I'm still standin', Ray. Ray, I'm still standin'."

So.

Those Championship Rounds.

The final two of any prize fight: rounds eleven and twelve at the elite level. Dig in to the end. Fight with everything you've got. Leave it in the ring. Of course, there's that knockout punch, the one you don't see coming, but isn't there always?

I watched a prize fight recently - heavyweight championship - Usyk vs Joshua. Good fight. Why? Because it came down to the championship rounds, the final two, the two that need you to dig down deeper than you've ever dug before, the two where fights are won or lost. The bell has wrung. Round eleven. 

Stephen Howard Foreman has been blessed. He's made it to the championship rounds. He's taken a licking but kept on ticking. Broke his nose. Got knocked out. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - bring 'em on! Brought 'em on. To paraphrase the lady when she sang out loud, "He's still here." Yogi Berra chimes in, "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings." Foreman has two rounds left. So, now, what does he do? His physical powers have faded, but it's never really been about the physical, has it? 

These are my championship rounds. What do I need to do? 

The most overwhelming thing in my life these days is my feeling for my grandson, four years old, and, of course, never has there been another so bright and so beautiful.It isn't that this feeling is more intense than any I've had for my wife and children. Certainly, Jamie pole axed me the instant she walked through the door. My children have had me mesmerized since before birth. But love for Dorian is unencumbered in a way those never were. You meet the woman you will marry, and you hope she loves you back. Your children are born into this world, and their cries tell you how much they need you. But, an innocence attends my grandson. I only need to love him. 

I see this awakening at this point of my life - this encounter with innocence - as a blessing. To feel so much that is so pure and good is an extraordinary thing, as much a miracle as any I know this side of the supernatural. That sense of wonder! At four score and nearly two years, I am reluctant to feel otherwise. So I focus on the moment, focus on the feeling when it's there, transfuse it, pack it away but not too far, able to retrieve it at a nanosecond's notice. Is this love, what it really is? If I could take this feeling and wrap it around all the things of my day - and keep it there - oh,the peace and exultation that would bring. To feel what I feel when I watch him sleep would mean that I had won. 

        

Me 'n' Marlon

One night way some time back when my career had taken a serious dive, I came quick aroused in the middle of the night, straight from the depths of a dream,  and had to wake up Jamie right then and there to share the incredible news.  An epiphany: I'd missed my calling. I should have been an actor. I'd just had a dream wherein I was more brilliant than Brando in "On The Waterfront". "I coulda been a contender..." brought tears to my eyes. Jamie had to see this. "Wake up, J! You gotta see this!" So, Jamie shakes herself awake and glares at me like "this better be good".

    "Listen to me, J. Just listen to me."

I had her undivided attention and launched into that famous speech certain I was once again about to out Brando Brando. The look on J's face was pure horror as she realized her husband, always threateningly close to the edge, had now truly passed over it. 

    "I coulda been a contender..."

    "Stop it."

    "It was you, Charlie, it was..."

    "Stop it!"

    "The extra cash wouldn't hurt."

    "You're not serious."

    "You could coach me."

    "Good night, Gracie."

That was a good couple of decades ago. I haven't acted since, and my career, while not exactly booming, is no longer on life support. 

PS:

Just for the record. Way back in 1973, Shirley Rich, a well known casting director, was casting my first national drama for PBS - The Resolution of Mossie Wax. She offered to send me out on acting calls. Pass. I told her, "Uh, uh. I'm having too much trouble learning how to be me let alone trying to figure out how to be somebody else."

My First French Kiss

That tongue. That tongue. That tongue. The way it slipped through my lips and sluiced into my mouth, wrapped itself around my own, then danced me one way and t'other. Oh, my God! My fifteen year old body exploded with the slippery sweetness of it. I'd felt pain and pleasure before but nothing like this. It was as if an unbearably sweet charge began in my mouth and traveled down my spine like Jacob's ladder. Zapadee-Zapadee-Zapadee-ZZZZZZapppp, like biting into a juicy fruit when the juice trickles down your throat and chin and neck and chest. It obliterated the rest of the world. Who did this to me? Her name was Suzanne. She did this to me. 

Back story.

She was nineteen and a student nurse. I was fifteen and an orderly.

Suzanne. A small town girl from Cumberland, Maryland. In later years I thought of Leonard Cohen. Remember, "Suzanne by the river..."?

Further back story.

Illusions die hard. Imagine this happening today. Spring,1956. I was fifteen years old and certain I wanted to be a doctor. One day I was driving with my mother. As we passed Lutheran Hospital I asked her to stop. I'd taken it into my skull that I was going to ask them for a job. Which I did. And got it. I told them I wanted to be a doctor and proposed to work as an orderly part-time while I was in high school. They gave me the job. Again, imagine this happening today. A fifteen year old just off the street emptying bedpans on the med-surg floor of an urban hospital. Furthermore, get this:  I was promoted to the emergency ward and then to surgery: gunshot wounds, car accidents, stabbings, miscarriages, autopsies - I was there for them all. I even worked my little sister's emergency appendectomy. Of course, the fact that I failed math, chemistry, Latin and physics didn't help with my med career. It's taken me years to ferret that one out.

Three score and seven years later she lingers like a fog at sunset and snuggles into my past like a sweet nap, although at the time, it was damn near unbearable. As far as Suzanne was concerned, my brains were eggs to be scrambled, a runny sunny side up on a good day. What she would do was touch my arm as she passed me. Once she actually drew the fingers of her hand gently across my midsection. She might as well have disemboweled me. As you can see, that was it for life. Every time she was near me I stopped breathing. When she looked at my face she saw me. Her green eyes triggered my damp and immature heart. All I wanted was to be with her, whatever that might be, wherever that might be, however that might be, whenever...I was barely treading water. I had no clue. 

One day...One afternoon...One morning...Damn, who knows what time of day, but we found ourselves in a deserted stairwell. I never saw it coming but suddenly there it was - Suzanne's mouth on mine, Suzanne's tongue on mine, Suzanne's breasts under that starched white bib the student nurses  wore. My memory has the kiss lasting a nanosecond then Suzanne tearing herself away from me and disappearing up the stairs. 

A couple of years later, she was still on my goodbye list. Just prior to shipping out for Parris Island, I went to visit her, illegally, after hours, in the hospital. "I really did a number on you, didn't I?" she asked, fully aware that she had done just that. I remember her manner as apologetic, but I can't remember anything else. Boot Camp obliterated  the rest of it.

My Daily Aphorism

 

The displeasure of aging is that I cannot do much of what I used to. The pleasure of aging is that I’m still trying.

More next week.

Reflections On A Broken Foot

Somewhere in the decade of the 90's. I wasn't even as old then as I am now, not nearly, still I had already entered the realm of the elderly, kicking and screaming, I might add, no way going gently. I was still working out at the gym regularly - I've always been a gym rat - so was in decent shape when my pal, Ed Thurman, invited me for a workout at his senior citizens center. I balked, at first, not wanting to go anywhere near the place as if it were plague infested, but Ed was a great guy, so I went. Five minutes into my workout I couldn't stand it any more - all these cadaverous looking "elderly" pumping their bikes and wheezing and gasping - I had to get out of there.

    "What's up?", asked Ed

    "I gotta get outta here," I answered.

    "You sick?"

    "Yeah," I answered, "Sick of being surrounded by all these old people."

    "I believe," said Ed, indulgently, "That you are suffering from a serious case of denial."

Maybe I was back then, but no longer. I just broke my G-damn foot! On top of a triple coronary bypass and a subdural hematoma,  further denial simply won't hold up.  I'm proof that life is not an end run around the bruises, that it's about the scars to prove I showed up. The late, legendary, outlaw writer of the sixties, Hunter Thompson, said, "Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, "Wow! What a ride!" Then, of course, there's Dylan Thomas with "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." 

Normally, I'd agree with them, yet rage is not what I want to be feeling when the time finally comes, and I certainly don't want to die  totally worn out and thoroughly used up because that would imply I'd gradually but steadily been reduced to nothing while still alive, sort of like the Chinese torture of a thousand cuts. Really, though, I know exactly what he means and suspect we mean the same thing - throw yourself into life and squeeze it dry. I just don't want to slide into home plate like Ty Cobb, cleats up, looking for blood. I'll take the bunt instead. Same game. Different position. 

                "This I know and only this, that I am given a life, 

                  a gift that only once I will receive to do with as I choose, 

                 and I choose to wring it dry of all its pleasure so that when 

                 I am wombed in death's certain eternity 

                 I cannot reflect in anguish that I have had but 

                 birth and death and nothing more."

This sophomoric ditty was written by a twenty-one year old playwright in his first play. Sixty years later what has changed? The fight has become more tactical, more pick and choose than rant and repair. The point is to go gently, at ease and still human, not raging and worn out. I'd like to see the world as a painter, hear the world as a musician, breathe in and breathe out, slowly, to listen as if syllables matter because they do. If I'm going to ride, give me a horse with an even gait not a rodeo bronc. The bronc'll sure give me a wild ride - like we used to say back in Montana: rode hard 'n' put up wet -  but I won't get to enjoy the scenery.   

For the record, most of my bucket list has been banked, however I'd still like to learn how to play the harmonica. 

September 7, 2022

I thought, by now,I'd seen it all, smelled it all, felt it all, done not all but most of all. Uh, uh. Today, a few minutes ago, was a first: I harvested our first crop of peaches from two trees I planted last Spring. They literally shone like golden orbs in the sunset sun - all ten of them - firm but juicy - peaches! - our own peaches! Drought and white-tail deer were two pitched battles, but we managed to prevail. I hauled five gallon pails of water up hill to those trees, fenced them and annointed the ground around with deer repellent. Ten peaches, folks. Tasty perfect as only a fresh picked peach can be. And, yet, I can top this: I picked them and ate them with my son and grandson, the three of us, juice slurping down our chins, a mellow day, a good natured breeze, with the leaves now drifting from the trees. 

Pears are next, though not such a revelation as we've been harvesting them for years. Then come apples. We have one pear tree and four bearing apple trees on the immediate property, and the garden still has tomatoes, kale, squash, and peppers. A sow and her cub have already raided the low hanging branches of the pear tree. One young buck regularly comes for the green apples closest to the house. When the leaves are gone and we're well into Winter, the remaining apples have shriveled and turned a shade of deep brass. When the sun is right, they hang there like temple bells. I don't hunt any more, yet, when the air gets chilly and the leaves keep falling,my eyes automatically "cut for sign" as they say out West which means looking for some indication that what you're looking for exists some where out there right now, and you're on it.

Years of hunting have made me quite the expert on "scat" (the most pungent of those indications), an otherwise arcane subject unless you spend some serious time in the woods.Turkey scat is white and shaped like a question mark. Partridge scat is white like a little caterpillar. Deer poop pellets. Bear scat is a mound (I won't tell you what's in it).Coyote scat is canid (Ditto on what's in it).  I think I've said enough. If you want to know more about the ejecta of any particular animal, drop me a line.

Four Years A Grandfather

         Why is it being a grandfather causes me to lapse into Yiddish syntax? Vas machst du, boychik? Why is it that I spent the past hour on my hands and  knees playing "Turtle"? What is it that makes the lower left drawer of my desk, Grandpa's Drawer? Could it be periodic safaris to Dollar General for fig newtons, gummy bears, chocolate bits, peanut butter crackers, Mexican Coca Cola, and such? Why is it that the smell of the back of a three year old's neck summons a Spring meadow? 

    Dorian Alexander will be four years old in two weeks.

    It will come as no surprise to most of my peers that this is a peak experience, maybe the peak experience of a lifetime. Nothing like it. But, why? I know reasons but not the reason, that taproot of evolution that goes down to the instant of beginning, the Big Bang of parentage. Why is that? I know what but not why, and, if you'll indulge me - trigger warning - I'll tell you some of what.    

    In her novel,The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo writes, "There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name." 

    "Granpa,Granma,Bubbe,Gamma,Pop-Pop,Poppa..." 

    Folks, do I really need to go further? 

    Sweeter notes than a Mozart flutter. Flute? Oboe? Feh. It's that voice, pure bells that chime and tinkle. I know you get it.Their voices have a chaste, unaltered quality, an innocence already nostalgic because you know it's passing. 

I can see him developing wiles, yet there is a purity about him still, an honesty manifesting in the emotion of the moment, an uninhibited joy as he embraces the instants of his life.His  innocence nearly makes me weep because mine is gone.He doesn't yet know he can't get but so close to the sun before the wax holding his wings melts and sends him crashing down. When we cross the street to get the mail, we hold hands and look both ways. I would protect him with my life, but I can't protect him against the melt. The world is going to teach him that if he attempts to leave its orbit he will pay the price. I will teach him that sometimes the price is worth it.

So, it comes down to this: Not the why but the what. I am not a social scientist or psychologist or anthro-scientist of any sort.I'm just a writer:what I feel when I look at him is like no feeling I have ever felt before.The one hundred per cent purity of it.Tainted by not one thing.A play area filled with books and charts and trucks and puzzles and lots of broken stuff. He calls it "my office". I watch him play and explore and my body swells with high octane joy,a feeling so pure as to be almost painful, a happiness so intense,a creature so innocent, so honest, so without blemish,so focused on his here and now, a happiness so fervent that I can only define it as pure love, from the toes up love, a cuddle in your arms because you make it all better love, a feeling that nothing can harm you,love, and, if it does, so what? Folks talk about love all the time. It's a common topic. There's all kinds and then there's this kind, the kind that allows you to forget who you are because this other being has taken up permanent residence in your heart. Finally,we know it at its most potent.In this state,you think your heart will perform a pole vault and stick it. Take it. Keep it. Treasure it. Who cares why? It's just a question answered in the doing.

     I am mesmerized.I need to sit.It is too overwhelming.