our deepest fear

i must be getting better--these tuesday morning jousts are ending far less acrimoniously these days... i've found that one "winning" technique is to come equipped with a suitably pithy quote from something current and something relevant, and this week's spur-of-the-moment grab was from marianne williamson, by way of nelson mandela, by way of the recent film "akeelah and the bee". with apologies to the secular progressives among us (is bill o'reilly not presently one of the media's greatest horse's asses?) there's a couple of references to god within, but i swear it makes even better sense to me without them. (but, as i discussed in a previous entry, i'm dead set against paraphrasing quotations, so here goes, first the complete, and then my distillation:)

"our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. we ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? actually, who are you not to be? you are a child of god. your playing small doesn't serve the world. we were born to make manifest the glory of god that is within us. it's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. it is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

yes.

i can remember being 10 years old at summer camp and choosing against one particular elective activity because--and i can still hear the rationale in my head--i thought everyone would choose it, so there wouldn't be any point in my choosing it for myself because i'd never be so lucky. it was the one thing that i most wanted to do. it was the one thing that i should have made every effort to give myself the chance to do. and i see now that i was afraid--afraid of doing what i wanted to do. and i'll forever have the lesson of the irony that hardly anyone else chose it, and it would have been mine for the asking.

some might see in my recently-past choices an excess of doing what i wanted to do, but i'd caution them at taking too much at face value. i still see in every choice the far greater non-choice, and that very same fear of the light.

it's been my good fortune to have been given a chance for redemption. i wondered if i should have said something about forgiveness, but i realize now that, chasing into the light as jackson browne once sang, that the forgiveness has to happen within ourselves. i'm very close to the conclusion that there is no such thing as forgiveness that happens in any other way. (the most powerful salve for all that is wrong in our lives being, simply and sincerely, like your life depended on it, because it does, "i'm sorry", followed by whatever it takes to deserve and achieve self-forgiveness, which is essentially what most people take as sufficient for others' forgiveness, which sometimes ensues, but, what is that, really...)

"chasing her into the light". it's my new life's work.

if only everyone else could distinguish their fear, realize the fullest extent of their inner beauty and potential, and find their true life's goal.

(moriarty has the morning off...)

some people can't be told, you know, redux

children wishing to adopt stray animals are always admonished at the lifelong & consistent care they require. (of course, they can never resist, can they...)

in the kitchen the other day, concocting father's first fondue, it was thought-provoking to note a recipe trifle of kirsch and cornstarch among the far-larger volumes of white wine, emmentaler and gruyere. i imagine, for those balking at the price of an obscure brandy and doubting the conglutinating propensities of such humble dust, it would be easy to blithely toss only 99% of the chemistry set into the pot, and chalk up the results to "experience". (you know what they say about some people). it's possible that every piece of advice among a whole is there for a reason, but what do i know, and what does stinky, dry cheese have to do with housepets?

last week i glazed a couple of basement windows in the house my grandfather built to satisfy the home inspector and the terms of (fire) sale. others hadn't wanted to touch that particular job, because 15x16" panes of broken glass set in 40+ year old compound seem an unholy combination for the weekend handyperson, but i wasn't concerned. my grandfather had once shown me the intriguing propensity of old glaze to magically soften under intense heat, and i still had the remainder of his collection of propane cartridges express for the purpose. and what was it he also mentioned? something about superheated glass splintering in unpredictable fashion?

some people can't be told to wear safety goggles for a quick job. some people will never understand that the purpose of 749 ml of kirsch can't be found in what's left in the bottle. some people will always see the other side of taking 99% of what was best intended as good advice, and draw their 99-percent-certain conclusion. "buy now, sell now" only sounds like "buy now" to some eager recipients of counsel. sadly, i never learned the housepet lesson as a kid, though i must have been told a hundred times.

i'm sorry.

overtime

i've always marveled at bill belichick's confidence. it's as if he knows that his boys are going to pull it out, and he fearlessly wrestles never to be pinned, always to earn that chance to put it all on the line for one single and final push coming to shove.

the new england revolution, undaunted by an early deficit, (two goals, if you were scoring on aggregate), played hard to earn them before time expired. but what were they doing, 8 in the box, giving chicago their possessions in the final third? what did steve nichol know that we don't know?

it was joy to see matt reis take the second penalty, and to see him roof the shot fearlessly with a confidence not often seen even among the most confident strikers--and to save TWO and ensure the win. having lost on penalties in big games before, it was an eerie sight, to see such boldness and fearlessness among an entire side.

i'm a little hoarse this morning, but satisfied.

i guess it's all about knowing your boys.

what we have here is a failure to communicate

strother martin's drawl (heee-ya) is most frequently remembered, but paul newman's offering of the classic line back to the sheriff later in the movie is the one i like best--cornered, nothing left to lose, but willing to offer one last act of defiance.

life isn't so dramatic, but it's occurring to me as the months wear on that whatever cosmic communication device (mohammed's radio?) that was imagined once to work is no longer. it's oddly liberating, but i don't imagine that's going to get through either...

desperados under the eaves

i always like to attribute motive to poets and their poetry, as with tony hoagland's "look out" at the end of "and the men". (that's not there by accident). today it occurs to me that warren didn't entitle his song "desperados under the eaves" by accident either.

devoid of "traditional" verse and chorus meter and rhyme, one of the song's only two repeated structural components is the opening line, repeated finally towards the end of the song: "i was sitting in the hollywood hawaiian hotel". the other is the poetically evolved line "don't the sun look angry at ME". (emphasis mine, to note the change of the suns attitude from "at the trees") that immediately precedes the second reference to sitting alone at the hotel.

so i'm transfixed today by those would-be bookends, and what warren is pointing to while he sings them. eeeves. don't the sun look angry at the trees. (hey, this is the guy who happily rhymes havana's risk with dad's get-me-out-of-this--it's an eeeves for sure). don't the trees look like crucified theives. don't you feel like desperados under the eaves. wait for it...

heaven help the one who leaves.

he was still waking up in the mornings with shaking hands, and trying to find a girl who understands, but the cause of it all can't be in question.

so here's the thing... certain people are going to read this and think it's about them, and regret all that spilt milk and what have you. but i've taken a moment to consider that my mornings aren't shaking, and there is a kind of understanding that creeps into a life when its built together around so much. i've had a very close thing in my life (still razor's edge) and a reasonable question would be what kind of man would be staring into an empty coffee cup after a time, were things to have evolved in an alternate direction.

look away... down... gower avenue... look away...

Attack ads

the '68 edition (14th) of bartletts suggested that a guy named burke (that's edmund, not brother solomon) once said that "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". (i wonder if he was he talking about "reds" or "the man"?) in any case, safire successfully challenged bartletts back in the early 80's and gained a retraction, (thanks to boller and george's "they never said it" for the etymology), but for whatever reason (i like to think because it makes eminent sense) the quote and its attribution has stuck to the internet like white on rice. (i also like burke's closest-credited version that "when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.")

so, with fullest irony in light of the aforementioned mass misattribution, here's another gem from burke's "thoughts on the cause of present discontents": "it is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. they are light and portable. they are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. they serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best." burke's now-dated conclusion cited a common bit of 18th century doggerel, ("not man, but measures"), but ultimately turned the phrase i today love best, calling the politician's spade "a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement." (you go, edmund).

i hear the epithets that a particular candidate might be "soft on crime", and i am reminded that we're likely to be treated in two years to accusations of a candidate being "soft on terror". well, i, for one, am resolved not to fall an "unpitied sacrifice" on this one. though i loathe political parties and large institutions of almost every kind, and though nietzsche's warning to "battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster" *ought* to give pause to the more-recently amoral, it's time to take up the cudgel.

compatible

having been rolfed of my ny screed, and accepting the inevitability of the impending bronx cheers of "sour grapes" and "loser" from the peanut gallery, it occurs to me that taste is a relative thing. yes, yes, relative to what *you* like, but also relative among our tribes, inherited and adopted.

i rode uptown yesterday with a classic becoming-more-cylindrical-by-the-day matron in some remarkably ill-advised leather pants, and i was struck that the most ridiculous part of her outfit wasn't the way her bulge-y boobs betrayed her weight gain since the last bra sizing, but instead by how truly comical were her exaggeratedly pointed shoes. oh, yes, a gay shoestore salesman can sell anyone on how such things offer visual balance to the high-heeled, and thus shortened foot, but let's be serious here for a second: pudgy wide stumpy-toed feet, no matter how attentively serviced by a korean pedicurist, give nothing more clearly than a wizard-of-oz caricature to their five little piggies that will never look like svelte when taken from eee-wide to gratuitously-pointed in just a couple of inches of czech-spanish shoeleather. who told her to wear those shoes? how much did she pay for the privilege? hasn't anyone intimated to her perhaps why not?

it hit me then that bellwethers guide both the sheep and the shepherd. you want to know where the bleating, greasy-wool cud chewers are off to now? just listen for the dull clank of the
castrated head-of-the-herd, and nobody need feel a moment's insecurity over where they should be, and who they should be with. take offense at the pointed language? i'm one of *those*, then, aren't i?

new york

it sucks.

i've heard all the cultural (and and all the other) paeans to the self-appointed capital of the world, and i'm just not buying any of it. as far away as new haven, the parking garages are all full, and it's necessary to take a bus just for the "privilege" of taking the train to the epicenter of lets pretend.

they're filming on the street (again) so it's a pain in the ass to get in, but even in what should be an oasis, where the menu suggests you can get $4 wurst and bratkartoffeln, the barslut with the naked lady tatoo across her bared shoulder doesn't even know what bratkartoffeln is. #4 on the menu--genau? at least the spaten is right... but then they come out hash browns...

it's all the right ideas and best intentions, but it's hollow, like the hole in the ground that they stare into like a navel, feeling uniquely hard done by while the refugees from east africa queue up to drive them uptown.

oh, but the restaurants. oh, but the theater. oh, but the fill-in-the-greatest-in-the-world-blank. like the $17 -tini's on the roof of the gansevoort, where you are both up high enough not to be bothered by the filth and societal squalor below, as well as most likely to be "seen". soho chic. meatpacking nightlife. soulless trumps treading on the rolling ghosts of the astors, without an audubon or a poe anywhere in sight. tell me how many could so much as find the ny public library, let alone have a memory of ever having been inside, even if you spotted them fifth avenue. (*especially* if you spotted them fifth avenue--i can just hear homiér now: "mmmmm, bergdorf's").

it's all about it being biggest and best in ny. if one were ever tempted to chuckle about the hypothetical harvard graduate from texas who would never be able to decide what to talk about first, it would require forgetting that pt barnum didn't ooze down from bethel and danbury by accident. (where else could a man start his career by purchasing another human being, claiming she was the 160 yr-old wetnurse to george washington and putting her on display for a fee, and then conclude it by penning "the art of money-getting"?)

"the art of money-getting"... if i hadn't told you the author, would you have questioned if it were suggested it was the latest tome by the donald?

i'd have taken the $24 too...

simplify

it's the new en vogue thing. mcmansions and sports utility halftracks are out, and cute little places with a prius in the driveway are all the rage. quality of life (citi says "live richly") trumps trumping it up, and everybody wants to be first to say they've been living simply all along. i drive a five year old dodge, how about you? (i'm still sorry i traded in my would-have-been 16 year old dodge, but you can't cry about spilled milk, even if it once again costs more than the 87 octane...)

the secret to "simplify", i've come to realize, is in realizing what you want. when you no longer have the luxury of one of everything, your risk is having none of the one thing that would have mattered most, if only. i've had the benefit of a life-altering experience played out over six roller coaster months, and i'm happy to wake up in the morning secure in having what matters most. i got here most recently by subtraction, but, in a way, most directly from long ago addition, and that's made all the difference.

my thought this morning is that most folks experience "simplify" via the subtraction route. rather than being free to look at what they have (left) as having reached out for what is best for them, they are burdened with the regret for what they've given up or had taken from them. for instance, i know a girl who kept over 200 stuffed animals in her bedroom, adoring each and every one by name and loving history. having brought 100 of them to the salvation army donation center, she was appalled at the last, not for those she was giving up, but to learn that any might be *sold* instead of given in adoption to the most loving and deserving of new homes. who is to say if there were any lies, white or otherwise, on which she built her resolve to look forward. but i do know that i've remained in awe of her example, to live forward in love.

there are a lot of things i might regret or miss... but none are more important than such a girl's love, or example.

sports

a lot of folks might watch sports for the athleticism and action of the play, (i do too), but i also have to admit to a secret pleasure that close media attention affords to the devotees of other folks who are passionate about what they do, and more than every once in awhile show the wit to match.

one that caught my eye the other day was from one of two would-be workaday goaltenders for the philadelphia flyers, robert esche. asked how he felt about his coach's peripatetic preferences for starting netminders, he replied that "i dont' try to get into his head -- it's an empty place".

i think bill lee has to be the king of the sports quote. in 1978, when one of the most talented teams in red sox history was noisily heading towards it's date with infamy and bucky f. dent, bill opined on his manager's schizophrenic handling of his pitching staff that it was to be expected, coming from the franchise's "designated gerbil". (best appreciated by considering that bill wasn't much of a fan of the designated hitter either). anyone who remembers the team's trading of bernie carbo and fergie jenkins, and agonized over watching bill stewing, unused in the bullpen, while the yankees pulled off one of the most improbable regular-season standings comebacks in the history of professional baseball has to know that it was one of the more meaningful quotes of all time, if also one of the most sadly poignant. (zimmer traded lee for stan papi, and while bill won 16 games that next year for montreal, the sox began a half-decade-long swoon).

you gotta love a guy who sings warren zevon songs a capella in the clubhouse, after jogging stoned to the ballpark (claiming the ganja offered protection from the adverse affect of harmful bus fumes) and waxes eloquent on any and all topics du jour while the scribes of journalism write it all down. warren zevon himself penned an homage in return to the man (you're supposed to sit on your ass and nod at stupid things / man that's hard to do / and if you don't, they'll screw you / and if you do they'll screw you too) and got it exactly right: "and sometimes i say things i shouldn't, like..."

like...

"most of the managers are lifetime .220 hitters. for years pitchers have been getting these managers out 75% of the time, and that's why they don't like us." (zimmer's lifetime average was .235, so he couldn't *possibly* have been talking about him...)

"baseball is a very simple game. all you have to do is sit on your butt, spit tobacco, and nod at the stupid things your manager says". (warren must have liked that one).

"the other day they asked me about mandatory drug testing. i said i believed in drug testing a long time ago. all through the sixties i tested everything."

bill also said a lot of things that he should have, and one of them, in response to a question about handling pressure on the mound, is for all-time:

"i think about the cosmic snowball theory: a few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull, and the earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. when that happens, it won't matter if i get this guy out."

cosmic snowball theory... words to live by.

da da da

ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht, aha
ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht, aha
ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht, aha
ich lieb dich nicht, du liebst mich nicht, da da da
da da da
da da da
da da da
da da da

where would the world be without youtube...

you go, google

Established in 16...

though you'd hardly know it, there are a lot of towns in massachusetts with charters dating back to the early 1600's. i find it remarkable to consider how folks wasted so very little time following the pilgrims and marking out their own little new worlds before there was government or even a consistent rule of law. however, i also find it sadly remarkable to note how few of these early settlements have any sort of presence in their modern-day incarnations.

i consider it my profound good fortune to be able to drive the route of the british to and from lexington and concord every day on my way to and from work, and to be able to take in the continuous vista of preserved fields, stone walls, barns and colonial homes. along that track, you can still feel, when you allow yourself to feel, the thread of history coursing through our modern life. even among crowded city streets, places like paul revere's house and the old north church hold a tiny corner of the past alive. those are magical places to me.

one of the more sobering aspects of my volunteer work this morning was to search for and not find even the faintest echo of the history of the streets i traversed. out of 350+ years of human history and potential, only the more recent (and hardly memorable) edifices remained. i pondered the affluence of the aforementioned towns, and wondered to myself if affluence afforded preservation, or if preservation embued the lives it enriched with something more... something valuable... something to build upon...

there's a sparsely-traveled corner in the town where i live where stands a granite obelisk to the memory of those who answered freedom's call more than 225 years ago. once the hilltop where a liberty tree stood and the farmers from all across the boxborough district rallied and drilled, it's now a waystation to nowhere while the highway overpasses connect other, busier places to our modern world. i'm grateful that it survives with its quiet dignity, but i'm thinking that it will need to be one of my life's goals, to see it cherished along with all the other relics of a preserved past, in hopes that time bequeaths a better life to those who follow after.

mis

this morning's choice (a choice!) was between a sanskrit chant, a john denver sing-a-long, and a poetry reading. (tony hoagland). aversions to the guru-my-ass and the rocky mountain highballer gave tony a shot, and it turned out to be a worthwhile listen. nope, not for what was read, (hardly an explanation for what all the tony hoagland fuss is about), but for what's been since learned *hadn't* been read.

why are people so cavalier with others' words? why do some do things like attribute snippets of tv-movie dialogue to historical figures who likely never thought such things, let alone said them, and then try to pass them off as meaningful? (worse yet when they don't even get the hacks' versions right and leave even the tv words malapropped beyond sense or sensibility). why do others edit otherwise "real" snippets as if they know better the feeling intended, and presume to better express that altered thought by altering the words?

the selection that got me going this morning was taken from "and the men", and it amusingly omitted one of the better lines, ("good listener would like to meet lesbian ladies for purposes of friendship only"), and the final two words, "look out". reading the full text of the poem a few hours later, (that's me, it's what i do), i'm struck by the huge impact of those final two words, and i'm at a loss to understand how someone could offer the poem to another as meaningful without them. included, they become the whole thing, at least to me, and the rest seems once again as trite and empty as it seemed to me the first time through.

was it a mistake? an innocent misquotation? a telling snippet of misanthropy? at least it wasn't a misattribution, and the original words can be retrieved, and a better understanding achieved.

look out.

service

wednesday morning, in lieu of work (which is clearly overrated, all except the paycheck *sigh*), i'm volunteering to help paint a homeless shelter. the greatest irony is not that i'm doing it, but that it's having to be done in a suburb you wouldn't normally associate with homelessness. (so much for your classic republican "recovery"). the next day me and my whitest white shirt are going downtown with an eye towards bearding the big-money lion in its den. i used to think everyone had that proverbial even shot, but it's clear that it's not nearly so rosy a picture towards the street side of wall street. for those for whom it's still my privelege to stand, it's not my place to do any less than the best that can be done, without distraction or misplaced care, as the bear tends not to differentiate. (do we all have our nike's on?)

at some point, society will need to redress its competitive imbalance. karma would seem to want to smile on someone who would do what he could, but the fact remains that it will never be my place to right all the wrongs of the world, not least of all many that were and are my own. i'm going to have to live with that.

get over

a lot of folks seem proud at the way they can't get over certain things. i heard it again this morning when folks on the sideline refused to take joy in a game well played simply because of an error in judgement by a 14 year-old well-intentioned referee. (who was not wrong in the method by which he decided not to make the call in question, but i suppose that's neither here nor there). i couldn't have been more proud of the team either way, and i regretted only that they lost their chance at the full extent of their rightful pride, not by the whim of a whistle, but by those who love them who just wouldn't get over things themselves. yes, sometimes it's best to get over something out of respect and care for the ones that we love. it's not disloyal. it's love too.

life is full of things that we refuse to get over. i have to ask myself again today if there's much sense at all to that. i think we all need a bit more of it, both for ourselves, and for the ones we care about.

life really ought to be about living well.

privacy

all talk of hair triggers and dears in headlights aside, there's one last thing i want to get off my chest this week before the weekend soccer frenzy starts, and that's the sensitive issue of privacy and personal boundaries. some have suggested i have boundary issues, which is fair enough, but i've continued to have a nagging discomfort about the characterization of distant and recent interpersonal politics.

i'm still not offering any excuses for my behavior, but i'm struck by how the worst of my present situation seems perpectuated by a certain person's particular impression of what is personal vs. what is public. it's doubly ironic because a touchstone historical gripe on her side continues to be the maternal reading of a teenage diary, but, be that as it may, the immutable fact remains that some extremely personal things were read and construed as if they were something shared on the cbs evening news with katie couric.

i haven't quite made up my mind if i feel of them most like a diary, or perhaps as private interpersonal correspondence, but i do know that i adamantly reject the notion that they should be treated like so many theses posted on a cathedral door. (i wonder, if luther's name hadn't been attached to his posting, would the catholic church have been motivated to make such a strident case against their recalcitrant monk?)

well, i guess, if present events were to be extrapolated to medieval theologists, the guys in the red hats would have spared no effort in nailing their prime target, so my present personal irish inquisition can't be thought unexpected, even if it remains uncomfortable. i do find it humorous to note that she's now taken to posting on that same cathedral door in handwriting as close to my own as she can muster, as if a question of indulgences could be "never minded" away like an emily latella monologue. i only wonder if anyone else is laughing...

which only returns me to the riddle of why everyone in my world seems so personally and emotionally invested in what, to me, seems most like a highway overpass painted over by so many frat boys, tagging in greek letters. dekes and kappas and tri-delts, does the world really note who's sleeping with who? (oh, yes, it's not hard to see how a sorority sister might feel differently).

dear in the headlights

i patiently waited all of 24 hours to step into *this* quagmire...

we all know the angst of emotional paralysis, when we know we should be doing something, but we just can't bring ourselves (or make ourselves) to do it. i find, being the "smart" one (quotation marks to indicate facetiousness) that these moments of paralysis are most frequently accompanied by a slew of inner-voice rationalizations that pile to prodigious heights of "reason", all to be thrown eagerly in front of the bus right before it runs me down. why didn't i...? because! xxx, yyy, zzz (and the zzz are the snores of the people bone tired of hearing "geniuses" describe their clear and indefensible idiocies).

the tuna always liked to tweak reporters by pointing out the obvious--that a record says exactly what someone is. deep breath now... what's YOUR record? mine is pretty inconsistent.

but now it gets complicated... meditation, introspection and reflection can enable us to make better decisions when they need to be made, and can even help us to ACT on them when we should. (how's that for a concept). but we're social beings, and inclined to empathize and identify with our most-loved ones. what of their paralyses? (or hair triggers, for that matter...)

sometimes we rue not shaking them into action when we know they are frittering their life away down a path to ruin. other times we regret desperately not grabbing their hand away before they reflexively reach out to touch that hot plate newly dropped upon their table. but in all cases, when all is said and done, we're really a lot like those lunatic fans who jump over the fence and run onto the playing field while the game is going on. yeah, we'd love to take that handoff and show the running back where he *should* have gone on the last play, but, let's face it, besides likely getting creamed by the same forces that busted up the previous attempt, it's really only going to result in someone who never gains the experience to think and do for themselves. as we should all know by watching ourselves, the burned hand teaches best.

trouble is, inaction--our own or our beloved's--doesn't result in the same sort of immediate feedback that mistaken action does. the dears in the headlights just keep standing there, because they don't connect the bus to that over-rationalized paralysis in the same way. squirrels can rightly tell themselves that they tried running BOTH ways before the tire tracks ran across their backs, and how do you escape from that sort of juggernaut???

*sigh*

patience

raise your hand if you tend to take the first available alternate route whenever you're stuck in traffic on the main road. raise the other one if you're inclined to pick at scabs in search of what may be healing underneath. if you look like an nfl ref signalling a touchdown, then welcome yourself to the impatience wing of the smart folks memorial mental hospital.

we'll save the analysis of the alternate extreme (the "deer in the headlights" school of oncoming traffic, financial and otherwise) for another time, but lets muse a bit on the consequences of a hair trigger. even though i won the title in last year's fantasy hockey pool, i did lose track of ladislav nagy and olli jokinen on my way to finding alex ovechkin and jonathan cheechoo. good for me, you might think (if you remember that alex and jonny were neck and neck for the scoring title), but i've concluded in retrospect that i jumped a gun that would have locked things up far sooner if i had used a little less jump and a little more patience. after all, i ended the season still carrying far weaker players than the two i had let go, and just because i recognized that folks like gary roberts would turn out to be busts doesn't mean i should give myself any credit for missing the boat on those other two.

i've concluded that timing a good decision is as important as making it. move too soon, and you miss out on the benefit of all that additional information and perspective that would have come your way in the meantime. (of course, move too late, and all you deer out there know what the impact tends to feel like). in contemplating what i'm going to do with the next part of my life, i think one of the things i'm going to focus upon is making my better decisions at their proper time, with all the benefits of all the information that is feasible, expedient and cost-effective to acquire before making them. yep, she loves me. (oops). yep, the book isn't closed on pascal leclaire. (gotta pick him back up). yep, having the courage to make tough decisions in the clutch is as much about waiting for the game to come to you as it is grasping at the first straw that pokes its head above the pack.

now, about that red pill vs. blue pill...

some people can't be told you know / they have to learn the hard way

declan gets it right more often than not. in a similar vein to focusing on improving our weaknesses and reducing mistakes, i find that accepting and embracing good advice and other useful outside information is a skill poorly demonstrated in the majority of the population, not least of all in me. as the tokyo storm warning puts it, while dead italian tourist bodies litter up the broadway, some people can't be told you know, they have to learn the hard way. bloody imagery, but, sometimes, while people can't be told, an earnest effort to try to tell them spares no excess.

my mind wanders to this little ditty in the wake of a fantasy hockey trade request being rejected that would have given a last place and scoring-moribund "expert" two of the top forwards in the league in exchange for one decent goalie. (what can i say, i was feeling generous). these weren't just any forwards, these were two of the creme de la creme, and though the goalie sought was equal to the talent of one, the offer of two was made as much to test human nature as it was to be more than fair. i had to laugh, because a few hours later another "expert" cut loose the top goalie for what will (you heard it here first) turn out to be the top team in the league, and i was able to fill my roster with the equivalent goaltending talent for nothing, and now i still have the two big shooting guns riding pine in my reserve. (i'd play them more, but the other guys i picked are doing even better). having sweated out the prior season overcoming some significant adversity on the way to the eventual title, this season is shaping up to be fun all the way. (how's that for hubris).

so, what makes us defeat ourselves? between our propensity for bad choices and our perverse need to let good advice go unheeded, the world seems the perfect place to make a fine sport of trashing the lives of the intellectually gifted. everybody hates to hear "i told you so", but it occurs to me that folks wouldn't even have to tell us, if only we'd pay attention to the same evidence ourselves.

but, you know what they say about some people... what is it that walt kelly said? "we have met the enemy, and he is us".

mistakes

i think i started my life preoccupied by ability and competence, and i've failed to adequately consider how success in this world seems as much defined by a limitation of errors as it is a sufficiency of achievement. put another way, i've spent so many years focused on what i can do well, that i've not spent nearly enough time conscious of what i don't.

this sunday's patriots game was a study in dogged, error-free persistence in the face of a superior performance. Outgained on offense, and out-stuffed on defense, all the patriots did was never make a mistake. it's hard to compete against that.

as bill once put it, it's only human that we muck things up. i appreciate his nod to divinity, and i consider myself lucky to have an opportunity to do better. considering my weaknesses, i'm looking forward to another chance, both at home and at whatever work comes next. maybe a bit more tortoise and a bit less hare. maybe a bit more right and a bit less wrong. maybe a bit more reliability, and a bit less wanderlust. it's not that those places aren't great places to go, it's just that it costs so much to get there. next time i'll check the wallet to make sure i've got the fare.

the banality of a peaceful heart

can't find a better description for it... i'm deadly dull these days, and there's no question in my mind from whence it stems. the walls can come crashing down around me, (the paychecks i won't miss--funny how a dow can be up and everything else so down), and the bruins can let in eight goals every night for all that it matters to the peace that embues everything else around it, but i'm unlikely to be any more exciting or excitable than i am right at this placid and quiet moment.

i can picture many wanting to shake and reawaken the agita with which they had become familiar, but it's just not in my heart. yeah, there's a spark every now and then, (take THAT boston globe), but it's most notable for its exception to the rule of peace. i'll find the means to clean up this knee, and maybe i'll exercise it with a little of the same vigor from time to time, but it's as likely to be found bent to the altar of forgiveness as it is flexed to the muse of competition. more, even.

banality never sounded so right.

righteous anger

as you all may have noted from prior posts, anger is one of those sensitive subjects where i am concerned. (i'm not supposed to have any, remember?). well, today, i'm asking to be let off the leash.

the nearby big city newspaper has taken it upon itself to wade into the maelstrom of youth athletics, and in an inflammatory boldfaced leader, "no-cut" middle school athletics policies are branded as "losing". honey, please hand down the M2A1-7, daddy's gotta go to work.

want to know the facts? the "no-cut" middle school team featured in the story's photo is actually 4 and 1, with 2 ties. the corresponding high school team, the first in its town history comprised entirely of "no-cut" middle schoolers, (the policy has only been in place for 4 years), is outscoring their opponents by an aggregate of 52 to 4. "losing" ???

nba first-round draft pick bob bigelow (that after a stellar college career under chuck daly at penn) wrote a book called "let the kids play" in which he makes the following strident recommendations:

design programs to meet children's needs, not adults'

ensure every child gets meaningful playing time up until varsity sports

make sure coaches and volunteers are trained and qualified

recognize the problems assiociated with elite travel sports

limit the number of games to prevent overuse injuries

encourage multiple sports to prevent burn-out and enhance overall body development.

his points are twofold: first, we're really supposed to be doing the best we can for ALL the kids. and, second, the irony of this approach is that it produces higher-achieving athletes than our present alternatives.

me, i'd want my children to enjoy the greatest opportunity to achieve a sports scholarship to the institution of higher learning of their choice. and if they'd have to win games 52-4 in order to do that, well, then that's a sacrifice to "losing" that i would think most folks would be willing to make. right?

the clean sheet

such a useful expression.

recalling back several months to metaphors of clearing things off ones line, it occurs to me that the clean sheet is often a euphemism for the holy grail of goaltending--the shutout. (bad connotations for me...) but, today, in honor of the national hockey league's season inaugural, the sheet is of ice, and the clean is how everyone starts fresh, with zeros across the board, and lives and records and statistics can become whatever will be made of them. (go b's).

surprisingly ironic how dearly people will cling to last year's situations and expend so much energy in perpetuating their emotional echoes. (or maybe not so suprisingly). around here we're still hunkering down to anticipate landfall of hurricane m, and as pointless as is that hurricane and it's unintended destruction, there's still a promise of passing implicit in every storm. A little emotional duct tape and plywood wouldn't be out of place, as wouldn't the conception of the reed's resilience compared to the oak in the teeth of the fiercest wind. the goal is the sunrise, not to live always in the stormclouds' shadow.

easy for me, i'm so practiced at "i'm sorry" that i forget that i'm about as reed-ly hurricane-proof as a clean-sheeted man can be these days, and though it's not my place to offer counsel, and the devastation should counsel be either implied or even inferred would be catastrophic, it's unfortunate i'm not blessed with the opportunity to try to make better what has been made worst. i guess i'm just going to have to settle for making better choices in the future, and taking the responsibility upon myself to believe in the goodness inside all involved while the consequences continue to play themselves out. it is, indeed, all my fault.

surprise/irony/ambush

thinking about sight, whether first or second, it occurs to me that so much of our world isn't quite what meets our eyes. or ears. (kinda like when james hunter baits hope all over the radio with "people gonna talk"--don't let them change your mind--but dontcha know there's always gonna be a "don't come back" hiding further down the playlist of life's suite of sweet r&b relationship hymns). so why is that surprising?

well, it's gotta be alright 'cuz that's just the way life is, but it still raises the eyebrow to observe how self-fascination so often serves to take our eyes off of the big blue marble. we are surprised. we call it irony. we even at times feel it to be an ambush. but what in the world is it that we're looking at?

"when bad things happen to good people" (1981? geez, 25 years of this already) gets lost in the navel and never quite answers the questions it ought. there's all sorts of postulations about god, and forebearance, but nothing really to aid the fright-vision goggles (spite-vision goggles?) in seeing the shit coming. (just a lot of "don't beat yourself up about it after"). kushner seems to want us all to know what to do with it when it gets here, but he's awfully sparse about the fact that (listen to me and my log-jostled squinting) it's really not as mysterious as all that when the agents of our destruction are people. (not least of all, ourselves, and, even moreso, the ones we love).

am i going to get an argument if i boldly postulate that people rarely intend the negative consequences of their actions, and are seldom personally the evil that they inadvertently create? (as an illustration of my hypothesis, i'd agree he's an idiot, but i sincerely believe that dubya is doing what he sincerely believes is best for the world, and i don't judge him malicious and i don't blame laura or think less of her for her devotion to the man behind the most heinous crimes committed against liberty perpetrated in the world today, even if i'd want to shake her and ask her WHY she doesn't do something about the insanity, and wouldn't hesitate to suggest we draw up indictments in the hague and put the little weasel forthwith into the international dock over her inevitable protestations).

the thing is, and i DO hold the majority of the voting-age population accountable for not seeing this coming, we're not getting any surprises here. a posse of sociopaths knocks down a couple of buildings filled with 75-odd different nationalities inside, (maybe more, i'm just going on the casualty lists for the number), representing virtually all the major religions of the world, and the "christian" texas cowboy is going to want to make his case upon whose land the crime took place and to go bomb the hell out of everybody who looks like or lives like or worships like the perpetrators. much like the aggrieved spouse of the philanderer is going to want to raze civil liberties in pursuit of her own self-satisfaction. some may be surprised and point out the irony, and others may want to wag fingers at the injustice of "eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" vengeance. but i'm the terrorist here. someone gave me the means, sure, though it's just as true that they didn't ever intend the damage caused either, despite what the aggrieved believes about that. from my point of view, the fact that shrapnel will fly isn't a fair picture of either of the coincidental adversaries. people likely will do what they will do, and they most definitely have done what they have done. in and of itself, that doesn't make 'em bad persons. 'cept, maybe... the one who started the whole thing down the path from which there is no good to come.

it's me, it's always been me. (and still, they're on about each other...) surprisingly ironic, wouldn't you say?

easily amused

one question might be: am i?

she might say that she fears not, and that she imagines there is in the world a perverse form of (sexual) adhd that drives the recalcitrant to the wilderness, much like sweet baby james muses upon that "song that they sing" (maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep), and she's powerless to influence it. it's a tempting theory, for it would explain many things--even the headshrinker seems to like the concept, perhaps, i imagine, since it serves to satisfy the airtight case's need for motive, and enables the confirmation of a quick verdict for conviction and draconian sentencing, along with unambiguous victory for the people and their prosecuting attorney, all right before the serious and likely-to-never-end business of rehabilitation and restitution might begin... trouble is, i'm finding such an explanation a little empty in moments of my own private introspection.

ironically, an evolving expression of resistance to the kangaroo court will likely coincidentally satisfy many who cringed at my initial unconditional penitence, but even that fails to satisfy my own need to make sense of myself. it's just not that simple.

want to know what? i AM easily amused. want to know how i know? easy: (for examples, and in no particular order:)

* i've lived the last five months (at least weekdays between the hours of 6am and 6pm) off the subsidized lunch coupons at work. cafeteria food. ham and cheese sandwiches. industrial cream of mushroom soup. bottled water from the company fridge. and i like it.

* without even a second thought, over that same five month period, i haven't found interest, need or motivation to self-abuse. and i like that fine, too.

* i'm rediscovering my sense of place. fixing the walk lights. dismantling the tv setup in the living room. (who needs it?) ensuring that the larder is stocked with WHITE (not wheat) english muffins (99 cents for a pack of 6 of the local store brand, which are the best around, and if i could find the bakery, i'd buy stock), 7up (it's a comfort food for me, long story), whole milk and fresh butter (organic from the local dairy), honey (for both the muffins and the breakfast cereal), and, speaking of breakfast cereal, product 19. many who know me might ask what has become of my lifelong devotion to cheerios, and, all i can say is that you'll need to refer to the comfort food topic on the product 19, and wait for further digression at another time.

* my appreciation for life has expanded to fill all of mine--instead of merely hiding in secret around its edges--and i just got my third row center seats for james hunter in a quantity of five, which i'm finding is a fine number for a lot of things, which is something i should have considered a year ago when shortchanging myself on both number and venue with only four soccer season tickets...

this all, of course, won't satisfy the yogi. (yes, daws butler would do a better job of voicing the part). it's gotta be a demon. a back-clinging monkey. a doppelganger to the addictions he's faced and experienced among the countless succession of asses into his chair. didn't i ever smoke pot? do drugs? cigarettes? coffee? internet chess? YES!!! an addiction!!! (oops, i forgot, i haven't played a game in years...)

so, he doesn't quite get it, and neither does anyone else. easily amused? i am.

see, if i were to say it, i'd say i wasn't running to anything. i'd say i was running from being present in my own life. (and you can ask anyone on the soccer field, even on only one good knee, there are few who can run as fast or as long). my sin? i started to build a life upon a tragically inappropriate foundation. i brought everyone, and i mean EVERYONE, around me to varying (sometimes catastrophic) degrees of devastation, and i didn't stand up for any of the principles upon which i hypocritically would say i built my life. and that was wrong. is wrong. will always be wrong.

some folks will spend forever trying to weave a thread of "right" back into the history of it. they'll need to reconcile the me they now know with the me they first knew with the me who did all these terrible things, and they'll undoubtedly put more effort into it than i ever will. they'll have their hardest time coloring in the motivations, because they'll go wrong attributing needs and wants to their perception of pursued amusement. but it's easier for me because i know that the math is far more simple: i haven't been a good man. but i am a good man. just watch me be.

sight

i've always found it remarkable, among all the immoralities and atrocities committed in and in the name of the bible, that nuggets of gold might still be found amidst the slag. (i wonder which word, "begat" or "slew", appears most often...)

take removing a log from one's eye. (nope, this isn't about other people's optical situations, since i'm permanently out of that business, but bear with me). just think about how much more clearly a person would be able to see, if they were to become free from such a thing. sure, they could take on interpersonal specks and become the life of that kind of party if they cared to, but, on another hand, just imagine the things these folks could all-of-a-sudden see. what would they choose to look at? what would they do with what they could see?

johnny nash sang "i can see clearly now the rain is gone", and i think i know what he was singing about. it certainly would be a glorious gift to be able to see all the obstacles in the way, and i'm thinking those dark clouds that had johnny blind must have more than a few things in common with that old carpenter's logs. but, as always seems to be, there seems to be catches, (i loved how declan put it: "boys everywhere, fumbling with the catches"), and i'm thinking one potential catch is the weight of the responsibility of seeing the world for what it is, and knowing that everything that is both done, and undone, has consequences.

how is it that i put it recently? two or more weeks ago under the heading of unseemly? there's a slow-motion quality to a train wreck that seems to be impressed upon those misfortunate enough to be in one, and when a train wreck plays out over the course of weeks and months, the sensation of impotence and impending disaster lingers for what seems like forever. today, i'm realizing that it only gets worse as ones vision improves. unlike the careless german test engineers, from miles away i can already see the maglev hurtling toward the haplessly stationary, ironically well-intended maintenance vehicle, and the results can't possibly be pretty. if only it weren't far too late for anyone to get off this train.

she needs to be seen. she needs to have her loss validated. she needs a sense of emotional even-footing. she could be either of them, but she's not. she's the bullet train, and even though she's to herself unaware of what she will do, or what will happen, the man with the newly jostled log is gaining a picture nevertheless. just as he'll have to face his in-laws, the other will have to face her rival and her nemesis. for me, even if only to say, "i'm sorry", if that's possible, i'm drawing my penitence into focus, and resigning myself to the fact that omniscience and omnipotence are two vastly different gifts, and we mere mortals are never given a chance at the latter, even if our logs forever keep us from the former...

everyone else is there to do what they will do.

i see it now.