Big Men Walking with Little Children: Futbol

It begins with large men walking into a stadium.  They hold hands with small children. 

     Soccer was pretty foreign to me when I was growing up.  I never knew anybody who played it until my sister went out with a Yugoslav guy from Hoboken (before the rich bought it) who drove a fast car that growled and hopped.  Everyone called him Mike Mercury, I forget his real last name.  Anyway soccer became for me something the Yugoslavs did in Hudson County Park.
     Later on, when I had kids and they played it became swarms of children running about kicking a ball, then older kids trying to ignore their screaming parents.  (I was told by my daughter Kim that I was not to talk to her during games.)  I never thought of it as Futbol, thought it was fun to watch, if chaotic, and was put off by the fact that the best team did not win as often as was to be expected.  The rare moments of TV soccer lulled me to sleep: the passing back and forth, the drone of a chanting crowd.  All of which is to say, I didn't get it.
     Why was all the world so mad for it?  Why were we in the US largely uninterested?  I had heard various arguments, explanations, but the nearest I came to understanding was a comparison to Baseball which I got, and liked.  It is something of a meditative sport, long stretches of nothing, but then there are those moments of everything happening all at once so it is a challenge for the players to maintain focus to be ready for those moments when all hell breaks loose.  Not enough action.  But now I am watching the World Cup and for the first time see and feel why it is called "the beautiful game."
     It has become beautiful to me.  I see a dance with twenty-two men and a ball.  Each side has its own music, each side wants to dance its own dance, and it does when it has control.  And the other side must learn their steps, must find a way to enter into that dance so they might take the ball from them, so they might change the rhythm, change the dance, make it their own.  They watch, they challenge, they study the other to find the chance where they can see the next movement of the dance before it happens, where they can slip their way in and coax the ball to change partners.
     They do not score much.  The moments of triumph are few and far between, like life.  And if we live for those moments then the game will seem long and often pointless, like life.  If we are living for the victories, for those moments of exhilaration then life is a tedious trudge punctuated by brief ecstasies too soon swallowed again by tedium.  We too often do not dance the dance to dance, we dance to leap and leap to shake the grasp of gravity: we would always be aloft, if we could.  But the beauty of the dancer is that she loves both heaven and earth  and brings the two together making harmony with her body.  And if sometimes she flies to heaven it is a wonder and if sometimes she falls to earth it too is a wonder for we are beings of both worlds.
     Now when I watch I see men of many nations come to dance.  They are large men, they hold the hands of children.  Do they lead the children or are they led?  I like to think the children lead, they are born with dance in them, we were born with dance in us but we forget sometimes and sometimes need a child to show the way.  I like Futbol.

Father's Day

     I do not know its genesis but believe that Father's day was invented because Mother's had one and it seemed the fair thing to do.  It is a belief that requires no factual support and is likely impervious to factual debunking.  In any event, I have always had little regard for the day.
     There may be those who have a clear idea of what one must do to be a proper father.  I have probably met some though I could not identify them.  That I am not one has, at times, given me cause to pause and wonder: Is there some plan I should be following?  Should I get a plan?  Should I follow it?  Ultimately though I have just blundered through as I suppose many others do.
     Before my father died, in one of his visits to the hospital, I was able to tell him that he was the best possible father I could have had.  It was important to say this out loud to him.  Like all those in love we did not always get along.  Though it has been tempered some by age I have always been one who said things without regard for the unintended effect they may have on others, especially loved ones, an example:
     My wife, in a conversation with my daughter Cait, mentioned a man who had always wanted children and I said, without thinking that I could not imagine why any man would want to have children.  It did not occur to me that this was an awful thing to say until Caitlin noted with some humor that it was interesting that she was neither surprised nor hurt by this.
     On reflection I could see how a father of four saying this could sound something like regret.  I could see that it might send a message to a child that she was an unwanted intrusion.  I could see that it might be a very hurtful thing to say. 
     Despite all my articulation I was unable then, and still stumble now, to explain what I meant.  I think it is something like this: I could not have ever imagined what it would be like to be a father and do not understand those who could.  What I should have added is how profoundly my children have shaped me, how much I have them to thank for whatever virtue I possess.  They have made me a far more fully human man than I could have ever become without them.
     So on Father's day I find myself blessedly beholding to my children, though I will probably not say this to their faces.  I do not like to cry in public, except on stage.
     I wonder how many other unwitting, awful things I have said over the years, but as this is something I can do nothing about I choose not to dwell on it.
     If the events of my childhood were examined with disinterest they would likely seem unhappy.  And while, in the course of living through these times, I was sometimes deep in sadness, yet I can say that they were happy days.  Happy in the way that happenings strung together lead to learning and a deeper appreciation of life, that what it is that has happened to me has brought me to this place where I can begin to appreciate the wondrous variety of human virtue in others, but especially in my children.
     Renee and I have never been doting parents, our kids got a good deal more criticism than adulation and sometimes I wonder if we had done things a bit differently how that would be but I let this go easily and without regret: the love we had to give in the way we had to give it was all we had to give and it would have to be enough.  I take comfort in the truth of their lives, I love who they each are and the more I learn about them the deeper I appreciate them and the more I am grateful for the love I have for them.
     I hope someday they can say of Renee and I what I once said to my father.
A postscript on the existence of Father's Day:  Whatever its origins I am thankful that it inspired this reflection.

A Week at Drew

     Sometimes life is mostly painful though there is no discernible reason why it ought to be.  I am not sure whether this state of mind that I often find myself in is a blessing or a curse.  I choose to believe it is the former. 
     Three years ago I spent a week at a writing conference at Drew University "Sentences 2,"  not knowing it was happening I missed "1."  It got me writing and thinking.  Listened to writers read their works and loved it (though I didn't care for the YA author).  Wrote in workshops and began a short story that may turn into something, we'll see.  One author popped for me: Mark Jacobs (Forty Wolves).  He drank Yerba Mate tea ritually having learned its powers while in the Peace Corps in Paraguay.  I drank Yerba Mate for a caffeine buzz when I was in San Francisco in the summer of 1970.  The difference was striking: he was enveloped by an ancient spiritual culture and I was getting hopped up to speed through life.  I'm thinking he had it more right than I did.
     Anyway, he seemed to me to be hung with a great sadness, like he had seen too much. 

     When I lived in the City (NYC) I liked to wander about, ride in the subway, blend into the machine of mass humanity that fluxed through the veins of grey concrete.  But somedays I was naked in the streets, shaken with empathy, and fearful that any moment I might suddenly burst into tears, overwhelmed by the pain that sweat from each passing being.  These days I tried to stay at home, I was seeing too much.

     Mark Jacobs had lived among people who are close to nature and poor so they had few resources at their disposal to defend themselves from nature and those who lived in plenty made sure it stayed that way.  He read to us, a mountain in tears pleading for humanity, our humanity we who live in the land of plenty, to do, something.  I thought he had caught his great sadness from his years in the Peace Corps and in the Foreign Service seeing how the other half lives.
     He said to me and Renee, "I am not the man I was" with such profound sadness that I longed to comfort him, but I didn't think that proper.  His confession had arisen from a discussion of the trials that had been visited on our children, his and ours.  (This would never have happened had Renee not been with me.  She shares the details of our life with anyone she thinks could commiserate, it helps her, and them.)  Yes, I too was not the man I was, having lived for a few years in the madness of grief, with only the occasional medicated relief, I was a ragged man.  Jacobs had not caught his sadness overseas he had bred it from his own loins and it flowed into him through a cord that can never be severed.
     But one sorrow informs another.  He had seen the struggles of the "less fortunate" which inspired empathy and he had seen the struggles of his children which gave it flesh.  Life hung heavy on him.
     The conference had given me a hunger for more and a sense that our private sorrows could be made to serve some public good.  I couldn't wait until the next year, Sentences 3.  But it was not to be for me.  I was working and could not take two consecutive weeks off (the family would go to Wildwood the week after.)   I spent that week of work engaged in matters of no matter, filled with a resentment that would not leave me until I was relieved from the job and joined Sentences 4 and learned what I must do to feed the hunger.
     

Growing Up, Letting Go and Knowing Where To

     A word about the evil empire and then back to it.  Being strong with the force and being strong with oblivion are more alike than it might seem at first blush.  Both conditions cede control of the conscious will over to another power.  The Star Wars power was an unnamed state of being wherein one lets go the consciousness of self and becomes in tune with a benevolent force that exists both within and without the individual.  It at once makes the self and the universe richer, more complete.  Something in us longs for union with it and something in us resists.  The former is a complete mystery to me and because I need to name it I call it God.  The latter is also a mystery but is more familiar, it is self-absorption, self-destruction, the hubritic need to control the forces of the universe with our tiny little minds.
     We (I imagine most of us) see how foolish this is and yet we persist.  We cling to our will, trying to force the mysteries of the universe into an order dictated by the boundaries of our own beings.  It is difficult for us to accept that the order is not a part of us but that we are a part of it whether we will it or no.  We can be dragged to it: a trantrumatic child in a futile fight, or we can give ourselves over to it and achieve the bliss we long for.  Of course it is not this simple, though I wonder if it is for angels and saints.  I have fought the universe armed with whiskey and the like and lost again and again, learning nothing from my failures but anger.  I have set this anger on the world without me and failing there too have given up the fight, I have gone blank.
     Pogo said, "I have met the enemy, and it is us."  The evil empire is within, oblivion helps us to forget this for some moments though the crash is hard.  Back to the topic.
     My sister recently returned from her annual trip to the Berkshires where she swims in art.  She told me of a revelation (though she did not call it such, it was one to me).  She talked about working to let things go, saying something like she had been trying to gather and hold on when she should have been trying to jettison.  There is so much that we cling to, that clings to us, it keeps us earthbound.  My mother used to say, "Let go and let God."  Yes, but easier said than done.
     Some things stick with you.  Forty years ago or so Jimmy Toomey, who had been a smoker and a grand stoner and likely a pretty hard drinker in his day too, though I have no evidence of this last, told me he had stopped all of it.  I was amazed and impressed and wanted to know how he had done it.  He said, "It just fell away."  I figured there was more to it, I knew he had done Transcendental Meditation or something with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and I figured there was some sort of secret understanding he could not impart to the unenlightened so I let it go.
     Well obviously I did not let it go because here I am thinking of it still trying to understand.  My mother had a theory that we are bound to keep reliving experiences until we learn from them what we are meant to learn.  Mostly this was a way of explaining why the same bad shit (my word, not hers) kept happening to us.  She also said that we had a choice to learn the hard way or the easy way.  It was her opinion that I had chosen the former, she was right.
     The point of all this is that I have let drop the shield of booze I used in my battle with the universe and am feeling some discomfort at times now but am learning that the universe which I thought sought to buffet me is really seeking embrace.  Could this be the path to sweet oblivion?
    

Forgetting, Remembering, Forgetting Again

     So I was adrift.  Waking in the morning, feeling good for an hour or two after coffee, washing, shaving, working, coming home and watching the clock, waiting for the time to come when I could return to the temporary oblivion of sleep.  Whiskey helps.
     There were times, often, when I weighed the options: do something, do nothing, don't choose.  I could not think of any reason for this ennui other than the usual reason for ennui: I stopped doing, then wanting, then being.  There were moments when I saw some hope, when I heard a song that took me away, when I was at church, when the morning and the coffee and the sky and the birds all sang in me but these were moments without substance, I could not see that they were the unasked for blessings that abound for those in tune.  Again, I don't know why I forget what I sometimes have known, why I forget entirely what it is that tunes me.
     While forgetting is the cause of my having gone astray it is not the first cause; it is a passive symptom of my own personal original sin: knowing what makes me happy and what makes me sad and choosing the latter.  (I am working on a theory of individualized original sin for those who believe in God and such things. A perfect God could have made perfect beings but decided not to.  If He/She has gone to this much trouble to make imperfection, perfection being the norm, then it seems reasonable to assume that He/She has made many different types of imperfection, hence a variety of original sins.  But I haven't really thought this out yet and besides this has gotten far too heady and off the topic for me.)
     Empirical evidence:  most mornings when  I woke up and for most of the day, often till the end of work when I was driving home I was resolved not to drink booze, then various discomforts psychic and physical convinced me that what I needed was a dose of medicine: Jameson 12 year old is very fine medicine indeed and whatever wrinkles remained could be smoothed out with a bottle or two of Guinness extra stout and for good measure, as well as to secure sleep, some red wine, then sleep, repeat.
     Looking at what I've written it is clear that even the most obtuse observer would be able to formulate a preliminary diagnosis for my ennui saying, "Well that's not a good way to live, maybe that's your problem." or such like.  And in truth, I often thought to say such myself but the allure of oblivion was strong in me which sounds like what was said of Luke Skywalker, the force being strong in him but my gift was unlikely to help me defeat the evil empire and besides I didn't have the energy.
     The evil empire:  Having grown up in the sixties, I was born in 49, I knew all about the evil empire that scooped up people my age, disproportionately black, and sent them to kill Asians in rice patties.  I took to the streets, to guerrilla theatre, to sit ins, to teach ins, to rage against the machine, which is now a band that won't let the Republicans play their music.  I had a cause and a purpose, we had a cause and a purpose but it went terribly wrong, ultimately sex, drugs, and rock and roll no matter how delightful were not enough.  We lost our way and those who believed that ass-kissing obeisance was the righteous rite of passage until they too rose to become the ass that was kissed eventually took over, i.e. Karl Rove et.al.
     So I knew what to fight but was too lazy to do the heavy lifting.  How this all came about and how I eventually returned to the fray will have to wait for another day as this is as long as I would like it to be today.
    
    

Begun Again, having learned a few things about myself.

     With the full understanding that I am likely just talking to myself I resume my blog.  My disappearance was the result of two, unrelated, causes.  The first is a syndrome that no doubt has a psych name but I don't know it.  This is what happened:
     The exploration of the "Locomotion"  began to grow in breadth and significance beyond my ability to keep up with it for various reasons which I have forgotten.  Somewhere between my conscious and my subconscious there was a deal made that I would not post anything new until I had completed that line of thought.  In the meantime other demands called to me: dissertation prospectus, a writing conference, the compilation of a book of poetry, sorting out my income tax, bills, family events, etc.  So I put it off and by doing so put time betwen my intent and its end.
     As is often with me and I imagine others when time is so put, the return to the pursuit of the end becomes more fearful as it begins to work on the imagination: was it all folly, did Google dump me for inactivity, does anybody care, why am I even bothering to write when I can spend the rest of my days peacefully awaiting death.  These sorts of thoughts.
     Earlier I said that the two causes were unrelated but I'm likely wrong about that as I see now some connection between the state of mind occasioned by delay and what subsequently enveloped me.  I had a mid-life crisis.  This being my second I recognize the symptoms and ultimate result.  The first occurred to me in my fortieth year.  My wife was pregnant, I felt keenly that I had not accomplished that which I ought to have accomplished by that point of my life (though I knew not what that was), a deadly sameness had swallowed me.  I had to change something.  I was unable to afford a hot red convertible or any convertible for that matter and in truth I didn't care much for cars, my wife was adamantly opposed to my growing a beard or shaving my head, I couldn't decide on a tattoo, and I thought I would look silly with an earring or any other decorative piercing, so I quit smoking.
     I had never gone a day in my life from the age of thirteen till then without a cigarette.  Smoking is a pattern of life I was very fond of and I knew this fondness would never leave me, I liked everything about it except the end: cancer and/or emphysema.  And while these realities were troublesome I felt the tradeoff was worth it.  But the psychic need to make some big change and the thought that when this latest child, our fourth, was twenty I would be sixty and having by then smoked for forty-seven years, having a history of weak lungs (my mother never gave me permission to smoke because of that), and having Irish heritage on both sides (they all seem to die of cancer), convinced me to stop.  Not quit, stop, with the intention of some time in the future resuming the romance with tobacco.  I have a cousin, Joanne, who also stopped with the intent to once again resume, I wonder how many others have done so just to keep the door open?
     But this is off the topic to wit: why I had been so long away from the blog and why I have now returned.
     Mid-life crisis II:  While the first crisis might have been aptly named, as twice forty is eighty, a reasonable life expectancy though beyond what any known male relative of mine has been able to achieve (seventy-eight is the record so far) the second crisis, coming at the age of sixty-three cannot rightly be called mid, unless I live to one-hundred-twenty-six, an unlikely prospect.  I am working on a theory of serial deaths and rebirths but until I have it a bit more solid in my head I'm going to go with a variation of the common phrase.
     This mid-life rebirth followed, as did the first one (I), a period of drifting.  Now I am one committed to drifting and under normal circumstances would be content to drift but there are different states of drifting and I was in one that would be more correctly called being adrift.  The distinction lies in the end of each state: the former has some intended end, the latter does not.  Let me explain, but first I will post this because it has grown as long as I would like for a single entry.  I will return much sooner than the five months previous pause.
    

The Locomotion, Part 2: Detroit

    Listening to the song while driving a slow road that ran beside a railroad track I had a vision of the streets of Detroit filled with people dancing, a Motown carnival celebrating life before death, like the carnival of Mardi Gras celebrating life before the death of Lent, the season of ashes.  But we are dancing on the ashes of a city that fueled the smoldering groin of America with song and with cars.  We shine, our sweat pouring from defiant flesh:, ash and sweat mingling, making the barren, rich: flush with life.
     It is this dream of resurrection that the song sings in me and I believe it had to have been written there, in Detroit.  And though I know there are facts which contradict this, that prove it wrong, I choose to believe in a truth without basis in fact.
     I used to know two bright and beautiful women from Detroit who told me that they used to like to get high and drive in rush hour traffic there.  I never knew quite how to catalog this information.  I could not understand the motivation.  I have been in rush hour traffic in New York and New Jersey and have found no joy in it and certainly no reason to intensify the experience chemically.  These women seemed otherwise quite sane, so I couldn't dismiss this report as lunacy but rather sought to find some key to understanding or at least appreciation.
     We carry mysteries with us all our lives, questions raised but not resolved.  They linger sometimes for many years before something occurs to make them make sense.  This was a forty year mystery made sensible, if not entirely comprehensible, by a song.
     Detroit's vitality, its being, is a throbbing engine, it's wheels on macadam.   Cars are the blood that courses through its veins, they are life.  To be a part of a car and that car a part of the rush of life is to become one with the soul of the city, an experience I never had but think it might be akin to walking the rush hour streets of Manhattan.  This I have known and I have lost myself in the flow of humanity that pulses with the energy breathing from the stone and steel of the millions of souls whose bodies built this great gray machine, becoming the thing itself.
     This is where the Locomotion brought me, to Detroit., in a crowd, dancing.
    
    
    

The Loco-Motion Part one: The revolution

     Of the three songs that have adhered to each other in my mind in this past while: Ooby Dooby, Hokey Pokey, and The Locomotion, the last evokes the greatest complexity of imagination.  I knew it in my youth and no doubt danced to it, summer night skies, loud speakers, macadam, girls, but when I heard it driving to work one morning it lifted me up in ways I could not have known when young. 
     I became one among many dancing in the streets of Detroit stirring up the ashes of dashed hopes, breathing them in, tasting the bitter joke of unkept promises, and laughing at it because the spirit of man cannot be crippled by misfortune or controlled by corporate exploitation.  They stuff our mouths with death, they use us and toss us aside, yet we dance.  Joyful and defiant we celebrate what we are, what they can never be: human.
     In a life grown complex, in an America where big is beautiful and small is fodder for the Corporopolitical machine the hungers of humanity are a nuisance that must be demonized by Religiocorporate puppets who have sold their conscience for cash.  Passion has become a dirty word.  But I forget myself and have fallen into a Marxist rant remembered, unbidden, from those days in the late sixties when I believed in movements.
     Experience quickly made it clear to me that institutions are inherently inhuman, that those gathered under a banner or a flag abandon reason, reflection, and compassion.  It matters little whether you call it "The Movement" as we did back then or you call it Evangelical Christianity the goals are the same: destroy all that does not agree with it.  It is that part of us that will give rise to a Hitler, a Stalin, a Pol Pot, a Pope Gregory IX.  It is the abrogation of our own humanity, replacing our personal passions with institutional imperatives, becoming a part of the beast of the machine.
     But the truth is none of these subsequent reflections were a part of the experience of The Locomotion in my car on the way to work.  No, there was no politics in it, there was only the longing to dance like a fool in the streets, to be with others celebrating life.

    

Back to the blog: The Ooby Dooby

     I cannot say for certain that I have ever seen the Ooby Dooby done but there was one night in east Texas outside of Tyler when I witnessed, if not the thing itself, then something much like it.  It was in a private club that had, as far as I could understand, only two requirements for membership: to be white and to bring your own bottle, I qualified.  The place itself was unadorned, more of a hangout for working stiffs in their 20's, a place to dance and drink.  I was enjoying the latter when the Ooby Dooby moment came.
     There were two young women on the dance floor wearing the smallest, whitest, tightest pants I had ever seen worn in public.  The effect of the white was enhanced by the blacklight that was ubiquitous in that era.  So I, moderately oiled with gin, sat rapt, mesmerized by the fulness of these twin orbs that leapt and shook to the music in the hazy light.  They called me.
     It has been my good fortune to have a keen perception of the inherent decorum of any of the drinking establishments I have visited.  I know what is and what is not acceptable and have been able to avoid confrontation.  So I knew that no matter how much it seemed to me that these lovely young women appeared to beckon, it would be a serious breach of etiquette to approach them.  In one scenario I would slip onto the dance floor ask to join one or the other and dance with her, and talk, and share a drink, and perhaps step outside to share a moment of privacy, whereupon the local boys would beat the shit out of me to preserve the honor of their ladyfolk and my membership would be suspended.  I kept my seat.
     I chose to content myself with an appreciation of the aesthetics and the sociological import of this most delightful display that had all the elements of the Ooby Dooby: "wiggling to the left, wiggling to the right, a wiggle and a shake like a big rattlesnake."  Yes, I am convinced that this was it: a rockabilly ritual whose meaning could only be truly perceived by those in the cultural milieu of its origin.  Oh, I could tease it out intellectually, put aside the lust it inspired in me to imagine what long term contract the viewer was invited to consider, what mixed joy and sadness lay before them in this country that was too big for comfort, that would always drive them to seek some small nest of joy to shield them from the immense, uncaring land.  I could think it but never feel it.
     And yet, when I stumble upon the Ooby Dooby again it makes me dance, even alone, as I imagine I am one of them, that my heart beats to that rhythm, that life comes struttin' across the dancefloor lifting me from the ordinary to the divine.

Missing

I have been missing for a long time.  It is that way with me and I have come to accept it.  I drift from time to time, searching, collecting.  I rarely know why or what it was that caused me to be for a while lost but this time the beginning was clear and specific.  I was driving to work a couple of months ago and I heard this:

Well-a hey baby

jump over here

when you do the ooby dooby 

I wanna be near
Ooby dooby

At once it struck me that this was a song akin to The Locomotion and The Hokey Pokey, an anthem or communal celebration of the human condition. 

     I should explain.

     I grew up dancing, not like kids do nowadays, in Miss Whatever's school of dance but in the streets, on summer nights, or in gyms and dark wood wainscoated basements of churches or schools, whose dim, warm refuge made Winter bearable.  It is where we learned to touch each other, gently and with reverence, breathing in the essence of the other, thrilling to the excitement of the expectation of a union in flesh.  It is where we celebrated the mad passions of rock and roll, dancing not with just one but with the sky and the earth, dancing ecstatic in a universe that said yes to our passions that were too fearfully sexual for public touch.  We grew up dancing with each other or watching each other dance.

    We did the stroll together, and the twist, and the shimmy, and the frug and a dozen other dances that came and went.  We were lucky to be so blessed to have rhythm etched on us at so young an age, but much more, to have been together dancing.  To dance together is to make community:  The Ooby Dooby,

New Kicks: On the transformative power of shoes

     I do not have a foot or shoe fetish.  In the normal course of a day I notice neither my own shoes nor others.  I do, however, feel them, have a physical sense of them, notice how they affect my posture, my gait, how my foot makes contact with the ground.  I am speaking here of the shoes I am wearing, though I tend to the empathetic, I have no sense of what others feel in their shoes other than to note how they stand, walk, how their feet meet the ground which may or may not be attributable to their footwear.  So my opinion cannot claim to be generally true, only specifically true.
     Recently, and quite by accident, I bought a pair of shoes.  I was at a shoe store with Renee who takes a long time to choose shoes, and I became impatient, a common state for me, so I amused myself by browsing through the men's shoes trying to find any that were not made in China, no mean feat.  It was pretty much limited to Bierkenstock.  Even the Sperry Topsiders, which I thought were upscale, expensive for loafers, were from China.  This task having been completed I returned to Renee, my wife, who had found a pair, six pair really, that she might purchase.  After a while the choices were narrowed down to one, which was a problem.  The deal was that if she bought two the second would be half off and so it made sense to buy two.
     Now it had taken a long time for her to find even one pair that she might buy and I was pretty sure that it would take even longer to find a second.  This knowledge, coupled with the certainty that I had exhausted all the amusements of this store led me to take action.  I found a pair of shoes for me, they were cheap and inoffensive, Sketchers, brown leather uppers and rubber or neo-rubber bottoms.  They fit, Renee liked them, the price was right, so I decided to buy.  As it turned out Renee bought no shoes so we didn't get the half off deal but the ones I got were seriously discounted, I'm guessing they were out of style, so it was ok.
     I've had these shoes for about three weeks now and they have become accustomed to my feet and my feet to them and this union has taken on a life of its own, as is often the case with feet and shoes, and has begun to affect my aspect and outlook when I am wearing them.
     There is a rawness to these shoes, the leather looking like hides pieced together.  They look, to me, like the footwear of a barbarian Celtic warrior.  This is problematic because the Celts usually went into battle naked but for a torc worn around the neck.  I think they also painted themselves blue but am not sure.  So if they were naked did that mean they did not wear shoes?  This, of course, led to a larger question about the true meaning of being naked.  Were the Celts truly naked when wearing a torc?  They have been described so.  This being true, then is one not also naked when wearing shoes?  If someone were to come up to you on the street wearing nothing but shoes, would you say he/she was naked?  The naked condition, in public, engenders approbation in the general populace.  The wearing of shoes would do nothing to lessen this approbation so I think it is reasonable to suggest that the wearing of shoes does not preclude the naked condition. It could therefore be posited that these Celts could be both naked and shod at once.  But the question remains: did they, in fact, wear shoes?
     Certainly one going into battle, especially on rocky terrain, would prefer to have some protection for the feet as a practical concern which would argue for them wearing shoes.  On the other hand one is right to question the practicality of a people who go into battle naked in the first place.  If we were to chose to protect a single part of the body I believe most would chose a part other than the foot.  So whether or not they wore shoes will remain a mystery in fact but I choose to allow my imagination to believe they did and so when I look at my feet in these shoes I see the extremities of a savage Celt.
     Now to the point: I noticed this morning, on the way to the Viking Bakery, that I was taller and broader and stronger than I had been in some time, that I was, simply, not myself, that I was, for some moments, Rhohan Pierce, a physically imposing young warrior who trod upon the earth as if it were his to take or toss aside.  Being neither young nor physically imposing, I realize this is an aberration, a condition, if you will, the Walter Mitty syndrome wherein the afflicted one's being is suddenly displaced by another whose life is significantly more exciting.  I am often subject to these fits though never before as Rhohan Pierce, so, other than the identity, the transformation came as no surprise.  I imagine this, something akin to multiple personalities or at least multiple delusions, should be cause for concern or even shame. It might also be disconcerting for those who are near and dear to my basic being to suddenly find me both present and missing but I am fairly adept at shielding others from it.  I do have some control, can pretty much stop it if I want, but the truth is, I rather enjoy it.
     So, with the help of a pair of Sketchers and with the music of Moby's Play throbbing in my veins, I strode the earth: a mighty Titan, but only for a short time.  It would have confused the people at the bakery if I had entered as anyone but myself.

Non-Negotiable Demands

I was fortunate to have attended college (Paterson State was a college at that time, later became William Paterson College, I believe to disassociate itself from Paterson which had the image of being black and poor which it was in some areas, and would become somewhat violent in those summer days when the urban poor looked at their plight and seeing no positive way out took to the streets with stones and fire.  Of course it was no Watts nor Newark neither, the latter providing us the spectacle of tanks rolling down the street of this old American city to defend property by arresting, beating and shooting the natives) during exciting times.  Wearing the uniform of the non-conformist (in that time long hair, whatever beard I could muster, jeans, an army jacket, and beads) I protested with others against the war because it appeared to me that we were fighting on the wrong side, for a corrupt government propped up by a nascent global corporate power structure, and against the people who had shook off the yoke of French colonial exploitation.  Somehow that people and the people here at home in the USA became one in our minds, well in mine anyway.  The military industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned us about had become a supra-governmental power, killing those who would not submit, poisoning our rivers and inventing things like napalm and agent orange.  Dow Chemical's slogan was "Better Living Through Chemistry."  The irony eluded them.
     So there we were with a lot to be pissed about, with a government that was sending our youth off to kill and/or die defending capitalism in Asia.   With a government by the people but for the powerful and wealthy. 
With a government that sent tanks against its own people.
     Now mostly we had peaceful protests and teach-ins, mild stuff, though the Black Student Union did take over a building and we white radicals stood in solidarity outside the chained doors, but elsewhere, like in Columbia (the university, not the country) there was more violence and the development of the non-negotiable demand.  It seemed like a good idea to me at the time, after all, we were right and they were wrong and it was our duty to impose our righteous will by any means necessary.
     Now here's the point: isn't this exactly what Republicans have been doing ever since the American people had the temerity to elect not only a Democrat but a black man President?  You could argue that they did it during the Clinton era as well but never so egregiously as now.  Was it right when we did it and wrong now or is it always wrong?
     I have a memory of being with my mother in a department store, I was five or younger (I have a lot of old memories) and I had had enough of shopping so I consciously decided to force my mother's hand by throwing myself on the ground and refusing to get up.  It is not a fond memory.  It was not a proud moment but I was a child behaving like a child so it was understandable.  The hope was that I would grow up and learn to behave in a more decent fashion.  Eventually I did.

Eating Lunch

     I had a turkey club, but it could have been a BLT or even egg salad which is what came to mind as the corner of the sandwich first touched my tongue and my teeth and I breathed in the smell of white toast.  (I'm particularly fond of egg salad but rarely order it, preferring the way my mother made it, the way I make it.)  Then there was the lettuce and the mayonnaise and I was in a small diner, Main street Hackensack (NJ), with my mother.  We had just come from the allergist, Dr. Berkow, a short, square, hairy man who had given me a couple of shots and who explained to my mother the sources of allergies and asthma talking to her like she was a child, maybe because he was a doctor and she was not, or maybe because he was a man and she was not, or maybe both.  And my mother looked at him in the way (I had seen this before) that let the speaker know that she was letting him go on with his nonsense, that she knew the source and cause but she wouldn't bother to tell him because he wouldn't get it anyway.  It wasn't hostile, it just wasn't worth her while.
     So there we were, sharing silence, (we are not big on talking, especially when eating, we are, both of us, quite fond of food), when my heart shook, hit with a wave of what felt like love coming from my mother, more like a sea swell really, slow and strong, and warm.  I looked at my mother who was not looking at me but was holding her sandwich in both hands and staring off somewhere in thought, looking angry as she always did when thinking, but she wasn't angry, that was just her face.  If you didn't know her you'd think her's was a cold, hard love but that wasn't the case it just seemed that way because the heat of her heart was held in check by a will of steel, tempered in the fires of suffering, hammered by pain.  She was less given to loving looks than actions: we had ridden the bus to the doctor together and now we were sharing a meal, she cared for me and it made me want to cry, but I didn't.  After all, to the rest of the world I appeared to be at my desk at work and if I were to cry there it would prompt questions the answers to which would prompt more and I would find myself explaining myself when all I really wanted to do was spend some quiet time with Mom.  So I didn't cry then and there, I saved it for later.
     

Psychopaths, CEO's and Boss Christie

     Other than the possibility of supernatural retribution in some dark future it is hard to see a downside to being without a conscience.  The world, especially one dominated by Capitalist economic principles, favors those who simply take what they want, whose focus is primarily, sometimes solely, amassing personal wealth and power.  In this environment compunctions are a handicap, morality a luxury reserved for later in life when one "gives back" by using the money squeezed from the sweat of others to create foundations ostensibly for philanthropy, but really to buy a reputation for humanitarianism which had played no part in their lives.
     But what I really wanted to talk about is Jon Ronson whose latest work, The Psychopath Test, has landed him on "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," as well as NPR.  I have neither seen nor heard any of these, and I haven't read the book either, so, armed with this ignorance, I can blissfully disregard Ronson's real purpose and focus on the part that struck me as most curious in the NY Times review and in an interview by Jeff Bercovici for Forbes: the qualities of a psychopath that would contribute to his/her effectiveness as a CEO, namely a lack of empathy, remorse or loving kindness.
     We really ought to question the morality of any system in which these virtues are a handicap but that for another time.  What really strikes me right now is the curious coincidence of some comments made by Mrs. Christie.  She was asked if her husband, Chris, would make a good president.  Of course she said yes but she didn't stop there she also added, unbidden, that he would make a very good CEO and it seemed to me that she preferred that course which is not surprising as her world is the world of Wall Street.
     Now I have never met Boss Christie and he may be a very different person in private but his public persona is that of a bully, uncompromising, vocally aggressive, and certain that those who oppose him are not only wrong but stupid.  His wife, who does know him privately, thinks he would be a good CEO.  He does seem a good candidate, having demonstrated a marked absence of empathy, remorse, or loving kindness, and maybe someday he will take his abilities into that arena but for now he is our Governor here in New Jersey.
     I know it is Quixotic to believe that public servants should actually serve the public and not just themselves but I believe it nonetheless.  For the most part our elected officials have put up something of a good front, appearing to care, and sometimes I believe they even do.  Boss Christie doesn't even bother to pretend.  Shouldn't we be fearful?

Postscript:  After writing this I read that Christie was saddened by the death of Clarence Cleamons, I wondered is this empathy?  But no, his reason was, "I was struck with the overwhelming feeling that the days of my youth were now finally over."  Yes, it's all about you isn't it Boss Christie?
    

Headline: Hiking Naked in Germany

     So I clicked on it.  I did not consciously imagine that I would see large, trim German women striding by a sylvan stream, or maybe I did, I can't remember, but of course that is not what I saw.  I should have known better.  No, what appeared on the screen was a vision of three old men dressed only in sneakers.  Spindly legs, no asses, and stomachs that were large enough to provide some measure of modesty, hiding their otherwise uncovered unders. 
     It occurred to me that it had to be men.  Women whose bodies had arrived at a similar state through the ravages of time and gastronomical abuse would never parade the spectacle of their ruin for all to see.  Their sense of their physical appearance is either realistic or skewed to the negative, so they are prone to conceal, not so with men.
     Somehow men are able to believe they are seventeen, so these three gentlemen could gambol about the hiking trail like fawns in the fauna.  They are nature boys, fresh and vital, and their nakedness a blessing on the natural world.
     I have never gone hiking naked in the woods and I likely never will, but I am often of a similar mind. 
     My father, in his seventies, would say he had played or would be playing golf with the old guys, though they were likely younger than he.  And he meant it, others grew old but he did not, it was a gift.
     I too have the gift, not always, but often, and I believe most men have it too.  We can ignore the popped buttons on the waistband above the fly, we rarely actually see ourselves in mirrors, we move through the universe like sleek and agile cats until irrefutable evidence to the contrary momentarily shakes the illusion.
     I think this is a good thing and women should join us in this happy illusion, but we ought to keep our clothes on in public.
     
     

It's not about the money

     The Christie, Sweeney, Norcross pension deal is another salvo in the war on the freedom and rights of the American middle class.  They are exploiting the financial meltdown of the pension system caused by underfunding and a collapse of the economic house of cards built by Wall Street to attack worker's rights.  They say the system needs fixing but when all interested parties agreed to serious discussions they launched a preemptive strike because it's not about the money, it's about eliminating collective bargaining rights.  It rankles Christie that these uppity wage slaves have the nerve to fight for a better life for themselves and their family, so he is doing something about it.  Christie is a cunning political operative, he knows what to grease and when to grease it, he knows how to play on the basest instincts of the people he is supposed to serve, to play one group against another, to inspire envy, to make greed a virtue.  A check of his record makes his motives and modus operandi clear.  Those he finds useful profit and the people pay the bill.  Take a look at who stands to benefit from the sale of the networks.  Why would we want a man who has intimate connections to a Newark political power broker controlling our news?  But I digress.  

     The point is simple: the man believes in power, he makes no bones about that and it is why many people like him.  We want to believe that there is a hero who can save the day, witness the explosion of movies inspired by Marvel Comics, but it doesn't work like that in the real world.  Fans of Obama have seen that even he cannot leap tall building in a single bound, but that for another day.  Chris Christie knows the corruption of New Jersey politics, he is an insider with intimate knowledge of how things get done and he is getting it done.

     Will we in New Jersey let Boss Christie strip away worker's rights or will we stand up to the bully.  I'm hoping it's the latter, better to be bloodied than to be bled dry.