Sketch: Two men after breakfast

The tall man sits in his chair, his legs folded up like a grasshopper.  He laces his fingers together and sighs.  He is less than half his standing height as he sits in the chair.  His shirt hangs on his coathanger shoulders. The bones of his face stretch his dark skin taught over his cheekbones.

His eyes glisten with emotion as he talks about his son, long gone now.  He buried him 17 years ago where the mulberry trees edge the cemetery, and birds scream in the morning when the feral cats pick their way through the weeds.  The old clock on the wall is ticking slowly, as if counting every third second.  The refrigerator hums and clicks.

The tall man sits with his old friend. They have long silences between them that are comfortable. Their thoughts continue together when the words end.  They breathe in and make small sounds that neither one notices, digesting their breakfasts and clearing their throats or just punctuating the other's last sentence with a grunt quietly.

The phone rings and the tall man reaches his long arm over to it. His fingers lift it slowly and steadily off its cradle and he waits for the receiver to get to his ear, patiently.

"Yessir," he starts, his gaze drifting to the yard outside the screen door that's open to let in the warming summer air.  He holds the receiver with his long fingers pressing their tips against the plastic of the phone, lightly.  "Yessir," he says again and the hand retraces its path to set the receiver back down with a quiet click.

The other man has begun a habitual rubbing of his left hand on his knee.  The tall man looks at him.

"Knee again?"

"Huh?"

"Knee's giving you trouble, old man?"

"Who's on the phone just now?"

"Lawyer Maginnis, he says his name is.  Know him?  Says something has come across his desk and wonders if I'm able to come on down to his office and see about it."  The tall man frowns and his eyebrows bunch up, knitted like old wool.  Three of his fingers resting on the easy chair tap and then stop. He takes a deep breath, inhaling slowly and steadily so that his throat looks strained. He closes his eyes briefly as the deep breath overtakes him and then he lets it go and settles down.  The call has cleared his mind of his son and the memories that return every morning. It's a relief. His friend is watching him out of the corner of his eye.

"No idea," says the other.  "You have to go now?  What about Millie?  She's sleeping still?"

"Yessir.  You stay here till I get back?"

"I can."

"All right then."  The tall man gathers his feet under his legs and pushes up out of the chair.  He is well over six feet tall, and his face looks regal when he's standing. "All right then," he repeats, gathers his keys off the side table, shrugs into his windbreaker and walks out the door.  The screen bangs softly after him and then the house is quiet except for the ticking clock.

Pique Your Imagination

The world between what is seen and known and the unseen and barely known, explored by the imagination and prompted by a curious spirit, pricks the conscious mind and tugs at the heart. There it is, and is not, a timeless space of dimensionless being. It exists, more than anywhere else in song, story, poem and prayer.

Throngs stream into stadiums and arenas to see contests between teams or solo competitors, or into theaters to listen to singers, hoping that there may be a glimpse  into the mystery of life and beyond, giving voice literally to that which might elevate the mind and transform ordinariness, spark  something with possibility.  We listen for the lilt in the voice or the moistness of the eyes that tells us that emotion is rising, that the heart of the singer is affected, that something is afoot.  We hope to become different, to have our senses expanded, the impossible reeled in and made near.  We have words for the experience of accessing the unknown:  Transcendent, uplifting, divine, and surreal.

We may view a piece of art, a painting, a photograph, or we may sense in some way that something special, unusual or undefinable is upon us. It may be fleeting and transient, but we know those moments as breathtaking and memorable.

On the other hand, when life is only drudgery and slop, hope and possibility drift away to the cold reaches of the night.  We sag, we worry, we cannot sing.  We cannot even breathe very well.

It is certain that living things, humans certainly, need those transitory moments when the dimensions of ordinary life change, when time stands still and when creativity and imagination are in full bloom.  We need to have time to let our minds wander, to drift undisciplined and unruly into the state of dimensionless being.

Ask any artist what I mean, and they will tell you:  Time stands still or means nothing, and it is as if they become a tool for the creative force of life itself.

Sometimes, I imagine I can step into pictures and exist in them.  I exchange my mundane existence for a walk in new worlds known to no one else.  I let my mind wander far into the realm of imagination.  It is as if I can push the edges of the painting's frame or photograph's edges aside and climb into a different state of mind.

Nothing is possible.  That is, nothingness is possible, even probable, when we do not live in between worlds at least part of the day.  The cues that beckon us to the dance of creativity are for our eyes and ears to catch and relay to our hearts, which beat more strongly when we do.  A backlit field of wheat at dawn, a fleeting smile, the ringing note of a trumpet in the woods are talismans for the torch of imagination that must be sparked if we are to be alive fully.

What piques your interest, stirs your heart, speaks to your eternal spirit?  Are you dancing lively, you tender creator of your own possibility?

Swimming Long Course This Summer

So, as my luck would have it, Coach Mark got up his dander and arranged for a "swim clinic" four days a week, held at the Hartnell College's 50 meter pool. The clinic runs for six weeks. At 6 AM, I gather up my swim stuff, then out to the car for the half-hour drive to the pool. It's summer in Monterey, and on the coast that means the day's temperatures vary between 52 and 70 degrees, more often on the lower end of that range.  It's cold out and fog has settled in like a mean old aunt on a big ugly sofa.  

This is the first opportunity I've had to work out in a long-course pool. It takes a little getting used to.  Like most sports, if you are familiar with a tennis court or a running course, you have mentally set up measuring points to gauge your speed or strength or accuracy.  In swimming, the pool is gauged by numbers of strokes per lap.  A freestyle 25-yard lap for a practiced swimmer is about 8 or 9 strokes; it depends on how much you use your kick and how long your stroke is. If you swim 25-yard pools, you subconsciously time your effort to last for 25, or 50 or 100 yards.  Not 50 or 100 or 200 meters.  

Now I'm adapting to a much longer course.  The coach is talking about the "speed trap" in the pool and I am thinking in American 25 yards when he's thinking in Continental 50 meters.  The first lap on the first day, I am automatically thinking I am nearing the other end of the pool and look ahead through the water and see nothing but blue and the stripe on the bottom. I'm not even halfway yet.  I wonder where halfway actually is.  How do I tell?  No idea.  So, I just swim. Much later, I reach the other end.  It feels like I've swum the length of a small lake.  I'm hearing the coach yell out helpful hints like, "Engage your legs! Forget about breathing! Rhythm! It's all rhythm!"  I try not to breathe and instantly hate life.  I like breathing pretty much; it helps me feel good about myself, and I maintain consciousness better that way, but I also try to embrace the concept of a long streamlined body position and fluidity of motion as I move.  I'm immensely glad I am not being filmed and forced to watch embarrassing videos of myself thrashing and sputtering, out of control.  I try to channel the ease and grace of wonderful Olympians like Amanda Beard or Liesel Jones.  If nothing else, the mental distraction of trying gets me to the other end of the pool.

A 50 meter pool holds a little under a million gallons, depending on the average depth of the pool its full length. I am three weeks into this "clinic" now and still trying to gauge my effort the length of the pool, remember how many strokes per lap I am trying for and goal times for distances and strokes. Swimmers have a lot to think about.  It'd be a big mistake to believe a swimmer just swims.  To keep all the various moving parts of one's body synchronized and coordinated while breathing air, not water, and to recall the shouted instructions of the coach as you are doing so feels like herding cats.  Some cats get away from me, nearly every lap.

I have an ever-increasing respect - awe really - for elite swimmers who quite literally swim twice as fast as I do. Every lap I complete, plowing and struggling along, impresses this upon me.  The youngsters who swim at the same time in distant lanes from mine zoom back and forth, back and forth for two hours, so I just think to myself, "Ignore them, they're 40 years younger than you are." I realized after talking to a couple of other masters swimmers in the pool with me that I am the grande dame of the group.  I hope to kick their booties once or twice before the clinic ends in three weeks' time.  It's not a plan; it's a hope, and hope is good.  I perversely enjoy the fact that they are suffering as much as I am, even though they are going a bit faster.

After my swim is over and I've showered, I drive back through the wide reaches of the Salinas Valley with its rich agricultural fields, farm machinery, farm workers bent to their tasks in long lines, doing hard labor in the long rows of lettuce. I go back to the coast and my rocky shore-bound town. I'm enjoying my own hard work in the pool.  I do wonder why I am not content to just sit poolside and sip a cool drink.  Well, one answer is that there are just very few hot days when a cool drink would be needed.  Coffee is what's needed with so much fog now.  No, moving fast in a big pool just feels good when I can get everything coordinated and going in the same direction at the same time.

Long Cool Bug

Two feet below my nose is a long black bug - like a stretch-limo fly - strolling around on a plant. The bug - iridescent blue and pinched at the waist - can walk around upside down as well as it can right side up. It is possibly the first time in my life I have ever seen such a bug, but I don't think I can remember every bug I've ever seen. It's a cool bug, not the kind that suddenly leaps into my face or chews up my plants. A Johnny Depp bug. A bug, pure and simple.

What strikes me about the bug is that it is going along living its bug life whether I have ever seen it before or not, whether I know what it's called or not.  That I don't understand its life or what it is called doesn't affect the bug.  I watch it, don't feel a need to kill, swat, whack or torment it. I realize that it's teaching me something.

Sometimes I wonder what other people think of me, how they see me, how I affect them.  I even get a little anxious about it now and again.  If they tell me how they feel, I usually believe them, but sometimes I even wonder about that, too.  I actually do things at times so that the person I'm with will approve of me, like me better or think I'm cool. I've probably never been cool, especially since I loved to go to the library and read magazines and books during my spare time at school, and I never jumped off of high places with bungee cords tied to my ankles.  So, being an uncool and quiet person, I wonder what people think of me at times. It has never done me any good to care.

It seems not to matter to the bug. The bug is living a casual bug's routine life regardless of what I think of it or not. I think it's pretty freeing not to care, to be bug-like. I know this begs the question: What if I kill the bug?  Shouldn't it be more concerned?  Maybe.  It doesn't seem to notice me, up in the air above it, 3,000 times bigger than it is, capable of annihilating it.

I have been known to fret a lot about these kinds of things. Does he love me?  Did they like me?  Was I nice enough, smart enough? Did I impress them?  I think that when I just stop caring and become oblivious to judgements by others, I get to the point of being able to walk on a leaf up side down.  Or the human equivalent of that.  I am more likely to reach my potential if I pay attention to what my heart and mind are telling me, pay attention to the truth of the matter, when I walk my walk unconcerned, right side up or up side down.

Just Sayin'

Some people begin life on a dazzling trajectory that never sags into swamps of disappointment or dejection, but most of us swerve and falter a few times once we are shot out of life's cannon.  Things go haywire, we get hurt or sick, we lose loved ones or bad guys really seem to be winning.  Life hurts sometimes.

I've heard that you attract to you that which you believe most sincerely.  I don't know if I'm so convinced this is true.  What I believe is that stuff happens and you had better figure out what to do about it so that you can live on.  And you have to help other people out.  You just do.

I used to be naive and then I became a nurse.  Lots of bad things happen to really good people and lots of good things happen to criminals.  That's the weird thing about life.  Kids get hurt. Old ladies who have done nothing but good all their lives get whacked and then what? Crooks rip people off and nothing seems to happen to them.  Can we really attribute mayhem and chaos to anything but fate?  I don't believe we can.  But I do believe in the goodness of people, or at least the potential for good in people.

The odd thing is I don't not believe in God.  I just don't believe God (or the creative force of the universe) is vengeful or plans things in terms of reward or punishment.  Fate is fate and if you are in line to slip on a banana peel, you have to figure out how to get up.  And I believe that life is better if we lend a hand to others instead of walking past.

It's pretty obvious we're all in this together, and that brings up such mixed images in my mind that I could just scream sometimes.  Then, I think of everything that dazzles and inspires me that people have done and dreamed of, and I want to cheer.
I am not yet a cynical, disappointed, formerly hopeful person.  Too much about life is mysterious and stunning to be cynical. Just sayin', I'm looking ahead, avoiding banana peels to the extent that I can and relieved there are good people in this world.  That's all.  Just sayin'.