Being Humans in the Universe

A ski acrobat wearing star-spangled pajamas flies up into the air in a very excellent attempt to overcome gravity and zoom away to Hawaii, where it's warmer and you can get a tan instead of a broken arm when you land on a frozen slope from 55 feet in the air.  He is wildly celebratory when he lands.  It seems likely that, so high has he gone, in the blink of time it takes him to spin and whirl in dizzy pirouettes above the dark tree tops, he actually made the trip to the tropics and back again, taking advantage of some frozen time warp.  He roars, and the people all round, whose necks had nearly snapped as they watched him come soaring back from palm trees, crystalline beaches and salt spray, shriek with surprise and excitement.

A thin, earnest young man in a baggy neoprene suit, a round helmet and huge goggles gazes down at the world spread beyond his skis to the distant mobs of screaming frozen fans.  Their painted faces and dazzled eyes gaze back up at him adoringly.  Then, as if prompted by a new idea he hadn't considered ever before, he shrugs, hops down off his perch, squatting like a crazy fly with big long laminated feet, and slides easy as you please down two parallel tracks in the snow.  He springs up into the cold as if shot out of a cannon.  His fingers, in big gloves held at his side, tickle the air.  He leans far forward, nearly kissing his ski tips, surveying the passing countryside like a skinny god suddenly borne aloft, looking for a good meal.  Almost incidentally he alights, on a whim, and slides to a halt near the admiring throngs.  Their full-throated roar shakes the snow from the tree tops.

Young couples, wearing outlandish costumes -- Halloween disguises pale in comparison -- frantically perform ravishingly passionate dances to operatic scores.  Arms clad in spangled spandex nearly detach from the spinning bodies of the skaters and take flight.  Shredded charmeuse skirts and bodices lift and float with every dramatic turn.  Legs bend, curve, lean and stroke in unison and the music powers over and around the audience which is rapt and thrilled by the drama before them.  Hearts soar and then flowers are strewn to the ice, cast there by enchanted and happy girls.

A hockey team wins its game and becomes delirious with the unexpected joy of victory.  Every woman on the team rushes out on the rink and tackles one another, bear-like, screaming, laughing, crying and screaming again.  They shake their J-shaped sticks at the crowd in the stands, who are banging on the walls and screaming, too.  All the women on the team, in a spontaneous mood of celebration, spread apart from each other and then turn, flop down on their bellies and slide around, like seals on arctic ice floes, glad to have not been eaten by the opposing team.

In all the arenas of celebration, the world allows for happy insanity and wild abandon.  The stupidity of war and horror of starvation and all other disgusting privations visited upon humans by other human beings does not exist here, pushed back far into the shadows by thousands of yelling, screaming, shouting, banging, clapping, whistling, cheering, crying, laughing and shrieking-with-happiness living souls.  All at once, the whole place lifts up off the ground and flies around the universe and all the powers and forces gathered there realize we are something special, we are embodied magic and we deserve something more than to be turned to ashes and left to eternity all alone.

Raising the White Flag

I've been watching spandexed bodies flying, spinning, flipping, running, skating, and flashing by so fast I can't see them unless I see it all again in slow-mo.  I am held willing captive by my television, white flag held high, taken prisoner by the scenes before my eyes.  It happens to me every Olympics, this surrender.  This is bad.  I have yielded heart and soul to the fantasy of Olympic endeavor even though I know it is a representation of only the most elite, most talented and gifted athletes the world has to offer in an arena created at extreme expense, leaving out the vast majority of humankind who also strive and compete.  But, then again, maybe they aren't left out.  Not totally.


It's true I've never come close and never will come close to being an elite athlete, but I need to know that those flying-squirrel ski jumpers are out there gently floating down long slopes to settle lightly and gracefully as you please 140 meters from liftoff.  I need to see a girl readying herself on a pair of skis before she slides down, and then up, and then way up into the cold sky where she does turns, tumbles, flips, and somersaults and lands again back on earth.  I need to see two people dancing with impeccable grace and flair on razor sharp skates to a cacophony of corny music and see them look effortless and fine.  I need to see an icy toboggan chute that barely contains a heavy sled with four muscular men crouching down, slashing downhill at 90 miles an hour.  


I need to witness it all that because I believe it's impossible to do those things.  I need to see the huge cauldron of fire set alight after a million-mile relay all around the country because I am small.  I am small, and I have attempted to live a good life, and my life has been safe.  I live in a small town where a few of our citizens can run pretty well or swing a golf club respectably, but from which no one has really distinguished themselves to Olympian heights.  


I swim and I think of Olympic swimmers who seem to have some ungodly ability to accelerate from an already insane pace.  I run and I think of diminutive Kenyan runners with the lungs of a whale who are so fleet that 26.2 miles is the same to them as my 1 or 2 miles are to me.  I ride my bike up Forest Avenue and I think of Tour de France riders storming up the slopes of Mt. Ventoux in France, a severe and horrible climb created by Lucifer himself.  


I need inspiration and hope and all my heroes, every one of them.  They are the gifted angels who fly among us, tapping us on the shoulder, nudging us to give it another shot, try again, go a little harder next time.  They have bitten off more than anyone should chew, swallowed it and grown up to be nearly immortal.   



Their movements are beautiful and they make it all look so very easy, so simple.  The simplicity is deceptive, but this is good.  A simple deception is beguiling and alluring, tempts us to believe that if we really do give it one more shot, maybe we'll do better, overcome a bit of adversity, prevail somehow.  The coolest part of it all is that when you believe you have the possibility of prevailing, beating the odds, sometimes you actually do.  


I will keep watching the Games, fascinated by the wild abandon represented in each arena, the attainment of rarefied glory because I need to.  I know this is a very specific groove, probably the most stirring and exciting one around.  However, you think this is bad, you should see me when July comes along and the Tour de France commences.  I'm gonna be soooo gone then, and happily so.  I surrender!