It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And Heaven’s A Fairy Tale)

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Harold Camping

It’s amazing to me what some people believe and the lengths to which they’ll go to make you believe it right along with them.  Harold Camping, the Oakland-based Christian radio zealot predicted through a complex interpretation of hidden messages woven into the Bible that Judgment Day would occur on May 21, 1988 [it apparently didn't] and later revised his analysis to predict it was really September 7, 1994 [it apparently wasn't] so he took at least one more well-publicized crack at it recently saying the End of Days would occur on May 21, 2011– at 6pm.  No one really fully grasped which time zone he was referring to when he made his pronouncement and set the clock-watching in motion but those of us born before 1970 knew to be ready to duck and cover.  As was the case during elementary school, no blast arrived and we all dusted ourselves off and stretched out our legs and went about doing whatever it was we were doing before the ‘sirens’ sounded.  After a brief period of confusion not altogether unexpected from an 89-year old whack job, Camping confirmed for the media that he didn’t really understand what happened, was ‘flabbergasted’ and needed to ‘think this out’ before combing his hair, returning to work on Monday, and appearing for the cameras to acknowledge that he was slightly off in his calculations.  The new and improved date for the Rapture will be delayed by another five months and is now slated for October 21, 2011 according to the Family Radio leader.  And I suspect he really believes it.

Jim Jones

He’s not the first charismatic voice to charm believers into parting with their hard-earned dollars [it's reported that his Family Radio operation received about $100M over the last 7 years in donations] and that these last few days leading up to the [temporarily postponed] end have enabled FR to buy as many as 5,000 billboards alerting the expected 200M Christians slated for Rapture to be standing at the ready [the rest of us are screwed, of course, and will soon learn that The Devil is really the lead singer of a Barry Manilow tribute show from Brooklyn].  Charlatans and hucksters have been suckering in gullible wonks since the beginning of time and only the end of the world will stop the selling of snake oil to people willing to be deceived rather than face their mortal fears.  Even Stephen Hawking was appalled by the roundabout deceptions people will delude themselves with rather than face stark scientific evidence and the prospect that perhaps all we are is transient matter and temporary energy amidst a universe that punishes the lack of longevity with the laws of physics– a short half-life is a short half-life and nothing more.  We live, we die, and maybe that’s it.  Energy, temporarily organized into a form we think holds greater significance than it really does.  Or if you prefer the liberal arts to physics, pretend Gertrude Stein was referring to Heaven when she said [about Oakland] “There is no there there.”  Not that she would know but People’s Temple founder Jim Jones’ name is included among the 918 cyanide-laced Kool-Aid drinking followers just memorialized in Oakland’s Evergreen Cemetery so apparently there’s a little ‘there’ there even though it might have arrived 33 years after the fact.

Stephen Hawking

On the one hand you have the scientist telling you your brain is nothing more than an organic computer and that there “is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”  So life beyond this temporal existence is essentially meaningless and we should merely do all we are capable of in this life and not concern ourselves with chasing meaning or order from anything beyond what we can see and feel and experience on Earth.  On the other hand, the zealots want us charging through this life behaving in such a manner as to bum’s rush our way into the salvation queue such that we’ll be raptured beyond the velvet ropes and into a heavenly afterlife where all will be revealed to us and we’ll finally understand the depth of the mysteries and the subtlety of the madness we’ve come to know here on Earth.  It will all be made clear and we won’t be taking anything with us but our soul [thank you John and Yoko].

I’m a little bummed about Harold Camping’s revised timetable for my imminent departure from this Earth–he has me checking out a little more than a week before my daughter’s wedding and I had really hoped to hang around at least that long and enjoy the party [the budget is taking up a couple of years’ worth of vacation fund, it's almost paid for up front, and it would be a shame to waste all that great wine we have sitting in storage for the nuptials].

Barry Manilow (as The Devil)

Besides, her dress is fabulous, a lot of guests are flying in from Europe, and, well, it’s a wedding after all and they’re meant to be a wild time for everybody that hangs around until after the cake is cut and the dancing starts.  My wife is going to make extra certain she looks Mother-of-the-Bride hot and you know as well as I do that if you wait out a wedding until the dancing starts, you’re bound to get lucky– that will be my version of Rapture.  Besides, sooner or later the DJ is going to cave in to some Great-Aunt’s request and play a Barry Manilow song– and I need to know who to follow when the Conga line leading to the flaming fires of eternity starts weaving through the crowd.

And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn’t too hard to see
We’re in heaven

Bryan Adams – Heaven (1983)

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Unhappy Endings (No Means ‘No’ and Any Means ‘Any’)

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The High Wire Act

Customer service can be a high wire act.  I’m usually the guy in the group that is far more tolerant, far more patient and accommodating when things don’t go as planned, and the one who will shrug off most ‘it didn’t go as I thought it would’ moments with an eye toward ‘Oh well… it’s not the end of the world.’  I’m the one who has the attitude ‘if nobody died, it isn’t a big deal, really’ and I’m quick to forgive and forget a disappointment where the overall effect on life and civilization is relatively minor.  My view is that the best service teams are like the circus– they operate with a net and if the artist occasionally misses the trapeze bar and falls to the webbing, that’s a flash of adrenaline to remind us that the circus is exhilarating but dangerous and that the tigers sometimes come off of their chairs and misbehave and we should all pay attention.  Players don’t always perform as the playwright scripted the play and whether we’re the actor or the patron, the lion tamer or the popcorn-munching audience member, we have an obligation to make the outcome a good one for everybody.  I order a latte—they hand me a mocha.  Oh well, I probably secretly wanted the chocolate infused sugar high anyway and it’s a shame to waste it.  My steak is somewhat beyond the rare I asked for.  No big deal as long as it isn’t as dry as shoe leather– it’ll remind me of my mother’s roast beef.  My car was supposed to be repaired and ready by 3pm.  If there’s nowhere I had to be or I can get where I want to go another way, it isn’t worth making a big fuss about– things happen that can’t be avoided.  But I get as frustrated as the next person when there’s a breakdown in customer service that is avoidable, when things aren’t handled professionally and acknowledged as ‘we’re wrong’ when they were wrong, and when the response to my being inconvenienced as a customer, however minor, isn’t done cleanly and crisply as I’d expect from someone interested in retaining my loyalty.  When my view of how a circumstance should be handled doesn’t match up with the offending entity’s view, there’s a brief tipping point where the relationship can be salvaged or tossed out with the table scraps forever.  Being right is different than winning and winning, consequently, can be losing in a heartbeat.  The whole battle versus the war thing in the wins and losses column is never really good for a business.  The demanding customer who is vocal and persistent, and becomes progressively louder and louder and makes other patrons uncomfortable in a calculated attempt to persuade management to capitulate wins the battle– the business wins the war because they not only retain that customer’s business, they probably get new customers as the whiner brags about how they berated the business into ponying up to make them happy.  This kind of customer… well, it isn’t me.  My pattern is to ask once for a correction and then to seethe quietly for the duration of the moment after resolution isn’t accommodated, then simply cease doing business forever–a massively bad outcome for a business that could well afford to do the one or two little inexpensive things to make sure I never reach for that red button that launches the self-destruct mode and terminates our customer-vendor high wire act forever.  The red button blows a hole the size of Arkansas into the safety net and that means someone is going to get hurt.

I mention this because there are a few ‘don’t mess with me’ things that people who know me well know not to do– not many, really, but those few aren’t really up for debate.  First, you don’t ever drink from my coffee cup– I’ve had the same one since I was 11 and it’s mine, not yours.  It fits my hand perfectly, it holds the right amount of hot coffee at the right temperature, it’s well-balanced and doesn’t spill even while I’m walking.  It’s so well balanced I once drove to the store with a hot cup on my bumper, admittedly spilling a few drops but the cup stayed safely balanced throughout the drive.  I noticed the steam rising as I passed the back of the car on my way inside and carried a hot cup inside on my errand– a testament it was meant to be mine and mine alone for as long as I live).  I’m territorially alpha male when it comes to my mug and you don’t really want to piss off the alpha male unless you’re prepared to kill him.  No one has reached that point yet.  There are others.  Try putting catsup on that steak I grilled you– I dare you.  There’s a reason the chef salted the dish the way they did and it probably has something to do with how they wanted it to taste.  Try and remember that as you’re overpowering the subtle flavors I’ve tried to infuse onto your palate.  White wine at just below freezer temperature?  No, ma cheri, this much I simply will not do for you!  In fact, don’t ‘mess’ with my wine enjoyment at all if you can help it or out might come the red button.  With that in mind, don’t bait and switch me when I want to give you money.  I hate that.

My bride sings in the choir and they meet for rehearsals every Thursday evening.  In the town where I live is a pizza place, Rocco’s, with terrific pies and a nightly special– one night it’s a large for the price of a medium, another night a pitcher of beer is half price, and on Thursday nights, any bottle of wine is only $15 (except one… they specify which one in every ad, every banner, and on the menu). I like wine and $15 is a bargain.  Better still, they carry a red wine grown and bottled here in town, Shadowbrook, that I’ve wanted but never had occasion to try.  We inevitably end up missing the Thursday night special when we come for a pizza– choir will beat out a medium sausage, mushroom, and spinach with a glass of wine every time (being stubbornly chorale-phobic, I don’t really understand why choir always wins but I’ve learned ‘acceptance’ from my periodic interactions with the Presbyterians who do).  But this is Holy Week and last night was Maundy Thursday—just Thursday to me but a night off from choir for my bride as they have rehearsed Tuesday and Wednesday for their Good Friday and Easter performances to the congregation.  We decided to relax over a bottle of wine, Shadowbrook, and a pizza rather than shop and cook at home.  It is, after all, Thursday and “Any bottle of wine is only $15 (except Biali).”  That means we finally get to sample the Shadowbrook.

It’ll be about a 15 minute wait.  No problem– even when 15 minutes stretched to almost a half hour.  Too busy with that table in the back (the City Councilman’s wife and children– I hired him as an entry level sales representative 20 years ago… good kid) to take our order?  No big deal… we’re in no rush.  Water with no ice please.  I’m sorry… excuse me?  The manager says Shadowbrook isn’t part of the special?  How can that be?  The banners and the posters in the door clearly say “Any bottle of wine is only $15 (except Biali).  Is Shadowbrook Biali?”  Oh, I see, there are other bottles excluded as well.  Ahh.  I see.  So the posters and the banners and the menus and the website are all wrong (not accurate, untruths, mistakes, LIES)?  No.  No, no… I’ll just have that water with no ice.  Nope.  No wine.  Thanks, no.  No, I don’t think I’d like to revisit the menu for a second choice before ordering– just the pizza and the water please, no ice.

The Red "Button"

I’m sorry, she ordered the ‘almost’ pint of Stella.  Is this the ‘almost’ pint or the small mug.  Hmm… every other time she’s ordered the ‘almost pint’ it was in that glass and the ‘small mugs’ have always been in these glasses.  This is an ‘almost’ pint?  OK, I’m sure you’re right– after all, you work here and I don’t.  No, everything is fine.  Perfect.  Couldn’t be better.  Happy as a clam.  Thrilled.  The pizza is fine but we’ll take a ‘to-go’ box please.  Nope.  No problem at all.  Thanks very much.

I’m not always able to execute the strategy but I figured out a long time ago the value of thinking it while not saying it aloud.  Seething with an outward smile that belied my frustration, I said none of the things I was thinking.  What difference would winning the battle have made?  I’m sorry, Rocco.  Our time together has come to an end.  When the sausage, mushroom, and spinach cravings strike Mrs. and me, we’ll once again make the longer drive to Melo’s in Pleasant Hill– our former pizza haunt before you came to town.  Melo’s doesn’t have nightly specials, entertainment after 8:30pm, and they don’t sell wine for $15 a bottle on Thursdays.  But they don’t lie to me, they value my business and they don’t put ice in my water when I ask them three times not to– and I’m good with that.

Any means any.  If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.  And, hey, don’t scrimp so much on the sausage!  Customers are paying for it when they order it!

Why, tell me why, did you not treat me right?
Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight

The Beatles — I’m Looking Through You (1965)

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One Man’s Weed (Is Another Man’s Flower)

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The spring equinox has come and gone and today marked the first full day of the season.  It rained so hard yesterday driving actually slowed to well below the speed limit on Highway 101– slowing on California roads when there is no horrendous crash to rubber-neck is unheard of here.  Rain yesterday enough to flood farm fields in the Salinas Valley and overflow the banks of the Nacimiento River but today only sunshine, shadows unseen for days (if not weeks), and bursts of energy from bluebirds and squirrels and other yard inhabitants hunkered down since this latest rash of storms began almost two weeks ago.  Renewal is everywhere– there are blossoms blowing off my cherry tree, the fruitless mulberry I refuse to butcher back to a stump (as my quite unfriendly and unlikeable neighbors to the rear do every late summer) is spewing out allergy-inducing pollen, and the grass is rising faster than I can keep it mowed and has invaded the planter areas abutting the identified lawn with impunity (a tribute to the late spring rains now arriving almost every day with only the occasional storm break– the same rains that render basic weed pulling more like a backhoe excavation than a check and balance exercise between the laws of nature and my hori hori knife).  My roses look like they live down range on an artillery base or maybe amidst the craters of the moon.  Renewal comes at a price and this year’s payment for the privilege of working the land will include new topsoil to replace dirt carted away in the green can along with the trespassing grasses and the weeds to be returned someday as mulch at 10,000 times the mark-up it would cost me to let it mulch directly on site.

We do this dance every year as the spring showers subside and the sun emerges– the reclaiming of the yard from the ravages of winter rains, massive runoffs from up the hill, and the impossible to stop scattering of weeds and debris that flow gravity-fed from the hills farther up our block.  You can’t push back the tide forever and I long ago conceded the December to March mud season to nature’s whimsy and an inevitable backyard flood plain only to try and exert my will beginning with the solstice.  That usually gives me a month before the annual “Paris in the Spring” dinner party we host every year for 30 or 40 starving Presbyterians– just large enough that I’m forced to anticipate outside seating on the back patio and thus necessitating my annual reclamation project.  Nobody wants to savor Côte des Bœuf and a nice Rhone blend while being pollinated by 12 inch dandelions and staring at grey-brown snapdragon skeletons from last season or wafting the sometimes pleasant [and sometimes not] fragrances from the suddenly warming soils of the yard.

My hands achieve a perpetual state of callous within days and the cracking and scaling of workingman’s hands coincides with the still chilly mornings to make dexterity painful.  Workingman’s hands aren’t pleasant for the workingman or the workingman’s wife and I concede easily to hand lotion and gardener’s creams in an effort to remain occasionally invited to wrap my arms around my wife in the middle of the night.  In addition to the weeding and pruning and raking and trimming in my own yard, I work with a small but committed group of dedicated weed pullers to try and eradicate Yellow Star Thistle from our thousands of acres of protected open space.  There are other non-native invasives there… milk thistle, Italian thistle, and yellow mustard.  Most hikers and dog-walkers love the yellow mustard and don’t think of it as problematic but the fields where it has set up shop have slowly squelched out all other life below its stalks and the winters reveal easily the large grey patches of earth where mustard decay has leeched a just toxic enough natural poison from the leaves and pushed back life from the perimeters where the spring growth once staked a claim.  Mustard is at once beautiful and ugly, depending upon your vantage.

There’s a movement afoot to make an attempt at eradicating the yellow mustard but I suspect that movement will rise and fall with the volume of shouts from an uneducated populace seeing only the floral arrangement side of the mustard dichotomy. These will be the same people who have planted Scotch Broom around California and destroyed the native vegetation of the wild lands. They don’t know any better.  Our small group of dike-plugging weeders have tried with some success to focus on winning the solo battle of the Yellow Star rather than all of the other thistles and though we’ve chatted from time to time about the mustard problem, we never seriously carry forward any plan for its removal– impossible as the task would seem it would be even more challenging because most people love the look when spring arrives and the yellow flowers rise above a man’s height and bring bees and butterflies and sneezes and the outcry over trying to pull the stalks out before they flowered and went to seed would echo through the hills louder than the hissing of crickets and ribbets of bullfrogs.

I prefer the bullfrogs.  Besides, like I said, you can’t hold back the tide forever.

But plant your hope with good seeds,
Don’t cover yourself with thistle and weeds,
Rain down, rain down on me,
Look over your hills and be still

Mumford and Sons — Thistle and Weeds (2009)

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Absolution (Just Say Three Hail Marys and I Love You)

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I suspect things have changed since I last went to a Catholic mass.  Generally accepted as among the wealthiest organizations on Earth, the Catholic Church’s wealth remains for the most part locked up in the vaults and treasures and vast real estate holdings of the Vatican rather than trickled down to feed and clothe and care for the masses– seemingly a contradiction to the mission of love and the vows of poverty espoused by church leadership.  The Church has been hammered repeatedly in recent years for the sins of the Fathers and some enormous settlements have been reached to avoid other, costlier, judgments at trial.  Pedophilia in the headlines, it seems, makes for poor recruiting.  I read somewhere that the number of priests ordained from First World countries these days was barely a sliver of a percent relative to those from Third World places where for children the church is still viewed as a way out of a life destined for hopeless desperation and poverty and into one of salvation and hope and– well, still poverty until you navigate the Church’s political hierarchy.  Simple black robes or a nun’s habit can’t hide all that wealth.  Someone up that food chain is getting fat.  The attraction of serving God and becoming one of His disciples here on Earth seems to have waned in Western cultures or maybe that’s just the perception.

A Festivus for the rest of us....

Of the seven sacraments, being ordained is still known as receiving Holy Orders and is the least common.  Baptism is still Baptism but they call Holy Communion the Eucharist now, Penance is called Reconciliation, and the Last Rites have been whitewashed into something called the Anointing of the Sick.  The phrases sounds vaguely lawyerish or maybe Kramerish on Festivus but they don’t sound like the tough as nails message drilled into us when we were kids about discipline and sacrifice and contrition.  I’m reasonably confident my adult children couldn’t define the word genuflect and I’m OK with that.  The generation of family priests and nuns stopped with my mother and father’s and my children will never have to fall to their knees, kiss the ring, or otherwise behave deferentially unless they choose to (an unlikely choice, I’m sure).  There are no lapsed Catholics in our house– only one ex-Catholic still amused by my Grandmother’s certainty that someday (despite my marriage to my wife) I would become a priest and carry on a family legacy.  That, as they say, would be a Festivus miracle like no other.

We didn’t stick with the church on Sunday routine for long when I was a kid– my father worked ridiculous hours to try and keep us living a middle-class lifestyle despite earning what was probably a lower pay and grade in fact for how we lived.  It needed to be spread across six children, a wife and a mortgage.  Giving up church on Sunday meant there was time for scrambled eggs and pancakes and orange juice–but more important it meant sleeping in and enjoying a day of actual rest rather than rising early, showering and dressing nicely, and driving to Saint Anthony Claret.  Breakfast for eight cost less than new clothes and dress shoes for six, and eggs and bacon didn’t require tossing something respectable in the collection plate.  After the first few years trying to appease my grandparents we even skipped the midnight mass on Christmas Eve and gave up all pretense.  The catechism classes became just another necessary carpool and disappeared off my radar entirely after I was confirmed (coincidentally, so did participation in all things Catholic, once it was explained to me by my Grandmother what it ‘meant’ to have been confirmed in the church.  Thank you, but no…).  I know my folks had a fancy Bible given to them by my grandparents as a wedding treasure.  I vaguely remember owning a Bible as a child but I have no recollection whatsoever of ever reading one much less studying it.  We didn’t consider ourselves heathen but I’ve been moving in that direction ever since.  I’ve come to grips with it.

My relationship with a god has been challenging at times for my kids, mostly, because of the conflicting messages they inevitably discern from their parents.  My wife is a member of a Presbyterian church; I am one half of a ’couple’ and that occasionally means I engage in activities deemed ‘couple-worthy’ that also involve the church and other church members.  They are good people with good hearts and healthy pocketbooks and they reach out in their way to try and make the world a better place.  When they bow their heads and extend their hands to pray a blessing before diving in for a group meal I clasp the hands of whomever reaches out for mine and try not to make it uncomfortable or obvious that I don’t bow my head for any god, however well-intentioned.  I don’t begrudge them theirs, I merely don’t share the same need or want for communion with a higher being (but for the record, I don’t deny them their insistence that such a Being exists for them).  Whether there is a God or not doesn’t really matter much one way or the other to me here in this temporal life.  I’m still going to live until I die and I’m still never going to know what, if anything, becomes of my soul until I move on– so worrying about whether I’ve pleased a kind and merciful God or if I’ve slighted a cruel and vindictive one seems pointless.  I sense when I have a need to know, it will all be made clear but thus far clarity has eluded me.

I approach my final hours maybe I’ll feel different.  Perhaps I’ll be one of those who, having lived apart from the sacraments for so long, will feel compelled to call out for a priest to comfort me and deliver me back to God during my final breaths.  I suspect not– I even hope not.  That kind of shadow cast across the way I’ve lived my life would certainly stain the confidence with which I’ve maintained my earthly beliefs, but I’ve heard of such things happening to even the most devout non-believers and the most lapsed of the lapsed.  I cautioned my sister to be aware of the phenomenon as my father nears death, slowly wasting away from cancer and emphysema and the spiral of negative side effects these bring on a path to the next world.  It seemed only right we prepare to honor his request if he should have a decades long reversal of faith and suddenly cry out for the gentleness of a Godly touch to comfort him as he approaches his maker’s kingdom.  If he asks for a priest, I want him to know that his God will be there guiding him in.  If as I suspect, he doesn’t feel that need and never makes that utterance, he’ll know the people who have always loved him despite his faults, his weaknesses, and his failures will guide him on toward whatever awaits beyond that last earthly breath we all someday breathe.

When my father was a younger man, a more devout or full of faith or Catholic man I’m not certain, he wore a sterling silver St. Christopher medal around his neck– St. Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. The thought brings back fond memories of my childhood and my father as a young man.  It seems certain he will be leaving this world before much longer but probably not guided openly by the St. Christopher I suspect is tucked away in a case on his dresser somewhere.  His days of paying outward homage to his faith disappeared years ago– maybe his faith as well, I don’t know.  Still, he’ll be protected– just by living saints and different articles of faith.  Lapsed or not, he’ll be guided by a warmth and love from blessings more personal and meaningful than what a priest can give.  He’ll start his journey to the next world comforted in the knowledge that he lived a life in this one as best he could, loved as truly as he was able, did some good along the way, and that people cared for him.  Those closest to him, his family, shared their lives and their love in much the same imperfect manner with him and did so freely.  When he has a need to know anything further, I suspect it will all be made clear for him and I hope he will find comfort there as well.

Today my heart is big and sore
It’s tryin’ to push right through my skin
I won’t see you anymore

I guess that’s finally sinkin’ in 

Patty Griffin – Goodbye (1998)

Outrunning Time (It’s Relative)

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There are concepts and then there are [insert Keanu Reeves voice saying "whoa" here] concepts– for those of us with feeble minds, some are just easier to grasp than others.  Long division and multiplying fractions?  I got that. Hitting the gas coming through a turn and offsetting centrifugal force instead of braking through?  Got it.  Conservation of mass and that all matter is made up of infinitely smaller pieces of matter [we just can't see that small stuff yet]?  OK, got that too but the thought that my whole concept of everything in my universe stretched out infinitely large is probably nothing more than a tiny cell in some other thing’s universe still makes me pause and consider shutting of the computer and turning on an old re-run of Friends to just disengage my brain.  E = mc2 and the theory of relativity?  Maybe not so much on those concepts.

Relativity is the one that seems more approachable– but isn’t.  The notion that things are not absolute when viewed from different relative vantage points offers a certain pseudointellectual comfort somehow but I’m no more comfortable with the Lorentz factor now than I was 35 years ago.  Is a yard really 36 inches– every time? Maybe yes… maybe no [insert Firesign Theater's Rocky Rococo voice from 2:03 of the New Adventures of Nick Danger here].  If I roll a marble 36 inches and it takes three seconds to finish the route while rolling on a flat table you can say the marble travelled 36 inches.  If the table was inside a train going 100 mph and you were sitting with me on the train, you’d probably still say the marble travelled 36 inches.  But if you were on the side of the road along the tracks and saw me as the train passed by, the distance the marble travelled would probably be different–greater than 36 inches and substantially so because you saw it move from one side of your field of vision to another.  50 feet?  100?  More?  Your particular vantage could be measured and recorded but 30 different observers of the same marble roll could also be measured and recorded– and all would be equally accurate while being distinctly different results.  Is one truer than another?  If not, does truth exist.  If so, where does the truth lie and falsehood begin?  If distance is relative, given a vantage point, what about distance’s fraternal twin, time?

Back To The Future

We try and mark distance with time, time with distance.  How far can we travel in one hour?  How fast can we cover the quarter mile?  When the big hand reaches the 6 you may have a cookie.  There is a relationship of some sort but the relationship is fluid and relative.  A second isn’t necessarily a second, an hour not always an hour in absolute measure.  How can that be?  Perhaps in the same way some experiences seem to take no time at all and others drag on seemingly forever– an hour massage often feels like 20 minutes and an hour meeting can feel like a lifetime.  The perception with which you view an event structures our concept of time as the event plays out– even though the minute and second hands click forward seemingly the same as they always do.  Were they the same?

The whole issue of time and relativity intrigues me more from the vantage point of travel and history (insert Einstein’s voice saying “Careful now…”).  Is the universe a closed system or an open system?  If there are bounds, the system is most certainly closed but can’t you make the case that a system infinite in bounds actually behaves as a system closed by an infinite border?  We know sound travels far slower than light but both do travel relative to the observer [or the observer travels relative to light and sound, we can't really be sure, can we?).  If you accept the premise that, within a closed system, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transferred from one form to another then sound dissipates only to some different form.  If we could travel far enough, fast enough, couldn't we outrun the energy emitted as sound from what we think of as our past and re-experience it [in 'relative real time' seems, somehow, silly to say at this point]?  Or could we simply arrive at a point within our universe where our vantage of ‘past events’ is now altered and we can experience them from some new point of view?  Can we outrun time?  If you accept the premise that light travels at the same speed regardless of the speed of its source, then the light which strikes an object– what we interpret as sight– must exist somewhere conceptually, relative to that image, and if we could only travel fast enough, far enough, or reposition ourselves relative to the light that once passed the object or event in our ‘past’ that we could see again what once was seen, though from a new vantage?  Would we be allowed to participate and alter outcomes or would we be limited to merely observing– a sort of historical voyeurism?

The mysteries of the universe are fabulous and complex for feeble minds like mine but that giant energy form that holds my infinite world and everything I can imagine it to be as no more than a molecule among trillions of trillions of trillions of like molecules in that world must certainly understand more than me.  The hope that knowledge is infinite, acquisition of knowledge is Godlike, and the benevolent use of knowledge will somehow make the time pass more comfortably is all that keeps us pressing forward toward our universal destiny.  Or would Einstein say we’re pressing backward and just don’t realize it because time and space are relative?

Time is the essence, time is the season
Time ain’t no reason, got no time to slow
Time everlasting, time to play B sides
Time ain’t on my side, time I’ll never know

It’s An Addiction (Ode To An Aging Star)!

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Ahem.  My name is Chris and I’m addicted to real estate pornography.  I admit it– I like house porn.  New listings, stale listings, listings of places I’ll never afford in places I can only imagine I’d ever be able to live.  Cheesy dialog and flowery descriptions using sentence structures no one in the real world ever uses.  And pictures.  I like pictures.  Listings with 30 pictures showing every closet and nook and claw foot tub and from all the angles.  Wide-angled lens, fish-eyed lens, closely cropped and panoramas.  It doesn’t matter.  I like ‘em all.  I came of age during the 70′s when the classics were being made– old grainy black and white shots that all looked somehow the same on the page– fuzzy mostly and not well-shot but clear enough that you could make out all the good stuff– the really important parts.  Curb shots with no creativity or originality made with a technician’s eye instead of a director’s vision.  Formula shots.  Money shots.  Shots they only use on retro sites nowadays and even then when they’re poking fun at the past.  New listings today really rev up my engine and get me going.  Freshly finished hardwood floors and granite countertops bigger than a king-sized bed make me tremble.  I get weak in the knees when I get a look at a custom made potting shed.  The real kind, not those plastic fakes they install for you from the kit that anyone with too much money can buy for themselves.  Something original and real, with a few natural  imperfections on the surface like they all have but with just the right combination of size and warmth for nurturing tender seedlings when it’s cold out.  My knees begin to buckle when I see a finished garage and I just can’t get enough.  I look and look and even when I say I’m going to stop, I look some more.  I’m not the only one, either.  I used to keep it a secret from my wife but I don’t even bother now.  I just bookmark the good stuff and she finds it.  In fact, she might be worse off than me.  I know she’s got the same sickness– I’ve noticed her trolling Craigslist looking at craftsmans, sunrooms, bigger and better kitchens with real eat-in areas instead of just a countertop and with a separate dining room big enough to hold a huge family table for grandchildren to sit around at the holidays someday.  She can spend most of an entire evening staring at the pictures.  I don’t have that kind of stamina anymore.

The house we’re going to spend a few days at during the New Year’s holiday is porn-worthy.  I know because we’ve stayed there once before and it was exactly that– amazing.  The kind I don’t have enough words for so ‘amazing’ will have to suffice as the chosen superlative.  High on a hill overlooking Lake Tahoe and almost nothing but National Forest between the house’s back deck and the shoreline.  It’s not your typical break from reality place– the one with all the normal stuff in all the normal places except not quite the same shapes and colors and styles as the ones you see every day at your home.  I mean it’s ‘off the charts’ different, a real looker, and the kind of place you only hope to get a shot at once in your life– and when you do, you want to make sure you savor every moment and give it your best because you know it’s way out of your league.  It’s a ‘lightning strikes once’ kind of place, the kind of place where, halfway through, you start to realize the chances of ever coming back are, well, remote at best.  Except lightning just struck again and we’re invited for another magic sleepover!

I hope she’s every bit as fabulous as the first time.  It wasn’t that long ago but she was clearly young and taut back then and had many good years ahead of her before signs of age would start to show.  I hope she stays clean and safe because bad things can happen when you open your doors to anyone that has enough money to come inside.  Our hosts for the holidays have a magazine where she is prominently featured on the outside cover.  I hope that doesn’t start attracting the wrong crowd and that she at least tries to maintain some kind of standards.  I bookmarked a copy of her website just to keep up with any new photos and comments from visitors.  I guess it’s being sentimental, in a way– that whole ‘shared experience’ thing by seeing the things said by others who have spent time with her over the years. I hope she grows old gracefully and settles down some day and I especially hope she doesn’t resort to all that ridiculous cosmetic stuff to make her look younger when she’s not and livelier than she is as she ages.  All that youthful activity, people coming and going and using her in whatever way they want for a wild week of romping around before they just drop her flat and leave will inevitably bring the wear and tear scars of an aged beauty.  I hope she outgrows the lifestyle in time and learns how to be happy in her own skin– the whole Meg Ryan makeover thing just scares me and I want to remember her as she was when we spent that beautiful few days together– not as some sad and lonely caricature of her former beauty!

There’s a beautiful full moon rising
above the mansion on the hill  

Bruce Springsteen – Mansion on the Hill (1982)

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Making Adjustments (Fine Tuning the Machine)

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Election Day 2010 in America is over and the social media is abuzz with chants from supporters of the victors and rants from the losers. The snarky feedback commentary following online articles about election results, mostly rants from losers, spells out the gloom and doom likely ahead of us now that the [ignorant] electorate has [insidiously] spoken their [misguided] minds. The morning after is a time for reflection, not platitudes, so if our candidate was elected, the appropriate response is mostly a knowing silence; but if our chosen one wasn’t chosen but, rather, sent off ignominiously to begin the long ‘walk of shame’ toward 2012, if the proposition we supported was repulsed like a cheesy bar pick-up line, or if our philosophical party lost some of the strength in numbers that helps governance plod forward gently bypassing tedious things like compromise and consensus, we’re likely keeping a close eye on Facebook, writing anonymous invective-laden nasty-grams on Craigslist, and tweeting our 140 character ‘end-of-the-world-and-life-as-we-know-it‘ salvos up to the cloud. By tomorrow we’ll have stopped posting and by the weekend we’ll be back fully-engulfed in the NFL and the NBA (now that that collection of castoffs and misfits and no names called the San Francisco Giants has won the World Series). Whether better days are just around the corner or not, we’ll soon forget the path toward destruction this election and this electorate has beaten into the ground, sending us along on our bi-annual societal death-march. We’re full of vitriol, opinionated and hot today, but we’ll cool quickly– about the time Taco Bell gives away some free chalupas or Macy’s has a One-Day sale on bras and panties or LeBron dunks hard on Kobe we’ll calm down and move on to more important (or at least more immediate) matters. We’re Americans.  Our passions rise and fall faster than a twenty dollar hooker’s at a truck stop after dark.

Our system is one of checks and balances, of perpetual tweaking and tinkering and tuning. The engine of our democracy never purrs for long like the well-oiled machine we thought we were getting when the wax was fresh and the chrome was polished and we gunned the motor and drove it off the lot. We’re in many ways like a British sports car—we look phenomenal all washed up and shiny but after a few short miles in the country we realize most of our time together will be spent lifting a floor jack in the garage, wearing oily dirty coveralls, and wiping mud from between the spokes to keep this bucket of bolts moving and recognizable. We’re a mechanic’s dream– there is nothing about this rig that is maintenance-free here and everything that breaks involves expensive parts and special tools to fix. We need to give our government constant attention and adjustments just to keep the thing running.

The winners and losers every two years are a necessary ingredient to our democracy and we shouldn’t get too excited or too concerned about any one election and its results, no matter how game-changing the outcome appears. Candidates, parties, and election strategists gain valuable experience and exposure when they win but they also gain these when they lose elections. It’s not unusual for issues and personalities to appear on the ballot long before the public is intellectually-prepared and knowledgeable enough to embrace and apply them and sometimes that’s what it takes to move our collective psyche forward. Not every candidate and idea fades away after a defeat at the polls.  We’re a nation of phoenixes.  Significant changes are almost never made quickly and rarely are they an overnight phenomenon; the process of aligning where we stand as a people and where, in fact, we should be standing is a gradual and oft times frustrating one—especially when we can see the desired spot off in the distance but can’t adequately gauge the right path to lead us there. Our collective growth is spawned more by making constant adjustments and minor improvements than from complete overhauls and if we decide we don’t like the color of our democracy, we can always repaint. We don’t have to change our leadership as often as a teenage girl might change her outfits– but we have that right if we choose to use it. That makes our ‘mechanic’s dream’ worth every tune-up, every fouled spark plug, and every tedious valve adjustment. We cuss out loud in the garage while we torque the democracy wrench but we’re singing her an aria with the top down when we get her out on the open road for a drive! We forget easily and the grease under our nails can be washed and our  scraped knuckles heal quickly.

By the way, speaking of forgetting things quickly, did I mention the San Francisco Giants are the World Series Champions for 2010?  By this weekend there won’t be stories about the Giants and their incredible season anywhere but in the San Francisco press.  All the eastern papers and ESPN and Fox Sports will be asking is whether Cliff Lee has signed with the New York Yankees yet? Apparently there’s a five-day period immediately following the end of the World Series so teams can exclusively try to negotiate with their own free agents before the Yankees sweep in and steal them away.  What were those idiots thinking when they made that a rule? Or have you cooled on all things baseball and simply moved on to more important headlines like the Lakers and the Patriots and the Sharks already?

He loved to drive in his Jaguar
So welcome to the Machine.

Pink Floyd – Welcome To The Machine (1975)

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Crayon Foul Lines (Wearing Shades of Gray)

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The Latrine

My daughter and her English fiancé have decided to marry. They’ve picked the date and set it for a year from today, selected a place they enjoy, and are busily making plans for their special day (of course the truth is that she’s making most of the plans– he’s smiling a lot, nodding at appropriate intervals, and likely wondering over and over again what he might have been thinking at the time…). They’ve decided neither of them prefers a chapel or a church ambiance– they want something more ‘shabby chic’ to better reflect their personal style together, and they both insist on a family-style meal rather than a sit-down– avoiding the ballroom rounds with eight or ten freshly-introduced people awkwardly trying to become mildly acquainted while simultaneously trying to decode which water glass can be reached for without risking looks of disdain and which bread plate might have already been claimed by the bride’s childhood babysitter or the groom’s college roommate’s date who actually remembers the etiquette rules for table-sitting with strangers.

Like most wedding parties, there will be food, wine, and song (probably an abundance of each) but also plenty of raised eyebrows– the betrothed have decided to use as their venue a former enlisted men’s barracks and mess hall (complete with a traditional military-style latrine) from a long-retired artillery installation once used to protect the city of San Francisco from enemy shelling by naval vessels armed with long guns outside the Golden Gate. The lack of a ‘comfort station’ suitable for the ladies wasn’t problematic around the turn of the 20th century when the building was commissioned– the architects never considered such a use of space.

Blazing Saddles

A century later, dividing the latrine into ‘his’ and ‘hers’ halves receives, out of polite necessity, slightly greater attention. The current solution involves a ‘your side, my side’ line, a couple of well-hung curtains, and likely a multimedia display projected on the common wall above the row of urinals broadcasting amusing snippets appropriately-themed for military and latrine-oriented enjoyment from American and British television, movies, and popular music (to create a loud but somewhat sound-muffling privacy in an environment that simply never contemplated the need for anything resembling privacy). If someone can explain for me how to position the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles somehow as a ‘military moment’ allowing it to be incorporated into the theme of the bathroom wall screenplay, I’m all ears (thematically seamless or not, it may find its way onto the wall– “For a Good Time, Call Mel Brooks” will make some of the folks laugh and sometimes you just have to go with ‘funny and silly’ and risk ’mildly tasteless’ without getting bogged down in whether it’s too much). A sense of humor is a lot like modern art– easy to categorize as ’I like’ or ‘I don’t like’ generally, almost impossible to explain rationally, and not typically in need of tedious intellectualization. Some folks will see the clip and think it’s crass and over the line– but then most lines are made to be moved.

Unless I’m driving, I’ve always tended to err on the side of one too many rather than one too few.  One too many steaks on the grill when company is coming over, one too many potatoes roasted for tomorrow’s microwave will be faster than baking again, one too many slices of pumpkin pie because I just like pumpkin pie (I question the very validity of ever having ‘too much’ pie).

I Like Pie

The question of when enough is really enough has always been a hard one and like many folks I’ve struggled with pressing right up against and occasionally violating that line.  When does a discussion become a disagreement and when does the disagreement become argument?  Is there a point where guiding and protecting crosses over and becomes simply controlling?  Are the first few teases playful and silly but the last ones callous and mean?  I respect having convictions but what divides having a ‘strong opinion’ and ’browbeating’ others for having their own– can you be so dogmatic that your convictions become disrespectful of others’?  When things are black and white, is there any gray sliver at all resting right where the two opposites touch?  Is there such a thing as too much love and a line there you shouldn’t cross?  Life’s little coloring book isn’t pre-printed and every next page is blank.  Where are the lines we’re taught to try and stay within?

Fear The Beard

My beard has changed color as I’ve aged and there will come a time not too far from now when continuing to wear my whiskers will label me senior at any observable distance.  I’m of the age where the Just For Men commercials have me targeted as the ‘sweet spot’ demographic, but I can’t even begin to imagine buying much less applying the ‘make me look younger’ product (I love that the Giants appear headed toward winning the World Series and that closer Brian Wilson’s beard is mysteriously far too black for his face these last few months but the closest I’ll come to touching up my gray with ink is with the doctored photo on my Facebook profile during the 2010 Series).  As my beard naturally grays with age my temperament has also tended to soften that line between black and white as well.  There was a time when things were absolutely one way or the other with me– you were or you weren’t, you did or you didn’t, you would or you would not, it mattered or it didn’t.  Now things seem to have swaths of gray between them and the line seems to be more a road than a path.  There’s a wider stripe of chalk separating the fair and the foul these days.

When the planning was taking place for our wedding I smiled a lot and nodded at the appropriate intervals and didn’t have strong opinions one way or the other about most of the decisions.  Things mattered or they didn’t– and for the most part, for me, they didn’t. I was marrying the woman I loved and the details of the event and the day weren’t especially important.  Our ceremony was in a lovely small chapel, we hosted a small buffet for family and friends in my bride’s parents’ back yard, and the only time a man and a woman were in the same latrine, I am told, is something my brother and several of my wife’s attractive bridal party friends will need to explain.  Still, I wish I had been more black and white about one thing:  I should have worn a nice gray suit instead of that awful tuxedo I’m reminded of every time I walk past the framed wedding photo in our living room.  The fact that I wore it– and that the proof will hang in our home until well after I’m dead– is testament to the fact that there is no such thing as too much love.

All that other stuff in the book, though, isn’t so black and white.

You’ve got a way to keep me on your side
You give me cause for love that I can’t hide
For you I know I’d even try to turn the tide

Because you’re mine, I walk the line

Straw, Sticks, and Brick (Down the Rabbit Hole)

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When I was in high school I worked as a laborer for a contractor who built nice fancy houses, not-so-nice, not-so-fancy houses, and pretty much anything in between that might require a carpenter’s belt, a pickup truck, and a well-rounded vocabulary for swearing loudly after finish nails bent when hammered into dried oak ["...%#$@ cheap Japanese steel..."]. Our days typically involved arriving at the jobsite around 6am, a cup of coffee and a smoke before rolling out the power cords, a couple of hours working up a good sweat to warrant the 9:30am break for a couple of Pall Malls and a six-pack of Bud, followed by another couple of hours of good, solid effort before heading off to a local bar for ‘lunch’ (typically more Bud and slices from a gigantic cheese block to keep calorie-low patrons from wandering off too quickly into the dining portion of the place). I couldn’t drink in the bar so my refreshment of choice after the morning jobsite break became water—and there’s only so much water you can drink from a bar tap with brick cheese before the prospect of staying on the jobsite and finishing whatever work needed finishing starts to look good. There were plenty of days I drank that much water or more– probably the reason I don’t hydrate well enough for my internist’s liking these days.  There were other days when lunch and dinner collided without a single afternoon nail being driven and there were days when my most important responsibility was driving back to the jobsite to roll up the cords and keep them from growing legs before heading back to the bar to wait for ‘lunch’ to end. We didn’t call what I did those evenings “Designated Driver” back then but that’s what it was; drive the truck, drive the nails, drive the boss home but make sure he’s the one in the driver’s seat for the last mile in case anyone’s in the driveway when the truck pulls in at the house. I didn’t really mind– I was on the clock from the moment I got to the truck in the morning until the moment that truck reappeared in the driveway at the end of the day.

There were custom houses with fancy staircase railings and redwood decks overlooking the blue Pacific, nice tracts of tasteful but ordinary houses the real estate agents would call 70’s chic today built on plowed under lemon and orange groves, and rows upon rows of smaller, cracker boxes that I’m sure today aren’t the well-maintained working-class neighborhoods the developer envisioned but rather more likely became the sprawling suburban ghettos that rolled the traditional project high rise concept over on its side and stretched it out laterally over the cheap acreage of a high desert those same real estate geniuses would come to call the Inland Empire. The babies had boomed and it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor or bobbing somewhere in between and it didn’t matter whether you were headed up or down as the economy turned, you had to lay your head somewhere.

We closed escrow on our first house together just before we married in 1981 and were thrilled to sign for a 13 ½% mortgage that included the builder buy-down— a loan that now seems astronomically high but a solid bargain compared with the 18% note a co-worker signed up for not too long after. By then I had already decided there was not enough money on Earth to get me to live in Southern California again, not enough opportunity, or enough good lovin’ to bring me back down south [so it’s a really good thing the woman I fell for was a solidly-entrenched in Northern California girl].  We made a shallow foundation in a development near the river and started putting down roots. We put shelf liner in the cupboard drawers and boxes of college remnants in the garage and set about building a life together in a house constructed with the same cheap materials and haste that more closely resembled those sprawling projects I used to build in Highland and Laverne than the clear redwood hot tub palaces in Mission Viejo. Eventually the shift from a $350 a month duplex rental to the $825 PITI stopped worrying us and we started nailing decorative oak paneling to the walls, filling the custom-made wine bottle rack I installed under the kitchen cabinets (custom-made by me at my brand new workbench installed in my brand new garage along with my brand new saber saw and brand new 3/8” chuck drill– these and a lot of sandpaper), and pushing back the rear fence to enclose the additional lot of otherwise useless land between our yard and the levee that was the city limit (the best views in the County, except days when they burned the rice straw, were from the top of that levee). We had our children there but the world moved quickly in the 80’s and we soon moved with it. We’ve lived in two different houses since– each time agonizing over the increased commitment to a new mortgage and each time adjusting relatively quickly to a new lifestyle and a new distribution of what we used to think of as ‘spendable’ cash.  Each time we try and make just the right little improvement to what any other family would most certainly have thought was already a perfectly serviceable house.  We were always trying to make it just a little bit nicer.

I used to think there was no Easy Street until I looked it up– they’re everywhere! I imagine the people on Easy Street struggle with bills like everybody else, wish it were easier to make ends meet like most of us do, and think about how their lives would be different if only they had a little more. Everyone has those thoughts—they’re a pleasant fantasy but really just a trip down the rabbit hole—the more you have, the more you think you need and wherever you’re at in life you’ll wonder what it would be like to have just a little bit more. I don’t really dwell on those thoughts any longer; the things I truly need I already have in my life– a loving wife, children I am proud of, and the limitless affection I get from my dogs no matter what mood I’m in.  I’m trying to appreciate and enjoy these rather than chasing after more stuff.  Better to build a small, well-made house of bricks than a large, flimsy palace of sticks or straw. The modern-day forest is a dangerous place, things can change in an instant, and the rabbit hole isn’t well-lit.

The house we own is made from the usual things: studs, siding, nails, and plaster. The home we have built is better-constructed and made from none of these things.  I’m not opposed to a new house in a different community but there’s not enough money on Earth to get me to live somewhere else. Our house is where we sleep but our home is where we live.

If you find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

Don Henley — New York Minute (1989)

Eye Black and Seeds (Wait ‘Til Next Year)

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The Dog Days at AT&T Park

The dog days of August are ending and September baseball is just around the corner promising the excitement of pennant races, final weeks of scoreboard watching, and the possibility of miracle finishes. Just as likely though are the calendar countdowns planning fishing trips, family vacations, and waiting for deer season to open. Fast-tracked rookies will get their first call up to the Major Leagues, minor league veterans deserving of recognition for their seasons of anonymous toil in second and third-tier cities will be added to the rosters of teams that play in ballparks with more than one level for organizations which make certain a segment of their employee list never themselves carry a suitcase.  Grizzled and waning veterans will hope for one last month of heroics that might stave off for one more year the inevitable early retirement brought on by eroded skills and weakness that can no longer be hidden or prolonged by more days off between starts or only late-inning pinch-hit at-bats. Players with ‘the game’ as their only marketable skill-set will re-plow old relationships hoping to land some kind of post-playing days career on someone’s minor league staff or in some front office capacity after their glory days end and those with a wider vision will begin to reprioritize their professional lives away from the dugouts and the grass and the noise of the crowd. How sad does the last singing of the Star Spangled Banner sound when the first one next year will be heard from the stands or the radio and not from the grass between the infield and the dugout? For some, September holds late-season promise but for most it paints only the clearest reminder of blooms which fade and eventually part ways with their rose.

When I was a kid there was the usual lunch line chatter about who made it to Majors, who got into Babe Ruth league and who was still in the Minors but I really wasn’t even a part of the club. I never played Little League ball (we were a large family and extra-curricular activities for me included things like pulling weeds and mowing the lawns and cleaning up after the dogs) so when tryouts for my high school team took place I remember feeling absolutely lost while coaches shouted out their instructions about drills in what were, for them, tried and true diamond lingo every ‘player’ would understand. Not me. My friends and I didn’t learn those phrases in the schoolyard playing pick up games and ‘over-the-line’ and ‘three flies up’ so I clearly made a bad impression trying to play ‘organized’ ball. I could always hit for power and I roped the ball for the high school coaches when I had the chance to swing, but defensively I must have been seen as clueless and a liability because I couldn’t follow directions. It turns out I just didn’t ‘speak the language’ yet and understanding coach-speak was a prerequisite. I was cut with the first wave of sophomores and castoffs and the experience soured me enough I never bothered to try out again. Only later, in college, did I find my stride and figure out the whole ‘language of the game’ thing (as a freshman I snagged the moniker ‘Toy Cannon’ after a meaningful walk off grand slam) and it was about that time I had developed physically and carried the size and strength and enough quickness to be an asset in the field as well as with a bat in my hand that would last my whole ball playing career, such as it was. First fast-pitch and later slow, guys I played against season after season came to understand the wisdom of not running on me when I played the outfield. We won our share of hardware and I led the league once in batting but my legs fell off in my late Forties.  By then, I could stretch a triple into a double as well as any ‘has been’ but I never lost the ability to drive the ball into the gaps. Stepping away for me just happened naturally– as the team aged it just became less and less fun playing with all the kids that started appearing on the roster– kids who could rely on nothing but raw talent and young wheels instead of a head’s up savvy for making plays and a sense for the beauty of the game.

When I stopped playing I missed not heading out for the first spring workout that initial ‘retirement’ season and I missed the jawing with the guys over a beer after the game was over but I quickly replaced the game and its habits with other activities and I developed new routines that made not playing less noticeable. Eventually I didn’t miss playing as much and eventually I stopped thinking about being out there except those occasional trips past the diamond at night while a game was in progress when the ball field lights made it impossible not to notice. There’s a wistful sentimentality that permeates the brain and hits on those pleasure points– not unlike the smoker that reminisces about a good smoke twenty or thirty years after having quit the habit knowing it was bad and would kill him (I haven’t touched a cigarette since the 80′s but there are those occasional moments where the old tapes go off and the brain starts playing a kind of mental Twister around those little nodes of pleasure).  I know guys that moved on from playing to umpire and stay engaged but that never seemed right for me.  I umpired a lot of Little League and high school games once upon a time.  My strike zone was consistent and I kept the game moving– coaches and players both let me know they appreciated how I called a game– but that was more a civic duty than a personal satisfaction and the thought of withstanding that abuse today for a few shekels just to be on the field makes the game and my time playing it seem less worthy to me than I remember it. I haven’t put the umpire’s gear on in years but I haven’t parted with it either– my inside protector, mask and shin guards most recently served as a Halloween costume for my daughter’s British significant other who has adopted baseball and my Giants as if they were always a part of his life story.

My baseball life and my professional life are following much the same trajectory and I find myself wondering if the only teams left are dominated by cocky young talent with speed and attitude but little longevity. Youthful arrogance has a way of tempering into a maturity and wisdom in veterans that has to be appreciated– no team plays well for long without that blend of experience to soften the rough edges of those rookies who see only their rise and never their fall. It may well be that I’ve already reached the apex of my curve but I can still drive the ball with authority and I can still turn it on and leg one out if it’s essential for the ball club. I just need to find the right team– one that needs a solid veteran presence in the clubhouse and occasional power at the plate.

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

Simon and Garfunkel – Hazy Shade of Winter (1966)

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