One mutual friend

I realize that I have a new friend. This is a friend who helps me to find joy in life, who helps me appreciate each moment intensely. A friend who, occasionally, makes me laugh but, more often, makes me just stop and marvel, with insufferable and aching happiness, at the mere fact of being here in this moment.

I've always known about this friend, but we really got closer than ever last year. And, even though we've never gone on a very long trip together, or became super intimate, we have gotten to be on pretty good speaking terms. 

I think about this friend a lot. And even though many people would not want this much proximity, I've realized recently that I am very grateful for our new relationship, and indeed am proud to say that we are close.  Or, close enough to be interesting, while still remaining comfortably distant.

So, on this day of giving and receiving gifts, I would like to say thank you to this friend, for all the things you have taught me, and for all the priceless wonders I have experienced since getting to know you a little bit better.

I look forward to continuing a long relationship with you, as comfortably distant as possible without losing contact. I look forward to getting your updates frequently.  I don't want to be in an exclusive relationship with you yet, but I do want to share what you've given me with everyone I know.

Mostly I hope the gifts that you have given me can be received by everyone, in some way.  On this day of all days, as we huddle close with our friends and family, I look at the sparkling and defiant lights and think of you as we move through the darkness of winter.


 

Bali - IV: The bike ride

Basically, they drove us up to the top of a volcano, put us on mountain bikes, and pushed us off the edge.

Yes, there were roads involved.  Sort of.  But if you cataloged all the dangers that one can encounter when on two non-motorized wheels, and then added five or six of them together at once, and then multiplied by, say, the equivalent of the exchange rate between the Indonesian Rupiah and the US dollar (currently 13,700 to 1), you might have a sense of what this bike ride was like.

I don't even know where to start.  Yes, it was beautiful.  I think.  I mean, there were two or three times when I looked up long enough to see that it was neato to be doing this in such an exotic location. Most of the time, however, I was clutching the grips of the bike tightly, hoping the grabby brakes wouldn't pitch me over the top, and watching the broken and treacherous road get worse, and worse, and worse.


As background:  We had no idea what we were doing.  The birthday boy, whose idea it was, had done this a few years ago when he was here.  He and his friend had asked the nice hotel if they could take a nice little bicycle ride and then the nice hotel gave them nice little beach cruisers and a nice little Balinese tour guide and they went out on nice little paths through the nice little rice paddies for about an hour and it was really lovely and relaxing and fun.

This was not that.

First we drove up to the top of the island.  That was kind of cool.  Up and up and up.  Through beautiful little villages and rice paddies and past temples.  Until we really couldn't go up any further.  At this point they dropped us off at a place where they served us snacks "to make us strong for the ride."  We should have actually paid attention to that.  Or, maybe, instead of obsessing over whether the WiFi worked, we should have asked a couple of questions about what exactly was going to happen on this bike ride.

Instead, we decided to not touch the deep orange items (carrots? very dark mangos?), or the room temperature banana fritters (hot: great, cold: meh).  We did drink the bottled water that they provided, which provided us at least one tick in the "not extremely dumb" column.

There was a moment that was a little disturbing around this point.  This when the birthday boy said "Just so you know... I have no idea what we're getting into here."  At this point he revealed that all he had really done was tell our house manager that we wanted to take a bike ride.  All he knew was that someone was going to pick us up and then we were to ride bikes.  End of research.

Okaaaaay.

When we were done not eating our snacks, not logging into WiFi, and not learning what it is we were about to do, we took a picture of the volcano across the way and then went outside.  A bunch of bikes were lined up.  Mountain bikes.  Which was, you know, fine.  I mean, I'm a trained badass cyclist. I figured this would be a walk in the park for me, right?  What could be so different?

HA HA HA.

Here are the differences between a road bike and a mountain bike: besides the basic configuration, just about everything. Because the whole point is different.  A road bike, with its narrow highly inflated wheels is lean and sleek, engineered to slice through time and space with minimum contact with very smooth, clean pavement.  A mountain bike has wheels that are wide and gnarly.  It is engineered to bludgeon its way through time and space, pound through the mud and gravel, grind up rough dirt paths, and chew up all obstacles in its way. 

Whole different beast.  The point of which was, as far as I could tell, enduring the bumpiest and gnarliest of roads, sliding through gravel, barreling downhill as fast as possible, and living to tell the tale.

The problem was that I didn't really know what my bike was able to chow down on, and I didn't really know how well maintained it was, and I didn't really know how well it did on gravel, or broken pavement, or grass, or dirt, and when we weren't off road dealing with those things... it was Indonesia.  Traffic driving on the left side of the road.  Motorscooters whizzing in and out. Trucks.  Chaos.  Remember all that?

"Um," I asked our guide after we were on the road about 4 1/2 seconds.  "Are we going to be on the road the whole way?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no!" he answered cheerfully.

Suddenly the quality of the roads became very important to me.  The best Indonesian pavement looks a whole lot like clumps of asphalt slapped together and then indiscriminately jack hammered into strange archipelagos of occasional street.  Actually, at some points it looked a lot like no street at all.  We'd be riding down the broken and patched road and it would deteriorate more or less randomly until we were having to wend our way across the rivulets of smoothness, hoping our wheels wouldn't catch in the places where it broke apart and throw us off.

Of course, the better the road was, the more traffic it had.  Bali traffic.  Read my previous description.  Except now I was part of the food chain.  Oh, along with my first born son and one of my dearest friends on the planet.  About twenty minutes in I realized that -- on the remote chance that I didn't die or get crushed or get thrown or, at best, just tumble off the bike and break an arm or two  -- two of my loved ones most certainly would.

It was not relaxing.  What it was, was hot.  Hot and sweaty, but we were flying downhill so fast that it really only sunk in during those precious moments when we stopped to take a picture, or put the chain back on the bike.  I kept begging my fellow riders to remember to hydrate.  I know all too well how big a difference that makes on one's stamina, both mental and physical.  The ride people gave us water, which was fabulous, but at the rate we were sweating we probably needed to just install an IV drip and keep a continuous flow going into our bodies.  As it was... we were sweaty, and hot, and scared to pieces (at least I was) and eventually pretty dehydrated.

We did see some super cool things, I must admit.  At one point our guide took us off both the allegedly paved road and the honestly unpaved dirt road and we rode across a bumpy grassy field.  There was a makeshift stadium set up on our left, something that looked like a rodeo might be held within its perimeter.  And then ahead of us there was a large concrete stadium, very substantial and permanent.

This is where the cock fighting happens.  It's illegal to gamble, but it happens all the time.  The other ring was for ceremonies, which is how they claim legitimacy for the cockfights. It's a ritual blood letting and has nothing to do with sport.  Or so they say.  On the ground were strewn cardboard gambling cards and the trash left behind from a large gathering.  Our guide gave us a long description of how the cocks fight and it was both grisly and interesting.

After about two hours I asked our guide if we were almost done.  "Oh no," he said.  "But almost half way there!"  At this point we realized that this ride was going to go all the way back down to where we had started.  Down the hill that, by car, had taken about an hour to climb up.

And then the climbs began.

The ride was allegedly going to be all downhill, but pretty soon we were going up and down these steep rollers.  At this point I had a kind of neat "aha" moment. For most of the ride, I'd been having gearing problems.  Chain falling off, gears slipping, unable to move between gears on the front crankset.  I wanted desperately to convey to the guide that I actually did have a clue about how bikes work but... since I was was the one having all the mechanical problems, and since I was the one that was chronically 50 yards behind everyone else because I apparently was the only one aware of how ridiculously dangerous the whole endeavor was... I actually didn't have much credibility to draw from.  I mean, I looked like a weenie.  I took the downhills like, well, like a girl... praying the grabby brakes wouldn't flip me over the handlebars, winding me up in an Indonesian hospital.  I was slow, I was nervous, I did not have a happy oblivious smile on my face.

But... then this thing happened.  I figured out my gears.  And I realized that I could really motor up these steep hills once I got the hang of it.

Suddenly... I was kind of flying past my pals.  I was a weenie, for sure, going down... but a rock star on the way up. 

That part was cool.

Then there were the rice paddies.  About 3/4 of the way through this thing, the word comes back that "now our skills are going to be put to the test."  WTF?  I so did not like the sound of that.  But sure enough, we got off the road and went through a gate, then started pedaling down a very narrow dirt path, about 6" wide. On our right were rice fields, on our left was a ditch filled with running water, and the more rice fields. Little sheds housed a cow or two, and it was all, well, very Apocalpyse Now, frankly.  Extremely cool, but I was not happy about the path we were taking, so I almost immediately got off and started to walk.

Which, as it turns out, was the right thing to do.  Periodically, the path was interrupted by big gullies covered over by straw and bamboo.  One wrong move would land you in the ditch.  And... because what happens in the rice paddies stays in the rice paddies... I won't describe the full scenario.  But a couple of our merry band ended up needing some rescuing and, all in all, it was kind of a mess. One of those messes that you know will turn into a great story... as soon as it ends.

Which it did.  It finally ended.  24 kilometers (about 15 miles), over about four hours.  We all survived.  Our cuts and scrapes did not develop hideous tropical infections and need emergency amputations.  The bruises were survivable. The story value was immense. And the beer afterwards was, without a doubt, the best cold beer ever in the history of civilization.

Bali - III

And yet, there is no denying the contradictions. The polarities that are embraced include things that truly do offend my Western sensibilities.  There is a lot of garbage thrown about.  The landscape is littered with unfinished projects, piles of junk strewn every which way, mounds of dirt or concrete or rocks dumped in the middle of the road for travelers to navigate treacherously around.

This is a world with very few regulations.  Traffic and driving is the subject for an entire dissertation. The rules of the road seem to consist of just getting to wherever you're going as quickly as possible. Passing other vehicles is constant, and on the narrow roads we end up spending a high percentage of our time in the path of oncoming traffic.  Multiple passing is frequent; as we are passing a slow moving truck, a scooter will be passing us.  Vehicles doing the same thing are racing towards us simultaneously. At the very last minute, everyone tucks into their correct lanes and we are all fine.  Passing when cresting a hill and having no idea if someone is coming at us is hair-raising.

Then there are the motor scooters.  There are a gazillion of them, and they whiz by in swarms, passing, weaving, and occasionally just riding on the side of oncoming traffic (if there's no room on their proper side).  Motorcycles and scooters are the primary mode of transportation, and all the business of life is conducted while hurtling down the street on these two wheeled vehicles.

Miraculously, it does seem like there is a concept of helmets, but not for children who frequently ride along with their parents... school aged kids, toddlers, and babies.  Roger saw a woman breast feeding yesterday, no lie. Four people to a bike is common, with a toddler in the front, head propped against the handlebars, sometimes sleeping, and another one in the arms of the woman sitting side saddle in back.  And the bikes are used for commerce.  We drove behind the bike of a balloon vendor the other night, bringing his wares back home, surrounded by a bubble of inflatable paraphernalia about six feet wide and seven feet high, a tarp flapping around it, and his own body completely enveloped.  We saw a guy carrying a 12 foot long pipe on one shoulder. We saw suckling pigs in pannier cages. Entire vending stalls are carried on the back of bikes. The degree of danger and resourcefulness is staggering. 

Our driver, Made 2, listened to our stories about traffic tickets, greeting this weird new idea with a mixture of disbelief and amusement. Just no such thing in Bali.  Not even close. If a policeman stops you, it's not because of an infraction. It's because he wants to stop you. And he'll go away if you give him 50,000 rupiah. A policeman will stop a car full of tourists just because he thinks the driver is getting paid well enough to kick back something in turn. It costs money to become a policeman, the equivalent of $25,000 US dollars. That's a lot, even for us, but for someone in an economy with a median annual income of $3500 (in our currency), it's nearly prohibitive. Made 2 just laughed and said that's why they ask for money from everyone, to try to make up for how much it cost to become a policia in the first place.

The construction of our house, which was very beautiful, was completely erratic. Changes of levels everywhere.  Steps of a wildly inconsistent height. Electrical outlets with weird inconsistent logic that we had still not figured out after a week.  There was a three inch drop in our bathroom right in front of the sink. It took us days to train ourselves not to step backwards after brushing our teeth because falling backwards on the hard floor would have been, well, a bad way to end the vacation.

So how do I feel about all this?  Well, it makes me realize how many regulations we have in the United States, for starters. We have a LOT of laws for some things... and not enough for others. While we were gone, we heard about the tragedy in Colorado Springs, and a day or two after we returned, the shooting in San Bernardino occurred.

How to deal with all this?  I have to say that, as much as they restrict us, I am very grateful for most of our regulations.  There is a reason, unfortunately, that earthquake casualties are so high in certain parts of the world. The standard of construction is just higher in the states. And regulations sure come in handy when dealing with things like sanitary food preparation.

But, truthfully, I did not yet seen any sign of an accident in Bali in a week of being driven around a lot, nor did I see much body damage on the cars. Dogs wandered across these whizzing streets of chaos (leash-less of course), and managed to survive.  (At least some of them.)  Our driver said that people just work together in this process of driving.  They don't believe they own the road, or that they have any more rights than anyone else.  He said they are not... and searched for the word... arrogant.  There seems to be an understanding that everyone is doing this together and that it's not in anyone's interest to start owning your piece of the road.

I can see how restrictive and interfering all the regulations are on our daily lives.  It takes a whole machine to create, enforce, and litigate a society with so many regulations. It makes us a world of office worker bees, pushing paper and collecting fees.  It bloats us and is, in many ways and on many levels, oppressive.

In the end, however, I don't think it actually ends up being about regulations vs non regulations at all. If suddenly all road regulations in the US disappeared, I have a hard time believing that it would work as well in the States as it does in Bali. I think we are too attached to our sense of ownership over our own personal driving rights.  We hum King of the Road as we lay on the horn and flip off that asshole who dared to pass into our lane. We are individuals, and our right to get to our very important meeting is far more important than your right to get to yours.

I think it's about a bigger picture. I think that when people are more or less on the same page as a culture, as a cluster of humans living in the same region, with the same goals, then the rules and regs are not as necessary to keep order and sanity on the streets. I am beginning to believe that even the most sophisticated of gun control laws cannot eradicate the hatred and fear that is behind all of the unspeakable violence we have been witnessing.

In Bali, it's absolute chaos. But it kind of works.  Amazingly... unbelievably... it kind of works.  We could learn a lot from that.

More to come.

Bali - II

In my previous entry, I explored how the fact of knowing one's place in society could add to a sense of stability and reduce a certain amount of agitation that we experience in the west. 

I think it's more than that, though.  I think the commingling of the spiritual with the mundane also has a lot to do with the Balinese contentment. I have always seen a large barrier between the spiritual and the religious, and an even larger barrier between the religious and the secular.  Here, I don't believe either of those barriers exist.

There is more to this feeling than just the omnipresence of the shrines and temples and offerings you see everywhere.  Although... it really is remarkable how dense the landscape is with these artifacts. Shrines are stuck into every possible corner, poking up behind the walls of family compounds, huge monuments to the Hindu gods in the center of intersections, giving protection to travelers. Rice fields during harvest have large offerings set up to ask the goddess of rice the permission to take the grain from the ground. Rice fields during planting, have offerings to the same goddess to help make fertile the seeds.

Our driver, Made, makes it clear that the Hindu religion does not worship many gods, but only one god, with many names.  The way he talks makes me think of a well run business, with one brand and identity, but many workers scurrying around taking care of the enterprise.  You go to different departments to get the job done, but the transactions are always with the company as a whole.  It makes sense, actually.

The shrines have umbrellas to keep the gods cool and protected, and many of them are wrapped with black and white plaid cloth.  I also started seeing many huge old trees with their trunks wrapped in cloth.  When we asked Made about this, he said it's because some of the trees are spirit trees and the cloth honors that.

Then there are the offerings.  Little baskets made of banana leaves and palm fronds are filled with rice and flowers and any other things that may be deemed delectable to the gods, arranged with beautiful mosaic symmetry and left everywhere.  On the sand at the beach, in corners, on the intersection monuments, all over the shrines.  Flower petals are left in places that will delight the eye: on the steps of stair ways, aligned along the edges of fountains, on pillows, behind ears.  Beauty is created for beauty's sake.  Shallow vessels of water can be found in front of restaurants and other businesses, with mosaics of flower petals creating beautiful patterns. Even when we had our massages, there was a bowl of sand placed under our massage table face rest, with a pattern of shells and seeds arranged for our pleasure if we opened our eyes during the massage.  For no reason other than beauty.

For no reason other than beauty... and to honor and befriend the gods.  This is amazing to me.  Significant time is spent daily on these offerings, and there is no profit motive in them at all. Making the gods happy is, of course, something that is for self interest, but not at all in the way we usually think of self interest.  Our self interest usually has a dollar sign attached somewhere. But this does not.  This is all about beauty, and dedication to one's own system of religious beliefs.

It spills out everywhere.  There is incense in the air, and the aroma of flowers. There is the sound of the gamelan playing from the temples and from homes, a music so sweet and so poignant that it's like the aural equivalent of the frangipani blossoms that spill over the sides of fountains and rivers.

The air itself is rich with the spirits of the gods, the ancestors, the remnants of the pagan deities that used to inhabit this island. There is a commingling between air and water and earth, between the life of the spirit and the life of the practical world. Even the homes resist hard boundaries, with their open architecture that removes walls and windows and brings the outside in, and the inside out, and removes the distinction between the two.

More soon.

Bali - I

I am sitting by the pool of a villa in Gianyar, Bali.  The Hindu noon time call to prayer is

broadcasting over the village loudspeaker, a gamelan plays somewhere in the valley, and periodically the cicadas screech overhead. Roosters crow and the cow behind the house bawls.  It is in the 80's, both in Fahrenheit degrees and percentile of humidity.

Bali is a rich and complex island. In many ways it has rearranged my realities, from inside and out. There is a profound blurring of boundaries that I usually think are hard and fast rules of ways to live and approach the world.  As always, getting out of one's own cultural bubble provide an immediate and often jarring shift of perspective.  The only way to get a good look at where you are in the world is to move completely away from it and see it in a much bigger frame.

I take so much for granted, as an American. I take for granted that the only true motive in a culture is one that has a profit margin associated with it.  I take for granted that there is a difference between religion and spirituality. I take for granted that a good path to happiness includes the state of being materially comfortable.  I take for granted that I have the ability to make anything I want of myself if I only work hard enough, or meet the right people, or get lucky enough.  I take for granted that I, as a person, have an inate right and, indeed, mandate to be the best individual I can be, and that my goal on this planet is to personally evolve as much as possible -- both materially, and psychologically, and in my relationships with other people.

All of these things seem to be bedrock assumptions for me and the Americans I know. They don't seem crazy, and they don't seem particularly self-limiting.  They just seem to be normal.
They may be normal, for us, but they aren't universal.  So, in terms that are understandably generalized, let me tell you what I've been learning here.

Bali is a happy island.  Our guidebook starts off saying that the Balinese are contented.  They enjoy being Balinese, they don't really see a need to not want to be Balinese, and (the joke goes) when a Balinese reincarnates, they want to come back as a Balinese. Our experience here has indicated that this is pretty on the mark.  The people we have come in contact with and have gotten to know fairly well (we have two drivers that help us out and we talk to them about everything we can think of, given the constraints of our mutual vocabularies) all seem pretty contented with their lives. They laugh when we talk about how stressed out drivers get in LA. They smile a lot. They simply just seem... for lack of any fancier term... pretty happy.

It is an enviable state, and one that immediately starts challenging our assumptions. They do not seem to be incredibly wealthy, they seem to have to work a lot, it is hot and sultry here, the streets and towns are crowded and in a kind of seemingly endless state of repair and disrepair, and basically they don't seem to have a lot of external ways and means to make themselves comfortable.  To me, it seems the American attitude towards living here would be one of continue disgruntled complaint.  It's too hot.  The bathrooms are gross. The traffic is chaotic.  It's a great place to be on vacation, don't get me wrong. It's incredible.  It is screamingly beautiful and achingly serene.  But if you transferred many of these conditions to any given place in the US, I think daily life would be met with a high degree of discontent.

But... these people don't seem to have that. Is it because they are not bombarded 24/7 with advertising and images of things that look like fun to purchase or experience?  Possibly.  But I think there is plenty of western culture and iconography that has percolated over here (an image of Benedict Cumberbatch adorns an ad for a disco in the beach town of Sanur; one of our drivers plays nothing but US pop/rock from circa 1980).  I don't think their happiness is entirely because they are too isolated to know what would truly make them happy.  I think they see those images and they don't affect them the same way they affect us... because I think they don't have that intrinsic need they are constantly trying to fill.

I believe a big key to our differences is in that need.  We have a need we are trying to fill, and I believe we live in a culture that tries to perpetuate that need, rather than satisfy it.  Our news broadcasts and media and politicians inflame our fear and anger, keeping us on edge.  Our response is to pack ourselves full of cheap, fast comfort food, or lose ourselves in an endless orgy of entertaining diversions, or work extra hard to alleviate our constant anxiety about money, and then spend it as soon as it comes in (or  beforehand, more often), all in an effort to fill a need that we are continually being reminded of so we will spend more money and meet the needs of a society whose primary goal is economic expansion.

I'm not sure that that is the primary goal of the Balinese society. The primary goal over here seems much different.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not at all saying that they don't care about material comforts and don't appreciate money and all the truly good things that can come of it.  I am also not saying that their economic needs are real and tangible and they would love to feel financially comfortable (which I'm assuming most of them are not... but I have actually never heard a hint of it in any conversation we've had). 

I totally get that as a whole we a very privileged and affluent culture.  I am deeply and profoundly grateful that my family and friends and I have had the means to take this time off and come to this exquisite part of the world.  And, at the same time, I am noticing that we pass fewer people looking for handouts on the streets of Ubud than we do in Old Town Pasadena on a Saturday night, which is pretty damn shocking.  We are a lucky and privileged people who place a premium on the material world. And yet we don't take care of our own people very well, and we don't seem very happy in general, despite the wealth and comforts we enjoy.

Here on Bali, people are named in accordance with their birth order.  Male or female, there are something like three names for a first born child, something like three names for a second born child, maybe two names for a third born, and a name or two for a fourth born.  After four, they start over again with the first born names. I find this fascinating, mainly because it actually works.  We have two drivers, and they are both named Made ("Mah-day") because they are both second born children. They say it doesn't get confusing because they also use their family surnames.  It's like a taxonomy: your name tells your story of where you are in which family.  It makes perfect sense.

And there is a caste system. Everyone knows where they are in their society. The number of roofs on your shrines lets everyone know who you are and where you rank in society. And although I haven't yet checked it out with Made 1 (our first driver who has given us the most insight into Balinese life), my guess is that there isn't a sense of trying to get to the next caste level.  As opposed to our lives where we labor furiously trying to better our position in life and "level up" to the next social stata, my sense is that people just know their caste and work within it.

Families live in family compounds.  These consist of multiple buildings surrounded by walls. There is an area for shrines, a central courtyard for meetings and games, sleeping pavilions, procreating pavilions, ceremonial pavilions, kitchens, pig styes, etc.  My guess is that families kind of are born and grow up and die in these compounds, little communities that have deep roots and are basically unchanging in their patterns over time.

All of this is, of course, very different from our lives in the US.  We split off from our families and live far away, or create our own chosen families with our friends, or stay isolated in our cars and single apartments. Change is a constant for us, because we think of ourselves first as foremost as individuals who are individually able (and mandated) to change the trajectory of our lives. We change our names, we change our addresses, we adorn our cars with bumper stickers proclaiming our specialness.  We have festishized the taking of our own self portraits, and we reinvent ourselves many times throughout our lives. 

This feels so normal to us.  But I wonder if it's not part of this underlying issue of our low level perpetual discontent.  What would life be like if we didn't have the ability to better our position?  Or, more to the point, what would life be like if bettering our position was not part of a fundamental value system?  What if that just didn't.... matter?

You would be a person born into a family that is of a certain part of society. You would not be able to change either of those things. To us, that sounds kind of like an imprisonment.  But couldn't it be kind of freeing, if seen with a different filter?

More to come.

Don't Want to Live Like a Refugee

[Note: I have been posting logs on my AIDS ride site (http://www.tofighthiv.org/site/TR/Events/AIDSLifeCycleCenter?px=3179523&pg=personal&fr_id=1880) and thought this one seemed to fit on this blog as well.  So... here you go.]

Don't Want to Live Like a Refugee.  Obviously one of my favorite songs... and it came up while taking a spin class the other night. Brought up a lot of interesting thoughts... and helped me understand a bit more what's going on with me and the bicycling these days.

When I was growing up, I would ride my bike in the late summer evenings around my house. I would just go around and around the same blocks, or along the same route, and it was wonderful contemplative time. I found such peace and solace during those moments, just working things out in my head and heart. When I got my driver's license I would do the same thing: drive and drive and drive (this was in a big old Chevy when gas was so cheap we didn't even think about driving aimlessly around town for hours.)

I move to work things out in my head. I'm not a sitter or a recliner. I don't hole up and cogitate. I MOVE. And if I can move while I think things through, then it seems to work better and faster than if it just settles deep inside and digs in for the winter.

I think I'm doing the same thing now. I think I'm actually now just starting to work through the ramifications of what happened to me last year. I had cancer. It was actually something that could have killed me young. If we hadn't caught it when we did, it could have been really bad. That takes some working through.

I am working things out in motion, so I can finally come to rest, I think. I don't actually want to live like a refugee. I want to settle down, find peace, be able to breathe deeply and long. It is ironic that the way I approach finding stillness is by movement, but that's the way I seem to work things out. And I think my intense desire to do this HUGE ride matches the magnitude of what I need to be working out within myself.

Where am I? What is my purpose here? What just happened? How do I deal with the fact that -- no matter what -- it will happen again, someday, sometime, and for real?

Every pedal seems to be a catharsis of these huge heavy questions. I like it that the hills are physical. I like it that the sweat is real. I like being so brought into the present moment by my muscles and my need for water that I really really can't think of anything else. THAT is respite. THAT is peace. To be able to focus on one large task, and let the rest of life be the refugee for awhile.

Hills

This last weekend I took a very challenging bike ride, down near San Diego. We were staying at the beach house of some close friends for the weekend and I brought all my gear with me, hoping to find a few hours to indulge in my latest obsession.

Fate saw fit to place two wonderful women cyclists literally in my path as I pulled out of the condo driveway.  We ended up chatting and they took me under their collective wing, saying I was welcome to join them on a rather easy fun ride.  Not a ride for training.  Not a huge ride for distances.  Just a fun, 30 mile or so ride.  With a few hills.

As Bilbo Baggins used to say... “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

So I said sure.  It was a beautiful morning, the sun out and sparkling on the vast expanse of the Pacific as it rolled out towards forever.  The kelp beds painted patches of deep orange on the tourquoise waters, the surfers dotted the shore watching the rise and fall of the incoming swells, the open windows of the bars on the main street let out smells of bacon, and last night's beer, and sounds of Jimmy Buffet and people laughing.

And yes, there were some hills.  Pretty manageable ones at first.  Little ups and downs.  But as we got out of the main parts of the necklace of towns, the hills started getting longer.  Going down -- ocean on the right, lagoons and rolling hills and the snake of I-5 on the left -- was a truly glorious thing.  Wings could not have made me feel any more free.  But going up....?  Going up was another thing altogether.

I do not like hills.  I have a nice bike, but all the gearing in the world does not make the hills feel flat.  All the gearing in the world just makes me feel like I'm never going to be strong enough to really do any significant riding.

I used to have this thing where I would save some gears, like I'd hide some extra cash in the glove compartment of the car.  I'm a big saver, a big fan of rainy day stashes.  And I found myself saving my lower gears for a rainy day.

When I started riding, I always stayed on my big front gear.  I made it a point of honor to never shift to the small inner gear.  Which was fine... because I was riding up and down the Santa Monica beach path which is just about as flat a ride as you can get.

Then I started training and getting more into elevations.  Elevations are a fact of life if you're going to cycle anywhere meaningful, so I started trying some out.  Well, in short order, I found the beauty of the lower gears.  Lower gears are great!  But... I always left the lowest ones unused... like, if I didn't use that last gear, I'd be really badass and bitchen, but if I caved in I was just another middle aged bag trying to get in shape.

But, ya know? ...  I got over that pretty quickly, too, as soon as I started tackling some bigger climbs.  Man, I started shifting down to that lowest gear like it was my best friend at a high school reunion.  Hello old pal!!  Here we are!  My legs spun, my heart raced, my thighs burned as I checked periodically to see if I was really in my lowest gear... and of course I was.  And that's about where I found myself on Saturday, going up the Torrey Pines grade... all two miles and 400 feet elevation of it, in the heat, in the lowest gear possible, with real honest to god cyclists passing me by while I pedaled... and stopped.  And pedaled... and stopped.  And pedaled... and stopped.  Many times.

My newfound companions were patiently waiting for me as I got to the top of that hill.  Some very smart entrepreneur had put a permanent table out with water and bananas and business cards for people who successfully made it to the top.  And I rested and caught my breath and doused myself with water from my bottle, and then we carried on.

Hills.  They bring out everything.  The fear of public humiliation always gets me propelled up a slope for a little while... almost trumping mental and physical fatigue.  But then after awhile, that just kind of goes away.  I usually have to stop at least once on a big slope, and I feel like a totally wussy pants... but... really, I don't give a fuck at that point.  I just can't go another foot... and so I stop, and wait until I can think again... and then I go a bit further... and then I stop... and so it goes.  Up the hill.  Bit by bit.

My friend Scott send me some hill climbing advice yesterday.  You have to sit up tall, so you can breathe.  You should try to concentrate on the upstroke of the pedal, rather than the down.  It sounds backwards, but you fatigue much less quickly if you use the opposite set of muscles.  Don't burn yourself out too quickly.  And, most importantly... enjoy the ride.  Even if it's painful, even if you feel stupid, even if you don't think you can go on.  Enjoy the ride.  You're going slowly, so look around.  You can't get into too much trouble going uphill at 3 mph, so take a moment and enjoy the scenery.  All too soon you'll be back to your stupid day job, or your disgruntled spouse, or your list of errands, or your pile of laundry.  As hard as this hill is... this is the best part of your day. So, enjoy it.  Enjoy even the pain of it.

There are big hills and there are baby hills.  There are hills you can get a running start on and sail up.  And there are hills that look so easy, so benign, and they just crush your spirit.

Last year, I went up a big hill.  Cancer is up there with the Himalayas, right?  It's big, it's scary, it's life changing.  And it brings out everyone's best, or so it was for me (and for which I am intensely grateful).  I had so much support, was surrounded by so many good vibes, the tables of water and bananas were available to me at every turn.  Not to say that it was easy.  And not to say that I didn't, ultimately, have to ride it up all by myself... with many sinuously evil dark nights and much teeth clenching fear and some really really bad moments.  But it was The Hill, and it was my turn to take it on, and I didn't have a choice in the matter, really.

And yet the smaller hills are just as challenging, in many ways.  I now find that I have to take on the smaller hills all by myself, without the bananas and water.  People pass me by and actually really DO think I'm a pussy for standing there, gasping for breath.  The smaller hills get me because they are normal.  The smaller hills get me because there is no escaping them if I want to get anywhere even a little bit interesting.  The smaller hills get me because everyone makes them look so easy.  The smaller hills get me because sometimes I am just so fucking tired. 

The same strategies apply for the small hills as the big, I think.  It's all about sitting up and looking the world in the eye.  Breathing fully. Approaching things using a different set of muscles if the traditional approach is burned out.

Even if that little baby hill is just stupid, or boring, or annoying.  Even when I am angry, or lonely, or feeling stuck.  It's where the Road is leading right now.  So I need to be swept off.  Be taken away.  Give myself over to the glorious flying downhills, as well as the tedious soul crushing climbs.

One year

My surgery was one year ago this morning. The last 365 days have been full of fear and wonder, discomfort and joy. I have been transformed, both inside and out. If the self of that day met the self of today, we would not recognize each other.

That's not entirely true. Some things remain the same. I am still driven to do too much. I am still, I think, basically me.  But sometimes I wonder. I have a new impatience, a new bite to my thoughts. My measure of everything is whether it will waste my time or not. Time is everything to me these days. I mark my days between mammograms and thyroid tests as the sweet spots in which life must be lived to the fullest. I don't know when the party will end, but -- for a long while at least -- I suspect I will remember the way that a single doctor's visit turned everything upside down. Point to point, mammogram to mammogram, I now live, six months at a time.

What wastes my time varies. Certainly I'm spending huge chunks of it with the opera company these days. Unpaid, as usual, and on projects that I am firmly convinced will bear fruit but, of course, are not guaranteed. Still, I'm full bore on these things. Working on grants, writing a new show. I am working 14 hours a day these days, either at the day job or at home, writing, writing, writing. It's a good thing that's what I do, I think, as I tackle whatever the next project is. This would sure be a drag if I hated to write.

Weeknights for the rest of the month are grant nights. Weekends are for the show. Last weekend I holed up in an Embassy Suites in El Segundo and did nothing but breathe, eat, and write Gilbert and Sullivan. This weekend I may do it again. I take my breaks at work scanning Expedia and weighing the costs and benefits of pure solitude. The Embassy Suites tour... where for less than $200, I can buy myself quiet, a desktop, and a bowl of rather gluey oatmeal. How much am I willing to spend for the luxury to think nothing but my own thoughts for 24 hours? A lot, as it turns out.

I have not yet hit my stride. I have an intense amount of inner energy, which is contained in a still somewhat fragile exterior. By this I mean I'm not Ironman on the outside, even though I feel like him on the inside. The fragility is rapidly falling away (in all areas except work where I fatigue rapidly and often). Outside of the office I am riding my bike more and more miles, with increasing elevations, and feeling stronger daily. Yesterday I brought home my first set of cleated shoes, and am both excited and dismayed at the prospect of learning (basically) how to re-learn to ride my bike. I spent a half hour by the washing machine, propped up, just clipping in and out, fifty times each side, hoping to build up the muscle memory so I don't topple over the second I get on the road.

So yes, the fragility is falling away, at least in terms of physical stamina. But I do not suffer fools gladly these days. Irritation factors are high. (I asked my oncologist: "Is it the tamoxifen, or is everyone in the world just basically really annoying?") Give me something meaningful to do, or talk about, or watch, or enjoy... and I'm fine. But don't waste my time. I have too many things I want to do, whether it's just sleep or ride the bike, or continue with the myriad projects. I don't have time to kill these days. I want to be out there breathing the air, stretching my body, engaging my brain with creative and productive thoughts.

Quite a year. Transformative. Being back in the trenches is both exhilarating and frustrating. I deeply want and need six more hours to each day. I deeply want and need my brain to be able to relax into the new groove enough to enable me to find the pause button a bit more frequently. Biking is the thing that keeps me settled down, the anxiety at bay. It is a form of active meditation that forces focus on the present moment. When I'm done with a ride I'm in my body and mind and soul again fully. Ready to tackle the projects I've set out for myself once again.

To the Kathy of 4/14/14, I send my greetings and my best wishes. I am glad we made it through. I would not want to be you again, for anything. But it was a good year in so many ways, laced through with such grace and laughter and compassion and love. I am deeply and tearfully grateful to be on this side of that year... and at the same time I would not trade it for anything.

Beyond Redondo

In the mid-eighties I did a lot of bike riding. I was in great shape, loved the exercise, and it made me oh so happy.

That was awhile ago. But I'm getting my juice back. I'm at the same weight I was back then, I'm gradually building up my miles and endurance, and it still makes me oh so very happy.

One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. If you could vaporize the yahoos with their selfies and their three abreast entitlement issues, it would be the best thing ever, anywhere. (And speaking of entitlement issues. Like, why does being a cute young female absolutely grant you total dispensation to ride, slowly, down the middle of the bike lane, sometimes veering over into oncoming cyclists, sometimes veering back in front of approaching cyclists, always looking so terribly perfect and expressionless? With your little hat and your postage stamp little shorts and your hair blowing in the wind just so. It's always the sweet young things, sometimes riding with some dumb young hunk... and... they just ride in the middle of the road. Like it's their right. Their god damn right.)

Where were we? Oh, vaporizing. Did I mention there are a lot more stupid people these days than there were thirty years ago? For starters, there were no smart phones that you could use to capture yourself riding along the bike path with (while riding, of course... I want to make it absolutely clear that the big deal out there these days is riding, sometimes with all of your friends, through the middle of Venice, with the breakdancers on one side and the body builders on the other, and the smell of pot in the air, three people abreast on both sides of the path, sand under the wheels, Asian jersey clad bombers whipsawing through the crowd at 17 MPH, while you hold up your phone so you can take a picture of you and everyone else right before everyone collapses in a pile of gears and bike chains and water bottles and iPhones right there on Muscle Beach. Seriously people?)

Let's try this again.

One of the greatest things about LA is the Santa Monica bike path. Going south, surfers on the right, dotting the waves like dolphins. The smoke stacks on the left, tall and eerie and wonderful. Planes from LAX casting rippling shadows over parked cars and sand berms as they head out to see the world, probably drenching us all in exhaust particulates, but who cares because the beach weaves a magical timeless spell over all who visit, harkening back to when we were kids and you could immerse yourself in an endless afternoon of bliss with just a plastic bucket and a shovel. The din of voices and laughter and crashing surf, the tang of salt in the breeze, the radiating heat of the sand... who could possibly ever feel old at the beach?

Riding through the beach scene, dodging sunbathers and strollers, zipping past piers and through parking structures, keeping pace with the surfers catching their long breaks... it's pretty much perfect. And today I found out something that made it even more perfect than I remembered it.

The top of the path is north of Santa Monica. A usual used to go from Santa Monica just across from the California Incline, down through the Venice boardwalk, up Washington to the Marina, through the parking lots of the Marina and then up the spine of the breakwater. You can stop and rest on the bridge that spans Ballona Creek just sound of the entry point to the Marina, and smell the guano on the rocks, released by the sun's heat, an intensely specific odor to a very unique spot in the world. 

In the old days I would turn around there most of the time, and make it a 15 mile loop. Occasionally, though, I would keep going and go all the way down to the terminus of the bike path at Redondo Beach. Dockweiller State Beach, Manhanttan Beach, Hermosa, and then Redondo. At Redondo I'd turn around at the parking lot and then slog back up north, into the afternoon headwind, watching the drum circles form in the park by Santa Monica as the sun started to set.

Today I went back to Redondo, and discovered the bike path had been extended way past the parking lot, at least a mile past where I used to turn around. It opened up in front of me like a delightful new portal, beckoning me to vistas never seen before.

This blog came to me then, and it really is a very simple point I'm trying to make. Things change. Things always change. But sometimes you can visit your past and make it your present once again. And sometimes when you revisit something that you did many years ago, the addition of time and experience makes it so much more sweeter, or so much more special, or so so much more precious.

All things change. Even in the timelessness of the beach, technology has brought great changes such as iPhones and selfies and pileups of very expensive bicycles. But sometimes things change for the better, too. Sometimes you find things you never found before. And sometimes the thing you've remembered has stayed exactly the same but you have changed, and the world is a whole new place as a result.

On Politics

Politics.

It's not something that we want to talk about with everyone.

As a matter of fact, it's usually something we only talk about with people we are convinced will agree with us.

For me, there have only been a very few people from the opposing camp that I've been able to enjoyably talk politics with.  And I had the pleasure of reconnecting briefly with one of those people last night.

I attended a wedding of two former co-workers from a job I left about seven years ago. I was looking forward to seeing everyone after such a long time, and our conversations were fairly predictable:

"What's new?"

"Kids grown/new job/cancer/short hair. What's new with you?"

"Kids born/same job/boy that sucks/hair rocks."

But there was one co-worker with whom the conversation took a very predictably unpredictable turn. This is the guy I always used to talk politics with. We were, and always will be, totally on different sides of the spectrum. We would shake our heads with despair verging on total frustration that an otherwise respectable and rational human being could have such whacked out ideas. And we always parted friends.

Friends who were, perhaps, a bit more enlightened than when we started.

I was pondering this as I rode my bike today and realized that I really don't talk politics with people I know I will disagree with that much. Or. Ever. I frankly don't know that many Republicans. I mean, I don't get them at all. But then, as I rode, I realized that I don't actually agree wholeheartedly with all the Democrat agendas either.  I've known for a long time that I'm socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I don't want the government telling me how to run my sex life or how to spend my money. Because of this, I don't really belong in either camp.

Still, for all their protestations that they want to keep government out of our lives, the Republicans seem to want to legislate a whole lot of social issues. And for all their protestations that they want to keep government spending down, the Republicans seem to want to spend a lot on wars that we really shouldn't be in, for a lot longer than we shouldn't be in them.

For policy issues, therefore, I tend towards the liberal. But mainly, it's not about policy... at least not when I really think about it honestly.  It's really about who I like, who my friends are, and who feels like my tribe. And my tribe is filled with women, and gay people, and African-Americans, and a lot of other groups who tend to be better taken care of by Democratic policies and who are, in fact, Democrats themselves.

But... then I meet someone whom I honestly like, with whom I can have a serious heart to heart conversation about many things. And that person is as perplexed with the way I see the world as I am with his vision. And when we talk about things, it turns out that we agree on a whole lot of the same fundamental principals, even if where we take the logic differs radically.

For example, I think we both believe that there are core values that need to be held in far more esteem than we are currently seeing in the political landscape.  Values such as respect. And integrity. And honesty.

I think we both are heartsick at the direction the country is taking.  I went into his office the day after the 2004 election and asked him, begged him, pleaded with him to tell me what the country was thinking after re-electing George W Bush. And he is having the same thoughts about the current president. I don't agree with his concerns, of course, but I can sure understand being baffled by beliefs obviously held by a great many people who don't agree with me.

Just the ability to talk with respect to people on the other side seems to be something that is shockingly impossible these days. We don't commingle with "them." We sit in our clusters and shake our heads together, clucking about how terrible "they" are, but we never ever talk to each other.

I think we are terrified at what would happen if we did. I fear that our anger is so entrenched, our cynicism so deep, and our bitterness so corrosive, that we just can't even open our mouths to converse with kindness and respect any more.  Maybe we never could, but right now it feels impossible.

What would happen if we were somehow suddenly forced to talk to people on the other side of the aisle, and that we were able to do so with a sincere interest in what they had to say and where they were truly coming from? We would not have to agree. We would not have to sing Kumbaya. We would not have to do anything other than just listen with an open heart, and speak with an equally open heart. It seems impossible. But what strange and wonderful things could come of it.

I know that's a pipe dream, but I was deeply grateful for that conversation last night. No, I am not going to wake up suddenly a conservative Republican. But I did wake up a much more thoughtful liberal Democrat. One who pondered all day the possibility that we all may be much more similar, when you get right down to it, than our outward differences would indicate.

The Challenge to be Happy

It hit me today as I stood in the pouring rain by a rushing waterfall.  It was a thought that I was thinking for either the first or thousandth time, but was really thinking it today with an impact that sent my heart racing: I nearly died.  I nearly died.  I had something inside of me that nearly killed me.  And then I went through a whole bunch of shit to try to make it not kill me.  But the speeding locomotive, the leering specter, the grim reaper's scythe... swooshed by, a hair's breadth away from me.

And, this time, it missed. 

And, one time, some time... for sure... it won't.

I was walking in the rain to my morning muffin at Rosie's.  I was walking with an umbrella and no one was around to tell me it was a stupid idea to walk in a downpour rather than drive.  No one was around to make me bundle up.  No one was around to talk to me and distract me from the absolutely glorious feeling of walking in some actual weather, next to a river, in a place that is distant and yet familiar.  No one was there to buffer me from this thought, that came to me as I stood by this waterfall.

And I realized that the challenge for me going forward is not to just keep avoiding that scythe.  It's to make every moment count.  To allow myself moments of thinking these thoughts.  To change the way I look at things, so that being ... for lack of a better term... happy is imperative.  It's doctor's orders.  It's the way it's gotta be.

So, like, what is happiness? I don't know the answer to this, precisely.  I don't think it's cheerfulness.  Or chipperness.  Or optimism.  It's not running around laughing and having fun all the time.  I think it's just feeling a feeling that makes this journey worthwhile.  It's paying attention and feeling like you're really part of the story.  It's like not killing precious time, no matter what you're doing.

Happiness, to me, is defined like this: On that day the grim reaper's scythe does not miss, how am I going to look back and understand the journey I am about to complete?  Will I have regrets or will I be satisfied overall with how I spent my currency of ... well... currency?  Was I there?  Did I pay attention?  Or did I space it out, try to escape or sidestep the icky parts, lose myself in things that I felt I should have been doing, rather than what would have made me truly happy?

I don't think I'm suggesting that happiness can only be found by going off to the Bahamas and maxing out my cards in an endless quest for physical luxury. I think happiness is not about physical indulgence, although for some it may be.  So I'm looking at myself carefully, to figure out what gives me that feeling of being really a part of my life.  And, because I'm out of town and have the ability to do whatever I want for a few days, I'm looking at how I'm spending my time up here.  And thinking about what makes me feel good, alive, and like I'm paying attention in the right way.

So let's talk about the shoulds vs the wants.  Yesterday, I had a whole day to my absolute self.  Total solitude for about 12 hours.  I had perfect dispensation to do whatever I wanted with it.  Sleeping, watching movies, reading, just sitting and watching the fire.  Perfect and total dispensation.  So how did I spend it?  Well, for about half of it, I fucked around with my new phone and tried to wrap my head around iTunes and getting my music set up.  For the rest of it I sat, absolutely riveted with attention, putting the opera company accounting information into QuickBooks.

Now... let's look at those two activities.  One looks, to the outside world, meaningless and indulgent, and the other looks, to the outside world, like work.  One would be something permissible (maybe) on vacation (if you were 20 years old), and the other one wouldn't.  You could also argue, that one would look like a total waste of time, and the other would be termed "productive."  But ...I'm going to disagree with those categorizations.

First.  As I was fucking around with iTunes, I was thinking how I never have figured out how to manage my music because I feel like it's somewhat unseemly for someone so... old???... burdened with responsibilities?... busy?... to fuck around with music.  Fucking around with music is something for kids to do.

But why?  Why is music fuckaroundable with for kids, but not fuckaroundable with for me?  Do I not get to enjoy music?  Do I not get to enjoy the beauty of a good (or even functional) playlist?  What is it about their time that gives them dispensation to fuck around with iTunes, while my time is meant to be spent on important stuff, like working at a job to pay the mortgage and the cable bill so they have room and space to fuck around with iTunes?

What am I telling me about myself when I don't take that time to fuck around with iTunes, if I'd really enjoy a good (or even functional) playlist while I'm driving or on my bike?  Am I telling myself that my time is best spent servicing the responsibilities of life?  You bet your ass that's the message.  I exist to row the boat.  I exist to crank the butter churn.  I am the mother and the wife and the worker bee, and I have no business fucking around with iTunes just because it'd be pleasurable to me to have my music somewhat sorted out.

Hate that message!  I HATE it!  (For the records, I also kind of sort of really hate iTunes because... really people... it should not take me four hours to just get music on my phone, wading through hundreds of duplicate songs and trying to figure out what is going to happen when I press the Sync button.)  I should have just as much right to have music on my phone as my kids do.  So.. fuck it.  I spent half of my day fucking around with iTunes.

So... is that a waste of time or not?  I don't know.  It was annoying as hell, but it was also kind of fun.  And now I have a few good (or even functional) playlists on my phone, which I'm really enjoying the shit out of.

The rest of the day I spent putting transactions into QuickBooks.  This, again, is probably something that someone would give me shit for because it looked a lot like work.  And non-paying work for a non-profit that I seem to have spent my life thanklessly supporting, to boot.  But no one was around to give me shit, so I did it anyway.  Now... what's the message there? Well, apparently, I like to work.  And I like to spend my time on a thankless non-profit.  Apparently I wanted to do whatever it was I was doing, because I did it with absolute happiness for hours.  I must, on some level, enjoy running the opera company.  I must enjoy working with figures.  I know I love making order out of chaos.  I must enjoy this so much that I will spend my vacation doing it, rather than watching a movie or taking a nap.  So be it: I enjoyed it immensely, and spent hours in front of the fire putting numbers in little rows.

So, is that happiness?  Well, it kind of must be.  And writing is happiness.  And walking in the rain is happiness.  And building a fire and walking to Rosie's.  And I have happiness in my job, when I have the ability to actually do it.  And I have happiness taking care of the people I love.  I think all of it can be happiness when approached with a certain mindset.  Even the stupid shit that's unavoidable: I think that can lead to a certain kind of happiness if done in a way that is wholehearted and strives to find meaning.

The challenge for me going forward is not how to stay alive, so much as how to make staying alive meaningful.  A meaningful, happy life, is going to produce a body that is more in homeostatis, that can fight off threats more effectively, that will allow me to be here longer.  Being happy along this journey is no longer something that will come, by accident, when outside forces converge to jar me out of my rut.  Being happy... in this sense of being present, and feeling like there is meaning as the sands of time run through the hour glass... is no longer optional.

Which means I no longer can see taking care of myself as an indulgence.  It is imperative to keep my qi moving, inside and out.  Internally, by writing, doing yoga, engaging in a daily sitting practice, and infusing my thoughts with compassion for myself and all the other in-process human beings struggling on their own journey's path.  Externally, I need to move.  I need to interact with the real three-dimensional world by walking and biking, and sailing, and touching nature from time to time.  These are things that keep me healthy.  These are the new imperatives, trumping the litany of simply churning the butter and pulling the oars.  The days of delaying my soul's gratification are over. 

I believe there is time enough on this journey to take care of these things as well as the daily responsibilities of life.  I believe that, if I am able to pay attention and live in balance, that there is time enough to get the shoulds done even when I get the wants done first.  I think that putting energy into things that my inner compass is yearning for will beget more energy for things that might not be as gratifying.  People do need me.  I am, and always will be required to do things that are on other people's schedules, or at other people's request.  But that's OK.  I think that when I'm feeding the soul then the whole system feels better, and that produces the energy and desire to do the rest.

The challenge is to be happy.  To spend the time I have with a sense of purpose and an attitude of paying attention.  That creates joy.  Joy promotes health.  Health enables me to stick around longer.

And if I stick around long enough, maybe someday I'll figure out iTunes.

Being Made out of Time

I am up in Oregon, staying with an old friend of mine from high school.  He's a high powered kind of guy in his professional life, but he's also a down home simple guy at heart.  We used to travel together a lot in college and have been in each others' lives so long that we barely need to talk anymore.  We have similar rhythms and outlooks, and it's always been very easy to fall into a groove.  This vacation has been no different.

One of my friend's favorite phrases (always said with deep sarcasm) is "Do I look like I'm made out of time?!?!"  And we always laugh because life is always too busy and there is always too much on the plate.

But this week up in Oregon, has actually made me really think about time in a whole new way.  In this very peaceful atmosphere, in a house that is not my own, with a family member who is not (really) a family member... there really are very few responsibilities or things to do.  And by very few I mean NONE. 

There is nothing to do up here.

Like, really.  Nothing.

There is no TV.

There are screens bigger than a laptop.

There is one night time restaurant in town (a pizza parlor).  There is one morning restaurant in town (a cafe with killer muffins and wifi). There is one pharmacy, stocked with things that people who have nothing to do but kill time might want to buy (chiefly board games, jigsaw puzzles, and an array of pharmacy stuff). There is one gas station.  There is a Circle K.  I can walk from one end of town to the other, leisurely, in fifteen minutes.  That's it.

It's really bare bones.  And life gets very simple when there aren't a ton of options.

We keep the fire going.

We figure out what to eat for meals.

We read.

We check our email and keep in some kind of touch.  But that's kind of more joyful because it's not squeezed in between a bunch of other distractions.  It kind of feels good to do something productive, because that something productive has a margin of a lot of empty, relaxed space around it.

It's the difference between having an infinite stack of cash and being able to spend as much, or as little, of it, whenever you want.... and being completely overwhelmed by credit card debt and scrambling the pay the minimum all the time.  With the whole pile of cash, the options are all about doing what you want to do with it, while with the credit card scenario the options are all about doing what you need to do with it.

And here's what's interesting.  Besides just feeling a whole lot happier, I'm still being productive.  The time stretches out to accommodate the various activities... and the more time I spend just doing things that are completely non-productive, the more time it feels like I have time to choose to do something that would otherwise be called work.

I know this is an unnatural scenario.  This is not reality and probably will never be reality.  But.  It's interesting.

For example.  When I got here I cleared my entire mental plate of all To Do's.  I only needed to do things that were healthy and pleasing to me.  At first I figured I'd just sleep all day.  But, in actuality, I slept about 10 hours the first night, and 9 hours the second night, and felt good all day afterwards.  So obviously, in reality, I do not need to sleep all the time.

I did want to keep my body moving.  So I started walking to the cafe in the morning.  ("Morning" is loosely described as that part of the day after waking up and before nightfall.  But generally it happens before noon.)  I have no agenda in getting there, other than desire for the killer muffins, so I usually take a pretty long route to get there and a longer one coming back.  It's not about needing to get in x number of minutes or distance of exercise, it's because the body likes it and I like being out in the world.

When I get back, sometimes I take a shower.  Showers feel good.  I enjoy the whole process, even more so because it's not required (strictly).

Options feel better than requirements.  Interesting.

Then what?  Well, there was the jig saw puzzle day.  I have to say that, in terms of intrinsically non-productive activities, I think putting together a puzzle is one of the best.  Of course, it scratches a deeply satisfying OCD itch in me to create order out of chaos, but it's also just... wow... so much fun.  For me at least.  It's like extremely low stakes problem solving that is guaranteed to succeed over time.  It's three dimensional.  It's analog.  It requires spatial skills (which I have in spades and find inordinate joy in exercising).  It requires depth of visual detail: the further you get into the dharma of the picture, the more you can see between the atoms.  You start analyzing things based on negative space, patterns, infinitely small nuances of color. 

Doing a puzzle is just great.  There are no screens.  No electronics.  And I hesitate to say it, but it kills a whole bunch of time.  But "killing" is just not the right word.  It's more (dare I say it?) meditative.  It's engrossing.  It's present moment.  It's about the thing itself.  Not a whole lot more, and not a whole lot less. 

I have to say that the ten or twelve hours I spent on that puzzle were probably the most restorative time on this vacation so far.  Between that and the walking, I've really started to forget the unpleasantness of last year.

So: what is a waste of time?  Maybe the things that "waste" time are simply things that we do without thinking about.  Maybe the simplest and least productive things, when done with attention, give us back far more than the high powered and complicated things do, when done in a hurry or to just tick them off the checklist.

We are all, of course, made out of time.  We are more made out of time than anything else.  And the time we are made of is finite (at least as far as we can tell in terms of living in our bodies).  Looking at what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, makes time feel like it's going both slower and more deeply.  Racing through or (god forbid) "multitasking" saps my energy, races the clock, leaves me breathless and unsatisfied.

I think it's interesting to play with the elasticity of time this way.  Paying attention is one way.  And approaching the tasks based on wants vs needs is another way.  Maybe I want to do something non productive for awhile.  My fear is that I will want to set up dominoes in a line and knock them over for ever, once I get started.  So I tried that last night.  Yup: fun.  But... I didn't end up wanting to do that forever.  Doing it a couple of times was fun and slightly engrossing.  And I felt better for having done so.  Not so deprived.  Not so "I'm the person who never gets to line up dominoes and knock them down because I'm a grownup and grownups don't have time to do stuff like that."  Nope.  I let myself play with dominoes until I didn't want to anymore.  And when I stopped playing with the dominoes it was because I didn't want or need to do that any more.  I wanted, more, to look at email and think about touring options for the opera company.

Yes.  It would be great if all of life could be this easy and simplified down.  I think there's a lot to be said for touching base with this feeling periodically.  I know that sitting in meditation for ten minutes a day is kind of like this.  It's an acknowledgement that, behind all the hurry, there is peace.  In between the wildly spinning atomic mass, there is space.  It starts to all feel like a big list of musts and have tos and high priorities.  But there is space in between those things.  There must be.  And paying attention to what I'm doing, and paying attention to what I want to be doing, has to be a key way to finding my way inside that space.

As Ferris Beuller says: Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.

Now.  There's a guy who really was made of time.

Future. Tense.

We have an interesting relationship with our future.  When I was young, in my twenties, I mortgaged off my future like it was a house with infinite equity.  I would refinance daily, trading one more beer at night for the risk of feeling somewhat less than par in the morning.  I would refinance weekly, opting to work (or play) excessively, rather than keeping my life balanced with exercise and rest and a proper diet.

In my thirties, I did pretty much the same, except that I started to realize the interest rates were climbing and maybe the equity was not going to last forever.  I started bicycling and exercising more, but basically I still lived like I would live forever and trained myself to be impervious to any ill effects from fatigue, stress, or taking on too much of the world all at once.

In my forties, things started to get cash and carry.  The days of endlessly borrowing from tomorrow were getting less attractive.  My body was starting to feel the strain and my brain was all too aware that I was officially in midlife. No matter how hard I tried, I was not going to get any younger.

Fifties.  Suddenly there's that knock on the door.  The mortgage man is there, demanding that some principal start getting paid.  All those years of putting things off were finally adding up.  I started getting used to feeling a little off, then a little crappy, then pretty much somewhat crappy, all the time. I could no longer drink alcohol without immediately feeling bad.  If I had equity in the bank (a good night's sleep, some yoga, and not too much daily stress), I felt pretty good.  If not, I didn't. 

Then, suddenly: balloon payment.  Which is what the last year was all about.

It strikes me that we don't really truly understand that there is a direct link between present and future until we've squandered a good portion of it.  It is very easy to sell out the self of tomorrow for a little more comfort for the you of today.

I heard an interesting story on NPR awhile back.  It turns out that people of some nationalities generally save more money than people of other nationalities.  For example, the Finnish and Chinese save about 25% of their income, while Americans and the French save about 10% of their income.  And it turns out that if you take the languages of the big savers and compare them to the languages of the little savers, there is one thing that stands out: the language spoken by the people who save more don't have a future tense.

WTF?  That's weird, right? 

Another thing I read the other day.  If you give someone a project in June and say it's due in December, they will get on it faster than if you give someone a project in July and say it's due in January.  Ditto with the days of the week.  If I give you a task and tell you it's due first thing next Monday, chances are you'll put it off longer than if I told you it's due by the end of the day on Friday.  Assuming you don't intend on working over the weekend, it's the same time frame... but Monday feels so far into the future that it matters less to us than Friday does.

The analysts who noticed the savings correlation say that when you have a built in sense of the future, it puts it off to a comfortable distance.  The further away tomorrow feels like it is, the more you can convince yourself to ignore it and play more today.  Our western culture certainly preys on that impulse:  look at credit cards and how they seduce us all with the idea of free money, easily attainable, the conduit of so much immediate gratification.  So what if it comes with a 17.99 rate?  We can worry about that tomorrow.

As I get older, I've moved from hoping that that tomorrow will never come, to hoping and praying that it does.  In our youth, we don't want that day of reckoning to ever catch up with us.  Now as we see our parents aging and start experiencing some of that payback ourselves, tomorrows are good and coveted.  We cherish all the candles on our birthday cakes, because someday we know we are going to run out.  Each one signifies one more victory lap.

So yeah, I'm feeling yesterday's victory laps on the beach today .... but happily so.  Some excesses are positive and healthy, and I was glad to pay the price today.  I am still recovering, and that's fine.  I did more yesterday than I have in a long time, and I will do more tomorrow than I did yesterday.  Someday that will turn around, I guess.  But for now, I want to put as much equity into the account as I can, and borrow it later... if, and when, it becomes necessary.

Ballona Creek

If you're looking to read all about the horrors of radiation and how my skin was necrotic and peeling off like over BBQ'd chicken two weeks ago, you're going to be disappointed.  Because my life is great.  We are so over all that.  And I'm feeling good.

This is rapidly going to turn into a blog about cycling.  If you really couldn't care less about how much I love my bike, and how good I feel after a ride, and how I love my little Garmin computer, and how I'm actually really happy about my decently-paying job because I have realized it's not a means to a mortgage end, it's also a means to a bicyclist's goodies end, then hey... go find another blog to read. 

It seems I have turned into one of those entitled people who dares to do things for themselves on the weekends, instead of running around taking care of everyone else.  I feel oddly justified in wanting to be happy now, because happiness will promote health and, yessir, I now have a really good excuse to want to be healthy. So I'm paying for my goodies with my earned income, and I'm periodically taking time off from every one of my responsibilities to be happy and healthy.  I'm now one of those people riding a cool bike with the expensive (and well padded) bike shorts and all the gear and the little computer.  I'm exactly that kind of person.  And if anyone asks me what I did to deserve a little time in the sun, and how I get off doing things to make myself feel good these days... well, you know, they can just pucker up.

I was thinking it could just be the feeling that comes when you stop whacking yourself in the face with a ball peen hammer.  I mean, no matter how you felt about things before you started doing that, you're guaranteed to have a much more positive outlook on life the second you stop.  It could just be that not having people poisoning, radiating, cutting, or poking me on a nearly daily basis is enough to invoke some major euphoria.

Or it could be the bike.

Did I mention that I rode 22 miles today?  And that I'm training for a 25 mile ride in February?  Twenty-two miles is a whole fuck of a lot further than I have ridden in many many many years.  Or decades.  I used to bike a lot (for me) in the '80s.  (That would be in the century prior to this one.)  I was fit and felt great.  I had Centurion 10-speed and rode it all over the place.  Mainly Griffith Park.  I believe I took that bike on the longest "fun ride" I ever did, which was 50 miles.  Didn't really train for it and, yes, it was pretty fun, but I wasn't a serious cyclist.

Although, really... the way cyclists are serious these days absolutely didn't exist back then either.  I mean, back then, if you went really crazy, you could dump $500 into a bike that weighed about 10 pounds and was so cool you wouldn't dare ride it out on the actual street.  These days, you can't buy a tricycle for $500. 

Back then, if you wanted to really protect your nether parts (highly recommended) , you could buy some shorts with a little bit of padding.  These days, there are dozens of options of clothing: streamlined sleek duds that fit you like shark's skin and have all sorts of magic space-age properties.  They have built in compartments for your cell phone and slits for your ear buds and you are spared all the inconvenience of having actual pockets in your jeans for your keys.  Now you slip them into one of the secret compartments and proceed to slip through the air like a fucking stealth bomber.

I rode the bike path down by the beach today.  In the late afternoon sun, the sounds of the drum circles and the volleyball games and the beat boxes all stirred up into this absolutely serene distillation of the best of what it is like to live in Los Angeles.  It was like the gelato of the California dream... the absolute essence... perfect 65 degree temperature, the harmonies of people blending with that wacky edgy Grateful Dead throwback vibe that hasn't changed in decades, the endorphins kicking in from the ride... I passed people and grinned like a holy fool.  This is heaven, I thought.  This is where they got that concept. Someone rode their bike on this bike path through all these crazy people, and came up with this idea of an afterlife that feels just like this.

At first I was just going to go from above the Santa Monica pier down to the breakwater past the Marina and back.  That's my default loop and it's a good 15 miles.  I was excited because plans that were going to keep me indoors fell through today and I had a chance to continue my training.  Fifteen miles felt a little ambitious still, as I have only done two nine-milers since Christmas and, you know, cancer and all that.  But as I rode, I felt strong, and as I neared the breakwater I thought... hmmmm.... I could go another little bit past the breakwater, like 2 1/2 miles, and then come back.  Even if I felt super stupid and tired coming back, I'd have no choice... and then I'd have hit 20 miles. 

That was so very tempting, and I was feeling so very good still, that I did just that.  Went another couple and a half, stopped, took a little selfie to memorialize the moment, and turned around... into the wind.... and headed back.  Yeah... the way up and the way down are not the same on that trial, as I suddenly remembered, but I hunkered down, used my gears, and started the trudge north. 

I got back to the bridge, still feeling strong, and then pedaled back down the spine of the breakwater...just feeling so incredibly alive and healthy and vital.  So alive that when I saw the turnoff to the Ballona Creek path (that my son calls Baloney Creek), I decided to aw fuck it and took a small mid-way victory lap along the creek.  A mile up, a mile back.  The endorphins were now so potent I was kind of hallucinating.  The clouds were tinged with that bastard amber glow, orange and pink against the blue sky.  The sailboats were taking down their sails as they slid into the marina.  The birds flew overhead in a kind of Terrance Mallick magic hour insert shot, and my legs continued to pedal and carry us forward.

After awhile, you become fused with the bicycle.  My son Spencer says you become a centaur, head raised, tires spinning, slicing through space melding flesh with steel and rubber, almost capable of flight. I am certainly not a legitimate cyclist yet, but I am learning to ride my new bike.  I got to a point today where riding felt like the norm, and stopping felt awkward and weird.  Sure my neck hurt and I needed to blow my nose every mile or so.  And yes, it will be interesting to see what my muscles have to say to me tomorrow.  But while I was out there, it was like finding my wings again, remembering back to a time when life was truly alive, all senses attuned, body/mind/spirit in alignment.  Coming back I rode into the setting sun, my shadow flying behind me like a flag of victory.