Mind Bumps

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I recently met (live) Sherri Frank Mazzotta, with whom I’ve been chatting about writing via the Internet.  As yet unpublished, she is incredibly accomplished and passionate about of all kinds of books and different styles of writing.  As much as I enjoy the Internet, email, and all the people I meet in cyberspace, I guess I’m the age where “there’s nothing like the real thing.”  We spent hours comfortably talking, not only about books, but our lives and how we got to where we are.  A cool do.

One question Sherri asked me is what it’s like to come up with an idea for every week’s post.  My response: nerve-wracking.  From the moment Monday passes, there’s a part of me anxious about whether a new subject will pop.  And the game has to come to me.  If I sit down to conjure up an idea it’s like telling someone to “be funny.”  Just doesn’t work.

This week it’s multiple “nexts” since no single thing jumped out front.  But over this week, like all others, I do stuff, ideas flit in (and most often out), some news report or column or cartoon catches my eye.

Let’s forget the straw poll in Iowa.  Crazies only interested me when I worked as a therapist.  So one of the most important things that occurred this week was my softball team (Jah Energy) won its one-or-done playoff game against the Loan Sharks.  It was a wet one; took place in a steady shower.  The game had been rained out twice before and there were no more permit dates for a makeup.  Maybe not on dry land, but ironically we were better than the Sharks in the water.

Now we play the first place team for two out of three beginning tomorrow evening—weather permitting.  Not gonna be easy.  Ron’s Auto consists of farbissina players, both men and women.  People who Lenny Bruce would describe as the type who wear wool suits with no underwear.  Needless to say, we are major underdogs.  I guess it will make winning that much sweeter–if we win.  I’ll let you know.

Also, something that caught my eye this week was a letter to the New York Times by Stephen Sondheim (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/) that tore Diane Paulus and Pulitzer Prize winner and McArthur Genius award recipient, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks new assholes for their re-interpretation of Porgy and Bess.  Paulus is the Artistic Director for American Repertory Theater, a prestigious theater company connected to Harvard University.  My ticket isn’t until the end of September, but what I find interesting is:

Diane Paulus.  Who receives an enormous amount of shit for her productions while, at the same time, filling seats with a large number of people who rarely, if ever, attend theater of any kind.  I understand why critics often have trouble with her work.  When you take Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, turn it into a disco, replete with roller blades and semi-nude actors dancing up a storm with the audience and call it The Donkey Show, it’s easy to understand why traditionalists have a difficult time seeing it as theater despite having its run extended for months.

Or when she invited the British Theater Company Punchdrunk to use an abandoned local school and turn Macbeth into Sleep No More, a production where all ticket holders wore masks to become anonymous as they wandered through the building from room to room where different scenes were played out.  Paulus caught it for that one too—Which also sold out and went on to be a must-have ticket in New York.

It’s odd that I find myself defending over-the-top theater since my favorite playwrights are Eugene O’Neill, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller and similar writers—as well as traditionally performed Shakespeare.  But there’s something to be said for introducing theater to a brand new audience and introducing it in a way we can all relax and have fun with.  Hats off to Diane Paulus for fucking with A.R.T.’s traditions and succeeding—despite the avalanche of criticism.  Me, I’m looking forward to Porgy And Bess.

This week I also found out we are definitely going to trial on September 8th in that same unnamed Midwestern state for the second of our two malpractice cases.  The defendant refuses to negotiate or mediate and I expect them to stay their course.  It’s a complicated case in a very conservative county where the defendant’s employer has their hands in damn near everything.

So it’s yet another David versus Goliath; this time Goliath has all the weapons except truth.  It will be interesting to see whether truth can win.  It often doesn’t in our civil court system where clout has a way of determining judicial decisions throughout a trial.  We can only hope a jury is able to separate the wheat from the chaff.  They’ve had practice since a good many of them will probably be farmers.  Again I’ll try to do frequent posts on the day-to-day once the trial begins.

And finally, my friend and artist, Michael Smith (check him out by clicking his links on my website’s ‘links’ page) came by Sunday morning to do a photo shoot of the cover for my digitalized version of Still Among The Living.  Spent a fair amount of time Saturday hunting for my old Bakelite radios and deco objects and art.  And finding someone with a gun permit and gun to bring to the “shoot.”

Well, that was my week.  How was yours?

“Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” – John Maxwell

Frigging Politics

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“Just when I try to get out, they pull me back in.”

I didn’t want to write about politics or Obama again.  At least, not right now.  Jah Energy (not an oil company, but my community softball team named after the Jamaican god), has a one-or-done playoff game tonight.  I’ve been trying like a dog to edit my second Matt Jacob book (Two Way Toll) so it can be formatted for multi-digital platforms, and am gathering materials for a photo shoot of the digital cover for Still Among The Living.

I really didn’t want to write about politics.  But after the last couple of weeks watching congressional bozos on both sides of the aisle make jackasses out of themselves, and seeing our country slide into a sinkhole so deep it may be impossible to climb out, I just can’t help it.  Sorry.

I feel like Peter Finch in the movie Network when he stuck his head out the window and screamed, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

My rage primarily has to do with the debt ceiling deal that President Obama blessed, albeit with some verbal regret over the absolute refusal to implement a truly fair progressive income tax that might help people who are just barely getting by. Problem is, verbal regret doesn’t cut it for those already bent over a chair and are now gonna be bending even lower.  Nine percent unemployment, my ass.  Those are only the people they count.  If it ain’t double that number, feel free to shoot me.  It doesn’t take a weatherman to know what programs and which people are going to get fucked by the newly agreed upon debt reductions.

We are already living in an era when the differential in wealth between Whites and people of color is the greatest it has been since the Civil War.  We’re eyeballing folks who have saved for a lifetime only to lose their houses due to mortgage manipulation (aka fraud) by banks.  Banks our president was more than willing to rescue and are now making more money than ever before.  We’re back to robber baron times.

And I haven’t yet mentioned two wars that nobody wants other than the congressional jackasses.   And the President.

I know the excuses since I’ve used them myself: The Republicans burned down the house then gave the key to the Black guy. Obama never really had a real majority because of the Blue Dog Democratic Senators.  President Obama believes in bi-partisan politics as the best way for a country to be run. The Republicans have never totally refused to work with a sitting Democratic president before, and are doing it now because he is Black.

I know the hopes: During his fifth year, he’ll be able to be himself and do what he’d hoped to do during the first four.  Roosevelt’s first term was less than stellar as well.  If President Obama is somehow able to forge an “adult” dialogue with and between members of Congress, it will be a huge achievement.

I know the accomplishments:  His support of gays in the military.  He forced health insurance companies to accept people with pre-existing conditions.  He jammed through coverage for millions and millions of people who had no health insurance whatsoever.  After eight years of neglect, the Justice Department and EEOC are again enforcing employment discrimination laws.  The administration continues to deescalate marijuana interdiction and raids, eliminate mandatory sentencing for first-time drug abusers and simple possession, and dramatically increase the amount of cocaine possessed that leads to a jail sentence.

And there have been more accomplishments:  (See http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2010/10/president-obamas-244-accomplishments-part-4/)  But these accomplishments have mostly come through Executive Orders and not “adult” discussions with, or bills passed, by Congress.  How many times do you need to be hit in the head with a baseball bat before you change your tactics.  Even if it’s just to give the other guy a noogie.

The bottom line is this:  President Obama is certainly better than the Republican nominee who will stuff the Supreme Court with lunks only too happy to off a woman’s right to choose and add to the already ugly list of draconian decisions.  So I will hold my nose and vote for him again.  But it’s gonna hurt.

Fact is: Progressives, and our organizers, have to make some serious decisions for the long term.  Actually, we have to make some decisions, period. First we need to form a coalition between all the liberal groups out there.  And if petition signing is any indication, there are quite a few.  Then, that coalition has to decide whether to spend its time, money, and effort to try to take over the Democratic Party.

And I don’t mean doing what the Tea Party is doing–getting enough votes to hold the rest of the party hostage. (Though that might be a good start.)  I mean turning the Democratic Party into a full-bore progressive party that doesn’t give a shit about moderates who are really Republicans in Democratic colors.  This has been the cry from Democratic Socialists for generations, and for generations it just hasn’t succeeded.  But it is one of the options.

The other is to throw the full weight of the progressive coalition behind a third party, something that has been tried in past and usually, if successful at all, created a nudge for change and then disappeared.  Neither strategy has kicked ass, but the past need not define the future.

In either case, or perhaps the third option, is that we actually mobilize our constituency.  We may talk politics more than many, but usually it’s shaking our heads over a beer.  “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” means DOING SOMETHING.  Actions, instead of whining. Message to self, maybe something more than just signing petitions (see my 3/21/11 post LOVE ME, I’M A LIBERAL).

We also ought to redefine our constituency.  We typically try to politicize the voting public.  I believe our real goal has to be engaging the forty plus percent of the population who doesn’t vote, maybe has never voted.  Unless we appeal to these folks, they never will vote and we’ll never have a real progressive government.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” ~ History

(Might want to laugh or cry at:
http://front.moveon.org/hilarious-i-didnt-f-_-_-k-it-up/?fb_ref=.Tj6yEX8cYbr.like&fb_source=home_oneline)

Failing Yoga

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According to every yoga teacher I’ve ever had, failure and yoga have nothing to do with each other.  Listen to your body, let it guide you on your own individual path.  Well, If, I listened to my body, it would be lying down.  On the couch, not on a mat.

Failure not an option?  Yeah, sure.  Have you ever seen a yoga teacher who wasn’t lanky and fit?  I’m here to tell you that if you’re old, overweight, and out of shape–failure is not only an option but a damn near certainty.

Yoga first caught my attention when I read that Robert Parish, the center of the Celtics great 1980s basketball dynasty, and a person who most definitely has duende, mentioned it as his way to stay limber.  In fact, he said it was also allowing him to extend his career.  Interesting, but I’m way too short to dunk.

Then my partner, Susan, began going to a class on in the mid 90s.  Ten years of cajoling later, I was convinced to join her and a couple of our friends.  So for about five years now, I’ve been trying to twist my body into extremely weird positions.

Yes, I can bend over and touch the floor.  I can inhale and exhale using my abdomen with the best of ’em.  I can get into Warrior and Goddess and even lie on my back and twist my body one way while my knees go another without pain.

And that’s when success comes to a screeching halt.  The rest seems like torture–of one kind or another.  Every time I’m told to move into Plank Pose, I do it.  But the first thought that jumps to mind is “drop down and give me twenty.”  And I was never in the army. Hell, I couldn’t do more than three pushups at any point in my life.

Then plank morphs into Downward Dog.

Twenty might have been better.  At first, “assuming the position” with my butt stuck up in the air made me think of bending over for soap in jail.  It took about a month, but eventually the image disappeared and was replaced by pain in my shoulders.   My instructor tried to be helpful: Rotate the inside of your elbows forward to lessen the shoulder strain.  It did, which allowed me two or three sun salutations (extra dogs) before the pain again kicked in.

Then there’s the balance issue.  Actually it’s a nonissue; I have none.  First, I can never find a spot to stare at without seeing someone else moving since I insist on being in the back row.  I prefer making an ass out of myself without other people watching.  In theory, anyway.  I never get away scot-free–a good part of the hour, the people in front of me are bent over with their head between their legs looking at my feeble attempt to stick my own head under my crotch.

But back to balance.  We start slow by placing one foot on a yoga block and simply swinging the other leg back and forth to loosen the hip.  I’m fine for two swings, three on a good day.  Then it’s off the block and onto one leg with the other placed on the inside of the planted thigh.  I have a few problems with this.  I have a bum knee, which makes standing on that leg and lifting the other impossible.  And when we switch to the leg without my bum knee it ain’t any better.  Like I said, no balance.  At this point in the hour I start to wonder what the fuck I’m doing there, but I force myself to focus on breathing since that I’m able to do.

Only my doubts come screaming back when we’re told to turn our feet outward with our heels touching and slowly lower ourselves (spine straight!) into a squat.  Which I can also do (I often play catcher on my softball team) but I know what’s coming next.

The fucking Crow–a crouched pose where you’re supposed to flatten your hands on the floor, bend your elbows, and lift your knees onto them.  The first time I tried, my body simply refused to move out of the crouch. My teacher noticed my look of dire immobilization, came over, and lifted me up from the rear.  At that moment I understood the freeze.  My nose was inches away from the hardwood floor that was just waiting for a splattering face plant.  I’ve already broken my nose three times; I ain’t gonna do it again.  I guess Geraldo felt my entire body begin to tremble and he gently brought me back down.  Sweet of him and even sweeter is his willingness to let me roll into relaxation mode when the Crow is coming.

Especially since it’s sorta fun to lie in my back and watch some other people glide smoothly from the Crow to a headstand.  Pretty amazing sight.  Which is all it will ever be.

So, in all honesty, I am a yoga failure.  Nevertheless, I’ll keep going each Monday with the forlorn hope that, someday, I’ll be able to stand on one leg longer than 5 seconds.  And with the anticipation of our every Monday night after-yoga do.  Eating a hot (not down) dog and drinking a couple of beers.

Toxins out, Toxins in.  My yogic symmetry.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin

Spoiler Alert

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(Parts of this experience will probably show up fictionalized in one of my new Matt Jacob novels.)

Boston, like much of the country, is in the midst of a heat wave.  Temperatures have topped 100, a new thing for me even though I’ve lived here for more than thirty years.  I’m doing my best to keep cool in a city where cold rules, but this weather brings back memories of the summer month I spent in Oklahoma City researching the Murrah Building bombing for a consortium of lawyers.

First thing I noticed after landing was the oil well digging on airport property. (Had never seen one anywhere before, let alone in such a bizarre location.)  The second was the stifling heat, which soaked my shirt while I waited for the van to the rental car office.  I’d been hot before but never like this.

And the heat never changed throughout my entire stay.  Triple figure digits running like a ticker tape across the television screen night after night, week after week.  Walking out of the hotel meant walking into a pizza oven.  The only saving grace were the pipes outside bars and restaurants spritzing a light mist of water onto their patio customers.  Another thing I’d never before seen.

I wasn’t in Oklahoma City to study the heat, though there was a constant “weather voice” similar to the interior monologue in Peter Gent’s novel North Dallas Forty where his protagonist’s football body aches always danced in his consciousness.  I was there because the lawyers, none of whom conspiracy theorists, had received reports that seemed to indicate some kind of Federal foreknowledge of the bombing.  They wanted me to discover whether there was any substantive evidence that the government either knew beforehand about the bombing or had actually initiated it. (The latter, something I never and still don’t believe.)

I worked with a local lawyer and his private detective, first to make sense out of all the initial conflicting television news reports which we reviewed: The suspect was an Arab looking man, there was more bombs planted inside the building, the truck bomb had done all the damage, the truck bomb couldn’t have done all that damage, there were one?, two?, three? men in the truck—one contradiction after another.

Despite the pigfuck of reporters who converged on the city the day of the bombing, all anyone actually knew was they were watching a tragedy unfold before their eyes. Bodies were handed from one person to another as they were found in the rubble and taken from the building.  Children’s bodies as well as adults since the Murrah housed a daycare center.

When I got there months had passed.  The bodies had been buried, funerals and memorial services were over.  In fact, by the time I arrived, the building had already been demolished and a chain-linked fence surrounded the city square block hole in ground.  Everywhere you looked, the fence was adorned with mementos of those who had died—flowers, dolls, and toys with people still adding to the assemblage.  It was another thing I had never seen—a huge, living, evolving memorial to human tragedy.  A smaller, but no less painful, dress rehearsal for Ground Zero.

The survivors and relatives of those who lost their lives on that April 19, 1995 had created this memorial.  And, during my investigation I interviewed a whole lot of them.  Indeed, it was the grandmother of a dead child who first contacted the lawyers.  She and her boyfriend had written a 200-page pamphlet that contained the most heinous accusations against the government.

I met with them early in my stay to go over each charge.  I had read the entire “book” and tabbed every assertion I felt needed support evidence if there was to be a viable case.  There were a ton of tabs.  As I began to make my request for evidence, tab after tab, the two of them grew increasingly angry until, after an hour or so, they threw me out of their house.  They also contacted the local lawyer and demanded I be run out of town and stop my investigation.  The local lawyer asked me what had happened so I showed him my tabbed copy, recounted my questions and their reactions.  To his credit, all he said was to take notes (which I’d been doing) and keep on keeping on.

And so I did and had the opportunity to talk with many, many more people about what had actually occurred before that morning, that morning, and the days, weeks, months after.  Although there were an incredible amount of contradictions, there was also enough hard information to keep me digging.  For example, the sheriff’s video tape of the entire day, which he began shooting about an hour after the bombing (and which I had the opportunity to study) showed a long break in the rescue effort during which people from the bomb squad removed all sorts of weapons and what looked like blocks of C4, a serious explosive.  Apparently, besides a daycare center, the building also housed an arsenal.   We’ll never know how many people died during that rescue “time out.”

We do know it was against the law to have an arsenal and daycare center in the same building.

But today’s post isn’t about the information I learned during my stay.  I’m writing about scorching heat and a blast of sorrow.  Truth was, it was a heart wrenching experience.  Truth was, whether the government had foreknowledge or not wouldn’t have brought peace to most people with whom I spoke.  These peoples’ lives had changed forever and nothing I found would bring back their old lives or those who they had lost.  Some had kept their children’s’ rooms as they were on the day of the bombing.  Some will never be able to enter a large building without terror.  Some won’t be able to work again.  And some will gut out the rest of their lives trying to put that horrific day behind.

Which may never happen.  Probably won’t.  Even though I wasn’t in Oklahoma City on bombing day, even though I wasn’t a victim and did not lose any relatives or children, when the temperature in Boston hits 90, I think of that summer and, in my own silent way, mourn their loss.

“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.” Joseph Conrad

(P)raising The Dead

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George Frazier (1911-1974) was an original.  And an occasional pioneer.  He was the first writer to have a jazz column in a major city newspaper when he authored Sweet and Low in the Boston Herald during the winter of 1942.  Eventually he moved on to a more wide ranging weekly column for The Boston Globe.  Although often derided and harshly criticized because of his totally politically incorrect positions on major issues (for example, Woman’s Liberation—though he did make it onto Nixon’s “enemy list.”), Frazier lives on in my memory primarily because of his ability to write scathingly, sarcastically beautiful prose.  And, more importantly, introduced me to the world of “duende.”

In his words:  “It’s not easy to explain…except to observe that when someone or something has it, we feel icy fingers running up and down our spine….it’s not measured in terms of surpassing skills…nor does it have anything to do with honor or integrity or valor…just as John Dillinger was all duende while the mafia, at least since Lucky Luciano is not…duende isn’t merely class, or just style either…yet I cannot offhand think of anyone who has duende who does not also have style…and to say that duende is merely charisma or panache or flair is rather to demean it, for while it is certainly all those things, it is the nth power of them.

In Frazier’s world Sinatra had it, but Joey Bishop most certainly did not.  Fred Astaire yes, Gene Kelly no.  According to Frazier, “It was what Ted Williams had even when striking out, but Stan Musial lacked when hitting a home run.”

Now there’s no doubt that duende is entirely subjective.  (Cardinal fans, for example, might turn Frazier’s quote on its head.)  But subjective or not, his columns struck a chord that remains as I think about duende in terms of people in my world–people I know or have met, some I’ve read about or seen on screen or in concert.

By now you undoubtedly know where I’m going with this.  Yep.  Paul Newman had duende but Robert Redford doesn’t.

Ghandi had it, Che didn’t.

I can’t quite decide whether Matt Damon has duende, but Ben Affleck doesn’t get close.

George Clooney has duende.

Morgan Freeman worked together with Clint Eastwood in three movies, but only Freeman has it, no matter how much Eastwood’s acting or directing are touted by the media. (Actually, in my opinion he only directed one really good movie:Unforgiven.  And, as much as I love jazz, Bird was an abomination.  Even his “Boston” movie, Mystic River, despite terrific actors, was blown away by Gone Baby Gone which incidentally was directed by Ben Affleck and also starred Morgan Freeman)

Lauren Hutton had and still has duende, but Heidi Klum with all her cheek-kissing “auf widersehens” won’t get there. (A shame since I have a picture of my son Matt with his arm around her at some function.  Or maybe the shame is that his armwasn’t around Hutton.)

Michael Moore reinvigorated documentary film making and I enjoy most of what he creates, but never in a million years will he have duende.  Neither will John Stewart or Bill Maher as quick on their feet as they are—after all, Stewart is gracious, classy and fun but doesn’t have it and however quick, clever, and political Maher might be, he is a bombastic twit.  But Stephan Colbert has duende.

As does Michelle Obama, while her husband, despite many attributes, simply does not.  (And I’m not saying that just because he dances like a white guy.)

Sometimes you can both have it and not.  Clarke Peters in his role as Lester in The Wire has duende.  But not as Albert Lambreaux in Treme.  Makes me wonder whether he has it as Clarke Peters.

John Lennon had duende but Paul McCartney, nah.

Susan, my partner has it, I don’t.

Obviously I could continue to traipse through the list of public figures, politicians, writers, actors, musicians (Wynton Marsalis has duende, Kenny G., ha! ) and singers (Billy Holliday had it as well as Sarah Vaughn, but not Ella) but this notion, this concept, this duende is in the eyes of the beholder.

What do your eyes tell you?

When people tell you how young you look, they are telling you how old you are.
Cary Grant