Just Another Big Bang Theory...

Yesterday I looked at my workout schedule. A two hour bike ride. Crap.

It was hard to begin...so hard. Why? Because:

a) it's winter and sitting on a bike, in the basement, watching daytime television, is exactly as physically pleasant as plucking your own nose hairs;

b) simple physics. Newton's Second Law - An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. I was the object at rest. Oddly enough, I was also the unbalanced force that acted on my resting self. I think of this as some perverted form of multi-tasking;

c) finally, it was hard to begin because I know that once I begin, I will not stop until I've done what I set out to do. Beginning is an unspoken promise to complete the task. It's never the first step that's hard, it's knowing that I will have to take all the other steps, and some of those steps will hurt.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, "It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything."

Rainer Maria Rilke is the best name ever. If I get to name myself in a future life...I'm going to be Rainer Maria Rilke.

Rilke was a poet, a tad on the morose side... but he sure nailed it on the idea of beginnings.

Contrast Rilke with Lao Tzu, the "journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" guy. People want to believe this single step notion because it's simple, peaceful and exquisitely rational.

But I'm with Rainer Rilke...and science backs me up. This whole show, the roots of our existence, the beginning of all beginnings - it didn't start with a step - it started with a big violent bang.

Races start the same way, the blast of a horn, or a gunshot. As the countdown begins the starting line becomes electric. The air takes on a particular odour; the ozone smell that precedes a lighting strike blends with low notes of fear, something that smells like lust, and the reek of the guy who's running in an unwashed "lucky" t-shirt. The crack of a pistol, the blast of an air horn...the runners explode forward, each one writing their own race. Bang.

...and a story, it never really begins with a single word, tapped softly on keys. The story begins with anguish, or a thought so terrible (or beautiful) that it's impossible not to think it again, a jealousy that brings burning bile to the throat, a passion that could breed violence, an act of violence that could spawn an impossible love...

Passion is the "bang" that starts art in motion.

"Bang" is the unbalanced force that precipitates action.

Perhaps that's why, when I ask politely for quiet, then come calmly to my desk, there's a good chance I'll spend a docile hour, checking out Facebook, on-line shopping and reading that pathetic drivel that passes for news on my homepage...and I will write nothing.

When I come to my desk on fire, that is when I write. On a good desk day I start by ripping off far more than I can chew, then I chew it anyway...I take more steps than I'm comfortable with.

"It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything."

We can only finish what we start.

To begin, begin.

Begin with a bang.

24 Random Thoughts

Hello:

I really have no big thoughts today, so here is a collection of small ones...

1. Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once. Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope. And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception.

The Tick said that, and no matter how times I hear it, it still makes me laugh.

2. I haven't decided if I hate Christmas, or if I love it in the way that you sometimes love things that are painful, like deep massage or a proper tooth cleaning.

3. I can't wait until Hannah Montana is done...not just for today...but FOREVER.

4. When you go to a pool to swim laps, don't swim in the fast lane if you are not fast. It makes the swimmers who ARE fast want to pull out your toenails.

5. When I write, my dog Bulky sits on my chair, behind me. Normally he's a bit of jerk - so this is his most endearing quality.

6. I don't tell the dog, but I actually like the hamster better. The hamster's name is Tuxedo and he's very handsome.

7. If we don't get a Chinook soon, I'll probably get arrested for committing some act of unprovoked aggression. Seriously, I nearly yelled at an old lady at the Safeway because she insisted on using the cart with the shakey wheel. Dammit - there was a whole fleet of perfectly good carts!

8. Women who think Dr. Oz is sexy give me the creeps. Really, ladies...doesn't he mostly look like he needs a bath?

9. ...and while we're on the subject of that genre, I can't wait until Orpra is finished...not just for today...but FOREVER.

10. If justice is something other than pipe dream, there is a special place in hell for people who spit in public.

11. Ignatius and Aloysius are funny names. Probably that's why nobody uses them any more.

12. I think the "Can't you see I'm eating a cookie?" response is pure genius. I can't believe no one thought of that one before.

13. Ikea. It's like Idea - but with a "k"...and meatballs.

14. My little girl is at the dentist right now. I bought her a donut at lunchtime but she wouldn't eat it because she was convinced the dentist would know and get mad. I wonder when she's going to stop being such a worrier.

15. I always judge a book by its cover. I find it saves time.

16. I've developed a peculiar relationship with my bicycle. I speak to it lovingly. I am worried if I don't it will abandon or fail me when I need it most. I didn't name it though - that would be weird.

17. I ate some President's Choice Baby Back Rib potato chips the other day (I know, don't judge me). The thing is, THEY TASTE LIKE REAL RIBS. It's unnatural. I think Galen Westin has taken concert with the devil. How else could such a thing be possible?

18. People who use the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" really piss me off. 276 children died that day. Hardly an event that should be turned into a tag-line.

19. I wish I could keep an Ipod for longer than two months before I lose it. My last one was with me for ONE run.

20. If you don't think penguins are cute, you should keep that to yourself, because penguin lovers...they're a little nuts.

21. You can still buy Cracker Jack at Walmart, but the prizes are totally suckish.

22. Gingerbread houses are a colossal waste of food. The practice should be abandoned.

23. Bullies are just cowards turned inside out.

24. If you don't have one great idea, sometimes a tidy pile of little ideas will do.

Stay warm...

Be cool...

I'll never make THAT mistake again...

I have this friend, lets call her Lorraine.

She believes that mistakes happen for a reason, that they arrive to teach us something we wouldn't otherwise learn. She is adamant about this. I think Lorraine is wise.

I also think that there are two kinds of mistakes. There are polite mistakes. They drop off their little bundle of "chock it up to experience" and then depart leaving the mind informed and at peace. The rude mistakes take up permanent residence. They regularly reappear in the mind's eye to embarrass us anew, sometimes in the middle of the day, but more often at night, just as we are about to sleep.

This is a tale of two such mistakes.

Mistake #1:

My very first writing teacher offered the class this assignment: describe a single event from two points of view.

Despite being utterly unfamiliar with the situation, I chose to write about childbirth, from the mother's perspective and the doctor's.

It started like this:

"I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

Really. Would anyone like a side of gag with their slab of melodrama?

I destroyed the paper copy of that piece decades ago, but that line still creeps into my head now and again, and each time it does, I wince."I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

I know I wrote better lines for that prof, but I cannot recall a single one. I'm equally certain that that hideous sentence will follow me to the grave. In fact, those might be the last words I utter.

"I have been wrapped in a shroud of pain..."

Mistake #2

I ran the Last Chance half marathon on Sunday. It was a great day and a wonderful race. My tights didn't exactly fit they way they should. I should have tried those stretchy babies on a few days before the race and realized that I needed better fitting ones. That small mistake cost me a little chaffing in the nethers. In spite of that, I ran a personal best.

On Monday I went to the pool to lengthen those race-stressed muscles. It was a lovely swim, all loose and floppy, just the way my coach told me it should be.

...and afterwards a soak in the hot tub.

Of an early afternoon, the hot tub at the Y is often populated with retired gents who make their workouts as much a social occasion as a physical outing. They congregate in a group of 6-8, sit along the edge of the hot pool, feet dangling in the water and they shout at one another over the roar of the jets.

Yesterday, as I approached the hot tub, they fell silent. Their eyes seemed to take on some frantic life of their own, darting from place to place, but always returning, ever-so-briefly, to me.

As I stepped over the rim of the tub, I glanced down. The abrasions of the day before had reacted with the chlorinated water. Red patches graced my inner thighs, bright patches. They positively glowed, their size and shape - dead ringers for giant hickies.

The old men did not utter a single word the entire time I soaked in the hot water.

I guess I could have stood up and addressed them, explained that I was the victim of ill fitting pants, not debauchery...but I preferred to let them think whatever it was they were thinking.

It occurs to me that another person might have reacted differently, that being caught with hickey marked thighs might be humiliating, while writing a really bad sentence might slip on as easily as a favourite sweater.

I think that Lorraine is right, our mistakes do educate us, and tell us as much about who we are as they do about what we've done. They help us define ourselves, they shape our future.

Perhaps the mistakes that haunt us most are the ones we will have to make again.

Trying to get it right more often than I get it wrong...

Kari

Tripping Uptown

So...a brief vacation from writing due to illness and the busywork that follows being unable to do anything for a week. Hope I was missed. Here's my latest...

I lost the stomach for downtown a decade ago. When I retreated to the suburbs, I left behind at least a million unread words. Manuals on bookshelves, PowerPoint presentations, corporate newsletters, annual reports... unappreciated gifts of a stifled imagination.

Occasionally I return to the core, but only to shop, a project for which I am wholly ill-suited.

Unaccustomed to the train, I am a clumsy traveler. I forget to buy my ticket before I descend to the platform, then I forget where I put it. I touch the handrail on the staircase then discover I’m out of hand sanitizer.

I sit at the edge of my seat. I touch nobody, nothing. I am not fond of the smell.

Near the downtown station where I exit, an old man sits crumpled in a corner near a door, a hat laid in his lap.

I walk past him, then stop. I find my wallet easily enough, but when I try to unzip it, the paper money gets clenched in the teeth and the zipper stalls. I pull at the bills to free them, shreds of currency flutter to the greasy sidewalk. I am sweating by the time I liberate a twenty.

I put it in the old man’s hat. It takes a moment for him to notice, then he looks up and into my eyes. “God bless you,” he says.

I want to say, “he already has” but I cannot. I struggle with belief.

“Spend it like you found it,” I offer, and he smiles a dark, gummy smile.

“You’re an angel,” he tells me and I smile too.

The secret to being perfect, it seems, is to show up infrequently, with a gift, and say something that makes a little, but not too much sense.

Feeling the love without, and the love within,

Kari