Just for the Record

Time for another confession here: I was a teenaged pole-vaulter. Vaulted for the Pingry Country Day School for Young Gentlemen back in the late New Jersey ‘60’s. And, may I add, broke the school record.

The pole vault runway was the same as the broad jump runway and usually, no one ever watched the pole vault, which was held early on in the meet while all the runners were circling the track. But on one particular day, myself and my opponent kept raising the bar and when it was time for the broad jump, the last event, we were still going. And so a crowd was gathered around. The bar was raised to 11’6”, 3 inches higher than the previous record. The crowd was gathered on either side of the runway and there was hushed silence to mark the moment as I stood with my pole eying the bar. (If this was a movie, this would be when the Chariots of Fire theme would play and it would run in slow motion.) Coming down the runway, I felt the energy of the crowd urging me on and up and over the bar— and over I went! The sweet ring of applause in my ear as I lay in the pillows and stood up to acknowledge the crowd.

I then had three tries to try to clear 12 feet. Hoping for the same moment of glory, down I ran and up I went— knocking the bar over decisively. Two more failed attempts— my moment of glory had passed. And yet still it was a teenaged glory moment— I now held the school record.

There was a tradition that the headmaster at lunchtime would announce the sports scores and give special recognition to any high scorer or record-breaker. All those years at that school, I was a bad boy in a good-old-boys club, but now awaited my one moment of recognition from the powers-that-be. I sat in the lunchroom while the headmaster announced each event and waited for my moment.

It never came. He simply skipped it, either innocently overlooking it or purposefully ignoring it. And so began my initiation into my future relationships with various institutions, my descent into bitterness, my ascent into crusading for justice in both small and big forms. (Years later, a friend gave me a belated pole vaulting medal at my 40^th birthday party that he claimed Pingry had made. Finally, I felt healed— until he later he confessed he had it made himself!)

What brought all of this up? Last night I dreamt I pole vaulted again for the first time in 45 years. And sailed over the 12 foot mark. How mysterious is the mind! It could be because I have the Spring Concert tonight and I need to sail over that increasingly high bar our music department has set for that event. Or it could be that this weekend is my 45^th reunion at that school in New Jersey.

I’m not going, but hey fellas, if any of you old classmates read this blog, could you announce my record at lunch? 

Visceral Reality

Nobody calls me a Luddite anymore, but I still maintain the same caution toward the mediated world I’ve held since the 80’s when I hosted the first TV Awareness events at my school. How much more screens have come to dominate our lives since that now-innocent time! We all benefit from some of it (the opportunity for me to write this blog!), but we also need more healthy doses of life off-screen and an intelligence that recognizes gifts and limitations and the need for balance. I still cringe when I hear people say “there’s an ap for everything” and “anything you want is online.” How small have people’s desires become that they think all they need can be electronically delivered! I’ve looked, but I can’t find anything that lets my hand feel the vibrations on the back of my recently departed Mom when she spoke.

And while everyone is scrambling to the Online Universities and looking for how to transmit their limited concept of knowledge to people far away, there are simply some things untransmitable in virtual reality— they require visceral reality. They need the warmth and sweat of living human hands held in circles, the touch of the teacher, the taste of the snacks at break time and the real time physical vibrations of voices and instruments charging the air and our own nervous system. The Orff approach that has shaped my life is one such tradition and though some in my world have drunk the electronic Kool Aid and are looking to bring it all online— or bring the Smart-Board on-lineness into their classrooms— most (I hope) realize that our physical bodies, beating hearts and inquisitive minds are now and forever where the whole show takes place.

Why are we in such a hurry to live in the i-Cloud? According to one tradition, we’ll have all eternity to float around up there. Let’s get our hands dirty down here while we can, celebrate this body and the bodies of our fellow humans and the body of this earth. Get wet, get muddy, get cold, get sweaty, get smelly, get washed clean, get moving in the dance, get singing, pleasure in the earthy boom of the drum and watery sounds of metallophones and airy stream of fluted breaths, all without plugging in a single cord.

Especially with the little ones. Later, the teens will need electric guitars to scream louder their painful passage to adulthood, the singers will want mikes when the jazz band is blaring behind them, the inspired moments captured on video will be fun to see on Youtube and yes, spread the good news far and wide.

But amidst it all, let’s remember the importance and pleasures of visceral reality, of life unplugged. 

Spring Concert

Dedicated to music teachers everywhere (with apologies to William Shakespeare):

That time of year thou mayest in me behold

When all that hath been silver,

Must now change into gold.

When that which hath been mere sound,

Must change to pleasing tone,

And played with two swift mallets

Upon the xylophone.

When children casually tinkering,

Must now show what they feel.

Express their deep emotion,

Upon the glockenspiel.

Now merrily the bells doth ring,

With well-shaped mouths, the children sing.

The teachers tense, some close to rage,

Moving hordes of children upon the stage.

How shall they enter, go off, which way?

And who knows why Johnny,

Isn’t here today?

Why are all these recorders,

So dreadfully out of tune?

(Maybe we can skip o'er May,

And just go straight to June?)

Yea, that time of year indeed has come,

To join together bell and drum.

To take off bars, then put them on.

(And just where has that F# gone?)

Make sure each movement’s choreographed,
Precise and joyful, with room for laughs.

Spring Concerts' here, oh, fun! Fun! Fun!

In a mere three days, they’ll be done! Done! Done!

In Praise of Independence

As with us all, many times in my life I’ve had my wagon necessarily hitched to some institution or someone else’s star and found myself in a bad neighborhood. You do the necessary repair work as best you can, but your tools don’t fit their screws and nails and you’re hobbling along with a rickety wheel on a rocky road. Finally, they kick you off the wagon— or if you’re more sensible than me, you voluntarily alight and start walking on your own.

Of course, no one’s on their own, but now you start to gather the folks you choose to sit with you and help pull the wagon and that’s a whole different feeling. It’s not pitch perfect— we are fallible human beings after all— but it is a cleansing exhale of relief to remove the top layer hovering above and let the sun shine down. And so these thoughts:

• It is exhausting to march to someone else’s drumbeat— especially when they have a lousy sense of rhythm.

• To work unencumbered to the edge of your passion—that’s the way it’s spozed to be.

• Don’t be the first to stand under some elses’s arches when they pull away the scaffolding. (In ancient Rome, the architects were required to be the first to stand under the arches they built.) 

• “Run like hell from someone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred, tender vision

    of your beautiful heart.” (Hafiz: Medieval Persian poet)

• If you drink the Kool Aid long enough, you start to think it’s water.

• March boldly toward the destiny that awaits. Or better yet, dance.

  And to your own drumbeat. 

The Front Stoop

It’s that rare San Francisco heat wave and how I love it! The other day, got an iced coffee and wanted to be outside, so with no benches available, just sat on the sidewalk and sipped. Watched the world pass by. Wondered if people would throw a quarter into my hat if  I turned it upside down. But I needed it on my head— the sun was out and I don’t have much protection there!

Sitting like that reminded me of my childhood hanging out on the front stoop in the summer. Just used to sit on my steps, my cat Zorro on my lap and watched and listened and thought my thoughts and talked to the neighbors passing by (long before the invention of those distracting hand-held devices). That delicious sense of doing nothing in particular, just sitting.

Years later, I took up the formal practice of sitting, the Zen meditation called zazen. In Soto Zen, they call it “Shikantaza” which literally means “just sitting.” A tighter, more concentrated version of my front stoop childhood practice with attention to posture and breath and stillness, a formal practice derived from the ancient casual one.

And throughout my life, I traveled to those lovely places like India, Bali, Ghana, where hanging out was a national pastime. They were each distinct, but all had some things in common— and perhaps most significant of them all— hot weather!

There is something about hot weather that kills ambition. We dismount from the horse of accomplishment and let it wander freely in the field while we lie down in the grass and look up at the clouds. Or, if we’re lucky to have one nearby, go jump in the lake. We’re losing that skill, seduced away from the pleasures of hanging out by the constant allure of electronic connection. Perhaps it's no accident that it's hard to see that computer screen outside in the blazing sun. It's an indoor activity. Great for long winter nights when we can pull up images of Hawaii on the screen. 

But today, Hawaii has come to San Francisco. And so, I leave the computer and go out to lie down in the back yard. Or maybe I’ll sit on the front stoop.