Inna Godda da Vida

Most days this is where I hang out. In a garden, the life. It's where I choose to sit and drink coffee in the morning, weather permitting, and have a bite of breakfast. For a few minutes it's a restful place to take in the visual and auditory state of the garden while the wrens go about their rambunctious business, the salvia calmly withstand the heat, and the other fauna and flora do what they do.

When I come home at night, this is where I choose to sit and have a drink and perhaps a bite of supper if there's enough light, winding down from a day of risk management. Throw in a workout here and there, and that's pretty much what I do on a normal suburban day.

On the weekend, of course, I have the distinct pleasure of doing the actual gardening, for as we know, there is no garden without the actual work of gardening, notwithstanding the ads on TV that tell people they can go to a big-box store and buy one. And that's the deal. You have to do the weeding and watering, the digging and planting, the thinning and transplanting, the pruning and disposing of debris and detritus, if you want to live in a garden.

But all that is the fun part. Once you get into it, grabbing a spade or a trowel and bending over weed after weed is a satisfying chore - a chore nonetheless, but take a look after an hour or so, and see the difference! Then, if you're smart, you'll take a break, sit in the shade, and enjoy a nice cool beverage, which you have earned and your body needs. Then, if there's time, you move on to the next mundane, monotonous, meditative chore and weed another bed, move a clump of groundcover to fill in a bare spot, or give the tomatoes a drink of water.

All of this is obvious, given the nature of gardening: that gardens are not naturally occurring, like forests, or floodplains, or prairies, or deserts. They have to be created and maintained by gardeners. And the hypothetical imperative, if you're a gardener is to take care of it, nurture it, give it love, and respond to its needs.

In return, the gardener get to see the effect of his or her labor, either immediate as in the case of a nice, weed-free bed, or deferred as in the case of a newly planted tree, sprigs of groundcover, or bean seeds. But above all, the gardener has the distinct privilege of inhabiting a garden.

100-day gong

Starting a new job the day after Memorial Day seemed like a good time to buy a membership at the community pool and augment my workouts with a little cross training. We've lived two blocks from the Jaycee Pool for eight years and never gone there to swim. What am I waiting for?

So, in the spirit of the 100-day gong in qigong tradition, I decided to embark on a summer-long regimen of bicycling and swimming. The time frame of Memorial Day to Labor Day is roughly the same as my 90-day introductory period at the new place of employment. Perfect. While I'm getting up an hour earlier, starting work at 8:00 every morning, and giving up potato pancakes on Sundays, I will also bike and swim every day (with certain exceptions to be determined).

The first week, I biked and swam every day except Friday, when it rained. So I'm a fair-weather practitioner of the ancient art of bike-swim-gong. Sue me. At this point in my development, I'm good for an hour or so on the bike (12-15 miles) and four laps (200 meters) in the pool, which isn't much, but it's a great way to wind down after work. And a great prelude to a cold pale ale.

The second week, I biked and swam every day except Friday, when I met a friend for a drink and conversation after work. Now I can do 90 minutes (15-20 mi) on the bike and 6 laps (300m) in the pool, then a gin and tonic.

The third week, I had classes in the park on Monday and Thursday, so I missed those days of the bike-and-swim gong, but the other days I increased my distance to 8 laps (400m) and I feel good. My stroke is changing a little, too, and I think I'm wasting less effort in my crawl stroke, which has never been very efficient.

The fourth week, I'm up to ten laps (500m) in the pool, and I don't feel fatigued afterward, so I guess I'm gaining some aerobic fitness. In this hot weather, there are more people at the pool in the hour before closing, so I have company in the lap pool. I have a hard time staying in my lane, something else to work on.

The fifth week was complicated by a Tuesday meeting after work with a friend and a violent thunderstorm Friday afternoon, in addition to classes on Monday and Thursday. Wednesday I stayed late at the office to meet a deadline, so no bike and no swim until Saturday, when I managed 12 laps. So much for the daily routine with rare exceptions. Sometimes it's the rare routine with daily exceptions.

The sixth week had a national holiday in the middle of it, which should have been ready-made for an afternoon bike ride and swim, but I missed a beat by going late in the day, not knowing the pool would close early for the annual Methodistville fireworks extravaganza, so I got in the bike ride, a very pleasant spin around Sharon Woods, but not the swim. Cooking out with our friends the Gormans, however, more than made up for it, and by the weekend I was back on track with 14 laps (600m).

The seventh week was another gongus interuptus, so I guess I'm over the idea of daily workouts, though it remains to be seen whether this derails the whole process and ruins the intended effect. Tuesday I only had time for an abbreviated bike and swim, but I'll take it. Wednesday I was pumped, but there was a swim meet in MY pool, so no go. Monday and Thursday I had classes, which went very well, thank you, and Friday I met my friend John at Bel Lago for our regular libation to solve the world's problems and lament our own. So Saturday was only my second workout of the week, and lo and behold I had the entire JC pool to myself (and about a hundred wrens playfully dive-bombing the water) as I easily raised the bar to 16 laps (800m). Hey, that's about half a mile! With the peace and quiet and solitude, I'm finding the rhythm of breaststroke, backstroke, and crawl remarkably meditative. Who knew?

Take a break!

To go to the Rose Festival at the Park of Roses, but only after cleaning the house and doing a little laundry, starting a batch of bread and watering plants. Run into an old friend who insists on introducing a friend of hers, who introduces a couple of his friends, you catch the drift, and the garden turns into a network of mutual friends in which I pause to do a bit of basic movement.

From there go to the coop and buy the basic beans (Great Northern, Red Chili), flour (whole wheat pastry), and beer (Red Bud Ale from Portsmouth, Ohio) and a handmade father's day card. Go home, knead the bread, start the bean soup, add onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms, habanero peppers, canned salmon, and coconut milk, let it simmer, and call it great northern salmon stew.

Pull a few weeds, transplant a few lamb's ear, and check the Reds-Tigers game. Take a break from taking a break and drink some water. Eat half an avocado with cherry tomatoes and cranberry walnut bread and coffee with Bailey's. Pull some more weeds, and stop in time to go for a quick bike ride down Alum Creek Trail, surprise a deer and a groundhog, and get back in time to go for a swim at JC Pool.

It's June, so it's time for a gin and tonic with a bowl of rice and great northern salmon stew, with a Cheez-It chaser while watching the Miami Heat blow it.

Petals, Pedals, Peddles

There are rose petals in my coffee. I have chores to do, a network to network, and the wrens are buzzing my table as they traverse the central flyway from one corner of the yard to the other. The extended family that inhabits our yard likes to fly from their nest outside the kitchen window to the compost part of the garden and back. The best seat in the house is right here on the patio, with morning light filtering through the white roses climbing across the pergola that every once in a while explode and rain a few petals on the table.

In training to begin a new job on Tuesday, I got up early and drank coffee outside. The late-May heat was drying recently planted basil and tomatoes, so I have them a drink from a gallon jug and pulled a few weeds. Bread with lemon curd made a perfect breakfast. During breaks from weeding, I read a chapter from Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker and continued my lesson in bond trading 1980s style. On the phone my Dad correctly identified a crucial part of the learning curve: a whole new vocabulary. Grilled cheddar on cranberry walnut bread with rose petals wasn't a bad lunch.

After weeding the front yard of about a million thistles, I stopped just in time to avoid exhaustion and took a break to watch a little of the Tribe's loss to the White Sox, then came to my senses and took a short bike ride down by the reservoir, followed by a delicious Burning River pale ale and a shower. Gwen served leftover ratatouille, ooh la la! We talked about old friends with whom we have lost touch and some with whom we are back in touch. Thanks for the day.

Oxygen debt

It's unforgiving, like a form of justice that is completely honest and harsh in meting out the consequences of our actions.

It's reliable, like a reference that does not waver in its accuracy, does not sugar-coat the truth, and does not make exceptions or play favorites.

It's real, experiential, and fact-based. It's not a figment of your imagination or "just a theory" based on a hypothesis based on an ideology based on a belief system based on a cultural worldview.

It's fair, just, and equitable in its indifference to you, me, or anyone in particular who might otherwise be special. It's an equal-opportunity arbiter of training, preparation, and practice, practice, practice.

For example, if you walk, run, swim, or cycle every day for 30 minutes at x minutes per mile, the bodymind develops the ability and even the expectation to walk, run, swim, or cycle every day for 30 minutes at x minutes per mile, no more and no less. It's pretty amazing how muscles, bones, joints, heart, lungs, and neurons adapt to a consistent practice. It's like you have made a contract signed in sweat.

If you then walk, run, swim, or cycle for 40 minutes at x minutes per miles - or for 30 minutes at x-1 minutes per miles - more duration at the same intensity or the same duration at greater intensity - then we have a problem. You have overdrawn your energy account and come up short; you have exhausted your resources and have a balance due; you are out of funds halfway home. You are in oxygen debt.

National Poetry Writing Month (Day 28)

Is officially over.
Have you heard? It isn't April anymore. It's the second week of May.
Why are we still writing?

Unemployed writer replies:
Kafka worked in an actuarial office,
Eliot in a bank. They found time to write.

So I fell short by two days.
It was a game attempt in an unpredictable time,
all the better, thanks for asking.

NaPoWriMo Day 26: And they all need weeding

Open your eyes.
There are birds
in the peach trees,
yellow finches.
Now they're gone.

It sneaks up on you
like a cat that wants
to be scratched. Yet
once you get started, you
never know what will turn up.

I only have inside errands today.
My at rest is in motion, and
the most calming thing I can do
is to get up, clean up, order
my world, and get on with it.

Every potted plant is a little garden
inside the garden room in the
garden house that sits inside
a yard that is composed of
front, back, and side gardens.

NaPoWriMo Day 27: Taxonomies

If everything is miscellaneous,
then no existing structure,
system, or binomial nomenclature
governs particular groups
of individual things.
The game plan, or
organizing principle
is up to the players.
Is this revolutionary
or merely scientific?

Creating such a system
can take an Aristotelian,
deductive, a priori path:
a given set of types
defining whole classes
orders, families, geni, species
of individual items,
establishing the rules top-down
by theory-driven practice,
like Linnaeus (not his real name)

Or a Wittgensteinian,
inductive, pragmatic path:
a collection of prototypes
drawn from those items,
leaving open the definition
of the family resemblance
between similar examples
by practice-driven theory,
like Mao or Darwin or Dewey
(John not Melville).

NaPoWriMo Day 25: May Day

May Day is many things to many people.
As kids we drew pictures of May Poles
in school with people dancing around.
Newspapers showed black and white photos
parades of tanks and missiles in Red Square,
a patriotic display of hammers and sickles.

Then spring became a time for antiwar protest,
and May Day became an alarm again,
a call not to arms but to stop the war machine.
Was it Nixon who renamed it 'Law Day'
for congressmen to talk about order
and decry the dangers of disagreeing?

Ancient Celtic tradition had its Beltane
fertility ritual with fires and dancing
around a phallic pole, ribbons spreading
like petals around it. Warm weather returns,
seeds are sown, birds and bees make babies,
new growth begins and crops will be harvested.

My nontraditional May Day consisted
of working out in the yard, paying bills,
downloading and managing files,
riding a bike to the bank and the library,
reading the business section of the paper,
and listening to rain on the roof.

NaPoWriMo Day 24: Big O

What distinguishes the greatest players
from the many very good ones who
are merely the best at what they do?
I'll tell you: it's being the best at
several things and doing what needs to be done.

Oscar was the best passer (maybe ever)
and one of the best defenders; he led
the league in scoring, moved without the ball,
and could rebound with the best.
One year he averaged a triple-double!

Wilt was by far the best scorer,
maybe the best rebounder and defender
(when motivated), and he could dish out
assists at will, but not so consistent.

Michael, always motivated, had no peer
as a scorer or defender; he could pass
or rebound as needed, and
he willed his team to win.

Magic, more like Oscar, was pass first,
shoot second, run the floor, team defense,
rebound as needed, AND
he could play all five positions.

LeBron has to decide every night
whether to be the scorer, passer,
defender, or rebounder and how
to get his teammates involved.

I never saw Mikan play, but they say
he was unstoppable. I did see Cousy,
Russell, Jabbar, and Bird, possibly
the smartest players ever, if not the best.

Day 23: Ritual

The clearing of the cubicle begins:
make a pot of coffee although
no one else is in the office.
Remove mementos from fabric walls,
except for a couple of parting shots,
and purge papers from cardboard files,
shredding the confidential ones,
to leave an empty desk behind.

Pack a few books in boxes to take home;
some were used for reference, and some
are products you've had a hand in making.
Place precious photos in a clear plastic
envelope with clippings, cards, a pen or two,
and bits of memorabilia. Carry two boxes
out to the car, slip your card-key
under the door, and exit the building.

Day 22: Now's the Time

Charlie Parker's 'Now's the Time'
is a coherence theory of truth
not conforming to or dictating a
reality outside itself but
obeying its own internal laws
and logic with complete integrity.