Hemispheres

Can a fist fight be good? -- at least for self-understanding? I had one that was, I think.

I remember some scraps from boyhood, mostly while playing football with neighborhood friends. But there was one fight that I remember to this day because, in the middle of it, I became immediately aware of the significance of my thoughts. I was about ten.

It was fall and we were on a tree-lined field; our usual football arena. It was cold, getting close-up on winter. Everyone played the game hard, with that energy that kids radiate during their few hours of freedom under fall clouds and falling dark on a school night. 

The original "Rocky": Marciano

Something happened with an elbow -- he claimed it was mine -- and the other guy came after me, swinging maniacally.

The Old Bicycle Shop

When I was a kid, when things hadn't yet gone mega-hyper-extreme everywhere you turned, we used to take our bikes, for repairs, to a small bike shop five minutes from the house. We'd bought our bikes there and we always had them fixed there.

When I would walk in with my dad, a forest of bikes seemed to go on forever, though there were probably only twenty in the whole place; it was about the size of a big living room. My dad would take care of the business with the mean lady and her mean husband who would both yell at me if I left fingerprints on the chrome, and I would wander around looking at the cool machines. Dad would pay, we'd leave, and I would go home and hop on my newly greased and tightened bike. It always felt like it went twice as fast as before.

The Real/Un-Real World Wide Web

I will begin by saying I know nothing about economics, especially on a global scale. Apparently, this ignorance contributes to my slack-jawed, head-shaking amazement upon finding out that chaos theory applies to naked Frenchmen; for, it seems, just as a butterfly flapping its wings on a teensy hill in, say, Iowa, can, in an eventual and non-linear sense, cause a hurricane, it seems that a naked Frenchman chasing a maid through a hotel and (allegedly) sodomizing her could lead to a global financial snafu.

In case you haven't heard, I am referring to the case of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. As you might have guessed, I am not going to dig into the news, because in the rare cases I mention "what's going on" I tend to use it as a springboard for considering our human situation, in general. This case will be no different.

Tragic Flaws and Eggshell Omelets

Last Friday, I wrote a piece called "Extra Lives" in which I proposed the idea that we all need to engage in activities that satisfy us -- activities that cater to the needs of the different elements of who we are: multidimensional beings of tremendous complexity. But when I thought back on it, it occurred to me that what I said could be seen superficially -- that it could seem like I am simply implying that we all need hobbies for stress relief.

I'm not talking about finding diversions. Diversions can be good for you, but they can also be dangerous. Too many years of diversions can set us up for a right cross from reality. For instance, finding an engrossing hobby can mean that while you spend every spare moment involved in that hobby, the rest of your life turns into a messy room you can't clean up without a front-end loader.

Extra Lives

One of the things I like to ponder from time to time, as you might have already gathered, is the question of why people wind up unhappy in life. I've presented a lot of possible reasons for this, but I was thinking, today, about the possibility that it may come down to not having enough lives to live.

In other words, we all tend to live various versions of our lives. In my case, the major breakdown is: dad, husband, musician, writer and teacher. These are almost presented in order of importance. "Dad" and "husband" are pretty interchangeable for the coveted number one spot, but necessity dictates that, while the little ones are little, they often need to be put first . . .