To Do or Not To Do

This sequestered quarantine time, however painful, can be seen as a unique opportunity for self-discovery, change and reinvention.  These new, weird times will change what we choose To Do, how and when we do it and ultimately who we are as person.  My wife and I are in this lock-down for the long run together so we have made our endless To Do lists and have gotten used to this new pace of lonely life.  We have been semi-retired almost 10 years, so we are kind of used to our free time and a deliberate lifestyle but this seems a little different - forced or imposed.  But we are also getting good at scraping the To Do list sometimes, letting the day come to us.   We wake up with a semi deliberate plan and a few choice things to accomplish but we remain flexible for changes and adjustments. Sometimes our days are upside down with restful mornings and active afternoons.  As the say, a change is as good as a rest.

 We try to get out in the sun a few times a day, when it is nice, so we schedule our reading and writing, fixing and painting around the weather and long dog walks.  We see our friends out on the trail and walking in the hood, everyone is walking and biking, but we stay apart and don’t shake or hug.  That elbow or ankle tap is kind of weird, so we don’t bother, but we opt rather for a virtual hug with eye contact and no funny faces, kind of like an Italian toast, without wine or touching. We have had a few people over for dinner, young and less than 10 of them, and it feels different, risky, inappropriate but we are wicked daredevils.  We are trying to pivot to the new reality but cannot give up our old busy ways completely and wonder if they will ever come back fully.

It is now almost a relief from the old constant pressures to be busy and travel, spend tons and work hard to go to places and do things that keep us educated and enlightened.  This is our constant battle for meaningful self-stimulation or entertainment as well as new and different things To Do.  Someone said that leisure time is the bane and burden of the upper and lower classes, for different reasons.  I think it was Oscar Wilde or Adam Smith or me.  I guess the middle class is too busy working.  Nowadays we all can just try to be, or not to be, without shame or incrimination, and dabble with what it means to be human and ourselves.  As James Taylor said, ‘The secret to life is enjoying the passage of time.’

Nonetheless we still write our To Do lists to give structure to our amorphous days and existential meaning to our lives  Some of us are more OCD about it than others and love to write our lists and cross off items as we complete them and move on to the next item.   If we do something not on our list, we put it on the list and cross it off triumphantly.  We are anal retentive, for lack of a better description, and we covet closure, compartmentalization, symmetry and completeness.  Franklin Day Planners made millions on this concept years ago teaching everyone to write lists and cross off completed chores and then forward unfinished lists dutifully to the next day.  The Franklin people hated James Taylor.

Others like to complete only 80-90% of each task and keep them on their To Do list forever, perhaps as a hedge against running out of things To Do.  This is a common human trait, the opposite of OCD.  Would this be called openness, impulsive or renal explosive?  I find that I am tending to the later these days, putting things off, practicing procrastination and solving problems slowly and deliberately, saving things To Do.  Procrastination, I am finding, is under rated since it lets us gather more advice and data about the chore, letting the problem incubate and come to us in its own time, sometimes solving itself. Who knew?

Here are some general suggestions from my own OCD To Do list, in no particular order, on how to organize, prioritize and spend your endless days.  Or not.

Take a walk.  Take a hike. Ride a bike.  Jog.  Nap.  Have sex.  Make Love.  Meditate, Do Yoga.  Do something new.  Learn to ride a motorcycle, mountain bike, snowboard board or  horse.  Ski. Surf, skate, knit, golf.  Plant a garden.  Play the guitar or the sax.  Adapt, Improvise, Overcome, Improve, Reinvent.  Make a new friend, support an old one.  

Get a new house.  Fix up your old house.  Paint the house, inside and out.  Stain all your wood.  Rake the lawn, trim the trees, fix the fence, clean up the dog poop.   Wash and wax the car.  Learn to shop, cook and clean - Naaahhh.

Go fishing.  Go skating.  Fly a kite.  Get a hobby.  Collect something - stamps, coins, antlers or rocks.  Learn a new skill or language.  Learn how to write code.  Improve yourself and others around you.

Purge everything. Clean the basement, shed, garage or barn. Sell your stuff or give it away, people need it.  Buy new stuff if you have coin, the economy needs it.  Share your wealth, health and blessings. 

Read a book.  Write a book.  Write a memoir for your kids.  Write a novel for yourself.   Write a Journal.  Start a blog or podcast.  There is a lot of stupid crap out there.  Don’t be shy, you can’t be much worse.  Write long emails and texts.   Share your knowledge and wisdom. Share your spirit and enthusiasm.

Write old fashion letters or talk in person or on the telephone to family, friends and loved ones. It’s all we really have. It’s all we really need, To Do.

Water and Whatever: Mud-Season

Water and Whatever: Mud-Season: Woke up, it was a Chernobyl morning   and the first thing I heard   was an earthquake chorus under my bed  and a thunder-snow sto...

Mud-Season

Woke up, it was a Chernobyl morning

 and the first thing I heard

 was an earthquake chorus under my bed

 and a thunder-snow storm wrote the sound.   JM.

No shit, we had an earthquake Tuesday morning in a snow storm, replete with lightning, thunder and a wind storm that sounded like a freight train outside of the house.  It came just after first light, that was grey and dingy, bleak, with pissy rain-snow and a cold north wind.  The third day into our quarantine, our national sequestration against the virus, it felt like we were in an oppressive communist state. The end of days.

But I do a disservice to the people of Chernobyl who woke up to a nuclear accident and subsequent contamination that was measured in Scandinavia and killed perhaps 100,000 although only 100 were officially reported.   Sure we are on lock down from a deadly virus, our economy is in the tubes and we don’t know how this will affect us or when this will end, but it still beats living in Chernobyl, I like to think.

We have our first world complaints here in Park City.  It’s mud-season, between winter and spring in the mountains, but the ski resorts are all closed despite a 10 foot base and a half foot of new snow each day.  The trails are all muddy, the backyard is full of 6 months’ worth of dog crap and downed branches while the roads and bike paths are all too wet and cold for a road bike, mountain bike or motorcycle.  

I used to spend the entire mud season at the Alamo or The Club, drinking endless beers, watching the Islanders and then Wayne Gretzky win Stanley Cups.  Now there is no freaking NHL!  It feels like suspended in-animation.  The town has cleared out of workers and tourists and is ghost town empty with a spooky feeling, like Mayberry RFD with snow and no Opie.

After watching some panicky TV coverage of the earthquake with shockey, neophyte field-reporters frantically running around, showing clueless, hard-hat workers catatonic-ally picking up bricks underneath a wall half-collapsed.   People deal with stress and catastrophe differently and not always logically.  I get it that the quake was more severe and freaky in SLC but It seemed almost comical - since no one died or got hurt.  One wide shot showed five TV correspondence together with all of them looking at their phones, reading what they found.  If I need the news, I guess I can look at my own phone, so I turned off the TV.  We have a new rule during sequestration… no TV or drinking before 500 PM.

So we did what any red, white and blue blooded American would do, we took a hot tub until the sun came out and then took a long walk in the meadow and counted our blessings.  Many have it much worse.  The sun, sky and the clouds were refreshingly immune to everything below and the earth laughed and breathed a sigh of relief that mother nature was finally getting even with those who continually ignore her.  Economic collapse, earthquakes and extinction are options. The end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine.

Changing Ocean and Beach

I can’t help but notice that the ocean is both intimidating and comforting at the same time.  It is dynamic and ever changing. It’s size and power is unimaginable and sometimes overwhelming while its rhythms and tempos are soothing and uplifting.  The ocean is a force of nature powered by the sun and the wind, moon and the stars.  It has a personality and purpose to be respected, revered and relished.

The changes in illumination where the sea meets the sand are a picture of rolling rainbow colors and moods.  The happy-clear, reflected blue-brightness of midday is contrasted by the mystery and menace of midnight, even when punctuated by a full moon or the Milky Way.  The contrasting clouds and storms can paint this impressionistic picture a melancholic grey or dramatic black and white, to suit the mood.

The waves add a schizophrenic face to the surface of the sea. This face is at times calm, smooth and peaceful, other times choppy, confused and random while occasionally it is incomprehensibly huge, thundering and powerful.  This face is painted by the wind and tides, seashore and continental shelf but is shifting constantly with the caprice and whims of Mother Nature under the universal laws of Father Physics.

This ocean power is what forms and changes the beach.  Four times a day with the tides.  Four times a year with the seasons and several times a year with the big storms.  Sand and slope come and go, kelp and seaweed lines rise and fall while random deposits of debris and detritus constantly surprise us with their variety and unpredictability.   You can never step on the same beach twice.

The waves and tides, winds and skies make the beach different every day, which excites us with our anticipation of its variations and fascinates us in its diversity yet reassures us in its consistency of change .  The only thing you can count on is change.

Whistling and Fishing

We saw the Ferrari vs Ford film last night and I confess that I cried at random parts.  Maybe I’m getting old but I cry in movies all the time now.  I know that this was a true story (spoiler alert) but did they have to have Ken Miles lose the race and die too.  I usually cry for beauty, truth and kindness but now it’s for Bruce, bravery, mentoring, inquisitive kids, sad wives, fast cars and of course dogs and all other animals, except cats.

The other day I was over at my new neighbors and the kids had new K-mart fishing poles that needed setup.  Mom was busy and frantic so I said I would help if the kids said please and thank you.  I set up 6 year old Ruby’s rod and she skipped off to the creek to fish.  Three year old Boon was next and as I threaded his fishing pole eyelets and attached the giant fake hook, I sang John Prine’s - Whistling and Fishing in Heaven song.

Father forgive us for what we must do
You forgive us and we'll forgive you
We'll forgive each other 'til we both turn blue
And we'll whistle and go fishing in the heavens.

Fish and whistle, whistle and fish
Eat everything that they put on your dish
When we get through we'll make a big wish
That we never have to do this again, again? again?

When I finished a wide eyed Boon asked me to sing it again, again and again and he tried to help me.  He was so cute and innocent that it brought a tear to my eye but when his mom came around the corner laughing, she brought the house down.  The point is that I’m a sad and sorry sot, easily bemused.  I still cry at "Rudy", every time.

Back to the movie, dynamic Christian Bale acts circles around cardboard Matt Damon and Lee Iaccoca is inserted for his name recognition as much as Ford and Coca-Cola are splattered across the screen.   If they are going to do so much branding, they could show a real Shelby Mustang named after the Matt Damon character or relate how Iaccoca eventually saved Chrysler as well as Ford.  

All the actors had strong moments but there were times when they seemed to stop acting well, perhaps because of poor dialogue or directing.  The sole female role of the wife had only one shining scene when she was racing around in her Country Squire to punish her husband for his quiet secrecy, and she knocked it out of the ballpark.   The movie, like the story and the times, was male dominated and that felt hollow in this modern world.

The stereotypical evil corporate controller part was a bit overdone as well but set up the conflict of good and evil and gave us a premeditated excuse for the tragic loss of the big race at the end. The cheap shots at the new Mustang design were undeserved and its unveiling could have been a nice Iaccoca sub plot in the film since it was all about saving Ford.  In the end it was about the people, characters and their story, since Ford did very well before and after this story happened and these legendary guys may just bend up as corporate speed bumps in the overall Ford story.

This film was a fun ride and the sound and cinematography was excellent, especially the early bumper level racing sequences.  The classic 50’s and 60’s period shots were tremendous and the small town, small track California scenes were bittersweet and nostalgic.  It all hearkens back to an early, simpler time when men were men, cars were cars and heroes were heroes.  This was a herculean effort and a real hero of a movie.

However, the best driving from that movie occurred on our way to the show.  I was driving the camper van when I saw, no, I felt a large 20 long SUV moving up fast on my right to try to impossibly pass me in a 14 foot space before ramming the stopped cars in front of him.  As usual, I knew my position and the position of all around me, since I am an excellent driver, so I swerved almost subconsciously as far left as I felt I could without hitting others and the crazy guy slipped into the limited space and avoided the inevitable catastrophe.  He sped away unscathed but my wife remarked on the tragedy narrowly averted by complimenting my driving, for the first time, ever.

They don’t make movies like this anymore that on the surface are totally enjoyable but have a subtle message underneath.  Movies that hit the punch line and don’t lose the teaching moments to dribble away in lame dialogue.  Movies where the guy kisses the girl in the fog at the train station and does not just say 'I'll see you around'.

Spielberg is the master of this with his simple depiction of the perfect split level California home with the happy loving, slightly dysfunctional but perfect family in the new subdivision with cookie cutter houses and the American dream.  The occupants are all willingly ignorant of the big picture cost of this lavish, conspicuous consumption American lifestyle and mindless growth but blissfully participate in it for the next great adventure.

In the early eighties Spielberg was making nature films before we knew what climate change was, he was making family films before there was a crisis of connubial confidence and he was making Nazi films before there was Trump.    Was Jaws a Melvillian man against nature or common man against local government film?  Was Indiana Jones just an adventure film or overstated anti Nazi.  Was Close Encounters a film about family madness or space invaders. 

I thought ET was about kids and spacemen, but it is apparently about the adversarial relationship between man and nature, the effects of our thoughtless growth and consumption with its affects on other creatures.  It’s also about the evil government and authority effects on the innocents. But is ET really Jesus?  He descends from heaven and is left here by his father, he becomes man – merged with Elliot, he is recognized and appreciated only by the innocents, he does miracles, flies, heals cuts and dying plants – he is life, he dies, is resurrected by the love of Elliot and ascends back to heaven to sit with the father.   Who knew?

I even thought Game of Thrones was about dragons, incest, gratuitous nudity and head chopping violence.  Now I hear that it’s about Climate Change - Winter is coming.  It is the World War I transition from feudal contentious warring tribes and families to the new method of building consensus and alliances united nations.  It takes the old Hammurabi code of an ‘eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' to the Christian philosophy of 'turn the other cheek and love your enemies'. 

And finally, I thought Bagger Vance was about golf but it's really about being our authentic selves in concert with the real world as we perceive it.    What does it all mean?  What makes us laugh, what makes us cry, what makes us think, what makes us lie?  I don't know.  I'll just whistle and go fishing in Heaven. 

Live and Learn

Heading over Teton Pass recently in a raging snow storm, I am reminded of an earlier time coming over this same pass in 1979 as a greenhorn.  We were 21, indefatigable, indestructible east coast preppies and we were trying to make it back to Jackson Hole from Targhee during a fierce storm in my big old 1969 Country Squire Station Wagon.  ‘The Green Monster’, as we called it, was a stripped down version without the wood panels or the backwards barf seats in the rear, but it was mine, it was paid for and it was a beast.  The FM converter was blasting some bootleg Grateful Dead out of Jackson and the car was littered with beers, boots, burgers, skis, a shovel and one sleeping bag.  We may have been young and dumb ski bums but we were not stupid. 

On our first try over the pass, we stalled halfway up behind some conservative old guy in a boxy silver Volvo with New Hampshire plates who foolishly slowed and stopped when he could not see anymore.  ‘Live Free or Drive’ we yelled at him. With only rear wheel drive we could not continue the climb without good momentum, so we backed into a U-turn, getting out to push our car and help the frightened New Englander do the same, and we headed back down in defeat towards the calm flats near Victor and Driggs, Idaho.   

Not to be dismayed, at the bottom of the grade we pulled another Kojack style U-turn and headed back to the pass at full speed.  I positioned my three passengers and all our equipment in the back over the rear wheels for maximum traction.  As we came around a blind corner, we saw a guy in a bus driver’s uniform taking a pee in the roadside snowbank.  WTF we thought, before it was a thing.  When we came around the next corner, we found his bus stuck in the snowbank on the right side of the road with all its passengers milling about helplessly in the road and on the shoulder.  Knowing we could not stop I started beeping the horn wildly and waving frantically as they scrambled and jumped into the safety of the snowbank.   

My buddies were howling in the back, praying and pushing down with all their weight on the spinning rear wheels.  We barely made it over the Teton pass successfully on that second try and coasted sown past the Glory chute and into the Jackson Motel-6 ($13.99?) just in time for happy hour and Gong Show reruns.  Persistence pays.  Youth is not wasted on the young, it is a prerequisite.  

Now I’m heading north to Montana for another ski trip in a modern, four-wheel-drive German sedan. I feel that I have come a long way in 40 years of driving and skiing and living in the north, snow country.  The road is bad but the car is good and I make my way up and down Teton pass towards Driggs.  I am passed only by local contractors with super beefy, studded Wyoming snow tires that grip and rip the ice.  Those guys aren’t kidding.

The snowplow drivers are out closing roads in the Teton River valley, with big gates at critical intersections, but they allow me thru with a wink and a nod, ‘at my own risk’.  I make my way towards Henrys Fork, Island Park and Montana, but the last cop in Ashton Idaho says the road is closed over the top and there is no way I’m going up.  So, I double back to Rexburg to hit the Freeway, the only way north for a hundred miles.   The freeway is open with a one lane ice rink heading north into the dark winter weather and people are cowardly bailing off the exits and accidentally into the center divider, likes rats from a burning ship.  After a while I am all alone, heading north into the mouth of the beast storm.

The Freeway is sketchy, at best, with blowing ground-snow and white-out conditions.  Visibility is 50 feet and at times going over the Mon-Ida pass I am completely blinded by a full face-shot, for what seems like 5-10 seconds.  None-the-less when I look down at the speedometer, I am going 60 mph along with a white knuckle trucker that are foolishly following me.  It is Montana after all, where the speed limit is -  ‘Safe and Prudent’.  What does that Mean?

It is high stress driving and I have to pee like a racehorse, but I don’t dare slow or stop at the exit or on the soft shoulder.  I soldier on, for what seems like hours,  until somewhere near Lima Montana, I pop out of the cloud cover and the snow slows to a mere blizzard.  I can see mountains and blue skies and a few other cars and I know that I have been miraculously delivered, once more.  I stop to pee and stretch and count my lucky stars.  I make my way towards civilization and a friend’s house for a weekend skiing the frigid ma and pa resorts of Montana.  Persistence pays off again.  Live and learn.  Or not.

Eva-lution

After another great powder day skiing in Utah’s Wasatch mountains, I was soaking in my backyard hot tub enjoying the orange-pink alpenglow hues on the surrounding hills. I had spent the day charging ahead of the maddening crowd with good friends, outflanking the competition, seeking untracked runs while searching and destroying pockets of pow.  My soaking was a fitting respite from the dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest war that is the new age, powder day at our crowded, corporate ski resorts.  I was complacent after enjoying some of my favorite old haunts and ski lines by thinking outside the box and trying new and different strategies for survival and optimization.  Zig when they zag.  Evolve or lose. 

My brand new puppy Eva was out in the backyard with me, exploring the trenches I had stomped for her in the virgin snow.  A soft, black cattle dog nearly 8 weeks old and only two days removed from her mother, siblings and heated barn bedding, she knows only snow and has never seen or smelled the ground.  She is fascinated with our us, our house and with the heat that comes up magically from a vent in the floor. 

As she snuggled the pure powder and pounced on imaginary leaves and mice, I saw her look up quizzically with a flake frosted face and follow a shape across the evening sky.  I looked up as well and saw our local Barn Owl glide by, with his silent four-foot wing span fully extended and his head down, not twenty feet off the ground, considering and calculating.  I jumped from the tub, in all my naked-isity, and scooped up young Eva from the fresh, white snow.  I stashed her quickly back into the safe warm house.  She needed more time to grow and learn, experience and analyze this Darwinian world.  We will both live and learn and evolve to see another powder day.