Category: cha-cha-changes

Oh my mortality

I had a doctor’s visit this morning. Nothing special, just a routine check up for blood pressure and all of that.

My doctor was running late so I had some time to sit and entertain myself.

When all my email was read on the iPhone and I’d caught up on Twitter, I started people watching. You know, people watching at a medical center is quite a thing. You see a lot…

Anyhow, pretty soon, a nurse came down the hall pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair.

They came into our waiting area and the nurse helped the man to get up onto his feet, and he then took a few steps with the aid of a cane.

As he shakily got to his feet, he said to the young nurse, “Who would have thought it would come to this, eh?”

He said it in a wry way, but it carried a deep note of sadness.

The man was, by all appearances, pretty healthy. He was probably in his late seventies and from what I could see, was suffering a very bad hip.

The nurse helped the man get settled into the seat, with a groan.

He gave me a weary smile and I smiled back.

The nurse said to the man, as she departed, “one of my patients told me that his best advice was simply this: just don’t get old.”

“Yes, certainly,” said the man, with a sigh.

The whole exchange made me a bit melancholy. I remember when my dad struggled with rapidly advancing lung disease. His mind was fine but his body crapped out on him way too early.

How angry that must make a person, your legs, your lungs, your eyes, your whatever body part you want to name just doesn’t work like you know it should.

Ugh.

And me. Still fairly young but full of the knowledge that I’m not taking care of myself as well as I should. Now is the time to tend to these things.

Time marches on, whether I’m keeping step with it or not.

And even now, I know some parts of this ol’ rig don’t work like they should. But I still have time.

Time to remember to enjoy my legs that still carry me easily, a heart that still beats strong. Lungs that take in air without coughing.

Yes. It was just a nice reminder, a needed wake up call.

Because one day I might be uttering to a kindly young nurse, “who would have thought it would come to this?”

Sorry for the sort of down post today. The rain and the doctor’s waiting room has me in a very thoughtful place.

Plot devices that no longer work

So, in the middle of the night last night, while I was *not* sleeping, I got to thinking about, well, phone booths.

And how there aren’t any around anymore.

Phone booths were such a key element to the plot lines of a LOT of books and movies.

For example, where would Superman be if not for the phone booth!

Where does mild mannered Clark Kent put on his blue tights these days?

Probably the bathroom at a Starbucks, but that’s not the point.

The point is, there are no phone booths on every city street corner anymore. Where are you supposed to take that random and creepy phone call? Where are you supposed to wait for the kidnappers to give you your next clue? How do you have an angry confrontation with a guido over how long you are on the phone? You don’t. Not anymore.

The movie “Crazy Heart” had a scene with a phone booth. It was by the side of a desolate road in New Mexico (playing the part of Arizona). It felt odd even in the context of the movie. It was in a weird location and had no wires leading to or from it.

It just didn’t work. The era of the phone booth is dead.

How many of our great stories told over the years involved a phone booth?

Or for that matter, payphones in general?

It’s just not the same.

The lonely cowboy with a stack of dimes trying to get his lady on the line, rain pouring outside the glass phone booth, operator intoning “fifty cents please” in a nasaly voice. That’s literature!

Cowboy flips open his mobile device and curses the low signal strength just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi, ya know?

And so then I thought about another lost plot device. The lockers in bus stations, train stations and airports. (ok, I already lamented their loss here, but I’m going there again.)

You know, the bad guy stashes the loot to cool it off, inserts a quarter, takes the key and no one is the wiser? Until the bad guy is bumped off and ANOTHER bad guy takes the key and tries to figure out where it goes so he can get the stash?

Oh yeah. That’s good suspense!

The movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” centered around the Rosanna Arquette character getting Madonna’s locker key that held her valise and that really cool jacket. Remember?

Yeah, we really don’t have those anymore, the quarter to rent a locker places. A few gyms have ’em and a local nature preserve has a few near the walking trails, but mostly people leave their stuff in their car or carry a backpack anymore.

Another good plot device, dead.

Oh, and how about meeting people at the gate at the airport!?!

How many great, dramatic scenes involve someone stepping off a plane and a loved one, bad guy, limo guy, complete stranger, detective, etc. is there waiting?

It’s just not quite as dramatic to have the waiting happen down at baggage claim where you hope you find the right person.

Or heck, really going back, how about waiting out on the tarmac while the starlet decends the metal stairs. Nope.

I won’t EVEN start down the road of the loss of manual transmission cars (I covered it here), but do you think Steve McQueen’s hot little green fast back Mustang in “Bullitt” was an automatic? Oh no, I don’t think so.

I know, I know. I’m being a fuddy duddy and time must always march on. But as a writer, I lament the loss of ANY good device to keep a story moving along….

Did you get healed?

Recently, driving around in the Jeep looking for something good to listen to on the radio, I began to think about a CD I own.

By thinking, I mean, wondering where it is. When The Good Man and I moved in together several years ago, I boxed up a lot of stuff and stored it away.

Over the years, occasionally I’ll remember something that I want or need and it’s a hell of a rodeo to find it.

So I put the thought out of mind. Whatever. It’s just a CD. I can probably find it on iTunes or at the library or something.

I tried to dismiss it.

But this thought came with a long strip of Velcro, and wouldn’t let go.

A voice in my mind kept asking, “Where is that CD? You need to listen to it.”

When you get a voice that adamant, it’s kind of hard to ignore.

But I tried.

And tried.

And failed.

Resigned to satisfying that damn voice so it would shut up, I suited up. Our storage is under the place we rent, and that happened to be a very cold and very rainy day.

Determined, under the house I went, poking around in boxes and bags, knocking stuff over and getting lost on that long winding lane called Memory.

Finally, I did find a very heavy box that had a bunch of CD’s, and also most of my VHS movies, that I’d packed away.

I heaved, grunted and lurched the box upstairs and started picking through it.

A lot of heavy memory stuff burbled to the top, clamoring for my attention, which I gave.

But nothing quieted the voice. I kept digging and finally, yes, I found the CD I was looking for.

Best of the Blues, Vol. 1

Yeah. A “best of” compilation. Forgive me ye Gods of the Blues.

I bought this CD back in 1997. I’d just moved to the Bay Area and some good friends (also New Mexico transplants) had introduced me to the thriving blues scene in San Francisco.

I only tangentially knew the music. I’d listened to some B.B. King, some Muddy Waters and some John Lee Hooker in my time. The popular stuff. The stuff everyone knows.

But back then, San Francisco was steeped in the old ways.

During the course of the next decade, I received what can only be called a Blues Education.

I watched some of the not only best blues musicians, but best musicians period, play in craptastic bars like the old Grant & Green (the remodel took the soul out of it) and of course The Saloon, the oldest continually operating bar in the beautiful City of San Francisco. It dates back to the 1861, which means it survived both the ‘quake of 1906 and Prohibition.

There were nights it was too cramped and too hot (and back then, too smoky) in The Saloon for my tastes, so I would step outside the front door. I was dating a musician at the time, so the dyspeptic doorman had to be nice to me. He would let me sit on his stool by the front door where he collected the cover charge.

I’d take his chivalrous gesture and lean back against the battered wood door. I could feel the driving beat in my spine, and I’d watch the fog roll over the tops of the buildings in North Beach.

I learned about the three Kings (B.B., Freddy and Albert).

I learned about Chicago blues, Delta blues and the just plain blues blues.

I heard a thousand different versions of “Matchbox” and “Shotgun” and I watched guys try to be both Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. I began to understand why some songs grab you by the gut and sometimes a song that should grab your gut doesn’t (hint: it has a lot to do with the drummer).

Today, I’m a suburban girl with a quiet, happy life. No regrets here. But sometimes I miss the family I made back then who took me in, protected me and helped me learn the old ways.

You know, they call it stormy Monday…but Tuesday’s just as bad.

This one musician, a hell of guitar player, used to tear it up for four hours, and at the end of the night, he’d ask the frenzied crowd, “Did you get healed?”

And he’d get crazy, drunken, full-throated hollers in return. The music mattered. It got us on a cellular level. We got healed.

I may need to see about a Saturday in North Beach soon, because something feels amiss. It may be time to go back and find if it’s possible to get healed.

Until then, I’ll take the ministrations from that ol’ CD found at the bottom of a moving box.

Image of Ron Hacker, arguably the best slide guitar man in SF and maybe even the world, onstage at The Saloon. (No, he’s not the guy I dated, I’m just a massive fan.)

Photo by Scott Palmer

Heartbroke no more

There’s this famous quote from this guy named Bart Giamatti. He was a baseball commissioner and had a bit of character.

Ol’ Bart was also a writer. He liked to put down in words what he felt about the game of baseball.

He was a true fan and had a lot to say.

At the end of every baseball season, one of his quotes from a work entitled “The Green Fields of the Mind” is trotted out and poured over by the faithful, including me.

The piece begins “It breaks your heart. It’s designed to break your heart.”

Bart’s talking about how baseball begins all fresh and new and sparkly, stays with you over the course of 162 games, and gives you a story arc that includes Spring, Summer, AND Fall and then goes away abruptly.

Finds you when it is warm, leaves you when it is wet and cold.

Sort of a fair weather friend, that.

And every October, I get a little down. The World Series ends, baseball isn’t on the radio anymore and I have to actually decide what to watch on TV instead of having it decided for me.

No longer do I worry over a pitcher’s arm or that catcher’s bum knee or why the hell that guy took that bad route to get to a routine fly ball.

Baseball leaves a big empty that cannot be refilled.

Like a whirlwind romance that fills my days with daydreams and my nights with passion and I get to thinking I could never live without it.

And then it leaves me.

But weirdly, baseball is a fickle lover.

Because come March, baseball finds it’s way back to my arms.

Yesterday, because I could feel the return on the wind, I engaged in my annual viewing of “Bull Durham.” It’s a preparatory event. An ablution. A ritual cleansing to prepare me for the return.

This morning I will have either “61*” or “The Natural” playing in the background while I work, to continue my readiness.

And then, today, at noon, or 12:05 actually, I will once again hear Duane Kuiper say “Giants baseball is on the radio.”

While it may only be a Spring Training game, some harmless flirtation and not the real thing yet, I will listen. I might even cry when I hear Jon Miller‘s voice (it’s happened before).

I will hear how Bengie Molina may or may not have lost weight. I will hear how our multi-million dollar Cy Young winning, dope smoking kid has fared in the off season. I will listen for details on the new kids and assessments on the old kids and I will find that yawning chasm inside of me will begin to quiet again.

Because today, my love has returned to me.

It broke my heart, but I will forgive and forget. I will give myself with reckless abandon, not caring that October looms somewhere out there. No, today I will pretend that it will never leave me again.

God I love baseball.

A rare bit of clarity from a cluttered mind

Ok, fine. I have New Year’s Resolutions. Sure I do. Doesn’t everyone?

I won’t list ’em out…I’d rather accomplish them and then gloat.

Don’t deny me the gloat.

Or, you know, fail miserably in solitude.

Anyhow. Since the first of the month, I’ve been working on a goal, slowly but surely.

Things are improving.

But I’ve made a rookie mistake.

Oh yes.

I got on the scale. A lot. I mean several times a day.

You know, there are some people in this world that are already in the groove of their personal health, and they tell me “well I weigh myself once a day and that gives me an idea of how to plan the day.”

Yeah. Good fer you.

I am not one of those people. I tend to, uh, well, a bit of OCD.

If once is good then eleventy kabillion is better, right? Right?

I mean once after you pee, after you shower, when you take a sip of water, when you sneeze, after blowing your nose, before dinner, after dinner, in the middle of the night when you are pacing the floor wondering why you are such a nutcase.

Trouble is, if you spend all your time looking at just the numbers and the results (how they fall short of goal), you are missing the most important part of the process.

(This may be why my last boss grew weary of me…she being ALL about the numbers.)

So yesterday, I weighed myself and I was pissed off. I mean, I’d weighed the day before and it was a yay! And then today it was a boo. One day? How can I go from yay to boo in ONE FRAPPING DAY?

Because you can. The body is funny that way. Especially the female body. Today is good, tomorrow is bloat, next day who knows.

So as I was fuming…my mind clicked in and my mouth took over, without my permission.

I shouted at myself:

GET OFF THE SCALE AND GET ON THE TREADMILL!

And I realized that has to be my new philosophy.

No more weighing. Screw that. I need to simply eat a little better and exercise a little more and when I feel good just…you know…allow myself feel good without ruining it.

And when I feel poorly, try to figure out how to feel good again.

And leave that g’damn scale in the closet.

I’m telling you, get off the scale, get on the treadmill has deeper meaning than just my expanding waistline.

It’s a new way of life.

How about get off refreshing my Esty page and get on some crafting?

How about get off the internets and get on some writing?

How about get off wishing and get on to doing?

And I’ve now redlined and revised every single one of my New Year’s Resolutions.

Get off the scale, get on the treadmill.

Meaning…Karen, stop dithering and start doing!

And *then* you get to gloat.

I will SO do the superior dance (for those who remember Dana Carvey’s character, the Church Lady) when I make all of my 2010 goals.