Wild Bears and Potted Plants

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A week or so ago, my brother Dave texted a photo of a bear edging along the deck railing of his house in Colorado. Even in an area where bears are common, the presence of a 200-pound animal a few feet from the sliding glass doors is enough to trigger the flight or fight response.

In this case, the bear posed no threat — it was trolling for seed fallen from a bird feeder — but it’s interesting how life offers a reality check, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

A potted plant, for example.

When I get up in the morning, I open the blinds on all the windows in my 1924 bungalow. I want as much light in the house as I can get. But as the weather has gotten warmer — high today is predicted for 90 degrees — I now angle the blinds to admit as much light as possible while also blocking direct sunlight.

New Life

In the living room, however,I make an exception.

For years I have had a potted plant in the living room — a lily of some sort — and other than watering it occasionally, I’ve done nothing to encourage it.

And for years it eked along, never flowering, just surviving.

But about a year ago, I moved it directly under the living room window, and it has come alive. When I raise the blinds, brilliant sunlight splashes onto extravagant and outstretched green leaves, and I am amazed at how expansive and exuberant the plant seems.

It has become a daily reality check, and a challenge. The plant is doing great, but how am I doing?

Or, to stay with the analogy, have I raised the blinds on my own life?

Answer: not completely.

Holding Back

As an imperfect being with a highly elevated sense of my own failings, I know that I have spent my life holding back.

Years ago, I did a weekend men’s retreat with Dan Millman, author of “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.” At the end, we broke a board with our hands, after first writing on it what we wanted to break through.

I wrote, “Holding back.”

I broke the board, but not the habit, and it was too many years later before I finally found a process that leads to the recovery of my authentic self. A process, I should add, that’s still in progress.

The morning ritual with the blinds reminds me that I’ve got limited time left on the planet and way too much left in the tank. Doubts and fears haven’t disappeared by any means, but I’ve had my time in the dark. I’ve got to open the blinds every day.

Or, bringing it back to bears — real and metaphorical — German filmmaker Werner Herzog put it this way recently in an interview with Carlos Watson: “Get used to the bear behind you.”

 

 

Muhammad Comes to the Newsroom

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Courtesy wallsdesk.com

It is January, 1981, and I’m sitting at my desk in the feature section of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin where I’m a feature writer and weekly sports columnist. Across from me, our desks abutting each other, is Roger Wise, our TV editor.

Roger is leaning on his arms, and I’m leaning on mine, and we’re deep in conversation when suddenly he looks up, his eyes widen and his mouth falls open.

I start to turn around, but someone puts an arm around my neck and holds me gently in a headlock.

I glance down and see a large fist. A large black fist.

Hawaii is a crossroad: people of Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Samoan, Fijian, Tongan, Vietnamese, and Laotians descent mingle with Caucasians from New Zealand to the US mainland to England and Germany. But there are virtually no African-Americans in the islands except those stationed in the military.

The fist, I am sure, does not belong to anyone in the military, so I have no earthly idea who it could be. So as the hold relaxes, I turn my head to look up and I am amazed

“Muhammad!” I blurt out.

It is Muhammad Ali, former heavyweight champion of the world and the most recognizable person on the planet, Pope John Paul II notwithstanding.

Schmoozing the media

Now it begins to make sense.

Ali retired in 1976, but started fighting again the following year because he said he needed the money. Just three months earlier before he came to Honolulu, he fought Larry Holmes in Las Vegas despite warnings about his health — he had a kidney condition, was beginning to stutter and his hands trembled. He performed so badly in losing that Nevada was rumored to be preparing to suspend his license.

He is in Hawaii hoping to get permission from the state boxing commission to fight an unknown British boxer named John L. Gardner.  Someone in Ali’s camp obviously thinks Hawaii hasn’t gotten the news and will allow him to fight again.

The state boxing commission is across the street from the building that houses the Star-Bulletin and our competitor, the Honolulu Advertiser. So after making his case to the commission, Ali has come to schmooze with the media.

That’s how he found his way into the building. What led him into our untidy little corner of the newsroom, and why he picked me out for a headlock is anybody’s guess. But he got what he was looking for.

Long-term Consequences

I wrote a column about him a few days later, devoting most of the space to scorning Hawaii’s commission for tabling Ali’s request until Nevada decided about his license. Ali knew what was best for Ali, I wrote, and everyone else ought to get out of his way.

Ali did get another fight, but not in Hawaii.  In December of that same year, he fought against a Canadian named Trevor Berbick in the Bahamas, and lost that one, too.

But that was yet to come, and I was wrong about saying that Ali knew what we best for himself, although perhaps by that time it was already too late. In 1984, the consequences of all the blows Ali took to the head over the years became apparent when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s syndrome.

By 1996, the disease had progressed so dramatically that when he lit the torch at the opening of the Olympic Games in Atlanta, his trembling and shaking were so pronounced and painful to watch it made me cry.

By early 2013, he could no longer speak and in 2016 he died at the age of 74.

Oddly enough, he was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in the leafy old Highlands section of Louisville, Kentucky, about a quarter of a mile from where I lived for seven years in the 1970s. I never met Ali during that period, but I did see him speak at an outdoor gathering in 1974. He was brash and funny and high-spirited that afternoon, and promised the crowd that during his upcoming fight with Joe Frazier, “I’m gonna stick to his ass like white on rice.”

No Place for Pollyannas

The column I wrote after his newsroom visit focused on his right to fight and touched only briefly on his appearance in the newsroom. I did report that people hugged and kissed him, posed for pictures with him and asked for his autograph, but I didn’t do him justice.

A pause here for context. I worked in five different newsroom during my career and visited at least half a dozen others. Generally speaking, they were not uplifting environments. Desks were gray or beige steel with black formica tops. The desks were covered with notebooks, newspapers, pens, books, old clippings, books, wire service reports and so forth.

Well into the 1970s, we wrote with typewriters on long rolls of off-white newsprint with carbons slipped between the rolls. When finished, you tore the story off the roll, revised it by pencil, cut and pasted the final version together, handed one copy to the editor and impaled the carbon on an upright, steel spike protruding from a lead base. (Spiking injuries were not uncommon.)

Lighting was creepy fluorescent blue-white, the walls were dull, and the floors carpeted with dark, industrial strength textiles. Newsrooms could be exciting places, especially when a story was breaking, but the dominant vibe was restrained, understated and even deflating.

Journalists were paid to be skeptical, but some drifted into the soul-deadening embrace of cynicism. In that very newsroom where Ali stood surrounded by admirers sat a copy editor who had taped to the side of his video display terminal this bruising affirmation: “Life is easier when you only dread one day at a time.”

Wide Open and Alive

That’s what made Ali’s visit special. When he was young, Ali bragged about being beautiful, but what I saw that day wasn’t physical beauty, and it wasn’t about anything he said, because with one exception he didn’t say anything memorable. It was about the energy of the moment.

Here he was, many times a world champion, famous beyond measure, widely admired and beloved as few human beings ever are, and yet he seemed genuinely joyful at spending a few minutes in the twilight gloom of a mediocre newspaper.

At first Ali seemed subdued, but as admirers encircled him, he lit up, and he lit up the newsroom. He basked in the excitement of his admirers, and beamed his delight back them. He was the sun, they were the stars. It was such a joyful moment, I found myself watching my colleagues more than Ali.

“They try to steal my charisma,” he joked.

I don’t think so. We all arrived at that moment with back stories — our assets and defects, our cares and concerns, our joys and sorrows and, with a nod to a certain copy editor, our dreads.

But for a few beautiful moments it wasn’t about any of that. It was about setting everything else aside, being human and real and connecting.

The beautiful thing about Ali was his gift for being childlike, for being wide open and alive, totally in the moment. I don’t know if he ever thought about it, but instinctively he understood that the only way to enjoy that gift was to give it away, to share the moment with people who were as jazzed as he was.

I saw Ali fight many times, and as great as he was, all his victories, all the money, all the fame and wealth were nothing next to those few beautiful, life-affirming moments in the newsroom.

The Writing on the Wall

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Men’s rooms were not created for entertainment, but some members of the species have demonstrated over the decades — and probably the centuries — that they think otherwise.

One of the most memorable instances occurs in The Catcher in the Rye, where seeing the F-word on the wall of a museum men’s room sends Holden Caulfield into an epic rant. Truth is, Caulfield was a neurotic, sexually frustrated 16-year-old; a lot of things set him off. If he were a neurotic, sexually frustrated 16-year-old in today’s world, social media trolls would probably make him homicidal.

But fictional character though he may be, Caulfield’s dismay is well taken. Other than the prim reminder that “Employees must wash hands,” the writing on men’s room walls tends to be crude, insulting and banal. It’s a Darwinian reminder that the species is still evolving, and that many of those who have been de-selected have not yet dropped by the wayside.

Eventually, the graffiti will be painted over, unlike the cave drawings in France, which were the work of actual primitives as opposed to primitive thinkers.

Clever Request

On rare occasions, though, higher intelligence visits the men’s room.

In a bar several years ago, the men’s room wall had the front page of the day’s sports section framed and hanging above the urinal. We’re not talking about the The New Yorker here, but it was a thoughtful intervention between man and his lesser self. The obvious question is, what’s on the wall now that no one reads newspapers?

In another case, the management of the place I was in — and I have no recollection what kind of place it was, or even what (geographical) state I was in — asked the patrons to cooperate with this clever request:

“We aim to keep this place clean. Your aim will help.”

A message like that makes a guy want to do his part. Cleaning men’s room has got to be a thankless job, and anybody who approaches it with humor deserves the best marksmanship a guy can muster.

But what I saw on the wall of the men’s room at Get Scene Studios in Atlanta recently raises men’s room graffiti to entertainment if not art itself. Get Scene is an acting studio, and the creatives in the building obviously take their work — and their hygiene — seriously.

Superheroic Intervention

Hanging above the urinals were posters of Wolverine and Thor. Below and between them was a cut-out of the Hulk. All three superheroes were in action.

Wolverine is charging full-tilt and brandishing a menacing fist. Hulk, in mid-air with his legs pulled up beneath him, is poised to deliver a devastating double-fisted blow. Thor, left foot planted and his cape flying, has already hurled his hammer — directly at the viewer.

But this wasn’t just idle Superhero fan worship. They were up there for a reason.

Between Wolverine and Thor was an exploding, cartoon-style speech balloon that read, “FLUSH OR BE ….” And the thought was completed in a smaller balloon pasted beneath Thor’s weapon: “HAMMERED!”

It would be nice to think that the next time I visit a men’s room, I might find something similarly inspired, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

 

A Year of Memoirs

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I’ve been reading memoirs for year or so with the idea that, sufficiently informed, I’ll be able to write one of my own.

Why write a memoir? What makes me think that my story is that interesting? The first thing that comes to mind is the tagline to “Naked City,” a police drama from the late 1950s and early ‘60s that went: “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This is one of them.”

As a journalist, I discovered that’s pretty accurate. Get to know someone well enough, and inevitably there’s a good story. I met and wrote about a lot of famous people, but I also met and wrote about a lot of people who were not famous, but who had or did one thing that distinguished them and made them interesting.

I think of the guy who owned the biggest tow truck on Oahu. I interviewed the mothers of Hunter S. Thompson and James Taylor. I met a British guy who twice rowed across the Pacific, crashing once on Maui and then on the Great Barrier Reef. I met the co-author of a book called “The Secret Life of Plants” that inspired a Stevie Wonder album.

I interviewed the chief scientist at IBM, a poet teaching school on Molokai, a photographer who did books of aerial photographs. I met puppeteers in Kentucky, a horse whisperer in South Carolina, and a high school kid in Connecticut who gave a bootleg graduation speech and got a blank diploma. That last story won a national award.

Challenging and Risky

My own story isn’t just all the famous and interesting people, although they have obvious appeal. What I’ve realized is that for a guy who considers himself risk-averse, I’ve had far more than my share of challenging and even risky experiences.

That includes two life-threatening experiences, neither of which were among the three shootings I witnessed. It doesn’t include flying in an F-4F jet fighter — that was the ride of a lifetime, but never life-threatening — but it does include kayaking the Na Pali coast of Kauai, and being pushed helplessly toward the rocky coastline while the other person in the kayak worried about getting her nails wet.

My year of reading memoirs began when a friend loaned me Stephen King’s “On Writing,” which is a memoir and King’s take on writing. Being averse to terror and horror stories, I’ve avoided King’s books and the films they spawned. But I’d seen references to “On Writing” and I’m glad I took the chance.

I found King to be likable, open and honest, and his lack of pretense encouraging. The biggest problem I have with the idea of writing about myself is that I keep thinking I’ve got to get better somehow, that I don’t measure up yet. It’s my mother saying, “Stand up, you’re slouching.”

King was encouraging in that regard, even admitting that when starting a project, often all he can do is lie on the picnic table in his back yard until the words start coming. I’d buy him a beer on the strength of that alone.

Conroy, Gaiman, McCourt

I’m no fan of Pat Conroy’s fiction, but in “My Reading Life” and the posthumous “A Low Country Heart,” he is at his open-hearted best, celebrating the justifiable joy he feels at making it as a writer. He also lavishes praise on every other writer he ever knew or read, whether he met them or not. No one was more generous than Conroy.

Neil Gaiman’s “The View from the Cheap Seats” was a surprise. I tried reading one of his fantasies and one of his graphic novels, but couldn’t stay with them. “View,” on the other hand, is a wonderful omnibus of journalistic pieces, reviews, speeches, and reminiscences that reveal his versatility and off-hand artistry. I was particularly impressed that he could be so honest and vulnerable, considering his British upbringing. Gaiman has no trouble being Gaiman, although given his brilliance who could blame him?

I’d seen Frank McCourt’s name over the years, but knew nothing about him. Then I happened upon a used copy of “Tis,” and now I get it. He’s an amazing writer with a touching, soulful style that makes non-fiction read like the best fiction.

It also reminds me of a joke I heard years ago from a visiting Irishman: “God created alcohol to keep the Irish from ruling the world.” That’s not to say that McCourt’s an alcoholic — although he admits to loving a drop — but rather to endorse that wonderful Irish personality.

Alda, Katz, Forsyth

I read Alan Alda’s “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed” primarily because I do some acting and I thought I might pick up a tip or two. I did, and it works equally well in life: listen carefully to the other actor and respond, not because it’s time for your line, but because you’ve connected at a deep level. Then the next line comes naturally.

Also, I loved Alda’s description of the M*A*S*H cast as a close-knit family.

Jon Katz’s “Running to the Mountain” was helpful in seeing how a former CBS producer clung fiercely to his dreams of being a writer and succeeded, against all odds and his own self-doubt. I wearied of his devotion to Thomas Merton, but honor his love of nature and dogs.

Finally, Frederick Forsyth’s “The Outsider” was a fast and engaging read, and especially meaningful since he spent so much time as a journalist. Forsyth was a prodigy with amazingly supportive parents and earned his Royal Air Force wings before he was 19. He wrote “The Day of the Jackal” in thirty-five days at 40 when he was flat broke. And then, to please a publisher, he came up with the ideas for “The Odessa File” and “The Dogs of War” in four days. Hollywood ought to turn “The Outsider” into a movie.

I also read — very belatedly — Peter Mayle’s Provence memoirs and Frances Mayes’ Tuscan ruminations, and all of Anne Lamott’s non-fiction.

At this point, I’m running out of memoirs to read … and reasons for not writing.

Throwing Strikes

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Photo by MLB.com

I was watching the Atlanta Braves’ playoff game Sunday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers with a lady friend, and, as usual, Braves’ pitcher A.J. Minter was wild.

His pitches were landing everywhere but in the strike zone, an affliction that has bedeviled him and other Braves pitchers all season. I was trying to explain why it was so frustrating, how it’s been going on all year, how these guys are professionals and ought to be doing their job better.

My friend’s response was that it’s easy for someone on the sidelines to be critical, and that Minter was doing the best he could.

She was right, of course, but for sports fans there is a certain tolerance for booing and criticism as well as for cheering and praise.

To be a fan, generally speaking, is to commit oneself to hope and expectation — after all, “fan” is short for fanatic — and over the past several years the Braves have been disappointing.

This year, however, they have been far better than expected. That they are even in the playoffs is a miracle. But being a fan, I’m greedy for more. I want it to continue, I want the players to be at their best, right through to the storybook ending and winning the World Series.

I also know that’s unrealistic. It would be a glorious ending to a terrific season — walk-off home runs, amazing defensive plays, a brilliant supporting cast and team celebrations so riotous and exuberant you couldn’t help but feel part of it.

So it was gratifying to see quick shots on TV of fellow fans in varying degrees of anguish as the Braves eked out a victory. This was my tribe — or one of them, anyway — and I was surprised at how much better I felt at seeing others experiencing the same emotions I was feeling.

That’s the fun of being a fan.

A Legacy of Pessimism

But my friend’s response reminded me that my critique of Minter was self-referential, and the better response would be, “How are you doing?”

As a fan — “you,” in this case — I’m twisting and tortured by doubt. I’m thinking, “It’s not going to work. I know the Braves are going to let me down.”

That doubt, that pessimism, that expectation of disappointment, didn’t just show up overnight. It’s a lifetime habit. I’ve felt it everywhere I’ve lived — Michigan, Rhode Island (twice), Connecticut (twice), Kentucky, Tennessee, Hawaii, Georgia.

It’s a legacy, an heirloom passed down through the family like grandmother’s dishes, black-and-white photographs and scarcity thinking. Pessimism was embedded in the consciousness of my parents and grandparents from their own experiences and by the Great Depression.

If my family had a coat of arms, the legend would read: “Waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Discomfort and Hope

So, if the Braves falter and fall, that’s the narrative I grew up with. And it would be true regardless of what I was observing, whether an athletic event, a public speaker, a surgeon in the operating room, a lawyer in court … all judgment is a reflection of the one who judges.

This is where it gets uncomfortable … and hopeful. The emphasis in “How are you doing?” shifts to the verb, and wisdom arises from a pair of aphorisms.

“When I point my finger at someone else, three other fingers are pointing back at me.” And, “If I’m not the solution, there is no problem.”

As a fan, I have no control over my team. There’s nothing I can do to help Minter or Newcomb or Toussaint or Gausman throw strikes. I can’t help Camargo hit even a foul ball, for crying out loud.

I am a victim of my expectations. A willing victim, to be sure, but a victim nonetheless.

The Action Figure

But in terms of “doing” I am also the action figure. And in that sense, pointing at Minter is an invitation to look at my own job performance.

And — hello! — I’m not doing that well.

I’ve got a manuscript to send to a writer who has generously offered to read it. I’ve yet to start the final chapter of that book. I’ve got two other projects awaiting my attention, and a request from an editor looking for stories.

I’m not throwing strikes, either. Move over, Minter, you’ve got company.

I’m not trying to take the fun out of spectating; too much navel-gazing will make anyone dull and uninteresting. But taking care of my own business can do a lot about the way I feel about myself and the Braves. Then I can watch without complaining, and appreciate what a great year it’s been.

 

Field of Sighs

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In June of 2000, I went on assignment for CNN.com to Andrews, North Carolina, to write about the manhunt for Eric Rudolph, the terrorist whose bombs in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama, in 1996 and 1998 killed two people and injured 120 others.

But after finishing the Rudolph story, I returned several more times to write about the people and their devotion to what seemed like a dying town.

After one of my visits, I called Jane Brown, an instructor in anthropology and history at Western Carolina University, for perspective.

“It all has to do with the sense of place,” she told me. “You need to experience it. Otherwise, you can’t relate to the things they say or what Appalachian life is like… It has something to do with the mountains.”

Not Alone In This World

Andrews is in a valley 1,700 feet above sea level that is encircled by heavily forested Smokey Mountains. Although they lack the formidable, snow-capped splendor of the Alps or Rockies, the Smokies have a comforting presence, a strength and a permanence that captivated me every time I visited.

On one of those visits, I had an unusual experience that I’d forgotten about until recently when reading a poem in an issue of TIME magazine.

In “An Orchard at the Bottom of the Hill,” Maurice Manning writes about an apple tree with “bees meticulously/attending every blossom there, and you think the tree is kind of sighing./Such careful beauty in the making,/and then you think, it’s really quiet,/but I am not alone in this world.”

After dinner one evening in July of 2000, it was too early to go back to my room, so I went for a drive. It had been raining most of the day and although it had finally stopped, the sky was heavy with clouds.

A Tattered Banner

I drove out of town on Fairview Road headed roughly southwest and turned onto Pisgah Road, which runs south between two ridges. High up on the ridge to the right a long streamer of moist gray cloud hung like a tattered banner.

I passed modest, well-kept homes and small pastures that sloped up toward the mountains behind. In some places, smaller ridges worked their way down toward the valley, creating the “hollers” of Appalachian lore.

About a mile up the road, this pastoral was broken by a cluster of dingy mobile homes, sheds and garages. Junked cars, tools and agricultural oddments lay in the weeds and underbrush, as if someone had been cleaning out a barn and forgot to finish the job. The air of sullen neglect indicated otherwise.

Beyond, however, the countryside reclaimed its rural beauty. After another half-mile or so, I pulled off onto a gravel road and turned the car around. I coasted over to the left side of the road, lowered the front windows and shut off the engine.

Spanish Moss

Directly ahead, across the paved road, a wet green field sloped up past a low shed and a weathered gray barn to a thick stand of trees. To my left and right were empty fields. Mist hung in the air like Spanish moss.

I still wasn’t sure what exactly I was doing there, and it took a few minutes to let everything settle. There wasn’t anything to do or see or, for that matter, to hear.

I live less than two miles from a general aviation airport, 500 yards as the crow flies from commuter and Amtrak rail lines, three blocks from a fire station and two blocks from the busiest street in Atlanta. I’ve got a sound track of planes, trains, automobiles and fire engines every day, all day, and often at night, too.

Here it was … still. Silent. Peaceful.

Deep breath. I’m still coming to terms with the stillness. 

A Bird Call

Then, from the field across the street, drifts the call of a bird: “Fwhee-to-whee.”

Silence.

Splat — a raindrop hit the roof.

Splatter — another on the windshield.

Silence.

“Fwhee-to-whee.”

Silence.

Splatter.

The silence isn’t just the lack of sound, it feels real … an enchantment. 

Becalmed and Serene

Eyes closed, another breath. With the exhale I feel tension release in my neck and shoulders, the pressure of city life floating off into the mist. Becalmed and serene, I slip away.

In this curiously expanded state I hear something familiar and yet not possible. I lean forward slightly, eyes still closed, listening intently.

There it is again.

From the very edge of awareness, the faintest of sounds, a whispering sigh.

“Ahhhhh.” 

The Kiss of Life

The gentle exhalation of the earth itself. Untouched by man, unhurried, unspoiled, the planet breathes the kiss of life.

I sit stunned and wondering. Such a gift, such a moment. I had never thought of the earth as breathing, as being alive; now I want to tell someone, but who?

Who could imagine something so unlikely, that amazing sense of connection and wholeness? The sense of being part of something so vast and reassuring?

Scientists know that plants communicate with each other. Native Americans  honor “Mother Earth” and call “our cousins of the plant kingdom Standing Ones or Standing People.”

Exposed and Vulnerable

But I’m out in the gathering dark, and suddenly I feel exposed, vulnerable.

I sit up and turn the key. The wipers surge and whine, clearing the mist from the windshield. I start the car, feeling the need to get out of there before someone drives past and laughs at the city slicker sitting in the dark and rain, doing God knows what.

I drive back to town.

Eighteen years later, I value that experience more than ever, especially for the reminder of how healing and restorative nature can be. And it’s pretty cool that Maurice Manning got an opportunity to spread the word. 

 

 

Healing the Future

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When I was 8, my 9-year-old cousin Skip showed me a drawing he’d made of a rowboat, and it shocked me.

When I drew, my subject matter was pretty much limited to fighter jets with the US Air Force insignia on the side. I probably drew boats, too, so it wasn’t that Skip had drawn a boat that amazed me. It was how he drew it.

My drawings were flat  — two dimensional. But Skip’s boat had three dimensions. It projected off the page, and when I saw that something in me died.

To the extent that any 8-year-old knows what he’s going to be when he grows up, I didn’t fancy myself an artist. But until then nothing had persuaded me that my drawings were inadequate, either.

Skip’s did, and in my despair I ignored that he had learned it from a book, and maybe I could, too. All I could think was that this was yet another instance where I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t do it, and that I might as well give up. So I did.

No Latitude for Mistakes

Such thinking didn’t originate with that episode, of course. It was a continuation of experiences that began years before, all convincing me that I was inadequate, that the turf that I could call my own — the realm where I was adequate and capable — was pitifully small and subject to further erosion.

That subconscious belief washed over into adult life, limiting my willingness to try new things only when I thought I could be good at them immediately. There was no latitude for making mistakes. I had to be perfect.

I never took up playing the guitar for that reason. Yet, like millions of others, I played air guitar along with  Mark Knopfler, Billy Gibbons and Carlos Santana, and still regret that I didn’t give it a try. I never risked surfing while living in Hawaii, and body-surfed in the islands only because I’d done a tamer version of it on the Mainland and loved it.

Years later, a wonderful artist and former high school classmate,  Claire Watson Garcia, gave me a free painting lesson and strongly urged me to continue. I didn’t.

Unfounded Assumptions

Self-doubt and saying “no” was such a part of my identity that I assumed that’s who I really was. But after the failure of three long relationships (two of them divorces), I began to re-examine my life and realized that many of my assumptions were unfounded and had been forced upon me by childhood circumstances.

In the mid-1990s, I attended a men’s retreat led by New Age author Dan Millman. Millman, a former gymnast, did a great job of mixing instruction with physical activity, and the finale was breaking a board with our bare hands.

The premise was that if we could break a board, we could also break through personal issues. So before we broke the boards, we had to write on them what we were trying to break through.

I wrote:  “Holding back.”

I broke the board successfully, but breaking through the control and perfectionism behind the holding back has been a long and difficult process. I’m still working on it.

“I Can’t”

A few days ago, after more than a year of pondering it, watching YouTube videos and consulting knowledgable friends, I finally decided to replace my kitchen faucet.

This was not a vanity project. The faucet stopped working in March of 2017, I’m embarrassed to say. But since the spray hose still worked, I limped along, not wanting to pay a plumber, yet not wanting to give up on the idea that, dammit, I could do it.

The hang-up, as usual, was self-doubt. Just as I concluded from Skip’s drawing that I was not an artist, I also learned long ago that I was not mechanical. My brother, Dave, the kid who raised and lowered the family trash can into a tree with a block and tackle, he was mechanical. He became an engineer.

I was an athlete who could spell and loved to read, and discovered later that I could write. Beyond that, every new thing, every change in the status quo was a challenge and a referendum on my self-worth, and my reaction was always “I can’t.”

Open Mind, Willing Heart

But when I started questioning my assumptions, not many of them were valid. Including, it still amazes me to say, the idea that I have no mechanical ability. Over the past few years, I’ve learned that with an open mind and a willing heart, I can do far more than I thought.

It began with replacing a washer in a leaky bathroom faucet — laughably easy for many, but for me it was a beginning. Then I risked replacing the flush valve in a toilet. The new one included instructions on how to clean it. So I took apart the old one, cleaned it, put it back together and it worked.

Wow, I did that?

I replaced a doorknob, a toilet lever, a lamp socket. I put up a new mailbox and, despite massive misgivings, installed a dryer vent.

At that point, I was almost giddy with success, and when an electrical outlet started smoking, I consulted a contractor friend. Suitably informed, I turned off the circuit breaker, pulled the outlet from the wall, took pictures of the wiring, bought a new one, wired it and installed it.

At that point, I felt like I was on the North Face of home repair. Screw up electrical stuff and you’re homeless.

And then the piece de resistance: I removed the defective kitchen faucet — which proved to be as deeply resistant to change as I am — and installed a sleek new one. It will be a week or so before I stop sharing my amazement at that accomplishment.

Inconvenient Opportunities

It’s absurd that I waited a year to brave it, especially with all the junk from beneath the sink sitting on a coffee table in my sunroom, reminding me daily of my unwillingness. That I finally overcame it was huge, and exposes another level to the experience that goes beyond the satisfaction of having a cool new faucet.

Household breakdowns — like divorces, getting laid off and so many other things I resent and resist — are always inconvenient and uncomfortable, but they are also opportunities.

When I hold back, I’m a victim; the past is running me. Accepting that life is about problem solving opens up possibilities to change, grow, and take back my life.

Taking action led to a series of accomplishments that unlocked a limiting mentality and opens me up to things I may have set aside — like drawing and painting — and to possibilities I may never have even considered.

In other words, It’s about hope and changing the trajectory of a life. It’s about healing the future.

 

 

Aging, Not Old

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I got an email recently from the agency that represents me requesting that I audition for the role of  a “somewhat clueless old man” in a movie that begins shooting in three weeks.

It’s not the first such request I’ve had. In fact, in just the past few months, I’ve had a half-dozen invitations to audition and with one exception — a role in the “Mr. Mercedes” TV series — all of the casting directors were looking for some version of a doddering old codger.

One of the requests came a week or so ago, and this was for a series of appearances that would have added up to a handsome check. Which I could very much use.

But they wanted a guy in his late 70s or 80s who sounded like a shambling old coot.

As I told my agent, I’m 73, but I’m also “supple and fit,” In fact, I had spent two hours earlier that day at the YMCA lifting weights. I also included a photo from a job last year that had me 30 feet up on a climbing wall.

When we were in our early 60s, a friend of mine used to say, “We’re getting old, JW.” He had special dispensation to use my first two initials, but being identified as getting old pissed me off. 

I’m not oblivious to changes as I age. My hair used to be brown; now it’s white, although I prefer to call it silver. The muscles I’ve worked hard to maintain are shrinking. I’ve got the kind of wrinkles I remember seeing on my grandfather’s face, and I’ve lost an inch in height. I took losing that inch personally. That was part of my identity, and I’m still not OK with it. But that’s reality.

Then one day at the gym a heavy-set guy lumbered past wearily, and commented, “I’m getting old. I’m 61.”

I was 62 at the time, and in far better shape than he was. I said nothing, but it gave me the answer I was looking for.

“We start aging as soon as we’re born,” I told my friend when I saw him next, “but getting old is a state of mind, and I’m not going there.”

That’s still my operative premise. Aging is reality; getting old is a choice. And that was the energy behind yet another note to my agent — this one more combative.

Hi J——, 

At the risk of being a pain in the you-know-what, my reaction to this audition is same as the one last week for P——.

Namely, clients have an outdated notion of what “old” is.

“Ageism,” as it is sometimes called, is probably the result of the lack of attention it gets due to the flashier, trendier stuff that seem to captivate the media and social media.

In any event, I am not a “clueless old man.” I would argue that whoever wrote that description is far more clueless than I am, and that such ignorance is getting tedious. 

As we both know from my last email, I am fit and agile and, if called upon, can go 30 feet up on a climbing wall.  

I told [another agent] the other day that on my very first job in the business 13 years ago, the photographer commented about my “weathered look.”

I did NOT give him a noogie, but I’m getting to the point now where it may be necessary to start knuckling some skulls. 

Thanks for hearing me out. No offense intended to you … I just needed to vent. And to explain why I am disinclined to audition for clueless people. 

Cheers,

John 

Mickey Mantle — The Better Version

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Austin Kleon blogged recently about trying to explain to his 5-year-old that artists — in this case, Kraftwerk — are no different from the rest of us, and that meeting them might not be as pleasing as one would think.

Kleon quotes Wendell Berry, who wrote “I am a man as crude as any,” and admits that he, too, suffers from the human condition. Although he loves meeting his readers, Kleon says that in his books they are getting the best version of him.

“In my day-to-day life,” he adds, “I am as confused and stupid and pessimistic as anybody.”

This is timely as I struggle to organize the material for a memoir that includes my experiences as a journalist who interviewed roughly 100 famous people. That doesn’t include chance encounters with Muhammad Ali, Jane Fonda, Janet Jackson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the hundreds of other people I wrote about who were special in their own way — and often more interesting than celebrities. (See Bio.)

But in thinking about Kleon’s point, former New York Yankee Mickey Mantle came to mind.

In early December of 1979, more than 10 years after he retired, Mantle and former teammate and best friend, Billy Martin, came to Honolulu to appear at a baseball camp put on by Pete Ward, a former teammate.

They flew in from Dallas and did a late afternoon media interview at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel. It was quickly apparent that “Open Jackson,” as Mantle called himself, and “Waco Texan” (Martin) hadn’t spent the 3,800-mile flight discussing Proust.

They were slurring their words and kept up a line of banter that, as I wrote later, was “off-color, macho and chauvinistic” in an old-school, male-bonding kind of way.

Mantle and Martin played on a New York Yankees team that dominated baseball from the early 1950s into the mid-‘60s, and they did it at a time when New York was transforming itself into the Big Apple. It was the financial, media, entertainment, advertising and retail capital of the world,  the home of the The Tonight Show, the Ed Sullivan Show, the Today Show and just about any other show of significance.

It was the home turf of Frank Sinatra, martini in one hand, cigarette in the other. Bob Dylan was playing clubs in Greenwich Village; Thelonius Monk and Charlie Mingus played the Five Spot in the East Village; Leonard Bernstein had the New York Philharmonic; and uptown in Harlem, James Brown electrified the Apollo Theater.

New York was full of itself, the city of winners, and it doted on the Yankees. Mantle was the best of them, a marvel of speed, power, and skill, a legend in the making, and in his off-hours, the carousing, hard-drinking, adulterous prince of the city. He could show up at Toots Shor’s any night of the week knowing he would never have to pay for a drink. 

When he arrived in Honolulu at 48, though, his skin was blotched and puffy, there were creases around his eyes and he was sadly overweight. But he was well-oiled that evening, a happy, high-functioning drunk, and he was obliging and responsive during the interview. Martin was, as well.

I was the last media member to leave, and when we finished, the four of us — Mantle, Martin, Ward and I — left the suite together.

The Sheraton Waikiki was — and, I assume, still is — shaped like an S, and we were walking down a hallway that curved to the left, unable to see more than about 30 feet ahead.

I was to Mantle’s left. Martin and Ward were behind us, and I couldn’t help thinking how cool it was to be walking next to Mickey Mantle himself, even in his inebriated and shopworn condition.

And that’s when he passed gas. As in farted. As in broke wind, a prodigious thunderclap so startling and violent that it volleyed off the walls like a sonic boom.

Before anyone could react — in what would surely have been a “boys will be boys” fashion — our momentum carried us around the curve and face to face with two couples coming the other way. They were handsome senior citizens, white-haired Mainlanders decked out in polyester Hawaiian shirts and muumuus, enjoying their expensive and no doubt long-awaited Hawaiian vacation.

But their eyebrows were up in their hairlines, and on their faces were expressions of shock, embarrassment and scalding, Old Testament disgust. It took me back to being 11 years old, and every fiber of my being wanted to point at Mantle and say, “He did it!” because in their eyes we were all guilty.

I didn’t. I took one for The Mick that day, and when I wrote the story, I covered for him again. I informed the gentle readers of Honolulu that Mantle had belched, which wasn’t exactly putting a happy face on the event, but it was less objectionable.

Any way you slice it, though, Mantle had shown that he could be “as crude as any man.” But the story continues.

In January of 1994, after decades of playing the fool, he finally admitted that he was an alcoholic. He sought treatment, found religion and made amends to the people he hurt. He even spoke publicly about the dangers of alcoholism, concluding with the warning,  “Don’t be like me.”

Cancer of the liver led to a transplant, but the cancer returned and Mantle died in August 1995 at the age of 63. Which makes me sad even all these years later.

I wasn’t a Mantle fan growing up; my baseball allegiance was elsewhere. But I did admire him as a ballplayer, and I admire him even more as a human being for the way he rewrote the ending to his story. It took courage and humility to own the ugliness and dysfunction of his past, and the reward for his transformation wasn’t a standing ovation at Yankee Stadium, it was peace and self-respect, at last.

At his funeral, they played a song that was — another surprise — Mantle’s favorite, and a wonderful way to send him off: “Over the Rainbow.”

The Importance of Being Envious

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My friend Steve Perras posted a picture on Facebook the other day of himself and his wife, Judy, in Paris, and it bothered me. In fact, it still does.

There’s an element of envy in it, but it’s not that simple. In fact, I’m happy for them. Although I see them only once a year these days, I still consider them dear friends. Steve is a talented and good-hearted guy, and they work hard at their real-estate business.

As Steve notes on Facebook, this is his first time abroad, and he is “Enchanted.” Good for him. He deserves it.

What bothers me is not that I’m not with them, but that in the past few years financial concerns have kept me from making trips to France and India, and two trips to Italy. Each time I said “No” instead of “Yes,” it pained me. And in two of those instances, I would have been traveling with my brothers, and that made it even more painful.

Steve is kind of a brother, too.  We met more than 20 years ago at the formation of a men’s group at a local church. When I first saw him, I thought, “What’s HE doing here?”

I didn’t like him, and I wasn’t smart enough to understand that “if you spot it, you’ve got it.”

What I saw that day was Steve’s mask, the face he put on for public consumption, and I decided he wasn’t trustworthy. But a few years later that I unexpectedly caught sight of my own public mask in a mirror, and it infuriated and appalled me. That wasn’t the “me” I thought I was. I wasn’t trustworthy, either.

By that time Steve and I had become good friends. We did so many things together with that group that I began to learn how to be a better person, a better friend, a better father, and a better brother. When I saw Steve last fall at a party, I was so happy I kissed him — on the cheek! — just as I do with my brothers.

So the thought the other day, “Damn! Perras is in Paris!” was a reality check.

In the old days, I would have been envious, because although I’ve been to Europe a few times, I’ve never been to Paris. I’ve always romanticized the place and thought I would go when I was with that special woman. I still feel that way.

The challenge is that I grew up with so much shame and self-doubt that I didn’t believe I deserved to be happy. The result of that thinking has been a world of trouble around finances and romances, and it’s why I haven’t made that special trip to Paris. Subconsciously I didn’t believe I deserved it.

But I know better now. I’ve worked hard to find my way out of the darkness and into the light. I know now that I do deserve happiness — and even to be “enchanted” once in a while. But turning that understanding into action is not easy. The old beliefs are deeply rooted.

Paris became known as “the city of light” during the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. Steve’s post reminds me that whatever the seeming obstacles, I cannot and must not give up.

I don’t want or envy his happiness, I want my own. If anything, his good fortune reminds me to double down and be even more intentional about my own. Paris is waiting.