Get off the Couch

I've been taking it easy since my scooter mishap a week ago. It turns out I bruised a little bit more than just my ego. My hand is getting better, but I also banged my chest on the handle as I went down, and that injury has been painful and slower to heal. Ibuprofen, the heating pad, breathing exercises, but most of all, rest, are the recommended remedies for my condition, and I have been using them all.

There may have also been some collateral damage to my self-image. "Are you going to scooter again?" Annabelle asked after the accident. "Of course!" I answered without hesitation, but I've definitely lost a little of my sense of invincibility: I feel more fragile, and life's dangers have been brought into sharp focus. Gone is my unwavering love for scootering, invalidating at least a half-dozen blog entries, and everything seems a little more scary now.

You are pushing 60! I think sometimes, as I inhale 1-2-3-4, Why would you do anything so risky? hold 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Stay on the couch and read! exhale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Do some writing! Take some Advil!

And it was on the couch with the heating pad on high that I was lying as we watched the finale of Survivor Season 37 the other night. The show actually had its traditional live wrap-up episode a few weeks ago, but we were busy with the holidays and missed it. Gone are the days when discovering the winner of this granddaddy of reality shows was a huge media event, and it wasn't even hard to shield ourselves from spoilers. So, we slogged through the three hour conclusion with a minimum of fast-forwarding, although I confess to always finding that ultimate tribal council tiresome and even boring.

This is the part of the show where the final three survivors are questioned by the jury, which consists of the last seven contestants voted out. The finalists have to answer for their game play and explain how they outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted their competitors, but to me it's just too much talking. It seems doubtful that anything they say can really influence the votes at that point, especially since they are still playing the game.

More interesting for me is the reunion segment at the end, where everyone is interviewed in hindsight, after the winner has been announced. The former survivors are often nearly unrecognizable, having had several months to recover from the 39 day ordeal and always so carefully dressed and groomed for TV. To be sure, the spotlight is still on them, but with the game so far behind them, their comments ring more true and insightful. They talk not just about their strategy, but also about how the experience changed their lives: what they wanted, what they got.

It was in this context that Mike White reminded me of something I know, but sometimes forget. A successful actor and writer, White seemed neither surprised nor dismayed by coming in second in the million dollar competition. When Jeff Probst asked him about his desire to play the game, he said, "As a writer you don't want just spend your whole life observing life. You want to just live it... and for me, I don't want to spend all my creativity on my work; I want to spend it on living, even if it means embarrassing myself in front of millions of viewers. It means you have to take a chance and live the adventure-- get off your computer."

He's right of course, and his advice holds true, not just for writers, but for aging scooterers, too. 

Tall Order

We started our first-of-the-year movie marathon with a short sprint of 2 movies in 2 days. Yesterday it was Vice and today we saw The Favourite. The acting was terrific, but both were ultimately unsatisfying to me.

Each bio-pic was an interesting meditation on power, exploring in particular strategies that women have historically had to resort to in order to gain power. As such, Amy Adams, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone portray characters who are ruthless and manipulative, understandable, but unlikable. Although they approach power acquisition differently than an equally ambitious male counterpart might, all three women still define power in the traditional, zero-sum way, where to have power you have to take it from someone else and hold on to it.

It's fair to argue that all three characters were simply making the best of a bad situation, but I guess that's where the movies fell short for me. I prefer my heroes to fight injustice by reimagining the corrupt status quo.

You Are What You Eat

Every year on New Year's Day we have the traditional southern supper of ham, black-eyed peas, and greens. Those dishes are considered talismans for the year ahead; the ham because a pig in his pen can't look backward and neither should you; the black-eyed peas for luck and the greens for money. In addition, we always have pan-fried chicken, corn, and rice, and every year or so we make up new meanings for those foods as well, so that they, too, might be charms to carry us successfully through the next year.

Yesterday's symbolism was especially satisfying to me: chicken for health, because it's lean, corn for sunshine and clear skies, because of its bright color, and rice because it represents our collective identity, many grains combine to make one dish.

Yes, our meal perfectly captures my fondest wish as I look ahead to the new year: luck, prosperity, health, and sunshine, in the company of family and friends.

Morning Meditation

It was 60 degrees and soggy when I took Lucy out at 7:30 this morning. The neighborhood was deserted; last night's revelries had seen to that, and so we wandered alone, tLucy reacquainting herself with her home turf, and I considering the weather, warm and wet, with which we start this new year.

Then it was back to the house for breakfast and coffee and a bit more quiet contemplation before the rest of our little world woke up.

Back Where We Belong

Beside the simple pleasure of spending time with family at the holidays, the best thing I can say about being away from home for 11 days in December is that, when we finally got home, the cats seemed softer and the Christmas Tree smelled pinier, and it sure was nice to be here on this, the last night of the year.

Wouldn't You Like to Fly?

We sat on the plane for 90 minutes in Atlanta before finally taking off for Buffalo. The first delay was a computer unit that needed replacing. It should only be 10 minutes, the captain told us, and his estimate was accurate. As we pushed back from the gate, the flight attendants prepared for departure, cross-checking and demonstrating the safety equipment.

We had barely made it to the end of the terminal when the captain’s voice interrupted those proceedings. Folks, I’m afraid we’ll have to return to the gate, he reported. We have a warning light that needs to be checked out. Once back at B31, the crew was required by FAA regulation to open the cabin doors, but they promised our gate time would be brief.

Sure enough, the doors were secured 10 minutes later, but opened again 5 minutes after that, because our original flight plan had us cruising at 29,000 feet and the air was too rough up there now. Lower altitude means more fuel, and so we sat waiting for them to onboard an additional 1500 pounds.

We were offered short pours of water from plastic liter bottles to slake our impatience, but it didn’t seem to appease the four-year-old behind us. He was a verbal processor who gave high and loud, minute-by-minute reports of his observations, both internal and external, including: the poop is out of my guts, we’re not moving, this trip is taking a long time, it’s still raining, my scarf is itchy, it’s still raining, now we’re going on the highway, that airplane is really big, it’s still raining, are we already there? In between he wailed like a siren and sang songs of gobbledygook and gibberish in a piercing soprano. His continuous sound track was punctuated frequently by the guttural whoops of a non-verbal young man a couple of rows ahead of us.

Slipping in my earbuds, I was amazed at how little noise they filtered, but I cranked a podcast anyway and closed my eyes. A little while later I was roused from a very light doze by the jolt of the plane leaving the jetway for what we dearly hoped was the last time. Shortly after that we slipped the bonds of gravity and flew up, up, up, through the drizzle and fog and burst through the clouds into a golden late December afternoon.

Dress Code

Following Richard's Bar Mitzvah, we returned to our awesome loft above the hip Ponce City Market, a repurposed Sears distribution center built in 1926. Before heading up to the fourth floor, we threaded our way through the throngs of casually dressed folks enjoying dining, drinking, and shopping in the Food Hall to grab a coffee from Chef Hugh Acheson's Spiller Park.

I was sipping my handcrafted coffee soda (El Salvadoran coffee, burnt orange syrup, carbonated and kegged with a dash of cream) and my mom was waiting for her iced decaf Americano, when a well-dressed woman approached us. "I was at a funeral?" she said looking at my mother's tasteful black dress. "What's your excuse?"

"Bar Mitzvah," I answered.

"I feel better knowing," she laughed and joined the line to order her own exquisite coffee drink.