Tipping Points

My friend Mark and I have worked together in a number of venues the past five years and we'd just started doing so again this past week when an email arrived telling him his mother had died. I'm providing a link to his blog, where he has published the email, and some of the strange circumstances surrounding her death.

Link to Mark's Blog

Telling someone his mom has died in email is definitely a misuse of this communication tool. It is bad enough to hear that someone you know has died this way -- which has happened to me several times -- but the passing of loved ones requires a telephone call at the minimum.

Where is Miss Manners when we need her most?

***

There is no transition more profound than death, except for birth. The juxtaposition of these events in a life often occurs in literature, for obvious reasons. Loss and renewal. Much of what I've written here over the months attempts to discuss loss and renewal.

When it comes to the death of your parents, these are events that will haunt you for a long, long time. This is true regardless of the state of your relationship with your mother or father when they die. Whatever has been not resolved will revisit you, either in your own life or in your child's life.

This is one of the main lessons I've learned from my memoir students, many of whom are older than I am, some by decades. Recently I've encouraged anyone who will listen to tape record their parents' and grandparents' stories. Family memoirs are about so much more than memory and forgetting.

They are about the passing of one person's unique custody of her life's story to another, usually a child or grandchild. This is one of those life lessons that we shouldn't put off for another day. If you know somebody older whose life needs to be captured for the future (and that certainly should include every person alive) get going on this, my friend!

This is one of those opportunities that does indeed vanish when another person dies.

***

There are many kinds of transitions, some profound, some profoundly silly. Everyone gets to have his or her own definition of what matters, so I probably shouldn't apologize for being so attached to baseball. But I have been told by certain partners in the past that my involvement with the sport is excessive, which makes me sensitive on this point.

I don't want to bore anybody, nor do I wish to mix the trivial in with the significant. Much of what follows may seem trivial, though not to me.

***

Since every good thing must come to its end, weekends like this one are inevitable. This is the end of the baseball season for the Giants, and I finally got the kids out to Telephone Company Park for the last Friday night game of the season, against the Dodgers.




Baseball fans in San Francisco know there is no time to see a game like a Friday night. The crowd is made up of a preponderance of serious fans who know the game. By contrast, day games attract businessmen with cellphones trying to impress clients; and weekend games draw tons of kids.

Friday nights are different. Often, like last night, they are bitterly cold in San Francisco. But we're used to that.

This game was meaningless for the Giants. Their season is over, and they are on the verge of finishing in last place in their division (unless they win their final game Sunday.) But the game had lots of quiet drama to it for those of us in the crowd. We know this is the last Friday night this bunch of veteran stars will ever be together.

The manager, Felipe Alou?

Gone, after this season.

His son, slugger Moises Alou?

Gone.

Pitcher Jason Schmidt?

Gone.

Lots of other older players -- Ray Durham, Steve Finley, and Mike Stanton -- probably will leave too. The team has 11 free agents, including the biggest name of all -- Barry Bonds.

Layers of sadness and irony surround the end of Bonds' career. He is probably the greatest hitter of all time. But that also has placed him in the center of a spotlight on the current generation of athletes' drug use -- growth hormones, steroids, and all kinds of stimulants.

That athletes have always used whatever substance they could find that allegedly would boost their performance doesn't buy Bonds and his cohort any sympathy. That he is only one of many, many stars who used steroids doesn't prevent the press and politicians and other players, some jealous of his superior abilities, from trying to bring him down.

As we have all witnessed many times, our media-saturated, celebrity-worshiping culture creates heroes, only to destroy them. It's hard to watch an aging Bonds reduced to a mediocre player, but this happens to everyone as they age. At the end of your career, you become, if not a joke, a shadow of your former self. People still look up to you, and young players even idolize you, but no one is quite as frightened by you as they were before.

For Bonds, the transition is dramatic, because he is the scariest hitter in the history of baseball, period. This year, managers continued to pitch around him by walking him, until they realized he isn't the Bonds of yesteryear. Thanks to a late season surge, he raised his batting average slightly, to .268, with 26 homeruns and 77 RBIs. These are respectable numbers, but hardly Bondsian.

Will the Giants bring him back for one last season? He needs 21 more homers to catch Hank Aaron for the MLB record. I doubt it. His salary is $20 million dollars, give or take enough money to send all of my kids through college several times each, and the Giants' owners need to start rebuilding the team around young pitching talent, which they have in abundance.



Is this the last time we will see #25 approach the plate, bat in hand, triggering a crescendo of excitement rising into the night, spreading out and over the city of love? I told my little kids, as we exited the park, to remember all they've seen of Bonds, so they can tell their children and grandchildren.

My father told me about the sluggers he watched -- Ruth, York, Greenberg, Foxx, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Ott.

I told my older kids about Mantle, Mays, McCovey, Kaline, Robinson, Aaron, Musial, Williams, Colavito, and many others.

My older kids saw Will Clark, Matt Williams, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Cecil Fielder, and of course, the incomparable Barry Bonds.

The youngsters have seen McGwire, Sosa, Guerrero, and of course Bonds. There are many others in the East -- Ortiz, Ramirez, and Rodriguez, not to mention the young sluggers, Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard and David Wright, who they'll get to see over the years.

But I'm quite sure the day will come when young baseball fans want to know what it was like to see Barry Bonds hit baseballs into the night sky, soaring beyond the imaginable, far out of the stadium into the waters where kayakers waited, hoping for a piece of history, and perhaps quite a bit of money as well.

Maybe we are compelled to destroy our heroes. What I know for sure is this--no one can take away your memory of what you've seen. Remember the thrill of each moment when you write your life's story.

One more thing. Ignore endings. Don't even bother with breakups, deaths, partings, and job losses. These are the dust balls of our history. Stay instead with the magic of anticipation. Those special moments when you are driving across town to a neighborhood you've never spent much time in before. Pick something random and see if it fits. Pick, say, the Inner Sunset. Have you ever had a lover in the Inner Sunset? Or Bernal Heights? Or the Mission? How about Nob Hill? Telegraph Hill? What about North Beach, Chinatown, Japantown, the Richmond, Hunter's Point or the Bayview? What about the Marina, where everyone is beautiful, lean and oh so athletic? What about Pac Heights? (Okay, forget that one.) The Western Addition. The Haight?

Obviously, I could go on and on, and if we're not careful, I will.

But I won't. You get the idea. Stories are best told not from their endings but at their point of highest emotional resonance. After all, all good things must pass. Including us.

-30-

Wives, Lovers, Girlfriends, Strangers

(Artwork Explained Below)

It occurs to me now and then that not many men like women as much as I do. This isn't a thought that comes easily into my brain. I resist it for lots of reasons. First, there's nothing particularly special about me; I'm a normal, red-blooded American male (I think.)

I like sports, math, computers (sort of), cars (sort of)...okay, now I'm running out of ammunition in support of my argument. Maybe I should start over.

I am a man who likes sports a lot, math a little bit, and doesn't really care much about gadgets like cars, cameras, cell phones, iPods, computers or purchased possessions of any sort, to get right down to it.

I care a lot more about my collections -- seaglass, bottle caps, shells, foreign money, old US money, stamps, model cars, baseball cards, hockey cards, etc. The only other possessions that matter to me are certain books, letters, photographs, and artwork, mostly by my children.

There is a massive amount of my own writing (unpublished) that I don't know what to do with. I have an entire box full of journals, which would no doubt best be not viewed until after I am gone. There are numbers of boxes of my published articles from the pre-digital period (1966-1995) that are gradually turning yellow, brown, and flaking into dust.

There are also my books, in various languages, most of which I cannot read. My house is filled to the rafters with this stuff.

Where was I?

Oh yes, my masculine credentials. Seems like it is men, mostly, who collect junk like this, no?

What's in my mind, however, is the list of other things I enjoy: Gardening, cooking, taking care of people. I think the last one is what in the Valley we call the differentiator.

I have been accused of being generous -- with my time, my resources, and my spirit. But I think differently about this. What motivates me is empathy. When it is so easy for me to identify with another's feelings, why would I not try to do or say something to ease their discomfort?

Quite honestly, I am not at all impressed with my intelligence, my looks, my athleticism, my math ability, musical ability, creativity, writing and editing ability, leadership skills, or sense of humor. (Least of all, the last one, because we all know where that comes from.) But these are the things I've been rewarded for and complimented for all my life. To be straight, I can very easily name ten people I know who are much more impressive than I in all of these categories -- smarter, stronger, prettier, sexier, faster, much more creative and certainly funnier.

But the one strange quality I seem to have in excess is empathy. Maybe this is why the vast preponderance of my friends are, and always have been, women. This truly is my feminine side, and one that only gets stronger with age.

In Michigan, I could always tell that the real men eschewed me. There were family gatherings, for example, where the men went golfing and the women stayed at the lake. I stayed at the lake. This has been a common occurrence all my life. Ever since I was sent home as a failure at the age of 8 or 9 for failing to run down fly balls in the outfield! (If only they had known I was suffering from an undiagnosed case of Romantic Fever, they would never have bothered trying to make a baseball player out of me in the first place.)

When my ex-girlfriend broke up with me, and I tried to explain how difficult this would be for me, I pointed out that I have had and continue to have many, many more female friends than the extremely small number who have been my lovers. I tried to convince her that I am extremely picky in this regard. "You're not so picky with women," she replied, "that you haven't been able to find ones to spend most of your life with thus far. So cut yourself some slack, and see what happens."

I guess I'm still waiting to see what happens.

(The art at the top of this piece is based on a photo someone took of me with a girlfriend.)

-30-

Letting Go

A friend told me a story recently about jealousy. Her long-distance boyfriend had a close, long-term friendship with another woman in the city where he lived. He insisted they had never been romantically involved, and my friend believed this. She said that as a woman when she met this female friend she could tell that she had no romantic interest in her boyfriend, so that was not an issue.

His feelings, however, were another matter. He was so absorbed in his friendship that the first thing you saw when you entered his home was his female friend's portrait (not his girlfriend's). Needless to say, this bothered her enormously, but she when she brought it up, he became angry and accused her of not believing him that there was nothing romantic between him and his friend.

Is this story familiar?

Much of what happened in their case matches our gender stereotypes and expectations. The man has some sort of ambiguous but close relationship with another woman, and his wife/girlfriend/partner feels that it is getting in the way of the intimacy she wants and needs to have with him.

It's classic.

But I've been on the other side of this equation, also. The rap on men is we are often inappropriately possessive, jealous, suspicious, and controlling with our partners. It probably is all true, at least I'm sure I was like that when I was younger.

But in conversations with friends, men and women, I've been re-evaluating these experiences and these feelings. "Jealousy only looks good in bad light. It's just hollow bullshit," one friend told me.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with her, but she's on the right track. What I've come to realize is jealousy occurs when you feel one-down in a relationship. If someone is not sharing the power fairly in his relationship with you, you're going to feel one-down. In this state, his interest in others -- real or imagined -- easily becomes inflated in your mind.

In the end, we either are or are not honestly together as an intimate, exclusive couple. If we are, from an emotional perspective, that's as good as it gets. If we aren't, nasty feelings like jealousy spring forth. All we have is the "bad light," where it's hard to know good from bad, wrong from right, or hope from hopelessness.

Every person has so much power. Those who doubt this miss chances to develop heathy relationships.

Perhaps the next time I find myself one-down and jealous of a woman, I will just let her go. It is likely that she is the one with work to do anyway, because I never feel overly possessive anymore.

However, that said, once you have violated somebody's trust, the only way you can ever regain it is to sit down and answer every question he has -- truthfully and in detail. He gets to say when enough is enough; you don't. And he gets to say what you can and cannot do in the future regarding this betrayal in order to be worthy of earning back the trust you have broken.

This is the fate of those who betray trust and cause pain to their partner. Their relationship is truly doomed unless they are willing to do this work. Most are unwilling; they'd rather flee.

I should know. I've been the "bad guy" in the past, and I know what it cost me. These are the incontrovertible laws of emotional life, eternalized as cliches.

What goes around, comes around.

-30-

Touched by a flower

On a foggy morning that most definitely felt like fall, a tiny yellow bloom appeared on the tiny little pumpkin plant out in front of his house. There is no chance this bloom could amount to any more than a tiny little pumpkin by Halloween (and even that's doubtful), but that would be more than enough for the man who had wanted his own tiny litle dancer, now, wouldn't it?

Like the sudden pleasure of seeing the yellow flower today, the man rediscovered the almost magical power of human touch yesterday. Sometimes, there seems to be one special discovery built into each new day. The occasion late yesterday was routine; the experience sublime. At his optometrist's office, the technician fitted him with his new prescription sunglasses, which may qualify him for the Blues Brothers look should he ever wear a sports jacket and top hat.

In order to adjust the glasses, the technician has to place her hands above his ears, one on each side of his head, ever so gently. He sat in a chair across the narrow counter from her as she evaluated the fit. The first time she touched him, he felt cared for in a way that often eludes his day-to-day life. The second time he sat very still and gazed into her lovely brown Chinese eyes.

Each time she made a minor adjustment, he leaned forward so she could place the glasses on him again. Of course, he could have put them on himself, but he yearned for more of her soft touching. He noticed her grace and beauty. She was focusing on how the glasses fitted his face and he was focusing on the beauty of her eyes.

This carried on for perhaps all of five minutes. A half dozen times he felt his head ever so softly and delicately balanced between her smooth, feminine hands. He felt his breathing slow down and his body relax. From her hands he derived a kind of sensual human energy that can only be gained through touch.

Regrettably, this pretty woman eventually got his fit just to where she wanted it, and with a sigh, he thanked her and rose to go. He was the last customer of the day, however, and the technician seemed to like talking with him, so he lingered as she closed up shop.

It turned out that she, like he, is a single parent. Her son is two years old. They shared parenting tips, frustrations, and stories. They talked about discipline, which was vexing this young woman quite a bit. (Two-year-olds and teenagers have a way of doing that.) She said she won't hit him, but that when she was growing up, her parents had spanked her when she was "bad."

Her struggle to establish firm rules based on the "time-out" method of punishment that most enlightened parents try to adhere to nowadays, whilst eschewing the physical discipline that has been shown to be so harmful, was being undermined, she said, by her parents.

Every time she gave her son a "time out," he ran to the grandparents, who comforted him and symathized that his mom was being so "mean" to him.

As the man exited the shop and bundled up against the chill twilight wind sweeping new oceanic fog into the streets of San Francisco, he kept thinking about this young mother, trying to raise her son without a father (he'd apparently left the picture when the boy was born) in her parents house. Her entire situation seemed so loaded; he wished he could help her.

Because this is the person whose soft touch had just pulled him out of a bout of self-abuse...he'd had to leave work early, which he hates to do, and he couldn't do another errand or two that beckoned, just to navigate way across town to get his new prescription sunglasses. He felt pressed for time, harassed by real troubles, beset with incohate anxieties.

And the only reason he had bought the glasses in the first place was vanity! He knew his old ones would one day be retro, and therefore cool, but for now they were just plain awkward. The technician had chosen a much more stylish pair for him, and she confirmed that he looked "good" in them.



So, even though it was getting dark, he decided to drive home wearing his cool new sunglasses. Maybe someday, he thought, someone else would find him cool and attractive enough to hold his head softly in her hands, sitting across from him, and not just because it was her job.

It's at moments like these, he whispered to the cool man in his mirror, that you can't hide from how lonely you feel.

New Appeal from the Forgotten Coast

Biloxi, Mississippi

Executive Notes
Mrs. Sharon Hanshaw
Executive Director
Coastal Women for Change
http://www.cwcbiloxi.org/index.htm



It is often said that just an encouraging word can make the difference. I want to foster among our women the willingness and openness to be encouraging to each other and those around us. Hopefully the words you find here will always have the ability to do just that. And as often as I am led here is where you will always find the desires of my heart for CWC and the community we serve.

Those of us struggling to rebuild the Gulf Coast face an overwhelming challenge and an unprecendented dilemma:

How do we maintain the inner strength to move forward when we are still coping with having lost almost everything we ever had?

Make no mistake about it: Our community is still living in shock, more than a year after Katrina destroyed our houses, schools, churches, and businesses. Thousands of good-hearted volunteers have flooded into the area. Without them, we would feel so isolated and forgotten that we would be suffering even greater collective depression than is already the case.

In order to solve our dilemma, we need to muster the collective strength to achieve affordable community housing, day care, and employment opportunities. We need to organize ourselves to speak with one voice at local council meetings -- as well as to the regional, state and national decision-making bodies.

We know that far more is at stake than our own individual lives. It is the future for our children and grandchildren that matters now. How will we ensure that there will be a place for them in a rebuilt Gulf Coast?

It is clear that the casinos and big businesses and land developers will all have a secure place in the new Gulf Coast. But what about us? What about the people whose communities have been destroyed, who now huddle in FEMA trailers, tents, cars and broken-down buildings, wondering how we will ever again be able to afford to own or even rent a home?

Coastal Women for Change is here to represent and organize residents to make sure our voice is heard by the policy-makers. They must not simply take us for granted, and dismiss us as irrelevant. The old Gulf Coast economy was built by our labor, often underpaid and exploited by unfair work practices.

It is our history here that gives us our right to now be heard. We represent the present and the past; our children and grandchildren represent the future. We are not going to leave, and neither are they.

In their name, we demand to be heard.

The prism of life

{Self-portrait. 9/26/06}

Live long enough, and write enough, and you'll be accused of just about everything. Is it easy for any of us to try to tell our true story in this time and place?

I'm hardly thin-skinned, particularly after a journalism career when I was called names that would make your grandmother suffer a massive stroke, not to mention death threats, bomb threats, libel suit threats, threats to my family, and seven accounts of contempt (while MIA) for refusing to appear and testify about my confidential sources.

None of that mattered much then, but some of this matters now. I stand accused of being overly sentimental, too talkative, given to "maudlin" writing when I try to describe my love for my children. I've also been told that my writing about the pain of breaking up earlier this year was "self-involved." It's been said that I appeared to be "losing" myself and therefore was, perhaps, "clinically depressed."

These critiques and many more stay with me, some like lashes, since I must agree with some grain of truth in them; others slide away like the polluted water from people who project their issues onto me, just for being a man, and/or for being the kind of person I am.

None of this matters now. I accept that I am a hopeless romantic, however uncool and threatening that may be to many around me. How can we help being who we are? I've done as much "work” on myself as anyone I know, for many years now. Therapy, group therapy, reading books, asking friends and medical professionals; most of all, listening very carefully.

Tonight I announce that I have made a decision. I'm closing myself to further advice, until further notice. I will keep reaching out, and seeking inputs, for the foreseeable future. I recognize that I, like most people, have issues and problems that require constant vigilance and the essential modesty of admitting our imperfections before God.

(Okay, that was facetious. I don't believe in God. But I do believe in telling my stories honestly to anyone interested enough to listen, and those people are godlike enough to suit my taste.)

In fact, all of us in this post-modern world share a common dilemma, whether we admit it or not, and that is our essential isolation from the types of communities that sustained (if also oppressed) our ancestors.

I have friends who grew up in foreign places. They suffered the blunt effects of sexism, racism, religious discrimination, and political oppression beyond anything any American knows. To them, America beckons like paradise.

Here, in the belly of the beast, and despite all of our social freedom, we Americans suffer the disease of aloneness.

So, what does this have to do with romanticism?

Just this: I dream of a day when every tortured soul around me finds herself feeling loved and sustained by a community she can depend on. Every little girl and boy who grew up not feeling loved may reach the point where they understand how valued and uniquely wonderful they are.

Why do I say these things?

Because, as a friend and former partner said to me recently, most of those you meet in the "second half" of life when you seek love are "broken" people. There may be a reason they have never been able to sustain a relationship, and it may well prove to be something you cannot "fix." Which begs the question of why you, too, find yourself alone, perhaps also somehow "broken" beyond repair...

Or, to be even more personal about this, what about me? What do I see when I look honestly in the mirror?

A hopeless romantic. I don't know exactly where my sense of hope comes from, but I suspect it came from my father. My sisters may know better. I also don't know where my sense of doom comes from, and I resist the idea it may have come from my mother, though again, my sisters may have some idea.

Lots of things are hard-wired in each of us, the random genetic lot we inherit. I know this, and never will "blame" my parents in any way for the man I am, and have become. I am happy to credit them, however, for my better features.

(I’m not quite sure who or what to trace my odd love of carrots to, however, but that's for another day. Note to self: I must describe what it was like as a child to pull up carrots from our garden like a rabbit, and eat them, dirt and all. Could this be related to why I have had so many children? And, most importantly, is this why the Blecker's rabbit, with the name of Marshmellow (I believe) seems so fond of nibbling my shoelaces?)


Where was I? (This is a question I will be asking with increasing frequency as the consequences of age and other bad habits overtake my former, youthful clarity. All details are now easily forgotten.)

You know, it struck me as perfectly natural that I got rheumatic fever as a boy. Because, for a long time, I misunderstood my malady to be "romantic fever."

The former did its damage and moved on.

The latter will stay with me until I die, and perhaps, afterwards, but only if these writings are good enough...

I leave you with the lyrics from a classic by the Pointer Sisters, who I am pleased to say, I once met (all of them.)

I want somebody who will spend some time
Not come and go in a heated rush...

Amen. You got that one right.


-30-

Men of many faces

There once was a man who wished to have his own tiny dancer. Remember that man? He had a friend. The friend always walked in the shadows, along the dark side of the street. He was presumed to have a dark personality, but truth be told, he was a little bit shy. This man had a friend who appeared to be even more troubled. He walked with his face always turned downwards. It was presumed he either was deeply depressed or had a spinal disorder. But it turned out he was an artist. By looking down he saw the faces peering up from below.

And that is how we discovered the little people.

The trouble with humans is we think too much of ourselves. Just ask any other species sharing this beautiful planet with us. Ask the whales who beach themselves. As far as our marine scientists can determine, these creatures have more sophisticated communication systems (language) than we do. Furthermore, they appear to be highly evolved as a species, understanding their place in the natural order of things, where they lead a largely peaceful existence, forming unions, raising their young, grieving over their dead, all the while warily monitoring the ever-expanding naked apes bent on yanking our ecological balance so far our of whack that only the insects, perhaps, will be able to adapt in time to survive the coming global sweatshop.

The whales know this and some, rather than waiting for the inevitable, have started committing suicide.

You can also ask the turtles that are appearing way too far north, or the salmon appearing way too far south. Ask the Monarch butterflies or Canadian geese, which are altering their migration patterns. (On second thought, don't ask the geese, but if you do, also please ask them to stop making such a mess of wherever they choose to land. Rather like humans.)

***

The only answer for all of this is that human beings must become much smaller, lighter, less aggressive, more loving, and much, much more modest. Otherwise the little people will demand to start growing up to our size, with our thunderous voices and our heavy footsteps that make the earth tremble wherever we tread.

The little people can grow, too; they've just held down until now. As they see how we are messing things up, however, the idea is loose among them that these giants can be tripped, swarmed over, and removed, one by one.

That's how it goes in the natural order of things. Darwinian, you might call it. The artist has been warning us for ages. The man in the shadows has withdrawn from speaking his mind. His shyness makes him a natural ally of the little people.

There is a silver lining to this story. The man who wanted a tiny dancer actually met a real woman, who urged him and his friends to henceforth walk along the sunny side of the street. Once out in the open, he regained his voice, and repudiated his wish to possess a little woman; he clarified his desire as to help the little ones, men and women alike.

The moral of this story is that all it takes to transform a face from a frown to a smile is love.

At War With the Mystics* (En la guerra con el Mystics)

If you're someone who gets asked lots of questions, like a parent, say, or a teacher, or a volunteer doing community work, or a boss, or a translator, or a big sister, or perhaps just a man who likes to talk with women, you better be prepared to have a pretty big stockpile of ready answers.

Nevertheless, the only truthful answer to some questions is, naturally enough, "I don't know." This is surprisingly hard to say if you happen to be a parent, or a teacher, a volunteer doing community work, a boss, a translator, a big sister, or a man who likes to talk with women.

Being in a state of relative power means you're supposed to know the answers. Being raised male is to be taught that not knowing is a sign of weakness. This, of course, leads us into all kinds of trouble, but nowhere as much as in matters of the heart.

Strangely, it is in emotional matters where men are most likely to admit they don't know the answers.

Q-Do you love me?
A-I don't know.

Q-What are you feeling?
A-I don't know.

The rap on men is that we are commitment-phobic, that we are out of touch with how we actually feel, that we leave all the difficult emotional work to the women in our lives.

I'm not going to defend men here, including myself. But I'm going to say this. As social mores have evolved, and men and women have become somewhat more like each other, it is not uncommon now for a man to encounter a woman who doesn't know the answers.

Q-Do you love me?
A-I think so but I'm not sure.

Q-What are you feeling?
A-Ambiguous feelings.

Of course, everyone in these semi-fictional dialogues is just being emotionally honest. As I like to say, however, not knowing and not being able to say has a way of becoming the answer that finishes conversations.

Not knowing how you feel is another way of choosing not to feel. Inevitably, if you can never decide, you will lose your chance at love -- not right away but eventually.

It's possible that men and women begin switching roles as we age, I'm not sure. One way or another, whenever your lover finally asks you the big question, it is far better if you already know your answer.

Otherwise, you're both likely in for a lot of unnecessary pain. If you're not sure, lean away. Date others. Then, you'll find out. There's no scarcity of loving in this world, but there is a scarcity of hope.

From the moment one asks another these big questions, an invisible emotional clock starts ticking...Everything will depend on your answer.

-30-

En la guerra con el Mystics*

Si eres alguien que consigue hiciste porciones de preguntas, como un padre, por ejemplo, o un profesor, o un voluntario que hace el trabajo de la comunidad, o un jefe, o un traductor, o una hermana grande, o quizás apenas un hombre que tenga gusto de hablar con las mujeres, mejoras estés preparado para tener una reserva grande bonita de respuestas listas.

Sin embargo, la única respuesta veraz a algunas preguntas es, naturalmente bastante, “yo no sabe.” Esto es asombrosamente duro decir si sucedes ser un padre, o un profesor, un voluntario que hace el trabajo de la comunidad, un jefe, un traductor, una hermana grande, o un hombre que tenga gusto de hablar con las mujeres.

Siendo en un estado de los medios relativos de la energía tú se suponen para saber las respuestas. El ser varón levantado debe ser enseñado que el no saber es una muestra de la debilidad. Esto, por supuesto, nos conduce en todas las clases de apuro, pero en ninguna parte tanto como en las materias del corazón.

Extraño, es en materias emocionales donde están más probable los hombres admitir que no saben las respuestas.

¿Q-me amas?
El A-I no sabe.

¿Q-Qué eres que se siente?
El A-I no sabe.

El rap en hombres es que somos comisión-phobic, que estamos fuera de tacto con cómo nos sentimos realmente, que dejamos todo el trabajo emocional difícil a las mujeres en nuestras vidas.

No voy a defender a hombres aquí, incluyendo me. Pero voy a decir esto. Mientras que los mores sociales se han desarrollado, y los hombres y las mujeres se han convertido algo más bién uno a, no es infrecuente ahora que un hombre encuentre a una mujer que no sepa las respuestas.

¿Q-me amas?
El A-I piensa tan pero no soy seguro.

¿Q-Qué eres que se siente?
Sensaciones Uno-Ambiguas.

Por supuesto, cada uno en estos diálogos semi-ficticios es el ser justo emocionalmente honesto. Mientras que tengo gusto de decir, sin embargo, no sabiendo y no pudiendo decir tiene una manera de hacer la respuesta que acaba conversaciones.

No sabiendo sensación eres otra manera de elegir no sentirse. Inevitable, si puedes nunca decidir, perderás tu ocasión en el amor -- no enseguida sino eventual.

Es posible que los hombres y las mujeres comienzan papeles de la conmutación como envejecemos, yo no son seguros. Una forma u otra, siempre que tu amante finalmente te haga la pregunta grande, es lejos mejor si sabes ya tu respuesta.

Si no, eres ambo probable adentro para los muchos de dolor innecesario. Si no eres seguro, inclinación lejos. Fecha otras. Entonces, descubrirás. No hay escasez de amar en este mundo, sino que hay una escasez de la esperanza.

A partir del momento uno hace a otro estas preguntas grandes, un reloj emocional invisible comienza a hacer tictac… todo dependerá de tu respuesta.

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* The Flaming Lips.

Your beating heart

As the fog rolled in softly late Sunday, my young pitcher hurled a scoreless inning, and looked fine out there on the "mound," which actually is just a flat piece of brown earth at Grant's Field in the West Sunset sports complex. It wasn't cold; it wasn't windy.

The umpire is none other than Larry Baer, executive vice-president of the Giants, whose season came to a premature end on a dismal road trip. It would appear that the Barry Bonds era is finished in San Francisco. His homerun total -- 734 -- is more than any player has ever hit in one league, but it sits under the dark cloud of suspicion that he helped himself courtesy of performance-enhancing substances.

I haven't asked Larry, but my assumption is the team will not renew the 42-year-old Bonds' contract. So, he'll probably finish his career just like Hank Aaron did, as an American Leaguer. Neither would ever be able to challenge Babe Ruth's AL homer total of 714.

None of this is interesting to non-stat-heads, I realize, so I'll change gears right this moment.

***

"Listen to your Heart," one of those pop song titles that sticks in my head. When it comes to relationships, there is such a thing as over-analyzing them. In this culture, we do so much therapy, we read so many self-help books and articles, we visit counselors, mediators, ministers, priests and rabbis. We talk about them in anonymous groups, 12-step programs, or over crisis hotlines. We talk about them in excruciating detail publicly on talk shows, in press conferences, even in the "news" section of newspapers, radio, and TV.

By far the biggest user-generated content on the Internet is all about relationships -- love, sex, meeting people, seeking advice, giving advice, and exploring fantasies. What all of this generates for me is cerebral fatigue.

I don't want to think about it any more. I just want it to happen. Love, that is. No matter how you cut it, love happens. In order for it to happen, you have to let yourself go. You "fall" into it.

Then, inevitably, you wake up to your new reality and doubts creep in. Maybe he's "too old," or maybe you "won't like her kids," or maybe you're "too different," or "too much the same."

To me none of this matters. You can analyze love until your face turns blue (i.e., you are dead, rendering the conversation irrelevant.) I know all of the popular wisdom about paying attention to the structure of relationships, being mindful of how power is distributed between partners.

And, this is good stuff. It's true wisdom for how to live your life and how to preserve your relationships, once you have them.

But it's not helpful to finding love. Love has its own way, and it tends to move well outside the channels of thought that compel us to assess and re-assess what we do and do not have in our intimate relationships.

I have been with enough people over enough time to have learned something basic. For me, there is no "type," that can be described rationally. That's why I rarely write physical descriptions or even mental descriptions of the women I love. They key to the "type" question for me is strictly emotional.


That's where the connection starts and ends. It's all about the heart.

***

Engulfed as we so often are in the fog, we just have to feel our way. Baseball is the perfect metaphor. Players know you can "think too much." Relying on instinct is the better way. Ignore the batter, throw your pitch. He's a great hitter and he hits a hard line drive right back at you. If it was yesterday, and you're the 12-year-old pictured above, you position your glove perfectly, making it look easy. The batter is out, the inning is over. You weren't thinking, you did it all by instinct.

Just like in love.


Chrissy Field 9/24/06

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