Washing the dishes. Watering the garden. Any number of things. Instead, I’m thinking about how Pedro Martinez reminded me of Yojimbo last night. ( One of my all time favorite movies, that and Sanjuro, of course.) But: That merest flick of a backward glance while walking off the mound. And since Matsui was the only one who, initially at least, seemed to figure out what was going on, the–er–motif got firmly fixed in my pliable little brain. Oh, baseball. As long as I can watch it, just watch the game, watch the people moving, and not think about all the money and owner weirdnesses and all, I am happy. There is a kind of discipline to the game that is like a martial art, in the way one has to devote oneself to the skills and techniques until they become second nature. And nature always has the last word: Luck, chance, weather, so many things enter into what happens in a baseball game. It is really like life. In that, you never know, sort of way.
And indeed, one never DOES know. I went to see my client in the nursing home today and everyone was dressed for Halloween. I didn’t recognize anybody, they’d costumed and switched up wheelchairs and all sorts of things. Werewolves! Goddesses! Border Patrol Agents! And everyone was having a fantastic time of it as a result. Slipping off their identities and entering into the spirit of the holiday- which, being about the bridge between the worlds of “life” and “death”, is actually appropriate for such a locale- with great humor and joy. The ability to be anonymous lent everyone an energy and …an abandon. A freedom. Which is precisely the point of it all, really. Entering into life with one’s heart. No guarantee of a win or a good ERA or success OR failure. It just IS and you might as well jump. So it was pretty amazing to see all these people, who live lives many would consider totally impossible, being collectively happy and, actually, powerful, in a funny way. The werewolf scared the hell out of me, to be honest. It turned out he’s one of the people who don’t speak, but I finally recognized him from his particular laugh. Oh, he thought it was hilarious sneaking up on me in that infernal wheelchair! I of course, being the mature person I am, laughed so hard I got the hiccups, which made everyone else giggle even more. Dude. Always a source of entertainment, we are. At least I didn’t fall down.
There is a kind of piercing, yet suspended, sense to things today. Maybe it’s the weather- warm, actually, blindingly clear. The intensity of the colors of things against the sky. We’re on the Pacific Flyway so there is always something amazing flying around–I saw a flock of small birds wheeling through the air earlier, watched them in a clustered group, then a circle, then a long line, constantly forming and reforming. Sometimes you could see them and sometimes the sun hit their wings and turned them so white they disappeared. Finally they expanded from the clump to the long sinuous line and all of a sudden: They were gone. It’s really all quite something, isn’t it.
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 