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Unfinished

When you run a part of the relay and pass on the baton, there is no sense of unfinished business in your mind. There is just the sense of having done your part to the best of your ability. ~ N.R. Narayana Murthy

I’m not a runner. I really never have been, though I did run from bullies when I was in elementary school. For a while I ran around my neighborhood, too, until loose dogs made me stop. Or at least that was my excuse for stopping. That’s pretty much it.

But I’m a big fan of the Olympics. I watch the runners go around the track, and I envy them. I love the relay because each runner goes all out for only a quarter of the race, but that’s it. That’s their job. It will forever be unfinished for them.

The baton is the only part of the relay that completes the entire cycle.

It’s something I think about a lot, the idea of trusting in others to get something finished that I’ve started. Continue reading “Unfinished”

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Not the Swearing Kind

He had Tourette’s, but not the swearing kind. In fact, if you didn’t know him very well you wouldn’t even suspect he had any issues. If you looked closely, however, you might notice the trembling in his right hand, the clicking of his tongue slamming repetitively against the back of his teeth, or even the twitching of his left eyebrow in time with some hidden drummer in his head. It was at once both familiar and reassuring, but also supremely frustrating to him. It had only caused him real trouble twice in his life: the one time when he accidentally voted for Jill Stein, and the other when he wet himself at the urinal at City Hall. Both times had been quite embarrassing. He had vowed not to let either one happen again.

He was a tour guide at the Museum of Modern Art, one of the fifty white-jacketed walking encyclopedias of the history of painting, with some sculptural knowledge on the side. When he was on his feet, using his hands to gesture at the works on the walls, he sometimes forgot the shaking that consumed him at all other times of the day. It was as if the motion lulled his brain into a sense of comfort that nothing else could. He wished he were able to bottle that feeling and keep it with him all day long, but he knew it was as impossible as Easter on the Fourth of July. Continue reading “Not the Swearing Kind”

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The Tone & Timbre

My father called here this morning. Why does he have such a hold over me? I hadn’t heard his voice in 6 months, and yet the tone, the timbre, are as familiar to me as my own, yet so foreign at the same time.

Alexa answered the phone, but she didn’t recognize him. After all, she’s only talked to him twice before. She covered the mouthpiece and asked me who he was, if she should speak with him, if it was okay. I wonder if he wants some sort of relationship with my children. He claimed he did once, but that was a dog’s age ago, and he disappeared again.

Is he back? Or was this just a Mothers’ Day surprise?

Why does he, even now, hold such sway over me, over my thoughts? I ask myself this less and less, but always when he calls again, after so much time. And I know I should make up my mind. Do I want to try and craft a relationship with him, even now, even after all this time?

Continue reading “The Tone & Timbre”

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Stretch & Tone

“Ultimately spiritual awareness unfolds when you’re flexible, when you’re spontaneous, when you’re detached, when you’re easy on yourself and easy on others.” ~Deepak Chopra

Flexibility is something I’ve lived with pretty much my entire life. I remember my high school graduation, how much I reminded my uncle of how early I had to be there (he was supposed to be my ride), and how I still found myself flying after the city bus, racing down the street with my mortarboard cap under my arm, robe flapping in the breeze. At least the people on the bus wished me good luck.

I used to pride myself on not being like that, in being everywhere early, in being as dependable as Cupid on Valentine’s Day. I treated it like it was the biggest virtue, and it is important, but time has shown me everything isn’t quite as black and white as it seemed when I was judging my uncle (at 17). I hated this ability to be flexible on things that to me mattered more than others. But maybe it wasn’t about being flexible at all. Maybe it was about trying your best and life intervening. Continue reading “Stretch & Tone”

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A Treatise on Exhalation

I’ve been neglectful, really. Not the kind of regret that sits on a windowsill and judges, but rather the kind that pops up out of nowhere and reminds me that I’m a human being, that I’m connected to a larger universe of humanity (a horde, really) that exists in and for itself. It’s both outside of me, and a part of me in ways I can’t always quite fathom the way I probably should.

Being “in-semester” does that to me.

For days on end, in-semester, the world shrinks down for me into seven classes, some on the Tuesday/Thursday cycle, and others revolving around Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Each one is its personal microcosm of energy (and the lack thereof, depending on what part of the semester we’re in). When I’m with that group they are the whole world. I engage, I am engaged, and I exhale when I have to move on from them. That’s my life.

But now I’m doing a different kind of exhale. Continue reading “A Treatise on Exhalation”

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Redemption?

It’s been a week since Tiger Woods shocked the world and won his 5th Masters title. For those non-golf fans out there, don’t tell me you didn’t already know. It was everywhere on social media, on the news, even in articles about Notre Dame (I know, right?). Well, Tiger Woods is larger than life, isn’t he? His problems, his foibles, his innate humanness, they were also larger than life in the intervening 10 years since he crashed his car into a hydrant. Such is the curse of being really good at what you do, and at having what you do be in the spotlight.

But hindsight is 20/20, dreams hardly ever come true, the Easter Bunny isn’t real… All things you should know by now. Part of that obvious list used to be that Tiger Woods would win more majors. It was in his DNA, after all, having captured his first on that selfsame august course he was playing this time last week (pretty damn early too). When 13 others followed in quick succession (can you believe the 1st 14 came in only an 11 year period?) it was easy to think they would keep rolling in.

However, golf is a fickle sport, and man is a giddy thing. Continue reading “Redemption?”