Notes from a cluttered mind

Episode 4: Sunday morning, coming down

1. “He’s a poet, he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, he’s a pusher. He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned.” So wrote Kris Kristofferson in “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” a song appearing on his second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I, that, according to Kristofferson, is a tribute to people in his orbit who’d inspired him:

   Well, there were a lot of people that the pilgrim stood for or that I felt fit into that category, and most of them were people who were serious about songwriting, but an awful lot of us just looked like we were out of work.

   The song also provides the opening music for Cisco Pike (1971), a wonderful time capsule of a film that stars Kristofferson, Gene Hackman, and a host of character actors who made 70s cinema so momentous, from Harry Dean Stanton and Karen Black to Joy Bang, Antonio Fargas, and Howard Hesseman.

   Kristofferson passed away Saturday at his home in Maui at the age of 88, with the news breaking publicly — rather fittingly, I’d offer — on Sunday morning.

   Coming down, indeed.

   At once a gifted songwriter and lyricist, as well as an underrated actor, Kristofferson — more than any other figure save maybe Bob Dylan, with whom I’d call it a draw — embodied for me the spirit of American rebellion forever captured by the real 1960’s counterculture: rugged individualism tethered to a serious social consciousness that differs in spades from today’s formulaic “social justice” poses — more specifically, from the trite blatherings of the old celebrity hippies like David Crosby or Annie Liebowitz, who moved from “free love” to leftist authoritarianism and a distrust of speech different from their own almost effortlessly, and without a tinge of self consciousness.

   To me, Kristofferson was a personal hero. An archetypal American. Son of an army general. Rhodes Scholar. Enduring creative force.

   — And so achingly cool that it almost physically hurt me knowing that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t possibly ever measure up.

   God speed, Kris. You will be greatly, greatly missed.

   

2. Been coaching up my youngest, Tanner, who just a little over a year ago took up baseball (to go along with football and wrestling, and now, soccer). Since then, he’s really taken to the sport, which has turned me into one of those Dads. We get up together at 5:30 AM four days a week for fitness training, which includes weights, resistance bands, dynamic stretching, and speed-agility-power training; and to that, we add skills-specific training, specifically, the throwing and recovery program from Driveline, as well as the hitting programs from both Driveline and Camwood, which I’ve lately combined into hitting workouts I design for him based on what I’m seeing in his swing and in his Blast Motion metrics. We also work on his catching — both blocking and receiving — as well as general glove work for infield and outfield.

   It’s a grind, and some mornings I feel like I’m the one who’s just finished with the 90 minute workout; but he’s starting to notice the changes in his body and his skillset, which means he’s starting to appreciate the workouts more, especially once he’s finished. Completing them gives him a sense of accomplishment. And it also has left him very strong for his size. He isn’t yet into puberty — could happen any day now or could be another year or two — but he’s already conditioning himself to put in the work necessary to thrive in competitive sports these days.

   Growing up, my generation spent hours and hours outside after school or on weekends playing pickup games at local fields. Today, finding a field that isn’t owned and rented out by the city or town is far more difficult and time consuming than it ever was, and kids almost invariably revert to the easiest avenues for entertainment, be it video games, surfing the web, or watching TV. Every sport they play is highly regulated and policed by adults. Which doesn’t allow kids the space to fool around, to try and fail, to self-police their own activities, or break up into groups along the lines of friendship, or even a level of competition as understood by the kids themselves that isn’t artificially imposed on them by adult travel league “scouts,” who select the most physically advanced kids and early genetic outliers rather than allowing the runts and the remainders room to grow and improve along with them.

   I miss those days. So I try to remember that he’s still only 12 — which is why I no longer get pissy when I walk out into the loft and find him pretending his bat is a rifle, or wearing his batting helmet as part of an insurgent advance behind the enemy lines of some malignant alien invasion. I love to see him play.

   I’m just a nostalgic softy that way.

   

3. At some point tomorrow — I’ll know exactly what time later today — I’ll be heading into surgery to have a few bones removed from my left wrist. The procedure is called a proximal row carpectomy, which I’m hoping finally eases the pain I’ve been dealing with. For about two years now I’ve been unable to use my wrist without serious discomfort, and using it athletically — say, to swing a bat — has been nearly impossible.

   My time in strongman training is not something I regret. It gave me tremendous confidence and a significant sense of accomplishment. Not to mention, it allowed me to win a shit ton of bar bets, whether by picking a bar stool up by the very end of one leg, or by tearing bottle caps in half.

   Still, over the years, thanks to a ligament injury I was unaware of until my wrist failed — in addition to the heavy grip work I did as part of strong man training — I developed arthritis in my left hand, which my orthopedist is hoping to correct by removing three bones, clearing space to allow healthy cartiledge to align with healthy cartiledge to form a new hinge point. This will slightly reduce my range of motion, but it should allow me to get back to working out and playing sports — or opening jars, or wiping down counters — without savage pain. My grip strength will never be what it was with that hand. But it’s a trade off I’m willing to make.

   This whole thing is happening, I should mention, while my wife is still recovering from her ACL and meniscus tears. So for the next month or so, we’re all going to feel like we’re living in a M*A*S*H unit. And the financial strain Biden’s economy has put so many of us under, is going to get more real here soon, if that’s even possible. But my wife and I talked it over, and getting back my quality of life is a priority. For good or ill.

   — And if that doesn’t work, the post-op drugs are going to be fire. So fuck it. Let’s cut this bitch!

4. Speaking of drugs, I was going through the crisper drawer in our fridge this morning for the first time in a while, and I happened upon a few agency beets in the midst of turning out a baby carrot. Poor thing was all kind of bruised up, mottled bits of gray on her smooth orange skin, her entire torso covered in limpid beet sugar and the sticky, fibrous threads from at least one of her would-be pimps’ scratchy blood red jackets — a syringe crusted in tiny pearls of heroin still sticking crookedly from her raw bottom.

   

   Fucking celery stalks just lay there, too, pretending to be asleep. Unconscionable.

   All of them, though — the agency beets, the strung out baby carrot with the dead eyes, the nihislistic tuned out celery stalks — soon found themselves folded into a pinkish smoothie, torn bits of each clinging small and stupidly to the blades of a prosumer KitchenAid blender.

   I’m all about the fiber. And the B9.

   Still, if you don’t think an irate phone call was immediately placed to a certain increasingly disengaged Dolphin in a peacoat, then you don’t know me near as well as you think you do.

5. That brand new bag Papa got? Turns out it’s a matching set. And they found themselves a bit of empty closet space directly beneath my eyes, settling there, a couple of parenthesis dead on their backs, left to bloat like a pair of Pacific Northwest sex workers dumped naked into the Green River.

   I’m old, is what I’m getting at.

6. That’s it for this week. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber. That and outright patronage — which would include, I fear, waxing my benefactor’s balls — are the best ways to support my work. Of the two, I’d much prefer the former.

   ****

   Buy me a cup of coffee? Lunch? A sports car?