VernonBlog

September 3, 2008

Why run a marathon?

For over 20 years I have been running for recreation and fitness, anywhere from about .8 to three or four times a week for distances of 4 to 6 miles. I have rarely been concerned about performance or proving anything. I was in it for fun and fitness. Suddenly, at age 50, I am signed up for the Philadelphia Marathon on November 23, 2008, and training seriously. How did this happen?

The influence of a running-fanatic friend was a factor. He encouraged me to try a half-marathon organized by the New York Road Runners back in January. This was the longest distance I had ever run and I was not properly trained for it. I was sore as hell for days afterwards, but I loved it. Five thousand pairs of feet trotting through the cold air of Central Park, a kin-hin line writ extremely large. I decided I would meet the NYYR requirement for entry into the New York Marathon in 2009 by running in at least nine races in 2008, and thus open the option of doing a marathon.

Then my running friend got into my head again: Why don't you do Philadelphia in the fall? It's open to anyone who pays the registration fee. I thought this over for a couple weeks, fretting over the difficulty of fitting training into an already busy life. Then just said fuck it, hit the website and did the deed.

Now I am embarked on a formal training program (from the Running Planet) that prepares you to complete a marathon in four hours. I felt irrationally attached to the four hour number even before arriving at it rationally. It's a nice round figure, and four hours of continuous running is quite enough, thank you, so let's get it over with. It's a fortunate coincidence that my running history is such that the four hour goal does appear to be reasonable and attainable. So I am going at it five or six days a week, getting up before dawn to trod the pavement and run around Liberty State Park as the sun comes up, hitting the treadmill at work, exerting myself like never before in my life.

Why do this? I have long been vaguely curious about the experience of completing a marathon and thought it might be interesting to try it some day and find out if I could do it. Then I noticed I was 50 years old. Now seems like a pretty good time to get started, rather than waiting until 60 or 70.

Yes, but that's doesn't answer the question: why do this? I read some place that there are as many reasons as there are runners, but that's another evasion.

Am I trying to outrun the grim reaper? Well, no, I fully expect to die. But first I would like to run a marathon.

But why? Am I trying to prove that I am disciplined and tough? Maybe a little. I don't think I need to prove that I am fit, it's a pretty simple and uncontroversial fact. But I will rather enjoy showing my medal to people. I guess that would be about ego gratification.

Why? Why go to so much trouble for ego gratification, or whatever it is? I don't know. Yesterday I was in Urban Athletics buying gear, and had a chat with one of the co-owners. When I raised this question with him, he simply said, cross the finish line and you'll know why.

I am reminded of something my Zen teacher once said to me: Ultimate truth cannot be known. But it can be experienced. Perhaps Jerry from Urban Athletics was saying the same thing.

Update: A few days later, Sensei was not impressed when I told him this story about the above remark from the guy at Urban Athletics. Ever the consummate Zen dude, he said: why ask why?

Posted by Professor B at 5:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

On turning fifty

I had the honor of turning 50 the other day. My girlfriend (not quite 42 years old) generously hosted a back yard party at her house. There were about 25 delightful people, flawless spring weather, splendid food and drink. Had I been invited to say a few words to mark the occasion, I would have said something like the following.

I have no scruples about making a big deal out of my 50th birthday. If multiples of ten are noteworthy, multiples of 50 are huge. Living 50 years is an accomplishment one usually does not repeat. It's a good time to take a look at one's life and notice how it is unfolding, developing, changing, and to savor the pleasures of getting older.

When you get old enough, your past becomes so long that it can be considered history. When I turned ten the year was 1968. Martin Luther King had been assassinated a couple weeks before, and cities were burning. Robert F. Kennedy was to be assassinated in June, as Hillary Clinton so tastefully reminded us the other day. The United States was mired in a catastrophic imperial misadventure in Viet Nam, where what is known as the Tet Offensive was in full swing. The Pentagon and the CIA were in a power struggle over lying to the American public about enemy troop strength. Grim and bloody news of the war came to us daily through radio, television and print media. Many young people were rebelling and doing a lot of drugs. I was in fourth grade and my friends and I would ride around freely on our bicycles with neither supervision nor helmets.

At 20 I was a music student, working diligently and with determination to become a classical guitarist. Remember the Jimmy Carter administration?

At 30 I was a fairly accomplished classical guitarist and quit the business in favor of "real" full time employment. Late Reagan era, Bush senior about to ascend to the throne.

At 40 I was well established in a reasonably honorable and well-paying career, a homeowner, married, no kids. The Clinton years.

At 50 I am in the same job, the divorce very nearly a done deal, my daughter recently turned five, the house about to be sold (profitably, housing collapse notwithstanding). I live peacefully and contentedly in good health with two superb cats, and things have never been better. I am immensely grateful for my good fortune. Meanwhile, as Barack Obama prepares to defeat John McCain in the fall, the human race has probably never been in greater peril. Will my daughter's planet be inhabitable when she is approaching fifty?

* * *

In our society a lot of us have a troubled and complicated relationship with aging. We lie about our age, or we snicker and chuckle and joke about it. "You look much yonger than fifty" is considered a high compliment. I can't help but think that underlying that attitude is fear of nothing other than death. We grasp and cling to life and run like hell from death, we generally avoid thinking about the inevitable extinction of our selves and our loved ones -- until it's too late. Life is replete with unspeakable suffering, and then, in the best case scenario, you get old age, sickness and death for your trouble. That being the case, what -- if any -- is the purpose, value, meaning of anything? Is "I don't know" a satisfactory answer? Does it matter?

I am convinced that the time to face the large questions is now, when you can still reasonably expect to have a couple decades to work on it, not when you're in the hospice with three days to live. And the most important way to work on this little side project is to stare at the wall every day without fail. If I have to confess to having a goal or objective in practicing Zen, it is this: keep stilling the scattered, chattering mind and use the tools Zen provides to help us face facts. When it's time to go, be prepared. In the meantime, enjoy living life instead of worrying about losing it.

Posted by Professor B at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2008

Having money -- more or less

The wisdom that he who knows he has enough is rich dates back at least as far as Laozi, a/k/a Lao Tsu. Countless studies have since established that material prosperity does not equal happiness. And while it is one thing to nod your head and say yes I agree with this proposition, it is quite another to acquire direct knowledge of it through experience.

I have had the good fortune to suffer enough of an economic reversal to be able to learn about having less money, while at the same time not having my essential economic security -- food, shelter -- seriously threatened. And I am pleased to report that you can be happier with less money in your pocket. Having bills come due with my checking account balance running as low as $124 is inconvenient, but it is little more than an inconvenience. Again, especially when one is still gainfully employed and can expect some relief at the next paycheck, within a couple weeks at most. One comes to appreciate that other aspects of life truly are more valuable and important than your checking account balance. Indeed, having that balance plunge and not caring is immensely liberating.

One also learns something about fear and anxiety. I stand in the very situation that terrified me couple of years ago when it was an abstract possibility: having to make do with less, paying a hefty child support obligation while also maintaining my own household in an area where the cost of living is high. And yet here I am, and not only is it OK, it's a good deal better than OK.

I am reminded of something my teacher once said, à propos of anxieties that come up during zazen: we should be grateful for them, because we often discover that the thorny problem we were so worried about is not thorny, or if it is, the thorns are not as dangerous as we thought. The logic is rather subtle -- why does that mean we should be grateful? I suppose the reasoning is that you should be grateful for the teaching that eventually comes out of those anxieties that arise while you are studying the paint on the wall.

So it is with having less money than you previously did. I like to joke that if I had a more abundant money supply, I would permit myself two self-indulgences. One is that I would buy a great wheel of high quality parmesan cheese, far more than I need. This would be for pure greed and amusement. I think it would be a kick to have that much cheese in the house. I would give away big hunks of it. The other eccentricity I would indulge in is reading glasses. I would buy perhaps a thousand inexpensive pairs and scatter them everywhere: every surface of every room, every pocket of every garment. That's because I frequently misplace them. The reading glasses market is highly volatile in my household, not suitable for the risk-averse. My reading glasses portfolio can gain and lose large percentages of its value in a single afternoon. I start with two, then I have seven, then one. I would insulate myself against those shocks by owning a large reserve -- very large.

So there you have it. Not having a lot of cash to spare is not bad. If I had more, the only things I would change are my parmesan cheese and reading glasses inventories. But I don't, and am quite happy to buy these items in modest quantities.

Posted by Professor B at 2:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2008

Grits or homefries

When I saw this sign I thought of a couple of people who would appreciate it, so I went back later with my camera to take this snap. "We served grits or homefries." Past tense. Ha ha ha. Get it? They are ignorant, I am superior. How are they going to attract customers with a historical trivium such as this? And an ambiguous one at that: does "grits or homefries" mean they don't know which they once served?

The joke was on me, as the photo turned out to be strikingly beautiful in its own right.

Posted by Professor B at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2008

"Either you real or you ain't"

The other day one of the teachers in our zendo gave a talk in which she likened the practice of zen to classical ballet: one of the most painfully demanding of disciplines. Dancers must show up for a 90 minute class every single day without fail, no matter how experienced and accomplished they are or think they are. Always showing up, always striving, tuning, preparing for the stage -- that's what it's about. So it is with the Zen practitioner. You show up at the zendo for formal zazen as often as you possibly can, regardless of whether you feel like it or whether it's convenient. Formal zazen is essential, a necessity. LIkewise, extended sittings such a as zazenkai and sesshin are not optional add-ons. They are what you do when you're a Zen practitioner.

This idea was reinforced by a scene that I recently saw in an episode from the fifth season of the venerable HBO series The Wire. During a prison visit, the incarcerated father admonishes his son to apply himself with greater diligence to his work in the drug trade. Either you real or you ain't, he says. Irony notwithstanding, this paternal advice underscores a valid point. The teacher's talk was evidently aimed at students who she thought needed to hear it. She might as well have said, either you real or you ain't.

I was reminded of something my family has said about me over the years: you are a fanatic, an addictive personality. When you set your mind to something, you go at it relentlessly, obsessively. I have always tended to think, well, ok. When they suggested that going away for a week-long sesshin last summer was an example of my fanaticism, I figured, whatever. Now I am not so sure. Sesshin is what zen practitioners do. Why do this at all unless you're serious? Either you real or you ain't.

Update

Looking at the above three months later, I see the fallacy in the argument "I am not a fanatic; sesshin is what Zen practitioners do." Sitting in meditation several hours a day for a week is extreme -- fanatical, even. Dedicated Zen practitioners are fanatics.

Posted by Professor B at 7:57 AM | Comments (0)

April 3, 2008

MLK's Mountaintop Speech

There was a good piece on NPR this morning about Martin Luther King's last speech, in which he said he was not concerned about longevity because he had been to the mountaintop and looked over. Just the night before I had been pondering the koan from which the phrase "All is vast and boundless" is taken. While listening to King's speaking voice coming out of the radio in my kitchen 40 years after the fact, it occurred to me that King himself must have realized that all is vast and boundless. It doesn't matter what you call it.

Posted by Professor B at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2008

On being burgled

I came home the other day to find that one of the two windows in my bedroom had been shattered. My apartment is on a third floor; the fire escape is accessible through these windows, and vice-versa. At first I thought, that's odd. A window broken, yet everything seems otherwise intact. The previous day had been a holiday for us public sector workers and I had devoted nearly all of it to cleaning and straightening out this apartment, so it was exceptionally neat and organized. Computer equipment and sexy skinny TV, still in place. Beautiful flowers on the clutter-free dining room table.

Later that evening as my four-year-old daughter and I were sitting down to dinner I had the impulse to take a picture. Oops, no digital camera. Hmmm, how about that portable computer that my mom gave me? Also gone. I had been considering whether to report the incident to the police -- what can they do? Is there any point? -- but at this point I decided I would definitely do so, if only to become an official statistic. Let the record reflect that this guy's apartment was broken into one day in February 2008 and his laptop and camera were stolen.

Two Jersey City police officers came promptly, and were impeccably courteous and professional. They summoned two more cops to the scene to look around and ask questions, then they left.

My bedroom was impossibly cold, and my daughter's is closer to the gaping window than the living room is, so I decided my daughter and I would both sleep on the fold-out in the living room that night. I felt curiously equanimous in the face of an experience that most reasonable people find distressing -- "violated" is the word people use to describe the feeling resulting from such intrusions. It was disturbing and inconvenient, but my material losses were modest and I felt I had gotten off easy. We went to sleep.

Ah, but at 3:30 a.m. I woke up a bit paranoid about the window open to the world, and did not get back to sleep. At around 5:00 I decided to get up and do zazen. The blinds rattling in the wind sounded like a person sneaking in, and scared the shit out of me before I figured out it was just the wind. As my mind meandered along, it ocurred to me that next time I come home and put my key in the lock, I will not know what to expect. In the next instant I thought, yes, but you never know what to expect when you put your key in the door. Indeed you don't even know if there will be a door. Welcome to reality. Back to the breath.

I have no ill will against the intruder. I do not want the incident to recur, but that's entirely different. In the days since the break-in I have wondered about the experience from the burglar's point of view. Who is she or he? A drug addict? How old? What race or ethnicity? The intruder evidently exited through the window adjacent to the one through which she entered, because I found it unlatched, and why risk cutting yourself on broken glass? She thoughtfully lowered it behind her, perhaps to keep the cats from escaping. I imagined Vernon and Lin-chi, ever sociable, greeting her warmly as she made her way through the kitchen and into the living room searching for portable items of value. Will you feed us, they must have asked.

You know how it is when you enter someone's home for the first time as a guest. You look around and take in the whole environment. Then, if left to your own devices for a couple minutes, you amble over to the bookcase and inspect the titles. You look at the art on the walls, perhaps the music collection. Looking, looking with pure, normal curiosity for things of interest, points of contact between guest and host.

What did my apartment look like through the thief's eyes? What did she observe? What registered? Anything? Did she notice the photographs on the refrigerator? The zabuton and seiza bench? The childrens' drawings taped up everywhere? Did the intruder form any impression at all of the apartment and its inhabitants?

We will never know, but it makes for interesting speculation.

Posted by Professor B at 9:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2008

poetry in the bathroom

taken away from my
customary diet
I become

stopped up.
struggling to squeeze out
two or three small turds

there is more than
time enough
to examine the poetry

books piled high in
Ann's bathroom

Posted by Professor B at 6:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2007

Lin-chi and Vernon rip shit up

As we predicted earlier, Lin-chi and Vernon continue to kick ass on behalf of VTB Consulting. That's all there is to know.

 

Posted by Professor B at 12:20 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2007

For immediate release: VTB appoints Lin-chi, Vernon to staff

Vernon T. Bludgeon Consulting is pleased to welcome two new members to its staff: (left to right) Master Lin-chi, and the eponymous Vernon T. Bludgeon the Cat. Both the Master and Vernon the Cat bring proven track records in inhaling, exhaling, sleeping, eating, shitting, and unprovoked aggression. We are confident that these two outstanding professionals will make a significant and lasting contribution to our organization, and will substantially enhance the already unparalleled Vernon T. Bludgeon value proposition.

Posted by Professor B at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2007

Down By the Riverside

I ride the bus from New York to Washington
to protest the Iraq war

At the podium a woman sings a capella
Down By The Riverside
her smooth black voice
full of confidence and determination.

I look at my shoes and realize
these feet once stood
on this same ground
nearly thirty years ago
when I was child
brought here by mother.

The song was the same
but the singer was Pete Seeger
and the war was in Viet Nam.

Posted by Professor B at 5:19 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2007

a weekend with the Dalai Lama

This past weekend His Holiness was in great form (ouch! no double-entendre intended). A friend and I went to five two-hour lectures on abstruse Buddhist texts about Emptiness by Nagarjuna. I am more interested in Zen than I am in the Tibetan brand, but I invested the time and money in this event because I thought I could learn something from someone so highly accomplished. And I believe I did.

But this was not for wimps, no. This was a dense, cerebral exegesis of a difficult and arcane text. Much of it went over my head. It was hard to stay awake -- nay, impossible. I nodded off more than once, especially after lunch at one of those good restaurants on 46th Street between Fifth and Sixth. And magnificent though the interpreter was, I think occasionally the message suffered some in translation, and became less coherent. But in case you missed it: all phenomena are empty, that is, devoid of any independent, intrinsic objective reality. Any questions?

Still, I think all this teaching went somewhere other than /dev/null. Some things are difficult to grasp, and you begin to get it after several passes at it. Moreover, as my own teacher points out, Emptiness is a matter of insight. Therefore, back to the mat.

On Sunday afternoon H.H. gave a "public" talk -- geared for general audiences. He spoke the whole time in English, and was superb. The man has an uncommon gift for connecting with audiences. And he is obviously a highly evolved, wise, compassionate, all-around advanced human being. As are a lot of people. I see no reason to deify him.

Posted by Professor B at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2007

Mets' shame and disgrace, Mets fans' anguish

At least the torture of the past two and a half weeks is over.

Mostly. Now we have to put up with Yankee fans rubbing our faces in this horrific shit. Them in the post-season, us not -- how can this be happening? How? Because we are Mets fans.

But this, this is truly ugly. It would be one thing if we had fought valiantly most of the year and then simply were beaten fair and square early in the playoffs, as we were last year. Or if the reverse had happened: if we had sucked ten kinds of ass all year and then suddenly made a valiant run that simply fell short. That we could handle. But this nightmarish, total collapse, this complete falling apart, folding up and lying down to die on our own turf at the hands of sub-.500 teams, is a slap in the fans' face that is hard to take.

But take it we will. We have no choice. We are Mets fans.

Posted by Professor B at 9:25 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2007

How to fill a paper napkin dispenser

When I was an student between my junior and senior undergraduate years, I worked a shit job in a Friendly's fast food restaurant. It was, as I say, a shit job, but we had some fun. After hours we would let in our friends, lock the doors, smoke pot, and gorge ourselves on ice cream. No matter how much we pilfered thus, we could not make a dent, a fact which struck us as hilarious as we continued to devour the cold sweet substance until satiation.

I was working in the back room one day when I suddenly found myself charged with the task of clearing handfuls of dishwater-logged coleslaw from the drain of an immense sink, as deep as my arm was long. Undignified and messy though the work was, I regarded it with equanimity because I understood that this was very probably the nadir of my employment career, and from this point forward things would improve. My optimistic intuition has proven correct, sort of. I have since had moments in my working life where I thought I might rather be back at Friendly's with the dishwater-logged coleslaw, but no moments quite as messy in the literal sense.

Besides this insight, there were other benefits to be gained from Friendly's. Early in my short career, one of the other employees explained to me how to replenish a paper napkin dispenser. My instinct told me to stuff it to capacity and beyond, so that refilling would be as infrequently necessary as possible, and began to do so. But my wiser colleague pointed out the correct way to fill a paper napkin dispenser: leave a little space towards the front. If you overstuff it, the napkins cannot easily be withdrawn cleanly, and the customer will inevitably pull not one or two napkins, but an entire cluster. You have surely noticed this yourself when dining at downscale establishments. Besides being wasteful, overstuffing has the ironic and paradoxical effect of making the Friendly's employee have to refill the dispenser sooner rather than later.

Everywhere you go, you see these dispensers overstuffed. Filling them properly is a lost art. Fortunately for me, I have not needed to apply my napkin-dispensing knowledge in the workplace, because as I said, the coleslaw prophecy has proven true. But it has given me the authority to second-guess paper-napkin-dispenser-fillers across the land.

Posted by Professor B at 2:16 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2006

First shit in three days

See, this is why you need to have a blog. So you can announce to the breathlessly waiting world important news such as this: I took my first shit in three fucking days this morning. Hats off to my dear wife for pushing the Citrucel at me. Not that I needed convincing. What brought on this bout of constipation, you are dying to know? Fuck if I know. I did nothing different; been following my customary fruit- and vegetable-rich diet, with the usual alcohol abuse on the weekends. Maybe it's comes with the territory when you are pushing fifty years of age. Anyway, I am glad the discomfort is over and I know you share my relief.

Posted by Professor B at 2:04 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2006

when your personal life is in the shitter

When your personal life is absolutely in the shitter;
When all your alarms and sirens are wailing disaster;
When your brain kicks into full crisis mode;
When the pain is more than you can bear;
When your pain is mixed with raw fear of the magnitude and likely duration of the pain itself;
When you keep collapsing in a sobbing heap, and just barely manage to bathe and dress and leave your house for work in the morning;
When you haven't slept adequately more than five times in the last four months;
When you know there are not enough drugs and alcohol in the world to ease your suffering;
When you wish there were some way short of suicide to escape from your own head, but you know there is none, so you can either do yourself in or suck it up:

Isn't it grand to be alive?

Posted by Professor B at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 4, 2006

what The Red Wheelbarrow means to me

I am not a literary scholar by any stretch, so whatever I have to say about it should be presumed amateurish, subjective and naive. But I have wondered about the meaning of this poem for decades. The other day I googled and found this discussion and realized how far off the learned mark I am. The scholars go on and on about the imagery and how "three modest prepositions-—upon, with, beside--place these barnyard minims in visual apposition, or a kind of contingent spatial rhyme..."

Get the fuck outa here. Sure it's painterly, and the way the words are spaced is no accident. Bla bla bla. But here's what it's about as far as I'm concerned: you can identify a particular thing, or event, or moment in your life as having enormous importance, make it a turning point of the utmost significance. And that event is more likely to have been a random accident than the result of some conscious decision on your part.

Posted by Professor B at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)