On Exercise Now

For more than fifty years I have exercised almost every day. During my twenties and into my sixties I ran from four to twenty miles almost every day. I ran through every season and in any meteorological conditions. I ran in more than half of the states in this country and even in my explorations in Europe. During those years sometimes I also would ride my bicycle for long distances. Little deterred me. When I would head out to the roads my body accompanied my consciousness and I didn’t consider the exercise was for my body but rather was about something else, was about being alive and exploring the possibilities of that body. Four miles, six miles, ten miles—running even three marathons— was all about exploring what the body could do accompanied almost always by an active and curious mind. Often while I ran I wrote early drafts of whatever piece in which I was then engaged, and would address conflicts I was experiencing in my life; on the roads I engaged in wonderful and stimulating conversations with myself and enjoyed some wonderful thoughts and ideas  about the work and the world. I remember that I composed the eulogy for my father with tears on the Red Cedar Trail as he lay dying. I would feel my body as I ran and would study each physical sensation I felt in it, relishing even the discomforts and sometime pains I might experience. The roads were my study, my meditation room, sometimes even my lavatories.
     And now I still exercise every day. When I stopped running in my late sixties I took up spin cycle and hatha yoga at the local Lifetime Fitness Club. Two or three days each week I would ride the stationary bike I followed the instructor’s commands accompanied by high-volume musical playlist. On the other days I join a yoga class and follow the yogi’s directions. My pilse rate stayed slow and my weight unwavering. But something had definitely changed: I exercised now with the purpose of simply maintaining the very existence of the body; I exercised not merely because I was alive, but I exercised so that I might stay alive. I would declare that every day I exercised was a day I would not die. Back then, well, the exercise felt different, and the pains and discomforts were not evidence of decline but spoke rather of growth. Back then to exercise was to be alive. Now it was to keep alive.
     I no longer run long distances and I miss the freedom and joy I experienced on the roads. Today I walk a two to four miles almost every day and sometimes commit to a half-hour of yin yoga practice, during the pandemic the latter undertaken solitarily in my office. My exercise now is a charm to ward off death. It is a seismic shift in my existence.

Reflections on a Gray Day

Alan Bennett writes in his diary for 10 November 2016, "One way of going on post-Trump, though it’s hardly a solution, is to live without news: no papers, no TV, no comment. Not hard to do that for the four days we are here [in Venice] . . . But after that? It’s not something I want to get used to, or for the outrage, the disgust, the despair to become blunted. Better raw. Trudging painfully through the streets, up and down the steps to the bridges for what must surely be the last time, I think that even this will be at the mercy of Trump’s folly.” I appreciate Bennett’s despair and disgust and even the prescience of his fears before Trump’s exist from the Paris climate accords. For most of my adult life I have read the New York Times, sometimes assiduously and sometimes somewhat casually. But both then and now, since the appearance of Donald Trump first on the political scene and then as President, I have slowly stopped looking at the front section of the paper, all the news that’s fit to print, because whatever is printed outrages, disgusts and disheartens me. Reading the mean-spirited, often slanderous language spewing from Trump’s mouth I feel dirtied, somewhat soiled, as if I had stepped in dog excrement in the street as a result of someone not picking up after their pet. I can’t begin to recount the horrors of that man and his revolting sycophants, but this one baffles me and I can’t understand how this could occur, but this week Lynn Cheney, whose ideologies I mostly do not support, was told she could no longer be a Republican in Wyoming even though at least until the mid-term elections she is the elected Republican representative from Wyoming. Groucho said it best: I wouldn’t belong to any club that would me as a member! What the Wyoming Republicans  don’t seem to like is her well-publicized disgust with and actions resisting Donald Trump and his sycophants. Like many of us, she is terrified that our democracy is threatened by the machinations and treasonous actions of Trump and his vicious horde. The man has no shame, his narcissism is pathological. The Republicans follow his lead. The only RINOs I see are them. Ted Cruz even went after Big Bird; Jim Jordan is dangerous. Mitch McConnell cares only about power. Paul Gosar posted a threatening image of killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and threatening President Biden, and the Republican leadership, men like Kevin McCarthy and its women like Marjorie Taylor Greene, not only refuse to condemn him but make excuses for him by blaming the victim!! Oh yes, environment does remind me of the lead up to the Nazification of German in the 1930s. and we know what came out of that regime. What I have been considering is that Trump has made it possible for Republicans to shed their sheep’s clothing and be the wolves that they are. Now they can be the fascists in public that they have been in secret. It is not concern for the country about which they might be known, but by their naked grasping for power for the sake of power. And with that power they can make the world safe for white, heterosexual, good old American males.
           A story is told: Towards the end of World War II a German wandered down the bomb-scarred streets of Berlin. He stopped at various news kiosks examining only the front pages of the newspapers on display. When asked what he was looking for he responded “the death notices.” Oh, the proprietor said, the death notices aren’t listed on the front page, but the man responded, “The death notice I’m looking for will be on Page One alright.” I look at the front page daily with some small glimmer of hope, but stop when the death notice I’m looking for doesn’t appear, and I then turn to the Arts section and bemoan over the movies I will never see protecting myself yet from the coronavirus. 

Anticipations of a Gray Day

And then came the wind and rain and the leaves came tumbling down. The sight of the naked trees ushered in impending winter. Today the yellow leaves thickly covered the sidewalks and street curbs and I replaced my walking shoes with my winter boots. The sky today is deep gray in hue.

I don’t really mind winter though this year I am planning an escape from it for a while to a warmer climate. T.S. Eliot might have though April to be the cruelest month but here in the Upper Midwest it is February that defeats me. Even sitting before the fire I can’t seem to warm up and the darkness overwhelms me. I think of Gordon Bok’s song, “Turning Toward the Morning.” He sings, 

When the darkness falls around you
And the Northwind come to blow,
And you hear him call your name out
As he walks the brittle snow:
That old wind don't mean you trouble,
He don't care or even know,
He's just walking down the darkness
Toward the morning.

Winter mornings are dark and cold, but the coffee is hot and fresh and the aroma of baking bread sweetens the air. I have always liked the morning. Perhaps the necessity of getting to schools early familiarized me to the days early, but as my friend says, morning is the time when I have the most courage. I grow less brave as the day proceeds until finally I pour a scotch and settle in to the evening. Winter affords me the opportunity not to venture too far out except for relatively brief forays to run and to shop and I try to complete those activities early. I have consistently taken my running and now walking out on the roads even in temperatures below zero degrees, but once returned have remained warmly snuggled within with my writing and my books and my home-baked breads. I have always taken naps during the day and winter naps are especially enjoyable. 

            There is all this talk these days about the sentience of trees, and I start to wonder what they think stripped naked and bare. Are they aware that they will remain so for the next six months? As a child I have always ascribed some consciousness to inanimate things, always worried that no pea on the plate wanted to be the last left. Without their leaves do the trees suffer from the cold?

It will be a gray day today and I do not think I will venture too far out. I will light the fire and follow Pip’s understanding of his great expectations. I think I’ll take a nice, long nap and consider a simple dinner and a bottle of beer. There are still a few leaves clinging to their branches: I think of O. Henry’s story “The Last Leaf.” On her sick bed the dying young girl, Johnsy, stares out at the leaves fluttering down from the trees. She sighs and says, "I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." She intends to die with the fall of the last leaf. But unbeknownst to her the artist Old Behrman had climbed up that tree and painted a beautiful last leaf that does not fall and whose persistence restores Johnsy’s will to live, but as she recovers Old Behrman dies from exposure to the cold he suffered atop the tree painting that last beautiful leaf that did not fall.
           I feel rooted and calmed by those naked trees outside of my window. Regardless of weather conditions though they bend they do not complain. They stand quietly and I think patiently. I have sometimes felt enfolded—somewhat at home in the environment of these trees.

The Careless Cook and The Galloping Gourmet

I’m not exactly sure how I began watching the television show The Galloping Gourmet starring Graham Kerr. I remember nothing about the dishes that he prepared, and then I probably wouldn’t have prepared or eaten any of the dishes he cooked on the show—at the moment I was becoming vegetarian and was always a bit squeamish about food put on the table, but I was heartily impressed and enthusiastically influenced by the glass of wine that always accompanied his cooking. He seemed to float about the kitchen, decidedly delighted, to be so happily engaged in the preparation of dinner and always accompanied by the presence of a glass on the countertop of what I assumed was a fine and not inexpensive wine. And then, when the meal was all cooked the show would conclude with Kerr dancing into the audience and grasping someone by the hand and inviting them to share the food and the wine with him. He would carefully fill the plate and the wine glass for his dinner companion.

            I recall this show now as I consider that if I were to host a cooking show I would be compelled to entitle it The Careless Cook. I prepare all of my vegetarian meals and always following a recipe but not carefully adhering to the directions. A ½ tsp of salt? Well, I like salt, so how about a whole tsp! Whoops, forgot the thyme. After forty-five minutes pull the polenta out of oven and add ricotta and parmesan cheese and put back in the oven until the top browns—about fifteen minutes. Well, that doesn’t quite occur in the time set . . . how about if I broil it a bit. Oh my, now it has burned but I think it will still be quite edible! What the Galloping Gourmet and I have in common is the delight I experience in the kitchen cooking and the glass of wine (or single malt scotch) that accompanies the process. And sometimes a the end I, too, floati nto the audience and invite a viewer to dine with me! 

            I think for me cooking represents not the anticipation of the feast but a transition from the day to the evening. Cooking signals that the workday, such as it has been, once in my classrooms and now outside of them, is for now concluded. Once, I reached into the audience and grabbed the hands of my daughters and invite them to the table. For the most part they acceded and even at times welcomed the moments. I was by them especially noted for my cabbage and cheese pie, my macaroni and cheese, and any pasta accompanied with green peas. My pizzas were always welcome! There were always some carelessly prepared dishes—I recall one sloppy joe meal that ended a bit too pinkish for one of the invited guests to sample—but I have fed not a few welcome diners and enjoyed many an evening accompanied by great conversation and  bottles of wine. I have over the years continually expanded my cooking repertoire though not commensurately improved my technique: it remains today a bit cavalier and decidedly careless, but I am fortunate that my guests don’t seem much to care!  For almost 35 years I have baked most of the breads, muffins and scones that we consumed despite the often failure of the doughs to rise appropriately—but there were few complaints regardless of the results that were as I said not always fortunate. Now in my retirement, preparation of dinner marks what might be considered the conclusion of the serious moments of the day of writing and study (such as either might be), and a time to settle into the wine, the scotch and the novels I am reading and not studying.

Like Clarabelle, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody, Pinky Lee and Captain Kangaroo, the Galloping Gourmet has left his mark. (So many male models: no wonder I’ve had issues!) But I enjoy my kitchen and the food that I prepare there without too much regard to rigor or recipe. I think it is the ritual I enjoy . . . and as I learned from Graham Kerr, of course always accompanied by wine! I would be known as the careless Cook, avoiding the undeserved title of gourmet, and continue to reach my hand into the audience for a guest for dinner.