In strange moments and at totally uncalled for circumstance and time, random memories of my youth, will dance across my consciousness. I'm not one of those that mentally suppresses a childhood passed. In the memories my younger days, lie quite the fair share of pain, shame and remorse, that I choose to not share with many - if any - but I never hide from myself. My younger days are mine and I hold onto them as proudly (and arrogantly) as I hold onto the man I am today. They are the truth and are therefore never avoided. However, considering how far beyond that fat little kid I've moved, I am understandably surprised when lessons learnt back then, finally, and for the first time at all, have application, considering the so very different context I find myself.
Perhaps it was because of the recent post about The Old Man and school, that my mind wandered back to those orange coloured brick, classrooms and the lessons learnt in them. In the run up to the festival of Passover, the curriculum would swing over to a focus on all things related to Slavery, Egypt, The Pharaohs, Red Sea Pedestrians, Plagues and Exodus. One of the stories repeated from year to year, was how Pharaoh (the Passover story, as told to us as kids, for some reason only ever deals with one single entity, as opposed to the several rulers that surely reigned over the Jews) used to bathe every morning in The Nile and would take this opportunity to 'relieve' himself of 'bodily build up'. Thus, he could sit on his throne all day and never leave once for a 'comfort break'. This was so done, so he could maintain the illusion of immortality in front of his people, for, as we know - 'When a man gotta go, he gotta go.' and by Pharaoh never 'having to go', he must not have been a man.
Now, I don't really think this to be such a fantastic illusion. I mean, surely someone with a quarter of a brain could have worked out this little ruse. But, to be fair, we are talking of a people who believed that cats where in fact Gods and, as anyone with an awareness of Australian sports culture from the nineties will tell you, anyone who believes a Cat to be a God, most likely will also think that Geelong is a great place to live and is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed (Nothing against Gary 'God' Ablett or Gary 'Buddha' Hocking, but surely those nicknames were slight hyperbole.)
Regardless of the innocence required to make it believable, I do very much like this story. In fact, more than the story, I like the concept. Find a methodology that allows you to free and release a burden and then travel your day as a cleansed and elevated being. Fabulous.
When I last lived in Australia, the Lucky Country of swimming pools for all, I too used to have a morning water release session. Hang on. I don't mean to say that I used to commit that most heinous of swimming pool crimes with my own imitation of that Egyptian Toilet System. No. Awful. What I mean to say, is that I used to trek down to the Olympic Pool at Albert Park, and smash out lap after lap, dispelling physical frustrations of the day before and aligning a balance in the private meditation of my mind. Inside the repetition of a 3-stroke-breath routine, lay the key to my morning release and the float alongside the lane ropes, allowed a further float through my day.
Here in New York, one cannot find a pool so easily. There are the many public, outdoor pools that are now open for summer, but they are too often over-run with fat, little Puerto Rican kids, submerged up to their mini man-boobs, whilst yelling indiscriminate demands for some satisfaction by way of fried food consumption. Not exactly the kind of obstacle that lends to conditions that would suit a session of meditationary release and expression. As for the sparsely available indoor pools, that are accessible all year round, many of them are way too short in lane length to suit the requirements of my requirements and are way too expensive to boot. Besides which, they too are often laden with obstacles. This time, it is elderly Chinese women, dressed up in intricate floatation devices, that blindly drift across the lane you may be charging down, totally oblivious to the fact that they are in fact not on the set of a Busby Berkeley film and participating in the big synchronised swimming, musical number. No my dear old lady, you are in fact, still on The Bowery and very much not synchronised nor synchronising anything.
So, I have had to find a New Morning. A new morning routine. And I have.
I jog the East River.
(Wait, let me qualify that statement. I mostly just walk, and then sometimes, in short, periodic stanzas, jog the East River. I want to be accurate about this, for I am not ashamed of my bad knees and bad back. In many ways, they are the truest link between myself and my Jewish Heritage.)
I don a pair of shorts, slip on the much loved T-Shirt that I acquired whilst representing the restaurant I once worked at in a charity soccer tournament (blind-drunk-goalkeeping is one of my rare and most underappreciated skills), push the iPod earphones into my ear and shove out and off on my release. Most recently, I have taken to leaving the BlackBerry at home, for added levels of isolation
And it works. It is working. This morning ritual is so pure in intent, so simple in execution and so clear in its definition of success, that it just works.
So, now, that I'm back at home and 'cured' for the day, I got me to thinking. What can I go for next? What other daily rituals can I use to bring me release?
I can use my visits to the supermarket, to grumble and vent my frustrations at the delaying movements of the elderly (Why must they take so Goddamn long to pass through a checkout isle??). I can use the need to top up my Metrocard, to release the burden that is my hatred of coins jangling in my pocket. I can use monthly visits to The Met, to fill me with purity of beauty I crave. I can use the minutes I spend close up and staring into the mirror whilst I shave, as a centring focus on the truth that seems to be at an absence lately. I can go back to and use writing letters to reacquire the confessions of strangers that I love and miss. I can use the nightclub downstairs for the dark and the smoothie shop up the road for the light. I can use West 10th Street as my Highway and the music I play as I walk to work, as my Key. I can use The Movement for the Love and The Road for the Romance. I can use this here blog for the fantasy. I can use your silence as your statement and I can use my statement as my silence.
I can use.....
I can use, just so I don't feel used. "the panacea to fear, lies in the courage found in the apology; the antidote to the lie, is completely in the admission" H.A., http://twitter.com/behaimah
