My Sinisterhand

We are constantly being warned to check with our physicians before beginning athletics. Play and games evidently can be risky business. What we are not told are the risks of not beginning athletics-that the most dangerous sport of all is watching it from the stands.
The weakest among us can become some kind of athlete, but only the strongest can survive as spectators. Only the hardiest can withstand the perils of inertia, inactivity, and immobility. Only the most resilient can cope with the squandering of time, the deterioration in fitness, the loss of creativity, the frustration of emotions, and the dulling of moral sense that can afflict the dedicated spectator.
Physiologists have suggested that only those who can pass the most rigorous physical examination can safely follow the sedentary life. Man was not made to remain at rest. Inactivity is completely unnatural to the body. And what follows is a breakdown of the body’s equilibrium.
When the beneficial effects of activity on the heart and circulation and indeed on all the body’s systems are absent, everything measurable begins to go awry.
Up goes the girth of the waist and the body weight. Up goes blood pressure and heart rate. Up goes cholesterol and triglycerides. Up goes everything you would like to go down and down everything you would like to go up. Down goes vital capacity and oxygen consumption. Down goes flexibility and efficiency, stamina and strength. Fitness fast becomes a memory.
The seated spectator is not a thinker, he is a knower. Unlike the athlete who is still seeking his own experience, who leaves himself open to truth, the spectator has closed the ring. His thinking has become rigid knowing. He has enclosed himself in bias and partisanship and prejudice. He has ceased to grow.
And it is growth he needs most to handle the emotions thrust upon him, emotions he cannot act out in any satisfactory way. He is , you see, an incurable distance from the athlete and participation in the effort is the athlete’s release, the athlete’s catharsis. He is watching people who have everything he wants and cannot get. They are having all the fun: the fun of playing, the fun of winning, even the fun of losing. They are having the physical exhaustion which is the quickest way to fraternity and equality, the exhaustion which permits you to be not only a good winner but a good loser.
Because the spectator cannot experience what the athlete is experiencing, the fan is seldom a good loser. The emphasis on winning is therefore much more of a problem for the spectator than the athlete. The losing fan, filled with emotions which have no healthy outlet, is likely to take it out on his neighbor, the nearest inanimate object, the umpires, the stadium or the game itself. It is easier to dry out a drunk, take someone off hard drugs or watch a three-pack-a-day smoker go cold turkey than live with a fan during a long losing streak.
Should a spectator pass all these physical and mental and emotional tests, he still has another supreme challenge to his integrity. He is part of a crowd, part of a mob. He is with those the coach in The Games called, “The nothingmen, those oafs in the stands filling their bellies.” And when someone is in a crowd, out go his individual standards of conduct and morality. He acts in concert with his fellow spectators and descends two or three rungs on the evolutionary ladder. He slips backward down the development tree.
From the moment you become a spectator, everything is downhill.

-George Sheehan

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche

This past weekend, Maria and I took a trip up to Boone, NC. The snow there is amazing this year! We left our house around 8 a.m. Saturday morning and headed west. Boone is about 4 hours away nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina near the Virginia and Tennessee borders. The snow storm covered almost all of North Carolina and was even felt in Wilmington on the coast. The roads were quite icy and we had to travel at a slow pace for about the first half of the trip until we reached Greensboro. We finally arrived at Boone about 12:30 p.m. and headed for Appalachian Ski Mountain Resort. I was due to meet a friend there to ski the rest of the day. Maria took a quick picture of me after I changed in the parking lot and then she left me there for the day. Skiing is not her cup of tea, so she had other things in mind like spas, massages and pedicures.

Appalachian is a very small ski resort compared to the resorts out west in the Rockies, but the snow was just as good. It was dry packed powder and perfect for me to get warmed up. I stayed and skied until about 4:30 p.m. and then my friend, Rich, and I left. He dropped me off at the hotel. We had dinner at a small Italian restaurant and then I passed out in the hotel.

The next morning Rich and I decided to go to Ski Beech which is the highest ski resort on the east coast. The snow was even better there. The slopes were nicer too. However, snowboarders were ten times as numerous and this always has made me nervous. I guess the generalization is that snowboarders hog the slopes. I can understand this perception. It makes me a little nervous and I am always on my guard when to trails joined each other. Last winter in when I was in Utah on a ski trip, a friend of mine was blindsided by a snowboard as he was on the precipice of a black diamond trail. He was pushed up and over the edge and slide about 50 feet down the slope. One of his skis was cut and gouged where the snowboard collided with his. After having experienced this first hand, I made a mental note to always be cautious around snowboarders.

We finished skiing about 4 p.m. on Sunday and left for the hotel. Unbeknown to me, Maria was very sick all day long. We are not sure what it was but it came and went over about a 48 hour period. She could not eat or drink all day Sunday until late that evening. The next we left Boone for home around 8 a.m. after having a small breakfast in a diner near our hotel. The snow started coming down rather quickly that morning and it was getting worse. We made our way down from the mountains and past the Blue Ridge Parkway in a haze of snow. We made it home safely from a great weekend in the mountains. I am looking forward to next year’s snow. I hope it is a bad (good) as this year’s. I know I have not finished my Cape Fear adventure story, and I will. I have had a lag in my writing lately. I will get to it though, so do not worry. It is coming.

-Jason

Often times I find myself in a situation that leaves me with a mark of remembrance. Whether it is at a point of struggle or an instance of pain, I recount the experience over and over again as I examine the mark. I inspect closely the disfigured and misshapen form that once was and I remember. Sometimes they are too painful to look upon at first, with floods of emotion and memories that I cannot control. Other times they stand as standards of victories and accomplishments that I recall warmly. Regardless, they are a part of me. I count my scars and understand that it is through pain that we are brought here and it will be through pain we leave. Yet, I believe it will not be an eternal pain. The departing pain is the price that must be paid. It will be collected. There is no other recompense. Yet, it is through these scars that I find my struggle and journey most rewarding when the sun sets and I fall into that cousin of death. I awake the next day with just a little less tenderness, but always the memory and learning still.

Whatever is, is.
Nothing can both be and not be.
Everything must either be or not be.

I don’t profess to have all the answers and for the most part I am glad I don’t. Yet, what is it that angers and annoys me so much about my worldview being trashed and tread upon like dirt? I believe it is disrespecting and insulting to both the belief and even more for the person who holds it. I find friends and people in general are more approachable to an open dialogue about philosophies, worldviews, and topics on life when I respect them and their beliefs as if they were my own. Out of love for them as my fellow man, it doesn’t make sense to try and pick apart or destroy what they hold dear and use to live their lives daily. Whether the subject is culture, ethics, religion, or societal issues, each one of us holds some sort of worldview of them. Only through open and honest dialogue in a public domain can we work through these ideas, testing each one rationally and logically for coherence and correspondence to the world around us.

From the canyons of the mind,
We wander on and stumble blindly
Through the often-tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days,
While asking for some kind of clue
Or road to lead us to the truth,
But who will answer?

Side by side two people stand,
Together vowing, hand-in-hand
That love’s imbedded in their hearts,
But soon an empty feeling starts
To overwhelm their hollow lives,
And when they seek the hows and whys,
Who will answer?

On a strange and distant hill,
A young man’s lying very still.
His arms will never hold his child,
Because a bullet running wild
Has struck him down. And now we cry,
“Dear God, Oh, why, oh, why?”
But who will answer?

High upon a lonely ledge,
a figure teeters near the edge,
And jeering crowds collect below
To egg him on with, “Go, man, go!”
But who will ask what led him
To his private day of doom,
And who will answer?

If the soul is darkened
By a fear it cannot name,
If the mind is baffled
When the rules don’t fit the game,
Who will answer? Who will answer? Who will answer?

-Ed Ames

The simplicity that comes with being a child is unnerving to most adults. The lack of control and the care-free sense would drive most of us insane. Their actions are simple and without regret, almost as if we, the learned and self aware, have forgotten how to act without reservation or hesitation. It amazes me to see the truth in a child’s ways. I do believe in choosing wisely and counting the cost of my actions. However, it seems to me that we have become enthralled with the decision making process and have left the actual choice out in the rain. We hold our heads high because we can process complex decisions and come to a rational and relative decision without using prejudice or emotion. Yet, we have lost the flavor of taking risks and being bold. I find that the journey is more enjoyable if I struggle all along the way. It prevents me from forgetting the journey and allows me to relish in my victories and learn from my losses.

Audaces Fortuna Juvat

-Jason