This Desert Life: I'll Have the Scorpion Bisque Please

Such a Life....yes it is, and we took our lives to Arizona last week. It was beautiful! Hot and sunny during the day, cool in the morning and at night. Awesome skies and bright stars, clean and dry. Different climate, different creatures (lizards, grasshoppers, crickets, coyotes), different life, a real change. Much like water and air and fire, change can promote or inhibit life. Change may kill you, yes, but without change and challenge and diversity, is life worth living? As every event in my life does, our trip to AZ set my brain off on paths hopefully never taken by a human that is not incarcerated. Read on, reader, at your peril.


Once again I am struck by the premise that the benefit of working out is oh so much more than just shedding pounds and lowering blood pressure and improving times. 50 years of angst, self doubt and confusion are washed away by 25 minutes of a "cross country" program on the eliptical. Ah, the joy of sweat! What creative and spiritual insights one achieves when pushing one's own physical envelope. While on the treadmill and eliptical machine in AZ with many senior citizens (were they also listening to the Ramones on their mp3 players?), these surprising revelations occurred:


The Trancendance of Music: As I "elipt" on the eliptical machine, each new song dealt up by my i-pod shuffle allows me to traverse years, cultural barriers and preconceptions.

"The punk meets the godfather" from Quadrophenia by the Who transports me back to 1973. I am 14 years old and at the lake at night with friends, not surrounded by senior citizens at the health club, most 20 years my senior."Across the Lines" by Tracy Chapman describes the vast differences between white and black, and the violent ways that we cope with those differences. I wonder when listening to the lyrics if we are now truly in "post racial America" given the fact that Obama has been elected president. I think not. "Ghost Dance" by Robbie Robertson describes the plight of Native Americans massacred at Wounded Knee and for some reason I now "understand" with empathy to the n'th degree.

Id/Ego/Superego: "Aha", I respond to Joey Ramone's statement that the kids "got their surfboards and they're going to the discotec, a go-go". Just as the id evolves to the ego, and the ego with social pressure may become the superego, the circle does not stop there. As society, government,or extremists decide what is "right", and protects it at all costs, the superego now starts to rationalize behavior that is the norm for the id. Extreme right or left wing behavior is certainly not based in the ego when violence, destruction, dishonesty and cruelty are rationalized. I hate to say it (I must be old), but when it comes to the psyche, MOR is the way to go. As anyone who read Rock magazines in the 70's knows, MOR means middle of the road.

Knowledge of the Garden Variety: Yes my basil masters are long gone, but their close relatives keep teaching me. Only yesterday did I dispose of the final two tomato plants, but not before they bestowed upon me one last lesson. As I pulled them from the earth, Linda said "wait, look at all the green tomatoes, let's put them on the windowsill". There is not doubt that some, if not all of these, will ripen and nourish us with their sweet taste and nutrients. But what of all of those "green tomatoes" that sit waiting to ripen in our own lives, yet never do. How much unfulfilled potential do each us have that never comes to fruition. It is impossible to reap all of the fruit in our life, there is only so much time. Yet we all have talents, gifts and knowledge that will allow us to succeed, and in many cases make the world a better place, if only we make the effort and have faith. So just go do it damn it, and when those tomatoes become red, make sure you season them with a bit of basil.

Holy crap, I almost forgot, Sports is all that matters in life!!!! Go Yanks, Giants stink, Knicks should be arrested.

Keep the faith!