Tag Archives: health

Stepping forth through the fourth wall with [in]formal steps

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Citizenship in a Republic, speech given by the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910.

I sit back down in the studio at home, leaves of a Japanese redbud outside the window reflecting raindrops from a light rain shower.

During our long ride home last night, my wife and I talked about the range of emotions and thoughts we shared the past few days as newb (not n00b) dancers.

The self-deprecating downers:

  • “I’m just this [guy/gal] who doesn’t deserve to be on the dance floor with such great dancers.  It would be a waste of their time to dance with inexperienced me.”
  • “I don’t dance much because I’m not that good.”
  • “What am I doing here?  Who do I think I am competing against better talent?”
  • “Watching everyone on the dance floor having so much fun is tiring and depressing.  Why can’t I be as good as them?  Well, I know at least a few of them have been dancing since they were three so it must be innate talent that I don’t have that makes them so fantastic, which is even more depressing that I’ll never be like them.”
  • “I’m too nervous to dance well in this competition.  I’m going to mess up, trip and fall or miss a step.  What if I don’t demonstrate musicality or get off the beat of the music?  The judges will score me in last place, I know it!”
  • “What’s going on?  The competition is about to begin, I’m in line to go out on the dance floor in front of the judges, the crowd and video cameras, making me so nervous I could scream.  I’m confused by the instructions because I’ve never seen a competition in person, let alone competed as an ignorant newcomer.  I feel so stupid and scared.”

The self-confidence -building uppers:

  • “I just learned a new move without it taking weeks to understand the steps.  This is more fun than I thought.”
  • “People, some of them the best dancers here, are actually interested in dancing with me.”
  • “It’s like being inside a TV show or movie about dancing and I’m the ‘star’ of the moment with my dance partner.  ME!”
  • “Not only did I survive the competition, I was so focused on having fun dancing I didn’t even see what my competition was doing.  I actually competed against the strong belief that I would surely fail and I won because I didn’t fall down and didn’t feel like I made a fool of myself even though I know I made a few mistakes!”
  • “Everyone cares about me and how I danced — their praise and constructive criticism was so good to hear because they paid attention to me, a mere beginner, and wanted me to be a better dance partner with them.”
  • “Can you believe that I went from not wanting to attend this competition or anything like it ever again to wondering when’s the next competition we can go to and repeat the exhilarating fun?”
  • “At football games and car races, there’s too much negativity amongst fans who spent so much of their energy yelling at or putting down others.  Here at this dance competition, we encourage each other, especially our competition.  At our age, maybe we should say goodbye to the ‘boo birds’ and spend our money more wisely with people who support their competitors to get better.”

There were several times after watching some of the competitions that I was sick and tired of dancing because the weight of negative thoughts that I’d never be a dreamy dance partner killed the good mood of the moment.

But then I’d get out on the dance floor, connect with a new partner, enjoy the brief flirtatious friendship and instantly restore my self-confidence regardless of whether I was in perfect sync with my partner the whole time.

As more than one person said, the first is not always the best dance with someone — it may take one, two or three songs for you and your partner to find your commonalities — but you are helping each other improve yourselves that drives you to keep going.

It’s that giving up of one’s ego for the sake of the dance that is amazing to me.  Abi often reminds not to stop dancing because sometimes I would just stop and watch her dance, swept up in the amazement of how great her dancing made me feel.  Same for many other partners, too.  I forget that they’re feeding off me for the sake of the dance.

You mean this little ol’ kid in me is an inspiration for others?

I worked hard all weekend to give myself permission to have fun dancing, clearing my thoughts of guilty feelings that I’m having a great time while people around the world are suffering and my niece is in the hospital recovering from a difficult birth of her baby son.

In fact, I had so much fun that I didn’t constantly split myself into multiple personalities, including the diarist/journalist/blogger who observes and reports everything he saw and felt.

Therefore, I don’t remember the names or personal stories of everyone I met.

Sensory overload was an issue that I didn’t want to get in the way (which triggers crowd anxiety) so I shut off the internal critic, the judgmental elder who uses criticism to build up barriers, and let myself live timelessly in the moment.

I first suppressed and then let pass through me the jealousy/envy of better male dancers who were making the women with whom I wanted to dance look like goddesses, especially after those very same goddesses wanted a song or two with me.

Memories of grade school sockhops welled up from out of nowhere, recalling when I stood like a statue fixated on girls I liked, occasionally getting up the nerve to ask a popular girl for a dance, where I first learned to dance awkwardly with equally-awkward partners, no matter how popular they were, sharing a laugh at the realisation we both felt embarrassed for no reason; high school dances where I was known as a guy to have fun flailing about on the floor, literally, doing jumping jacks, pushups and other shenanigans because I was the wild-and-crazy president of the drama club who had a reputation of outlandishness to maintain; college years full of sorority formals and punk rock mosh pits, often on the same evening; then, 25 years generally devoid of dancing.

And now this, the post Dance Mardi Gras euphoria, where, interestingly enough, a dance form that has no rules or formality — turning into The World Swing Dance Council, with scoring and a points system — inspired me to dance without thinking, letting my whole body speak and learn a new language all over again, while I sit here trying to describe what I felt rather than directly thought with the formal labeled sounds/memes we call words.

Thanks again to everyone of all ages such as the dance groups like Newsies and Tortilla Chips who put on an entertaining show for us during the masquerade ball.  The celebrity J&J contest was just as exciting!

Last, but not least, a big shoutout to the crew who made it all happen.

Bouncing babies – updated, new and improved!

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O, many stories to tell…babies born on sidewalks, in the maternity waiting room, on elevators, at the full moon, during bad weather when barometric pressure is low.

Waiting on our niece to deliver us a new family member.

Thx to everyone at Women & Children’s Pavilion of Huntsville Hospital, including Helen who loves any dessert with pineapple, Kathleen from New Jersey who loves the South, Rosalind and Christy; family and friends who have stopped by and prayed.

More as we labour in love.

Genisha, too.

Is your childhood functionally extinct?

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We can think of our sets of states of energy as a microclimate/microenvironment (i.e., the microbiome).

As we age, our symbiotic microorganisms are more or less compatible with our current bodily conditions.

Thus, we may create a situation where we make some species functionally extinct within us.

How many diseases or syndromes are such situations?

Choices: 1. Monsters; 2. Zombies; 3. Something else

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What does “family friendly” mean to you?

Out the fifth floor window of this hotel room, birds fly in the air or search a patch of grass for food.

Hundreds of motor vehicles, parked or moving, transport the sets of states of energy I accept as members of my species.

Rows of businesses take up 30 percent of my view which is accented by a nearly-full supermoon.

The sun sets behind me, having joined me from sunrise onward during this day of summer solstice.

I will soon return to Mars.

What about family-friendly, though?

Rupert Murdoch and Vladimir Putin divorce their wives. I remain married to mine.

What is this family that is so friendly?

As people flock from one business to another — grocery store, cinema, restaurant, mobile phone sales, general merchandise shopping centre, etc. — what average, what mean, what hump under the bell curve would best describe a typical parent/child/spouse unit we would call a family?

And what is friendly to them?

A night out at the movies?

An evening of video games?

Watching/playing ball at the local sports park?

Bailing someone out of jail?

Sitting at the bedside of an ailing family member in hospital?

Is a single person — a party of one — a family?

What about pets or extended social media connections — are they family?

The moon and the stars? The birds?

How about the friendly faces behind the counter in the hotel lobby? Aren’t they my family now, too?

I drink a bottle of Jones cream soda flavored water, produced by the Jones family, independent since ’96.

Is death family-friendly?

Birth seems to be. So does the tradition of marriage.

To secure my household, I killed a rat, three mice, dozens of insects and several amphibians. I chased away a mother raccoon and her three babies. I attempted to scare off the ubiquitous squirrels. I also saved two newts and a box turtle, not to mention the tree seedlings I didn’t cut to the ground or the vines I removed from the side of the house. I cleared uncounted privet bushes and poison ivy that clogged part of our front yard, to open up a sunny spot for our Rose of Sharon bushes and forsythia canes.

So killing can be family-friendly in the right measure.

However, a family that commits murder-suicide is not friendly, is it? What if everyone was dying of extreme radiation poisoning? Would a humane death be friendly, in that case?

What about a family that had lived on the same plot of land for centuries but died protesting their recent or soon-to-be forced displacement? Is that family-friendly, dying for a shared cause?

Watching the cars, minivans and trucks cycle in and out of the shopping district across the street, which triggers my thoughts to fill in the required infrastructure that supports the luxury of internal combustion engines, cup holders, powered seats and large carparks, prelabeled clothing sizes, preapproved dinner menus, landscape lighting and traffic signals…well, I’m easily distracted, aren’t I, by GPS satellites, shopping centre architecture, local building codes and “green” technology implementation schemes.

Since tattooed ladies have walked out from under the circus tents and into suburbia, what is family-friendly?

Is family-friendly an arbitrary label for changing tastes in community standards?

Hmm… All the chain restaurants lighting up their logos for my attention.

Think I’ll go to the local Irish pub for a beer and a bite to eat for dinner tonight, family-friendly enough for my tastes.

Still no conclusive proof

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Despite my attempts to the contrary, I can find no conclusive proof that these blog entries have any effect other than rearranging bits in what must be, probably is, computer servers out there somewhere.

Therefore, I am, as I imagined in my first thoughts as an infant, truly alone.

I walk, I breathe, I speak, I listen — those activities have greater impact upon the world than these bits and bytes.

Nothing I do here influences or impacts the [American] football coaches of the Southeastern Conference college teams so nothing I write in this space would cause them to want to make comments about the level of competition that the University of Tennessee coaches, trainers, staff, stadium/field, training facilities and players bring to the SEC.

They alone have to defend their job perks/pay scales and physical abuse of young men in order to instill teamwork and self-sacrifice into “student-athletes” aligned with the much-maligned NCAA just so universities can virtually destroy a few student-athletes in the name of commerce, yet claim it’s all about educational opportunities.

My habits are the result of my place in a tiny subculture in this great galaxy of ours — I do not qualify them with labels like “good” or “bad.”

For, you see, I have my own personal secret to success that prevents me from S everyday — I am waiting to die and every day until I die is a bonus I didn’t have when I contemplated S the day before — the only friend of mine when considering the big S is procrastination — there will always be time tomorrow to say hello to S and goodbye to the rest.

I never have been a very good team player.  I blame my parents, who brought a rival for their affection into this world — my sister — and I’ve been in a personal war against the world ever since.

From then on, it’s been a mental struggle to tell myself that the opposite sex is one part of two-gender trait of our species (to be honest, I’m still uncomfortable including LGBTXYZ in my universal view), that we should work together to make this planet a better place to live, etc.

I am an uptight dude, who never has felt comfortable relaxing in front of others, constantly switching personality masks to accommodate and please people around me so I can wall/fence them off from the parallel universe inside my thoughts, where I truly live, happy in my private misery and/or miserable in my private happiness.

Men are not my rivals — everything about them is some part of me, and they are what they are in their hairy, testosterone-driven imperfections.

Women are my rivals and always will be — there will never be a time when I can get back to those happy moments with my parents before my sister was conceived — whatever women do, I will compete against them; when they’re better than me at some task/skill, I will feel an immense jealousy/envy with which I will either find strength and choose to compete or feel deflated and concede defeat.

Before my wife and I followed in my parents’ footsteps and bought season tickets for Univ. of TN football home games in 1991, we enjoyed weekend getaways to B&Bs around the country.

If the exploitative college football system didn’t exist, my wife and I would probably be traveling the world.

Instead, I have driven us six or seven times in the autumn of the year back to our parents’ places in order to schedule family time around trips to Neyland Stadium.

A week ago, my wife and I decided to change seats in the stadium, giving up our South End Zone, upper deck spots in Section LL, Row 9, Seats 14-15, that we have held since 1991, in order to move to the North End Zone upper deck, our “Annual Fund” (formerly the Volunteer Athletic Scholarship Fund) donation level staying the same.

We also took advantage of buying four tickets to the “away” game in Tuscaloosa for this year’s UT-Bama game, traditionally held on the third Saturday in October.

I have no idea who the players are or will be for either team but I’m pretty sure that they’ll be in the 17-23 year old age range, the youngest players being a third my age, remembered for decades by kids who’ll attend the games and cheer for their favourite players just like when I was a kid and cheered for the likes of Condredge Holloway, a young man from Huntsville, Alabama, who ended up playing quarterback for University of Tennessee because the University of Alabama head football coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant, told Condredge that he’d never be a quarterback for Bama because his skin was the wrong colour for the times.   Probably still is in the heart of Dixie.

Doesn’t matter to me how many national championship trophies that the University of Alabama football team claims to have because I’ll always remember a fellow male, George Wallace, standing on the university campus barring people with dark skin from attending classes.

How many national championship caliber quarterbacks for Bama have not been white?

When will the first national championship college football team have a woman on the first team, let alone at quarterback?

These are questions I can wait until the day I die to see answered outside of this blog because I’ve already seen them played out in the parallel universe of my thoughts.

In a few months, I’ll watch traditional male-dominated football teams hold a controlled fight/wrestling match while women and men cheer on the sideline, knowing, despite increased ticket prices and major stadium seating capacity upgrades, nothing has changed in 50 years:

I’m still a set of states of energy alone in my thoughts, committed to my marriage and my family, but otherwise not much of a team player when I don’t want to be, never that happy-but-apprehensive-of-the-big-wide-world one-year old ever again.