Why I Consider Kobe Outside of the Top 31 All-Time NBA Players

Kobe Bryant is the most overrated player of sports in my lifetime.  As a lifelong Laker fan it pains me to make this point but from a keen sense of justice I have always been bothered by the enormity of Bryant’s legend.  To be certain he is a terrific player and one of the best to ever join the Association but not top 10.  No way. 

Kobe has been one of the best.  First, his endurance has been exceptional.  Until the last few of these 20 seasons in the league Kobe was incredibly healthy, which can be attributed to his superior physical fitness and perhaps also to genetic good fortune.  Second, he may have possessed the greatest pull-up jumper in the history of the game.  Kobe’s versatility is also among the all-time greats.

Kobe’s drawbacks begin with his ego.  When he entered the league he was groomed by many of the game’s greats to be prolific, even the best ever.  He had that kind of talent.  And that shot was so smooth from day one.  We, (I’ll speak for all Laker fans here,) all dreamed it, imagined it, and pronounced it as if his destiny was manifest by the purple and gold “Lakers,” emblazoned across his chest.  Never mind the missed three-point shots at the end of the Kobe’s rookie Lakers’ season-ending loss in the Western Conference Finals to Malone and Stockton. Kobe averaged 7 points a game and was not an integral part of the offense or the rotation.  He was the future and in many ways he lived up to the potential.  Once the Lakers brought in Shaq and surrounded the two of them with efficient workmen like Derek Fisher and Rick Fox and Robert Horry, the threepeat was born. 

In the modern NBA every team has a scorer.  The Lakers in those years had Shaq who could literally sink 40 points and gobble up 20 rebounds every night if necessary.  Bryant, however, was the team’s classic scorer.  He averaged 22, 28 and 25 points a game in those three glorious seasons.  Kobe’s points may have been easier to come by than some other scorers around the league based on the attention Shaq drew to the key.  Then again, maybe it was harder to find those points given the lion’s share Shaq achieved by owning the paint and putting back everything.  In any case he was more than proficient in his role.  I can’t help but wonder what a garden variety NBA scorer like Alex English might have achieved if paired with someone of Shaq’s caliber and stature.  Or Allen Iverson.  Iverson was not the defensive player Kobe was and he certainly brought a shitload of baggage to his team but as a scorer, he was more creative and better than Kobe and he honed his skills on a bunch of otherwise bad teams.  Carmelo Anthony may have had equal success to Kobe with Bryant’s supporting cast.  Dwayne Wade achieved at a similar level with less.  Today, around the league there are several players who will never be considered in Kobe’s class, who carry a greater burden than Kobe had to on his winning teams, and who achieved more than Kobe did when his teams were equally inefficient. 

Scorers get the recognition in the NBA.  Sometimes players like Dennis Rodman or Joakim Noah are lauded for their yeoman’s role but generally, it is the Derek Rose’s and the Isiah Thomas’s who are given the credit for wins.  This makes sense in as much as scoring is the single hardest thing there is to do in a basketball game.  At the same time they are not just plentiful in the game at any level, every team has one or two.  Kobe led the league in scoring in two of his 19 years.  Both of those years the Lakers departed the playoffs with first round losses.  For those two years, ’05-’06 and ’06-’07, Kobe was one of those scorers around the league he gets so much credit for being vastly better than.  To me he was virtually Carmelo Anthony in those years, except with good defense. 

Kobe also gets a lot of credit for somehow being a smart or heady player.  In fact he was never smart enough to focus in on his best skill and capitalize on it.  He became known as the best bad shot maker in the game, which is a truth and a manifestation of the fact that he got good at something that was unadvisable in the first place.  More, to say he was good at is a relative estimation.  It is not as if that bad shot selection yielded better results than other players or than himself when he got better shots.  Had Kobe been a truly smart player he would have made a living off of taking 1-3 hard steps and dribbles in either direction then pulling up for the mid-range jumper.  That being the shot he did better than everyone else.  Only Jordan was close and may have exceeded Bryant based on his ability to consistently get more lift on his jumper making it an easier shot for him. 

In 2008 the Lakers beat the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals and in that series, but scarcely at any other sustained time in Kobe’s career, Kobe did focus in on his strength.  He also played unselfishly and with great defense.  In a word, in that particular series, Kobe’s play was devastating.  Personally, I was overjoyed.  For me Kobe had finally become the best player in basketball and all that Laker fans had hoped for.  It was the season of his first title sans Shaq.  He had been joined by what was at that time the best big man in the game whose name was not Tim Duncan, Pau Gasol.  As we know with Lamar Odom and Ron Artest the Lakers won two more championships, which was what fueled Kobe to play as he did in that Denver series.  Getting that other title as Shaq had in Miami was a big deal to him and finally he set his ego aside and played team ball, even in his role as the scorer.  Kobe also played well in the Finals that year, and had a spectacular game one, but Trevor Ariza and Derek Fisher made the necessary clutch shots in the crucial games four and five.  (That is the reality that can be seen throughout Kobe's career in spite of his reputation as somehow being a clutch performer.  He is not and never was.)  In the following year, even though the Lakers won Kobe’s 5^th championship, he digressed.  His ego got the best of him and he reverted to slashing to the hoop to try to get crowd pleasing dunks and bombing three balls like Pistol Pete Maravich on Dopamine.  My friends and I used to feign tears when he would hit two or three three’s because we knew the end result would be him jacking up a bunch more.  He is a lifetime 33% three-point shooter and he achieved all of 35% in that remarkable ’08-’09 season.

 

One more piece of evidence on  Kobe’s ego and a bit of conspiracy.  First, Kobe gave himself the moniker The Black Mamba.  He said he adopted it as a means of coping with the turmoil he endured being accused of rape.  He got it from a Quentin Tarantino movie.  Who nicknames themselves?  That is narcissistic as hell, right?  On the conspiracy front I question Kobe’s ability to speak Italian fluently.  It’s been out there forever that he is fluent having spent a number of years growing up in Italy while his father played in the Italian professional basketball league but I have never heard it.  We have all heard him say a few words to somebody but if that is the measure of fluency then I am fluent in Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and Armenian.  I just don’t trust him.  He seems like the type of person to lie about such a thing.  He wants so bad to be the best ever and thus far the public has cooperated.  Also, almost everything he ever says publicly, every quote, every interview, he reveals the true megalomaniac within.

I don’t know Kobe.  It’s possible I am all wrong about him.  I have always swam upstream on this one but outside of a playoff run that led to his 4^th title, the counterintuitive Kobe is the only one I have ever seen.  He won the NBA Finals MVP award when the Lakers won that 5^th championship and I was beyond incredulous.  Go back and watch that series.  Kobe gets his 20+ points per game but his turnovers were not only abundant, they occurred at the most crucial and inopportune times.  I recall thinking during some of those crucial turnovers, ‘well, if they win at least Kobe won’t get the series’ MVP.’  Wrong.  If it had been to me I would have nicknamed Kobe 'The Emperor," for obvious reasons.

As for why or how Kobe’s reputation grew to such heroic proportions, I have fragments of ideas collected and stored over the years.  Yes, we all wanted him to be great, so we were prone to believe he was achieving it before our eyes over the years.  The Lakers had great success and Kobe was a part of it if not the overwhelming catalyst he was credited as being.  Kobe always talked the talk.  From day one he was always intent on creating that legend.  He would say he did not socialize with other NBA players because he was dedicated to honing his game and working out but it may just be that he was an asshole and no one was interested in being friends with him.  Whenever he did seem like he had become friends with someone in the league the relationship was always characterized as, “Kobe has become something of a big brother figure to Carmelo.”  I used to imagine the days when years after their careers were over some of these players would come out and tell the truth about Kobe.  I still  wonder if Dwayne Wade or Carmelo Anthony will emerge one day to say they always felt superior to Kobe and despised him for the cast he had around him and the success.  I also wonder about Pau.  He has always seemed like a heady sort of guy, in stark contrast to Kobe, and as such I thought he might one day back off all the lip service praise he has bestowed upon Kobe over the years as his teammate.  When I think about Kobe complaining to the cops the night he was arrested for rape, about how Shaq would have had his indiscretion swept under the rug by the authorities, it just seems appropriate from a karmic standpoint some of these guys would come out and cut Kobe back down to size a bit.  That they have not reveals their bigger nature.

I am a Laker lover.  When I was about 6-years-old I remember the Lakers were a great team and they had this guy who shot left-handed and always seemed to hit big shots in crunch time.  I was aware of this behemoth of a man, (unbeknownst to me in the twilight of his career,) Wilt Chamberlain.  I also knew Jerry West.  He was the team’s catalyst.  But Gail Goodrich was the guy I identified with.  Other teams could not leave West or Chamberlain alone and so Goodrich got plenty of good looks at the basket and he was in his own right a great scorer, (ironically by way of the mid-range jumper.)  A few years later it was Lucius Allen and Cazzie Russell on mediocre Laker teams.  Then Kareem came over and Magic was had in the draft and the glory years began in earnest.  Five championships in the ‘80s were salad days for Laker fans.  Kareem became and remains my favorite player of all time.  Magic was great.  His exuberance in action is unparalleled in sports.  James Worthy is vastly underrated due to the mixed fortune of playing with Buck and Cap.  I also loved Rambis and Michael Cooper and most every Laker.  I even liked Nick Van Exel. When glory returned in the new millennium, I quickly became a Shaq fan, even though I had not cared for him when he was in Orlando.  I also embraced Kobe.  In the first 6-7 years of his career I too sang the faithful refrain.  It was when the debate began about whose team the Lakers were, Shaq’s or Kobe’s, that I first became dismayed.  I remember thinking geez, I bet Chris Webber and Mike Bibby would be thankful to have Shaq on their squad and they would not act as if they were somehow on his level.  Kobe was never near Shaq in terms of real impact on basketball games.  Shaq was a pulsating force in the middle of the key who affected everything that happened at both ends of the court.  By comparison Kobe was merely a good player. 

As a Laker fan I loved Robert Horry and I embraced Ron Harper and Brian Shaw.  Along with Ron Artest later these players hit crucial important shots.  Derek Fisher also hit some big shots.  By contrast Kobe had a million chances to hit big shots and hit very few.  According to an article several years ago in Slam Magazine Kobe was statistically among the worst clutch shot makers in the league.  The cable network Prime Ticket created a show out of Kobe’s 10 greatest clutch shots.  Most of them occurred in the early season.  One or two were in the same last game of a season and another one was in the 2006 playoffs against Phoenix.  In 19 years and all those playoff games, given that Kobe has shot the basketball more than anyone to ever play the game, (the all-time leading misser of shots but well behind Kareem on the all-time scoring list,) isn’t it shocking he doesn’t have some real big clutch makes to show for all those attempts?  Fisher has “.4.”  Metta Worldpeace made hay of Kobe’s airball and made the layup as time expired in the Finals.  (Ron Harper from the baseline against Portland…Horry top of the key vs. Sacramento…so many big shots come to mind.  Only that one against Phoenix comes to mind for Kobe and the Lakers lost that first round series and the Lakers were a bad team, Kobe’s bad team.  Yes, that team was truly his.) 


Kobe is and was better than Robert Horry or Derek Fisher.  Fisher was a smarter player who used his brain and moxie to perform at a level higher than what might be expected of him physically.  Horry landed on several excellent teams that needed another really good, versatile player in their push for championships.  He was exceedingly skilled and as cool under fire as could be.


Kobe's legend was fueled by victory and Hollywood, self aggrandizement and folklore.  It was built over time by fans who wanted to believe.  It is groupthink and it is mostly harmless. 

There is not much I like about Kobe.  Even on a bad team when he calls a team meeting to tell the young guys they need to stop complaining and just go find ways to win, he could not be more tone deaf.  He is shooting 33% from the field, hoisting up way too many three-point shots and spending disproportionately more time on the court than these young guys while producing less. As it is Kobe’s legacy is larger than life and for me, larger than it should be.  I am interested to see if age changes his attitudes and if somehow he finds humility in his gray years.  It could swing my attitude about him.  I mean look, he was involved in a lot of Laker achievement.  I have no intention of changing my tune but I could see him popping up on an NBA broadcast and waxing humble for a period of time convincing me of some late-arriving maturity but then who knows how my opinion might evolve.  Still, no doubt as of today his reputation is completely overblown and unjustified. 

The odd videos one can find on the internet.  So I don't know that these are the top 10 but it is not surprising to me the only two Kobe makes are with a 5-point lead on an ill-advised two-point shot with Grant Hill all over him and one jump shot with plenty of time left in game 7 against the Celtics.  In that game it is pretty clear Ron Artest was the clutch shooter and in fact he should have been awarded the series MVP.

On Turning 50

On the occasion of my 50^th birthday I am inclined to reflect.  I want to look backwards for lessons on how to proceed.  I want to look inwards to take stock and ensure I am listening to my best self.  I want to look forward to envision the outcomes I need.

 

It is easy to say it is just a number but the point is people age differently.  Some battle ailments and maladies.  Others enjoy pristine health.  Some age gracefully, adapting easily as they go while always projecting cool satisfaction to the world.  Others bite and hiss and moan and scowl their days away.  In a gray world nobody does it perfectly and nobody fully fails. 

 

As for me my values can be understood best by viewing them through the lens of how I can explain them to my children.  For the sake of balance I will alternate between the good and the bad.

 

I have many regrets and I have come to terms with all of them, (excepting perhaps this one on which I continue to process.)  My children live in an apartment.  They live in an apartment, (two, really,) because I am something of an economic or financial failure.  It is not that I have failed to earn an income or even failed to earn a viable income.  It is that I have lived a life to this point of indulgence. 

 

Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I recall considering the idea of saving money and living a life of frugality, temperance, chastity, prudence and austerity.  I had friends embarking on such a lifestyle but for me it seemed so hollow.  In some ways I had a difficult childhood and so the idea of enjoying and getting something in my adult life in the form of experience and understanding was attractive to me.  For me Henry Miller’s quote rang true: “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” 

 

In order to be aware I needed to experience.  In order to experience, I needed to indulge.  So, indulge I did.  Thus far in life I have had things my way for the most part.  I became financially stable around 30-years-old.  (My 20s were good but filled with periods of intense character development.)  My way has been marked by low levels of self-discipline and high levels of instant gratitude.  It is embarrassing and yet, I have walked my walk in large part as a product of my environment.  And now you know my deepest, darkest secret.  (If it is true a man is only as sick as his secrets, well I suppose I just took a step toward better health.)  That I live in an apartment in a great location is not in any way bad for me.  That my two children live in an apartment without a backyard to play in, without the love of a dog for a pet, without a parent who is comfortable allowing them to invite their friends and their friends parents over for virtually any occasion, is a deep and enduring regret for me.  I haven’t given up but this is not the sort of thing one recovers from or resolves overnight.

 

The positive side of my self-indulgent ways is manifested by my world-view, which is informed by my experience, (which is manifold.)  People have lived much richer lives and relatively poor lives as well.  There is value in my experience that transcends me and reaches my children in large part.  I suffered physical, mental and emotional abuse as a child.  These gave me perspective, understanding and empathy.  I was raised by a variety of relatives.  The variety had positive and negative effects.  I spent my teens in Americana, in the back yard swimming and barbecuing with my brother, and an Aunt and Uncle as Mother and Father figures and a cousin as a sister.  We were actively involved in a fundamentalist, (colorfully Pentecostal,) church scene, which also had its plus signs and its minuses.  I attended several higher learning institutions, always getting more from them than what I gave them, eventually studying Journalism.  I spent four years in the USAF.  I lived in Japan for two years and thankfully, I ventured forth from the American base freely and often.  I learned a great deal from that culture and those people and from being abroad.  I was a fire fighter for six to seven years, (including those four years in the Air Force.)  I worked in a bookstore for three years where a budding love of the written word was able to flourish into a full-blown affinity for knowledge and understanding.  I built houses as a Contractor’s apprentice for two years.  I became a CSR and embraced that work as my career, if as a default when other endeavors did not work out.  (I dropped out of all of those colleges, after all.)  I climbed slowly in the work place from CSR, to Lead CSR, to Trainer, to Supervisor, then off to a start-up company trying to teach English language to adult Spanish speakers using children’s Leap Pad technology, then to the unemployment line for seven months, then to a $5 million per year termite and pest control company managing the administrative part and helping manage virtually all of the rest of it, then back to the unemployment line for nine months, then back to Call Center Supervisor for a large corporation, then to Trainer again.  I got married once.  I had two children.  I divorced after less than six years of marriage, and around 12 years of relationship.  I drank. I smoked.  I did drugs.  I caroused and philandered.  All of these with some caution.  I visited South America.  I embraced the internet from Day One.  I am gregarious and enjoy meeting with and talking to and learning about people.  I am open to hearing about my faults and I like to try to improve in those areas.  I developed a tremendous affinity for sports as a child.   I was addicted to reading every last word of the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated as well as the sports section of the LA Times and any other rag I could get my eyes on.  I was a teenaged encyclopedia of sports knowledge.  I played every sport, too.  I loved basketball like I loved breathing.  It was necessary for me. It was my therapy when I was afraid to go home at nine-years-old, and the game that allowed me to assimilate at schools.  I played baseball, too, varsity as a Junior.  In most organized sports I was a B+.  I did not want to be the best because I wanted access to everyone.  I did not want to put anyone off.  I needed to be above average though for the respect of the most as well.  I had other hobbies and endeavors as well.  My life was and is full.  I am pleased in retrospect at my level of engagement.

 

All of this experience informs me and by proxy informs my children.  I am hopeful the obvious drawbacks of my self-indulgence are offset in some part by the perspective gained.  I am highly confident in my world view.  When my children pose questions I typically feel eminently qualified to answer them.  (I have been stumped once or twice but it’s been rare.)  I am trying very hard to be a good Dad.  I am not entirely pleased with my performance in that role thus far but I am aware of the areas I fall short in and I am trying to improve. 

 

At 50 I do not feel irresponsible with this life.  I feel like I have taken it seriously, accomplished some and learned much.  I could die now without the regret of feeling as if I had squandered my time, in spite of the fact I have much I still want to do.  I do not want to die now however.  I want to live.  I want to learn more.  I want to share with my children and others.  I want to use what I have learned to help others.  (It is why I write.)  I want to see how things turn out for me and for others.  I want some time to make some things happen.  I am nothing if not deliberate and so, I need time.  I want and crave time.  I am hopeful I have some more ahead of me.

 

I find at 50 I understand older people better.  I have expressed a general dissatisfaction with the elderly for many years and nothing has really changed about that.  I find older people, certainly older Americans, to be selfish and greedy, (among other things.)  The idea of AARP has annoyed me for years though I admit it is no different than Scientology or the Masons or Objectivists or the Knights of Columbus.  I just have less tolerance for those who have been living longer but have not learned, (or learned to practice,) life’s most basic and fundamental truths.   

 

As I arrive in later years I am fully aware that 50 aint shit.  The other day my eight-year-old son asked me the meaning of life.  It’s a joke we play.  We ask Siri this question on my iPhone from time to time and she seems to have a few colorful, fun answers programmed in.  So Mark asked me straight out, as if emphasizing the is, in the question, like, “Dad, what IS the meaning of life?” 

 

I thought about it for a few minutes then I answered.  Some say life is absurd.  It has no meaning, no rhyme, no reason.  I disagree.  I say we live for the future.  I say we long not for immortality but innate goodness, which can only come from putting ourselves second to our species.  The meaning of life is to learn through the course of it as soon as possible and then to act on this maxim: that which benefits humanity in the greatest possible way, represents that which is the best action.  Action resulting in good consequences for our children and the future of our kind is the best.  It is what we should aspire to.  My answer to my son was not quite so succinct but if pressed to delve further I would add…

 

• Lighting the dimmest recesses of ignorance is noble, right action for our species.  Spreading insight is innate goodness.
• Acting on behalf of the less privileged or underserved is goodness.
• Protecting the powerless from being taken advantage of should be viewed as a responsibility.
• Providing for the best possible environment, to include finding ways of improving it beyond what we can imagine, is righteous. 
• Having the future of humanity as the basis for our heaviest decisions is important.  (At the very least; Research>Treatment.)

 

But what of 50?  What should it mean to me?  What should it mean to the world? 

 

In many ways I feel like I matured until I was 45, then I began to age.  What I know for certain is that the ageing is undeniable.  Lately these moments of ageing sneak up on me.  I was getting a haircut a few days ago and I peered at myself in the mirror and the apron was tied around my neck tightly and I looked closely and noticed my neck sagging this way and that as I swiveled my head.  The changing elasticity of my skin was also evident.  Today it was my hands.  I looked at my hand, clenched and unclenched my fist, and saw there the lines I had at my knuckles all of my life, now have lines framing them.  The lines have multiplied from three per knuckle to seven, or eight.  The elasticity of my skin on the top of my hand, again, has changed.  It’s shiny and prone to wrinkle like old cellophane.  When taut it looks much as it always has but as soon as it is in any way touched, moved or compromised, the years show themselves to the knowing eye, like animal tracks in sticks and moist earth. 

 

I have also gained some weight.  No excuses.  It is reality.  I also know about myself that I have judged myself too harshly.  When I was a young man I thought it a sin to be out of shape.  That thought was easy because I did not seem to possess the capacity to put on fat in any sense of the word.  Still, I was active even amidst the drinking.  Hangovers were cured by running three or four games of full court at the park.  Now as I realize the decline of my physical self, in an age of glorified youth, I contemplate the real work involved in maintaining tip-top physical fitness, and I think how could I?  Why would I?  This stage of life feels like a time of refinement.  I have learned how to live and in some proportion, I get to apply mine understanding. 

 

In my 20s and 30 when I was angry about all the things one should be angry about in this disappointing world, I raged against machines of government, the selfish mores of capitalism, and declining cultural norms.  My dissatisfaction nourished me.  It drove my everyday life like a righteous computer monorail.  I drew ideas from a trough of fundamental notions, most of which I retain. 

 

In my 40s I helped create two lives and I worked on learning how to nurture and care for.  What I learned from growing into the role of Father helped me to prioritize virtually everything.  Perspective gained. 

 

Here come the 50s.  I'm down.  I plan on being a great Father.  Better than I am today.  Better than I think I am capable of.  I want to read more, and talk less.  I want to enjoy great films and eschew advertisement.  I want to appreciate and I want to discern.  I want to talk to my people.  I want to talk to them about ideas and art and the trials of our days.  I want to carry out the mantra of my bloodstream, which proclaims, "Be Positive!" every time its type comes up.  I want to influence and I want to refine.  I mean to provide value.  As for physical fitness I want to be as fit as I possibly can without sacrificing my earnest love for laying around watching tv now and then or other indulgent acts.  I'd rather work at living than at living longer, (though as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "longevity has its place.")

 

I am just out of a relationship.  I learned so much.  I no longer aspire to a relationship.  I once did but now I feel it as secondary or, yet another consideration.  I like being alone, which propels me to savor being around people all the more.  Life at 50 feels more full, not fuller than other's, but fuller for me. 

 

I grok why I was unmoved to cry when I was a child.  I did not know the melancholy of life, the self awareness of homosapien.  At 50 I can cry.  I feel life, the massive weight of it and the lightness of being.  I can connect with just about any idea and I do-I choose to engage.  I feel like an orchid, a fragile twig bending into the sky on the strength of hope and curiosity, sprouting a beautiful something at my greatest reach as an offering to this life, the whole of humanity and no one. 

 

Samsara

Samsara is the repeating cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.
The film; Samsara, by contrast is about numbers, the macro, and all that is vast and expansive. It is a million still pictures woven together in many cases creating motion. It is so many images of the normal culled to highlight and create data for the Encyclopedia Humanica. It is clever and banal. It is prophecy and historical text. It is every moment at once and an exploration of the unique. It reduces human experience and free will to the level of mitosis and champions beauty like Picasso.

The movie is bi. It is visual and aural. It is black and white. It is truth and beauty. It is, (to borrow from Gibran,) opposite sides of the same stone. 
Samsara admonishes the viewer on the diversity of the human experience. We are not unique snowflakes after all.  Still, the uplifting nature of this hour and 42 minutes cannot be denied.  It is gripping and haunting and it feels like it could lead to the release from the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth that is this mortal coil. 

The Snake lives

John Madden said of the legendary Kenny Stabler, (If I had one game to win in the ‘70s, I would have chosen Stabler to be my Quarterback.  In the ‘80s, I would have chosen Stabler.  In the ‘90s, Stabler.  In the ‘00s, it’s the same.  If a game was big, Ken Stabler was big.  If a game was tough, Ken Stabler was tough.  If a game was hot, Ken Stabler was as cool as it gets.)  He went on to say it is a travesty The Snake is not already in the HOF.  I agree with Madden.  When I think of the great QB’s and I think of all aspects of the game, I think Brady is in his class.  I think Steve Young is right there.  For me these three are above the rest.  (Yes, Montana was clutch in some huge games.  Yes, Peyton Manning has thrown for a bazillion yards, as has Marino and Favre.  Yes, Bradshaw was great and gritty and with Montana is right on that next tier.)  Ken Stabler ushered in this new game.  He threw more than other QB’s of his day and for a higher percentage.  He played DBs with his eyes.  And when the game was on the line, he could fumble a ball forward, he could loft a jump ball into the sky so it would land amidst four defenders and his Receiver but giving his Receiver the best access to the ball as it returned to Earth, or he could look right and throw left and win games.  Madden was right.  He did not have the longevity of some and the joke is he studied the playbook by the light of the jukebox but in my lifetime he is the best I have ever seen. 

His death has also affected me more than any other athlete heretofore.  The reason for this is partly because it feels like such injustice that he was not elected to the Hall of Fame in the normal manner, (going in next year by Senior Committee, instead.)  That my friends and contemporaries will view this ode as somehow skewed when I know with certainty of Stabler’s greatness, bothers me.  That he is not already in the HOF, that he was not a first ballot entry, is sheer groupthink.  It was also suddenly shocking as he was relatively young.  (70 is too young.)  I was thinking of which other athletes’ deaths will affect me like Stabler’s and it occurs to me, I will likely feel something deep when Kareem Abdul Jabbar dies.  Same for Ron Cey.  Gretzky, if he beats me to it, will make me sad.  Maybe Don Baylor, or Burt Hooten, or Fred Biletnikoff or Dave Casper or Ted Hendricks?  Certainly when Vin Scully dies I will weep.  I will weep for my own mortality and for nostalgia.  I will weep remembering the voice of my childhood, but really just remembering my youthful self.  Scully has had a great life though and so I will certainly not weep for him.  No, with Stabler it is something else.  It is that he did not get his due.  It is that he represents the self-effacing nature of what it means to be classy.  He may have loved to hang out into the wee hours at the bar, and yes he liked the ladies and even married a Miss Alabama Universe, but he always took care of his business, which was football. 

It was a joy to hear John Madden speak of Stabler in such glowing terms, (and yeah, I am remiss in leaving Madden himself off the previous list.)  I know he knew, (and how could he not-he was right next to him making it happen.)  That others may not conclude that Stabler was the best ever is of no bother to me.  I just wanted to say it in any case because it is my truth for certain.  RIP Kenneth Michael Stabler, the coolest Quarterback ever.

https://youtu.be/dn4dsNAHRgs

Age

I just concluded an affair with a girl 20 years younger than me. I am left with much to unpack. Why did it end? Was the end inevitable? Is there something wrong, morally, spiritually, logistically, reasonably or inevitably with such a large age gap.

When we discussed our relationship and the possibilities and probabilities, we recognized the long odds. For her part my now friend seemed on the run from guys her age. She talked to me early on about pothead ex-boyfriends and dickheads who treated her poorly. No doubt it took two to tango but the behaviors she talked about, the unwillingness to commit based on some unfounded but inflated sense of self-worth, (you know how every guy in his 20s expects to one day rule his world regardless of any planning or evidence to substantiate such an idea,) sounded familiar but only in as much as when I started down those paths at that age I was circumspect enough to recognize my folly and turn. 

She also seemed interested in the different. If I represented some sort of insight, some level of experience, some other perspective, I think she was drawn to that. I think she felt somewhat isolated or raw or sheltered, and so getting to know me represented a chance to expand. She was attracted to my smart-ass mouth initially. (Long story...) She liked my perspective and also that I did not fumble all forward as so many of her contemporaries but rather moved surely in my own direction while letting her know there was some space next to me.

For my part I was simply attracted to this girl. She was, (is,) five feet and nine inches of big, strong supermodel. When I looked at her my immediate sensation was to want to make babies with her. (This in spite of my otherwise void of interest in making more children and in fact, my reluctance to do so.) Said babies, however, would have been the strongest and most advantaged of creatures.

She had this quality though, of kind of towering over everything. It was regal really. I think when she was younger it must have been awkward for her to be so powerful but that is what comes with this perch. Height is natural power-power incarnate. Power manifested. At her current age however, she seems just arriving at a place of comfort with her physicality and who she is. I mean, she owns some social anxiety still, but in being tall and naturally superior to others, I think she recently may have embraced it. 

More about this girl, she had a face like an angel. Not your garden variety Italian fresco cherub. Hers is a complicated beauty. It starts with softly aqueous eyes accented by flat saucers below each of them and an aesthetically perfect, undersized nose. Her nose punctuates her features. In being so efficiently dainty it sets the tone for the pleasing but inferior features around it, (Her eyes notwithstanding-they too exist on a higher plane.) Her physical charm emanates outward from there. She has a cute hairline like something Michaelangelo would have imagined. She has perfect skin and a strong jaw. She is not perfect by the way, not at all. Well, except that she is perfectly flawed. She is not particularly fit. She is slim enough but a bit soft, like a girl, like a woman, really. She has nice hips and oozes sex appeal in a nonchalant way. Here's the thing I'm trying to convey: this baby is hot. Hot like something special. Hot like Scarlet Johansson in Match Point. Remember how she tells Jonathan Rhys Myers guys tell her they think being with her would be special? This girl gave off that same thing. Honestly, what little time I spent with her was special. 

When I met her I did not think of her as a possible lover or romantic partner.  She was younger. She was a stone cold fox. I was introduced and I made nice but thoughts of being close to this kind of physical beauty are too expensive for me. (Yes, something changed about that but it's an entirely different essay.) Still, the time came when I did consider it and I wanted her for just that. I was not disappointed either. Being close to her was special. At first it was awkward, then it was compulsory, then it opened into this sweet, tender thing. We finally played with each other and at those times the years which stood between us melted away like facades of an ignorant species. We became contemporaries, engaged in the niceness of humanity and interpersonal relationships. We loved easily. She was generous in that she sought her own pleasure actively and tried to open up to me, which was not easy for her. For my part I basked in her smell and holding onto her and being so profoundly close. The sounds she made, including her voice, entranced me. Certainly in those moments, in this season, I loved her.

At first I don't think she recognized my age. She knew I was older but she may have thought I was as little as 10 or 11 years older than her, which compared to 20 years is wholly manageable. When she discovered my age I think she recoiled and immediately knew we were not meant to be involved, (rightly or wrongly.) Still, she flirted with the idea. We flirted, and in time we got some time together.

Our little dates were good. I had only the slightest hint of an awkward moment, maybe once or twice. I can't say what it was like for her-I expect it was similar. For me going for fro-yo was odd. Children, teenagers and young couples occupied that space and I felt like an intruder, but we settled outside to enjoy our treat and it was fine. (Maybe at the same time she had a moment when the teen girl selling us frozen yogurt looked at her enquiringly, "Is that your Dad?" I don't know. It could  have happened.)

There is a little more, too, about this girl. I am not interested in mean girls. Women. Ladies. I choose only to be close to or involved with those who have good karma, who send positivity out into the vibratory world and as a result live in the positivity that returns to them by universal flow. She embodies this. She does so shyly, too. The culture around her glorifies behaviors counter to this way and so she has had to examine from whence her own goodness comes and decide if she should be the girl who makes her friends laugh and embodies the mantras of so many hip hop, pop rock, songs. I saw her choose wisely. I saw her wanting more than that.

So, the question is: do people of such age disparity make sense? Can they or should they work in a relationship? Is some age difference okay while a certain amount of difference is too much?

I have long thought an older man and a younger woman made sense. Men tend toward the immature, (generally speaking of course.) Men can be exceedingly superficial in as much as we are attuned to our sense of sight and thereby beauty perhaps more than women. Hence, we appear to be shallow. By contrast women grow up faster in terms of positing the proclivities of adolescence and they are attuned to the tactile, (which is almost a metaphor if it weren't so literal.)

For this reason an older woman and a younger man has always seemed odd to me like an aberration of nature. My thought has always been that women match up well with a man older by enough to be serious about life, and by that I mean, responsible, perhaps career oriented, one who spends his time wisely and ideally even gives back in ways. 

Men may like similar qualities but we tend to value physical beauty at a higher level. Our chemical makeup, (and by chemical makeup I mean testosterone in harmony with pheromones,) shuts down any number of considerations for us when we fall under the spell of whatever bright and shiny thing happens in front of us, (and by bright and shiny I mean stone cold and foxy.)

My thought had been that an age gap of 6-8 years might actually be ideal. And, maybe it is. Or maybe there is no ideal at all.

It can't be good to take romance out of the romantic. That said it certainly is good to use one's brain when dealing with affairs of the heart. In fact it is my fervent desire that when my daughter chooses a mate she does so primarily with her wisdom. I want her to have chemistry with her mate. I want her to be attracted to him and have a healthy even super active love life. But I don't think this precludes her from making a choice based on principles she values and a life she has planned.

My own mistake in my marriage was that I did not plan much at all. For that reason I wound up married to someone less than ideal for me. If I did it over again today my clarity about such a decision would be increased greatly. I could probably break my decision down to about 10 considerations of which, I might expect someone meeting 8 of 10 would represent an ideal match. (I mean this world is diverse, after all.)

• Good values. (As mentioned mean girls need not apply. Deal killer.) Positive. 
• Attractive to me. Interesting. Passionate about things I at least find interesting. (Passionate about nothing would be a deal killer.) 
• Family oriented. (This is not to say interested in having children. This is to say one who values her family and respects the value of bonding with a mate's family.) One who appreciates children and is nurturing at least in as much as she is positive in her world view and understands children are the future of our species. 
• One who strives to be better and values learning. 
• One who acts with integrity and maintains a big picture view of life and the world. Fun. 
• Engaged and engaging. 
• An active adventurer. 
• Someone for whom money is a necessity of the world we live in but not a means to an end. 
• One who strives to be happy but is balanced in her views and accepts the ugliness and struggles of our kind gracefully. 

Okay-so that's like 15. Sue me. 

Of those 15 a couple are deal breakers. That one thing at odds with me means no go. Of the rest, I could likely live with a couple out of place. It is not easy to come into contact with people who share our values on such a scale to say nothing of finding that chemical match. So, in employing my powers of reason to decide, I am able to make allowances. 

I say all this to make the point that this is where I think I was with this girl. I think she liked me a lot but I think the age is the deal killer, which is not unreasonable at first glance. However, as I have come to think about it more deeply, (and it is not impossible my judgment is clouded by my desire-I recognize that,) my opinion is transforming. I see so much synchronicity between her and me.  The age difference is just a number, after all. What is really at the root of that number differential? It can only be physical. Not that it matters but I can pass for someone younger than myself. If I were to tell someone I am five years younger than I really am I would not expect anyone, ever, to raise an eyebrow. Still, I have some gray hair mixed in with the brown. I have a receding hairline in the corners only, which my hairstyle probably minimizes to a degree. I have some wrinkles on my face. I have one in particular between my eyebrows which rises ever so slightly onto my forehead.  I have some other less pronounced ones that are only occasionally visible and I have increasingly bags under my eyes, though I think that is less about age than my lifestyle recently. I need sleep, but I digress. Overall, I'm substantially older than this girl and certainly less attractive to her than men her age.  My curiosity is this; if she has 10 or 15 categories for making such a decision, could this one be one of the ones endured? Asking myself the same question I can honestly say I don't know. Maybe, but an experience I had last year suggests not, even if it did last for 8-10 months and for a moment somewhere in the middle seemed a bit serious. Still, women are different from me, (I think.)

This girl has professed in the past to find me attractive or cute, even. I can't say if I believe her... No. I believe her. I suppose it becomes a question of degrees. My desire is like that of the beast, or that of Mustafa Sa'ed, that she find me not ghastly enough for it to be a deal killer and attractive enough in so many other ways as to compensate for my aged appearance. Is that reasonable? Possible? Wrong, in some way?

I don't think so because I know her and I know myself. I find us well suited for one another in a whole bunch of ways. Her weaknesses or those areas in which she lacks confidence are my strengths. My weaknesses seem complemented by her. I feel yang to my yin for her even as she has stressed to me in the past how much she values what she cutely refers to as, "the feels." This is her way of emphasizing feelings over reason. I struggle to do that but sense the value of balancing my own perspective. I am an analyst after all, in life. In as much as we are yin and yang on this particular subject I feel even as if it is my duty to her to wage this campaign of woo for her on this level, to make the case for us l'est she feel like that one thing is a deal killer. I know I am not her ideal physically, (even as I know I am not repulsive.) (Oddly, once upon a time I was compared occasionally to one of her expressed ideals: Johnny Depp. Still, I don't guess I've kept pace with him, but who has?) Still, I want her to challenge herself to see if she could be happy next to me, if she could love me. I feel like I could adore her on a level I have not heretofore known. Having said that I know she owes me nothing. She has already graced me.

Maybe a 29-year-old girl who hasn't met many mature guys in her age range, who values a man for all the right reasons stands to gain from a relationship with an older man. It almost seems like it is a status issue. Perhaps the older man values the status of the younger, pretty girl while the girl does not value that sort of status?  Or, might that have been my preferred ideal here? If so the advantage for the girl is maturity, is a man who loves her thoroughly with respect and appreciation, is about stability and maintaining interest in the short and long term. Maybe.

What may be most fascinating about my season with this exquisite creature is what she has revealed to me about myself. I write this on a trip far from home amidst a sublime group of strangers. These people are drawn to me and this sensation of others coming to me and lavishing me with odd praise and making their small measures of ardor known to me is something I have shied away from previously. In the past I would practically refuse to look at it for fear of jinxing it but only now am I sensing from whence it comes. They haven't met many if any other people like me. I am unique in ways I have not valued perhaps because it is just me. It's not that I'm so awesome or anything either. I'm just me. But I am me, always me, only me, and this real me is good. I like to talk about big ideas. I like to be honest. I can be critical or filled with accurate and honest praise. These new friends this week have suggested I am a sort of onion with so many folds to be peeled back. They saw me quiet and unassuming then when it was my turn they saw me engage them publicly and they were drawn in and impressed with the force of my reason and presentation skills. Next they saw me through the lens of nightlife, singing karaoke in a self-deprecating manner, having drinks, chatting easily with the girl from Boston and the one from East St. Louis and the one from Georgia and the one from Dallas. We talked about movies and music. I challenged their political views but in a way that validated their thought process but sought an avenue of divergence. There were other little things, even discovering my children speak Mandarin, on which my legend seemed to grow.

I am not suggesting I am special in so many ways but perhaps within the realm of my class I am just that. People in my socio-economic strata do not read from pure passion or for self-edification. They are drawn to what is easy. And when I say they I suppose I should say we. We typically take the road less difficult. We find ways to get by economically and we engage in all the follies of the masses, memorizing the lines of the dumbest films ever made, glorifying the most idiotic so-called artists, and so on. I defy that behavior for the most part and I think this is why people of my ilk are drawn to me. This is an especially strange topic for me and I am not sure I have flushed it out entirely but I know there is something to this.

For several years now my inner dialogue has been quite negative about my age and my appearance. It is not that I have a low self-opinion or exaggerate my flaws but rather that I spend more time focused in on the unfortunate changes of time than I do dwelling on the positive things. And there are positives. My financial situation has never been more stable. I am wiser and more knowledgeable than at any point ever in my life. Thusly, I feel in my prime. My natural tendency to treat others as equals in the least has changed recently and this has been a positive shift for me. I start these days assuming others will not necessarily be as insightful as myself. This makes sense to me. At my age, analyzing the factors, life experience, wisdom, sharpness in mental faculties and so in. I am in fact in my prime. This is my truth and it is important for me to own it regardless of the girl.

I'm getting old. Later this year I will be 50. Sometimes in some ways I think my perspective has to change. I will have to cease to be interested in the recently bloomed flowers and consider instead the fading ones. Undoubtedly they offer a different but certainly equal beauty. This has not become natural to me yet, however. 

In the end I want to give this girl what I have. I want her to have my insight and charisma. I want to give her self-confidence. I want to give her an example of what she should want if I am not what she wants. From her I just want to be close to her purity and simple beauty. I want to feel the sensation of her charms bestowed on me. I want to feel the love of someone so pure and lovely. 

The season of our dissolution lingered like a truce. It was over then it was not. Then it was over. (And then again, not.)

I wouldn't let go completely because I had this vision in my head of us. We were the baddest of badass couples. Unlike so many couples, so many relationships I had been in, so many she had been in I was sure, we were secure. We weren't in it for the approval of others. We were in it for selfish reasons. We appreciated what we gave each other. We needed that, in fact. There was a certain symbiosis between us born of individualism but bloomed in tandem.  We complemented one another and thrived for it, in my vision. And in receipt, we gave. And by giving, we received so much more. And we understood this. And we overcame so much trite minutiae from this simple understanding and proceeding. 

Moreover, in parting my vision changed. I came to imagine her life and I saw her settling into a comfortable space. I saw her getting together with someone entirely expected. I saw their life and in ways, (to me,) it looked simple, and boring, and easy. In that possibility her partner was of the same ethnicity, in her age range, a man of his age and culture in no way like me. They made a family. Her concerns were of a garden variety. Life as always would be fat with struggle and yet, easy. 

With me I saw it differently. I saw us thriving from challenge. I imagined myself working to keep up with her but loving the reward, which was her love and vigor bestowed. I saw myself open to change beyond the years of such behavior, healthier for it of course. I saw myself pleased at being close to this creature I admired for being herself, for living inside of her brain, for being the medium between knowledge and sensation, between facts and feelings. I imagined her conquering the notion of normalcy to embrace the different. I saw her challenged and rising to respond, the outside, the different, the older and more experienced thrusting her life into a dimension beyond the prediction or predilection of social science. By loving from the selfish choice of knowing the greater reward available by such a union, I imagined this girl and myself on a higher plane, reaping an unknown harvest of plenty from choosing challenge, choosing to love, choosing values of receiving from giving, and shunning convention in the name of pushing boundaries into the future, into a realm of life learned lived loved. 

I could see us too, on the daily, my age showing more dramatically with time, her taking on the aspects of woman. I remembered my own youthful immaturity when love was so connected to status and I saw myself in this permutation loving only this girl, the idea of her, her essence, the sum of her traits. I saw her stripped of her stunningly beautiful face and all physicality in or out of line with our cultural interpretation of beauty. Instead, she was simply who she was, her thoughts and values and actions. I saw those traits manifested as my closest friend.

My vision, however is not reality.  When it finally did end for real, the reasons were complex and legion.  

For me a season had come when I stopped feeling sheepish about my age.  I had to stop feeling like I did not belong, or like I was obligated somehow to be aware of my age and to make apologies for others who might be uncomfortable with it, with me.  I was shrinking away from being me, from just living my every moment like a I was a corporeal, thinking essence inside a human body with the body my vehicle for experiencing the world and this life.  I had to think bigger and I had to make a decision to do that.  

It had been as if I should somehow feel less than because of a line on my forehead, because of a few dead hair follicles, or because age had brought evidence to my face in the form of circles under my eyes.  

I chose to think differently.  

So it is I pursued the desires of my heart.

Amber.  (My favorite paragraph.)

I wanted Amber.  I wanted to be so close to her we would breathe the same air in unison and share sighs.  If I won the lottery and became super wealthy I would still want Amber.  It was precisely because she was a little like a monster with her emotional tirades by text or the way she played so strong against me, knowing she had me and working me like a magnetic object she could hold at a perfect distance in spite of my thrashing.

At the end of it all however she did not value me.  She did in moments, at times.  It was short of a foundation however.  When we made love she had real tenderness for me.  If I could freeze time I would.  She told me I was cute.  She kissed me affectionately.  We were in every way compatible and symbiotic in those moments and stretches of time.  

Ultimately however we kind of devolved from there.  In the end it became a known thing if not a joke that I heaped on the praise and compliments.  They were not in any way phony.  And I think she may have liked the attention and the near affection but perhaps in looking at me she knew all along it was a no-go.  She told me recently that one of the attractions for her was that the relationship was sort of taboo.  It is likely the taboo with the positive attention and whatever, some force of personality maybe, encouraged her to explore a bit.  In the end however she became angry.  She lashed out at me.  

I am a frank person, especially with my intimates.  I think it is of my charms.  And my favorite intimates are the ones I can be frank with the most.  Some of my best friends collar my speech to a great degree.  I still love them from nostalgia and because I know their essence so well and I remain attracted to that, to them.  Still, the ones who know I have strong opinions about the world around me and value that aspect of my character make me feel like they really care.  

In any case this girl seemed to get angry at me.  She talked about how when we were out for her birthday she had noticed I grew reticent.  She said it is normally her way to attend to people like that in her circles but she thought it curious that she did not minister to me.  (Lots of good that did me.)  There were a multitude of reasons the night had worn on me but the point is she did not in any way take care of me or enquire if I was good.  And I was okay.  Actually at the end I kind of bolted from the scene but it was no impact to her or her birthday. 

There were some violent jolts in our relationship. She was rude to me, disrespectful even. I chided her via text and she reasoned through the events with me, concluded she had been rude and explained her mindset, then apologized. This reasonability both impressed me and gave me a sense of trust about her. It is funny because she is an emotional creature. She feels something...in this case the need to push herself away from me. 

I think when she looked at my face she saw the age. She saw the little lines. She saw the gray in my goatee. She liked me quite a lot and found me to be compatible to her in every way except one. She felt like my appearance belied the idea of her having found love. My age represented her settling for something other than the ideal. She could have handled that privately. I would be a suitable match for her if life was private but life is not private. Aspects can be but not your partner. 

At this point the girl was unable to reconcile these things. My age was evidently greater than hers. By how much could be considered but it was clearly more. She could not go forward feeling as if she had settled for something less than by translating the comments of her friends or family and the knowing glances of others in public into a sort of derision. She would accept that narrative as criticism of herself only. As if her shortcomings were responsible for her being involved with a lesser creature; the older man. After all, she knew she had a face like an angel. She figured her chubbiness along perhaps with her peculiarities were responsible for her not getting the grade A prospect, a handsome man of her own age with everything going for him, and she imagined a super-motivated version of herself springing forth one day and transforming herself into a supermodel with a great career perhaps inventing a hybrid therapy for autistic children that involved singing various mantras and affirmations of healing and love. The good life was out there somewhere and she was a charmer. 

If the affair with me could be viable in some way it would have to be reconciled. The girl would have to reconcile herself with the idea that choosing to love someone cannot and should not be related to status-more that it should not be contingent on outside approval. She would have to reconcile the idea that love is about mutual respect, involves a close sort of spiritual bond between two minds coming together and choosing each other and choosing to revel and be happy in the bond. 

For my part I felt like I could not ask this of her. It is too much. And yet through my ardor for her I asked it of her constantly. I could not help myself. I romanticized her and I wooed her and it was in this, as she experienced this affection she would pull back and revolt against it. I sensed the duality within her. She loved it and craved it and detested it too. She longed for a man to say the things I said to her. She longed for the respect with which I treated her. She longed to be intellectually stimulated in the manner I addressed her. She longed to be as comfortably pleased in intercourse as she was with me. I was really good in so many ways but for my face and my graying hair. 

Her duality manifested in a number of ways. We could be out having a great time and the subject of an insecurity might arise. In response she might ask if I could grow my hair out again as it had been when I was younger. These were tell-tale signs. She might mention our age difference, which meant she was working on the reconciliation. She might remark positively about me, commenting on my relative youthfulness perhaps on something as inane as how my hands do not look super old. This was her working it out. I liked the idea of her working it out too because eventually I arrived at some conclusions.

First and foremost, like her, I needed to reconcile myself with my desires. I did not desire her for status nor was my desire in some way a character flaw. It sprang from my need to constantly be moving, changing, or challenging myself. I realized I could have chosen any number of less challenging paths. I might have chosen to settle in with someone at a young age. Surely I had those opportunities. We might have had a great life growing old together, growing close and coming to know this sort of existence in harmony with our surroundings. It would have been different. It may have been so rewarding. It was not for me however.

I might have chosen someone more compatible to a long and enduring union than my ex-wife. That did not come naturally to me in all likelihood because deep down I knew I did not intend the affiliation to be particularly lasting. I wanted change even if I had to sabotage it so it would confront me later and uncomfortably. I needed things to move, to force me into precarious situations.

Now I might pursue a girl my age. In fact, I have, but ultimately I concluded she was less than ideal for me on various levels. Initially, she represented complacency to me. It was settling in to existing as opposed to struggling to find the bits and pieces of survival and harmony I could muster daily and in all the blank spaces. If life is suffering one’s life choices should represent the most proficient way of dealing with that fact. 

Second, she was uninspiring in as much as she had lived a life parallel to my own. She had encountered much of the same stimuli as me. She had reacted in some similar and some dissimilar ways. She was a flower not unlike myself but different. It was really good to know her and to have some communion but in the end we realized we were not there to offer each other our best so much as to create ease and who needs ease?  Ease with morphine please, when I have hours left. 

I might have chosen or pursued someone in my ex-wife's age range. I would have that familiarity to help create something, build something, and she might be divorced or have children like myself. There would clearly be some consistencies to build on. Perhaps that outcome is still out there somewhere but as for me, as for now, I am past that.  I want more and by wanting more I don’t mean more accoutrement, or more material.  I mean more substance, more challenge, more growth, more learning, more communion, more understanding.  Truly the role of my life may be fatherhood and if I am a good father, if I am becoming a better father all the time, it is from my insight.  I have refused to specialize like an ant all these years to my seeming detriment but no, alas there is advantage to my choices.  I am not an engineer who lives in a box of expertise.  I am not constantly interested in my profession.  My career is a means of survival and a means to thrive to a degree but I keep it in its place. 

Amber was different, the next generation, a new frontier, and thereby a completely unique challenge to me. This love would be difficult, new, fresh, strange, embarrassing and wonderful. I was energized at the prospect as well as by Amber. 

She was also nearly on the spectrum as we had discussed. Whether it was Asperger’s or not was immaterial. These qualities of getting lost in deep thought in public, of casting her eyes off to a faraway clime, of second and third guessing, of contemplating the hell out of her naval, and arriving at a place where she must get the thought out no matter the size like a cat with a gigantic hairball in need of relief. 

When Amber brought up the idea of growing my hair out again or dwelled on pictures of me as a younger man, (even mentioning that she had shared them with a best friend, which may have seemed pathetic to that person but who knows.)  When she moved in a such a way I knew what it meant.  She strained to reconcile.  When she and I had our best moments there was always a recoil that followed like the thunder trailing the lightning or the shockwave following the blast.  The next morning I might discover she was suddenly intent on losing weight or she had explored graduate programs and preferred one far away. 

This was not Amber being mean to little old me.  This was a reaction based on her belief in all that I told her.  Her recognition of the truth.  When she loses her soft middle she will ascend to supermodel status in everybody’s else’s eyes then too, (and not just mine or the handful of her admirers.)  Instead of a band of misfits following her around, the fat, ugly or old, she will have handsome men her own age.  With those she will be able to step out into the spotlight of the world with confidence at having attracted the truly attractive.  Her problems will not change at all. She will have the same old problems only with more handsome people.  There may be a drawback for her too that is her relative unfamiliarity with this class of people.  I don’t expect her to navigate it especially well though she will learn and adapt as she goes.  She will however still be critical of herself.  She will still want for more. Her relationship with her mother and her bestie will still have its pratfalls.  She will still get dumped occasionally and the beautiful do not as a rule have better sex.  (Some may but the ugly class is carnal.  Know that.)  That her problems will not change is part again of why I think she and I could make sense, or could function. 

Amber can better herself in any number of ways and she can make the pictures from her life so much prettier by making the guy standing next to her increasingly handsome.  This is a real possibility.  On the other hand she can just choose happiness, too, based not on addition, on what she can add to her life or what a lover might add to his appearance to increase her aesthetic pleasure.  She could, if so inclined have what she wants based on subtraction, (as Kundera informed us.)  She can take away a person’s physical appearance, the lines on their face or even their girth.  She can subtract the tone of their voice or their talents, (or lack thereof.)  She can remove any number of attributes in an effort to drill down on who they are, defining them essentially by subtraction not addition, and she may find by stripping everything else away she is able to get down to a greater truth about a person and who she might become entwined with.  She can match herself up by values, (which is my preference in such endeavors.)  At the end of it all she can choose either means of drawing conclusions about people.  And if she sheds a few pounds or increases her education level she will attract people from a higher socio-economic strata.  There is nothing wrong with that at all. 

Still, I wish it might have been me.  She was divine.  (Is divine, even still.)  My experience is such that I have, somewhat late in the grand scope of things, figured out a few things about life.  I wish I would have understood these universal truths perhaps 10 or 12 years sooner but I see no need to bemoan my path nor my learning curve.  Rather, I am thankful to have arrived at this place.  If it was Amber it would be so easy because she is beautiful on the outside as well as the inside.  Still, when I love again it is going to be done right.  I have learned.  I will be low ego.  I will nurture the relationship.  I will place my partner on a pedestal of understanding and I will treat her with dignity and respect.  I am excited at this prospect and I feel like Amber has given my first, best glimpse of that me.  When I think of how I plan to be and mean to be I feel desirable. 

I have learned much from this affair.  I have been nourished by it.  I have felt some pain and I am good with all of it. 

 

mommy

let's start with a platitude.  everyone has a mother.  every creature...  mother's are more common than right arms.  still, not all mothers are present.


this is an ode to my mother.  my mother who was absent.  (she was present for perhaps  1/11th of my life up to the point when she passed.)  my mother missed my early years completely.  incarceration is a bitch for the littlest ones. 


not all mothers enter into it purposely. 


the is an ode to my mother, who at 14 likely landed pregnant by happenstance.  she had no life path carved out and probably did not plan much.  2nd generation americans in los angeles of irish, english, and german ancestry, who became pregnant at 14 tended to let life happen to them and so their socio-economic lot was cast and struggling with masses of humanity was more than statistically probable.  their children were also born into an outlook fat with struggle but so beautiful.  so, so beautiful.


i don't know if everyone else in the world sees the beauty i see.  it is true that adversity builds character and great art often springs forth from it like a delicate, radiant flower climbs out of a crack in the pavement.  (the list of prime examples is unending.)  my perspective is born of struggle and sadness. 


i grew up with four mother figures by the time i was five.  they were wonderfully tender women who gave me love and security.  this ode however, is for my biological mother; tresenia james. 


i don't  know if my mother embraced smack in jail not long after i was born, perhaps sometime after her father had her incarcerated for being incorrigible.  I don't know if at 15 or 16 when she went to jail it was not the most natural thing for a child with an underdeveloped brain to seek the solace of narcotic.  i imagine her at that age partly from how i remember her on heroin at a later age, falling, just floating-falling into a place of comfort, a place where fathers nurture and love, instead of giving up and worse. 


by the time of my earliest memories she was hard.  she had a tattoo on the top of her arm that read, "shorty."  that is who she was to me at first.  every time i saw her, in places like the visiting area at terminal island women's penitentiary off the coast of long beach, everyone called her shorty.  i can remember her even later on the outside, with my aunt, her sister, who was four years her younger, how she was always comfortable everywhere.  outside the liquor store with people lurking in the shadows I recall my aunt expressing apprehension but my mom was in charge of the situation and ventured forth confidently with her jaw set.  my aunt, who by contrast was weightless and playful, was comforted by my mom.  so was i.  my mom was kind of serious.


i guess at some point she saw the limitations of her own life.  i am sure she felt guilty about what she provided for me and what she provided for herself.  i doubt she blamed her father or her family or the world or our species.  i think she may not have reflected at such a level.  self actualization requires some insight and erudition to achieve.


her day to day was probably consumed by the typical thoughts of a teenager.  at times she probably suffered from believing she had somehow caused her circumstances and was worthless for reasons related to how her father treated her, how impotent her mother was relative to my grandpa, and how poorly she understood her environs.  i am sure under the influence of the dope she went places as serene and fantastic as any real destination.  i am sure she felt as soft and pliable and one with the universe as any yogi or ascetic ever.  i know in that haze she forgot.  she forgot her father.  she forgot her child.  she forgot los angeles.  she forgot the love of her mother.  she forgot concepts and values.  she forgot herself and lost in that maze of altered states she walked through moments a totally different person, an entity unfettered by any sense of responsibility or being, perhaps not devoid of love however.


i don't love my mother on what would have been her 63rd birthday because she could not take care of me.  i don't love her because she lived in prisons far and wide.  i don't love her because she gave birth to me, from any sense of obligation or cosmic, genetic connection.  i don't love her because when i showed up at the prison in lexington, kentucky or glendale, arizona or pleasanton, california, i was a rock star.  every incarcerated chola who came across shorty in the joint must have heard of this cherubic child of white and filipino descent, (of a known of. but never encountered father,) because when i walked in those visiting rooms the fucking red, velvet carpet met my feet as prison-made presents showered me with the welcome of my people, my mothers, the girls who were exactly like my mother if of a browner color.  they came to me with smiles and kisses, praising me for being even more profoundly beautiful than the pictures they had seen.  their gifts were knitted or folded or drawn.  they always returned to their visitors as if grudgingly for having to leave the prince to his royal agenda.  i did not love my mother for giving me three colorful years of her life in the apartments of los angeles, bell gardens, hollywood, downtown los angeles.  i did not love her for asking me to steal items from a grocery store or bringing an abusive man into our home, (or rather me, into their home.)  i did not love her for cockroaches or hitchhiking or methadone or a half husky half timber wolf named lobo.  i did not love her for sunset boulevard or a '67 impala.  i did not love her for marijuana at way too young an age but i did and do love her.


i love my mother because she loved me in a way that is now too incomprehensible to know fully.  she loved me in the way she looked at me and the way she spoke to me.  she loved me completely and substantively.  when she comforted me i could sleep.  when she smiled at me i saw nothing else.  i was only capable of giving her love back but my love was that of a child.  i was not disagreeable but still, i had a certain sense of entitlement. she was my entitlement.  silently i demanded some things from her, not all of which she could provide but i saw her strive for those things. 


it may seem unlikely but my mother taught me love.  she gave me all she could, all she had, all she was. 


when she died on a bathroom floor in an apartment in azusa with the mojo pin still stuck in her right arm, i was on the other side of the planet.  a long flight and a day later i met her in a hospital room in glendora. she was on life support and she was not there.  there was no life or love in her.  of her own accord she was motionless.  the rise and fall of her chest belied the stillness of her soft, sunken face.  she could not smile at me in that moment and i had been trained to deal with this.


i did not know what to expect as i flew over the pacific ocean by night sensing the vast expanse below me and within me.  i knew she was on life support but i thought my voice might rouse her and everything would be okay and i would stay by her side forever and help her to overcome this evil comfort she sought so incessantly for 20 years. 


i walked from that room back into the world i knew and accepted the outcome.  when i was asked to go back into the room the next day after the decision had been made i levitated to her bedside and touched her hand.  those who were in the room watched me closely.  i forced two or three salty tears from my eyes and indicated i was ready to go.  back in the waiting room i participated in hugs and tender reminisces of six or eight people, of whom only half of us knew her at all.  then i went with my friends to a mexican restaurant and got drunk on margaritas. 


throughout my childhood i was more or less incapable of crying.  i didn't know why.  i only knew i seemed to accept the facts of the world, not bemoan them.  i was less than for it, too.  later in life when i learned to cry, or came to cry, i came to understand how good it really was.  the love i felt doubled in on itself then multiplied again and again.  i began to feel the weight of the world.  i sensed the nature of sorrow and came to adore it like a lover, to nurture it like an extension of myself and to feel it effortlessly and from instinct. 


if i am in any way special it is because of my perspective.  i love and crave justice like oxygen.  i am of the people because i come from disadvantage and it has always been my life's goal to be a champion for my people.  in many ways i have not lived up to that, perhaps because i am emotionally challenged.  perhaps because i am lazy and indecisive.  still in other ways i do what little i can.  in my work i try to help people assimilate into our crazy, hyper-capitalism.  our utilitarian jobs do not edify people.  they are not about stakeholders-but i try hard to help people understand the forces that play on their lives and find ways to cope and thrive. 


i have worked hard to educate myself in order to be responsible as an adult, responsible to my class, responsible in some way to those who are like me and so much worse off.  i had it good in many ways.  i had an aunt and uncle step in and raise from 11-years-old on.  i would not be a functioning father to my two wonderful children if not for that good fortune.  i am so thankful for all of my mother figures: aunt nancy, lupe, nana, elsie, carmelita, theresa elder, and more.  but my mother, tresenia james, set the bar.  she showed me and gave me love and in spite of her absence and her addiction, it was in those moments when we were together that i learned what everyone should have and know.  i love this metaphor about the wounded oyster.  (it is, after all, the wounded oyster which heals itself with pearl.)  her love as i remember it and feel it deep inside myself is my pearl.  i feel beautiful and i feel a beauty inside me that emanates from her love, so long ago.


you know a mother's love and how profound it is.  you have or had one-and you know.  it is more than circumstances.  it is more than your struggle. 


my mother's love informed my life.  it is the template for what i want in the world, for what i want for everyone.  it was pure and perfect. 


my love for her still, is the best of me.  i am become empathy.  i love.