Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Bull's Eye


It’s been a busy week. I’ve been trying to discover the secret of life and the origins of the universe, solving for quadratic equations, and contemplating the Theory of Relativity.  I’ve observed Fat Tuesday, Pudgy Wednesday, Tubby Thursday, Flabby Friday, and Corpulent Saturday in an effort to purify my consciousness, plump my hippocampus and find the meaning of life.

Not as easy as it sounds.  As a member emeritus of the Boomer Generation, this is our constant quest for enlightenment.  Personally, I think it would be easier to sign on for Odysseus’ voyage to Ithaca than to become enlightened. I just want to take a nap.  Trying to manage all the stress coming at us inhibits the flow of our life force, shifts our energy from vital organs, and makes us REEEAAALLLYYY irritable.  However, just recently my accountant said I am “radically diversified. “ That’s a positive. (I think he was referring to my finances.) 

But I am training to be calm.  I am embracing my inner crabby as a means to cosmic wisdom.  

It’s easy to become emotionally eviscerated.  That’s life.  The other night I saw “Les Miserables” for the fourth time in a year.  Good ole Victor Hugo.  He says in his book, “Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound.  Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”  WhatEVVVEER.  I set aside my book of social graces after the performance, and drove home entombed in a veil of tears and mucus and emitting decidedly UNheavenly guttural articulations.  From now on, I’m only going to watch brainless comedies, like presidential debates or the Oscars, those models of banality, whose main components comprise a checklist for depravity. Sporting facial orifices that are clammy and sodden is not the stuff of fascinating womanhood.   

Of course, changing the clock ahead and becoming sleep-deprived by the omission of one hour of rest each night is not exactly triage for ill temper.

I have a cartoon on my nightstand that keeps me focused on what is essential.  It says, “Life is simple.  You’re born.  You have birthdays.  You shrink.”  So far, I’m right on track.

At the moment, I’m involved in the planning of our class reunion.  I hope the event is as fun as the meetings.  We gather regularly to upload memories and reminisce.  Someone will recall an incident that is flash-blinding and leaves after-imaging of an event that had lain dormant for years.  I guess time puts a halo on a lot of things, but our memories are who we are.  The past comes again to the present.  Reunions, gatherings, are crucial to our identity, individually and collectively.  It’s how we measure our progress through life.

And all of us working on this committee are going through the stages simultaneously:  We were born.  We have birthdays.  We have shrunk. The fire within is often obscured by the waddlesome flab without. Being part of this informal clump makes for good fellowship.  We still have teeth in the sockets, if not the bite force of years gone by.  So far, there is no evidence of reduced autonomy in any of us…maybe a little automatic inertia.

However, my darling daughters, in order to preserve their places in my will, announced that the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) is coming to Salt Lake, and they purchased tickets for the tribe.  I am THRILLED!  In an instant, all their past crimes and misdemeanors were forgiven. 

These girls realize the glorious “divine bovine” is my passion, and making the arrangements to attend will be forever engraved in the Great Ledger of their recorded decisions. 

Mick E. Mouse and Asteroid are animal athlete superstars.  But Bushwhacker is on a par with the stallions that pull Zeus’ chariot.  This 2,000 pound parcel of hostility is dark, defiant, and belligerent.  He snorts and bellows menacing oaths reminiscent of a mother under stress, and can render cowboys perfectly stupid and acutely angled when he unceremoniously dumps them at a dizzying trajectory into the dirt, little pieces of wreckage, long before 8 seconds have ticked off the timer.

Bushwhacker owns the universe.  He is arrestingly handsome. This bull’s eyes are enormous and brown and  rimmed in long lashes.  His horns are precisioned brackets and crown his head like a laurel wreath for the Olympian god he is. 

Unlike his more infamous predecessor, Bodacious, Bushwhacker has no inclination to kill.  Oh, no.  He simply wants to eject a presumptuous cowboy from off his haunches, inflict some gratuitous bodily harm, (mangle, dent, wrench limbs from hinges, tear off lips, rip out tongues, and other vocal apparatus, etc.) and slowly swagger out of the arena with characteristic majestic disdain, irksome in his hubris. 

AND I CAAANNN’TTT WAY-ATE!!!

Bushwhacker is the perfect experience for the person, who, in fevered delirium, wants to experience it all.  How exhilarating.  And we have tickets on the third row, where the seats are up close and personal…if a little odd smelling.

Maybe that’s what life is all about.  In spite of the despair, the stress, the difficulty, there is beauty and lovely memories…and odd moments when you have the illusion that you’re in control of what is happening around you. Maybe the theory of relativity is, ultimately, about relationships – that Victor Hugo was right when he said, “ To love another person is to see the face of God.”  Perhaps  life can be even more adventurous and triumphant than 8 seconds on a bull named Bushwhacker.  That’s what we aim for.  That’s the bull’s eye.

Something to think about – and clasp to one’s bosom.