Archives for January 2005

Passion, a passion for life. There is a constant fire that burns in my belly. I sometimes think that the source of all my stomach troubles is the fire that burns just beneath the surface of my skin. There is molten lava there, a forge that can be used to create and to destroy.

It sounds goofy and dramatic, but I think in very graphic terms. When I imagine things I almost always visualize my doing them. Call it what you will, a bit Walter Mittyish, but the imagination and the fire are one and the same.

I have spent 35 years teaching myself how to best harness that fire, how to use it to motivate myself, how to use it to push myself that extra step. In athletics it is the fire that made me a teammate that people wanted on their team. If I took the competition seriously you were going to get a fierce competitor. It shows itself now on the basketball court.

I love to rebound, I love the battle. It is a test of wills. Anyone can score, but it takes a warrior to rebound. I love to do the dirty work, to get in there under the basket and take the ball away from everyone else. I revel in hearing other players ask me how I got the ball. I realized a while ago that there is a limited time in which my body will respond. The knight can only mount the charger so many times before his mount and or body fail him.

The time will come when I cannot play the way I love to. I already feel the changes. The day after a game my feet hurt, my back aches and I find bruises on my arms and legs that seemingly have appeared from no where, I haven’t any idea how they got there. I used to be able to play this way everyday, then I had to cut it down to four consecutive days a week and then three.

Actually I can still do it four days a week, but responsibilities around the house and with the children prevent me. I am fighting time. One day I may audioblog when I feel the fire, when I belt out a blue streak, when you hear me tell time to go fuck itself with enough venom to kill an ox.

The hard part about this passion is that it is not relegated to one aspect of my persona. I can have an explosive temper, or so people say. They have expressed surprise with the strength and vehemence of it. I like to storm around, throw things, bellow, yell and paw the ground. I am a Taurus what can I say.

The problem lies in people not recognizing the warning signs, misunderstanding that my playful good natured side goes away and the horns come out. And once I am angry with you it takes me some time to calm down.

I have a very thick skin and it takes a lot to get me to this point. When I am this angry I typically try to stay away from people to gain a little perspective so that I can speak calmly because I can verbally eviscerate you. There have been those who have continued to seek my attention, who have ignored my pleas to give me time and they have been skewered.

In truth, the people who usually bring this out in me have been those I love and care about the most because no one else gets in deep enough to get this kind of reaction from me. A good test of my love is to see if I stay angry. If you piss me off like this and I remain angry there is a problem.

But I am rambling and I don’t like the path I am on, too much testosterone and not enough reason. Sometimes life is just frustrating and unfair. Today is one of those days I am thankful for my blog, it is a safe way to vent. The blog listens, it doesn’t judge me, it allows me to speak without cutting me off and questioning me incessantly. It listens and is a calming presence.

That fire is burning, it is my own internal ner tamid, but that is just part of who I am. Without it I would be more lost than I normally am. Life is just a journey, a train ride of choices, a question of paths to take. I feel silly now, but a little more relaxed, not much but a little, enough that I will be able to sleep tonight and for that I am thankful.

Now this was just idiotic and stupid on their part. But that is the joy of being human, we all have our moments.

I did find something interesting here:

“New York FM radio station WQHT, or HOT 97, repeatedly ran the segment last week on the show, hosted by deejay Tarsha Nicole Jones who uses the on-air name Miss Jones.

Jones and her team were suspended indefinitely, according to publicist Lizzie Grubman, who declined to say whether Jones would feature in another show at a later date.”

Did you notice who the publicist was? Lizzie Grubman is the “rich girl” who got into trouble when her temper got the best of her and she had her wild ride which just goes to show you that the public has a short memory.

Now I am not saying that people shouldn’t have the opportunity to redeem themselves, but after her incident it does make me laugh that she is handling the public relations.

The other day I wrote a post about relationships in which I said the following:

I met my best friend G on the first day of kindergarten. It was September of 1974. We went to school together until the end of 5th grade at which time our parents opted to have us avoid being bussed to school and we left our elementary school haunts for new digs.

We lived in the same neighborhood so the different schools didn’t split us apart, it just meant that we spent less time together. But after school you could find us on our bikes tooling around the neighborhood, watching the Twilight Zone, throwing rocks at the UPS truck, or doing a hundred other things that could and would get us into trouble.

We were reunited in high school where we resumed our habit of eating lunch together. There were very few days in which we didn’t eat together. Neither one of us got sick much, so usually if we missed a lunch it was because I was out for one of the Jewish holidays.

After high school we ended up at the same university, but our schedules really did prevent us from getting together on campus as much as we would have liked to. Nonetheless we managed it. And as we made new friends they would ask us how we had managed not to lose touch. It was almost a silly question, G and I will always be friends, I can’t remember life without him.

Fast forward a number of years. We are both out of school and G is working for the NASD as a compliance officer. He goes to various brokerages and verifies that all of the transactions taking place are legal.

It is September of 2001. G works and lives in LA, but the job requires that he travel. He is in New York and working in the WTC. I am supposed to be there as well for a trade show, but the stock market has taken a dive and the company is cutting down on expenses so I am not able to go.

911 hits. I watch the news for about 20 minutes before I realize that the last time G and I spoke was while he was still in Manhattan. I can’t remember when he is supposed to come home and I start making telephone calls. I am not panicked, but I am nervous.

I finally get a hold of him. He is back in LA and has been for a few days. He had been working at Cantor Fitzgerald and wonders if anyone that he worked with survived the collapse of the towers. I am just thankful that he is ok, we are too young to die.

Fast forward to this morning, January 26th, 2005. I am reading the news when I hear about a train wreck in which there are casualties.

I listen to the report and know that it is the route that he takes to work. It takes me ten minutes to locate him by telephone, but he is ok. It was the train before his. I tell him that I am glad that he is ok, just thankful. And then I tell him that if he scares me like this again I am going to break his legs.

After more than 30 years I am not giving up our friendship, not yet. It is just another reminder that life can change in a heartbeat. Live it well and make sure that those you love know that you love them.