Park-ing with Lou

“Ten thousand repetitions are not enough. It takes 

talent, passion, cultivation of the craft 

AND ten thousand repetitions.”

— Anonymous

We were walking and chatting along a trail in Oro Valley, Arizona, at Catalina State Park. ‘Park-ing’ — hiking in the park. Out early, there was a chill in the air that was more refreshing than it was poking, unwanted through our clothing.

 I was mid-sentence when he abruptly stopped, turned around, looked up, and lifted his camera. Looking through the viewfinder, and with no hesitation, took the shot. For the briefest of moments, it was like he didn’t know I was there. 

He had felt the photo opportunity, even though it was behind him. It had happened so fast, it was over almost before it began. The photo was stunning. Smiling, he said, “It’s sometimes better to see things when you look back at the path you are on. Sometimes they are the best pictures.”

Lou took his first photo when he was nine, lying in the back window of his father’s car, as it crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. There was something about the Kodak Brownie box camera that captured his imagination. From that day to our walk in the park this morning, it had been nearly eighty years from that first click to thousands upon thousands of pictures.

It seemed to me that he didn’t take time or wait for the perfect shot. He explained that waiting often means missing the shot entirely. He looked at the mountain and said, “The light is the key. It shifts and moves. What catches your eye may not be there if you wait.”

I asked him how he knew what to shoot and when to do it. His answer was like the cook who had done so much in the kitchen, she didn’t need a recipe. He replied in a way that if he tried to explain, I wouldn’t understand. “I just know.”

I realized I wasn’t just hiking on a desert trail with this man, looking for the right photo — I was hiking on a desert trail with a master of his craft. He was communing with nature, in his element. We were in this man’s sanctuary. I was just along for ride.

At the park that morning, I was
transported to a small dock on Lake Joseph where we ‘cottaged’ in the magical land of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada. My uncle was standing on a small walkway to a dock where a sixteen-foot sloop (sailboat) was tied. He was wearing one of those muscle teeshirts you see at the gym. This seventy-year-old man wasn’t lifting anything but a paintbrush.

He was soaked with sweat in the late afternoon sun — his hand moving effortlessly, intermittently refreshing paint or exchanging brushes from the multicolored palette sitting beside the easel. The canvas had been empty when he started.

Surrounding him was a cloud of mosquitos...like insects do around porch lights at dusk. Remarkably, despite dozens landing on his bare skin, he was never bitten — something in the chemistry of his sweat sent them away empty-handed.

As I watched him work, it seemed the 16 x 20-inch canvas was coming to life with amazing speed. There was an otherworldly aura to him as he worked. I knew he had been there most of the day. I arrived during the last hour of his work. 

When he was done, my curiosity was piqued. “How long did it take to do this painting?” He was startled, as if it was the first time he noticed I was standing there.

He took a beat as he wiped the sweat from his forehead and turned to clean his brushes. “Thirty-five years.”

Both men — one with a camera, one with a paintbrush — were in a world they had cultivated year after year.

Back to the desert.

Lou Waters was a news photographer and newsman for decades in his career. He sat at the news anchor desk at CNN for over twenty-two years, as he would say, “When news anchors reported the news, not their opinions.” He was a founding member of that first twenty-four-hour news service.

He told me, the television news industry at the time ridiculed CNN, the Ted Turner operation, until they saw that it worked…then, other networks jumped on the bandwagon as though it had been their idea in the first place.

As a news photographer in his career, he told me, “In my business, you couldn’t wait for the right shot. You see it. You take it, or it’s gone.”

He had refined his ‘eye’ from thousands and thousands of pictures. It wasn’t just instinct…It was instinct practiced in war, in peace, in flowers, in trees, in clouds, and mountains. 

He told me the desert was his church, its mountains his altars, the sunrise and sunsets, the sacraments through which he saw the motion of life. This “…I just know…” fellow captures moments that most people never see.

He shot the cover for my latest blog book: life never rests – it just keeps moving. I was with him when he took that photo. It didn’t look special to me. You know, just a desert trail. While maybe not able to articulate it, he knew better. It wasn’t just a desert trail — it was a story.

I’m pretty sure that if I ask him how long it takes him to frame and shoot his pictures, he might say in his humble way, “Oh, seventy-eight years.”

Yeah…the same way you get to Carnegie Hall — practice, practice, practice. 

- ted

Empty chairs_there are many...

“I awoke this morning with devout 

thanksgiving for my friends, 

the old and the new.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

mid-19^th critical thinker

 

It is Thanksgiving morning here in the United States.

The day before this American Thanksgiving is the anniversary of the death of Molly’s father. By now he has been gone, unbelievably, twenty-two years. We reminisced and were touched by thoughts of his life.

During the day, I came across a piece of music by Anthony Gargiula titled Empty Chair. The song is about a young man missing his deceased grandfather. It ends with a phone message he kept from his grandfather, telling him what a great grandson he was. The piece was incredibly touching and evoked many thoughts about people who are no longer a part of my life.

In the opening chapter of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (16^th of the Roman Emperors), he thanks the many people who laid the foundation of his life and those who influenced his journey. They included his grandfather, father, mother, tutors, teachers, mentors, household and family members, and his friends and companions.

Every time I revisit The Meditations, I am grateful for my life and health. More so, I am thankful for my parents who gave me life, and those who nudged me, sometimes kicking and screaming, along the way. So many of those remain alive only in the reaches of my mind…people to whom I owe so much and who added vibrant brush strokes to the tapestry of my life.

In 1852, Charles Dickens (best known for A Christmas Carol) wrote a short piece titled The Child’s Story. A grandfather tells his grandchild a story about a traveler on a journey who comes across several characters, asking each, "What do you do here?" 

He encounters: a beautiful child at play, a handsome boy learning, a young man in love, a man, his wife, and his children busy with labor. These characters invite the traveler to play with them, learn with them, love with them, and be busy with them. Each time he does, but in the end loses them and moves on. 

Finally, the traveler comes across an old man sitting on a fallen tree who invites him to sit and watch the sun set. The traveler asks the old man, "What do you do here?" The old fellow says, "I remember. Come remember with me."

Dickens writes,

“…and all his friends came softly back and stood around him. The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young man in love, the father, mother, and children: every one of them was there, and he had lost nothing. So, he loved them all and was kind and forbearing with them all, and was always pleased to watch them all, and they all horoured and loved him…”

In the U.S., we are celebrating a day of giving thanks. And yet, there will be many empty chairs, chairs that over a lifetime were filled with those who gave unselfishly to us.

On this day, let's take a few moments to invite them to come softly to our minds, to remember how they loved us, and to give thanks for them.

- ted

Birds do it, Bees do it_there is a catch...

Be kind to your mind and others. 

Billions have passed before you, 

and yet you are unique.”

-   Anonymous

 

I wake up almost every morning with a song running through my head…not an earworm, but rather something random. 

This morning, it was Ella Fitzgerald singing Let’s Do It, a catchy Cole Porter tune about falling in love that I haven’t thought of in over fifty years. Many of you have probably not heard of this song, the writer or singer. Porter, a prolific composer, died in 1964, and Fitzgerald, an equally gifted singer, died in 1996.

The lyrics say that in addition to untold numbers of living creatures, people also do it (e.g., Spanish, Lithuanians, Dutch, Finns, Bostonians, to name a few).

The song is about falling in love…falling in love, yeah, about that. The euphemism for, you know, doing it.

 

Moments before the sun…

Sitting in the backyard this morning, I thought about this. Not so much about falling in love, but the ability to know we are in love. We, of all creatures, great and small, do not just react to fundamental urges to mate and reproduce, or survive through primal instincts. We have thoughts, feelings, and the ability to make conscious choices. This allows us to share things with other people. It enables us to take thoughts from different places and combine them into new ideas. It allows us to accumulate and act on the input we receive in highly creative ways… and maybe even fall in love.

Consciousness allows us to consider more than just ourselves. 

Not in a passive way, but with the tools of faith, curiosity, and imagination, drive a journey of expectations full of unforeseen twists and turns. Robert Frost, the American poet, once wrote, "The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected."

 

Just thinkin’…

Consciousness is fed by the sensory side of our brains, the input from touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste. These sensations tell us about the world around us. In the liquid chemistry of consciousness, decisions are made to react to what has entered our minds. Output through the nervous system follows and helps build bridges with others (e.g., verbal, writing, gestures, and facial expressions).

 

It's overwhelming…

Over the past few years, I have taught courses in the complex, often mysterious body in which we live. I have come to appreciate its intricacy. Our bodies have several trillion cells, coordinated and communicating in ways that support life. 

This living machine has but one purpose: to support the brain so that it can observe and interact with the world into which we have been born…a living, organic computer that is the world in which we live.

In the day-to-day grind, with all of the difficulties and opportunities we face, it is easy to forget, or maybe not even know, how remarkable this ability is. Little doubt a gift.

 

Just chemistry, amigo…

Of the top six elements in the universe, our bodies share four (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen). We are stardust. Our blood is chemically related to the oceans. Yep, our bodies are not much more than cosmic dust and seawater!

In the vastness of the universe, none of these particulate elements has any sense that they exist. They have never had desires, wants, or sensations, felt beauty, or love.

And yet…and yet in this limitless cosmos, a collection…a distillation of these elements has found its way into minds with more neurons than stars in the Milky Way. Minds that have the unfathomable gift of consciousness that permits feelings, desires, wants, and the ability to act on them.

If we think the universe of galaxies is amazing, what is hiding inside our minds is even more so. 

Marcus Aurelius, in his meditations, says:

“You wander about and visit temples and tombs 

and open the eyes of your body to sights, but 

you close your eyes of your mind.”

 

Hard to believe…

Think for a moment how fortunate we are. Not just that we have consciousness, but that these words have been written and read by you. Of the billions of our species that have lived, none of our relatives died prematurely from disease, war, famine, or catastrophic accident before producing surviving offspring, our ancestors, leading to our existence. In the lottery of life, the odds that we are alive in this moment are astronomical.

 

It’s a miracle we are here. It is more of a miracle that we have the capacity to know it.

- ted

 

Old dogs? Not this time...

 “If you think you can or you

think you can’t, you’re right.”

- Henry Ford, founder 

Ford Motor Company 

 

Laura said, "Just lie back in the water, and imagine you are on a teeter-totter or floating on a cloud.” 

That was easy for her to say. She clearly did not understand.

“I would love that,” I replied, but my legs are heavy and always sink.”

Lucky me…

My family spent our summer holidays in the Muskoka region of Central Ontario on the shores of Lake Joseph. Mother thought it was a good use of her time to ensure her children would be safe around water, so she taught my sisters and me to swim.

She was clear, “There is nothing more wonderful than being in the water…there is also nothing more potentially dangerous.”  She wanted us to be safe.

Being able to swim and swimming are two different things. I was not a swimmer, but a ‘water player’ — meaning that when water skiing, tipping out of a canoe, or jumping off a diving board, I could survive in the water. But swimming for its own sake, you know, moving arms and legs over distance, just wasn't interesting – until…

Living in the sunshine on the coast…

Several years ago, we moved from Detroit to San Diego. I have been a recreational gym rat for years. I knew how important resistance training was to remain functional while growing older, so I joined a fitness center. There was a basketball court and a weightlifting area. But, as it turned out, there was also a large twenty-five-meter outdoor pool for lap swimming. 

A glass wall overlooked the pool from the weightlifting part of the gym, and I found myself, for reasons unknown to this day, watching folk swim multiple twenty-five-meter laps. It was like watching paint dry.

Ha! How boring that must be! I thought to myself.

The thing is, the locker room was shared by the swimmers and the ‘real exercisers,’ you know, ball players and weightlifters. I would hear these guys talk about how great and refreshed they felt after swimming for thirty minutes or an hour. Initially, I ignored the chatter.

Somewhere in the second month at the gym, I discovered I had contracted a psychic virus. It was so strong that I found myself in a delusional state, compelled to try swimming. I fought it, of course, but in the end, it was too overpowering. 

Purchasing a set of baggy swim trunks and goggles, I jumped in the water. What was I doing? 

While I knew a few different strokes from my mother (breast, side, and back), after fifty meters in the water the first day, I was exhausted. It was humiliating.

By two months, however, I was able to swim uninterrupted for thirty minutes…and, I hesitate to admit, was beginning to enjoy it. 

It turned out that this cabal of regular swimmers was very happy to share tips and tidbits that made the exercise more palatable, even on the verge of being enjoyable. 

In those two months, I ditched the baggy trunks for a pair of streamlined above-the-knee leg huggers — a real improvement. One fellow suggested I get a face mask and a snorkel for freestyle swimming. While this configuration prohibited side and backstrokes, it was great for breaststroke and freestyle. I was on my way.l

A significant issue I faced was the weight of my legs. When freestyle swimming, they sank, decreasing any efficiency and increasing the effort. To the rescue, another fellow suggested I ditch the facemask and side snorkel, opting for one that sits in front of the nose and between the eyes. That allowed me to get rid of the mask, wearing only a small set of goggles. The final item was a small buoy (float device) that, placed between my legs, prevented them from sinking. I was set!!

Note: I had gone to the snorkel in the first place because when I tried to breathe during freestyle, I got as much water in my mouth as I got air... the snorkel stopped that.

By then, I was living in Oro Valley, Arizona, and swimming at a local outdoor aquatic center, even during COVID.

 

Folks here in the desert are not so locker room friendly, but watching other swimmers smoothly moving through the water without a snorkel or leg buoys, I wondered whether I might also learn to swim without them.

Everyone needs a little help...

This is where Laura, my swimming coach, enters the story. For several months, I had seen this woman teaching young people, children, and babies to swim. I wanted to ask her if she would be willing to take on a geriatric client. I did, and she agreed. As it turns out, she is excellent.

So far, she has helped with intermittent non-snorkel laps. Breathing without drinking is still an issue, but it's improving. Legs, on the other hand, without the buoy, continue to sink.

“I have an idea,” she said during our last session.

 “Why don’t you just lie back in the water, and imagine you are on a teeter-totter or floating on a cloud?" 

“I would love that,” I replied, “but as I said, my legs are heavy and always sink.”

“Let’s try it anyway,” she said with a cheery smile, ignoring my protest.

Okay, if it makes her feel better…Whatever, I thought.

I lay back in the water, and with a bit of help stabilizing me, Laura let go. I lay on the top of the water, floating…floating! For the first time in my life...in my late seventies - legs and all!

“You believed you couldn’t, so you never tried or had anyone to teach you,” Laura said with a knowing look. “You only needed a little faith and a little help.”

I appreciate that floating in the water may seem like a small thing, but it was not a small thing to me. It was an epiphany, and I was over the moon. I'm still in the afterglow as I put fingers to keyboard.

An old dog? – Yep. 

A new trick? Yes sir, and it was a good one!

ted