i, in my old age frenzy, have replaced a great deal of writing with reading, which in my youth was my frenzy in addition to sports.

Strangely, i have selected several different types of reading: old ones off the shelf i’ve read several times from back when. New ones others have suggested, even loaned me. i read old man late after that beautiful woman has gone to bed until i too am tired, and the eyelids flutter and the head nods.

i read out of several books at a time, wishing i could stay awake all night and pore over the pages in a fever like i did back a long time ago under the sheets with a flashlight to prevent my folks from knowing i was violating the sleep rules.

Something from which i would have spurned until now i find…intriguing, i think is the word: Literary History of the United States by erudite scholars Spiller, Thorpe, Canby, and Ludwig. i’m sure it was one of my college course books. i never read it. Now, i learn when learning is not required. Yet loquacious, a term for talkative, prevails in the writing, almost pompous, and i marvel at myself reading with pleasure such an academic tome.

i also have returned to favorites: Faulkner, Warren, Greene, Doctorow. i currently am re-reading David Maraniss book on Vietnam, They Marched to Sunlight.

i read several at a time. In addition to the history tome, and Maraniss, i’m near the conclusions of Robert Penn Warren’s Or Else: Poem/Poems 1968-1971, and Al Nashashibi’s Gratefulness: Messages from the Heart to the Mind (I have written before of Ibrahim’s books and his restaurant Farouz in San Diego. He was born in Jerusalem, has a Jewish and Muslim background, and is an amazing gentleman).

Saturday night after all the football games had gone to bed, i read a poem of Ibrahim’s, “The Vessel and the Traveler.” Ibrahim discussed the relationship between the soul and the body. As usual, it was thoughful and produced some deep considerations for me.

Then i picked up Warren’s book and read “Interjection #7: Remarks of Soul to Body.” As usual, Warren captures me with power of his images.

The poems were different. But they expressed a relationship about ourselves i have often wondered. And here were these two men from amazingly different times, locales, and backgrounds addressing the same themes. i was struck by reading them randomly on the same night.

Oh, i wish they could have met and talked about those two poems.

Of course, i and my brother Joe, would have to be sitting in the back of the room listening.

Reading this, don’t be concerned about my health, i have some issues, pretty much the same as anyone a couple of months from 82 will have. There are some procedures i will be experiencing in the next couple of months to address the most serious difficulties, but i plan on being around for quite a while. i am hoping to make it to almost 99 like my daddy did, but i’ve live a much harder, wilder life, so am not likely to do that. i do think about what’s next more than i should. i’m still having fun. i hope you are also if you are in my generation.

i feel aging embracing me
while sharpening the blades
i cannot see
that will eventually
do me in.

i shall not worry about 
what will take me away
for i know it will be earned
for what i’ve lived,
good things and bad things
regardless of intention.

the question is not
how nor when
but what remains
in my living
for i am blest.

one must step carefully
in this forest of diabilities piling up;
yet, at four score plus
a new vision of the world opens
for i have been there and remember.

i have seen the good and bad
over those years,
now, observing them
in the growing crowds 
of people, planes, automobiles,
concrete and steel,

i think i understand.
i know i cannot tell them
what they should be doing
based on what i’ve learned:
they are young, impetuous, headstrong,
knowing i do not know what it’s like nowadays,

which i do, of course:
i’ve walked down that road.

it matters not.
there is a warmth in knowing
i’m not in their squabbles;
knowing living, doing the right thing,
or making the attempt
is the key to feeling good in the long run.

So, i read the headlines, 
watch what they erroneously call news,
shake my head at their goofy plans
to make the world better,
which they can’t unless they
realize the depth of what i wrote above.

it is a pleasant world embracing me,
even with the discomfort of being
embraced too hard,
for, as my father said that i repeat:

i’ve had a good life,
have a good wife,
have great children, grandchild, and friends.
i just hope 
when i go,

i go quick.

Yesterday, i once again was looking for something i had misplaced and forgotten where. Such has become a daily tradition around here, sometimes more than once a day. It’s so often, i no longer cuss when it happens.

Okay, okay, sometimes i still let the sailor talk rip.

This time it was different. i looked in the usual places, considered where i had been, and found it on the coffee table in the living room.

As i reached for it, a voice came into my head that said, “Right where it has always been.”

That is something my mother, former wife, and current wife would say to me. They have engrained it into my brain. They didn’t even have to say it.

There’s stuff going on. i will not elaborate other than note getting old can take a toll on productivity, something that has been a major drive for me.

So, i’ll just share a few wonderful memories:

The lady, dressed in my Booze Brother’s hat, and the goofy guy recalling a life long ago at a 1987-88 Halloween Party, laying it down.

The incredible Bacall, sister of Bogart who leftt us too soon: our first cats, even before we were married:

Long ago and far away in a little Tennessee town, now overgrown with progress and people, i’m guessing 1949: Daddy and i, mostly Daddy, making a snowman in our backyard. That’s our garage in the background.

Douglas and Daisy Lawrence, family friends that were more like family, visiting from Florida during the WAR.

Sometimes, memories are enough.

i have tried to restrain my disapproval. i have attempted to simply not pay attention to what has happened to the major “sports” and the pollution in sports that i have loved, played, and followed for most of my life.

i wished to refrain from comment. i can’t.

There was a photo shot last night that took me back. It was player sitting on the edge of his team’s dugout, looking out onto the field, a silhouette against the sun setting sky.

i remember sitting on the edge of so many dugouts looking out onto the field of my dreams.

But my dreams did not include technical analyses. As Willie Mays so wisely and eternally described it: “They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.”

And i admire that guy sitting there last night. i think he was a Toronto Blue Jay. It does not matter. He captured the essence of my feelings about baseball: a quiet moment taking in the setting sun out on that field of dreams, watching his opponents taking the field while the opposing pitcher toed the dirt around the pitching mound rubber to get it just right for his liking, a peaceful moment of taking it all in before the beauty of the game reveals itself in action: pitching the ball, hitting the ball, catching the ball, sliding…

…feet first, not that stupid head first silliness Pete Rose made fashionable for which he should continue to be banned from the Hall of Fame, not the arbitrary betting goofiness; i mean yeah, someone should be shot for betting against their own team, but what’s wrong with betting on your team, and betting and money are running amuck, ruining the beauty of the game as much as all of the silly make-money-paying-fans-happy crap by sacrificing the rhythm of the game the way it used to be.

But my thoughts of the beautiful game with that young man sitting there were interrupted with the announcers over analyzing, telling me stats that are essentially useless, but probably essential to this new version of pleasure watching baseball for those who didn’t worship the game like i did. As their diarrhea of the mouth filled the room, i kept thinking “where is there some quiet to enjoy watching the game while these goof balls apparently wanting to impress us (or themselves or somebody who pays them) go on and on. They sound like my buddies and i watching a game sharing our analyses…and our analyses were likely better than the idiocy to which i was listening…okay, okay, i know i a bit overboard here.

Then there are the fans, a horrible name for the bunch of folks i see in every stadium, all sports. They aren’t there, paying absurd prices for a ticket, to watch the game. Hell, they can’t. There 40,000+ screaming, spitting profanities at the umps, the other team, waving towels that obscure sight lines, throwing crap at opposing fans and players on the field.

The primary reason the Padres manager, Mike Schildt maintains he retired was the stress, including the death threats for him and his family. Those threats are common for many players, managers, and umps. Have we lost all sanity?

We turned off the television. Watching playoff baseball isn’t fun anymore. It’s hectic nonsense breeding a fanaticism that is not earned, fabricated by the money makers.

And yeh, i’m whining about what used to be and doesn’t exist anymore. The game back when i was growing up was corrupt, manipulated for money by those who controlled the game. i am not that naive.

But i was young and didn’t know. And i believed those guys they call professionals played for the beauty of the game, and i tried to emulate those players: Nellie Fox, Don Hoak, Stan Musial, Roberto Clemente, Willie and Mickey, on and on…

But airtime bullshit had not invaded the field of dreams back then. Yeh, Dizzy and Pee Wee were funny and team announcers were homers, but they let you enjoy the game.

i will check the scores for the rest of the playoffs and the World Series, but am not likely to watch a great deal.

And i wonder if that guy they caught on camera sitting on the top steps of the dugout, his back resting against the hand rail, grasped the beauty of the moment, hoping he wasn’t worrying about if his agent could get him a substantial raise in his contract.