THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“THE LONG GOODBYE, PART TWO: THE LONG RUN”

It is thirty-six years later and I find myself again on a synthetic track in the oppressive Texas summer sun, the heat still emanating from the ground in its familiar amoeba pattern. I am now at Woodrow Wilson High in Dallas and the ghosts of its two Heisman Trophy winners, Davey O’ Brien and Tim Brown, are keeping me company as I complete my run.

At 57, I now have an entire complement of ghosts- living and dead- to guide me through my day.

But today my heart is racing in an unfamiliar way and feel a slight skip every now and again, which will give a man my age a moment’s pause. My breath is choppy, my legs are wooden, and my back hurts with literally every step.

It is so much harder now.

But I push on, step by step, if for no other reason than I have absolutely no idea what else to do.

Just like 1981, I am running to fat again, undisciplined, and totally lacking in focus.

And I am scared to death. I am fearful in a way I have not been fearful before- not of the unknown but of the known.

I hate the things I know now.

I’m back to where this journey began, in the fervent and prayerful hope that I can reclaim some clarity and purpose.

For ten days now, I have been in what could only be called the mother of all existential funks, sleep -walking through days before falling, exhausted and usually drunk, into a fitful and dreamless sleep.

So, I’ve decided to go back to First Principles, to see if I could summon the courage to put myself together one more time from the scattered jigsaw pieces of fifty-seven years.

You see, ten days ago, I went to see my best friend.

He didn’t recognize me.

Before when I would visit, there would be hesitation and then recognition. I would sometimes actually see him mouth the words “Tom Barron” or “TC” and there might even be a slight glimmer of mischief in his eyes, as if he were remembering the nights he put the alligator in my bed or taught me to drink beer at the Deep Eddy Cabaret or found me naked on the floor of my apartment looking for a joint.

There were even those cherished moments when he could reconstruct entire episodes from our life, including several that alcohol has hazed over in my own memory.

In those moments, I thought I could see him digging into the deep recesses of his memory because it seemed important to him, as if he knew our lives were intertwined and that to know me was somehow to know himself.

But not this time. He looked at me with a vacant stare.

In one instant, thirty -nine years simply vanished- not just misplaced but gone forever.

Worse than that, it seemed as if he could no longer conjure the Herculean effort it took to try.

I made it through less than five minutes of idle chatter before I had to excuse myself. I stood in the bathroom, begging for the tears to come and cursing when they wouldn’t. I reached for everything I had in the arsenal: anger, humor, logic, prayer.

Nothing.

The last five minutes with him were a blur. I tried everything to garner some recognition. I felt like I do when I am trying to get my adorable but Buddha-like neighbor child to giggle, using whatever clownish expression I can muster without any sense of vanity.

Still nothing.

I couldn’t even find my own way out the door of his new facility, one which specializes in “memory care.”

There’s a little irony for you.

The tears found me on the way home. They were neither comforting or cathartic.

I’ve been a mess ever since, falling into fine but rigid patterns of hard-wired behavior:  withdrawal, isolation, and fear. And I have been drinking far much more than I should.

It was time to break those patterns. So, I went back to the track.

First Principles: Those things that are the hardest are best for you.

As I schlepped through the first lap, I had my first epiphany: Like him, I will never get better, only worse. Not only will I never be young and strong again, every slight memory lapse or moment of indecision will cause my heart to skip a beat. 

And I feel guilty as hell- not just for the fact that I cannot do anything for him or that I don’t see him as often as I should or even that I am still whole- but for something far more selfish and cowardly.

It is the fear I might be next.

I hate the things that I know.

It took only another lap in the hot morning sun to have another sunburst: It is not going to get easier, only harder. The drive to Austin will get longer and my visits will get shorter and decidedly less satisfying. Do I have the strength to keep doing it? What if it was me? Wouldn’t I want him to be there? Would he be? If he doesn’t know me, why go? If he doesn’t remember I’m there, why go? Does it help him? Does it hurt him? What purpose does it serve for him? For me?

I also hate the things I don’t know. And I hate the fact that I don’t know them.

I am at that point in my life where I am supposed to be wise and I am not. I am supposed to be at that point in my life where I am supposed to be able to help others and I cannot.

I hate things the things I know.

And is all this about a friendship which was- as Bill Hurt said in The Big Chill- for a short period of time a long time ago?

Or is our friendship truly enduring? Were we, in fact, born kindred souls? And does this moment define that friendship separate and apart from all that preceded it? If I fail him now, is that the legacy of my friendship?

I choose to believe in our friendship because to deny it is to truly erase those thirty-nine years.

But I also make that choice because of those people who have done the yeoman work for him, who have shouldered the load in ways I cannot imagine. Those who have been there for him are not always those who are the most demonstrably warm or open. Oftentimes, they appear just the opposite. But they have been there nonetheless, doing the hard things.

I have spoken to literally hundreds of his friends about his plight and all their pursed lips and false frowns of compassion together don’t add up to a bucket of warm spit. Their furrowed brows and mock whimpers are the same as they would have reserved for a crying baby or a dying aunt who had never been altogether civil to them. 

They are like those people who form committees to absolve themselves from further moral responsibility, who are in fact providing moral relief for themselves but very little practical relief to those who actually need it.

Epiphany number three: You never know who will who will be there for you.

This is how this one ends, my desperate attempt to understand karma and interconnectedness and that there is a tenderness in seemingly the most ostensibly hardened of us.

On Sunday, I will try to run the Too Hot to Handle 15k in Dallas, folly for even the most hardcore runner. At the 7:30 start, it will be 77 degrees and, when I finish (presumably sometime before mid-afternoon), it will be in the 80s.

Heart Attack City.

Maybe I am running precisely because it is hard, pushing my outer limits again because I owe it to him to do what is hard.  Maybe I am punishing myself. Maybe I am doing it because I need to know I can still push my own limits, that I can summon the will to get off the mat one more time.

Maybe this track is somehow a road back to a place where something good started years ago. Just because the track is a circle doesn’t mean it doesn’t go somewhere.

Or maybe I am just a lost pilgrim staggering toward redemption.

I don’t pretend to know. I know only that I am sad.

I hate the things I know.

© Thomas C. Barron 2017