The Middle Way

At Rocket Prince we like to encourage belief in wonder. We ask for nothing and everything. Now we ask you to consider young Siddhartha. The Siddhartha who saw two choices when he bolted the palace in the 3C BC -- the velvet coffin or enlightenment. Young Buddha was hungry for the latter and eventually found the Middle Way. All other paths lead to extremity, depravity and despair.

When playing, let us not think about despair. For as much as the woods are shadowy and dark, the meadow is light. Zooey Deschanel sings, “the summit doesn’t differ from the deep, dark valley and the valley doesn’t differ from the kitchen sink.” Wash up – let’s go to the light.

But there are holes with trees smack in the middle, you say? Look at that narrow defile. Sometimes you have to go left, sometimes right, sometimes up and over, sometimes through, sometimes beneath, you say? Yes, it is true.

Then how can you prescribe the middle as the way?

Look at the tree. You might say to it, Hello, tree, you’ve been around a long time, isolated in nature, I commend your longevity. If you’ll hold still a moment, I will throw my disc around you and then I will walk to you. I will admire your silent grace. And then I will continue walking, looking forward to our next conversation.

We find the middle only when we open our hearts. You won’t get there if you think. You have to feel. Trust the way. There’s no syllogism, no this plus this equals this. No if, then. This is not reason.

We’re talking about a nice drive, yes, but we’re also talking about the return of soul. It helps if you have four arms but all you need is one heart. Grab the saucer, throw the saucer, and release a piece of your soul. May it fly to the heavens.

It begins

I was putting the trash in the dumpster behind my apartment building when Prince turned up and said,

Did you see that?

See what?

Three guys just dumped a milkshake in that convertible. He pointed to the street in front of the building where a long white convertible was parked.

What guys?

They just walked by. Let's get them.

Did they really do it?

I saw them.

Alright.

Prince motioned me to his motorcycle, which isn't a motorcycle anymore it's a spaceship. We didn't really need to fly if the shake dumpers were on foot but Prince was pretty excited and you could tell he'd sort of taken charge of the situation. He velcroed me in and we flew off down the alley and down the street.

There they are!

Prince parked, slid down the nose of the spaceship and came to a stop right in front of the three shake dumpers. I hurried out of the velcro and had Prince's back just when he started in on them:

Did you dump a milkshake into the convertible back there?

Yeah, what's it to you little man?

And then Prince, this is hard to describe, but Prince, what he did was, he like floated in the air in front of the doofus, hovered like a hummingbird or like he was his own spaceship and slapped the doofus at hyper speed. He like spackled the dude and the dude was dazed. The other two bozos made a start but I stepped and gave them a look like, Yo, my man Prince is exacting justice. Step off. And they did but I'm pretty sure it was more to do with they didn't want to get spackled than because of my steppin'.

Justice exacted, Prince flew me back to my apartment.

We wasted those guys!

I'll roll with you any time, Prince.

He winked and said, I'll see you around. Then he flew off.

His words wafted after he flew away, lingered there in the air, a whelming mist that lifted me off my feet, literally lifted me off my feet and transported me to the roof of my apartment where I waited for further instruction.

Ball Seven

At an old-fashioned baseball game the other evening I met Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, which I read age ten or eleven in the car on a family trip to New Jersey. Ball Four was the first adult book I read cover to cover.

Sitting behind the plate with friends, we took in the baggy wool uniforms, tiny gloves, the umpire in a black suit and bowler hat, the marching Suffragettes, players referring to the ump as ‘sir’ and the seven balls instead of four that constitute a walk—all evocations of the game circa the 1880s, brought to us by Bouton, the brainchild and founder of the league.

My hero walked by. I leaned back, looked at him and said, This is great.

For the next couple minutes we talked, his hands on my shoulders. He told us about making the wood fence in centerfield, hand-painted by a local artist. He was wearing a period suit and looked like a barman in a gold town. I said I was surprised they were throwing as hard as they were, on account of the small, not-much-padded catcher’s mitts. I asked him if he’d shown any of the pitchers in the league how to throw a knuckleball, the pitch he grappled with in Ball Four.

He said no. It left me years ago. And it didn’t leave a forwarding address.

Then he was off, maybe to get a sarsaparilla at concessions.

The Mass Mutuals won with five in the ninth, final score 5-2. Both starting pitchers finished the game. The slugger with the long sideburns might be a dentist in real life. The constable and the drunk reconciled.

Swamp Jedi

Rhode Islanders are present and helpful people, the kind who can get your car started with a hammer. They feel at home in a marsh or estuary. Often you can find them in the canopy.

Parts of Rhode Island become a jungle in high summer. Bushes, trees, plants and vines tangle with their neighbors, creating a thicket that often carries overhead. Sometimes the canopy can cover parts of a disc golf course, such as the one I recently played at Ninigret Park.

The canopy eats discs – you simply can’t go through. Unless you find a hole. I marveled at the ingenuity of one Rhode Islander who found holes and tomahawked up, through and over the canopy, landing the disc through another canopy hole closer to the actual hole. He’s a lefty whose Hawk seemed to break three or four times. But he knew where it was going. You’d see the release, see the disc disappear through the hole then land down-fairway through another hole. This kind of serious metaphysical shit – worm holing through the canopy – can be expected of Rhode Islanders.

Our grand coliseums

Fifty years from now the Super Bowl will be sparsely attended. I know because I've been there: in the highest reaches of a stadium I picked up trash at Super Bowl XCI. It was odd, time travel, but the Super Bowl gig was all my temp agency had to offer so I took it.

I was given a big barrel and told to patrol the upper aisles. There wasn't much trash, on account of the sparse attendance and it seemed like people didn't have much money to buy beer. All the fans were stone sober. You could say the same about the gray façade of the concrete stadium whose fireworks silos were empty and whose poles waved no flags.

There wasn't much trash but the mini-football giveaway still turned out to be a problem. Most of the mini-footballs ended up on the field. Delays ensued. During the delays the players stood in their tracks looking up to the heavens with their arms spread and raised. You could see through their face masks that some of them were talking, perhaps addressing the mini-football throwers in the upper reaches, addressing us like players in a Greek amphitheater where the acoustics are so tight. What were they saying? Maybe the players weren't addressing us in the upper reaches at all. Maybe they were just talking to themselves the way a lot of people do in the future when there are no more fireworks in the silos of our grand coliseums and no money for beer.

There was still one mini-football being thrown around in my section during the last quarter. I caught hold of it and then I gave a speech: Always with the throwing the footballs. Guess what? Fun's over. I have a temporary job to do.

Then someone said, in a whisper, Fun's been over a long time, Mac.