THE NAKED ANIMAL

"Skaters, this is your final warm-up."

This is one of maybe two- or three-hundred tunes, jingles and snippets that randomly take hold of my mind, popping up frequently like those flashing website ads, at the top of other thoughts, distracting my attention.

I was a figure skater as a kid (that's me at eleven in the picture--gold medal, woo-hoo!), and "final warm-up" was the term competition announcers used to signal our last minute of practice before we'd have to wait in the wings for our respective turns to perform. I was a high-strung child with no native self esteem to speak of, so I was working without a center, and no matter how prepared I was, you could always lay even money on whether I'd skate a flawless program or wipe the floor with my ass--I was roller skating, the white trash cousin of ice skating--same tricks, same everything, except we weren't on TV, we carried 20 extra pounds of weight in wheels, bearing and plates on our feet, and we skated on a rubber or cement floor covered in a creepy rubberized glaze instead of a pristine sheet of ice. At the Bakersfield Civic Auditorium, in the center of my hometown, where the state championships were held every summer until recently (they moved to glamorous Fresno), we skated on the basketball court.

In my adulthood, the once-dreaded term has taken on a cozier connotation--it signifies the beginning of the televised figure skating season, at which annual point I become a temporary ESPN2 junkie for the next six months. I've been following the epic evolution of the sport of figure skating, absolutely rapt, since I started skating at age seven. When I quit at fifteen in favor of concentrating on my education (and on the usual--sex, drugs, punk rock, etc., though I did manage to graduate cum laude from UCLA in '88), it became my vicarious way of participating, a phenomenon that is unsettlingly analagous to the way an ex-high school quarterback will latch onto Sunday football as a lifeline to the physical and mental rush of competition, and to the fulfillment of a talent that he still feels must be lying latent somewhere deep inside his aging bones.

I don't spend the rest of the year thinking about skating or keeping up with what my favorite competitors are up to, so the season sneaks up on me, which can be a delight. Last Sunday I was deep in research about the nature of time, when I was rewarded with a noontime bon bouche of Skate America--the season's first open invitational. Lots of skaters wiped the ice with their asses (and you don't just get bruises on ice, like in roller skating, but wet, half-frozen bruises that thaw into inky blots), but their were a few amazing highlights that sent chills through my nervous system. In fact, some of the best moments of skating that I've seen have made me bawl like a baby with wonderment and appreciation. Yup, I'm really into figure skating. It's the one geek card I carry. And if you're as big a nut as I am about it, you'll soon be able to read my analyses of the ongoing drama on my new figure skating blog.

But I wasn't all that tuned into the skating that was taking place onscreen that day. No one captured my attention the way it was yearning to be captured, so my mind got fixated on the phrase--"final warm-up." I repeated it over and over, silently, in the endless, surreal conversation I've been having with myself since the dawn of my cognizance, touching off a string of metaphorical associations.

First, it was ninety degrees in the shade after two weeks of downright chilly weather, and I felt that Los Angeles, always obliging when she wants to be, was giving us her "final warm-up" before slipping casually into a cool, damp quartet of months. YES, we do have weather in Los Angeles--it's simply custom designed to fit the ever-morphing idiosyncracies of the city and its population. Along with the skating season starting and the time change--always a discombobulating event, even if it does happen twice a year--this tender afterthought of summer helped to form a triple-headed announcement of a cyclical shift that is always profound, if familiar.

I also feel that I've reached my own "final warm-up" period. After a year of battling cancer during which I learned more about myself and my connections within the universe than I had in the previous 38 years combined, I have broken through many walls that used to seem impenetrable, and I'm finally taking on the management and development of my life with the vigor and dedication it deserves. I'm ready for my close-up, and I'm goin' for the gold. Now, I'm not sure what kind of gold, exactly, it will be, but I'm going for it nonetheless. No more false starts. I take my place in the arena and face the crowd.

Last night while I strolled through the Halloween free-for-all on Santa Monica Boulevard I was faced with my political self, and I took a good look at it for the first time. I have long pussy-footed around my truth so as not to sound too radical to people who are naturally more content with the flawed world and more solidly third-dimensional than I am, but it has done nothing for me except cause undue frustration, and I'm sick of it; we're in far too urgent a situation for such dissembling. The truth is that human culture is in peril due to America's lack of meaningful leadership. As the wealthiest country on earth, we carry a sort of noblesse oblige to lead the rest of the world, most of which looked up to and emulated the US until recently, humanely and creatively into the future. Instead, our country is being kneed in the groin by the same kind of fundamentalist fanatics that have disabled and disenfranchised much of the Middle East. And anyone who believes that Bush was actually elected to the presidency either in 2000 or last year is courting willful ignorance, which has probably now passed baseball for the title of America's favorite pastime.

So there I was entering the fray with my roommate and brother-in-arms Philip, who had thrown together a truly SICK gender-fuck drag at the last minute,
when I heard someone on a bullhorn yelling out that it was time for Bush and his incipiently theocratic regime to go, that if we enjoyed walking the streets half naked in freedom and pleasure, we should take a look at our government and see how they were threatening those rights and forcing passion or dissent in any form into the dark corners, where they can be quarantined (okay, he didn't say exactly that) - and that there was going to be a mass action tomorrow, all over the country, in which people would leave work at noon and gather on the main thoroughfares of the major cities and demand that this ineffective, narrow-minded buffoon of a CEO leave the boardroom of Americorp immediately, and that the corp itself be radically redesigned. (I use the corp moniker with impunity because there's no other reason for nations or borders than economic and commercial ones -- I dare someone to refute that.)

Despite the kaleidoscope of critters on the street, I was drawn to the voice, where I picked up some flyers and read all about it, poring over the words that so closely echoed my own deep feelings while I slowly inched through the crowd, oblivious to the mellow madness through which I passed.

I'm looking forward to cocooning through the winter with my healing self and my lovely, lovely figure skating, but it's getting harder for me to comfortably and casually cocoon. Life has gotten too prickly. I used to think that if I couldd make myself happy, then the fucked up world could go fuck it's mother fucking fucked up self (see here for how poisonous I considered civilazation two years ago, when I began this blog, then forgot about it), but after many years of trial and error, and finally running away from society altogether--and bang into my own mortality--I've found that a major reason for my unhappines is the state of the world. Especially our dear country. The beautiful, brotherhood, sea to shining sea and all.

Just over half of us voted last election, but most of us sure do find plenty of time to complain about what's going on now because of that. It's no wonder that the conservative press villifies the liberal press for being whiny--I hate to say it, but it's true. It gets tired hearing how stupid right wingers are and that they're doing everything wrong when we're willing to kowtow to them the minute they swing their little dicks around, as when the entire Senate wimpily gave Bush the right to march into Iraq. Let's cut the hypocritical crap and do something about it. It's time. This has been your final warm up. We are ready to meet the enemy. The cavalry is not coming to whisk us out of this on its intergalactic horses. Intention now must become action, for the sea of change does not favor underdeveloped currents. Posting about this here is my first truly concerted contribution to turning the tide of stupidity and intolerance, and I'm thinking about staking out my own corner along Wilshire Boulevard tomorrow (I'm thinking Wilshire and LaBrea, in front of the old diner there) to join the action whose tenets so moved me on that sweet, warm, final-warm-up kind of night that Halloween turned out to be this wicked year.

Happy All Soul's Night, and to all a good dose of lovin' from within and beyond.

Categories: politics, snippets, backstory, skating, holidays, weather, recovery