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The daily something

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The daily something.

In the last years before my mother’s death this past June, she read from the “Daf Yomi” – a nearly seven and a half-year cycle of readings and commentaries from the Babylonian Talmud. (For the uninitiated, the Talmud consists of the Torah or first five books of the old Testament plus commentaries by learned Rabbis from around the year 400 onward.)

She described it at first as an inquiry into something that had been denied to her as a young girl. Rather like forbidden candy, the mysteries of the Torah were intriguing to her, akin to wearing your older sister’s jewelry or sneaking out after dark (with a please pardon for the religious out there who might feel offended by the comparison).

Over time, the process of her daily readings went from breaking a taboo, to duty and on into a realm of grace.  The daily reading of two pages of text and commentary became a punctuation mark of her twenty-four hour cycle.  Both a beginning and an end, the cycle of readings brought her closer to assuaging the spiritual hungering that had walked along side her most of her life, as well as an opportunity to order the disordered world of illness and increasingly diminished physical health.

In thinking through the idea of a daily something, it struck me that so much of our lives is lost to the constant interplay between the “have to’s” and the “need to’s,” as in I have to wake-up, have to get to work, need to pick-up the dry cleaning, have to make dinner, and so on.  What’s left then for a quiet space of being?  Of dwelling in the mind or the body.  And if not a daily reading of a spiritual work — a Daf Yomi, what then?

It’s a question many of us lose sight of.   And resolvable in a myriad of ways; as a daily dose of shadow boxing in the mirror, a morning run, a meditation or even a daily write.  The point is to find a space — an “n” length of time that can mark a beginning and end of a twenty-four cycle.  A punctuation mark that belongs to oneself and oneself alone.  And maybe it’s nothing more than singing one song every morning, but in the end that span of experience represents a moment unlike all the other moments in the day.  Multiply that times a number of days, weeks, months and years, and one can really be on to something.  A sacred space that is bounded by all the junk out there, but from which one can find great solace and even joy.

Writing it down

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Writing it down

When I first started boxing I kept a punch journal.  There was something very cathartic about keeping a record of my activities.  I was able to measure my progress and relive the nuances of unspoken emotions.

What I was most struck by was my own vulnerability.  When had I ever let anyone give me water to sip or tenderly mop my brow of sweat.  There isn’t much one can do for oneself in oversized puffy gloves – and yet, when I first started I did try to do it all.

Writing down my punch log also led me to write down other things.  How I was feeling that day.  The things that were bothering me.  The things that crossed my mind during the parts of my day’s training when I was on my own.

What you have is the chance to let your feelings flow in the same way that they can in the ring.  And whether those feelings flow out in short punches, or in staccato stats on a notebook page, what you end up with is an abundance of self-expression, that once started is like a floodgate.

I’ve been journaling in one form or another since I was twelve years old, but the focus of my boxing journal has led to a self-awareness I had not encountered before.  The truth is if you’re not honest in the ring, you’re going to get “clocked”.  And what that means is you must put 100% of yourself into what you do – call it being 100% present.  Without that, you will be so busy running in your head between what you think the experience is and the actual experience, that there will be no time to react.  And by then you’ll be on the canvas.  The same can be said of your journaling.  You can be present with what you write down, and find some truths you may not have been aware of or been ready to face.

What I love about boxing is that I never know where it is going to take me.  And whether it is finding a comfort zone for my jab or more self awareness stemming from what I’ve written down in my journal, it makes every day a little happier and more joyous, and that is a very good thing.

The “afternoon” gym

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The “afternoon” gym.

A gym at 6:30 in the morning is a place in motion.  Every action seems purposeful with little time wasted in the niceties of even a “good morning.”  The early AM hours in a boxing gym are no different.  People work out as seeming little islands encased in their mirror work, in how they jump rope, hit the heavy bag or run on the machines.  Even the interactions between boxer and trainer are encapsulated by a purposeful economy.  One just does the rounds and gets out.

Working out in the afternoon is something else entirely.  There is a languid spirit that pervades.  Even the sunlight agrees, flooding in through windows and not as pinholed beams of light.  Afternoon is also the time when with little else to do trainers group together to play checkers or dominos or sit sprawled out reading the paper over coffee and take-out.

To train in that atmosphere is to take things slow.  There’s no pep in walking from place to place.  And while one can work-out hard even harder than in a “morning” gym, an “afternoon” gym seems to demand that you tarry; take the extra round to figure out a problem or to push through the threshold of your next goal.  I like to think that an “afternoon” gym is saying this is your place now – and because it is “your” place, there is no place else you need to go.

Missing the gym

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Missing the gym

I miss the gym when I don’t go for a while.  The physical part of its huge, of course, but its the mental stuff that seems to count for more of what happens.  Perhaps it is the intimacy I feel in connecting to myself, to how my body physically connects to the world around me.  Sure I hit things too, but in order to do so, I have to own the space between me and the object which can be a powerful thing.

When I’m shadow boxing, it’s more gaining a sense of how the punches feel as I release them in relation to how my body moves through space.  Mostly it’s a kind of fluid dance, body moving through space to an inner rhythm of pop-pop, pop-pop-pop.  At other times, all I can think about is how silly it is to shadow box in front of a mirror.  When that happens it’s nothing but mind movies and perhaps losing focus for round after round.  And if it happens in the ring, my trainer will cuff me in the head and say, “wake-up, girl, wake-up, you’re dreaming.”

My gym time reminds me to wake-up when I’m in the world.  And if not, the cuff in the head might translate into a stubbed toe or a missed train or any of the myriad of things large and small that one misses when one doesn’t pay attention.  The funny part is as a parent, I’m the one who gets to say, “wake-up and pay attention” but the truth is, I’m really saying it to myself.

Boxing everybody

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Boxing everybody

Ever feel as if you are just boxing everybody?  As if every single thing is a fight?  Spouse, kid, your body, folks on the street, the subway, the job, the “yuck” that comes across as news or mind movies at 2:30 in the morning?

And it’s not even a matter of its being one of those days.  Rather, it is a state of mind.  Active, alert, and punchy; always ready for the counter punch; for the stick and jab, for how one seemingly has to move from zero-to-sixty all the time.

My whole life is like that lately.  Somebody is always in high drama mode around me.  Spilled milk becomes an exercise in life at defcon four – and I think to myself, imagine if there was a real problem.

I’m boxing my past too.  The flutter of memories and stories and things that did not happen that comes with losing a parent.  Only one can’t box the dead.  And really not the living either.  It just is.