In novels and films, we often root for characters who are bit imbalanced, those whose rash decisions drive the plot, while in real life, we prefer our friends to be balanced.
The musician Patti Smith put it this way: “In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.”
When my children were young, I would sometimes say surprising or outrageous things at the dinner table to see how they would react. Aristotle allegedly said, “The secret to humor is surprise,” and I love to hear my surprised children laugh. Once my daughter Geneva accused me of being silly (or unbalanced), like Mr. Noodle.
This fall my youngest son Truman will be heading off to college. Truman is a novelist who is trained as an actor and an improviser, but he also makes more measured decisions than most of his peers. Will his new roommates and lunch buddies consider him to be more or less balanced than the norm?
Henry Miller said that “All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.” Perhaps the job of the novelist, the playwright, or the poet is to discover or create the miraculous? Such is a significant task, but eyes must be opened.
According to a 2022 report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, if you can balance on one leg for 10 seconds or longer, you are unlikely to die anytime soon. To quote the article’s abstract, “Balance quickly diminishes after the mid-50s increasing the risk for falls and other adverse health outcomes.” Ironically, that sentence itself is imbalanced – it needs a comma after “mid-50s” the way a see-saw needs a fulcrum.
I’m not naming names, but I still remember who was the heaviest girl in my second-grade class. How did I know? From where my lightweight self had to sit across from her to keep the see-saw evenly balanced.
After I heard about that sports medicine study, I tried to balance on one foot for ten seconds. Even though I my age could be characterized as “after the mid-50s” (I’m around the age that Dante was when he finally lost his balance), I can balance well. I can still put on my socks and shoes, and tie my shoes, from a standing position without losing my balance. Bringing my feet up to my hips, such as to tie my shoes, is the only way I can touch my toes.
Before the pandemic, I found it easier to put on my shoes. For decades on teaching days I wore lace-less black dress shoes. Back then, I biked everywhere around town instead of walking. As my back bike tire went flat that fateful March week just over four years ago when all the (bike) stores closed in Davis, I just opted thereafter to walk. I found that I was less in a hurry than before.
While out long-walking with my son Jukie (he joined me for 15 miles this past Sunday), I will hop up on an elevated curb or greenbelt ledge and walk a stretch to test my balance. Sometimes I make Jukie do the same. With our strong legs, he and I can (immoderately) walk all day.
Like veteran skiers, Jukie has excellent physical balance. When he was younger, we used to play this game where I would sit on the floor at Jukie’s feet and then push and pull at his calves or thighs in a mock-attempt to knock him down. He would laugh and laugh, but never fall.
Currently we Davisites are balanced between winter and spring, but meteorologically, spring dominates. Like a spring day just before dawn, our once-optimistic country also seems precariously balanced between darkness and light, between what the Bard called “the winter of our discontent,” and the way that he described spring in Love’s Labour’s Lost:
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.
I hope that this November every Californian and every open-eyed and mentally-balanced American will be filled not with discontent, but with delight.
But even after November, I hope you and your families enjoy many years of physical, spiritual, and work-life balance. If you feel your balance waning, I recommend that you invite a favorite companion on a long walk that is interrupted often by daring feats of balance and by Mr. Noodle-like whimsy. I have found that in many cases, like life, those two will be one and the same.
Subscribers to my pub quizzes on Patreon have already received a bonus treat this week, the short pub quiz that I performed for the yearly Patwin Elementary Auction and Fundraiser. I was also the auctioneer.
This bonus quiz has 15 new questions, and I transferred one of the trickier questions to tonight’s 7 P.M. Sudwerk pub quiz, so join me on Patreon to see that preview. Tonight also expect questions on big places, locators, Japan, championship games and series, forked lightning, tricky riddles, big cities, Hurricanes named Hugo, losing politicians, nannies, self-described legends, monkeys, Latin words, medieval lingo, first novels, TV sports, coastlines, orchestras, old animals, popular characters, place names, superheroes, game statistics, appointments back on planet Earth, words that could be Wordle answers if they were not proper nouns, fancy words for washing up, current events, books and authors, and Shakespeare.
Thanks to new patron Adam who has been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. Thanks also to Brooke, Jeannie, Becky, Franklin, and More Cow Bell. Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. Thanks for considering backing this pub quiz project of mine!
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Science fiction icon Kim Stanley Robinson, himself the topic of a pub quiz question at least once a decade, will be reading poetry at Poetry Night on March 21st at 7 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Come early, for I expect on that we will run out of chairs.
Enjoy these three questions from our last Sudwerk Pub Quiz.
- Renaissance Men. What poet, singer-songwriter, and cartoonist wrote the books A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree, The Missing Piece, and Where the Sidewalk Ends?
- Books and Authors. First name Zadie, what White Teeth author and NYU creative writing professor was born in Britain to a Jamaican mother and British father?
- Film. First name William, what director has directed 14 actors to Academy Awards, more than any other director? Hint: His films include Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, and Funny Girl, but not the Billy Wilder classicSome Like It Hot.