Elliot Silberberg's Open Salon Blog

The bocce Buddha

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:05:36 -0400

I was crossing a corner of the park and saw a very fat man sitting on a bench, fast asleep. Head tilted back, belly spilling over the bench and sloping down towards his watermelon thighs, he glowed orange brown in the afternoon sun. He wore sneakers on his rather small feet that anchored him to the ground. He looked like a melted Buddha. I walked past, envying him his oblivion and wishing I wasn’t going to the dentist’s.

An hour and a half later I cut back through that part of the park on the way home. The very fat man was gone. There was a group of men in the area in front of his bench playing bocce. I continued on my way.

Before exiting the park, I spotted the very fat man seated asleep on another park bench. He was in the sun again, facing it square on westerly this time, totally dead to the world, his head rolled back again, those big swabs of his belly drooping down.

The Empiricists famously argued that if you don’t hear a tree fall in the forest you can’t prove it made a sound.

My question is: If you don’t see a sleeping very fat man on a park bench get up and move to another park bench and go back to sleep, did the very fat man get up and move or not?

I was tempted to go back to the bocce players and ask if they had seen the very fat man wake up and walk away. But bocce players don’t need to be asked a question like that. I think asking them that would raise more questions than it would answer. And eyebrows. So I didn’t go back and ask.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not planning to lose sleep over the matter. At least I hope not. Of course the very fat man moved on his own slow speed. Only thing is, I’ll never be sure.

Sultans of swat

Sat, 18 May 2013 05:05:19 -0400

Tyler Kepner has written an article about the increasing tendency for baseball players to go for the gusto and try to hit homers and how that’s led to a sizable increase in strikeouts. He notes that last season set a record for strikeouts in the Majors, 7.46 times per game. So far this season the rate is a little higher, 7.63 per game.

It’s easy to imagine why players go for the fences. To warp James Brown, “It feels good!” to belt one out, a cosmic cure for the anxiety of facing that inscrutable menace, a pitcher who’s trying to make a monkey out of you. Even striking out has its own tragic dignity, at least if you go down swinging.

Is homer mania a sign we’re more narcissistic, would-be super-heroes, ashamed at the paltry notion of reaching first thanks to a blooper to left? Probably, but get over it.

I'm one of the lucky ones, weaned on and spoiled by Mickey Mantle’s home runs. My father took me to the old Yankee Stadium in the 1950s. Glory bound, we drove in from Connecticut. Mantle always seemed to oblige and hit one, not out of the park, no one ever did, but close enough to make you want to be there next time when he surely would. Sitting up in the cheap seats on the first base side, I remember seeing the ball fly by, close enough to going gone to catapult me into the thrill. The diamond wasn’t flat any more. The whole crowd rose, suspended inside the gem’s gleaming perfection and our wild cheers made it known that for those few moments after the sweet crack of the Mick's bat everything was right with the world.

Mantle switch-hit them, as only the gods can. He came from Oklahoma, a planet with a name as marvelously weird as Manhattan and Connecticut must sound to a person on Tulsa time.

Why are baseball players trying ever more to hit homers? Elementary, Watson. Where there’s an itch, you gotta scratch.

Match point from Mars

Sun, 12 May 2013 09:05:37 -0400

Watching World Number One women's tennis player Serena Williams at work amazes, even on TV. Yesterday she methodically took apart Italy’s Sara Errani in two sets, 7-5 and 6-2 at the Madrid Open. Going up against Williams must be like confronting an alien force, more goddess than mere woman. The Sphinx-like impassivity of her face is at odds with the rhino power/agility of her body. An ordinary mortal looking across the net at that combo ought well be trembling even before the ball flies. Before serving, Williams has an extra long ritual of bouncing the ball with her racket, then her hand, over and over. It’s a double whammy way to prepare herself and unnerve her opponent. Bad enough you know something wicked is on the wing. Williams has her opponents mull it over so long they're reduced to cramped toes and mumbled prayers. When Williams misses a point, thank goodness she scolds herself, a welcome affirmation she’s only human. That’s what must make it all the more painful to lose to her. You don’t have a perfectly valid excuse. At one point, Errani and Williams sat almost side by side between games. The Italian’s coach was giving his charge a pep talk. Errani looked depleted, the writing on the wall. Williams sat stoically nearby, listening.I don’t know if she clearly understood the Italian she overheard, but she surely sensed the coach was urging Errani to fight on and not despair, meaning Williams knew she just needed to continue doing what she was doing, as she did, with vengeance. Once it was over and the pressure was off, she smiled and did a lovely, little-girl-like double pirouette for the crowd and showed she’s human after all. Sort of. Today Williams wiped out Maria Sharapova, 6-1 and 6-4, in the final to win her 50th career singles title.

Turn, turn, turn...

Sat, 4 May 2013 13:05:49 -0400

I just caught the last five laps of the Giro d’Italia on TV from Naples, mesmerized by aerial shots and close-ups of the cyclists weaving their way around the shoreline of that magnificent and terrible city, one of those places where Good, Evil, the Beauty and the Beast meet over great coffee and manage to shake hands. The winner, Mark Cavendish, was so spent he could hardly talk after the race and when he did it was about how the curves and corners tired him out, the endless winding path of the race around and through the city, again and again and again, 130 kilometers in 2:58:38. The old saying about the beauty of Naples is, “See Naples and die.” Cavendish experienced more the physical than esthetic truth of that, in the way athletes know struggle. Seeing him panting and gasping for breath and trying to gather his senses after the race makes it easy to understand the Greek origins “agony” and “agonistic” share. Death during an insidious urban race like that might be termed a mercy killing. What the fuck does that guy hogging my space want from me? Hey, look at that blur, it’s the sea. And, Wow, is that the castle flashing by again? Cavendish deserves a Least Able to be Distracted by Beauty award along with the pink jersey. The racers stuck together for much of the race, as if the bikes were magnetized. Then David Millar fell towards the end and the swarm blew apart and became a trail of ants on speed. Millar had the grace to later tweet, "I love crashing the first day of a Grand Tour: glut & shoulder bruised to hell, bike broken: Congrats Mark Cavendish, delivers as usual." Cavendish won only by inches in a savage sprint, all flesh and blood and out of body. For all he was a little loony moments later when he got off his horse, the look on his face as he crossed the line was one humongous beatific smile, his arms raised high over his head in relaxed, glorious relief. The guy he nosed out, Elia Viviani, slammed his handle bars in frustration. One, suddenly, after an eternity, was the winner, the other faced the icky eternity that forever haunts the dreams of also-rans.

Small favors

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:04:15 -0400

Milan – I was wandering inside Berlin’s ominous, open air Holocaust Memorial in the dark when, as if on cue, a cold, windy rain swept down. The stone slabs shaping the monument’s gloomy labyrinth were scant protection. For a chilly and chilling moment I was afraid I couldn’t get out. It was a relief to find my way out to the sidewalk.

In the next days, I found other compelling reminders of Germany’s Nazi past in surprising places, like government buildings and civic centers, where photography exhibitions exposed the Nazi infamy. I left Berlin moved at how open, understated, and dignified the city is in revealing that shameful phase of its history to the public.

My Berlin stay made me recall a more personal experience where Germans showed class in dealing with the Nazi past. That occurred during the summer of 1972. I was hitchhiking outside Munich with my friend, Lisa, to visit the concentration camp at Dachau. A young, married German couple picked us up.

Communicating was difficult, but we felt comfortable together, at least until it became clear where we were heading. Then the couple got agitated. They had an intense exchange in German. When they let us out near their home about ten kilometers before Dachau, the woman scribbled her address and, using gestures to help, let us know we were welcome to spend the night.

We continued on to Dachau and arrived just before dark. Inside the barbed wire, it was miserable walking around the lousy, wet grounds. Lisa was angry. I had never seen her like that, swearing and kicking at the dirt.

I felt depressed and was unprepared for the desolate reality of the camp. Growing up in Connecticut after the war, the rabbis at my synagogue never discussed Hitler or the Nazis. Nor did my parents, who spared me the pain of talking about a horror they could hardly cope with themselves.

The exception was my grandfather on my mother’s side, a Russian-American émigré who never learned English. Whenever he heard Hitler’s name on the radio or television, he’d start to rant in Yiddish. Then he’d leap from his armchair, thrust his powerful dockworker’s arms into the air and pantomime strangling the devil to death on the living room floor. It was a show for me and the other children in the family, but also a way to vent his frustrations. My grandfather’s blind fury bespoke a rage I understand more clearly over time and am proud to have witnessed.

After Dachau, Lisa and I were dazed and didn’t have a clue what to do. Spending the night in town was not an option. Then I remembered the hospitality we’d been offered and we headed back. The couple smiled and welcomed us in, showed us to a guestroom and prepared a delicious dinner. Not much was said or needed to be. The silence itself was full of understanding and good will.

After dinner the woman, a classical pianist, played for us for hours, as if to purge the thought of Dachau from our minds. Rarely have I felt so much warmth expressed without words.

A couple of days later I flew home out of Munich. The woman’s music ran through my head, a stirring grand finale to my trip that lent consolation to the mean, low feeling at Dachau.

When the plane landed, I learned that Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich had been taken hostage by Palestinians. Another bitter chapter in the bloody history of Israeli and Palestinian hostilities was underway.

The couple’s kindness and the wife’s concert have stayed with me over the years. In part for the quirk of timing linking those days with the violence at the Olympics, more for seeing the years pass with violence on the planet so endlessly present, I now remember her music in more general terms, less a grand finale than a peaceful interlude.

That’s fine with me. There’s nothing wrong with being thankful for small favors.