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You're listening to I Have No Process.

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I am your host, Nicholas England.

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This is the fifth episode of 71.

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When I was 21,

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I covered my bedroom walls with a grid of corkboard.

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I bought boxes of pushpins, some clear, some black, some red.

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Then wrote out a carefully curated collection of aphorisms and diagrams,

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which I arranged upon the walls with great solemnity,

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that their example may guide the remainder of my cultivation,

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there at the end of my adolescence.

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Among the shards of wisdom I'd wrought from the likes of Cormac McCarthy and Martin Heidegger,

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I included the following three phrases for their gnomic pearls.

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First, a wry proverb from Eastern Europe.

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"The future is certain, the past is always changing."

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Second, a quotation from the British historian Taylor.

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"Nothing is inevitable until it happens."

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Third, a remark from my friend and collaborator, Phil.

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"Something must come from all this learning."

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When I was a kid, I was raised to believe that I would be renowned in my adulthood.

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My zest for storytelling and play acting was undeniable.

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I could spend days on end pretending that I was Robin Williams or Al Pacino.

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Every dollar I received from my allowance went toward the purchase or rental of VHS tapes.

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I started watching international films when I was seven, R-rated films when I was nine.

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I knew every Best Picture winner and nominee going back to the ceremony's inception.

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I was attached to the family camcorder, directing countless movies with my friends from the neighborhood.

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I acted in school plays and later joined the youth program at a nearby repertory theater.

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I even got a Hollywood agent when I was in middle school.

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My parents pulled me out of class and drove me to LA sometimes twice a week for auditions.

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Never once did I need a school counselor or family member to point me in the direction of an estimable career.

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For to become a powerful creative force within the film industry was not only the plan,

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it was written by many of my elders as a token of destiny.

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On multiple occasions, adults approached my mother within ten minutes of meeting me and whispered to her,

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"That boy is going to be famous someday."

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There was only one caveat to this. A single well-known warning which I heard repeatedly over the years,

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one which every cohort passes to the generation coming up the trench behind them.

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"You have no idea what life's going to be like when you're older.

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"You think you do, but you don't."

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I listened to the adults when they said this, my father especially,

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but it was hard for them to get their point across on account of there being certain salient stories they refused to share.

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If any of my mentors had unfolded their own history of life's plans gone awry,

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episode by painful episode, I may have absorbed the lesson better. But no one did.

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They kept things abstract, so after a while I tuned them out.

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Maybe their lives didn't turn out the way they wanted, but me?

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I only had to figure out whether or not I was going to kill myself.

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If I didn't, well then the whole world was going to know about me.

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Ten years after I instructed myself, at 21, that nothing is inevitable until it happens,

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I was living in Boston, wondering what the hell to do with myself.

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Alyssa had just begun her MBA classes full-time, so I was working three jobs to make ends meet.

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My primary employment was in mental health, but I also tutored English and collated insurance reports on the side.

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And for the first several months of the grad school experience,

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I was further responsible for cooking every meal and doing most of the housework.

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After that first semester, I reached another limit within myself.

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I was harried and crestfallen.

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No time to write, to create, to process.

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But also, nobody asking or expecting me to do anything of the sort.

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In the 15 years following the high watermark of my ambitions, in my naive and megalomaniacal youth,

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I had abandoned theater and music, taken up and retired from writing comics,

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quit any intention of being a screenwriter, shifted entirely to poetry and prose,

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adapted my craft to the silence of the page, written a trove of intellectual odes, which spoke to no one,

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suffered a crippling spell of writer's block, then circuitously accomplished the first drafts of a memoir,

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exactly the sort of project my teenage self would have suicided to avoid.

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At 31 years old, I was decidedly unpublished.

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It had long been my goal to become published by the time I was 26,

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because that's when my health insurance coverage would run out.

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But that day came and went without any fanfare.

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Five years later, there still wasn't a soul in any industry who knew my name.

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By then, I had settled into the habit of a gainfully, if humbly employed individual.

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I'd worked at a restaurant for years.

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I found something amazing in peer mentorship, where I could directly channel my life experience into service.

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I was satisfied in my friendships and my family life and the man I had become.

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I still needed to write.

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I had stories, both real and unreal, oozing out of me on a daily basis.

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But I didn't need anyone to need me to write.

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The absence of public accomplishment no longer defined the quality of my existence.

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I was content to be in the mode, always toiling away, no matter how quietly.

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Nothing pleased me more than to let my eyes scan over our bookcases,

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to bask in the spines of so many texts, each of which meant something irreplaceable to me.

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My literary ambitions had been reduced to a single notion.

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Just write one book that makes its way upon a stranger's shelf.

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One small tome, which provides them with the same sort of gratitude I feel

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when I spy The Soul's Code or King Rat resting above my desk.

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I had no interest in writing a bestseller or winning a National Book Award.

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I had no use for the recondite respect of one's peers, a writer's writer, and so on.

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I just wanted to manifest that augured "something."

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Whatever it was Phil thought should come of all this learning.

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I called Phil that first winter in Boston.

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I poured my heart out to him, then sought his counsel as to what I should do.

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"I don't want books or movies to teach me anything," he griped at one point.

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"Just tell me a good story. Don't moralize it me. That's what poetry is for.

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"You want to organize your thoughts about life? Go put it in verse."

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I'd only written a single poem in the six years preceding that revelation,

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but I was thirsty for another as soon as he offered it.

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And tonally, I knew just how I wanted to begin.

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To cope with my various stresses, I had recently acquired Katsuki Sekida's translation

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of The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Records.

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I had never studied Zen Buddhism before, but I felt that I was ready to attend its lore, if not its practice.

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I was old enough by then to know that life is not a vessel for control.

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That the certain future is certain only in the calculating mind,

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the one that yearns and relies upon the fruits of that yearning.

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I had grown inured to disappointment, without cynicism or self-pity.

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Whenever a dreadful circumstance occurred, I felt there was nothing left to dread.

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The thing had happened. It had become inevitable. Time to accept it and move on.

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I was no longer interested in formulating answers about how to go through life,

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because any answer I could conjure would be a delusion of the moment.

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I was interested only in asking stimulating questions

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and letting their challenge propel me toward my truest nature.

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I knew my attentions were where they belonged when I read the koan entitled, "Case 7,

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"Joshu's Wash Your Bowl." A monk said to Joshu,

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"I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me."

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"Have you eaten your rice porridge?" asked Joshu.

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"Yes, I have," replied the monk.

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"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Joshu.

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With this, the monk gained insight.

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I enjoy koans, because they allude any attempt to define them.

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They are not designed to be analyzed or fathomed.

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You are not meant to find their resolution as though they were some western riddle.

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Like the monk who seeks wisdom from others, if you go to the koan to become edified,

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you will go hungry, sucking on air.

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Koans belong to a category of transmission entirely different from allegories.

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Koans are composed of words and images,

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but words do not follow within you once the koan has concluded.

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There is no argument to toss about in your mind,

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nothing to settle upon, no conceit to be made.

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The moment you think you have it, you are lost.

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So it is with life, identity, why we are here,

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what we should be doing, our most familiar fantasies.

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Life unfolds in its own inarguable reality every day.

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When we gather those days into narratives and arguments,

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we turn a blind eye to the moments dancing before us.

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And when some happenstance derails our best intentions,

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we feel injured and disrespected.

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This is the sorrow of the calculating mind,

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the ego that measures the gap between the life it longed for and the life it led,

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the ego to whom the world owes a debt it can never make right.

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When I decided not to suicide, every day of my life became bonus.

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Nothing was owed to me.

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My life wasn't going somewhere.

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I existed only to relish daily living, to love and to serve,

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and to channel my creative spirit however time allowed.

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I became a man when I committed to life, just as it is, just as I am.

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I washed my bowl and I washed it gladly.

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When mom got sick and our time together drew to a close,

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after such an intimate and wonderful life together,

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how could I surrender my gratitude and complain?

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Game 31, Reds 2, Padres 1, May 2nd, 2023

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If you read today's poll of players and managers,

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regarding their feelings about the year's new rules,

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you will learn that red is a number,

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four is a molecule,

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and bees only speak French on Saturdays.

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Here is a non sequitur.

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Snell gives a great interview detailing yesterday's outing.

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Three runs, seven strikeouts, no walks,

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while Wacha quietly pitches shutout baseball.

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Game 32, Reds 1, Padres 7, May 3rd, 2023

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Eight continuous years in the minor leagues.

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One swing of the bat,

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his first run tallied in the majors.

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At the end of his days,

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will Brett Sullivan be able to remember one without the other?

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Another version of the poem reads as follows.

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A master never takes the night off.

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In Bogaerts' first missed game,

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he does more than shake his fist at the young Brett Sullivan,

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and the following day,

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Sullivan does more than shake his bat at Luis Cessa!

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There is yet another version of the poem,

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which was written after Sullivan hit a home run in the bottom of the fourth.

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Holy mackerel! Brett Sullivan.

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Game 33, Dodgers 2, Padres 5, May 5th, 2023

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The last time the Padres played the Dodgers,

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my wife and I were in a hotel room, in Banff, the night before a wedding.

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Our pants discarded,

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cold bottles of West Coast Indian Pale Ale by the bedside,

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as we screamed and frothed

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and made love to the greatest seventh inning rally ever seen.

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For tonight's sequel,

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my wife and I are curled upon another lavish queen

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the night before some Massachusetts nuptials.

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Legs bare, inebriated, delicately fiddling about,

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we turn on the game just before Tatis' second moonshot blasts the game wide open.

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Kershaw is bounced,

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San Diego is jumping,

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and life is a series of suspended triumphs.

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Game 34, Dodgers 2, Padres 1, May 6th, 2023

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Cancer is our second leading cause of death

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behind diseases of the heart.

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At one wedding reception,

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I speak to two granddaughters of pancreatic,

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three survivors of breast,

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countless cases untold,

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and one man my age set to marry this fall,

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whose mother has been diagnosed with her own late stage.

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What else can we do?

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We who forge life in the shadow of our lost.

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What is the answer beyond the brief exchange of our numbers?

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Game 35, Dodgers 5, Padres 2, May 7th, 2023

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There is who you are, and there is who you want to be.

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As you face up against those who tower over,

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do you fear what you see,

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or do you admire what you have yet to become?

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Facing a count of three balls, one strike,

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Hader and Betts both want the ball over the plate.

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But what decides the home run Betts will launch?

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The pitch that Betts connects with?

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The balls Hader threw in advance?

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Or the revived specter of a slain dragon?

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Game 36, Padres 6, Twins 1, May 9th, 2023

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What is worse, global warming or Luis Garcia warming up in the pen?

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Game 37, Padres 3, Twins 4, May 10th, 2023

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Tim Hill is everything a relief pitcher needs to be.

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He has one supreme specialty that is useful to his team.

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He induces ground balls,

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and he induces them against two-thirds of the batters he faces.

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He gives up a hit often enough,

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but most of the time those hits result in simultaneous outs.

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Look no further than this inning here.

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Hill allows a single, then a grounder,

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which results in a fielder's choice,

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then another grounder, which leads to a routine double play.

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Hill intimidates with tall lank, wild eyes, rambunctious hair,

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and a strange delivery where he slings the ball from his flank,

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having it slice laterally toward the batter's box like a blast of grapeshot.

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I would not want to be on the wrong side of Tim Hill.

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How emasculating to be smote,

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not by flashy strikeouts and wind-caught meteors dropping by the warning track,

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but by weakly struck balls rolling across the lawn in a sterile parade.

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Game 38, Padres 3, Twins 5, May 11, 2023

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Carlos Correa is very happy to tell you

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he has heard the boos emanating from his home crowd

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concerning his scant production to start the year.

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Those jeers drown out the curses emanating from my mother's living room,

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and from all the living rooms, basements, garages, and sports bars

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of those who remember Correa and the void of repentance, which has lingered

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ever since he and his teammates usurped a title years ago,

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then went on with their careers without so much as flinching.

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"Do not let my murder of this small child overshadow my expertise in the field of theology!"

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shouts a relocated priest.

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"You are playing for the Lord!" declared the Astros team preacher,

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a week before they robbed Yu Darvish of an honest exhibition of his worth.

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When Darvish strikes out Correa today, it is not justice.

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There is no justice in the world beyond the maintenance of the status quo.

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No putting the toothpaste back in the tube, the soul back in the body, ashes in the bin.

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Even if you were fool enough to try, our memory of the past taints its recapitulation.

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Conscience may look backward, but its vessel only hurdles onward.

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So save your apologies, your reasons, and your reparations.

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When you get caught within your own disgrace, resign, and do not speak to me of justice.

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I have heard enough of Plato babbling in his sleep.

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Game 39, Padres 2, Dodgers 4, May 12, 2023.

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These words have only what value you impart.

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I cannot say that I have lost the means by which to speak in silence,

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for it is obvious now, I never could.

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All this time, I have been murmuring to no one but myself.

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A dark wind pushing over the tall grass.

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There will be no one left to listen, should I turn away.

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I wish I knew something worth telling you. About baseball.

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About the blood in the tissues by the bed. About love.

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How my mother's familiar scent has been absorbed by a faint effluence of scorched ozone,

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so when I press my nose into her thin silver curls, it is as though she is already gone.

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I wish I could tell you about the quiet way life has settled down into itself.

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The ceasing of my animus. Ecstatic. Washed out. Slow.

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I am sure that whatever I meant to say was a fantasy.

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Before you leave, please do me one favor.

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Trace the doglegs of my passing along that tributary there,

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which curves as it flows to the open sea.

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Would you call that wandering -- what breaks and carries the earth within its way?

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Or is there another name for what's become of me?