If I Had My Life To Live Over

"If I had my life to live over I'd like to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual trouble, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day."

Jean de La Bruyere (1645 - 1696)
 

Free Brownie Wednesdays. Walk-Ins Welcome. Doctor On Premises

I am a child of the 60’s, so when I see a State Trooper, a Local Sheriff, or even a well dressed Security Guard with a Badge, several things automatically run through my mind. Where is my pot, and or pills, how easy is it going to be to get them stuffed down my pants, who was the last person near my glove box, and what could they have possibly put in there? Do cars even have glove boxes any more? The last bit of paranoia comes from my good friend Captain Zooms, who once left a big bag of leafy green summer of 72’ pot in my car. New York State was not amused upon its subsequent discovery on my drive home from his house. Lucky for me, the State had just relaxed its possession laws and my Judge knew my dad. My sentence as a middle class white boy in the 70’s was to write a ten page term paper on the cause and effects of smoking marijuana.

Nothing in my experiences and the attitude of average Americans who smoked pot in the 1960’s and 1970’s and later became parents and proponents of “Just Say No” has prepared me for the legalization of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the State of Colorado. When you look closely at the ads and all of the concoctions, names of the products, the potency and purity, and regulation of the products, it can blow you away. 

I am not, nor will I probably ever be a card carrying member to a dispensary. First of all, I pride myself in being clean and sober for over twenty three years. The price of my excessive consumption in the sixties cost me dearly in both emotional and legal consequences. All is well that ends well, so they say. 

My paranoia from the sixties is deep rooted and not easily dispelled. In the last few insurance applications that I’ve filled out, were smoking questions about cigarettes and other substances. Will the dispensary someday share it’s files not only with the government, law enforcement, and the insurance companies? Will your insurance rate go up because you smoke your prescription? If you eat it, will there be a difference?

I live in a small rural part of Colorado. I am blown away by the number of dispensaries open. The incredible advertisements of giant buds tinged in gold and brown in the local magazines is surprising. There are Franchise Dispensaries popping up with wild topical creams, cookies, candies, and brownies. Ads like $35/ for 1/8, no appointments necessary, doctor on premises fill the newspapers.

Do not misunderstand me! I have spent too many evenings of my life in a bar eying the bottle of Bombay Gin (my particular choice of personal deprivation) on the shelf. So I know what prohibitionists felt like when the Bar Signs went up in their neighborhoods. It’ s all too new and funny. It’s like a Saturday Night Live Comedy Skit. The local dispensary is advertising free brownies while the newly opened hot dog joint next door shows big pictures of plates with giant dogs and chips brimming over. This is obviously in case you stumble out of the “clinic” into the streets with the munchies!



The next famous movie quotes will probably be, “ Of all the pot joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” “Here’s looking at you, kid!” --- Albert Bianchine

Welcome To The Dream Academy

"You have been doing a great job, Al. I’ve spoken to Don and I know it wasn’t part of your employment package, but I have arranged for The Company to pay for half of your ski pass. We’ll finance the other half and take it out of your pay. Oh! By the way, here is a pager, nothing happens around here until later in the day, so go ahead and go up on the mountain early, get some first runs in the fresh powder and if anything happens, I’ll page you,” said, my then Property Manager.

This must be some form of a joke, I thought. No employer awards their employees, retroactively with a ski pass, not previously negotiated, tells them to go skiing when the snows come. I had turned from a well trained ski bum into a chubby middle aged Italian working man. Out of shape for skiing completely, there was no way I could even pretend to have a good season.

“By the way, I designed a ski conditioning program at the Aspen Athletic Club when I was the manager there. It is patterned after the Denver Bronco’s Football Training Camp, but it is geared for skiing. Perhaps you’d like to join the club and get in ski shape. We have a corporate membership and there is a discount off the regular price. It makes membership affordable.”

Was I dreaming? Had I really died and gone to ski bum heaven? There is the fittest woman athlete in Aspen, a power lifting champion, a western conference racquetball champion, that had the envy of Arnold Schwartzenegger for her calves, the respect of Phil and Steve Mahre(Olympic ski racing brothers) for her rock hard abs, giving me permission to go skiing everyday and she’ll call me if she needs me. All I had to do was to get in the best physical shape I’d ever been in by following the most advanced ski conditioning class in Aspen, Colorado.

That worked very well for me in my downtown Aspen apartment. I lived across from the Main St. Bakery, with their outrageous designer coffee and brownies, just down the street from Benjamin’s Deli and their homemade Matzo Ball soup.

I was able to arise early mornings, work on my short stories, then take a walk through our 8 commercial buildings in the downtown core and perform the repairs on my list from Kathy. I would reserve a spot in ski conditioning, before 9 am.

The weeks of training unfolded and I progressed in my athletic development to a fit and trim ski athlete. Everyone commented on the new man.
Ski conditioning concluded with the award of t-shirts. “I survived ski conditioning at the Aspen Athletic Club, Aspen, Colorado.” I wore my new shirt proudly, along with a new wardrobe and self-confidence.

When Aspen Mountain opened up, true to her word, Kathy provided the coveted ACRA All Mountain Ski Pass for all three mountains, Aspen Mountain, The Highlands, and Snowmass, (a fabled fourteener, with the infamous wall as it’s centerpiece.) I commented to my associates that I was in love, not only with the mountains and new terrain, but with this woman who had arranged it for me.

I have always become obsessed with the powerful women in my life. It all began with my first grade teacher, Ms. Ossendot in 1960. I was learning to print in pencil on those large pieces of paper with the big green lines on them. I was already dreaming of 1961, because I realized that you could turn the paper upside down and it would still be 1961. Anyway, I refused to stay with in the lines, another malady that would haunt me throughout my life. Ms. Ossendot made me stay after school until I reluctantly wrote between the lines. It also set a deep consequence and reward issue in my young mind. After school that day, I got to ride home in her yellow rag top Volkswagen Beetle, with the top down in the sunshine with the prettiest teacher in school.

Misbehaving had its rewards. A pattern I was to repeat often, culminating with my boss Kathy at our annual Christmas Party. She was in an Emerald Evening Gown and looked beautiful to say the least. I, feeling quite sporty in my new tight fitting jeans. I remember kissing her hello on the cheek and walking past her. I could have sworn that she looked approvingly at my small ass. It’s funny how things between men and women are often misconstrued. Years later, she denied looking at my ass. She maintained that as an expert on physical conformation, she was looking for my ass. It however, gave me the courage later that evening while at her home when she asked me to help remove her cowboy boots, (her new Larry Mahan leather boots that even Vagisil down the boot wouldn’t help slide off,) to become brazen and to get a little frisky. It all ties back to my failure at staying between the lines. I thrive on skiing out of bounds. I don’t like ski area boundaries, other skiers, and authority in general. It has been a great hardship in my life, except for stepping past the employer and employee relationship with my boss, Kathy.

The trilogy of Aspen Mountains are beautiful, as wonderful as it is to noodle up Walsh’s, where the Paragliders take off from Aspen Mountain, and drop down into the big open bowl called the Wall at Highlands, or to slip out of bounds into the backside of Highlands.

My calling has always been that of Utah. I love Colorado and all its Ski Areas, but Utah is to die for, (literally.) I took my vacation and my new super in-shape athletically fit body and drove there. I remember starting to herring-bone up Brighton Mountain, to get to the out of bounds, and ski the chutes through the trees with 18 inches of new snow, a feat that had always caused me great trepidation and physical distress. I practically ran up the mountainside and dropped down over the lip and cranked off 50 big arcing powder turns before I realized just how great of physical shape that I was in.

Isn’t it funny that sometimes the greatest times of life is when no one else is there? I had none of my friends with me, no one to show off for, only to know that I had just accomplished this utterly fantastic feat of physical prowess for myself. It also made me realize that I had spent a lifetime alone on the mountains, and that I didn’t want to be alone anymore. For the first time in a long time, a woman respected me for my sobriety and the obstacles that I had overcome to achieve it, for my physicality, and the time and patience I had put in following her program to achieve it.

I had laid a lot of things to waste in my short life, but her gift was not one I could let go of. I did not want to become another lonely old man in a ski town, with his skis and dog and a P.O. Box that said Aspen, for the sake of my own vanity. Something had changed. Perhaps it was this girl, who snuck up to the Cowboy Corral in the dead of night on Christmas Eve with a lantern, her Stetson hat, and a bag full of ribbons and bells. She climbed up and silently laid across the backs of the 2 ton behemoth Percheron team of Sid and Sam, (the brothers).

She would spend hours on that snowy Christmas morn braiding the manes and weaving in the bells without a betraying jingle to be heard. She would surprise the Cowboys and their guests with a hitched up and jingling sleigh to take them to the restaurant for their Christmas Dinner.

Perhaps it was the look on her face when I presented her with the Lady of the Lamp, a sculpture from my artist friend Elfie of Vail. Whatever it was, suddenly skiing and the endless turns of deep and steep powder meant nothing to me even being in the best physical shape I had ever been in. I cut short my ski vacation, (an unheard of act in my former life.) I returned to my quaint little Aspen Apartment to pursue the love of my life. I have never looked back. All I have to say is, “Welcome to the Dream Academy!” --- Albert Bianchine

P.S. Be sure to check out my friends blog; www.thepennymogul.blogspot.com

Cry For The Species Equus

I got it straight from the horse’s mouth. Our chestnut mare Tahoe was laying on the ground in a stall at our rescue ranch with the winter sun shining on her face. She was too weak to stand for very long periods. I was attending to her with a very heavy heart. We were in the process of making the decision to euthanize her, and I was stroking her face.

“Hey Albert,” she said with her big brown eyes. “If horses are God’s gift to man, why would man treat them so badly? Why would they take the best years that we have to offer and use us up until we are spent, and then turn us out to the auction barns to be purchased by the killers? You know, it’s alright. I am tired, and I don’t have the strength to go on. I’m ready to let go. It is time.”

The scene has replayed in my mind a thousand times, especially each time that I helped another abused or dying horse move on. The answer has never come. The question still remains imprinted into my minds eye. I search for the answer. Not long after laying Tahoe to rest, both Kathy and I re-read Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, but our broken hearts found no solace. We only found a greater unanswered question in her words. Why would man mistreat beasts of burden so poorly and carelessly?

I spent many days backside at the Finger Lakes Race Track in Western New York State in the early 1980’s. I witnessed broken down thoroughbreds from Saratoga and Belmont with their front legs in ice buckets so that they would be able to run on arthritic and sore legs. I watched the blue goose (a horse ambulance) pull up to down horses with broken and shattered legs to remove them from the track so that the next race can begin. They were all former champions, and if you ever stood backside at a race horse barn when the bell rings and the gate opens, all the thoroughbreds are lined up with their chests pressed against the stalls ready and willing to run.

Willingness in animals shouldn’t be construed as a license for abuse. If you own an animal and it makes a living for you in any genre or form, then you owe it to them to treat them with the respect that they deserve. They at least deserve a dignified procession to the grave.

There is no genre of the horse world that is immune from it. I have had to protect my wife from barrel racing horses that were so stoved up and sore that to merely touch their flank they would try and kick her head off. She would still attempt to massage them so that they could run for their pretty little barrel racer.

I vividly remember the first time that my fingers slipped over the hair ball like protrusion on the nuchal ligament of a dressage horse that had been surgically altered. The purpose of the alteration was so that he couldn’t raise his head. I thought it was a spasm until my wife informed me it was a common practice to cosmetically correct conformation in some competitive circles. You snip the ligament at the base of the skull and it prevents the animal from standing with it’s head too high. They show better!

The American Mustang is standing in pens by the thousands as I write. They have nowhere to run. They are stuffed back to back and side to side. Collected by the thousands by the BLM, they are standing in urine and feces soaked surrounds with no chance of adoption. The economy has tanked, and no one is there to adopt them. They were supposedly rounded up because of the damage they are doing to grazing lands. They should inherit the earth, not the cattle that man wants to raise on it for their bloody thirst for meat.

My only answer came from our rescue quarter horse Sage, who we found in a barn full of miniatures, in the back dark recesses with sore and arthritic knees. One warm summer day, I was standing in the middle of one of our fields. I was watching a mother eagle teach her eaglet to fly. She would let it soar and when it got just far enough away she would give a shrill whistle and it would whistle back, then return to the nest. Sage walked up to me, stood alongside of me, and wrapped her neck and her big bucket head around my neck in an embrace. As a man, I have never been touched greater by animal husbandry.

Sometimes late at night, I’m ashamed to admit, that when I’m drifting off to sleep and my mind replays all the beautiful animals that it was my mission to bring to God, I cry for the species Equus.

Life's A Beach, Not A Mountain

The sound of waves crashing on the shore has always been an elixir for me. A respite, a repose from the craziness that is my life. My high school friend “Captain Zooms” and I discovered the joy of the ocean many years ago on a vacation to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. We rented a catamaran and went sailing and wind surfing. Cruising inches off the ocean on a wind surfer, and lying out over a raised pontoon is all consuming. I have loved the ocean, and everything about it since that time.

I have learned well from mountains and the wilderness, especially at 14,000 feet in elevation. We are only temporary visitors at the summit, sometimes only for minutes at a time. Some climbers never summit at all.

Touloose, my life long ski companion and I have skied all over America, although we had never heli-skied with one another. We decided that on our last big ski vacation we would ski the Little Cottonwood Canyon of Utah including The Wasatch Powder Birds in Snowbird. On the day that we registered, it began to snow heavily and continued for the entire week. One to two feet of fresh powder fell every day. Our hopes dashed every morning by a call saying the weather was too bad for the helicopter to go up, even though the skiing was awesome on the mountain.

On our last morning at Snowbird, the sun rose over the peaks and burst across open snowfields filled to capacity with light, airy Wasatch Powder. We could here the Wumpf! Wumpf! Wumpf! of the Powder Bird helicopter heading into the pristine wilderness of the back country. The heli-ski run was never to be taken and we were only visitors there for a very short while.

Casting my fate to the wind has been a mantra of mine. I have enjoyed the freedom of going where I wanted, while living modestly. I started this pattern at a very young age and whenever I had more than a few thousand dollars saved I would spend it on an adventure.

When I hear the news today, my heart goes out to the unfortunate factory workers and civil servants who bought the dream of owning a home and retiring from their 40 year commitment with a pension. I am truly heart broken for them in their loss of the great American Dream. They gave up their youth and some of the best years of their lives. They get Na Da. Nothing, not even a job. No pension, no golden watch and fob. “Sorry, can’t extend unemployment benefits for you. We used the money to bail out the greedy bankers and to pay their bonuses for being the best and the brightest.”

I would like to lead a revolution of change. They say that if you really want to change, begin with yourself. I have both the desire and will power to make the change. We could all learn to make a change by putting more love into our hearts, a necessary self lesson for the change to begin.

Life is a Beach, not a mountain. I have always thought that Society had it figured all wrong. You should be allowed to experience life in the pursuit of your dreams for the first 1/3 of your life. The 2nd third of your life should be in pursuing financial security for the next phase. The last 1/3 should be in the pursuit of artistic endeavors that contribute to and enhance society as a whole.

I want to spend the last 1/3 of my life at the ocean. I will spend my days sailing, playing, and staying a while. The Great American Oil Spill has turned up the heat and the desire to enjoy the waters that are still around the bend from destruction. There still are pristine beaches in Oregon, and I want to go there and walk on them with Kathy, my wife, and have long talks and even longer writing sessions.

I write the best documentary of the mountains when I’m not living in them. Melville, who wrote lovingly of the sea only wrote successfully after he had left it. I want to make my final 1/3 of life the most powerful of all. I will work in the arts and bring about the change that I hope for America.

Kathy and I have begun the design of our retirement years. We have incorporated as Symposia Living Arts Inc. We will be promoting the Healing, Literary, Culinary, Visual, and Performing Arts. It simply is our time to shine. --- Albert Bianchine

If A Woman Were President

If a woman were President, she would slap the "Drill, Baby, Drill" Bitches and send them to their room. Sorry Mr. Obama, you were my choice, and I respect you immensely, but if a woman were in the White House, the oil spill would be cleaned up by now or BP’s assets would have been seized. Do you think putting 10,000 boats in the water to clean up the spill is unreasonable? I think the spill lasting for 59 days is unreasonable. What do you mean you don’t have the technology? Then why were you drilling that deep in the first place?

If a woman were President, the oil would never have made it to shore. She would have collected it before it ever got close. Let’s talk about low ball, flow rate, educated opinion guestimates. Expert, who? She would have called Joe The Plumber! Everyone knows that a good plumber is worth his weight in gold. In this case, it’s liquid gold in the form of black, ugly crude fowling our shores, beaches, and waterways, and killing our beloved sea creatures. She would have had compassion for the hard working men and women crying on camera over the loss of their heritage and livelihoods. She would have massively fined BP for every second past 48 hours that the leak continued making it economically prohibitive to allow the oil to continue to spew into the ocean. She would have never allowed them to use a chemical dispersant that hangs like large gobs of snot at the bottom of the ocean again killing all the bottom feeding creatures (especially since that chemical makeup is a mystery to everyone except BP.) I’ve heard the story before, proprietary blend in the natural gas drilling industry with the fluid used for fracing. Many women in my neighborhood came down with never before seen forms of Adrenal Cancer.

The spokespeople for BP are liars, and yes, they do have an English accent. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, you get the inference. If a woman were President, she would have the nerve to tell them we don’t want you here befouling our shoreline. Her rallying cry would be "America for the Americans." She would usher in a new period of isolationism and self-reliance on renewable energy.

A Woman President wouldn’t have gone to bed with the oil companies in the first place. She would have been held accountable to a higher standard for a lot less money. No, I am not referring to that “Drill, Baby, Drill” trailer bitch from Alaska who is rumored to have spent her publishing windfall on new boobs for Trailer Hubby Todd, I’m referring to a real woman President.

Are You Willing To Do Whatever It Takes?

The answer is a resounding yes! It wasn’t always that way for me where writing is concerned. I expected success without being willing to contribute the time or effort. I had many mentors when I was a ski bum. The world’s greatest mentors, I boast. I have always related skiing to writing. There is a similar flow to both when you are performing well. Dropping into a deep powder run is treacherous. There is always the possibility that the mountainside will slide. I stood atop many a knarly Utah ski run with my good friend, Touloose, a ski patrolman. I learned how to probe the snow with my pole, or make a long traverse across the run to test the consistency and stability of the run. Many times, after climbing for hours into the back country of the Wasatch National Forest, we would each take a turn skiing a steep and deep slope and critique the others skiing ability. We would say, “You have got to commit to the mountain, stay forward, stop sitting back, gravity is your friend.”

Perhaps the most applicable lesson that skiing taught me where writing is concerned, is that often we would ski up to a particularly challenging ski run and stop. Big mistake, never stop at the top, it gives you time to look down in to the face of certain death. You freeze. You stop, sometimes your knees knock together and your body involuntarily shakes. I mean, we arrived at places where if you missed the first turn as you dropped in, you would likely die. It generally included big ugly rock faces and narrow chutes, steep mountain sides, deep powder snow. There always seemed to be a giant tree right in the middle of the chute. It was always at your second turn, so the entire time you are trying to concentrate on your first turn you are preoccupied with that damn tree and the second turn. It taught you to live in the second, and not to get ahead of yourself. Unless you made the first turn, there would be no second. So when you would stop, it would give you all the time in the world to think about how you were going to miss that first turn and crash into the tree and hit your head and careen down the hill bouncing off the rocks of the steep chute until you were history. It is where having a companion skier was the key. I remember vividly looking at Touloose at those difficult moments and he would smile from under his Sherpa hat. In his all too familiar cackle he would say, “The Lord hates a coward!” He would smile, and drop in. I, of course, had no choice but to follow.

The point is where writing is concerned, I have always written up to the lip of the steep, and stopped. I have never been willing to let myself go. I have never been willing to pull the writing trigger, to drop over the edge and noodle up the writing run.

Some people read the end of a book first- so this is for those who like a happy ending.

Act III
Scene III

Setting: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, evening poetry writing workshop.

Enter: Writer with backpack. He sets the backpack next to desk at the front of the classroom. He takes out several books and sets them on top of the desk. He turns and writes his name on the blackboard. Turning, he faces the class and smiles as he unbuttons his sports jacket.

The Teacher (ME) says: “Good evening class. Before I begin, I would like to invite you all to the McKenzie River Lodge this weekend. We are having a get together to celebrate my new book contract. I have been fortunate enough to have received a contract for my Historical Novel, the corresponding film, and the music score! There will horseback riding along the Pacific Northwest Trail, and a vegetarian picnic with our own organic vegetables.”

A loud crash is heard as the classroom door hits the wall. A dazed student with dread locks and a rainbow colored knit hat stands in the entrance.

“Wow, sorry for being late man. I spaced out and didn’t realize the time,” he says turning to the teacher.

“Good evening Brian, how good of you to join us,” the teacher smiles. He looks sideways knowingly at the young man. He reminds him a lot of himself as a youth. He was inappropriate, loud, and abrasive. Brian doesn’t quite seem to fit in. Perhaps he never will. There is wisdom in knowing that he gave up fitting in many years ago. Some of the best writers are those that are the outriders of society.

“As I was saying, you’re invited to join us for a celebration of our WRITEMYFIRE contract.”

He turns and walks to the front of the classroom.

“Let’s have some writing fun.”

--- Albert Bianchine