This morning I didn't want to ride. I was tired, no, I was exhausted. See, I worked the overnight shift again last night at CVAC and although we weren't needed to go out on any calls, whenever the calls and the subsequent signals that indicate a rig's status go out it disrupts whatever slouching towards REM might be occurring in my brain. So after I got home I was determined to go back to sleep. Yet my mind wouldn't let me, it had another purpose in mind.
There are movies you watch that just seem to inspire. Perhaps it was/is Rocky, or Rudy, or Remember the Titans. Maybe it's a movie like The Blind Side that shows what somebody's potential can be if their just given the right break. Or a film like The Life of Pi, Schindler's List, The Pursuit of Happyness or any number of others that will inspire you to never give up. The other night I found another movie to add to that list - 100 Meters a 2016 Spanish (yes, get ready for subtitles) film directed by Marcel Barrena. It tells the true story of a man diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis who became determined he would finish an Iron-Man Competition after being told by doctors that within a year of his diagnosis he would not be able to walk 100 meters. I was originally looking for a break from my bingeing of old YouTube cycling videos and went onto the Netflix search and typed (surprise) "Cycling" expecting to pull up something like American Flyers, Breaking Away, Rising from Ashes, or Pantani. Instead, I found this movie and I'm so very glad I did.
Much of my life I've known people who have been fighting debilitating illnesses. When I was very young it was one of my cousins battling Leukemia. It was the first time I knew children could get sick. When I became a part of the dance world I became close with people who were struggling with anorexia, Lupus, Grave's disease, and degenerative physical conditions that were making it excruciating for them to dance - but they kept going because they loved it. As I grew older, five members of my family fought their own battles with cancer and, I'm so grateful to say, won them. I worked for many years at Sunrise Day Camp getting close to young people who were still fighting their battles with cancer. Too many times I received the emails from the director telling us one of our young charges had passed. And then my father was diagnosed a number of years ago with Parkinson's. So despite my reticence to watch this movie, once I learned it dealt with a neurological disease, it drew me in and kept me there.
As I watched the movie (I won't spoil the plot here, I really want you to put it on your watch list), one based on a true story, I became very conscious of the fact that the protagonist Ramon was just a normal guy. He wasn't someone who was particular active or athletic. He wasn't a hot shot athlete struck down in the middle of a stellar soccer career. He was just a guy that worked a lot of hours, trying to provide for his family until he was diagnosed with MS. He goes through the stages of grief, lashing out at everyone around him until his wife tells him, "Your children didn't choose a bitter father." It reminded me of the fact that as parents it's our job to take care of our children, no matter what is going on in our lives. It's not their fault, they don't get to choose who begats them. We need to be the adults and do what we can for them. It is up to us to make the effort to allow them to be children, no matter what is happening in our lives. Even if, as one of the characters puts it, "we all have an incurable degenerative disease, which is life." It's a touching and inspiring story, made even more so by the fact that it was a set of unfortunate events that were actually lived, and to a great extent overcome, by this man. I won't reveal the ending except to say that at the end it was "Dedicated to all those who fight to complete their 100 meters." It was remembering those words and thinking I have nothing at all to complain about compared to Ramon that dragged me off my futon and made me get "fattening the curve" tuchus out the door.
And as I headed out still thinking about the movie I decided as a sort of tribute I would ride MS(D) today - Middle Slow Distance. You see usually during this time of year I'm commuting on my bike and often taking the long way (30 miles) home in what I like to call LSD - Long Slow Distance. With the threat of rain this morning I realized I couldn't be out that long but I wanted to still pay tribute to the fortitude of the man who inspired the movie so I vowed if I couldn't ride fast, I'd at least climb some hills and make a go of pushing myself. While on my ride I also thought of some artwork I had once come across which had been inspired by multiple sclerosis. It seems the artist Elizabeth Jameson had once been a practicing attorney who was diagnosed with MS and turned to artwork. Her artwork is based on and inspired by MRI's of her brain. A true lesson in how to make art of what others would deem to be the utmost in misfortune. Something so many of my fellow actors and theatre teachers are trying to do in this Life Amongst Covid. The artwork that begins today's blog is an example of her work.
But as I am wont to do, I allowed my perambulations to also give rein to my musings and found other thoughts coming to my head as I reached that state of flow that focusing on the revolutions of my pedals often brings. I thought of our current state of social distancing and how even on this ride I carry a surgical mask in my rear pocket in case I have to stop and speak with someone. I thought how many cars weren't on Jericho Turnpike as I crossed it near Huntington Station (usually a busy stretch of road). I thought of how many people are actively (and non social distancing) protesting the stay at home orders, some of them giving lame reasons such as needing a haircut or wanting their nails done. And I thought of some of the people that I have come to know and respect utterly in the brief years I've been an EMT. I thought of how people thank me when they see me in my EMT uniform as I'm heading to work and how I truly don't believe I deserve it because I'm in no way doing the kind of service they are. THEY are the real heroes out there. The nurses I know who are putting in back to back 12 hour shifts and then going home to an empty house. EMT's who I wish I could be like working in NYC or in the roughest districts on Long Island answering multiple (often in the double digits) cardiac arrest calls a day as patient's organs fail. Those are the real heroes in my mind and the type of First Responder I wish I could be.
Where all of those thoughts came from are from a conversation I had with a former ACTer (a member of The Association of Creative Thespians, the SHS drama club), a young man named Eric Kravit who curates a podcast titled "Keeping Connected" here on Long Island. He had sent out a message last week wanting to contact with "normal people dealing with the every day struggle of trying to maintain their livelihood during the pandemic". I reached out to him, primarily in my capacity as a theater teacher trying to teach what is essentially a kinesthetic subject through a digital means. I also spoke with him on the phone about how Little Mermaid was cancelled because of the virus and how we've been keeping up the hope (but which seems to be quickly dwindling now) of perhaps restaging the production before the end of the school year. And of how I've been also spending my most of my time at home in an 8x10 room because of patient contact I've had in my duties as an EMT. After initially battling a lot of technical difficulties Eric and I had the chance to have a conversation which will eventually be edited as part of his podcast. We spoke about a lot of things but one of the things we talked a lot about was how being an EMT has changed from pre-Covid to post-Covid. In essence, it's changed everything as we can't answer a call for someone falling without taking precautions that it might be someone who has Covid, has been in contact with someone who has had Covid, or that someone else in the home may have Covid. It's definitely changed the way we all handle patient care. At the end of the session he thanked me and my family for all we do for the community from serving as an EMT, to shaving our heads for Saint Baldrick's to riding cross country as a family to raise money for Sunrise. Am I a hero? Certainly not - as I told Eric I'm just a teacher who doesn't have the money I wish at my disposal to donate to all of the causes I believe in. What I do have is time and a still workable body that can do what I tell it to - well most of the time.
And so today it told me to get my butt on my bike and ride because there are a lot of people who can't - either because they're battling a disease that is getting the best of them or because they are being the REAL heroes and working 12 hour shifts in the hospital trying to save patients from dying. And while I rambled along the boulevards I also thought of those nurses who just the other day stood in front of the "good people" who were protesting the stay at home orders in Colorado. There were nurses standing in front of the vehicles keeping the protesters from blocking access to the ER. One of the nurses was of Asian heritage and one of the protesters screamed at him to "go to China". And the sheer stupidity of that mentality struck me hard. I myself was raised in a Korean-American household and while I don't look it, my sister who is a nurse does and I thought how completely incensed I would be to have someone yell that at her. Here are people literally putting their lives on the line to save people they may never see again while these bloated, self-important cretins are yelling about how they need their hair cut and nails done. And just because someone is of Asian heritage doesn't give anyone the right to to yell those sorts of things at them. This is the America we now live in. Not the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Rather it's the land of the xenophobic, and the home of the coward. No, not all, but the vocal minority has been spewing their hate for four years now rising to a crescendo of hatred and intolerance, in their quest to turn our beautiful nation into a quagmire of myopic misconceptions and untruth.
And it was about that time in my ride that Rammstein's "Amerika" started playing on my iPod. Now if you're not up on your German Dance Metal (or your German for that matter) I've included the official YouTube video with subtitles here for you;
A little bizarre, a little out there, yes - but it does conjure up one idea that for generations was true - America used to be THE leader of the world. It was the place where others wanted to go. It was the culture that peoples from across the globe wanted to emulate. No longer I fear. We have become a place of ridicule, the butt of jokes globally, in no small part because of the way we treat our Real Heroes.
Be well. Take care of yourselves and your families. And I'll see you on the road
And because I know there were readers who were once amused by all the detritus I observed on my rides, I'm bringing back the RRL (Random Refuse Log) - a description of all the out of place jetsam I see on the side of the road - and the FFR (Flattened Fauna Report) - a description of the fauna that didn't make it to the other side. Not because I take morbid delight in it (although I have a friend Nancy who in her youth took great delight in running over already flattened roadkill), but because I think it's an interesting zoological observation of the comings and goings of the Long Island wildlife.
RRL - Shopping Cart, Unopened can of pinto beans, Steak Knife, Beach Ball, 8 nitrile/latex gloves
FFR - One Possum, Two birds (I think due to the fact there are fewer cars on the road)
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