Point of View: If Ifs and Buts . . .
Lori King, the intrepid long-distance swimmer, was a little surprised the other day that I’d never heard the saying, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.”
Which is to say that there’s no time like the present — which, come to think of it, has a Christmas ring — and that you’ve got to accept what is, whatever is it is, whether it’s unpredictable tides, strong headwinds, frigid water, utter darkness. . . .
Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. And Lori, ever a swimmer, is doing it — a hero, I’d say, because of the challenges she faces down.
She swims the Catalina Channel, she swims 120 miles in the Hudson over the course of eight days, she swims around Bermuda — the second person and the first woman ever to do it.
Yet she would be the first to say she does not face these challenges down alone, that her successes are owing to the fact that she’s had plenty of help, invaluable logistical support in every one of these efforts. Long-distance swimming in her view is a team sport; it is not about records or high finishes.
As to why she does it, “there’s something spiritual, something beautiful about it,” she has said.
A mix of joy and suffering, I would think. It is a way for her, I think, to experience transcendence in what is.
I come fairly close to it in the outdoor shower, or on the back porch where at the end of the other day I saw the points of the oak leaves sparkling in the sun. And Billy Hofmann’s painting above our fireplace is ever profound because it is, we think, the heartbeat of everything, though he told Mary he was really thinking of Louse Point, its shoreline, the water, and the boats. Transcendence in what is. . . . It’s elusive on a rainy morning in the Reutershan parking lot.
I remember when Billy came with Carlos to hang the painting. They were scouting out wall space, as if we had any wall space. And so it’s over the fireplace and is as interesting to us as it ever was, and I’m so glad I said that to him one day at One-Stop.
His mock-heroic account of a Maidstoners-Max’s Kansas City softball game that I alit upon in the sports pages of 25 years ago and reprinted recently was sparkling too, like the oak leaves in the late afternoon sun.