stoop: A small staircase ending in a platform and leading to the entrance of an apartment building or other building.
A couple of mornings ago, I took my coffee outside, which is not a part of my sunrise, idiot routine. Other than Sunday, when the rules are suspended, I do the same fucken thing every, single day. Some of it has been the same for well over thirty years, I shit you not.
Sitting, coffee, yoga and running, were as consistent as my heartbeat for a long time. Somewhere, buried back in there, the computer took my mind hostage and any hope of freedom was shitcanned. The little metal bastard was capable of grabbing my attention at any time. Coffee and computer became my techno-breakfast. Once I’ve have had my fill, always keeping an eye on the clock, it is then time to whip out the mat in the exact same spot, doing the exact same series of asanas, yoga poses.
When the Buddha and I became friends, there was no question it was imperative for us to hang out first thing in the morning. Before I even have a chance to sit down and cross my legs, that son of a bitch had been there all along, with that know it all expression.
My commitment to running grabbed me by the throat in my early thirties, way before the Big Guy and I started hanging. I suppose, in a way, I could say that my running was the best I was able to do with the monsters that were chasing me, early on. I was in, light years over my head, drowning in the world I had created. I own it all baby, including the consequences. Therapy saved my ass in so many ways, but that’s for another time
I was a piss poor athlete as a kid. It’s funny, I looked like I should have been a much better jock, based on my demeanor and carriage, but I sucked. I started running in the mid Seventies, which was me in my early thirties. While running had caught fire by then, it was nothing like the explosion that occurred a bit later, making it a multi-billion dollar industry, drawing millions of runners all over the world.
I think it you want to be good at most anything, it has to be the consummate love/hate relationship. It instantly got to the point, where I couldn’t live without it. Unless I was beat to shit at the end, I didn’t consider it running. Trust me, I was not a good runner and I’ll tell you why about the use of past tense in a moment. I ran the ’82 NYC Marathon in 3:42:43, with a picture to prove it.
I took my running with me to Santa Fe, NM in ’87. Actually, that’s how I really met the Buddha. I’ll make it quick, because this is supposed to be about stoops, for Christ sake. I owned a little adobe womb, way south of town, in the Cerrillos Flats. Every morning, I ran in a Superman shirt I took with me from my NYC, Mad Men days. One day, I am in town, a woman yells, “Hey Superman!”
Turns out, she lived out there, in the middle of nowhere, near me and she would always see this asshole in a Superman shirt, running in the sun, rain and snow. Hate not to pay attention to her, because she was and is a wonderful human. Anyway, after weeks and weeks of getting together and talking, which we both loved, she told me I was a Zen practitioner, whether I knew it or not. I had met the Buddha a few times in NYC, mostly at bookstores that catered to weirdos. The more I learned, the more I agreed with its rock-solid foundation, making sense of a world that makes none.
In the midst of all this in Santa Fe, which truly changed my life forever, I fell in love with a lady, who happened to be a gifted yoga instructor. I was at a party in town, not something I usually did. I saw this lovely, looking spirit and she had a fucken red dot, smack dab in the middle of her forehead. Well, I’ve already got this Buddha thing happening and here is a lady with a goddamn third eye.
I learned everything about yoga from her. For quite a while, I resisted becoming her student, because I thought it would fuck up the relationship. God bless her, she insisted Ihad a body for yoga and I finally broke down and started going to her classes. As a hysterically private person, my mission was to develop my own practice, based on the flow of her classes, which were brilliant. I have been doing the same damn sequence of poses on my own for so many years, I don’t care to count.
The only change in the cemented regimen, and it was a more than a gigantic adjustment for me, was being forced to give up running after forty plus year. I had seriously injured a leg when I first got here. It is truly one of my all-time best stories, but not for now.
I broke my ass to rehab the leg and I did. I fought, harder than there a words to describe, to get it all back. There was no question it was compromised and it was only a matter of time before it called a permanent time out. I now ride a stationary bike every day, except Sunday and it is boring as fuck, but that’s the deal.
Shit, did I go off on a tangent or two or what? Ever since my friend and neighbor gave me a little chair and table, set on the side of my place, I have been going outside at the end of the day. I put the Beats in my ears and get serenaded, while I sit out there and wonder how I could be so lucky to be right here at this point in my life.
Back, a couple of mornings ago, I took my coffee outside and sat on the steps in the photo of yours truly. I had ten seconds to get from the iPhone to the steps and that’s what we got. It took a couple of runs to beat the click. Oscar, the slob from the Odd Couple, would not even wear my morning robe. Truth be told, it is my evening robe, too.
I don’t know why, but sitting out there in some surprising state of bliss, I remember being a little boy, back in Queens in the Fifties, sitting on a real stoop at my house at 69-30 179th St. I don’t know when it became a regular place to hang out for me. It was certainly a way to get out of the damn house as a kid and not be hassled. I remember having a turquoise, palm-size transistor radio, so I could listen to the very beginnings of Rock n’ Roll, before it even had a name.
The next time I saw actual, real stoops was when I moved to the East Village in NYC in the late Sixties. Back then, they called it Alphabet City, because avenues were lettered, from Avenue A on. It was a rough neighborhood and I’m being kind. The Hell’s Angels had a building up the street. In the midst of all the human carnage, people were always sitting out on their stoops, once the sun dropped below the shoulders of the city.
I really got to live in the stoop world when I moved to Park Slope, Bklyn around the mid-Eighties. The area had just begun its transition to urban gentrification when I got there. The folks, who lived in those brownstones over the years, were deeply rooted in the community of the stoop. When my sons would visit, they got to hang out with all those neighbors, who were incredibly welcoming.
So, there I was, sitting out here, with my view exploding in the rising sun. I had this forever feeling, like I disappeared in the moment. It was borderline blissful. It felt so clean. I instantly thought about the little boy and his innocence, sitting with his transistor radio, his imagination a brand new invention.
I reached out and kissed him on the cheek. He has been waiting for me and it was great to see and feel young Larry once again.