Olympic Games

It is common knowledge that baseball was invented when a caveman swatted a mosquito which had made a meal of his face. Basketball came about when an exasperated scribe crumpled a parchment out of the typewriter and tossed it across the room aiming at a wastepaper basket. But nobody can account for a human being giving Newton the finger vaulting through the air while twisting, rotating and somersaulting with agility, grace, verve, strength, flair and balance like these gymnasts. And then for some to leave in disgrace because of a wobble or a bobble.   

The perfection of these world-class athletes is of such a level I’d give them all a gold medal and send them home. I really don't want to hear about the near-champion who had her twizzle fizzled while I'm still having my razzle dazzled. They give us mere mortals a complex. After a week of watching, maybe I’ve had enough. The problem is they’re all too awe-inspiring and they're giving me a complex.

I would no longer dare try cutting the melon into four equal quadrants. This morning, I started to tie my shoes and could swear there was a Bulgarian judge over my shoulder taking off points for the circumference of my loop and another demerit when the aglet missed a shoelace hole on my sneakers. And then, God help me, it was revealed that my black socks don’t quite match, one of them having escaped from the dryer and replaced with a navy blue.

All this makes me think of another sort of Olympics that goes unnoticed in silent rooms where the poet dares a leap stretching toward a distant metaphor. Sometimes it falls clumsily or turns purple on the page. Risky business.

There is something faintly fascistic about synchronized diving or synchronized anything else. Truth be known I am a secret agent sent from some elsewhere where asymmetry is a virtue. I lean and limp. I stagger and I slouch. I don't always agree with myself. The right hand doesn’t know what the left one is doing. My left fingers will never know my left elbow. Dare I slurp a peach? Was that a piece of spinach on my tooth in the family photo?

I would have a counter Olympics where motley is the only wear, as the Bard put it. After all, weren’t the gods on Mt. Olympus famous for their constant squabbling? Zeus was nothing if not a mischief-maker. He would have cheered for each misstep and blunder, sent bolts of lightning in celebration for every landing not nailed. Look what he did to Icarus with the hubris to take wings.

Where but in this paean to perfection do we punish a splash? Here’s to the art of the stumble and fumble. The blemish that adds to the beauty. The inexplicable risk called creativity. The typo that improves the poem. The sandwich left out overnight that gave us penicillin. Taking a knee for the anthem. Damn the hundredth of a second that means nothing to messy humanity. The Hopi knew to include an imperfection in their pots, not to offend the gods.

As Putin never said to Mussorgsky, That's Godunov, Boris.