The Sweet Spot

What do you need to be content? What ingredients should be thrown into the stew on a Saturday or Sunday, on a weeknight, after work, in the glow of a porch light, to make you feel fully alive?

Give me a drink, a splash of Jameson maybe, and two or three fine conversationalists, with their own ideas, their own insights. Allow them a disheveled appearance and a rye sense of humor. Then let the evening roll.

That's it. Give me that, and I'm home free.

I know a man who wants but a lone spot on the river, fifty feet above the water, where St. Clair Avenue meets Mississippi River Boulevard, in Saint Paul. He wants that and his pipe. His spot is a limestone ledge, his tobacco, Virginian Blackberry. His faculty resident bought him the pipe his first year at St John's University. He was rooming at Mary Hall and the priest in charge of the floor sold slightly flawed briar pipes rejected by the manufacturer. How the priest came into possession of these I don't know, but he sold them cheap, and my friend bought a couple. He soon fell in love with the languorous post-supper smoke, and that joy never left him. After graduation, he moved back to the Cities, and ultimately found his spot on the 'ol Miss. In the spring you can often find him there with his Collie, Jess. That's where he's happiest.

I think my Dad was most serene when seated with his Hamms, up north at the lake.  Halsey Hall would be talking over the radio and the southern breeze would be hitting the north side of the lake with that steady hum. In Pop's lap would be the Sunday paper and when his reading eyes tired, they'd close slowly, and he'd let the cool wind take him in a dream state back to his days in Sauk Centre, shining shoes at the barber shop, where the talk could still center around Sinclair Lewis and his book "Main Street," published over a decade earlier. Dad liked to listen to the old men chatter. I think at the lake he could still hear their voices, and he'd nap with that little Mona Lisa smile. Dad didn't want much more than this from life. He had his little community newspaper in Saint Paul, and that busy brain, always churning out new thoughts, and hard to answer questions. The two  I heard most often  were, "What is it about fire that allows a man to sit in silence for the longest time just studying the flames?" And when watching a National Geographic special: "What do you think God was thinking when he made that creature there?"

Dennis, who lives down the street, is happiest when working. He was born to hustle, and he makes money the way rabbits mate; intensely and often. He tells me he "eats stress for breakfast." When the tension of a business deal reaches its breaking point he says to himself, "spoon-feed me more." Dennis thinks life is a grand board game, to be played well, but not to be taken too seriously. "We all die," he says. "The game's rigged from the get-go, so accept it, and have fun." Dennis told me years ago that "the single greatest illusion in the world is fear. Why fear life? The worse case scenario, in this game, is you die early. Big deal. Sometimes the eight ball drops accidently. Put your cue stick away and shake hands with the winner."

So, my question here is, where do you find your great stream, where the current is flowing at just the right speed, in just the right direction, taking you on just the right ride? Joseph Campbell would have called it "bliss." Modern athletes would refer to it as some odd variant of "the zone." I just call it the sweet spot, and I look for it as often as I can, knowing full well that, while it's so much like home, I'm only there for a visit, can't stay. And that's okay. My coins are in the slot, I'm shooting stick, and every joint has a closing time.