Zen and the Art of Davis Island Living

Every once in a while I help out at UT basketball games. At halftime we have a foul-shooting contest. Everyone who makes a free throw gets a t-shirt (until we run out, of course). So last week, third in line is a guy with Downs syndrome. But he had this smile. This wonderful smile that could photosynthesize plants it was so bright. I toss him the ball and he dribbles a couple times then stares at the rim with this Kasparovian concentration. He holds the ball in two hands then pulls it back over his shoulder with one while the other points at the rim like some Roman sculpture. It looks like he's going to throw the ball through the backboard, but when he releases it he has such touch. It tickles the side of the rim and drops in.

The crowd cheers, he throws up his arms like those people in the deodorant commercials, and I lob him a t-shirt. But I wanted to abduct him and bring him on my morning commute. I'd stop every cranky motorist on my way to I-275 and show them my friend and ask them how they could scowl when there's someone with this smile. How could anyone be angry when they see his smile? We could have world peace with that smile.

Of course, I didn't. I said, "Way to go," smiled, and patted him on the back. Why can't we do those things? There's a girl on Davis Island, she has really the most beautiful face. But I've never told her this and I don't know why. She would want to hear this, right? Why haven't I told her? This I could do, but still I haven't.

There's so many hurdles. I have singles in my car, to me, each is just another beer at Tate's happy hour, so I like to give them to the homeless men on Hyde Park Ave. or wherever. But unless I can pull up right next to them, I just can't give them anything. I'd love to be in the far lane and dash around SUVs and slide Marty McFly-style over car hoods to drop a buck in the hand of a poor and hungry person who needs it to subsist, but then I just think that everyone around me would be upset that I did it, making them look callous and cheap. Or the light would turn before I could get back, and I'd get scowled at and wouldn't have my free-throw shooting friend's megawatt smile to show them.

This is what goes through my head every time. It's not much of a hurdle, it just takes a little pluck, I know.

I've heard that there's buried treasure on this island, but that people don't look for it. Even with maps they don't look for it. Why not? Cynicism? My friend thinks cynicism is the obvious pace car in our apathy theories Grand Prix. He may be right, but how do we cure this? How do we boost our collective sanguinity quotient? Like I said, I'm not immune myself, but I'm changing. I have ideas. Some haven't worked out, but they're building.

I thought I'd stop people on the street or sitting down drinking coffee. People that need to be heard and talked to and appreciated. I would tell them that I'm from the Milwaukee Post or New Orleans Times-Picayune and want to interview them for my paper. I'd say I want to hear their stories and write a long, reverent article about them so thousands and thousands of Wisconsinites can hear the wonderful, beautiful tales of Arnold Jackson of Tampa, Florida. I figured I'd sit down with Arnold and Shirley and Ruth and Paul and ask and listen. Details will be pored over. Laughs will be had. Memories will be lifted out of dusty hope chests and brushed off, to gleam under Tampa's warm winter sun.

After filling pages and pages of notebooks and taking pictures of their beautiful, reminiscing faces I'd thank them heartily and tell them to expect a copy of the article in the mail. How hopeful they will be! They will say they can't wait. They will tell their friends and family and coworkers and strangers at the bar that they will be the focus of a feature article in the Des Moines Register and soon thousands of Iowans will know how proud Thomas is of his school-teacher daughter.

And here is where I'd (partly) fulfill the promise. I'll write articles about each of them. Extensive, magnificent, award-winning articles that they will want to laminate and show their grandchildren. I'll lay them out with pictures and captions and headlines. Witty headlines that yield cheek-aching smiles. The finished newspaper will go to a printer to run off a copy on high-quality newsprint. Each article will be cut out, placed in an envelope with our wholehearted thanks for their cooperation and sent off to the interviewees. I can imagine their faces when they see that envelope in the mailbox and hold it in their hands. The anticipation leading into pride and joy at knowing how worthy their stories-everyone's stories-are for print for the whole world to read.

That was the plan anyway. I tried twice, but neither person seemed too interested in being the focus of a human-interest story five states away. All I pretty much found out was that this one woman broke her hip two years ago and now the heel on her right shoe is 2 inches higher than the left. It doesn't bother her that much.

Other plans worked though, and if David Spade taught us something with Joe Dirt-and I think everyone will agree he did-it's that we can all enthrall a city; we just have to realize it and act.

It's like dancing. We all want to be doing it. The happiest people in the world are the dancers at Pipo's when that salsa music is melodiously f�ting Davis Blvd. There was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in which some curse caused the entire town to constantly break out into song and dance. Can you imagine how joyous it would be? Dostoevsky wrote that life is paradise; we just can't see it. Maybe that's what the writers were hinting at with that "curse," a sudden lifting of that shroud of cynicism that smothers us like stowaways caught under a massive canvas sail.

Unfortunately, we can't wish for a curse. Well, we could, but we'd either be disappointed or on some fierce LSD. It's just a different outlook, though. I guess I'm talking about changing our concept of the world around us, a "Copernican Revolution" as Kant would call it. Nothing physically changes at first, but in terms of your rational outlook, everything changes. These ideas-whether they work or not-flood through your head like great pop songs: amusing at first, but as the deluge continues you realize their romantic beauty. And when they do work, you want to tell Dostoevsky that he was right, and you saw it.

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