A Q&A with the Godfather of Fitness, Jack LaLanne
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[Originally published in
Playgirl
, April 2007]
Plot Line
Current mood: 
chipper
Category: Life
Only the story of my life involves chance encounters the moment before I'm meant to catch an airplane; then drives me head-first into Colorado characters-turned-business men and strangers I already know; my story careens me into dark humor, the jokes of which I just barely get.
You gotta love falling in love all the time with laughter and stories and people. Lucky me for living in the thick of it. Makes me want to climb a tall building or water tower or mountain and welcome myself home. What awaits?
I'm wondering about the possibility that I create the universe with my consciousness. Can it be, that all I deem as real is real only to the extent I can imagine it to be? Can that "tree falling in a forest" question possibly have an answer? Too, is it to be believed that each action has infinite possible reactions; all simultaneously playing out? How do so many people worry about celebrity weddings and eating disorders when we could be figuring out (at least, discussing) quantum theories related to being itself? I'm begging the question of whether something only becomes real when we lay our peepers on it. Some tell us we only perceive inanimate objects as still; in fact, their very composition is of millions of hurrying, flipping, folding atoms. And if you could speed the molecular composition, you might find cans of soup, a sock, a conch shell, a spoon and a stick walking along a highway out west under the bright orange fireball. I digress.
I'm also thinking about age and the strange mechanics of a mind; how like computers humans can seem. A little dust of age settles like a fog over certain transmitters and blowie!—you no longer know what you had to eat (indeed, if you ate at all) or to whom you last spoke. Are we all doing this incessantly throughout life? What makes some memories stick? Why does dementia in the old affect memories in reverse order? What makes consciousness any different from automatic synapses, when one sees how vulnerable the psyche is? Or is consciousness part of a higher level of being; something separate from brain wiring all together? I think it's more than bah-humbug coincidence that so many things overlap.
No answers so far; I'm working on teasing them out. Ah, so very much to wonder about as I sit here surrounded by ghosts.
I'm reminded of this brain athleticism each morning while commuting through the delicious early-fall air on another bus, which is similar to a Greyhound but with 100 percent less socializing and story fodder.
Besides fate, I've been working on articulating, in the words of James Joyce, "imaginable itinerary through the particular universal." In English, that's thoughts and sweepy feelings (gasp). Tried figuring a way to talk about my own theories regarding found objects (belts strewn on sidewalks, plastic jewels in the street, discarded letters, food scraps); the millions of memories each nook of Manhattan holds (sites of lovelifedeathandothershenanigans); attempted to tell a friend he has traits not possessed by another human; or to her, that as a duo we know invincibility; or that I still miss those friends in such a specific way; or that the laughter I summon from memories is what I most fear losing.
But all I've said so far comes out sounding like maraschino cherry paste. On second thought, maybe that ain't half bad.
But more than that, it seems this conversation also turns to the damned string theory: someone leaves something behind and someone else picks it up; we try relaying our dreams and consequently spread or reduce confusion; we overlap, spread the love. Like a big heapin' knot of string.
Does everything come back to that? Here's to hoping so.
Redwood trees have shallow but long roots. They stretch great distances underground, seeking out fellow redwood roots. Once found, the trees sort of embrace and hold each other up. Walking among the giants, keeping watch out for Bigfoot, I think of all these trees holding onto each other for dear life just a few feet below my step.
Two weeks on a Greyhound bus will do something to a woman. She'll play cowgirl to Nashville's honky-tonk, and by the next day she'll be dancing at a Laredo nightclub. She might sweat it out in the desert while locals moan and wail into karaoke machines, or sit poolside among saguaro cactus and so much sand. There's the beaches of San Diego, with body-building cancer-crusaders and street kids with eccentric stories; LA county with its studio lights and mechanical bulls; and Santa Cruz: ah, Santa Cruz.
All that, to find oneself nestled in a bunch of ancient trees at an overnight Yurok tribal dance intended to heal a sick child. Ceremonial fires, regalia dating back hundreds of years, chants as old as the salmon running in the rivers. And for tomorrow, a protest in Portland to shut down Klamath River's dams; the dams that make the salmon float belly-up in too-shallow and too-warm water. It's a grab at the old ways, at the sacred life-cycle and livelihood of an ancient people who know these trees, and those fish, and the river. I'm just along for the ride.
And what can there be, after that?
Here's a scary fact: about 10 percent of American teenagers drop out of high school, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And while teachers, government officials, and parents are busy sorting out what drives them to leave, one organization thinks the problem might be as simple as a change of scenery. How do you make students want to stay in school? In a word: decorate.