On Balance, There’s a Lot to Be Said for Chaos

Even without the push of a New Year’s resolution behind me, I had come to theorize of late that a more balanced life might be a good thing.

So one recent Sunday, I embarked on a two-part mission that looked like a lead-pipe cinch for attaining balance, harmony and integration.

Our first stop was to see a display of suiseki, or viewing stones, sponsored by the California Aiseki Kai, a suiseki club founded by Orange County resident Larry Ragle. These viewing stones are shaped by the winds and waters of Mother Nature, who works many thousands of years to fashion each stone. The rocks are sought out in their quiet natural haunts by enthusiasts, then brought home and displayed either inside or outside, depending mostly on the size of the rock. A top-rate suiseki is not cut, polished or worked by man in any way. It often is displayed on a stand or in a setting that subtly enhances its mass, energy and presence.

Looking at rocks is an approximate opposite of excitement, which is precisely what the Japanese intended as the art of suiseki appreciation developed over the centuries. (The Japanese did not invent the activity, but caught the fever from the Chinese back around the First Century.) In Japanese culture, a prized suiseki is given its own tokonoma, or viewing alcove in the home, in front of which the harried denizen of a place like Tokyo may sit and contemplate the stone rather than the frenzied city around him. The stones are meant to invite a meditative state, in which such qualities as contemplation, isolation, minimalism and serenity can be experienced. The stone “is” whatever the viewer’s imagination says it is.

I can vouch that, even with scores of people traipsing past to look at 150 of these suiseki (in a brief display that has since closed), the stones induced in me the very qualities mentioned above. At the heart of any stone is silence, and this silence surrounds each stone like an aura.

But the quietude is an inclusive one; each rock invites the viewer in, and allows him or her to participate by appreciating its, well, rockness, and by letting the imagination flourish within the welcoming silence. Some suggest mountains, near or far. Some suggest islands, some animals, some people, some not much at all. All of them emanate a specific world of possibility. Lest any of this sound a bit hyperserious, take note: Basically, you look at a bitchen rock and like it.

So, centered by calm and introspection, refreshed by serenity and the pleasures of the imagination, we loaded into the old gas-guzzler and floored it to the Hollywood Palladium to watch Oscar De La Hoya’s third professional prizefight.

Just so you know, Oscar De La Hoya is no relation to Oscar De La Renta but was the gifted gold-medalist in the lightweight division of last year’s Barcelona Olympics. He is a “product” (as they say in the boxing game) of East Los Angeles, thus extremely popular in these parts. He is talented, bright, cute as a bug and possesses in the ring a killer’s instinct that would make a hit man blush.

What boxing has in common with suiseki can be summed up in one word: nothing. There’s nothing like a professional boxing venue to return one’s senses to the adrenal, the carnal, the atavistic. And as venues go, the Hollywood Palladium is just about perfect. A splendidly long-in-the-tooth building on Sunset with an illustrious history of rock ‘n’ roll (it’s now a dance club), it’s the setting for occasional near-riots, the best homemade chicken burritos I’ve had in months and an actual coat-check area staffed by a real person. There are chandeliers in the auditorium and a guy in the men’s lounge who hands you paper towels.

Fight crowds are an interesting lot: plenty of broken noses, studly guys, beautiful women. What they have in common is a love of the boxing spectacle (except for at least one young lady who remarked to my companion while in the Palladium “powder room” that earlier in the day she was “so happy to have almost gotten out of this”).

The fight crowd is, of course, testosterone-heavy, which is why promoters get nearly naked women to carry the round cards in the ring between rounds, and encourage sponsors such as Budweiser to unleash their “girls” to sign posters and generally provide some antidote to all the ugly men like me who fill the seats. (The guy next to me studiously wrote down the number “2” on his program as the busty girl paraded ‘round the ring with her card. I’m assuming he believed this to be her phone number.)

So, there we were to see if De La Hoya could preview some of the greatness that many observers of boxing have suggested he might achieve.

Instead, Oscar flattened an unworthy opponent in less than two rounds, and that was that. It may be noted, however, that even in this brief skirmish, he made very clear the skills he already has developed: astonishing power, ferocious concentration and a workmanlike poise that seems almost premature for his professional experience of just three fights (though as an amateur he was 225-5). He also looked stationary at times, and easy to hit, which was the furthest thing from the mind of his cautious opponent, Paris Alexander.

After the fight, we went to a bar, but the bar was closed. Parked streetside by the darkened establishment, we compared notes on suiseki and boxing, trying to assay whether one can achieve a balanced life by scheduling contradictory activities. If you think about it, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, something on the order of chasing martinis with espresso (with which I’ve never had a problem). I did not feel inwardly harmonious, but I did feel great.

I began to wonder if balance is all it’s cracked up to be. Then in my rearview mirror I saw the very opposite, the very antithesis of balance: a man sitting in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, blanketed next to his sweetie, enjoying the cold winter night as the horses clip-clopped down the boulevard. He was talking to someone on his cellular phone. To hell with balance!, this joker seemed to be claiming--do all you can before you sign the final check! And what a heroic figure he was, crucified on the three-point triangle of his lover, his phone mate and the satellite above bouncing its signal back down to the carriage.

At that point I went back to embracing the old disorder, the old comfortable mess of extremes that is life itself. I had failed in my mission, and had a good day instead.