I had my second boxing lesson with Ray Pace Monday. Another chance to build the skill set and to listen to Ray talk about moving and hitting. Learning boxing is like learning to talk to strangers-you already know how to do it just not that well. You won't relax enough to get better at it until you practice, practice, practice. So I was walking the two blocks to Go Time through the frigid temps in my down igloo parka and trying to let my shoulders loose and feel the punches come out of them, but my backpack was digging in and I was keyed up and it wasn't working...

It's -9 degrees here in Chicago, the Bears lost the Super Bowl last night, I have been in a writing funk, and the Bleak Late-Winter has officially arrived. It's so cold my face still hurts from walking to the coffee shop. On the writing front my mind has been filling up with half-ideas complete with half-titles, half-characters, half-mantras, half-conclusions and I have not even been half-writing them. It's that kind of half-assed literary life that will drive a brother half-crazy if he's not careful. It's not like I haven't been trying to punch my way out...

In Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues , he's singing from the perspective of a guy in prison hearing or seeing the train go by and imagining all the possibilities of going with it. The movie Walk the Line tells us that Cash composed the song when he was in the Air Force in Germany. Who knows? Maybe a train went by the barracks. The train goes right by my apartment too, and it has an effect on me I can't quite explain. I'm speaking of a freight train now, not a commuter train, or a light rail, or an Amtrak, but a good old fashioned east-west freight train...

I had my first boxing lesson today. I've always wanted to learn how to box, but I've never been able to find a way to do it that made sense, apart from in the backyard of a college party house wearing a motorcycle helmet. That made sense at the time. Ever since I formally retired at the age of 7 from my frontyard boxing career, my experience has really been limited to getting brained by brawny friends. The retirement came after my very first fight. My cousin Henry Cherry egged me and a neighborhood kid into going a couple bare knuckle rounds. I was feeling like Sugar Ray til I got walloped in the stomach, lost my wind, and decided boxing was kind of dumb...