I would love more readers.
Know anybody? If so, please send me their e-mail address, and I'll add them to my list...which, by the way, is growing, not by leaps and bounds, yet with the occasional leap and random bound, it's lurching its way along.
My intent is to keep this going for the duration. In my Hollywood days I used to day dream that one day, if I wanted to write about a blade of grass I could. Well, I am one lucky Jewish guy from Baltimore because I do that now. Of course, Hollywood paid handsomely, and a blade of grass doesn't pay at all, not even bupkus. Quid quo pro, right? Always the trade-off. But, hell, the house is paid off, there's gas in the tank, and plenty of gluten loaded food, so, yes, I admit it: I'm happy. I hope you are, too.
MORE READERS,PLEASE!!!
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Sunday, November 17, 2019
The Beauty of A Long Life
I'm not one of those Holy Rollers who preach the gospel of growing older as Glory Years. The Golden Age? Sorry, it's not. More like the Rust Belt. Of course, it has its very real pleasures, however these pleasures are fewer - your imagination might wander but your body stays put - and the penalties greater. I've taken falls in my lifetime with barely a bruise that would have pulverized me had I taken one this morning. Still, have all the fun you can because, why not? It's been a long and rambunctious ride, and I see no reason to quit.
One of the beauties of a long life is that people come back into it. There are times when you know someone so well you might even die for them. You make room for them in all the minutes of your life, hold them there, hang out, listen to music as if you've been together forever - and then they disappear. It's not abrupt. If this were a movie they would slow fade to black. Decades pass, so they are remembered, if at all, as wisps that dissolve soon after they appear, memories as intense as they are frail.
Lara is one of those people. I first saw her on an early Spring morning thirty years ago. I was standing on the small bridge that spans the creek in front of our house. I don't know what made me turn around - maybe it was a bicycle bell? - but there she was, couldn't have been more than eleven, speeding by on a battered boy's bike, long blonde hair streaming behind her, a wisp of forsythia her headband. I can't remember how we began talking or how Jamie joined us, but the day came when Lara knocked on our door for the first time. She with her mother and her mother's boyfriend had moved into the cabin on the edge of our property that had earlier been a one room schoolhouse. I thought of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" when I first saw them, phosphorescence cavorting in the forest, slender and fetching the way (if you had a strong stomach) Keene paintings were in the sixties, in their own dimension, victims of the city, refugees from daily life. We live way up a small, beautifully isolated valley in the midst of the Catskill State Forest. By coming here they chose Thoreau over Warhol. They had both been on the cusp of that world. Lara's mother, Nancy - cropped blonde hair, a damsel fly on moss - had sung back-up on the 70's spoof hit, "Monster Mash." Her father, (now dead) danced in West Side Story. I don't know what Oliver did. He looked like a jockey, but I've never been sure. The first time I went down there to say hello, he was sitting in the crotch of a maple tree maybe ten feet up, elf-like, and he never did come down. Later on I learned he fantasized being a hobbit. He actually came up here to be a Hobbit! Lara, on the other hand, wanted nothing more in life than to get back to New York City. She'd been born and bred to the rhythms of the streets, and that's where she wanted to be. Jamie and I, a tenth of a mile east, were the next best thing.
She knocked and told us her mother wasn't feeling well, could she come in? The first of many more knocks, the beginning of a relationship neither Jamie nor I had intended nor were we prepared with how deeply we would come to feel for this child, and she for us. Had we invited it? Had I? Had Lara herself put things in motion and kept them there, albeit unconsciously? Basically, she barged into our hearts, and we reciprocated: kite flying, cookie making, walks with Hank, our springer spaniel, snacks, meals, sleepovers, a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay with my niece and nephew...Best of all, Lara favored the bubble baths. There was no water and no tub in the cabin - they drew water from the creek out front - so Lara craved hot, soapy baths more than food or anything else. Anticipation made her giddy, giggly, really silly. She was spending more time at our place than her own. Eventually, it came out that her mother had been very sick and had gotten sicker. Would I please go down there with her?
As long as we'd lived here, I'd never been inside that cabin. Edie Falco and her dog lived there before she was Edie Falco. No running water. No electricity. Compost toilet behind a wooden screen. I was prepared for shtoonk alley, so it was a nice surprise to find it neat and clean and...Minimalist. Any sparser, it would have been empty. Nancy lay on a mattress. The mattress was on the floor. Normally thin, she looked cadaverous, a drastic change from the times I had seen her outside. She whispered she'd contracted girardia from the water in West Kill Creek, but she knew how to treat it. Had she been to a doctor? "I've got what I need," she said patting a box of herbs in plastic containers. "How can I help?" "Lara loves being with you. It makes her happy," she answered.
I told Jamie, "That's not girardia." I'd begun to recognize that gaunt look. It was the mid-80's. AIDS was rampant - the distinctive skeletal faces of its victims. "J, it's AIDS," I said, "Nancy's got AIDS." It didn't take a month. We checked Nancy into Belleview on a floor where every patient was a young man with the face of the young man next to him. Nancy's face. "What am I doing here?", she asked, but, soon, she would return to California with her mother, an aging flower child, and die of it. We stood there at her hospital bed - Nancy so weak, almost inert - the skin on her face, stretched thin, opaque - with Lara, Oliver, and Nancy's mother, knowing that the dreaded question was coming, and it did, "Will you adopt Lara?" Will you take this child as your own who loves you and whom you love? We could not. Time and circumstance were just not right. We had no children, yet, although caring for Lara helped ready us for the ones we have. She sucker punched me. I wasn't prepared for such an abundance of feeling, never even knew it was there. What I felt and feel for Jamie was and is no less intense, but it's not the love for a child, is it? It was agonizing to say no, but we could not say yes. When memory replays this scene, as it does from time to time, I feel just as I did standing at Nancy's sick bed saying, "No", to Lara. Awful. What had happened to her? Where had she gone? What had she become? Was she still alive? When she thinks of me does she loathe my memory?
Cut. Dissolve. Two months ago.
I think I was in the living room. Maybe my office? Jamie comes in with her notebook on facetime and says, "Somebody wants to talk to you." "Tell 'em I'll call back." "You want this," she said, thrusting the notebook forward. Who is it? Some woman. Mid-forties. You want me? No clue. Until I hear her say, "Hi, Stephen," and wave and smile. Jesus! Lara? Lara! Retired Army. Successful marriage. Two kids. Drama teacher. Grown woman. A good life. Lara had never forgotten us, and now she had come back into our lives. She sought us out. She wants to visit. She's remembers how we were back then, how much we cared for her, how much she cared in return. The love we felt was deep and it was real. Her heart was still full of us. Yet, those were troubled days. We just couldn't protect her anymore, but, now, here she is again: strong, loving, capable, ready.
I'm trying to remember what Lara likes to eat, for when she visits. Jamie aims to buy bubble bath, just for the hell of it.
The perk of a long life.
Next!
One of the beauties of a long life is that people come back into it. There are times when you know someone so well you might even die for them. You make room for them in all the minutes of your life, hold them there, hang out, listen to music as if you've been together forever - and then they disappear. It's not abrupt. If this were a movie they would slow fade to black. Decades pass, so they are remembered, if at all, as wisps that dissolve soon after they appear, memories as intense as they are frail.
Lara is one of those people. I first saw her on an early Spring morning thirty years ago. I was standing on the small bridge that spans the creek in front of our house. I don't know what made me turn around - maybe it was a bicycle bell? - but there she was, couldn't have been more than eleven, speeding by on a battered boy's bike, long blonde hair streaming behind her, a wisp of forsythia her headband. I can't remember how we began talking or how Jamie joined us, but the day came when Lara knocked on our door for the first time. She with her mother and her mother's boyfriend had moved into the cabin on the edge of our property that had earlier been a one room schoolhouse. I thought of "A Midsummer's Night Dream" when I first saw them, phosphorescence cavorting in the forest, slender and fetching the way (if you had a strong stomach) Keene paintings were in the sixties, in their own dimension, victims of the city, refugees from daily life. We live way up a small, beautifully isolated valley in the midst of the Catskill State Forest. By coming here they chose Thoreau over Warhol. They had both been on the cusp of that world. Lara's mother, Nancy - cropped blonde hair, a damsel fly on moss - had sung back-up on the 70's spoof hit, "Monster Mash." Her father, (now dead) danced in West Side Story. I don't know what Oliver did. He looked like a jockey, but I've never been sure. The first time I went down there to say hello, he was sitting in the crotch of a maple tree maybe ten feet up, elf-like, and he never did come down. Later on I learned he fantasized being a hobbit. He actually came up here to be a Hobbit! Lara, on the other hand, wanted nothing more in life than to get back to New York City. She'd been born and bred to the rhythms of the streets, and that's where she wanted to be. Jamie and I, a tenth of a mile east, were the next best thing.
She knocked and told us her mother wasn't feeling well, could she come in? The first of many more knocks, the beginning of a relationship neither Jamie nor I had intended nor were we prepared with how deeply we would come to feel for this child, and she for us. Had we invited it? Had I? Had Lara herself put things in motion and kept them there, albeit unconsciously? Basically, she barged into our hearts, and we reciprocated: kite flying, cookie making, walks with Hank, our springer spaniel, snacks, meals, sleepovers, a fishing trip on the Chesapeake Bay with my niece and nephew...Best of all, Lara favored the bubble baths. There was no water and no tub in the cabin - they drew water from the creek out front - so Lara craved hot, soapy baths more than food or anything else. Anticipation made her giddy, giggly, really silly. She was spending more time at our place than her own. Eventually, it came out that her mother had been very sick and had gotten sicker. Would I please go down there with her?
As long as we'd lived here, I'd never been inside that cabin. Edie Falco and her dog lived there before she was Edie Falco. No running water. No electricity. Compost toilet behind a wooden screen. I was prepared for shtoonk alley, so it was a nice surprise to find it neat and clean and...Minimalist. Any sparser, it would have been empty. Nancy lay on a mattress. The mattress was on the floor. Normally thin, she looked cadaverous, a drastic change from the times I had seen her outside. She whispered she'd contracted girardia from the water in West Kill Creek, but she knew how to treat it. Had she been to a doctor? "I've got what I need," she said patting a box of herbs in plastic containers. "How can I help?" "Lara loves being with you. It makes her happy," she answered.
I told Jamie, "That's not girardia." I'd begun to recognize that gaunt look. It was the mid-80's. AIDS was rampant - the distinctive skeletal faces of its victims. "J, it's AIDS," I said, "Nancy's got AIDS." It didn't take a month. We checked Nancy into Belleview on a floor where every patient was a young man with the face of the young man next to him. Nancy's face. "What am I doing here?", she asked, but, soon, she would return to California with her mother, an aging flower child, and die of it. We stood there at her hospital bed - Nancy so weak, almost inert - the skin on her face, stretched thin, opaque - with Lara, Oliver, and Nancy's mother, knowing that the dreaded question was coming, and it did, "Will you adopt Lara?" Will you take this child as your own who loves you and whom you love? We could not. Time and circumstance were just not right. We had no children, yet, although caring for Lara helped ready us for the ones we have. She sucker punched me. I wasn't prepared for such an abundance of feeling, never even knew it was there. What I felt and feel for Jamie was and is no less intense, but it's not the love for a child, is it? It was agonizing to say no, but we could not say yes. When memory replays this scene, as it does from time to time, I feel just as I did standing at Nancy's sick bed saying, "No", to Lara. Awful. What had happened to her? Where had she gone? What had she become? Was she still alive? When she thinks of me does she loathe my memory?
Cut. Dissolve. Two months ago.
I think I was in the living room. Maybe my office? Jamie comes in with her notebook on facetime and says, "Somebody wants to talk to you." "Tell 'em I'll call back." "You want this," she said, thrusting the notebook forward. Who is it? Some woman. Mid-forties. You want me? No clue. Until I hear her say, "Hi, Stephen," and wave and smile. Jesus! Lara? Lara! Retired Army. Successful marriage. Two kids. Drama teacher. Grown woman. A good life. Lara had never forgotten us, and now she had come back into our lives. She sought us out. She wants to visit. She's remembers how we were back then, how much we cared for her, how much she cared in return. The love we felt was deep and it was real. Her heart was still full of us. Yet, those were troubled days. We just couldn't protect her anymore, but, now, here she is again: strong, loving, capable, ready.
I'm trying to remember what Lara likes to eat, for when she visits. Jamie aims to buy bubble bath, just for the hell of it.
The perk of a long life.
Next!
Saturday, November 9, 2019
My Life Is Like A Word On The Tip Of My Tongue
My life is like a word on the tip of my tongue: I've...almost...got...it! It's there. It's there. I've just about...I've almost...Oops. Slipped away. OK. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. Breathe. OK. Better?
I was fifteen, failing in school, face full of sclurbs, clothes from the "husky" rack, desperate to play freshman baseball, failing to make the cut, no drivers license - life was a mess! Better times had to be out there somewhere. Lordy, did I ever look! Everywhere! Nevertheless, it seemed all my part-time earnings went towards Acnomel, an anti-zitz product, designed to make my pimples disappear. It didn't. I was getting nowhere. One day, my father, who was a very funny guy, said to me, "Son, one of these days you're going to find yourself, and, when you do, you're going to be awfully disappointed." He smiled, cleared his throat, tapped the ash off his cigar. He'd always clear his throat after a joke - our signal to laugh. Years later, backstage after the first performance of my first play, my father, nattily dressed in his light gray Chesterfield overcoat with the black velvet collar, put his arm around me, smiled, and said, "I guess you're not going to be a bum after all." Funny guy. He died two months later.
So, where does that find me now?
What a blessing: to be sure of one self! Happy with the face one sees while shaving. Content with one's credit rating. Certain of one's sexuality. A team jersey for each season. The absolute auto. A wife who still likes you. Life is good. I'm wondering if I know anybody like that? One or the other, yes, maybe two, three, but all six at once? Give that man a sticky bun.That man, of course, is not me, not yet, maybe not never, but I'm working on it. The father of a dear friend once advised, "It's a great life if you don't weaken."
So, here's what I want to know: when does the Will go? Is suicide the end of Will or the ultimate act of Will? I recently read about a 95 year old woman who gladly, with all her reason intact, chose to starve herself to death, simply and happily stopped eating. She also stopped drinking water though moistened her dry lips with wet gauze. It took six days. She was cheerful and thankful until shortly before her end. Apparently, this is not so unusual. Others have done it. You die by your own agency, your choice, your time, in a way that appears to cause the least amount of trauma to every one. Did she just give up or did she muster an exercise of incredible will? Does one make a decision to give up, or does it happen when gravity finally pries your grip off finger by finger? I'm clinging to the top of a sheer stone face with a drop of a thousand feet. Can't pull up. Have to hang on. Fingers cramp. Arms ache. Have to. Muscles get weak.Will I never let go? Will I give in and accept, what? The Fall. The Fall? And just how does one face that? I stop the dream before I need to make any rash decisions.
I was fifteen, failing in school, face full of sclurbs, clothes from the "husky" rack, desperate to play freshman baseball, failing to make the cut, no drivers license - life was a mess! Better times had to be out there somewhere. Lordy, did I ever look! Everywhere! Nevertheless, it seemed all my part-time earnings went towards Acnomel, an anti-zitz product, designed to make my pimples disappear. It didn't. I was getting nowhere. One day, my father, who was a very funny guy, said to me, "Son, one of these days you're going to find yourself, and, when you do, you're going to be awfully disappointed." He smiled, cleared his throat, tapped the ash off his cigar. He'd always clear his throat after a joke - our signal to laugh. Years later, backstage after the first performance of my first play, my father, nattily dressed in his light gray Chesterfield overcoat with the black velvet collar, put his arm around me, smiled, and said, "I guess you're not going to be a bum after all." Funny guy. He died two months later.
So, where does that find me now?
What a blessing: to be sure of one self! Happy with the face one sees while shaving. Content with one's credit rating. Certain of one's sexuality. A team jersey for each season. The absolute auto. A wife who still likes you. Life is good. I'm wondering if I know anybody like that? One or the other, yes, maybe two, three, but all six at once? Give that man a sticky bun.That man, of course, is not me, not yet, maybe not never, but I'm working on it. The father of a dear friend once advised, "It's a great life if you don't weaken."
So, here's what I want to know: when does the Will go? Is suicide the end of Will or the ultimate act of Will? I recently read about a 95 year old woman who gladly, with all her reason intact, chose to starve herself to death, simply and happily stopped eating. She also stopped drinking water though moistened her dry lips with wet gauze. It took six days. She was cheerful and thankful until shortly before her end. Apparently, this is not so unusual. Others have done it. You die by your own agency, your choice, your time, in a way that appears to cause the least amount of trauma to every one. Did she just give up or did she muster an exercise of incredible will? Does one make a decision to give up, or does it happen when gravity finally pries your grip off finger by finger? I'm clinging to the top of a sheer stone face with a drop of a thousand feet. Can't pull up. Have to hang on. Fingers cramp. Arms ache. Have to. Muscles get weak.Will I never let go? Will I give in and accept, what? The Fall. The Fall? And just how does one face that? I stop the dream before I need to make any rash decisions.
Saturday, November 2, 2019
To Saunter
To Saunter
It’s late October yet it feels as it did last May when it was finally comfortable enough to keep on walking, simply walking, rather than risking a busted hip racing back inside the house with an arm load of firewood. I’m not interested in power walking, or my heartbeat, or my personal best, or your personal best, or a gluten-free breakfast, or pushing through pain (Haven’t we all had enough of that one?). I just meander, poke around, change direction, look up, down, stop, start. Attention to detail. Which detail? Doesn’t matter. One is always there. The goal is to…saunter. A la Sainte Terre. To the Holy Land. A pilgrim walking to Jerusalem. A sacred journey.
Now, I’m neither proposing nor pretending to go that far, but there are wonderful words, ancient words, abracadabra sounding words from all the British Isles that evoke what I do with whimsy and the ecstasy of morning dew. I love to “doddle”, to walk slowly and pleasurably. I can also “dander” or “nuddle”, walk in a dreamy manner, with my head down, like Christopher Robin searching for a toadstool. I could also “soodle”, if I wanted. My choice. Any one of those will do. You get my meaning.
60 degrees. Days like this won’t be around much longer. The hawk is on the way, so I sauntered forth on what could be the last of these junkets for a while. Joe, my pure black, sixty pound, brilliantly goofy, doodle loped ahead. We headed north towards the foot of Evergreen Mountain, an uphill walk that gradually increases grade. Easy. We cleared high brush and reached a spot bordering the woods, yards from a briskly running brook where the sounds were the same sounds for as long as this land has been – the very same sounds - breeze, some scurrying under brush, sometimes thunder, rushing water - the same as forever. Breeze and brook. The caw of a crow, the whisper of an owl, the bleat of a deer. A deep-throated, drawn out squawk jarred me out of whatever state I was in, picked up an echo, and kicked it back. I swear it sounded like a shofar, the haunting wail of the ram’s horn sounded by observant Jews to begin and end the High Holidays. Who knows? Some cultures might say the brook knows, the trees know, the breeze knows, but me? What do I know?
One thing I do know: I love being alone in a place where no one else in the world knows I am. Alone. No one. Not forever. Not even for very long, a month, long enough to feel cushioned by the world round me. Current geography has altered this somewhat. One is no longer in the middle of thousands of miles, and it’s not likely one’s going to get there again any time soon. Still, I can wander out my door and settle in somewhere with the understanding, at least until dinner, that I’m the only one who knows where I am, assuming, of course, that I do. Selfish? The people I love know I won’t stay away too long.
Many years ago, the Hollywood years, I took off for Alaska while I was in the midst of writing a script. My plan was to follow a trap line deep into the bush and stay there for a while. Pre-cell phone. My producer wanted to make sure we kept in touch. The phrase “off the grid” had not yet been invented, so when I explained to him how completely out of reach, I’d be, it really rocked him, dazed, like a fighter who had just taken a good punch. “Aren’t you even gonna read the trades?”, he asked, attempting to process what he’d just heard. Was that a quiver? He could barely get the words out. It took me a second to realize the man was serious. I laughed a friendly laugh because I didn’t want to appear as condescending as I was actually feeling, but, really, I thought, why would I want to read the trades? That last sentence seems to explain my Hollywood career.
Put me in the middle of Alaska. Put me anywhere. I am never in the middle of nowhere. I am where I am. No matter where that is. It’s a gift, a perk from birth. Really, it is. I am safe. It’s not a lonely feeling at all. There is no yearning. Perhaps that’s why I need it? Trekking across Alaska there were times when I was many miles from another human being. Truth is, I didn’t really think about it. My feet hurt too much. It was hard enough moving one of them after the other.
One night – late, dark – I stopped where I was, laid out my caribou skin, my sleeping bag on top of that, shed my boots and climbed in. It so happened, that particular night, I had a joint in my shirt pocket. Somebody back in Eagle must’ve slipped it to me. I can’t remember what I ate or if I ate, but I do remember lying back under a sky flush to the horizon with Northern Lights wafting in the solar wind like opera house curtains, firing up that joint with a waterproof match, and sending its bewitching smoke skywards. I’m surprised I didn’t levitate. Maybe, I did. Maybe I came as close to Heaven as I might ever come. Maybe I was actually there, you know, just passing through. Fine weed can make one a believer, but, of course, you already know that.
October, 2019
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