Cover My Bets

Nineteen years ago, tomorrow

You better start keeping your eyes wide open -

 - you never know when you might see something

 A sudden river of light streaming across our kitchen floor

The Agreement

is that, in social networking - and I use the term in its pre-internet sense - in fact, in its most elemental sense, the exchange of pleasantries artfully packed with information entwined with inferred questions - is that one must never reveal more than the most fragmentary glimpse of one's own pain and struggle while sharing benign verbal and visual snapshots of beauty, and affection, and invulnerable comfort and equilibrium.

Jackie, pre-vanity, circa 2000

When's the last time you saw someone you know crying on Facebook? I know why we don't share that. But how great it could be, if we found a way to tell our real stories, that was not just a hideous catalog of misery.

Me? No answers. Just a question.

Here come those goddam year-end reflections again

 - gonna start now and avoid the rush - - eh - -  too late...

1) I think one definition of happiness may be that at the end of a weekend (or holiday break, or vacation),  you're eager to return to work. Of course, this may also mean your private life is miserable. I'll have to get back to you on that.

2) Something my wife feels strongly about - and with which I've come to agree, after some years-  is that party or dinner guests should NOT help with cleanup, beyond maybe taking out the trash or recycling. A good host/hostess has a system for post-bash cleanup, and a guest's "help" usually throws a wrench in the works. Just relax and enjoy!

3) It's 100% true, today and for all time, that we don't know what tomorrow will bring, so expressing your affection and respect for those you care for, without delay, is almost always a great idea. The exception may be when it's really late and significant amounts of alcohol have been consumed. I'm not saying this invalidates the sentiment, but I'm pretty sure the recipients of the warm feelings are likely to see them as inflated. Use your best judgement. (I think most of us past the age of forty have worked this out, but it probably bears repeating).

4) Part of the reason that being kind and patient is often so difficult is our fear that we're the only ones trying to do it. You know what? So what. Do it because it's a better way to live, not in the hope that it'll change anyone or anything besides yourself.

When I said that it wasn't about the presents,

I didn't mean to say that presents aren't fun! Especially when you make an educated guess on what they may want and you get it right. Payoff: big warm smiles.

"All he lost he shall regain"

Learning by rote is not just effective for low-level knowledge like multiplication tables or state capitals, I've come to believe. I think it's a good way to remember and reinforce more complex and subtle concepts as well. Like:

Our circumstances - our health, finances, relationships, and every other aspect of our lives that we spend time and energy thinking about - are whatever they are. When they are not what we'd like them to be, we typically feel bad - anxious, sad, angry, confused, and every possible blend or combination of these states. 

But luckily, we can sometimes find ourselves suddenly distracted or lifted up out of out of our dark places and feel lighter and content, if only for a short time. And the interesting thing is that in most cases, there's been no change in our circumstances. The bad's still bad, the good's still good.

So, it would seem that at least some suffering is voluntary. And if so, we have the ability to be happier by just choosing to not to suffer.

Repeat as needed.

22nd of December - the first run-through

A day early posting the lyrics and a day late posting the performance - - -

Not Dark Yet - no, wait, it is.

Most everyone I know - including some friends who are Conservative, and whose perceptions I may question, but still value - are in despair at the state of the Union, and some at the state of all the people of Earth.

Unfounded anxiety? Oh, absolutely not.

You want the good news or the bad news?

The good? Historically, EVERY civilization has expressed near-suicidal angst at the downward slope of their reality. Going WAY back. And yet - we're still here.

The bad? And dismiss me if you will, at which point we part ways:  the sustainability of anything resembling a middle class life-style - and maybe even the wealthy - is now much more uncertain than it has ever been. Unlimited energy and open space - the premises upon which our cosmic-teen-on-crack practices have always been based - are about to go the way of the dodo. How fitting.

Running Out of Dreams

Again, hope this is new to you:

The 22nd of December

(Written one year when Winter Solstice fell on the 22nd...)

Everything's connected (Handle with care)

One of the forms of awareness or intelligence that children - and some adults - mostly lack is the understanding that every one of our actions has consequences. So one of the jobs we as parents (or family members, or teachers) take on is to instill this awareness. And as always, the most compelling evidence we can offer is from our own lives.

And as we do so, it's impossible to avoid reflecting on how well or how poorly we have learned this lesson ourselves.

Each of our lives is created by a fantastically elaborate web of decisions, and one of the truly fascinating things is that some of what seemed like poor choices at the time now prove to have played an utterly unforeseeable and crucial part in the composition of the fabric, and some actions that looked brilliant were likewise equally unforeseeable in their true effect.

And here I am imagining I can see the whole picture at this point.

Taking it slow,

for a change. Usually we get the tree, drive home, wrestle it off the roof of the car, then into the house, onto the stand, and then dive directly into the ornamental extravaganza.

This year, we did the first layer - the lights - all white, at Jackie's request - and then said, hey, let's just dig this phase for a day -

One thing I noticed as we tree-wrangled this fellow - either a) this particular tree was much heavier that those of previous years, b) the Earth's gravitational pull has steadily increased, or c) we're getting old.

It's not about the presents.

December 2008

Seriously. Well, maybe when the kids were real little and were so full of anticipation that they made the whole house vibrate, then, yeah, having a bunch of stuff under the tree felt like something we had to make happen.

This year the tree won't have quite so much company. And just as I felt like this realization was going to hit me in the heart, I became aware of the fact that I was actually OK with it. We're still going to have a nice tree, with all the beautiful ornaments we've gathered over more than thirty years, and some fine meals, and family and friends around us.

I'm not going to lie - 2010 had some awful moments. And it still has a few weeks left; who knows what the hell else it has up its sleeve....but despite it all, at this moment, I feel inexplicably hopeful.

April 29, 1981

As time went on, when I found time to update the journal, I was less oblique, less obscure. More in touch with depicting the day. As opposed to concealing it.

An unexpected benefit of being a husband and father

 - or wife and mother, I'm sure, but I'll speak only of what I know first-hand - is that even when the road gets scary dark and you feel like you can barely put one foot in front of the other, it suddenly occurs to you that the one thing you CAN do is to smile when you get home and not add worrying about you to whatever else they are contending with. And lo and behold; the performance becomes reality. The smile warms its wearer.

All morning outside my window

they've been trimming the sycamores that line our street. I got nothing against tree-trimming - being married to a gardener, I know that's how you keep plants, bushes and trees happy - but between the chainsaws and the giant wood-chipper, the noise level was almost comical. (I said "almost.")

And rather than becoming less piercing and present as time wore on, the racket actually seemed to resonate more painfully, as if the bones of my skull and jaws were vibrating in horrible harmony with the machines.

And then - they finished. They drove off. And now I can hear the little sounds of the house - the ticking of my office clock,  the distant whoosh of the furnace as the heat kicks on. My heart begins to slow down a bit.

Wish I wasn't so easily distracted, but I prefer to describe it as being inherently interested in my surroundings. Yeah, that's the ticket!

The bad thing about playing a great gig on a Sunday afternoon

is that re-entry into the working week the next day is that much more painful. But that's the deal I made, now, isn't it.

Gerry Tenney, Kurt Regas, 12/12/10

Joe Saah, 12/12/10

Matt Parker, Gerry Tenney, 12/12/10

Parties, continued

My daughter reminded me - indirectly - that my comments on parties left out a critical element. An omission I can't explain: the parties that Teri and I have hosted through the years. As Jackie put it - with great accuracy - "No one who comes here wants to leave."

The girl speaks the truth. This is not bragging; this is a statement of fact. We have never hosted a party that was not larger than we anticipated, or that did not go on longer than we had planned.

Bear in mind, my wife is a gifted hostess, not just in terms of laying out a full table of great food and drink, but in attending to her guests with genuine care. And I hold up my end in the "gift of gab" department (hey, we are Italian/Irish/Jewish - you want reserve, pal around with Episcopalians). And if any of you sing and play music and are not shy about it - let the games begin.

So this is a notion still not full-baked. Bear with me.

"The Key to Happiness is broken off in the lock -

Use the window."

Wrote that when I was around twenty-one. I was feverishly trying to finish up my Senior Project at Bard, and my collection of writings - one short story and maybe a dozen poems - was looking really skimpy to me. So I called this a poem and included it. Hey, one more page.

But even at the highest tide of my post-adolescent ego I could not convince myself that this was anything more than a wise-crack in fortune-cookie drag.

Funny thing, though - reading back through that collection, some of the more "serious" work has not aged well at all, while some of the lightweight bits still seem fresh. Good notion to reflect on, I tell myself......

About Parties

When we were young, like in high school, throwing a party was truly exciting. Nerve-wracking, in fact, because we could only throw a real party - loud, intoxicated, sexual - when parents were away. So a party was dangerous, illicit, and there were more than a few that got out of control or got you busted by your parents when you didn't cover your tracks well enough (like one time when we thought we'd cleaned up pretty good - except for the dried spray of beer that Tyler had spewed from the second-story landing, over our living room wall).

Grown-up parties are not as much fun - how could they be? We gather. We drink, or not. We talk. We eat, or not. At a company party - like the one I went to in the hills outside San Jose last night - there's also the fine line between shop talk and, well, everything else.

But for all my grousing, here's the funny thing - I almost always have a good time. I just don't have the pleasure of anticipation, since, again, we're not getting away with anything and no real surprises are in store. But the gathering, the lights, the feast (gotta have the feast) - these are still fundamental. And of course, for better or worse, I'm a born talker. And talk - even more than food and drink - is what the party runs on.

Brand New Moon

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

SM journal pages, 12/9/1980

One day, John came home from Kindergarten

and asked if we were Jewish. Well, I said, your grandma Lil is Jewish, so you could be.... (trailing off here...) - - why do you ask?

Turns out that as part of his class's discussions about holiday traditions and stories, his teacher Mrs. Chew had told them all the story of Hanukkah, including what must have been a very moving account of the miraculous oil that lasted eight days during the revolt of the Maccabees. Hence his strong desire to light a menorah in our home.

John did not covert to Judaism, but we did get him a menorah, which we've lit every year since then, going on twenty years now. Not saying it's much more than a secular family ritual at this point, but, hey, we light candles, we hug....I'll take it.

While wife and daughter were still sleeping,

I got up, brought in the Sunday papers, fed some of the cats, showered, then went out to pick up our traditional half-dozen Sunday bagels. The golden morning would quickly fade back to that chilly slate grey that Winter seems to prefer, but at least I got a taste of light.

I came back and had another one of those fleeting moments of contentment as I ground coffee beans and sliced and toasted half an onion bagel; for a moment, there was nowhere I'd have rather been; nothing else I'd have rather been doing.

Moment of Weakness

For The Characters' final recording project, we were down to an acoustic trio; kind of a quiet "see you later".

Note: No visuals here to speak of. You can take this opportunity to rest your eyes.

June 25, 1973

The start of my second tour as a camp counselor at Camp Wel-Met in Narrowsburg, NY:

I distinctly remember an afternoon

in I think July or August of 1976, when I was feeling down, for whatever seemingly important reasons at the time, and as I sat near the corner of Claremont and College in Oakland and watched assorted groups of people strolling along, I thought to myself, "they look carefree and happy," then wondered - for real - "Will I ever be carefree and happy again?"

Bear in mind: this was a beautiful summer day. I was 23 years old, in near-perfect health, had all my hair, and since I didn't own a car and walked nearly everywhere, I was in just about the best shape of my life.
And yet I was able to create a state of concrete misery for myself, out of pretty much thin air.

How enjoyable it would be to go back in time and kick that bonehead in the ass.