Spent a Little Time On the Mountain

Things are winding down at work - people are mentally checking out in anticipation of the last real holiday weekend for months - so it's a good time to gather my thoughts at year's end.

A large, strong basket is required, as always; I have a lot of thoughts. Not all of the highest quality or durability, mind you, but plentiful.

This year had some terrible moments. Let me get that out of the way first. Last March, I lost another close friend, by his own hand. It was so shocking to me that I felt that I had gotten knocked into a different universe, a much harsher, weirder one. This dislocation was made worse by our deepening money worries and the unavoidable harshness of physical aging. There were some days that it took every atom of my concentration and will to get myself out of bed each morning and make it through the day.

If it weren't for my wife and my children, I'm not sure I would have.

But even at the worst, there was laughter, good meals, sunlight, our garden, music, funny TV shows, great books, cute cats. And I made my way from each tiny island of happiness to the next.

The tide began to turn when, at the end of August, I finally escaped from the single worst job I've ever held in my adult life. Without exaggeration, everyone there - aside from the owner - was profoundly anxious and depressed most of every single day, and once I knew how bad it really was - when the spell I had cast on myself wore off - it was like each hour there cost me a little piece of my soul.

Anyway. Enough of that. Point is, I did escape. Is my new job perfect? Are we now financially solvent? Have we stopped aging, and has all our pain vanished? And have our lost loved ones returned?

No. At the risk of repeating myself or stating the obvious (whoops, too late), we each have to find peace of mind and strength in the simple, imperfect moments our lives are made of. And one thing I find myself proud of as I head towards my sixtieth year of this life is that I'm getting just a little bit better at that every year I manage to stay above ground.

The secret to raising children...

is still something my wife and I don't possess. And even with our youngest being 16 and our oldest 26, believe me, the work is not done. As a friend (and parent, and childcare center operator) once told us, little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems.

We've been very fortunate (KNOCK ON WOOD) in that our kids are healthy, smart and beautiful (and I speak with the utmost objectivity), but before everyone's eyes roll out of their heads, they also have imperfections, they still need our guidance, and we still lose sleep over them.

We've always felt that we were good parents, because our family is close, we enjoy each others' company, and our kids have rarely if ever gotten into any real trouble that required us to punish them (again, KOW).

After having had a lot of time to reflect on this, we now acknowledge that although we work hard at being good parents and we adore our children, the extent to which they are turning out well is as much a matter of luck, of genetics and circumstance, than from any particular skill on our part.

However, there are a couple of things we've learned along the way that are worth sharing. Mind, we don't claim we invented these, or that we put them into action anywhere close to as often we we should, but that doesn't mean they're not powerful:

1) Saying No to everything - severely controlling every aspect of your children's lives - is relatively easy, in the sense that it doesn't require a lot of thought. So is saying Yes to everything. Considering every decision on a case-by-case basis, though, is much more difficult. But it's what you need to do, as much as possible.

And -

2) Ulimately, you don't have control over your child's actions or their feelings. The only person whose feelings and actions you CAN control is you. And you need to maintain that control or you won't be able to help anyone, including yourself.`

Food Fight

Writing about food is difficult, even dangerous, because most people hold extremely strong views on every aspect: What's good food? Where should we get it? How to prepare it? How to serve it? How much should we eat? Who to share it with? How to save it? And on. And on.

It may not be as inflammatory a topic as religion or politics - I think that it's a little easier to find some consensus - but the fact that it affects and is affected by just about every facet of human civilization makes it hard to even take on the topic. Especially when some many have done it so well (or at least entertainingly) for so long.

So let me start with a question: why does food that we know is bad for us - or at least bad unless eaten in fairly tiny amounts - taste so good? Wouldn't evolution have helped us develop cravings for healthy foods by now, and aversions to fat, salt, and sugar akin to our revulsion towards bitter or foul substances?

But I do realize that in evolutionary terms, we haven't had nearly enough time to deal with the results of our ability to cultivate, store, transport, and even outright manufacture food.

More's the pity.

So plainly, some other adaptive mechanism needs to be developed. But even this is beyond our ability, because even with all of the research and discussion on diet and nutrition that's taken place in the past decades, there's less agreement and more contention on these topics than on any supposedly objective discipline besides economics.

Yet even in regards to money, there are fundamentals that I don't think will lead to fistfights: Save at least a little as you go along. Spend at least a little less, especially on shit you don't need. That sort of thing.

In food terms, that might translate to: Prepare more meals from scratch, when you can. Use fresh ingredients, when you can. Eat a little less (and walk around a little more). And share your food, whenever you can. Let's start there, eh?

November 23, 1977

Words

In my last semester of college, I took an introductory course in linguistics. It was fantastically exciting to learn that there was an entire field devoted to the study of language, how it arose, how it evolved, and most of all how it affects the way human beings think and feel and remember. How we see the world, each other, ourselves.

Because as far back as I could remember - age three or four - I had been thinking about all these things. So, again, to learn that this was an area that people had been working in and developing an entire science around, for centuries - well, I guess my feelings were, "where have you been all my life?"

I've had to deal with the fact that most people are not terribly curious about language, spoken or written. And in fact the earliest linguists had to acknowledge this lack of caring, or even awareness on most people's part.

So the paradox is - and I still live it every day - that caring and thinking deeply about the way we communicate with the world can actually isolate you.

Because it makes you a freak.

So in order to survive, you have to train yourself to accept that most people don't care that much about the nature of language, let alone the mechanics of it - spelling, grammar, punctuation, and of course, the actual choice of what words to use when.

And you know what? That's OK. It's taken me all these years to realize that if I'm so damn smart, I should use some of that so-called intelligence to listen to people more carefully and figure out what they're really trying to say.

This Week in 1982. In My Brain.

Guess you could say

that I haven't had as much time on my hands since I started my new job. Aaaaaand you'd be correct. I'm working nine, nine and a half hour days, with a half-hour for lunch some days. Some days none.

And I'll tell you - I haven't worked this hard for a while, and I'm still getting the hang of the new gig and all its gears and levers. So I go home cross-eyed tired every day.

But am I complaining? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Like I've said elsewhere, if the work is even mildly interesting, if the company is even moderately well-run, and if there's even just a possibility of making decent money, I'm miles ahead of where I've been for the past three years.

But three years of treading water and living in alternating states of dread and delusion did take a certain toll - aside from the financial aspect. Namely, I did lose some stamina, and maybe some ability to focus.

Hence the profound exhaustion. I'm like a runner getting back on his feet after a extended period of forced inactivity. But every day, it gets a little better.

The End of the World, Continued

There are few constants throughout the history of human expression, but one observation has surely been expressed in every language, past and present: "Everything used to be better; the world's going to hell."

I think everyone eventually realizes the timelessness (thus worthlessness) of this sentiment, though that realization never seems to curtail anyone from continuing to share the observation with anyone who'll listen. Especially with our contemporaries, since they're the ones most likely to vehemently agree.

But I'm not talking about just the decline of the human race, I'm talking about the end. Last call. Game fucking Over.

And for me, this seemed real and imminent for a long time - from the time I was eight or nine, till I was about nineteen.

At first, it was just a vague foreboding - don't laugh; little kids can feel foreboding - brought on by overhearing snippets of grown-up conversation. Something about Russians and missiles and fallout shelters. Then, as I began to read comic books, and later science fiction novels and short stories, the theme was reinforced continually.

Of course, since I was still pretty young, this sense of the nearness of a cosmic cliff awaiting us all had no real impact on my day-to-day life, partly because of my secret belief that I was either a mutant or an alien and so probably exempt from any approaching human extinction.

As I entered adolescence, though, I began to take the idea of The End much more seriously. Much more personally. They had killed most of the leaders I admired, and most of the artists I loved were doing themselves in, fast or slow. We were busily wiping out whole towns and tribes in Southeast Asia, and all the adults I knew seemed either delusional or catatonic.

Add to this the typical teenage hormone explosion. Then, just to make it more interesting, mix in some - OK, many - other chemicals. It becomes easy to see how I could peer into the future back then and see....Nothing.

And by this time, I was old enough to have some of my behavior affected by this perspective. For example, I only took the SATs because it was easier to just take them than to try to explain to my parents that I wasn't going to college, so, you know, what was the point. End of the world and all that.
(I may have actually done better on the test because of my complete lack of seriousness about it).

Well, there were more of those kind of fuckitall choices, but somehow I survived the next few years, wound up in college, and gradually began to grudgingly acknowledge that the world and I could be around for a while, so some longer-term planning might be in order. And it was scary, but also cleansing. Like a fever breaking.

Happiness

(Don't ever say I don't go for the big themes, hear?)

I was thinking about the experience of listening to LP's - that means "Long-Playing" albums, for my younger readers - and I felt a shock when I realized that, beyond questions of pure sound quality or the demise of album artwork and liner notes, there is something more fundamental that has vanished along with the disappearance of the vinyl record album.

It's this: during the heyday of the rock folk jazz pop album, most everyone I knew listened to every song on a record, in sequence, both sides. Because that's the default, when listening to a record - you put it on the turntable, drop the needle, and let it ride.

In light of this listening mode, some musicians (and/or their producers) chose the order of the tracks with great care, in search of the best flow and variety; some even took on the challenge of having the album tracks tell a unified story (with mixed results, but, hey, better to go down swinging, eh?)

In any event, for at least a few years, songwriters and musicians at least did their best to have every album track possess enough substance to not sound lame compared to the other, better-known tracks.

Now - not so much. Although musicians still release collections of new material available to buy and to listen to just like an album, I know that's not the way most people buy or listen to music. I'm not going by industry stats here; I'm just going by my personal knowledge that neither of my kids has purchased more than one or two CDs/albums/cassettes/whatever in their whole lives. They do listen to plenty of music. Only, it's on their iPod or iPhone. On "Shuffle".

And yes, I realize I've strayed deep into geezer territory here.

But when we had the whole experience of listening to songs in a given sequence, we had the opportunity to experience two different categories of happiness; first, when listening to a brand-new album, it was like opening a dozen presents, one after the other; then, over time, we became so deeply familar with the song sequences that, in the silence between tracks, we could anticipate the opening sounds of the next song so vividly that when they actually played, it was as satisfying as a promise being kept, or as thrilling as a dream coming true.

Spring, 1972

Labor Day

When I was little, I didn't know exactly what my father did for a living. I knew he took a train into The City every weekday, always dressed in a nice suit, close-shaven, hair slicked back. (I think he even wore a hat, before those pretty much disappeared from the scene.)

As I got older and asked questions, I began to understand that he was in something called Public Relations, and that he'd also been in something called Advertising. A few more years went by, and I acquired enough sophistication - so to speak - to understand what these things were, and what the significance of the place called Madison Avenue was.

By now, it was the mid to late '60's, and I had begun to develop some political and cultural attitudes of my own. But in many respects, I was more heavily influenced by my parents' views than I realized (or cared to admit): they loved music, art, and reading; they had taken me to places like Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art many times, from the time I was too young to absorb very much till the time I no longer wanted to spend much time with them. They bought me my first Beatles album, and perhaps more significantly, my first Dylan album. And they let me go unchaperoned to the April 1967 March on Washington.

But by the late '60's, I felt I had out-grown their traditional liberalism, and that there's wasn't much I could learn from either of them in this Brave New World. (In all fairness to myself, I was about sixteen - not a particularly tolerant age for most people, in my experience).

Around this time, my friends and I were starting to get into some trouble with the local police about our night-time gatherings on the high school grounds. Technically, the place was off-limits after dark, but our attitude was, it's our high school, it's our neighborhood, and the cops can just go to hell.

So we'd gather, they'd roll up in their cruisers, we'd scatter, they'd leave, we'd re-group, and so on. Occasionally, though, they'd chase us, box us into a corner, and make us show ID. That part really got under my skin, enough for me to actually complain to my parents about it.

My father's response was, don't be an idiot; the proper response when a policeman stops you is to say, "How can I help you, officer?"

Well, of course, I answered, YOU'D say that; you're a man in a three-piece suit - when has a cop ever hassled YOU?

Which is when he decided to tell me something about his past - a thing he rarely, rarely did. Turns out that had he actually been a labor organizer for a spell back in the '30's, and one of the places he and his crew had tried to sign workers up was a mining town in Pennsylvania. A company town - did I know what that was? Not really, I said. Well, it's where the company effectively owns the whole town - including the police. And that's how he came to get his head beat in before being thrown into a cell for three days, then escorted to the edge of town and told to never show his face there again.

He never spoke of any of this to me again. But he didn't have to. He had made his point - not about how to interact with police, necessarily, but about making assumptions based on limited knowledge, and about taking things for granted. Like the right to join a union.

Mid-October, 1971. Utica College, Sophomore Year.

Sales, Continued

As I've probably mentioned before, I got into sales - the way I've made my living, for better or worse, since about 1982 - by accident. I had been refinishing furniture for a man named John Knight, who owned several furniture stores on College Avenue, but after my main partner in that venture had moved to Oregon, I found the work lonely and more difficult. So when the manager of one of John K's stores decided to do something else, John offered me the job, because 1) I literally knew the furniture inside and out, and liked talking to people, and 2) he sensed I would work cheap.

True and true.

As a couple of years passed, and especially after my first child was born, I realized I was not going to make the kind of money I needed by selling furniture, and took my friend Andy's invitation to apply for a sales job at ComputerLand. Twenty-five years later, I'm still in technology sales, because I still find technology interesting, and the money can be good. (Except when it's not).

But why sales in the first place?

A few reasons. 1) There are always sales jobs available. Seriously. Just check any job web site - or even the classifieds in a newspaper. "Now Hiring - Sales". I didn't say they were GOOD jobs. But they're available. 2) I had no other training. I have a Bachelor's in Creative Writing - Plan A was to be a famous writer. When I realized I lacked the discipline to isolate myself and write for hours each day, and I started playing in a band, Plan B was to be famous musician.

(I never said they were well-thought-out plans).

But maybe the key reason was, I somehow sensed that there was less kissing of the corporate ring involved in being a salesperson, since your work is so objectively quantifiable; as long as you make or exceed your numbers, you're usually left alone.

And that is still the reality, overall. What I underestimated, going in, was that making your numbers is not just a result of your skill as a salesperson. If you represent a badly-run organization, or if the economy stalls or dips, you can do everything right and still fail.

I know more about this than I wish I did.

And I still feel some serious pangs that Plans A and B did not pan out. But despite all this, I still take pride in my sales skills, because, when it all comes together and you're closing, it's a kind of magic. Something is happening because you MADE it happen.

Memory, Empathy, The Future

When Michael Jackson died, a lot of people felt a great deal of pain and loss, but, with no disrespect, I was not one of them. Though I thought the tunes on the early 80's albums had some great beats, and the videos were a lot of fun, I never felt truly excited about any of it, and to this day, the only stuff of his that really rings in my heart is the early Jackson Five songbook: "I Want You Back", "ABC"....you get the picture.

Plus there was the whole matter of his very public and visible mental illness, over so many years. Even people who were heartbroken over his death weren't what you'd call surprised.

Nevertheless, when Michael died, there was a tremendous outpouring of reflections on what he and his music meant to people. And though I was not among the bereaved, I could at least understand it on some level.

What began to irritate me, though, beyond the ghoulish death cult aspect - which, to be fair, ain't exactly a new phenomenon - was the outlandish hyperbole of some of the praise, statements like, "he was the greatest singer and dancer who ever lived."

Really? My initial good will began to grow thin.

Then a memory came to me - and like many of the more compelling ones, it rose up from the deeps without warning; clear, detailed, and solid as a swinging fist:

December, 1980. Typical Bay Area winter; not too cold after the morning haze burned away, most days; I was living with the woman I loved,  who would be my wife in a couple more years; we were both working steady and money wasn't too tight, so we could keep our car running, and even hit a movie or a decent restaurant when we liked. A lot to be thankful for.


But the band I'd been in for a couple of years - and had grown really fond of - had moved away, and in fact most of my gang of musical brethren had left the area. With help, I would eventually put new musical projects together, but at that point, I felt a great hole in my life, and at times I felt just like a ghost.


Tom Dunn, my long-time friend and the bassist for my now ex-band had taught me how to strip, rebuild, and refinish old oak chairs and benches, and we'd had a decent little piecework business that we'd been operating out of the ground floor of a decrepit rental property owned by the dealer whose furniture we were working on. It was a good two-person process; one of us would strip the old varnish or paint off the chairs while the other would clean the solvents off the ones we'd already stripped, knock apart the pieces that were loose, then glue and clamp them; then we'd unclamp them, sand them, varnish them, and drive them up to the dealer's showroom, collect our pay, and pick up the next batch of work.


But Tom had moved away, and the job was much slower - and lonelier - as a one-man gig.


Pretty much every day, I would break for lunch, walk to the McDonald's on Telegraph and 45th, buy an afternoon paper from the machine out front, order a fish filet sandwich, fries, and Diet Coke, sit by myself at a plastic table in my paint-solvent-sawdust-encrusted work clothes, eat, read, dispose of my trash, then return to work till it got too cold or dark to keep going.


The day after John Lennon was murdered, I had spent the morning trying to work, but with the radio playing his music all day, I was mostly just trying to not cry too much, and trying to remember not to rub my eyes with all the crap I had on my hands.


Lunchtime came, and, mostly out of pure routine, I trudged over to McDonald's and had my usual. But of course, the newspaper was full of news about the killing, and despite being surrounded by total strangers - most of whom were black teenagers who probably didn't know John Lennon from a hole in the wall - I cried quietly but continuously throughout my meal. I could tell my fellow diners looking at me like I was a lunatic but I didn't care very much. I threw away most of my meal and went back to work, at least for a little while.

Thinking back on all this, I realized, you pompous prick, who cares how over-rated you think Michael Jackson was? People's hearts are broken, and maybe not even mostly about the death of a pop singer. You don't know. Hell, THEY don't know. So would it kill you to have some kindness in your heart for them?

I suspect a lot depends on this.

Early July, 1985

Gratitude, Continued: The Dining Room Table

My wife loves to set a nice table and to show off her considerable skills as a cook - I think "home chef" may say it better - and hostess.

She sometimes gets a little, shall we say, wound up during the preparations, which often include selecting the tablecloths, plates, silverware, and flowers the night before. Not to mention menu selection, shopping, and the actual cooking. So, my job is be on call and to execute any instructions quickly and efficiently, which after thirty-three years as a couple, I can now do with admirable adequacy.

Part of why I'm so grateful for these gatherings - beyond the fine food - is that we've had some fascinating casts of characters at the table, over the years. And we've always made a point of including our children and their friends, which has given us the opportunity to have the kinds of conversations with all of them that I sure as hell did not have at my parents' table.

Now, as with all gatherings, the dialogue is not always witty and warm. In fact, there have been a few visitors whose presence became harder and harder to enjoy as the evening progressed. But overall the spirit of each get-together has been benign, and more often than not, affectionate. And aside from a few carving-knife mishaps, no blood has been spilled, to date!

I like to to think that each dinner party here has been a nice little outpost of Civilization. I hope we can have these for years to come, and I especially hope that our children take the trouble to keep the tradition going. It's a thought that makes me happy, even when so much of the future is in doubt.

Sons and Daughters

As most parents will tell you - at least those parents whose daily lives are not entirely devoted to finding food and shelter for their children and themselves - the first child is a terrifying experiment for which we've had no practical preparation. If through some deeply obscure jumble of genetics and luck, Number One escapes death or serious injury or illness long enough for our selective memory to kick in, though, we start thinking about having another. (An even MORE lunatic notion: "We escaped calamity, so --- let's spin the wheel again!")

Of course, this questionable if not outright delusional behavior is why we're all here on this planet today. And I'm mostly happy about that.

But my happiness about our own kids' existence, and the lives their mother and I have lived while raising them, and the lives they are creating for themselves, is specific and conscious - perhaps not unique, but not just the result of a biological imperative either.

We in fact had to overcome a lot of serious obstacles to get Child #2. Six miscarriages. Three different really good OB/GYNs and a battery of tests couldn't tell us why they were happening or how to prevent them. Ultimately, their advice was, if you can stand to keep trying, you may eventually get lucky; or give up, spare yourselves  the anguish, and enjoy the one healthy living child you have now.

We were almost ready to throw in the towel - I was steeling myself to schedule a vasectomy - when Teri became pregnant again, and this time, everything went OK. Jackie is sixteen as of this writing, and going strong, knock on wood.

So, why was having a second child so important to us both (because it really was both of us wanting this)? Some part of the drive was hard-wired, certainly; and some may have been stubbornness in the face of Stupid Fucking Fate.

But I think it came down to two things - first, we both believed that having another person with the same parents as you can help you make sense of their strangeness, and of the uncharted Land of Childhood: you have someone to compare notes with, and someone who knows exactly what you've been through. And second, though of course this was pure gambling on our part, we were somehow sure that Child #2 would be a girl, and we would then be able to experience raising both a son and a daughter.

And why should that matter? After all this time, I still can't say, and, without a doubt, after what we'd been through, a healthy baby boy would have been perfectly beautiful in every way. But we were still especially pleased to have the chance to experience what I can only describe as the complete adventure.

So, how has it been? Like every aspect of marriage and child-rearing, more frightening, ecstatic, exhausting, and satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

I've read that there may be millions or billions of alternative universes, each of which embodies a different way all the variables of circumstance could have played out. But for the life of me, I'm incapable of imagining a world that didn't have my family in it, just as they are.

This may be one decent definition of happiness.

March, 1975 (Bard, Senior Year)

This is taking way. Too. Long.

But then again, compared to what? We've only socialized one true feral before, and truth be told, she ain't exactly the best company, even after like fifteen years.

We caught Coyote (apt name, eh) more than five weeks ago now, but he was already more than six weeks old - maybe eight? - and as soon as we opened the cage, he disappeared into the baroque nightmare clutter of my daughter's room without a trace. He only came out to eat, when no one was around, and the few times we caught a glimpse of him, he hissed with tiny but authentic ferocity before vanishing into the chaos again.

But I've been taking time to sneak into the room and sit quietly till he peeks his head out, talking low-volume/high-pitched baby talk at him for a few minutes at a time. And now our little sessions last for as much as five minutes of eye contact, at a distance of only three feet or so.

We'll get there. We will.

Still Grazin' After All These Years

It's mid-July, but the weather has been chilly and grim here for a while now. There's no doubt that my  feelings about this are affected by where I'm spending my workdays right now - in a grimy building set in a truly bleak neighborhood - because ugly places look worse in bad weather.

But today we had some visitors across the street, and they lifted my spirits by their sheer incongruity: a herd of goats, whose herder must have gotten hired by either the city or the owner of the vacant lot this building overlooks, to graze back the tall brush and weeds before the fire season.

I took a break to walk across the street and say, Hey, goats. I was so pleased to see them. They made this place look wild and beautiful for a few minutes.

I am NOT repeating myself; I'm chanting.

I'm not sure if it's possible to engage in any creative pursuit - be it writing, music, art, dance, cooking, gardening, or architecture - without unwittingly (or wittingly) covering some of the same ground from time to time.

I think that as long as you keep the similar creations reasonably far enough apart in time, you're OK. And of course, if anyone calls you on it, you can say it was intentional; that these are your themes.

Yeah, that's the ticket...themes....

In that case, one of my themes is our struggle to hold on to our real values, the ones that we hold closest in our hearts, even in the face of counter-winds that blow relentlessly in our face till we feel like our sails could be ripped clear away and our ship thrown against the cliffs.

Best example: feeling ashamed when you have no wealth or property. Mind you, there's nothing wrong with wanting or having wealth, especially if you don't don't take it too seriously; but to feel like a failure, like a loser, because you've gotten your ass kicked sideways in the financial realm, well, that's wrong, wrong, wrong. I knew it was wrong when I was fourteen, for chrissake.

So why does it still keep me up at night?

July 4, 1976

The nicest praise I think I've ever received

 - and I share this in full awareness that I may come off as vain and foolish, but as Popeye always said, "I yam what I yam" - is when I overheard someone sitting in front of me at a small acoustic gig a few of us were about to play at say, "Hey, I've heard these guys before - they're good. Especially the lead singer. He has a great voice!"

Now, why would this please me so much? Well, he didn't know I was sitting behind him, so his comments were unsolicited and sincere. And that's rare, since so much of what we say to each other is heavily freighted with personal politics: we say things because we want to have some specific effect on the listener, for good or bad.

And it's also because, for me, singing is as close as I get to a purely childish pleasure. When I write - either prose or songs - I enjoy myself, especially when I finish a piece I like, but it's very conscious, for the most part; I'm editing and thinking and making decisions as I go along. Pretty much the same when I play guitar or mandolin or harmonica.

But when I sing, I'm not really thinking. Which, for me, is like a kind of vacation.

One more reason why we need our memories,

and, beyond that, some grip on history: whatever your burden, things could always be worse.

Let me melt like a stone in the mouth of the sun,

let me breathe
Like a single clear note, I would gleam and be gone

The only son of an only son

When my father was the age I am now

he had less than twelve years left. Don't why this melancholy notion came up now, but it makes me reflect again on my own experiences as a father. How have I done?

I'm not done, of course - you're never "done" as a parent - but to a great extent, whatever Teri and I have to give our children in terms of teaching or guidance, we've done it. My baby girl is sixteen and my boy is twenty-six; they're pretty fully formed.

I found myself talking about this today to one of my co-workers, and I realized as I was talking how unreal what I was saying must seem to her; her boy is five. But I kept talking. (Surprise)

And I realized  - not for the first time - that I am very proud of my kids, and that all questions of nurture vs. nature aside, at least some of who they are is the result of who their parents are, and the things we did and said over the course of years.

It's just that after so many years of being a parent, and of thinking of that being the most important work in my life, I'm going to need some time to figure out the order of things when that changes.

But not right now.

We thought we had this down

but we were wrong. The feral momma (Pattycakes/Pancakes/Patty/Hey You) is still eluding capture, and the third of her three kittens has been in Jackie's room now for going on ten days but still remains in hiding.

Discouraging. A word I hate, because it sounds just like what it means.

Kittens One and Two, I'm happy to say, are doing great in their new home. So, there's that, and that's an accomplishment. But momma and #3 haunt us, and believe me when I tell you that neither Teri nor I need any more sources of anxiety.

I wonder how much of this is just what it appears to be - two cat-lovers trying to do the right thing (well, three, counting Jackie, but I don't think she's as disturbed by all this as we are), and how much is transference.

I remember that when my mother was approaching her last days - though the process took months - I had recurring dreams about the fish in the aquarium we had in Jackie's room at the time. I dreamt that the fish were in danger, and at one point dreamt that the one big gold fish had escaped from the tank altogether and was flying around the room, gasping for water.

But this is what we signed up for, whether we knew it clearly or not.

June 11, 2004

One World

April 1979

There's a difference

between wanting to leave this world and wanting to climb secret stairs between the clouds to a place where the world looks quiet and serene, like a lake, or a loved one fast asleep.

After another night of sleeping poorly,

I struggle to relax in the warm sun out back. One of my favorite things, right? The reading in the sun part, not the struggling to relax.

What a peculiar mess of a mood, to be restless and lazy, body at rest but heart beating too fast.

Oddly enough, doing some chores helps - cleaning the pantry and kitchen, watering the back garden - and what helps the most right now - not for the first time - is catching that sharp light just right:

God, Judgment Day, and questions aplenty

Let me start by saying that I was never bullied or coerced, physically or psychologically, into attending any regular religious gatherings or chanting any sort of creation story. My father and mother were lapsed Catholic and non-observant Jew, respectively, and the closest my sister and I got to being members of a religion was attending Unitarian Sunday School and the occasional service - usually at Christmas and Easter - and the topics that were addressed were typically those of social responsibility and activism - integration good, Vietnam War bad (this is shorthand, not flippancy).

But this all served as a good basis for my contemplation of religion as a cultural and historical phenomenon. I had no axe to grind. Seriously.

So now as yet one more person decides to proclaim the coming Doomsday - tomorrow, in fact - I return to some of my earlier thoughts about religion, and about fundamentalist Christianity in particular. Which have not changed a lot over the years, frankly, since these folks have been singing the same song for a LONG time now.

And once again, I wonder: what would make a human being want to believe that there was a Supreme Being, with absolute power over all Time and Space, who would be capable of torturing and murdering every single living thing on this planet aside from a tiny percentage who agreed to swear to their belief in a specific, narrow interpretation of a huge, cryptic, poorly transcribed and translated text?

Doesn't that seem, well, insane?

As I think I've mentioned before, assuming there IS a Supreme Being, I would prefer to believe she looks and sounds just like Dolly Parton, and when we meet, she will ask if I'd like something to eat.

"and because of all their tears

their eyes can't hope to see
the beauty that surrounds them
Isn't it a pity?"

Still miss you, George. And I'm still working on my sight.

The cold rain begins to affect me

    

in unpredictable ways

Another question:

Do young people still decorate their walls with giant posters? This was pretty commonplace when I was in high school, less so in college; I myself went through a phase where I had huge prints of Humphrey Bogart and Allen Ginsberg staring back at me enigmatically. (Eventually the images were etched so deeply in my brain that I no longer needed the actual posters).

One thing I never had or wanted - intellectual snob that I was - was any sort of inspirational poster. But I wasn't an asshole about it if a friend had one. (Since the friends that seemed to like these kinds of posters were mostly young women, I had reasons for keeping my thoughts to myself that went beyond simple tolerance).

A big, big favorite was a well-known poem by the therapist Fritz Perls, sometimes referred to as "The Gestalt Prayer". This is how it was transcribed on most posters (along with some pastel swirls or a soulful photo of hands touching):

"I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."


And I thought, OK, a little mushy, but hey, also kind of liberating and hopeful, right?

Till one day I read the full text of the poem. And the last line - omitted on every poster I ever saw - is

"If not, it can't be helped."


Wha? Isn't that last line, like, THE MOST IMPORTANT LINE? Doesn't leaving it out turn a really complete, interesting statement about the nature of human relationships into a fucking greeting card?
Needless to say, my rants on this topic probably cost me at least a few intimate encounters back then.

But I guess it couldn't be helped, eh?

The Roses

- as in, "Take time to smell the..." -

It's lamentable but true that I can't always do this. Not from any lack of desire, but because I just don't have a very keen sense of smell anymore. Or more precisely, it comes and goes - sometimes I smell almost nothing for days but then suddenly I can pick up on odors like a goddam bloodhound. Like, being able to smell someone smoking a cigarette three blocks away. Or the perfume someone in a passing car is wearing.

Then back to zero. Or stranger - I sometimes experience olfactory hallucinations. (I am NOT making this up.) Like smelling kerosene in a mostly odorless office. For an hour.

But even if I can't smell the roses today, I can damn well see them. And for a few minutes, nothing else matters.

Mid-October 1977

Peacetime

I know we are at war, that American men and women are getting killed and wounded, in towns and villages they hadn't even heard of a few months ago.

But back here in America, you'd never know, at a glance. There are no craters, no rubble, no counties with no electricity or running water for years at a time.

This is the problem. Or one of them. Up till the "Korean Conflict", wars changed the way civilian Americans lived, day to day. Then there came the distancing. "We" killed and were killed. But it wasn't "we". It was the people who we sent. And that "we" were the ones we elected, who we trusted to do right.

And it turns out, they didn't always do that great. Some of the decisions they made were, let's face it, flawed. They -we - supported dictators, with money and troops, in the name of anti-communism. And Act Two was anti-terrorism.

We funded Sadaam. We funded and trained Osama Bin Laden. I'm not making this up. I wish to God I was.

And we've paid a price for our mistakes. For some, that price has been crushingly terrible.

But for most of us, our day-to-day lives have been completely untouched, seemingly. I don't want more suffering in the world, with all my heart, no, but what if the consequences of our nation's wrongs actually did touch us all, directly? What would that be like? And would it change how we chose and watched our leaders?

A Mind is a Terrible Thing

I remember the first time I read The Once and Future King, by T. H. White (if you haven't yet had the pleasure, you're in for a treat), and among his many keen insights into human nature, he observes that one character is less physically courageous than his brothers because he has a more vivid imagination - he can imagine painful and catastrophic outcomes more intensely, and this dampens his will to jump into the fight.

Well, ain't that a kick in the head, as Dino used to sing. Once again, everything has its price. You want to have the gift of imagination? Fine; sign here, please. You've just agreed to lay awake at four in the morning in a state of dread a certain number of nights throughout the course of your life, and the joke is that 1) most of what you are panicking about won't even take place, and 2) the pain of whichever calamities actually DO occur won't be lessened by your anticipatory agony. AT ALL.

It's interesting for me to look back on the days when I used to do hallucinogens, and there would often be someone with me on the trip who would start to flip out; since my psyche seemed to tolerate these kinds of chemicals better than some, I wound up being one of the people who helped talk them down. And of course, one of the most common strategies was to calmly point out, "don't panic - you're going to be okay; you took a drug a few hours ago, and the drug is going to wear off in a few more hours. In the meantime, we're all here with you and we'll help you keep it together."

So, what's the strategy for talking someone down who's freaking out on life? Is it, "you're going to be okay; you were born into a physical body a while back, but it'll wear out eventually and you'll be back on the spiritual plane"?

That COULD work, I guess.

If You'll Take My Hand

"If you'll take my hand,
we'll walk back down together
If you'll take my hand,
then you won't have to fall"
If I 'd had my way,
I'd have kept you safe forever
But on that day
I did not hear you call

What did the devil whisper
What did the devil whisper
What did the devil whisper
in your open ear?

Where were your angels hiding
Where were your angels hiding
Where were your angels hiding
all of these years?


"If you'll take my hand,

we'll walk back down together

If you'll take my hand,

then you won't have to fall"

If I 'd had my way, 

I'd have kept you safe forever

But on that day

I did not hear you call

Meditations on a Cracker, or, This I Believe?

My mother's people were Polish Jews, or, depending on the decade and who you asked, Russian Jews. She was actually a first-generation American, a fact I didn't grasp for a long time. This was partly due to the lack of curiosity most children have about their parent's history - which often transforms itself into an intense desire to know everything, that kicks in later - sometimes too late - but also because both my parents consciously and thoroughly distanced themselves from their working class New Jersey roots in order to become nearly prototypical post-war Manhattanites.

So to say that my mother was a non-observant Jew would be an understatement. My sister and I were always kind of amused that my father (the lapsed Irish Catholic) knew and spoke more Yiddish than my mother did (or admitted to).

However, she did two things that seemed to be hard-wired into her, despite her strenuous assimilation: she always read magazines back-to-front, as if they were Hebrew newspapers, and she would buy a box of Matzos every Passover.

I remember asking her about the Matzos - I was probably like seven or eight at the time - but I don't think I got much of an answer; for articulate, intellectual people, neither of my parents was ever very forthcoming when it came to sharing any sort of self-reflection.

One of Teri's clients gave her a box of Matzos - I guess she had extra? And many people assume that my wife is Jewish - another puzzle.....in any case, when I came home and looked at the box, the old mysteries rose up in my mind again. And still no answers.

One interesting thing about my new job

is the fact that, since it's a well-established business - at least by tech firm standards - some of the people have been there for years, and they've seen a lot of salespeople come and go.

So as more time passes, I can sense them start to be more willing to connect, since the longer I last, the more chance there is that I'll be there for while. KNOCK ON WOOD.

No one likes to make a bond - even a loose, light one - when they fear the other person is just passing through, right? Reminds me of the fact that when we first moved to this neighborhood - twenty-three years ago this month - there were neighbors who didn't make much effort to engage with us until we'd been here for a while. Say three years.

As I've said more than once, the number of times I've had to start new jobs over the past eleven years - and I will tell you that number: ten - is not a source of pride or comfort, and has taken a certain toll, even as I acknowledge that I made the best decisions I could at the time, and played the hands I was dealt as skillfully as I could.

But I have gotten to meet and work with a wonderful assortment of people, without a doubt. There have been a few assholes in the mix, sure, but that's all part of the adventure.

March 24, 1972

Figured Something Out

I've kept a journal - a written one, in a bound notebook - since I was fourteen. Since mid-1967, to put it in an ancient context.

Between the years of fourteen and twenty-one I was a student, and had to spend hours each weekday in a classroom; I was expected to take notes on the coursework, so finding time to make journal entries was no damn problem at all. And no instructor EVER asked to see my notes.

(Even so, a lot of my entries, both pre and post-high-school were sporadic, brief, and cryptic).

Cut to post-college - struggling lazy writer, slightly more successful and less lazy musician - journal-time became more precious, and some good stuff resulted. Still, sporadic.

Marriage. Parenthood. Plunging into the who-gives-a-fuck-about-your -art workplace. The journal suffers. But, hey. Does not die.

But now it's mostly summaries - children being born, parents dying, the tides of fortune or lack thereof. Some good shit in the mix, but again, intermittent. Seriously. A volume that took three months to fill at fourteen now takes three, four, five years.

Then: Dawn of social media. (Not a brilliant, rich coinage, re: description. Isn't ALL media social?)

Facebook: OK, a verbose multi-media ham like me says, HEY, this is GREAT. Especially well-suited for short, punchy status updates and links to favorite music. No complaints!

But after a year or more, I realized I needed to create a more formal, enduring presence, and started this blog in October 2010. While acknowledging that I was still just building sandcastles, they were at least indexed and had some editable layout elements.

Seven months in, and I'm overall pleased with what I've built. I can only hope my visitors are too.

But meanwhile my journal gathers dust. And while the blog is in many ways a fantastically liberating blend of writing, music, and images for someone like me to mess around with, there are limits to what I will include, knowing that it's designed to be read in close to real time. So anything too explicit, too dark, too alarming, gets clipped.

All by way of saying, I need to share some of this energy with the old journal. Which you may never see, or at any rate, not for a long time.

Where to start? Or should I say, to continue?

"Okay, I've had enough, what else can you show me?"

I've tried to make this space more about the personal than the ideological, but things are getting out of hand out there, and I feel the need to make some statements which I personally think are on the same level as "fire, hot" and "water, wet" but, well, are obviously - astonishingly - not.

• Donald Trump - whose pronouncements have been as loud and ever-present as car-alarms for more than fifteen years now - is an intellectual and moral embarrassment to not just the American people, but to the human race. The fact that there is even a remote chance that this man could actually be the Republican candidate for President next year mortifies me. It means decency and intelligence are not even serious contenders for the Top Ten Qualifications. Compared to The Donald, W looks humble and introspective. 
• I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" years ago. All the way through. No kidding. With enjoyment, even. I'm being totally honest here. (I was sixteen). But then I realized that these were meant as realistic depictions of history and of human character. And that the author and her followers believed that these stories were visionary depictions of a struggle for the soul and future of the human race. And that they had developed a whole philosophy around these books, called "Objectivism". Wow, that takes some big ones. Makes L. Ron Hubbard look shy. As I've said elsewhere, I thought that was laughable, and paid no mind for forty years. Now I hear that there are surging numbers of people who take this cult to heart. Who pore over these prose caricatures as if they were - well, Gospel. 

I beg of you all, read some real books. And not just my old lefty intellectual pals from the 20th century  - try Shakespeare. Jane Austen. Dickens. Or some history - ANY history. (Or essays. You could even read some Karl Marx. Might surprise you.)  But don't base your world-view on TV or the internet or just two poorly-written novels. There's a universe of expression out there - more than two millenniums' worth of content, most of which you can access as easily as you access YouTube or FaceBook.  

If I sound worked up, well, it's because I'm worked up.

How Do You Slow This Thing Down?

So John and Steph packed up, drove off to her Mom's in Walnut Creek, and will be flying back to Seattle tomorrow. We had a nice backyard send-off for them last night, with a blazing fire fueled by Christmas trees that John expertly chopped up with a new axe Teri had bought for the occasion. I realized it had been a while since we'd had a fire. Months.

I drank too much and I'm pretty sure I delivered a meandering and maudlin monologue to a couple of my longtime friends and neighbors about the pitiless speed of our passing lives and the losses we all endure. But I don't think I cried, and they didn't appear alarmed, so I must have made at least some sense. Here's hoping.

Then I slept, a long dark dreamless sleep, till nearly 10 AM. Which is the latest I've slept in at least ten years.

Later I sat in the warm sun, reading, drinking a lot of water, listening to the birds, watching my cats sleep, feeling tired and achy but somewhat contented. For no particular reason. Or should I say, I chose not to question it.

Dining Room, Oakland, 2011

A long and not necessarily poetic day at work. But my wife had worked up a feast for John and his friends. And I was swept up in it, gladly.

Four in the Morning

This is a pretty good performance and recording of this song. Not flawless - never been in a band that did "flawless"; not sure I would even want that.

I threw in some visuals; realized they're heavy on me. But I am the singer on this song, so, eh, shoot me.

I wrote this song pretty fast - it's a blues, how long can it take to write? - but I realize now that whether I knew it or not, this is an homage to Leonard Cohen. By way of Howlin' Wolf.

Howlin' Cohen. All right.

Too windy to read in the sun after lunch today,

so I drove up in the hills above where I work, kind of aimlessly, just enjoying being away from computer screens and the inherently crowdedness of offices.

Once again, I'm happy to find ways to not think too deeply for a while, to skim across the surfaces. Deep means dark these days, I'm finding. Gotta stay in the light as much as I can.

The past is dangerous these days.

Not being fatalistic here; just trying to state facts. Maybe you've done just swell this whole time, by any human measure. But at least some of what could have been is never going to be.

And no matter how healthy and good-looking you may be right now (and I hope you are - no kidding around), you were almost definitely better-looking and healthier at 24.

And then there's those who are gone. Who you want back so badly.

So - looking back is tricky damn business. For me, anyway - let's leave it at that, since I said I wanted to stick to facts.

That's why this whole picture-taking thing has meant so much to me lately. No past, no future, just the light right now.

Did It Matter? Does It Now? (continued)

I've been a salesman for the last, oh, nearly thirty years of my life. Was that part of my life-plan? <insert dark laugh here> ...Life-plan? What plan?

No, I went from vague visions of literary fame - which evaporated like piss on a hot rock when I realized that writing requires not just verbal facility and imagination (check and check), but solitude and discipline...  (eh, not so much) - to slightly more concrete dreams of musical fortune. The music dream suited my temperament much better - physical, collaborative, and best of all, instant feedback from the audience (should there be one).

But once again, talent was only one check box out of many. And then there was the harsh reality of our band disintegrating, and then the subsequent bands and their members calling it quits or moving hundreds or thousands of miles away. 

Still, to my credit - and to the credit of my beloved collaborator G. Gould - I persisted, even after the Shattering. Started to write my own tunes (after relying upon my brilliant mates for material up till then), and with G's help, formed a band, and even recorded some fine sessions.

But fame? Fortune? Not even sure we gigged enough to cover our recording budget. Well, no, I know we didn't.

And 'round this time my son was born. I was managing a tiny furniture store on College Avenue in North Oakland, and I thought I was doing pretty cool - I got a regular paycheck which along with Teri's pay from waitressing and tending bar in Sausalito covered our bills OK. We even had health insurance!

But motherhood and bar-work don't mix real well, so soon we were thinking about what Teri could do next. Challenges: 1) She had no other marketable skills - she was a stellar waitress and bartender, but had never done anything else (besides a year at School of Visual Arts in Manhattan); and 2) We had no money to invest in any kind of business.

Somehow - and this will require mighty backfill at some later date - one or two moms who knew us through the pre-school that John went to asked if Teri could do some after-school pick-up and then take care of their little ones till dropping them back home later in the day.

My wife went for it, then discovered that she had a real knack for caring for- for communicating with - young children. Soon, word got out, and the wave built, till she had a full roster of after-pre-school and summer kids. Which she then continued, with some variation, until my daughter was out of kindergarten. Well - maybe even beyond.

Point is, 1) She was as close as you can be to a stay-at-home parent for our kids, while still bringing in cash for the family (which I will just flat-out say was not trivial); and 2) She showed all the kids under her care real love. She was not just a custodian (though in truth, keeping children physically safe and free from fear is no small accomplishment).       

Eventually, after getting accredited as a Nursery School teacher while Jackie was at Griffin School, Teri realized she had max'ed out on what she could give as a childcare provider. What next?

Gardens. Designing them,  installing them, maintaining them. After years of caring for her own home gardens - first in the Berkeley flatlands, in the sun-blasted 4 ' x 8 ' dead zone in front of the concrete slab four-plex where we lived when Johnny was an infant, then in the more spacious/gracious front and back yards around the Rockridge house we've lived in since 1987 - Teri acquired an intimate awareness of the light, heat, shade, and moisture that each plant, bush, vine, and tree required to thrive.

I'm not ashamed of what I do for money. I'm ethical, I've always represented companies that provide good products and services for fair prices, and I've always strived to make my customers feel like we're all human beings looking to treat each other with respect.

But after all is said and done, what makes my work matter is that it has made my wife's work possible. What she has done is to make the world a better place. And I helped.                    

Jackie and I were talking

about writing; she started keeping journals in fifth grade, but just now looked back at them for the first time (at age sixteen) and was mortified by the shallowness and stupidity of the entries.

I told her what I've told myself - something I did not make up: until you've made your first thousand mistakes, you can't correct them.

And I also told her that most people can't withstand the realization that their ambitious efforts have failed, and fall back to something easier, some arena where they already know the terrain and the adversaries, and success is a likelihood.

And I told her that it took me thirty years or more to learn how to write decently; but I then realized I had to qualify that by saying that I was only a part-timer - that a real player that jumped in the deep end could shorten that span by quite a bit.

And hoping I was telling the truth.

The First Warm Evening of the Year

I like to think I'm snappy with the words and all, but, believe me, there are times when I enjoy being speechless. Especially in the face of casual beauty. Neighborhood beauty.

When the shock and numbness wear off,

then it gets serious. And misery - as we all know- is fantastically invasive and viral. It summons each and every blood relative to the march, down to the most distant cousin, and the horde howls with negative glee as they storm your highest walls.

Here's what can happen: the past fills you with agonized longing and relentless regret, you view the future with terror and paralysis, and the present is a path that dissolves into darkness at every step.

The good news? The good news is that, in our hearts, most of us know that there are others fighting much harsher battles, and we still feel a need to recognize and honor all those who struggle against genuine catastrophe and who somehow carry on.

And here's how you can do it - for starters:

Stop whining. If you can read this, you don't have it that bad. I'm not saying your pain isn't real, but if feeling sorry for yourself was an effective treatment, there would be no hospitals of any kind.

At the corner of College & Keith, in North Oakland,

a relatively busy intersection for cars and pedestrians that I navigate often, being near my house, I vividly remember seeing fleeting glimpses - as I turned left through a really short Turn light:

• a pretty young girl in a T-shirt and jeans weeping as she walked alone, unseeing, as if all was lost:
• an old man in a three-piece suit and a fedora smiling vaguely downward, as if the streets were lined with gold - again!
• a man shining with sweat as he juggled three - or four? - tennis balls while strolling in a small circle, and shooting every other ball about twenty feet in the air.

There is a world behind this world.

Who He Was to Me and Why I'll Miss Him.

To put it as simply as possible, I was extremely lucky to have had Mills in my life, though of course if it was up to me I'd have had much more time with him. Much, much more time. But that’s a different conversation.

So, I'll just pick a couple of stories, since I could go on and on otherwise:

When I was maybe six or seven, I was terrified of riding a bike without training wheels. Lloyd came up with a great solution - he took me up to the top of Eastway, which to me at that age seemed like a pretty long, steep hill; he held the bike as I got on, steadied me, then gave the bike a good hard push and yelled, “Just steer straight and don’t fall over!”

And I made it nearly all the way down to Northern Road before I wiped out and tumbled onto somebody’s lawn. After that, I wasn’t as afraid, and it got steadily easier.

Fast forward from bicycles to cars....Lloyd’s mom Flo had a Le Mans, I think a ‘68, maybe? Anyway, pretty close to new. He got to take it out one night right before they opened up the new Sprain Brook Parkway, and we thought it would be cool to push the barriers aside and take the Le Mans for a high-speed ride on as near to a perfectly smooth surface as we’d ever find. With no traffic. And no cops. We were too stupid to think about the possibility that the road may not have been completely finished, or may have still had construction materials or machines in the roadway. We just rode. Fast. Like 130 miles an hour fast. And it was so QUIET. I will admit I was a little freaked out, but I looked over at Mills and he looked like he was born to be behind that wheel. And I felt OK.

No wipeouts that time. We took that luck for granted.

Then there were all the times that Lloyd was just my guardian. A bunch of you will remember that the late ‘60’s was a time when if you were a guy with long hair, it was like an open invitation to get punched in the face. Mills was one of the people who stood by me and said, “I don’t think so.”

Years passed; I went upstate to college then moved out West. While I was gone, though, after Flo and Bernie moved to Florida, Mills took care of the Northern Road house, and he also helped take of my parents two houses down, who were not getting any younger - when they needed a new stereo or TV hooked up, or a chair repaired, he was there for them.

When he moved out of the Hartsdale house, he and I lost all touch for a long while. I was busy with my new family back in California, and I didn’t really know how to go about looking for him, even if I’d had time on my hands. 

Then, Facebook. BAM. Lloyd - and many of you - were suddenly back in my life. I was as happy as a kid in candy store, for real. 

The Sudden Reunion of 2009 came to be - through the hard work of a bunch of people. You know who you are, and I thank you. I got to spend an exhilarating two days with people I hadn’t seen for as much as forty years, but most importantly, I spent a lot of time with my lost brother, and I can remember nearly every moment, so clearly.

We talked for hours and it was like no time at all had passed since we last hung out. And of course, he still took care of me - my luggage had been lost on the flight in, but he drove me back to Westchester Airport right before the reunion supper and literally talked a guy into opening a locked office where - surprise! - my bag had been the whole time.

Since then, we kept in pretty good touch, by phone and email. I mainly wanted him to fly out here to Oakland, to meet my family, walk with me in the sun, and eat my wife’s great food. 

I wish we could have had that visit. What can I say.