This is a very important story for me for a number of reasons. The choice of title is a great way for me to begin. I have had a hatched plan to go to a place called Wrangell, AK. I would say the egg of it all was laid many months before.
After the fog of Covid lifted, it was like we had this fresh chance to look around and see where we were at. I gotta tell you, it will always feel weird when I use the word, “we”. I’d say that’s an easy trap for a writer. You start thinking you are the voice of others, total strangers Under these circumstances, I often have to stop myself, so I apologize. There is only one person I have any right to talk about and you’re reading him.
I realized the last time I took a trip 100% for myself was in the summer of 2017. I went to Tuscany and I got nothing, but luxurious memories of the whole experience. She is the most voluptuous women it has been my privilege to spend time with and not nearly long enough.
I was feeling the need for something like that again, but I was thinking of it as a writer, a word I am forced to use, but don’t particularly care for. Yeah, I understand its use, but it’s not what I do. I am simply a very low paid mind-stenographer. Decades after the fact, thrilled I learned to type in seventh grade. At the time, I didn’t see why I’d ever have to do that, because that’s what Gentile girls did in the office. I was a semi-bright Jewish kid in Queens, NYC in the Fifties and typing would never be a skill I’d be thankful for. I was a little snob, before I knew the word.
I really started spending a lot of mind-time trying to imagine where I should go. I guess it is easier to visualize some guy, married to his easel and the canvas he’s brush-caressing with colors and textures and dreams, for all to see. It is much less romantic to imagine some old fucken guy, with a white pony tail, tippy tapping on his laptop, in the shadows of anonymity. You gotta work with me here.
I was looking for the perfect village, the perfect country setting. I wanted to star in a movie about somebody just like me, way too close, who goes to some magical place and writes stories that mysteriously captivate the imagination of millions and millions of people. I am a hopeless romantic, what a shock!
Clearly, place was the deal and everything out there didn’t do it for me. I don’t know why nothing was grabbing me. I can’t tell you what I was looking for either. OK, this is where the famous joke line: “A man walks into the bar” finds a home right here.
A bunch of months ago, I was leaning against the bar, which is my favorite posture. For me, a bar has always existed for leaning, fuck the stools. Somewhere, over my audio shoulder, I hear some guy calling my name. I slowly turned around, cat-like and down right Bondian. I had a momentary lapse in my steel trap of a mind-memory. “ Who the fuck is this guy? He knows me pretty well. Oh, Christ, it’s a guy I worked with over ten years ago.”
Listen, I have to tell you that I’ve lived quite a life so far. I hardly ever think about it, because it would feel like I am prematurely, self-eulogizing. At the same time, the longer the trail gets, the more I marvel at my good fortune. I think one of the reasons why it happens is that I am terminally virgin when it comes to feeling embraced by the Universe, or whatever name you got. It is a wonderful kind of amnesia, preventing me from taking anything for granted or bragging about it. Every time is always the first time for me, embraced with the same, fresh gratitude.
We were having a wonderful, free-flowing conversation and I started getting my memory-footing back. I met him and his Dad in one of my past lives, which I will spare us both. They were hardcore Alaskans, involved with forestry and heavy duty construction. It was great to hear them talk about Alaska, especially the Dad. He would talk about how much he loved the spot, where he lived.
Honestly, I don’t know how the conversation about the past ten years, gracefully segued into my spending time at his late parents’ home in Wrangell, AK. I know I didn’t just come out and ask? “Hey, how about I stay at your dead parents’ home and you go out of your way to make sure I have a great time when I come up to stay?” I swear that’s exactly the feedback I got from Brett. “So, this guy walks out of the bar.” I am fucken going to Wrangell, baby.
Shit, it took forever to get here. I am flying to Wrangell on Tuesday, August 15th and that is all I know. I was presented with a very interesting opportunity for myself. I made a good producer, back hundreds of years ago, because I could track shit, before it happened. I have never jumped off a cliff quite like this before, ad libbing in Alaska!
I fancy myself are real lousy Zen practitioner. I can’t help that It finds its way into many of my stories. The transient nature of everything that ever was or ever will be is a big one. The rhythm of the breath is always the metaphor for living moment to moment, inhaling and exhaling, continually embracing whatever is next.
I think the need for something like this was pre-ordained for me. It gets back to the stuff I just can’t talk about. You know, when I went from NYC to Santa Fe, I got a sense of what forever can look like, when you’re camping in the middle of absolutely no where. I did a lot of growing in the high desert country. I needed the room.
Coming here had everything to do with shrinking my world and paying a whole different kind of attention to my encroaching dotage. I have crafted a fairly simple existence here, totally by choice. I must have time to be a writer. I know this place has nurtured me in ways I never imagined, when I dropped out of the sky.
I have always been struck by the “moment to moment” phrase in Zen. I have used it, too many times. I am not stupid, I know what it means. I got it, handed to me by those imaginary powers, unleashed by Brett, walking in the bar.
If I was a real writer, I’d want to embody the spontaneity of the moment, as I am experiencing it and that’s my commitment to you. I swear, I have no idea what awaits me from the moment I land. The good news for me is that I’ll never be alone on this journey, because you’re gonna be with me. I never would have taken this trip if it wasn’t for you.
I got an idea who I want to be, but it has always been my experience that you don’t know dick until your feet touch the ground in your next moment.
This is could be the last story I share until we enter the magical world of “Larry Goes To Alaska.” I think this will be the prologue, before I am changed forever. I’m gonna create a small book, too.
I will try and capture as many of the moments as I can and share them with you.
I’ll see you when I get back.