I had a plan to write on my birthday, this past Friday, May 29th. The writing thing is kind of weird and wouldn’t make sense to anyone who didn’t bother. Everybody reading this has definitely had a fair number of birthdays already, a statement of pure genius on my part. So, let’s say your birthday is approaching. Why the hell would you be preoccupied with what you are going to share and when? Well, after having transcribed over 200 of these stories in nearly 6 years, it is safe to say I’ve got a serious problem
I was too busy being happy on my special day and didn’t want to ruin it by thinking, so I decided to wait. I have always felt that one of the great let downs in life is the day after your birthday, primarily because nobody gives a shit. Even though the happiness clearly lingers into the next day, it begins to feel a little bit like a secret. However, the distance seems to bring some clarity of intention, at least for me this time.
First, I am pretty old. I don’t have be very good at math to count up to 75. You know, our vision is wonderfully external. We look out and rarely look in. With increasing frequency, I stop mid- view and catch myself. It is hard to ignore all of the time, memories and experiences that have gotten me to wherever I happen to find myself.
Now, I have a short confession to share with you. I wrote the three paragraphs above yesterday, the day after my birthday and then stopped. I didn’t know where to go, something I have done with some of my stories before. I woke up this next morning around 5AM and I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed thinking about this unfinished tale, but not for very long.
Here I am, in the morning darkness, which feels like such a deeply personal time. I want you to know I love sharing my stories. It is like being marooned on the island of life and scribbling messages in the hope someone will eventually read them and have some sense of what life was like for this guy.
I am beginning to feel like a Forrest Gumpian character, not because I have been theatrically present at every great moment over these past 75 years, but I have been breathing the air of the times. It is funny, as I am writing this very sentence, the yellow-orange ball of light is rising on the eastern horizon yet again, something I will never tire of. I have no idea who is in charge of all this, but I would like them to know how grateful I am to have been awarded this privilege. I am one of the lucky ones, something that has quietly made itself so clear to me with the passage of the years.
God knows, I am no historian, but I can mention so many things to young people and they look at me like I’m speaking Martian. I guess this is where you’re supposed to provide an example. I was a page at NBC, working the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when it was in NYC. Ed Ames, an actor, originally part of the singing Ames Brothers, was a guest on the show. He was on a TV series, Daniel Boone, playing the role of Mingo, a Native American, called an Indian back then. He was demonstrating how you throw a tomahawk. He threw it at the silhouette of a body and hit it right between the legs. Nobody played an audience better than Carson. At a perfectly timed moment, he said, “I didn’t even know you were Jewish!” You had to be there and I was.
Well, that probably wouldn’t have made it into the Gump sequel, but it is so easy to accumulate experiences by simply being alive. I was thinking about all the things I’ve been around for, when I decided to get out of bed and finish this birthday story.
On Halloween night of 2011, I started writing a memoir for my very young grandson, in the hope he would find my scribblings after I had left my marooned island. It is called, Halloween in Portland, with the subheading, Diary of a Mind. After finishing the book, I have kept the diary thing going with these stories. Every time I sit down to write anything, my mind manages to always interfere in the process, forcing its way in and disrupting the flow.
It has been impossible for me to ignore the insanity in our country and the rapidly unfolding, global climate disaster. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes the creeping Covid, upending the entire world. I am going out for my Sunday motorcycle ride in a while and I am taking my mask with me. My mask? Did you ever imagine we would have something called “social distancing”?
You know, I was really intent on just focusing on my birthday and keeping this very personal, leaving the world out of it this one time, but I can’t. It goes back to my comment about how our vision is almost always externally focused, rarely looking back at ourselves. Imagine if it was reversed and everything you saw came through the prism of how you viewed yourself? I think that’s what it must be like to be a black man in America. You can never forget, not for one single minute, who you are. Being a Jew is not even close, but I have had these flashes throughout my life of strange reactions when it has come up. I feel like an idiot, saying it’s not right for any human being to be made to feel like they are any less a person than anyone else. This simply cannot continue and that’s what we may be looking at right now!
It increasingly feels like pay day is coming around and the sowing is turning into the reaping on so many fronts. I am definitely closing in on the last glorious chapters of my life; mind you I am using the plural, and it is seems rather fitting. It has become increasingly easy to look out over the landscape of my life, on this private island of mine, scribbling away about the view. As Desi said to Lucy, “You’ve got some splaining to do.” Yes, that’s another time warp for you youngsters.
OK, I am just about done, because it is nearly time for my ride with the Sons of Kauai and you’re probably getting bored. In honor of my birthday, I broke down and got myself a gift, one that is fitting for my encroaching dotage. My neighbors were having a yard sale and their glider caught my eye. Cheap skate that I am, I decided I deserved a gift. Wouldn’t you know it? They gave it to me as a present.
Happy Birthday to all of you.