I have found the perfect day to get started with this bit of writing. It is a rainy Sunday morning and there is no way I am going to get on my motorcycle and ride over to 7/11 in Lihue, because there will be no Sons of Kauai there. With most bikers, it’s not about getting wet; it’s about getting your machine dirty.

Just between the two of us, I have had trouble writing lately. It’s been a couple of weeks and when it stretches out like this, I get worried I’ll never write again. While I feel a compulsion to write, I am often filled with doubt about the merit of my work. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who wrestles with his passions and their expression.

Right now, there are seventeen type written pieces of paper on my floor, in varying, scissored sizes, loosely grouped together by subject. I have used this caveman approach before, especially when writing researched pieces and trying to create an orderly flow from point to point. I have resurrected it for this occasion because there is too much in my head and too much time on my hands. At the moment, I am under no time pressure to meet a publishing deadline for ForKauai.

My approach to writing is a study in ass first. Soon after my grandson, Shane, was born, I began thinking about making sure he knew me when he was old enough to actually be curious. At one time or another in our lives, many of us become curious about our family history. How many times do we get asked, “Where are you from, etc.?” I think the older we get and the more experiences we garner, the more we start getting curious about our parents and grand parents lives. Dialogue with them can be come challenging after they are dead.

The currency of my life has been experience and I have accumulated a decent bankroll. I couldn’t think of a better way to share my wealth than writing my story, and making Shane the beneficiary of my life. I actually did write a book called, Halloween in Portland. I published it through Amazon. It is amazing what happens when you tell someone you have published a book. The fact is, any asshole can self-publish and in my best act of self-deprecation, I like to point that out. No one proofread or edited the book, which is about the dumbest thing a published writer can do. Even though I was putting it out there, the entire writing process was deeply personal and I didn’t want anyone to touch it. Back thousands of years ago, when we hand wrote letters, we never thought to have anyone “proof read” our correspondence. Even though I published the book, I still considered it a very, very long letter to Shane.

I am not sure how long ago I was first encouraged to write, but it was at least forty years ago. I am seventy, so you do the math. I remember a painful, first attempt back then. I bought a used typewriter (Yes, it was even before the word processor and the fax machine!). One night, I set it on my bed in my ground floor, railroad flat in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I proceeded to have a few beers and smoke a few joints. I rolled the first piece of paper around the carriage and looked at it. I looked at it again and again. In the midst of struggling with the first sentence, I broke down in tears and had one of those body-shaking cries. I was unable to continue. It felt far too painful. The typewriter promptly got stored in a closet.

There was a bit of a creative tease before that bed break down. Several years prior, I was living in Glen Cove, Long Island. I was in a house I couldn’t afford, the man of the house with two beautiful, little boys and in a deeply fractured marriage. Every Saturday morning, I would mow the lawn, convinced I was an undercover Martian in an in incomprehensible world. I was slowly beginning to break out of the predictable mode of someone in the broadcast advertising business. Toward the end of my time in NYC, I would not even wear a tie to work. It isn’t quite like standing up to the tanks in Tiananmen Square, but breaking out of the mold began to matter to me.

To be continued………………