Category: Life

Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.

Sober Assessment

TWO-AND-A-HALF MONTHS AGO, I completed my tenth year of clear-eyed, clean-headed and grateful sobriety.

Now, when some people hear that, they might think, “Great, here comes the self-righteous lecture on the evils of intoxication.” But that won’t happen, at least not from me. I don’t and won’t disdain anyone else’s recreational or coping choices; frankly, they are none of my business, and refraining from inebriation is not a crusade that I feel either comfortable or qualified to pursue toward others.

Instead, I want to speak about the rarefied and addictive intoxicant that actually “saved” me, keeping me sane and healthy not just during the past decade but all of my life – and if you know me as well as you think you do, you can already guess what that is.

WRITING.

Not for nothing did Stephen King say of this 6,000-year-old-plus art: “Do it for the buzz.” There is an ineffable thrill in watching the words spill out onto paper or screen, an actual physical and mental rush only gotten from congealing thought into alphabetic form, that’s as hard to beat as it is to describe.

And the best part is, it’s free. Easily accessible. Shareable. No more watching my money go up in a cloud of marijuana smoke; no more furtively prowling dodgy neighborhoods; no more keeping it all to myself lest I run out.

Did I mention addictive? Once you start writing, you’re hooked for life. I sometimes find myself typing and typing until I fall asleep at the keyboard, literally unable to stop ’til I drop. (True story.) E.g., tonight: I meant to take advantage of the finally clear Sonoma skies and do a bit of long-delayed stargazing. But as I write this, it’s well after 10:30pm (or, if you prefer, 2230 hours) PDT and I’m already getting sleepy.

So before I trundle off to Dreamsville, I’ll leave you this hard-earned advice: Try not to let the Great American Novel (or Essay, or Blogpost) keep you from tending your other bodily needs. Otherwise, you may find yourself face down in a pool of your own ink – or even with “QWERTYUIOP” reverse-imprinted deeply into your throbbing forehead. Nighty night.

Aged I

LET’S SHIFT GEARS for a second and talk about something that’s been on my mind for a long but indeterminate while: in a word, aging.

Later this month, may the Force so will it, I’ll celebrate my 64th birthday. While momentous enough in itself, what’s even more of the moment is the matter of perspective this milestone brings.

I have now outlived several dear (and once-dear) friends and family members.

Many of the Hebrew-school children I taught when we first came to Sonoma are now out of college or vocational school and pursuing their own successful careers – some with children of their own.

I have seen my beloved hometown change from a quaint and sleepy rural community to a quaint and world-famous tourist playground. (Don’t get me wrong – it’s still by far the best place on Earth in which to live, filled with the best people to live with. It’s just … different, that’s all.)

And I have matured from a depressive but charmingly self-aggrandizing hophead to a joyful and sober social asset. (For some values of the term “social asset.”)

All these changes – particularly the sobriety – have helped me realize the fragility, continuity and inevitability of time and its cycles; it’s the sort of realization one can only derive from direct experience, and has also given me an appreciation of depth and focus. (And rocket-fueled my innate and sardonic sense of the absurd.) Most valuable of all is what the kids today call “radical acceptance” – a healthier byproduct than cynicism of struggling against the unchangeable – as well as a fierce love of life and its many inhabitants.

Wisdom? Enlightenment? Inner peace? I wouldn’t go that far, because I don’t know how to define or even recognize any of those. Let’s just call it a grateful and quiet delight in the simple, in the small, in the deep happiness of becoming and belonging. And we’ll leave it at that.

Life Coaching

AS YOU MAY KNOW, Stephen Colbert – one of my cultural heroes, for more reasons every time I see him – has this feature on his show called “The Colbert Questionert.” The format: after he interviews his guests, he poses them twenty questions like “What’s the best sandwich?” and “Have you ever asked anyone for their autograph?” and “Apples or oranges?” His final question is always, “Describe the rest of your life in five words.”

Last week, one of his guests was the always intense, always entertaining Weird Al Yankovic. After being put through his interrogatory paces, Weird Al summed up the rest of his life thus:

“Be kind. Bring joy. Repeat.”

‘Nuf said. Me too. Right?

Dead Grateful

AT MY DAD’S shiva minyan tonight, came a moment that caught my breath.

Roughly two-dozen fellow congregants had turned out in our synagogue’s sanctuary to help my copilot and I navigate the choppy waters of fresh grief as Jews have done for millennia: tearing the black ribbon that we had pinned on each other, praying the ancient weeknight service, sharing memories of the decedent, saying the Mourners’ Kaddish, and sharing a post-service nosh. All very halachic, heimishe, and loving.

But what really touched me was just before saying Kaddish, our rabbi (who had popped in from sabbatical to conduct the service) asked for whom else the assembled mini-multitude were also currently saying Kaddish. As each name was quietly offered, I thought, So this is why we mourn together as a community. We are none of us alone – we’re also members of a dead-relatives club. And it helps to know that. Viscerally. And very much.

To quote Spider Robinson: “Shared grief is lessened; shared joy is increased.”

Looking forward to that latter. May it come not soon enough.

%$#@!ing Goodbyes

SO. MY 89-YEAR-OLD father entered a Jacksonville hospice yesterday following a week-long bout of very severe pneumonia/COPD (reports vary) and attendant complications. When I spoke with him by phone, his speech was slurred as he said, “It’s been a wild ride.” Those may have been his last words to me; I don’t know if he was talking about the illness, which robbed him of his natural optimism, or his life in general – the latter being very full with people he loved and who loved him in return. He taught me to be a mensch and how to appreciate eating and cooking (especially the adventurous variety), classic comedy, baseball, Slack, music, generosity, thrift, and “the little things in life you treasure.” (See more at “Why I Love My Dad.”)

As Dad would say, “C’est la vie.” I believe he will eventually be at peace.

But dammit — he will be missed.

(And today, the 23rd of January, at 2:40pm Eastern, he is. Terribly. BD”E, Dad, and welcome to the What-Was.)

Teapot Tempest

OUR SMALL COTERIE WAS IN Oakland in 1989, and in that aftermind imbued by any Grateful Dead concert: happy, playful, joyful and a wee bit mischievous.

We were also ravenously hungry, so on the way back to the car we stopped halfway through Chinatown and took in a restaurant crowded with locals. Somehow and somewhere along the way, I had acquired a small chip of dry ice and was amusing myself (and the others) by tossing it about inside my top hat. But once we were seated, I realized I needed to divest myself of my acquisition.

So I dropped it in the hot teapot sitting in the middle of our table.

You may imagine the scene which unfolded next. (No? Well, then: imagine a thick column of steam roiling up from the pot’s spout, expanding outward along the ceiling to the edge of the room, and slowly creeping down the upper part of the walls. Silence reigned among the astonished diners, while I sat there wearing my best “I meant to do that” face. Got it now?)

The rest of our meal passed in peace and relative quiet, concluding with an enormous tip and profuse thanks to the unsmiling owner.

It’s a wonder he didn’t kick us out. I guess you can’t argue with physics.

Cat Whispering

IT’S NOT ACTUALLY hard to become a Cat Whisperer, if you just follow these field-tested and foolproof steps:

1. When you first behold the cat, sweet-talk it: e.g., “Who’s the nice cat?” or “Hey, beautiful boy/girl!” or simply, “KITTY!”

2. Let the cat approach you instead of vice-versa, lest it bolt. (The first Rule of Thumb in any feline encounter: NEVER MAKE A CAT AFRAID OF YOU.)

3. Present to the cat the back of your motionless hand, without trying to reach out for it. (See Rule of Thumb above.)

4. Should you be blessed by having the cat rub its face on your hand, keep your hand motionless and enjoy its warm attentions for the duration.

5. When the cat, sensing your good intentions, rubs its side against your hand, shift your hand to its rump to give a few experimental skritches. Let the cat’s tail slide (loosely!) between your thumb and forefinger as it passes.

6. If the cat turns and makes a beeline for your hand, repeat steps 3-6 until your new friend tires of these familiarities and leaves.

7. If, when you next see the cat, it runs to greet you, congratulations.

8. See?

The Handshake

THE UBER DRIVER’S HAND was warm and calloused, but its electric charge was unexpected.

It shouldn’t have been, though, since for the past forty-five minutes we had free-associated on topics that don’t lend themselves to easy or uncomplicated conversation: God, mind, the uselessness of AI, Self-realization (not a typo) and ego-death, gurus, the constancy of change, the Indian fashion-industry, meditation, capitalism, health and healing, life’s unpredictability, Hindu holyman Ramana Maharshi.

His car was a late-model Tesla – ironically, since we also agreed we shouldn’t colonize Mars – enroute to a faraway hospital, where my copilot was undergoing heart surgery. I told him this toward the end of the ride, and he reached back a ringed and metal-braceleted hand to take one of mine.

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

That was when something unexpected passed between us.

“For her,” he said with earnest intensity.

We conversed a bit more before pulling up to the hospital.

“Thank you,” I told him as I got out. “And thank you for your blessing.”

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But thank you for being the conduit.”

A few minutes later I stood next to my copilot’s bed. She had just come out of surgery, pale and weak-voiced and pained of expression. Her escape from the Beyond had been a close one, but her doctors were skilled. With a why-not-it-couldn’t-hurt shrug, I touched her leg with the hand the driver had grasped. Nothing unexpected this time, just a loving gesture of comfort.

Mind you, I am a skeptic in the original sense of the word: an open-minded soul who doesn’t chase after explanations of the inexplicable. And really, earnest handshakes are common enough. But over the next few hours, as she went from colorless and tentative to walking with me about the cardio unit, beaming a delighted smile at everything we passed, I wondered.

Perhaps that’s the way her sort of surgery is supposed to work. I like to think it does.

But on the other hand, every little bit helps.

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