Reveries on a Sunday Afternoon on a Terrace in West Hollywood

Actually, I am about to write about last Sunday as I sit on my little terrace THIS Sunday. It happens to be the same sort of afternoon, the sun is out, the hummingbirds are feeding, my two cats are on my right and left respectively. It might be a little cooler.

I have no doubt been in prettier places overall, and nicer terraces, but this little spot in West Hollywood is just enough for me on days like this. And days like last Sunday.

So, last Sunday, instead of just sitting out here and reading, I retreated to my little divan that has a nice new additional cushion courtesy of a friend and lay down. I never really fell asleep, but I spent about an hour, maybe more in that delightful in between spot between sleep and wakefulness.

Just as they are now, the wind chimes were being brushed by the wind and making that ethereal sound to complement my sense of well being. I found myself remembering other occa`sions of this sort, through my life and how they felt exactly the same--safe and peaceful, a taste of what paradise must be, what I hope it is.

I can think of two occasions that happened in Monticello, New York. My aunt, cousins and I used to take a trip to Sackett Lake from time to time. I don't know where everybody was, but I was laying on a small patch of grass or sand (there wasn't much beach), on my side, hearing the breeze, and the voices of the kids in or around the water. The sun was strong and, though my eyes were closed, there was a tinge of visible orange I still could see. It was, as last Sunday was, some more than fifty years ago, a joyful suspension of time and space.

Also, in Monticello, outside the little summer house my aunt and uncle owed, there was a large tree. I want to say Maple, but I never know one tree from another. It was big, wide trunked, and leafy, casting a large shady circumference. The grass by the tree always seemed longer than on other parts of the front lawn grass. Once, maybe more than once, I lay on the green cushion and watched the leaves cross in front of and out of the sun. A deep breath was my entire activity. Or maybe watching a cloud pass in the space the leaves left.

Later, in Freehold, New Jersey, outside of the rented house of my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Mike Mulligan's, a rather rambling old house, so different from my family's one bedroom in the Bronx, during a rare visit to this kind couple--in fact, I am not sure that Aunt Peggy was still alive--I sat by another tree, remembering one or two other times I had been there, and wishing that our families had been closer. Still, there was a sense of all's well with the world.

As I lay on my divan last weekend, facing the ficus, the hummingbirds, St. Francis' statue, a couple of pinwheels that spun from time to time in the breeze, I was in each place, more of them coming to me in memory, in the now, experiencing the exact feeling--all of those moments somehow coalescing into this one.

The phrase that comes to me as I conclude, as Tuxedo changes position on the arm of the divan next to me, is the "Everlasting Now". I must have heard it somewhere.

Le Jeu De L'Amour Et Du Hasard--A Constantine Story

I get involved. I forget to add Dad's stories to this blog, and then I find one and I think, "Let's get back to that!" So, here is a short one.

I don't really have a story to tell, today.  In fact, I have a kind of reluctance about the whole project.  Anyway, it is the day before writing class, and I feel somewhat obligated.  So forget literary considerations and let's get on with it.

In the third year of my marriage, I began graduate courses at NYU, in Washington Square, NY.  Actually I enrolled in the program since if I stopped my GI Bill Entitlement, the monthly checks would stop, and I still needed the bread.

She came into the class in the middle of the semester.  She was tall, slim and long haired and spoke a fluent French.  I soon noticed that despite random possibility, it seemed she was always sitting on one side of me or the other.  I looked, peripherally at first, then appraisingly.  We spoke, and soon lunch was a daily affair.

She made it plain that she was attracted to me.  I avoided any commerce outside the university area.  She began asking probing questions.  The theme was obvious.  She was asking if I were gay.

Ok, you may rightfully say, "Why didn't you tell her you were married?"

That's a woman's question.  How often does a man encounter a sucubus, a rare charmer?

The fever reached its height when she did several scenes as Roxanne, in a reading of Cyrano de Bergerac.  I was entranced.  

I scribbled several lines of poetry on the inside cover of a text book.  I insist this was simply a scholarly exercise, inspired by the beauty of Rostand, the author of the work.

To make a long story short, my wife stumbled on the opus.  She said she had been dusting the book shelves.

"Are you seeing another woman?" she said.

No man can deliver an articulate answer to this question.

"Of course not," is a standard answer.

Moreover, no man has the intuitive perception of the female.  About  the charmer:

We were walking down the stairs on our way to lunch when she stopped suddenly.

"Ah, oui," she said in revelation, "vous etes marie, you are married."

Life, and Death, and Life

I know. Some of my friends among you worry when I write what you feel are "gloomy" posts on these pages.  So that you don't generally worry too much, I was the 16 year old reading "Thanatopsis".  I have always tended toward what I suppose is existential angst. If my Catholic faith were not a key aspect of my life, I suspect I could easily have fallen into a dark hole. I may have circled the hole from time to time, but Thank the Lord, never fell in.

So, let's be clear, this entry need not evoke a "What's with DjinnfromtheBronx?"  It just happens in my travels I see certain things perhaps more than others. So, because I visit someone regularly in a nursing home, and informally volunteer with an art class at the site, I am around people at the end or near end of their lives. And sometimes the end of a life, to the observer, sort of has a way of integrating itself subtly into our living world in one moment so to be a rather amazing experience for its passing appearance. This happened the other day.

I had been helping my elderly friend create what turned out to be quite beautiful painted coasters. She is at that stage of her dementia where it is hard for her even to follow directions, but I think I can safely say that she participated more than usual in the work we did as a team. Two lovely coasters were produced, but I could see she had had enough so I took her out to the wing's lobby area.  There was a comfortable leather like deep chair for me and for both of us a view to the outdoors in this lovely setting. It was a little too breezy to take her outside.

The other side of where we were sitting, but lovely.

She pointed to the trees and the perfect plein air expanse and said, "This is a famous place."  I don't know about famous, but it sure is bucolic. She asked me questions about my two cats, which somehow she remembers though she saw them only once, while she can not remember a moment before, nor people she knew for years.  What she remembers also well is that Catholic Faith that has sustained her and her delight that I help at the parish, lectoring and serving as needed. She asks me with rhetoric repetition, "You are still on the altar?" Whenever a nurse or visitor she has many times met comes in, as happened once or twice that day, she will say, "You look so pretty!"  It never fails that they take her hand, cheered by her kind words which substitute for a hello and hide her failing memory.

And so, there we were. I noticed some errant paint on her fingers and was thinking that before I left that day I would bring her back to the activity room and clean them off. She was in a good frame of mind. Smiling. I was in a good frame of mind. Smiling.

Then a series of people, clearly family members of someone, passed us by toward the exit. Each was sniffling, or dabbing an eye. Someone had died. I don't know who, because they are very strict about adhering to the HYPPA laws, which is a good thing (except when someone you have known there for a long time, disappears, and you realize that it probably was death that caused it). I suspect it was one of the folks I don't often see in the activity room. They seemed to be all accounted for, in my head. Several of the nuns who run the home went outside and hugged the family, a confirmation that thre had been a passing.

My elderly friend saw them all, and asked me if I knew who they were. I said they probably were visiting someone. And that Sister so and so was just chatting with them. I did not tell her that anyone had died. It would not have impacted her because she is unaware of where she is, and seems not to remember the other residents when she is not with them, but it was unnecessary, perhaps a little inappropriate, somehow, to note something that pointed out the elephant in the room--this scene of loss has been and will be repeated for years.

And yet, in the activity room the gleeful noise of the seniors still finishing their art work--one man must at one time have been an artist, as he drew little cartoons on the coaster. And my friend did not notice the tears. And the sun still shone. And the trees still swished in the heavy breeze. And the birds were flying by with pieces of weed and fuzz constructing their nests for the new life that they would incubate.

How to phrase this?  I saw the whole circle in that few moments. I wanted to say something to the family, but I didn't want to intrude.

I took my friend back to the activity room and got the paint off her fingers. She was content.

A New Attitude in Long Beach and Beyond--That's the Plan

Back in the summer of '78, I made my second trip to Los Angeles. I was still in law school in New York, had another year before I'd graduate and probably another year, after that, before I'd be able to take the New York Bar. But I had plans by then to find a way to move to land of palm trees and sunshine. Well, not exactly plans, but I was intensely thinking of how I could wend my way out here.
I had, with regard to making the move, getting out the too much cold in winter and too much humidity in summer, a rare thing, for me, a positive attitude. It wasn't just about the weather, though. It was Los Angeles where I thought, as many have before me, that I could make my mark, as a television writer, with my then partner, Len Speaks. As I was driven around back then--I didn't have a license of my own yet--the scented streets (orange blossoms, jasmine, all of it), the palm trees swishing in the breeze, the cloudless cobalt blue sky, and the sunshine somehow different from that of New York, yes, all that cliche stuff, and the radio playing some favorite tunes that gave me optimism. In 1978, the tune of good omen, because of its spectacular sax and the only lines I could actually hear, "When you wake up, it's a new morning, the sun is shining, it's a new morning, you're going home," was "Baker Street" because it would pop up at what seemed to me strategic times during the visit. Actually the song is about depression and alcoholism, but well, the song was hot, the music was cool and I felt energized by it. By 1980 it was Steve Winwood, "When You See a Chance".

"When some cold tomorrow finds you.
When some sad old dream reminds you
How the endless road unwinds you
While you see a chance take it
Find romance
Fake it
Because it's all on you."

I finally saw a chance in 1981, after I passed the New York Bar, to make the move to Los Angeles, and I took it. By then the song that gave me a sense of optimism was from a television show, "The Greatest American Hero"--"Believe it or not, I'm walking on air; I never thought I could feel so free; flying away on a wing and a prayer; Who could it be? It's just me."

My partner didn't make the move then, and I hoped I could till the television writing ground while I studied for the Bar and got a job. I wrote a bit, beginning a spec script for Remington Steele, just as it was cancelled, and one for a favorite of mine, Cagney and Lacey, to keep my creative juices flowing. But I couldn't devote time to both writing and making a living. And life went in a different direction.

Where does Long Beach come into all this? Well, in the 1990s, I decided I needed to work out some of the neurotic quirks of my nature. I had taken a chance and though I wasn't a staff comedy writer at Twentieth Century Fox or Warner Brothers, I was reasonably successful in the career that I had, wisely, prepared for while I pined to be a Hollywood writer. I had a circle of West Coast friends and still had contact with a number of my East Coast ones.  But, I had done less well in either finding romance, or faking it and my usually hidden version of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, full of  catastrophic "What ifs" (which had manifested itself in various versions over my life but which I had managed with a combination of dismissal, denial and changing certain aspects of my daily life), was interfering with my ability to make decisions about pretty much anything. Not good for anyone, but particularly problematic if your job was being an ethics attorney. And when you do that sort of thing all the time, you get a little anxious and a lot depressed.

I began therapy at a location near LAX but when my therapist moved to Long Beach, I decided that the drive to a beach community was a nice complement to my appointments. After one of my last appointments, I had taken myself for lunch on Second Street, and as I walked on the street window shopping, I noticed that my hair looked particularly awful. I had parted ways with my prior hair stylist, not because she was in any way wanting, but because I had had a particularly bad experience with the salon at which she was then working. I walked into Effie and Company, begged for hair help, and was matched with Rosendo, who remains my hairdresser to this day.

It has always been like a day vacation when I go down there. Get my hair done. If the weather is invariably good, make a stop at an on beach or near to the beach locale for lunch. Often someone comes with me, my cousin, my aunt, a friend.

I had to cancel several appointments in the last few weeks due to other intervening activities. But today, I was able to go. Today, I needed to do it alone. No particular reason. It is a breezy, beautiful day, just like those days I was so aware of when I first came to California. I wanted to be able to blare the radio, and sing along. I even "forgot" my cell phone.

I found a new restaurant along Second Street, open only since August, Pietri's Bakery, Greek run, full of breakfasts, and pastry made on the premises, and a cheery shiny atmosphere. I saw on a side street this incense, crystal, chimes store on the side street and bought a few tchochkes I didn't need and then some cosmetics I also didn't need. Driving back along Ocean, amid the revving of the Grand Prix held once a year, I was alternating between the 60s on 6 or the 80's on 8 on Sirius Radio.



That feeling, the one I had when I was a 20 something first in Los Angeles began to overtake me, out of nowhere. Here I am free of the need to work, and I am not fully taking advantage of the opportunity to spend the time doing the type of writing I intended to do when I first moved to Los Angeles, but couldn't because I had a fully occupying my time job. That isn't an issue now. It hasn't been for quite a while.

I do not need to make a living at writing. I have to get over the idea that I need to succeed in any traditional way. That period of my life, happily, is over. I somehow lost track of that wonderful fact. I have always seen my life in terms of responsibilities. I have a few now, but they ought not, they need not be allowed to generate old anxieties. That's what Long Beach did for me today. Reminded me.

Yep, as I drove home first along Ocean, then to the 405, the wind quite truly blowing through my now messed up coif, I thought, maybe for the first time, truly, that today is a beginning, not a prelude to any end--which is my tendency to think as my glass half empty nature can be tamed, but apparently not eradicated.

So lots of songs popped up as I was rolling along, and the lyrics of another 80s classic caught my ear, Patti Labelle's "New Attitude". 

"I'm feeling good from my head to my shoes
Know where I'm going
And I know what to do.

I tidied it up
My point of view
I got a new attitude."

I really was feeling good from my head to my shoes. That's a great thing.

The Weaponized Car

Perhaps I am noticing things because I recently had to consume and memorize the 93 page Drivers Manual so I could take the Department of Motor Vehicles written test for the first time in what I think has been at least fifteen years. (Happy to say I passed, and happy to say I will have a new picture!) I have got to say, though, that the drivers in Los Angeles (though I suspect the same is true in New York, Boston and all those cities which probably resemble Skinner mazes more than civilized metropolises) seem to take particular delight in ignoring all regulatory, hazard and warning signs. Unfortunately, they are doing so while careening in 4,000 mass of metal and plastic.

This day, alone, I saw two people zip past a decidedly red light, and two, just in front of me, turning left at 4:45 in the usual slog of traffic, though the sign clearly said no turns left as of 4 p.m. It is much the same every day, adding in passing without signalling,  ignoring any idea of a "three second behind the car in front of you" rule, and making right or left turns from middle lanes, also without benefit of signal.

I remember the quaint days of courtesy.  On my very first visit to La La Land, when in New York, the idea of letting a pedestrian cross either at a light or at an intersection without traffic control, the drivers always stopped. It was positively mesmerizing, and to tell the truth, I didn't quite trust it. Once I moved to Los Angeles, and for many years thereafter, the drivers and pedestrians existed in a zen like peacefulness for which the West Coast was a model. I can't tell you when it changed, but suddenly horns were honking like I was back East, and pedestrians as well as those drivers who actually followed the law became target practice. The demyelination of psychological nerves of a society in decay has given us the "weaponized car", among its other symptomologies.

Regulation, and 93 pages tells me there is a lot of it, along with all sorts of financial and legal consequences (e.g. littering, 1000.00 fine that a cop won't bother with while he is doing the pit maneuver on some guy in a car evading him after he ran a stop sign all on TV for our viewing pleasure) makes precisely no difference.

And then, of course, in California, which is wildly concerned with drunk driving (as it should be of course) and the Blood Alcohol level of everything from a teenager to an Uber driver, has legalized recreational marijuana.  Oh, of course, they remind the populace that it is illegal to use and drive still. Tell that to the guy in front of me who was blowing the smoke of his joint out of the SUV in front of me one time recently. Tell that to the guy who was smoking weed while we were all waiting to get into the DMV for our various tests. They already know is states like Colorado, which legalized marijuana before California did, that there is an uptick in DUI's, or as I will call it, "DUWI", "Driving Under Weed Influence". Seems kind of like adding to the arsenal rather than limiting it.

But to me the bigger problem is the attitude of my fellow citizens. It isn't merely that they believe the rules do not apply to them. It is that they have so little regard for other people's lives (they have a sense of invincibility borne of their narcissism). The car, not unlike the gun that is currently the subject of cyclical discussion, gives this increasing subset of an already frail humanity, a sense of unlimited power and control. They certainly have the power to kill. What they don't have is the control they imagine as they cut and weave among us.

The long-term solution seems impossible in light of the level of regression. For that some of us look to a Higher Power recognizing that man always fails as the self-designated center of all things. The short term solution though is rather the Giulani model of the "broken windows" days in New York.

Small things matter. When someone spits on the sidewalk, there should be a ticket. When someone turns left at 4:45 where the sign says you cannot beginning at 4 should get a ticket. Every time.
No discussion. And for every small thing that is ignored because there are "bigger" crimes need to have the attention of police authorities or other traffic authorities. There is, manifestly, the slippery slope. We are nearly at the end of it going into the muck. 

But then, in California, at least, the authorities are trying to ban cars by their policies. Then everybody can go to the subway, where, naturally, there will be no crime as people are much nicer there. And if you believe that, I have a bridge in New York I can have imported to Los Angeles.

Thinking on Mr. Rogers

I was too old to watch Mr. Rogers when he began his something like 30 year run on Public Television. I think he began his Mr. Roger's Neighborhood in about 1968, when I was already a teenager. I was of the Romper Room and Captain Kangaroo generation.



I was always aware of the quiet, simple presentation of his show, and when he was on the air, he was subject of satire. He was a slight man. He spoke in clear, but very soft tones. He had no interest in competition or the usual trappings of success. A society like ours has long been distrustful of anyone who seems to be well. . . .good. His show has been re-run and new little ones have had the opportunity to escape, if only for a half hour or so, the realities the adult world imposes on them. And Mr. Rogers seems to have been a very different adult from the general species.

That's why I find myself worrying about Mr. Rogers a little. Some 15 year after his death, there is renewed interest in him. There have been short documentaries, like one you can see on YouTube or the like, called "Mr. Rogers and Me". Then there is a longer theatrical documentary that is going to be released in the summer and the most recent announcement is that Tom Hanks is going to play him in a biographical release of some sort. At the moment, Mr. Rogers has been given a kind of secular sainthood.

But that's what triggers the worry. I have never known the media or human beings generally not to seek the chink in any hero or heroine's armor. There is almost a game in it--build the person up, write glowing things for a long time, and then, one day, a rumor, and then a snippet in a paper or on the net, and then an investigative story that takes the shine from any character. It isn't always true, but once the whiff of scandal is in the air, truth becomes irrelevant. Salacious sells and comforts the rest of us that no one can be THAT good.

More than anything, maybe because I have watched interviews with Mr. Rogers and seen many clips of his show since I heard about the new movie with Mr. Hanks that is pending, I have felt what I think the children and their parents have felt for years upon end, as I watch him, a sense of peace and a delight that there are people who not only have no agenda, but who might truly be models for the rest of us.

I would like Mr. Rogers to survive the scrutiny that will likely descend upon him, though he is in earthly repose, and hopefully in celestial joy, when both documentary and movie are released.

I want the shine to survive the human need to detract and reduce. Maybe this time the crown of secular sainthood will be undisturbed.