I don’t know about you, but my favorite days are the ones entirely free of encumbrances. No doctors’ appointments (especially no dentist!). No weekly schlep to the supermarket. No hours lost to the hair salon. No plumbing/heating/appliance breakdowns (rare, but always a time-consuming nuisance). Nothing but a whole day stretching gloriously ahead to use as I choose. Uninterrupted writing time. Unhurried hours to lose myself in a house project of my choosing. Time for a cup of java with Ed at one of our local cafes or taking our books for a leisurely read at the park down the street. A stint playing my guitar. Maybe—dare I hope—time to start an art project. A decoupage, perhaps. Or collage.

That’s the fantasy anyway. And some days, I actually manage to do several of these happy, life-enhancing activities, but all too often (and weirdly, more and more often—did someone put the 24-hour cycle on hyperspeed?), to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, “Stuff gets in my way.” Not worthy stuff. Not interesting stuff. Not some unexpected delight like my recent meet-up with a dear friend I haven’t seen for nine years who happened to be in town for the week, a guest lecturer at the local university. For that, I gladly cut my working day short and even forewent my usual five o’clock gin-and-tonic so Ed and I could have dinner and drinks with M without me doing a faceplant.   

Pounding Headaches

No, the stuff that routinely wreaks havoc on my waking hopes are things both unforeseen and unavoidable. Like two weeks ago when the contractors renovating our house informed me that it’s best to take everything off the walls while they’re re-siding the house because the hammering (and it’s a lot of hammering, weeks of hammering stretching into the foreseeable future) may cause pictures and pottery and all sorts of wall-mounted bric-a-brac to crash.

So instead of writing or enjoying a coffee out or strumming the old guitar, I took down all the framed artwork and photos, transferred all the antique bowls and vases from their shelves to the dining room table (where we will eat for the coming weeks is a mystery)—and started to box the 10,000 CDs (slight exaggeration but not by much) stashed in the CD wall-mounted case. Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself here—I first had to find a box to hold the CDs. Make that three boxes. Wide enough and long enough to hold a zillion CDs in alphabetical order—otherwise I’ll lose two days on the return when I have to put them all back into the hanging cupboard.

As of this writing, I am still searching for the floor space to stash these boxes, space where we won’t trip over them every ten minutes as we’re now doing.

One-Sided Phone Tag  

If it was just the house renovation, one could philosophically say, “It will end someday.” Some month. Some year. Hopefully. But that’s the thing about dies interruptus, there’s always something happening. And then there are the things that happen over and over, with slight variations. Like phone tag. Whole mornings, complete afternoons vanish as I wait, and wait…and wait for someone to talk to who can (maybe) resolve my problem.

A recent classic example of this occurred when I tried to do a routine annual renewal for my Carbonite back-up plan (there is no greater fear for a writer than some unexpected catastrophic glitch that erases everything one has written. Essays. Short stories. Entire novels. In a word: one’s life’s work). So, as I was waiting for visiting family to get ready for a much-anticipated day—a river walk and art gallery visit, followed by lunch at a favorite eatery—I clicked on the e-mail link that in under two minutes should have renewed my subscription for the year. The prior credit card I used was now defunct, so I typed in the new info where it said change payment method. No big deal, right? I’ve done it. You’ve done it. One card expires. You use another.

Only this time, it was a big deal. This transaction cannot be processed. No rhyme. No reason. I refreshed and tried again. And again. I scrolled down to the Contact info and dialed the number. We are experiencing an unusually high call volume at this time. Please wait for the next available representative… The mantra of our times.

No fool, I put my phone on speaker and used the time to clear 600-some emails.  A half-hour later, the family was ready to go, so I cancelled the call. Another day. Long story short, it took several more calls, consuming sizeable chunks of several more mornings to get the renewal straightened out. I could have walked to Carbonite headquarters in Boston faster, although it would have been more fun to visit their field office in Paris.

The Doctor is (Not) In 

Last November, I went to my scheduled annual physical with Doctor Z. A nurse did the usual prelim weight check, blood pressure, pulse stuff and assured me, “the doctor will be with you shortly.” I used the time to finish a chapter of my current read (I always bring a book), cleaned up some email on my phone, and waited. Forty minutes passed. No doctor. I went out to the nurses’ station to investigate the situation. “Oh, Dr. Z isn’t here,” one of the nurses gaily informed me. “She has jury duty today.”

Jury duty? Jury duty! Why didn’t someone call me or at least inform me when I arrived? Why did they proceed with the preliminary checks?!

“If you’d like to see someone today,” the receptionist said [Did they think I had arrived for some other purpose??!], “Dr. Y could give you a few minutes between her appointments.”

I will refrain from going into a tirade here about the sorry state of medical care in this country and just say that since I did have a particular concern that day, I took the few minutes Dr. Y could spare. She was wonderful—attentive and supportive for the ten minutes I saw her. On my way out, I mentioned with all the politeness I could muster that it would have been good if someone had called me to inform me about Dr. Z’s jury duty. “Jury duty?” the receptionist said. “She’s not on jury duty. She’s taking a couple of weeks off. She scheduled it months ago.”

I swear, every word of this time-wasting tale is true. But I did get one good thing out of this “lost morning.” Dr. Y. She is now my primary care doc, though making that happen is another loooong time-wasting tale I will spare you here.  

Computer Glitches

It was a beautiful day in early May. Nothing scheduled on the calendar. Following breakfast, I settled into my desk chair, looking forward to an uninterrupted morning of work on my novel, after which I would take a stroll downtown and browse the local bookshops. Ed would no doubt want to accompany me and we’d have lunch on the open rooftop of a favorite local brewery.

Ha. Ha. Nice try, Henry.

I had just opened my manuscript, tweaked my last chapter, added a new twist to my outline, and typed in Chapter 20 when my computer curtly informed me: You do not have permission to edit this file.

Permission? Permission?!! I WROTE THIS “FILE” YOU ****** MORON MACHINE. [For sensitive readers, I have edited out the longish string of expletives here.]

But, of course, shouting at your computer will only take you so far, as in “that and five bucks will still buy you a cup of coffee.” Which is to say, nowhere. So, heaving a big sigh, I started the tortured journey into ascertaining where the glitch lay. I first checked my other files to see if this forbidden thing was systemic. Nope, I could happily edit each of the five files I opened. Next stop: Settings.

After a frustrating half hour of searching likely places to no avail, I googled my problem, jotted down several possible solutions and tried again. Still… nada. Ninety minutes into the morning, I at last located the problem: I had somehow been bumped from the position of “administrator” on my novel. Just who the administrator was for my file on my computer remained a mystery. I returned to googling solutions. Found something that sounded like it might work and, crossing all fingers, knocked wood (my desk), and deleted everything under “administrator”—a string of letters and numbers I didn’t recognize. I then boldly typed my info in. Voila! I could now edit my novel again. What I could no longer do was work on it for the morning or enjoy a stroll downtown to browse bookshops. It was lunchtime.

How We Spend Our Days

I have no snappy words of wisdom to impart here. Only the observation that time is a precious commodity. No one’s time is infinite. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know I’m a big fan of writer Annie Dillard’s thoughts on this subject: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  

Some time-busters are one-offs like our house renovation. In a few months, it will be finished. I’ll restore order to the interior and move on. Others are reliable repeats—my thrice-yearly dental visits, the weekly shop. Some are not only time-consuming but utterly maddening—like the repeated attempts to renew my file protection I detailed here.

It does seem that since the Plague broke in 2020, the number of “glitches” one daily encounters has skyrocketed at the same time as easy, straightforward solutions have plummeted, but that’s where we are. And since I don’t see a likely turnabout in this state of things, and moving to a yurt on the tip of outer Mongolia is not an option—too cold, bad internet, no Quik Marts within a zillion miles—I need a way to not let the unending stream of time-zappers deflate my spirits and spoil my day (after day, after day).

When I told Ed the topic for this month’s blog, he laughed heartily and said, “The day you plan, and the day you get? They are not the same. Ever.” But yesterday was one of those rare days. Ed and I took our computers to a coffee shop downtown where I wrote undisturbed for two-and-a-half hours before we moved on to lunch on the shady porch of a café with Mediterranean cuisine. Heaven! Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a week of days like that. But…

This morning, I got a jury duty summons. Then, an incorrect medical bill that had been settled months ago resurfaced, involving a long string of messaging and several phone calls. And one of the brand-new posts for the front porch was somehow badly scratched and chipped in the installation, so I need to get in touch with the builders.

How we spend our days…  

[I’ve been away this past month, playing hooky in London with Ed–watching lots of theatre, enjoying art and history museums, traipsing the parks and, of course, patronizing my fair share of pubs! So I’m re-posting a piece from July 2021. Hope it brings more joy to your summer, and a greater sense of sanity amidst all the noise out there.]

During my son’s recent visit, we drove up to Vermont. The centerpiece of this daytrip was lunch at my favorite summer eatery—the Marina in Brattleboro. The restaurant boasts a sizable deck overlooking the Connecticut River. In the soft hazy heat of a June afternoon, you can enjoy a lazy meal to the sound of water lapping and birdsong. The word somnolent comes to mind.

I first dined at the Marina eons ago, scant weeks after moving from the heart of Boston. The restaurant’s deck was smaller then, but the tranquility factor was just as high. Sitting there, I was startled to realize the only noise was me. All around was serene—the agitation, the angst, the tumult was all within me. I love cities. Love the diversity, the wide array of culture, the energy, but in the chaos and rush of the urban, you may never hear your own heartbeat.   

A Discordant Jangle of Uncertainty 

The noise within: You’ve got a zillion things to do—a zillion things you want to do—but you can’t settle on what to tackle first. Whatever you turn your hand to, you find yourself spinning your wheels, repeating the same steps without making any discernible advances. Busy doing nothing, as a friend once put it, leaves you exhausted but unfulfilled. In this state of paralysis, hours and days melt away as you frantically row but get no closer to land.

The noise within distracts us from what matters most in the moment, leaves us confused and uncertain about our true feelings—Am I doing what I want? What do I want? It blurs our focus and renders us immobile. Should I go this route? But what if I went the other way? What if I miss something vital? The possibilities overwhelm. The problems feel insurmountable. Fear spirals wildly, an endless loop of anxiety. What if I fail? What if I fail because I fear failing? We are swamped in a deluge of despair.

What is Making All That Racket?

The still calm of that long ago afternoon on the Connecticut River revealed the noise within me, but Boston didn’t create that noise. You don’t have to be standing in Times Square to be rendered deaf to your inner voice. We live on Planet Earth, home of Social Media A to Z, the Worldwide Web, and the 24-hour news cycle. An unceasing parade of pundits forecast doom and gloom. Experts—true and false—spout their wisdom(?) freely everywhere:

“You should do this.”

“You mustn’t think that.”

“Everyone knows…”

The subtext: Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it wrong. Like the increasingly contaminated air we breathe that pollutes our lungs, the constant, often contradictory, mumbo jumbo from these talking heads offers lots of anxiety but little affirmation.

The din of the outside world—a cacophony of voices, often strident and discordant—may drown out the most essential voice, our own. Getting away from that din long enough to tune in to our true inner state is the first step toward reducing the noise within. The good news is, we can choose to decrease the time we spend on, take breaks from, or entirely turn off this media circus. We can limit the authority we grant to others, especially strangers.

You don’t have to hide away in a yurt in the Himalayas to hear your own voice. You just need to create space and trust yourself. While it’s wise to take in and weigh new or differing viewpoints, it’s healthy to remember—and value—your own experience, your needs, your hopes. If anyone tells you they know you better than you know yourself, don’t believe them. And if someone says, “This is the one right way to do/approach/achieve this”, ignore them. In every field, for any endeavor, history proves there are many paths to any goal.

Mute the Noise: Mind Cleansers

During the pandemic, shut out from my usual visits to the gym, I took long walks. The gym has re-opened but I’ve put off signing up, preferring these daily rambles that both empty and “clean” my head, leaving space for new ideas, insights, calm. Some people swear by meditation, and if that works for you, great, but I get fidgety sitting still. For me, the mind/body catharsis of a good walk works best.

Other mind cleansers I’ve discovered or borrowed and tweaked include:

1. Get ready… Jigsaw puzzles! Yes, those BIG 1000- to 2000-piece babies. Absorbed, focused solely on finding and fitting pieces, it’s my “dessert” at the end of a workday. Unlike the inner push many of us feel to have a finished product—a new chapter on the book, the entire garage cleaned—to show for a day’s effort, jigsaw is all about process. No one expects to complete a jigsaw in an afternoon. There’s no “right” number of pieces to fill in. There’s no success/failure pressure. It just feels great to make whatever progress you can. If we could adopt this attitude about all our endeavors, the sanity quotient would skyrocket around the globe.

Okay, I hear you saying, but what about real deadlines? The kind the boss imposes. Believe me, writers get deadlines, too. All the time. I think it’s possible, though, that more gets done—and better—when we focus more on the work itself and less on watching the clock. Anxiety is not conducive to either creativity or productivity.

2. The stuff that nags. The seemingly endless—and changing—list of troubles and woes we can’t fix at the moment—or maybe ever—but must wait for the answer or leave to fate. This is an old trick—one the experts got right—but it has worked for me (when I’ve taken the time to do it). Make a list of the stuff your mind keeps churning over to no avail. Just brainstorm it without pause or judgment. Then tuck that list in a folder or a drawer—I tape mine to the far side of my file cabinet where I can’t see it—and let those suckers go. Get on with life. You might get a shock from revisiting this list in a month. How many items have resolved themselves or simply don’t matter anymore? And how much energy have you freed up in the meantime? Repeat as often as necessary.

3. Of course, there are BIG valid worries aplenty in our world. Our climate is in chaos—June saw 115 degrees in Las Vegas. Geo-politics are trending toward the fascist. Here in the States, we’ve watched the rise of violent militaristic groups and white supremacy. Voting rights are on the chopping block. Whole lotta noise out there.

I confess to struggling with these fears—I like to get out in front of troubles and act to prevent them. But when we’re talking about problems of this scale, it’s just not possible for any one person to eradicate or correct them. They are systemic and well-funded by Big Money. Allowing them to endlessly rattle around in our brain drains us of hope and energy. Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength, writer and Dutch watchmaker Corrie Ten Boom cautioned. And she walked the talk on that one. Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom and her family hid many Jews in their home during World War II, aiding them in escaping the Nazis.

Like Corrie, what each of us can do is act from where we are. We can make phone calls, write letters, register voters, join local environmental groups, protest, and donate. Every dollar helps. Every voice raised swells the whole. As Corrie Ten Boom’s life shows, action gives strength. Empowers rather than depletes us.

4. Mental health days. Take them regularly. Play is as essential to our well-being as the loftiest purpose. Got a full-time job? Kids to care for? Ask a spouse/partner/relative/friend to step in for an afternoon. Even a daily mental health hour—like the walks I took during COVID and continue to enjoy—can reset your head.  

Choose Your Focus

Once you’ve freed up some mental real estate, you can direct your energy. Choose your focus. What are the basic areas where you want to expend your time and effort? My list includes: Writing (novels/short fiction/blogging), playing guitar, gardening, house projects, reading, walking and, of course, family/friends. These are things I strive to do with great frequency because they matter to me—in the case of writing, almost daily.

What my list does is provide a road map, a general direction, when I start to feel lost or overwhelmed. Say, if I have six hours today, I might spend two on my current work-in-progress, and one hour each on blogging, walking/guitar, and gardening. The sixth hour? Maybe I’ll throw those boxes of clothing for the Salvation Army into the car. Ed and I will drop them off, then enjoy a summer lunch at a favorite café.

I don’t do these things with a stopwatch. It’s just a loose guideline. If I should get bitten by the neighbor’s dog—which happened two weeks ago—and have to spend my morning in the ER, c’est la vie. No self-recriminations. As John Lennon wrote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Your True Voice: Let It Rip

“The sky is falling in!” Henny-Penny cries in the classic children’s fable after an acorn falls from the tree above and bonks her on the head. While it’s never pleasant to get hit on the head, I think if you look up, you’ll find the sky is still there. It’s always been there. It will always be there—at least in terms of any timeline that concerns us.

The noise within, maybe it’s just a whole lot of acorns pelting us from one direction and another. If we let them take seed and sprout, we’ve got a forest too dense to see through, but we can just decide to cast those babies aside one by one and keep focused on what really matters to us. Whether that’s work or play, if it doesn’t hold some kind of real satisfaction, I don’t want to waste myself on it.

I hope you’ve found something in these observations and ideas that will help vanquish the noise within. I also hope you’ll take a moment to comment and share any “tricks” you use to turn down the din. Our possibilities are too wondrous and our hours too precious to let our true voice be muffled in the roar of the crowd.

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” — Alice Morse Earle

Ever since people discovered they were mortal—and I’m guessing this was around the time they first saw someone drop dead and remain dead—they began to create various belief systems in which this demise was only temporary, that life would somehow resume in another realm. In short, they invented immortality.

The ancient Egyptians, famed for being buried with plenty of food and all their worldly possessions, believed that earthly life was but the first leg of a journey; that if one had pleased the gods thus far, one would end up in The Field of Reeds, a paradise that would mirror one’s life on earth exactly.

You have to work a little harder as a Hindu. While they believe the soul never dies, Hindus also believe the soul is reborn in another body—reincarnated—and you keep coming back until you get it right. You can be stuck in samsara, this cycle of birth and death, a long time. But eventually good karma is achieved and you are freed from your earthly body to live a life of divine bliss for all eternity with Brahman, the supreme universal spirit.

The Igbo people of Africa believe that one continues to have agency in earthly affairs after they leave this world and go to the land of bliss. There, along with their ancestors, they interact, intercede, and protect their earthly families.

Christianity promises eternal life, but whether that’s Heaven or Hell—or the waiting room of Purgatory, if one follows the Pope—depends on your behavior here. Similarly, Islam says you will be sent to Paradise (Jannah) if you followed the teachings of the Qur’an, or Hell (Jahannum) if you don’t. Immortality, in these religions, is a dicey thing.

Eternal life. That’s the promise of most religions, but there’s another kind of immortality—the kind that we seek in life. The deep hunger to make our mark on earth—an indelible permanent mark—through an achievement or achievements that will long outlive us. To be remembered, even revered, for centuries in this world after our mortal coil has turned to dust. I would argue that this is the real immortality most people seek, unable as we are to truly imagine ourselves dead. But what price do we pay for that desire?        

Changing Fortunes/Shifting Sands

The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920 at the tender age of 24. It was an instant smash hit. Overnight, prestigious literary mags like Scribner’s clamored for short stories from this rising star of the Jazz Age. The Saturday Evening Post, one of the most widely-read magazines in America, paid Fitzgerald handsomely—in the tens of thousands of dollars in today’s cash per story—and arranged to have first dibs on all his short fiction.     

Fitzgerald then married the girl of his fictional dreams, Alabama socialite Zelda Sayre, who had put off his advances until This Side of Paradise made him “somebody.” The Fitzgeralds lived the party life, drinking and cavorting with the glitterati of the day in New York, Paris and the Riviera. In 1922, Fitzgerald published a second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, which also enjoyed much success. The party continued, and it’s a testament to just how lavish their lifestyle was that as much money as Fitzgerald’s books and short stories generated, the couple had no trouble living beyond their means. But who worried? He was the golden boy, destined for immortality.

Then he published The Great Gatsby in 1925, and it did not do well. After six months, only 20,000 copies had sold. Fitzgerald was shattered. His next book, Tender is the Night, would take him nine years to write. It also failed to achieve success. He would never complete another book. His final work, a rough, unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, would be completed by literary critic and writer Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941, the year after Fitzgerald’s death at age 44.

In the years between the failure of Gatsby and the heart attack that ended his brief life, Fitzgerald would increasingly sink into the alcoholism that had begun in his Princeton days. Would attempt suicide on at least one occasion. Would struggle to get his ideas for screenplays accepted by Hollywood and fail all but once (“The Three Comrades”). Would face rejection over and over from the very magazines that had once clamored for his every word. His stories grew darker, more explicit—sex and drink and suicide—as Zelda descended into madness and their marriage crumbled. In 1940, lamenting the loss of his popularity, he wrote to his editor, Max Perkins: “But to die so completely and unjustly after having given so much. Even now, there is very little published in American fiction that doesn’t slightly bare my stamp—in a small way I was an original.” The words have the ring of something he fervently hoped for rather than believed.

Too Little, Too Late 

Van Gogh had none of Fitzgerald’s polish, his sophistication. None of the success or wealth Fitzgerald experienced in his youth. Van Gogh would struggle for more than a decade to find himself, although once he did, he would create on a scale that few, if any, have ever achieved. Over two-thousand works of art, including nearly 900 oil paintings. The Starry Night. Café Terrace at Night. Bedroom in Arles. Van Gogh’s Chair. The Potato Eaters. The Church at Auvers. The Wheatfield with Crows. His works are bold in color, dramatic in their brushwork. The viewer cannot look away.

And yet, it was not enough.

Vincent Van Gogh was the son of a Dutch-Reformed minister and a woman who was grieving the stillbirth of her first child, a child who died exactly one year before Van Gogh was born. A child he would be named after, Vincent Willem—an idealized perfect child his mother had invented and whom he would never feel he could live up to. At age 11, he was shipped off to boarding school. He hated it, but his repeated pleas to come home went unanswered.

His professional life began five years later when his uncle snagged a position for him with famed art dealers Goupil & Cie in the Hague. After four years training, he was sent to London, then Paris, but found the commodification of art deeply troubling. Van Gogh then took up Latin and Greek, hoping to become a clergyman, but that didn’t work out so he became a lay preacher, caring for the sick and reading the Bible to coal miners in a desolate region of Belgium. It was here that he finally decided to take up the work he had always been drawn to—painting. He stopped preaching to the miners and began making sketches of them, then paintings. He was 27. He would be dead a decade later.

Always restless, he soon left Belgium for The Hague, where he met up with his cousin by marriage, Anton Mauve, an artist who was enjoying the kind of success Van Gogh dreamed of. Mauve introduced him to painting in oil. He also fronted Van Gogh the money to set up a studio, but later cut him dead when he discovered Van Gogh was living with a prostitute.

Van Gogh would move on to Antwerp, painting the local mills and churches, the wheatfields, the orchards, the faces he found in cafes, the peasants. Of his painting The Potato Eaters, he wrote to his brother Theo: “I wanted to convey the idea that the people eating potatoes by the light of an oil lamp used the same hands with which they take food from the plate to work the land… that they have earned their food by honest means.”  

He would try to sell his paintings. Without success. Theo, an art dealer, would do all he could to help. It was Theo who got The Potato Eaters into a Paris exhibit in 1885. But the world was not yet ready for Van Gogh. “Too dark,” they said. So unlike the light, bright style of the Impressionists. In Paris, he met other avant-garde painters, notably Emile Barnard and Paul Gauguin, who were also moving beyond Impressionism. But the vast city wore him out and he moved to Arles, having not sold a single painting of the hundreds he’d completed in Antwerp and Paris.

At Arles, in the famous Yellow House, both home and studio to Van Gogh, his painting continued at a fevered pitch, each work more brilliant than the last. It was here he invited Gauguin to come and live with him so they might work together and make real a dream he had long harbored—an artists’ collective. For a time, the dream seemed possible—the two men took their easels into the fields, painting companionably side by side, but then the arguments started. And grew in volatility. After a particularly heated debate over whether painting should proceed from the imagination (Gauguin) or be based in nature (Van Gogh), Gauguin packed his bags and left in December 1888. Van Gogh cut off a piece of his ear soon after and spent the next year in a mental asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence where he continued to paint, completing more than 150 works. He then settled in Auvers. It would be his final home.

His brother, Theo, had continued submitting Van Gogh’s paintings, most notably to the annual “Salon des Indépendants” in Paris. Ten of his works were finally accepted in March 1890. Claude Monet declared them the best in the show. Only two months before, the critic Albert Aurier had called Van Gogh  “a genius”, and a society of avant-garde painters that included Toulouse-Lautrec had invited him to submit works to their annual exhibition.

His art was beginning to be appreciated. But it would come too late and be too little. Worn out from years of fevered hopes, hardscrabble living, and constant disappointment, on the morning of July 27, 1890, Van Gogh wandered out into the fields he loved to paint and committed suicide, shooting himself in the abdomen before walking back to town where he died in his bed two days later.

What We Can Never Know

Fitzgerald died believing his life had been irrelevant. His works would be forgotten. His quest for immortality a failure. And those beliefs hastened his death—there was not enough alcohol in the world to ease the pain.   

Van Gogh died believing the world to be utterly indifferent to what he offered.      

To be mortal though is to never know the true impact of our life. How the ripples we cast, whether ignored or heeded in their hour, stretch beyond us, touch and change other lives. How The Great Gatsby—whose initial dismal sales would eat away at its author’s confidence and happiness until it killed him—would then be rediscovered a decade later to become a huge best seller. A literary masterpiece that has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and is a staple of university literature studies around the globe. How the painter of The Starry Night, who sold but one painting in his lifetime of the hundreds he created—and so despairing, took his own life—would one day be regarded as one of the greatest painters of all time, his works hung in museums around the globe and sold at auction for prices in the tens of millions.  

Embrace the Moment

Will Shakespeare likely had no notion that the plays he wrote would last 400 years and counting. Very few plays were published in his lifetime. Publication paid little, if anything, to the author, and there were no copyright laws. In fact, plays were largely felt, by those who decide what “matters”, to be entertainments for “the rabble.” Had it not been for Shakespeare’s actor friends Henry Condell and John Heminges tracking down prompt books (the manuscripts used by the actors), the best of the quartos (cheap pamphlets of plays, sometimes assembled from memory by audience members), and the author’s working drafts to produce The First Folio, many of what are now considered his greatest plays would have vanished. Shakespeare simply wrote because that’s what he loved—the theatre. It was his LIFE. And that way of living—doing what you love because you love it, wherever it goes, however it is received—is much more important than what happens after you’re gone.

When I was surveying world religions for their take on immortality, I was struck by two things: 1) Most religions seem to use the afterlife as a carrot-and-stick to get people to follow whatever rules the religion deems “appropriate behavior”; 2) Judaism and the ancient Greco/Roman world share a fuzzier notion about an afterlife, if they have/had any notions about it at all. I have no ancient Greco/Roman friends to query about this, but I did ask my Jewish friends on Facebook for their understanding of immortality as it plays out in their religion. Here are a few of their comments:  

Jeffrey: Apparently, there’s no afterlife per se.

Amy: It’s vague and I think the point is that this life matters.

Lesley: In every service, we say prayers for those who have passed. So that they are always with us.

Toni: For many Jews, the emphasis is on living today, not on an afterlife.

Mimi: In all my years of Sunday school, Hebrew school, and services, I don’t remember the topic coming up!

As for the ancient Greeks, with their various gods, mythic tales, and the underworld, the fate of humans still came down to what the playwright Aeschylus has Apollo declare in Eumenides: “There is no resurrection.”

Death is it, ballgame over.

The Roman poet Horace was even more succinct. Cutting right to the point, he wrote: Carpe diem. Seize the day!

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (William Faulkner)

As regular readers of this blog may recall, April is the month I do a little tally of the lessons life has imparted—or dumped on me—in the preceding year. This time around, as the Birthday Fairy drops me another one, I’m taking a wider lens. Much wider. Forty years. But I’m still learning. May it ever be so.

In March 1983, I was a part-time journalist for an alternative newspaper in East Lansing, Michigan. When Black activist Angela Davis came to speak at Michigan State University, I jumped at the chance to cover the story and interview this legendary woman. While being one of six reporters permitted to spend a half hour talking to her before the event was a dream come true, what has stayed with me most was something she said to the largely student audience: Don’t let these places [universities] make you forget from whence you came.

It was a striking line then, and its truth/import has only grown for me over the intervening years. In fact, I have come to believe it’s impossible to forget where you come from. Oh, you can fake it for others, you can choose to keep the blinders on, you can even lie to yourself. But where you come from, it’s always there, the good and the bad.

Five months after Davis’s visit, I got into my orange VW “Bug” and headed out to Boston, almost 800 miles to the east. I was going in search of a place to live in a city I had never seen. I was going to make my Big Move, leave behind the conservative, small-minded, small town culture of the Midwest and move to the East Coast where “things happened.”

Famed newspaper editor Horace Greeley may have said “Go West, young man” but I had always yearned for the East. During my college years, I hitched rides with various fellow students heading to New York for a term break. They would drop me off in Manhattan, where I rented a student room for $6 a night at the top of an old hotel in Midtown, ate at Horn and Hardart Automats—“frill-free and democratic” eateries (as one writer put it)—and walked. And walked. And dreamed.

New York was definitely the center of “all things literary” in the States, but the City was too pricey for a lowly-paid editor, so I settled on Boston because it was: 1) still a major city on the East Coast, and 2) an easy hop by bus or car down to Manhattan. On Labor Day weekend, 1983, I again got in my VW and drove to my new home in Boston, the first floor of a house in a working class neighborhood in Somerville. I was leaving the Midwest behind.

Twenty-six years would pass before I saw Michigan again.

Yearning to Breathe Free

We are a restless nation, a mobile nation. At least those of us with a college degree—about a third of the country. While a sizeable number of people still live their entire life in the place of their birth, college graduates are generally out the door and on to someplace else, most frequently the West Coast or the Northeast. “Many young people in rural communities now see college not so much as a door to opportunity as a ticket out of Nowheresville,” the Wall Street Journal noted in 2017. For my part, I wanted to find “my people”, the place where I fit. It was a quest I had anticipated making since I was thirteen.

Thirteen. That was the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Bobby Kennedy, too. The year the Black Panther Party (born in 1966) came to national prominence, with its demands for decent housing; an education that exposed the true nature of racism in American society; free healthcare, and an “immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people” (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose). Nineteen-sixty-eight was also the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and a concomitant intensification of an already very active, highly visible U.S. (and worldwide) protest movement against our involvement in that war. Women, too, were starting to rise up, refusing to accept their circumscribed roles as sex toy or wife and mother. We, not men, will define who we are, how we act, what we want. The Stonewall Uprising, a major turning point in the struggle for LGBTQ rights, was only a year away. The world was happening, baby!  

But not in my small corner of it. In my little virtually all-white town, Nixon was a hero. The local country club banned Blacks and Jews. The jocks in my high school roamed the halls taunting the non-jock guys with cries of “faggot” and “queer”.  On a particularly memorable day, during my freshman civics course, a group of “the cool kids” gathered round my desk, shouting over and over, “This is America, love it or leave it!” (a favorite chant of rightwing, pro-war, Nixon fanatics). I knew they were arseholes, but what can you do at thirteen except dream of getting out?

In one revealing instance, one of the “elite”, a cheerleader, was cast into the netherworld when her mother married a Black man. Her former clique shunned her. I mean, cut…her…dead. We had a gym class together and over that year, we talked a lot. Her experience had radicalized her. She later signed my yearbook—a thing she would never have done a year earlier: “Let’s hope we make it through all these rotten schools.” Wherever you are, B., I hope you escaped, found your true home.

… With Many a Winding Turn

Going east for college was out of the question. “Too many communists there,” my dad said. (I know. I know.) I finally selected Michigan State University, in part because it boasted the largest undergraduate community of any campus in America—48,000. No more small-minded, small-town cliquishness. If you thought you were too cool to associate with others, you’d find yourself…alone.

I loved my college years. East Lansing was a true breath of fresh air. But it was still Michigan, still the Midwest. And my determination to escape had only intensified with each visit to New York. The road east, though, turned out to be far more labyrinthine than my opening paragraphs may have suggested. Oddly enough, right after graduation, I did a 180 and went west for a while. Tucson, Arizona. Wide open desert country stretching to the mountains. What I discovered there was how much a child of the north I was—I needed green. Grass. Trees. Seasons.

So… back to East Lansing where I had friends. And a few kindly profs from my undergraduate days who fast-tracked me into grad school. In recognition of my strong academic record, I was given my own section of a freshman writing course to help pay the bills. I. Loved. It. The new plan: I’d get a Ph.D. in literature, become a college prof and then hit the road, this time for the Northeast. No detours.

But grad school was not what I had thought it would be. Not a deeper dive into literature at a more complex level. As an undergrad, literature had been about reading widely, making connections. Grad school felt more like regurgitation. It wasn’t the student’s insights and ideas that were wanted, but a steady stream of vomiting up all the noted scholars in the field who had preceded you. Your turn would come… in a decade or two.

Home, at Last      

In the middle of all this, John Lennon was murdered outside his home in Manhattan. My boyfriend of the time, his cousin, and I headed for New York for the memorial service in Central Park, driving all night to get there by dawn. It may be hard for someone not of that time to understand what a major impact the Beatles had on a generation, especially John Lennon. I mark his death as the end of my childhood, though I was 25 when he died. Time to stop mucking about, I thought. Pursue my dreams. So, I left grad school and got a job waiting tables to support myself while I wrote my first novel, a thinly-disguised tribute to Lennon about a rock star who is murdered by a mentally-disturbed fan with jealousy issues.

As I was doing revisions on the book, a friend suggested I apply for an editor’s job with a company in Lansing and I got the job. For a year, I put aside a few bucks from each paycheck while I churned out a monthly rag for indy women’s retailers and traveled to apparel markets around the country to push our publication to store owners. Then I quit, got in my VW, and moved to Boston. Where, on my first day, I took the “T” down to the North End and dipped my hands in the Atlantic, grateful—I made it. I made it. Where I had recurring nightmares of finding myself back in the Midwest, stranded, no car, no friends, and no way out. Where I met and married my first husband. When housing prices soared to the point that our 400 square-feet in the South End bought an entire house in Western Mass, we moved.   

And here I have remained. Writing. Teaching. Raising kids. In a progressive community that celebrates immigrants and champions the rights of LGBTQ+  folks, Black and Indigenous people, women. A creative community, home to many artists, writers, musicians. And just three hours up the road from New York City where my beloved second husband, Ed, was born, and which we visit regularly.  

Postscript: The Things That Shape You

In 2009, I returned to Michigan for a visit. Ed’s son was a student at UMich, and I still had dear friends in East Lansing and Ann Arbor. We spent a day in my hometown, where I knocked on the doors of my several childhood houses and the owners were kind enough to invite us in. Then, we topped off the trip with a weekend in Chicago. Museums, art galleries—the Windy City has some great ones. What sticks most in my head, though, is a conversation we had with a young guy—a Ketel One vodka distributor—at a neighborhood bar as we were unwinding from the day, a Cubs ballgame on TV. Not the conversation itself, but my realization that I’d forgotten how open Midwesterners can be, chatting to strangers. A reminder that amidst all the negatives of my native land, this down-home easiness was a part of where I came from. A part of me.      

But the significance of that didn’t really hit me until a decade later when my stepson’s new partner came to Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. He, like me, was a “transplant”—the only other one at the table who had not grown up in the Northeast but had chosen to be here. I felt an instant connection to him. Felt we could understand something of each other that no one else in that room might get. The choice, the need to self-exile from “places that failed [us] before,” as Tennessee Williams put it. And the equally haunting truth that you will keep returning to them, if only in your head.

I mentioned the long drive to Boston in 1983. My VW had no cassette player. As I recall, it didn’t even have a radio. So I brought along a portable cassette player and a pile of cassettes for the eleven-hour trip across Canada, New York State, and the length of Massachusetts. On one of those tapes, a compilation, was John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads. I’m not a Denver fan, but that one song, I’ve always had a soft spot for. After the family left that Thanksgiving, I took out my guitar and messed around until I found the right chords. Sang the song. Have sung it many times since.

What does it mean, that I cannot entirely leave behind that place I left nearly 40 years ago? It’s not nostalgia. There is nothing sentimental in it. I remain deeply grateful that I escaped. I love where I live. This is MY space—the Northeast. It’s where I was born to be, but the things that shape you, the good and the bad, you never forget them. They are forever a part of you. As author Asha Tyson wrote: Your journey has molded you for your greater good. And it was exactly what it needed to be. Don’t think that you’ve lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time.

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”  (Dorothy Day)

As I’ve strolled through my neighborhood in the past few years—a walk that within fifteen minutes can take me to my favorite bookshop in the center of town or out along the banks of the river that runs through the Smith College campus or into a tree-studded park with winding paths and shaded benches for reading—I’ve felt the increasing reticence of people I encounter to speak or even make eye contact (let alone smile) in passing. Most of the “Boomers” still nod, say hello. Respond to my “I’m loving the sun today” or offer some observation of their own. But the under-60 crowd avoids such “terrifying” exchanges by turning their eyes to the pavement, and the local college students stare fixedly at their smartphones with such ferocity I’m amazed their gaze doesn’t blaze a hole in the screen! It takes a lot of energy to avoid other people, to act as if the fellow human being passing two feet from you does not exist. I pity them. It’s clear from their furrowed brow, they are not enjoying this pretense. I long to ask: How will we ever fix the world and make it a more humane place if we can’t even nod to each other in passing? But I don’t ask. They have made their wishes clear.

Or have they? Does any of us ever really wish to sever contact with our fellow humans? To view others with distrust or fear?  

The Weight of Depression

If laughter is the shortest distance between two people, avoidance of others is a cumbersome ball and chain. And it may be making many of us ill. Emotionally, psychologically, even physically because the mind informs the body and the stress of building a virtual wall to keep other people  at a ‘safe” distance can take a heavy toll on both. So why do so many of us seem intent on defending that wall of silence?  

It’s no secret that cases of depression skyrocketed during COVID, nearly tripling in the early months of 2020. Sadly, that’s to be expected during traumatic events. But it’s also expected that the mental/emotional toll such crises engender will peak and then drop off. Only this time they haven’t. New research from Boston University School of Public Health reveals that the 2020 increase has not only persisted BUT escalated. Nearly one in three Americans, BUSPH reports, now suffers from depression.    

Yes, there was a brief moment in the Spring of 2021—after the election ousted TheRUMP and the COVID vaccine rollout opened up the world a bit—when people seemed lighter, our unmasked faces revealing relief, hope; when people smiled at each other in passing. But, quickly, fears of COVID were replaced by worries over the state of democracy and the growth of fascism around the globe. Increasing police violence against black citizens, GOP threats to LGBTQ persons, the death of ROE, and a flurry of laws from right-wing controlled states: If we don’t approve of the candidates Americans vote for, our Republican legislatures will just change the outcome to one we do like.

The Key to Easing Anxiety       

Psychotherapist Kerry Malawista’s recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun identifies a new complaint she is witnessing among a rapidly rising number of patients, a complaint one client labeled “Democracy Anxiety Disorder”—grief for America and one’s own future in it. Malawista notes that while many people are in denial about the threats to America and the planet, millions more “cannot look away from what is happening to our country and our freedoms.” She asks, “How do we offer psychological help when we know the danger is real, not imagined?” In response to that question, Malawista notes, “Here we have some agency, because in the face of a threat to good government and democracy itself, power rests in voting and volunteering in grassroot efforts.” In other words, we must work with other people to build something positive, to make a better, safer, more inclusive world. As Malawista observes, “engaging in constructive work with others eases anxiety, offers hope.” But to do that, we must talk to each other, not look away. Stop using our phones as a shield from the world.

There are some real challenges to doing that. The pandemic and the resulting greedy grab by corporations to cash in on the moment—downsize workers, reap bigger profits, consolidate market share—have literally changed the face of America. In many places, especially smaller cities and towns, the center of public life—our downtown gathering places, locally-owned shops and restaurants—was gutted by the pandemic and has not come back. Empty storefronts line Main Street. In their place, an army of Amazon Prime vans brings virtually (no pun intended) all our material needs to our front door. Food delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub do the rest. We stick our heads out, grab the stuff, return to our smartphones and streaming devices. On the surface, our needs appear to be taken care of, and with a minimum of effort. But what about our emotional needs? Our need for human connection?

“The need to connect socially with others is as basic as our need for food, water and shelter,” writes Matthew Lieberman, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral science at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and author of Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (Crown Publishers). “It’s been baked into our operating system for tens of millions of years.”  

Making Connections: Old Friends and New

As I mentioned in a note to last month’s post, Ed and I spent most of January in Barbados, a jaunt that has become an annual thing. A welcome reprieve from the cold, dark days of the New England winter. For three weeks, we lie on the beach—reading, swimming in the clear warm ocean waters, enjoying a rum punch or two. All to the best of reggae music. It truly is a healing experience. Literally. The on-again, off-again UTI symptoms I’d experienced for the previous 14 months vanished completely the day we arrived and never returned. But the most healing of all is the people we meet there. Barbadians are among the most open, welcoming people I have ever encountered.

You don’t just “take a cab” in Barbados. You converse with the driver, swap stories about family, the tastiest eateries, local politics. At The Boatyard in Bridgetown—our favorite beach!—you don’t just pay for the day’s pass (umbrella, chairs, a food and drink allowance), you talk to everyone on the staff. Trade jokes with R., ask T. how his plans for opening a coffee shop are going, chat with N. about the work he does teaching magic tricks to kids.

Out for dinner in the evening, you exchange stories of family holiday gatherings with A., your waiter—the number one reason you always come back to this restaurant (and that’s saying something because the menu is amazing)—and promise to send him your recipe for the French Apple Pie he wants to try. You sing along with the steel pan band to “Sweet Caroline” and “YMCA”—with about sixty other locals and tourists at a favorite beachside cafe. The same cafe you’ll take Boatyard friend T. to for dinner and music, as he’ll later take you for beer and karaoke several blocks away.

Yes, Ed and I love the sun, surf and sand, but one of the great joys of our annual visits to the island is seeing familiar faces and catching up on each other’s lives. As the poet William Butler Yeats said: “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.” And there are more people to be met on this island besides Barbadians—Bajans as the locals refer to themselves. A world of people, in fact.

Icebreakers: Take the Plunge

On the many beaches that encircle Barbados, people gather from around the globe. Some are locals, of course, but a sizeable number are from cruise ships making a brief stopover, and many—like Ed and me—are vacationing on the island. Lots of Brits and Scots, even more Canadians, but also Italians, Spaniards, the French, the Dutch, Middle Easterners, Aussies. And that’s the short list.   

So here we all are, lined up on the beach, no more than a couple of feet between umbrella/chair set-ups. Or splashing happily in the ocean together. In such an environment, it’s more unnatural not to talk to each other. Making contact is just a matter of commenting on some aspect of the scene. Finding an icebreaker.

I found mine in the ocean. Though the water is reasonably warm, there’s just something about committing to that final all-in plunge. Ed dives right in, but I always linger a few minutes, talking myself into that leap—The water will feel warm within a minute or two. I’ll be okay. I can’t just stand here—until, at last, I throw myself into the waves. Of course, it’s always better once you do, but I had observed that, like me, many women hesitate as the water rises above their waist. I don’t know if there’s a biological reason for this, but I began using it as a way to connect, empathizing over how hard it is to go all the way. Laughing at my own hesitation. Yes, yes, my fellow swimmers nodded. Suddenly we were talking—about anything and everything. Sometimes, as with one couple from Milan, in an exchange of broken English (theirs, really good) and broken Italian (mine, really bad). But I’ve seldom found language to be a barrier (in part, admittedly, because most people speak at least a little English and many speak it quite well).

Even when the overlap in lingo is virtually zip, if you want to make a friendly gesture, there’s often a way. We were in a New York City hotel once and the elevator was kaput—waiting for the repair people. Standing in the lobby, I noticed a young woman repeatedly pressing the elevator button.  Approaching her, I said, “It’s not working.” She shook her head. “Russian,” she replied. Wracking my brain, I produced the one Russian word I possess: “Nyet.”  “Ahh.” She nodded her understanding and we both started laughing.

Kids and grandkids are another easy way to get a conversation going. Last year, we saw a girl of four splashing about in the shallow water. Her sister, age two, watched avidly, but hung back despite Mom’s coaxing. The game changed, though, when big sister came out to the shore and started lobbing small pebbles and seashell fragments into the surf. Then the little one went crazy—picking up everything not nailed down and tossing it with joyous abandon into the ocean, in the process getting thoroughly soaked. “Guess she’s been converted,” I said. “Oh yeah,” the woman replied. “Whatever big sister does…” And with that, we were off and running.   

Survival: It’s Up to Us

It really is a small world. On Alleyne’s Beach, the step into the ocean is a bit of a drop off and a little rocky for the first several feet. Getting in is easy, but getting out with the waves rolling in behind you can be tricky. On one of our visits there, a man helped Ed manage the last couple of feet to shore. Which started us talking. He and his wife were from London. I said it was my favorite place in the world and had been ever since I was a student for a semester at the University of London. He asked which college of the university. “Bedford College, 1976,” I said. “Me, too!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t met anyone for years who was there at that time.” Well, there you have it. Forty-six years later and four-thousand miles away—a connection!     

These little conversations, light-hearted and fleeting though they are, unite us. Make us smile, laugh. Lift our spirits. But you don’t have to go to Barbados to have them. We are surrounded wherever we are by others who dream and fear and hope, just as we dream and fear and hope. Edward Said, the controversial scholar who founded the academic field of postcolonial studies, wrote: “Survival, in fact, is about the connection between things.”

I would say, simply, survival is about the connection between people.