I Am Born

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously."

Nope. The quote isn't about me. It's the famous beginning of "David Copperfield", but a combination of a conversation with my friend Len of http://Lenspeaks.blogspot.com/ and mulling over these literary lines this morning while I stretched out of sleep led me to an idea for this reconstituted version of my blog.

The conversation was on Friday night. Len and I saw an awful movie with Ricky Gervais that even Greg Kinnear's charm couldn't save. Over my guacamole and chips with a Margarita chaser and his potstickers at a Grove cafe, he looked at some photos from our just post college days gone by and some of my way before college life. I must have made my millionth mention of the regret I sometimes feel about not having anyone to leave photos, and other personal memorabilia to, when (I almost said if, silly me!) I shuffle off this mortal coil, kick the bucket, buy the farm, all the Monty Python euphemisms galore.

This always brings out the "There she goes again" look from my otherwise fairly tolerant friends. I try to convince them of my sensibleness when I regale them with my now 15 year ago visit to the Exploratorium in San Franciso that featured an exhibit on all things related to memory, including personal histories which are a microcosm of a society's history. I loved that show. It included information and experiments on how we learn, about Alzheimer's. It had artifacts from the lives of ordinary people, people just like me. And these people long dead were fascinating. It is just a variation of what made walking through Pompeii so exciting for me--touching not only the past, but bringing the people of the past into the present, where they are in a way alive again. Alive in the red paintings on crumbling walls. Alive in the container spaces where ancient food was placed and given to passersby. Alive in the mosaic mat that says "Cave Canem" ("Beware of Dog").

But the truth is, let's face it, as much as I believe in eternal life in the "Hope I make it to Heaven" variety, I am narcissistic enough to want to carry on in minds and hearts beyond just the few people who thought I was okay enough to hang out with from time to time. I want this, my earthbound immortality, and heaven too! There, it's out there. The truth. And I also want it for the people who have meant something to me. Some of the "stuff" I have, it's from and about other people. An invitation to a Halloween party at "Black Rock" in the Bronx. A series of letters or cards from Ralph, Len, Noreen, Andrew, John, Dennis, Glenn, Connie, Ginny, staying connected to the first of us who travelled out West to seek her fortune. (Two others have joined me in the lap of weather's luxury here in Southern California since those days). Wedding invitations galore. Love letters from my father to my mother in 1956 from his three month exile in Camp Gordon, Georgia as a reservist.

I want what has had meaning to me, and to others, to last beyond our limited score of years. I can enjoy it now, but I want to, I need to, preserve it, so that it can be bequeathed to? A generation? Posterity? I don't really know. I like the idea that nothing and no one is really ever gone. Maybe that's part of it.

Whatever it is, my new plan, in the ever changing spectrum of plans I have, is to write about things from "I am born" and day to day to here and whatever is the fullness of my years, whatever God has in store for me. `

Tales of Djinn from the Bronx. That's it! That's the ticket!