Thoughts In Between 2011 and 2012

                                                      
                                                    FAREWELL 2011


I probably ought to be thinking about resolutions as 2011 fades into the historical time line. But I resolved not to make any resolutions back circa 2004, particularly the one about losing weight, although forgive the pun, that lost resolution weighs upon me! 


As I know it has been for many of you, 2011 was an interesting year (a la, "May you live in interesting times" offered by some toast that has its roots I have heard in Chinese philosophy) for me.  Like you, I am likely going to be sorting out the remnants of 2011 into 2012 as life is a seamless garment, albeit one with a few pulled threads. One of my pulled threads has had me musing over the trajectory of my life. When I am toasting with a fizzling glass of champagne over Auld Lang Syne in a local glitzy restaurant, I will be holding my breath, just a little.


What is the measure of any of our lives, those of us who toil, comparatively anonymously (compared, say, to the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Just joking) for what we realize, perhaps too late, despite the surfeit of literature on just the subject, is beyond transient, so much so we are stunned by its predictability?


I have been thinking a lot about that, even more than usual, since finding out how dispensable was my career painstakingly developed (when you count college and law school and the work itself) over 40 years of a life that statistically ends (if lucky) at 78. I almost titled this entry, "If I died tonight. . . ". If I am objective and I have come to realize that is probably impossible, and I had no more chances, what would be the final tally as of midnight tonight?

"Regrets, I've had a few" isn't that how the song goes?  Let's start there. I never married. I knew, even as a child, I probably would not. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe. I have been told by many women that it is "easy" to meet a man, and even to fall in love. It never has been for me. And, I have to accept that I was the problem in the few short chaste relationships I did have. Three of the men married and each had children, so they certainly managed without me and it is hard to say, "it was because of them." I am happy for each. I don't know about the fourth. I did what I thought was my damnedest to change that trajectory, including years of therapy which I still hold as life saving in a multitude of other ways. The man who counselled me was an incredible soul who did his damnedest to help me see I could change. I clearly did not channel his optimism enough.


I never had kids. "Well, you could have adopted".  I could have. If I did not, there were good reasons and less valid ones, but it is what it is. But losing my job reminded me that I put all my eggs in one basket, the achievement basket.  And then, both basket and eggs were taken away. 

I have been afraid almost all of my life, of things that existed and of things that I anticipated with or without substantive evidence. 

I made choices, that I must own, although along the way it often did not feel that way.

But the fact is, I had it good!  I live in a country where I have been well educated and well fed (back to weight again!). And while I worry that freedom here is seeing its last days, I have been its beneficiary to date. I had parents who came from difficult circumstances, who were scarred by those circumstances, but managed to create in me a reasonably well functioning member of society. I have already lived longer than so many deserving beings who never had a chance in places where they were born and died in quick succession, without anyone caring or even noticing. The environment in which I was formed, and the people who directed that formation were gifts I received (in my world view by Providence) through no effort of my own.


I would not say that I have a crowd of friends, but I have some good and long time ones, at least three from the time I was 5 years old and a fair number from high school and college and law school still.  They have blessed me with their support during tough periods (like Dad's death). I had an extended family on both sides of the familial tree, but unfortunately neither mother or father cultivated them, and most of them remain strangers to me. On the other hand, I have a few stalwarts in the group, cousins and a couple of aunts and an uncle (shout outs, you know who you are). Most of these devoted characters know that I have a tendency, despite my apparently outgoing nature, toward being a recluse, and shake me out of it more often than not.  In the last few months, I have made a few new friends, although I realize when I meet a man or woman of a certain age, I am now one of them.

I may not have had children, but I have been blessed to know a couple who have been kind enough to let me be "like an aunt" to them. I am as proud of them as I could be of any of my own.

I am afraid to fly, but despite that I have travelled to Italy, to Canada, to Bermuda, and to some 18-20 states (ok, I am counting New York, and New Jersey). Once blown out of my safety zone, I am passionate about anything and anyone I encounter. I am always glad that I went, even if I am delighted I have returned to my Los Angeles abode and my cadre of cats.

Speaking of cats, I have saved more than a few, and if there is credit given in heaven for that, then I am a shoo in! I take the Aquinas (is it?) view that animals have souls.

I have been blessed with a good voice and a good vocabulary and I have been able to use both for my pleasure and to assist others. 

I lost, and then found again, the religious faith of my youth. I have found another father in the retired pastor of my parish, he who treated my dad, who died after a long good life at 90, as a brother.  

I may no longer have my career, but I can manage comfortably enough while I decide what is next in my life.

And if I get a few years past this Midnight, as is devoutly to be wished and prayed for Lord, in Your Good Wisdom and Will, I might become less afraid, and more open. If the good outweighs the "bad" this year, the entry for next year will even have more of a recitation of how blessed I have been in this life. And maybe, if I get that additional time, I can take the few things in the regret category and join them to the blessings. Who knows?  Anything is possible, eh?

Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year!


                   WELCOME 2012!

Christmas, and Christmas Adjacent, Thoughts

I was just sitting in my favorite swivel and rocking chair cup of coffee in hand, looking out my apartment window at the splendid foliage of the ficus against the most always blue Los Angeles sky. It is very quiet even on this mid-city street, as our denizens are still vacationing. At least few people are working.

I woke up very very late (I shall not say how late as it is truly embarrassing), and remain in my memory foam slippers, and mismatched jammies. I suddenly thought "Shouldn't I write something about Christmas, in general, and my Christmas in particular?"

I did have another entry ready to go, about a recent movie viewing "Young Adult" but I had some trouble with the google blogger automatic save and wrote the whole thing only to have it gone. Somehow, days later, it just doesn't seem worth re-creating, which brings me back to what shall I write about?

First, I hope that you who celebrate the season, secularly or religiously, or both, have so far had a most excellent experience of merriness!  Those celebrating Hanukkah---thank you, for your ancestors are the reason that monotheism survived and this holiday was their effort. (Thank you Dennis Prager for bringing this to my attention). Those celebrating any other holiday, or will be, I hope that you have shared or will share a wonderful time with family and friends.

Djinn's Christmas Door

Secondly, I want everyone to know that when greetings were exchanged, I wished everyone I encountered, "Merry Christmas!"  I keep hearing how non-inclusive it is to say that. After all, the person might not celebrate Christmas. Or might be an atheist.  But to this unimportant writer, that's not what inclusiveness is about primarily. It is about everyone getting to do his or her thing, whatever faith or philosophy is yours in a tolerant country. It does not require the phrase "Happy Holidays" although if it is said, it is quite nice and is certainly a phrase appropriately used if one feels like it in covering the pantheon. So, if someone said to me "Happy Hanukkah!"  I would be delighted as she is offering me the joy of her season. Similarly, when I say "Merry Christmas!" I am offering my love, my affection, my joy, my good wishes to the other. It is extending to them the best for them and their families. It is the inclusiveness personified. Whoever you were that I wished "Merry Christmas!" to, I thought with love and affection about you even if I had no idea of your history or beliefs and may never even see you again.

Third, is what it means to me, this Christmas, and I think to those who do celebrate it. I like the material stuff, the secular sidebars, the lights going up and down every tree in the city (noticed more of that this year), the Santa cottages in all the malls, the fake snow spritzing from towers in malls to the crooning of some old time singer, "Let it snow, Let it snow. . . ", the enormous selection of cards and wrapping paper, the 50 percent sales (yeah!). But, perhaps more as I am getting older and closer to my personal reckoning, the idea of God chasing us out of love to the extreme of becoming one of us in the most vulnerable of ways, as an infant, is about as magnificent a thing as could be given, as Handel's Messiah reports "unto us".  So, I went to two masses, one at Midnight, and the other during the day, and helped on the altar and read the extraordinary words of the Bible, and received God, body, blood, soul and divinity under the appearance of bread and wine. Hopefully, I am guided by the physical presence within of the "New Adam". That, of course, is a choice, for I have free will. I accept the love or I run from it. I have to think about that because my tendency is to run.

Fourth, it was a quiet lovely evening of Gelson's prepared honey baked ham, scalloped potatoes, veggies, cranberries, at the home of Len Speaks, whose preparation and presentation skills were without peer. We will actually have another gathering in January when one of our number presently in the East visiting his relatives is back to make a from scratch meal.  And tonight, I celebrate "boxing day" with two English friends, which for you literal Americans out there, has nothing whatsoever to do with pugilism.

Well, it wasn't that quiet, I guess, cause we played the home edition "Password". A couple of things in that regard. I learned that suspenders are a synonym for "braces" in proper British English. And courtesy of my Thesaurus on this very computer (all reference books), I have confirmed smarty pants Mr. Anonymous from the deluxe furnished Barbara Judith apartments that "alot" is an alternative to "a lot"! 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all among my group of family and friends and to all of you who are delightful enough to read my ramblings. 

We Are All Broken People

Just so you know, despite the title of this entry, and the substance to follow, I am not depressed. 


Been thinking a lot about the face each of us presents to the world, and the reality of that with which each of us copes, either physically or psychically, or both. How many times have you met someone, and to all intents and purposes, she (for purposes of this entry, I shall say "she" to avoid the annoying he/she in my sentences), seems the most together person you have ever met? She dresses "to the nines". She has this terrific job making oodles more money than ever you have or will and she always has advice aplenty for you on how to improve one or another thing about you. It has not failed, at least for me, except on the rarest of rare occasions, that once I got to know this paragon of apparent social competence, I was embroiled in a cascade of crises. My problems, which were barely manageable, were now mutliplied. But then, in for a penny in for a pound, and we try to help.

Years ago, probably on some greeting card, I read the statement, "A normal person is someone you don't know well yet."  Here's a verion of the card, I think.

Lately, everyone I hear about or deal with, once become more familiar to me, is in the throes of some self-imposed and/or externally imposed sturm und drang. She looks to family and friends to assist them, but when you come down to it, Uncle Harry and Aunt Martha turn out not to be the most sensible of solution finders, as they are about to lose their house because they haven't paid the mortage and ignored the past due notices, "hoping that something would turn up." Some people are able to maintain the facade better than others, but have a few more visits than the occasional dinner at a nice restaurant where everybody is selling an image of themselves, and suddenly that person of wisdom and authority seems more like a candidate for the local funny farm. Was it another person who was wise and helpful? Because this guy in front of me is delusional and is trying to convince me he is absolutely making sense.

I'd like to think that it is an epidemic just thrust upon us, but I have a feeling that it is just we are more aware of it given the instant nature of technology, which allows gossip to spread like a tsunami. 


Some years ago when I had illusions I might still avoid spinstershood and manage at least one child, I joined the Catholic Singles Network. I figured it would be nice not to have to worry about a harmony of faith, which always seems to get in the way of a couple AFTER they are married.  Most of the people I met were way too voluable about the Virgin Mary over drinks, and while I fancy myself a marginally good Catholic, I am between lapsed and charismatic, the two extremes I tend to meet or know. People know I am Catholic and I will talk about my faith when it is appropriate, but I rarely bring it up say, at the movies.  I met this interesting fellow in Culver City at some Starbuck's. It was all going fairly well until he told me 1. he had lied on his application for the Single's Network and wasn't Catholic at all, which would have been ok but 2. he had a criminal record for burglary. I think he had a weapon while he was at it. You can tell that things with my prior dates had not gone so well that I actually did not run screaming away. And it turns out the guy was well read and we got into quite the philosophical discussion. At the end, almost wistfuly, he said something I have never forgotten, "We are all broken people."   I sent him a book on contemplation by Thomas Merton, but I was rather glad he did not call again. I have never forgotten that. And have found it to be true, publically and privately--really, we are broken.  Some of us just creak along better than others. 

On the public front, think about all those gurus who tell the rest of us how to fix ourselves. I used to love listening to Dr. David Viscott giving advice on the radio. It was firm. It was clear. It was not just that he was giving good objective advice and practical gimmicks for living but he made it sound like it was something he was doing himself. And surely I could do what he did. Only he wasn't doing what he said I could do and should do. He died alone and it sounded like his life was a series of unending unresolved issues. Same thing with the man who wrote one of my favorite ever pop psychology and ethics books, "The Road Less Travelled".  While he was telling people to beware of the "People of the Lie" he himself was living a way less than authentic life. 

Do I have a point in all this? I don't know, maybe "take what everyone says to you with a grain of salt."
Or, "the advice may be good but don't overly admire the person giving it."  Or "me too, I am broken and I am just trying to find the right glue."   Maybe I am saying be gentle with yourself, and with others.  The guy or lady who looks like they got it all going on, they don't; we are all just trying to get through the day.

Risk Management and the End of Civilization

I was listening to the radio the other morning and a representative from the Salvation Army was on the air with the host. I was expecting the comforting Christmas pitch something like, "When you see our red kettles outside your local commercial establishments, give generously". It was a little of that, of course, but when the host asked what was different about charity work today than 40 years ago, the man said, "risk management." Well, stores are afraid to allow this charity, and others, because of liability. Something happens, and the store will get sued. Like what the host wondered, as did I? Tripping over the red kettle? Well, that would be hard because it isn't on the ground; it hangs from a discreet holder. The tone inside the bell that the volunteer rings?  You know the little ringy thingy inside. Maybe if the volunteer is over exercising in his ringing gyrations, the tone will fly off and hit a Ralph's shopper in the eye. Guess it is not impossible. Or maybe the volunteer is a wild eyed escapee from San Quentin whose life of crime included ringing bells at a supermarket to collect dollar bills for the needy.


I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of it. I am ashamed of my own profession that has made every accident of life the responsibility of some other poor soul or conglomerate, private or publicly owned. 


We are so busy trying to protect ourselves from getting hurt that we seem to forget that it is unavoidable for the flesh and blood among us--which means everybody. A few years ago, a small plane crashed into a residential building. A man, in his bed, was killed. How do you manage against that kind of risk?

So, now, the outcry is that the laws against distracted driving with cell phones is not enough. We need more. We need to ban the use of cell phones entirely in the car. Aside from the fact that people won't obey the law, there is the uncomfortable fact that people do a million other things in their cars that will remain permissible, at least for now. Like eating in the car. Like drinking beverages in the car. Like listening to the radio, the CD and/or the Ipod, including changing channels and checking labels. Perhaps a law should be passed banning radios, CD players and MP3 connections in cars. And while we're at it, banning Uncle Harry, who chatters to and from whatever destination you are driving to until you want actually to crash the car! There should be no passengers in a car. You shall also be forbidden to daydream, because then you don't notice where you are going or where you have been. And, if you are on any legal medication, you are not allowed to drive (that'll clear up the freeways).  Oh, and if you have cataracts growing, or are nearsighted, with or without glasses (as some people with glasses don't see any better than without them) you are not allowed to drive.

Meanwhile, the obsession with being green will allow a bicyclist on the roads with cars, wobbling with ear buds neatly planted in their ears so they cannot hear the honking of a horn. (see earlier diatribe in these pages about bicyclists on the city streets). I think there is a law against driving a bike while drunk. Anybody enforcing that? 

You can't go near children any more because we have so effectively educated them that a touch on the wrist could be interpreted as sexual in nature. They can't play dodgeball anymore, or ride a seesaw, or hang upside down from monkey bars (well they had to go too since climbing is dangerous). 


Risk is being managed so intensely, so fascistically, that we are raising a generation of potted plants, or cyborgs, since most every kid is attached to something electronic. But of course, they too are dangerous, since they emit something or another. We may need some kind of special earmuffs that allow the sound and block the rays.


We should not worry about being conquered. We have made ourselves so weak that all we'll be able to do is to wave the white flag in surrender. But don't stand too close, you might get hit by the flag.

By the way, we are all going to die. That's a risk no one can manage.

P.S. Here's something to ban. Lawyers.

The Ties That Bind

Pardon to Daphne Du Maurier, if  you would. "Last Night I dreamt I was at (the State Bar) again. " It wasn't a dream, and it was not the Bar, but some of the people of the Bar that I saw again.


It has been nearly six months since, as an at-will manager, it was somebody's "will" that I no longer work where I had for 25 years. I have nearly made my peace with that unfair (from my point of view) ignominious end to my hard won career because I see that, as my former pastor used to say, "with God there are no accidents". I am where I am supposed to be at this time of my life, though for now, while I dabble at voice over, and write things, like this blog, and do some charity work, it is not entirely clear what my part of the cosmic puzzle will be revealed to be. Maybe I'll never know. I just have to let it go, something my "type A" personality resists, and say, "Not my Will, but Thine be done."


One of my colleagues, Robin, retired this week, and so I was invited back among them, those still toiling there and those not, many of whom had begun with me, when we were all very young. It was held at the festive upper room of J Lounge across from the former ATT building, formerly TransAmerica, where I had an office and responsibilty only a blink of an eye ago.  I did not know how I'd feel after all the time in which I have adjusted to my new pattern, but I wanted personally to recognize a fellow traveller of the same number of years who is off to another phase of her life. I was a tiny bit afraid. And, there is a bit of a gauze, a haze, over what used to be the largest part of my life, my work.


In some ways, despite the extended period of my life in which I went from young to over middle age, it seems like it never happened. But then, what I realize, what I realized  in particular tonight, it is the people that make me sure it did. And makes me grateful, it did.


The work, yes, I guess it was important. Still, there will always be someone to do it. But the interactions of this group of people, now, this time, this place, that will never come again. And they were what made often mind bending craziness in the work place tolerable. They were the ones that banded together in a crisis, shared joys of births and marriages, of small occasions and large. Amid changes and changes back and changes again, they kept plugging along. There may have been some grumbling, but mostly there was laughter and sharing.


I don't miss the work as it happens. Been there, done that, and in some ways, it was becoming soul killing. But I see I do miss the people. Luckily that is a choice we each have, to stay in touch, to share the next part of our too quickly passing lives, to count ourselves lucky that we met in an improbable confluence of circumstances doing a sometimes improbable job of holding people who don't want to be so held, to their ethical responsibilities.


I have a tendency, despite my apparently outgoing nature, to become reclusive if I am not in a structure outside of my control. But tonight made me realize, that would be terrible. We have, we current and former staffers at a difficult task, ties that bind us together.


So, get thee onto Facebook and friend me; let's call each other; let's have lunch, or dinner; let's not let the ties loosen.  We don't have all the time in the world. Now is the time. . .




Delores Faile and our recently departed friend and colleague Nancy Bollaert.



Bye Bye Bodhi Tree Cause Nothing Lasts Forever Even if We Wish It Could

For pretty much five months I have been carrying around five bags of mostly hardcover books, probably most in the area of psychology, intending to try to sell them to one of the few remaining individually owned bookstores in Los Angeles County, specifically in West Hollywood.  It's been there since 1970, which to give perspective, was my sophomore year in high school back in the Bronx. All these years later, it still has the feeling and scents of the Age of Aquarius. You walk in and first view is of many hanging chimes and a plethora of incense. The books, they are about everything, psychology, philosophy, Eastern Religions, Western Religions, mysticism. I particularly always loved the well used wood floors that creaked as you went from one stack to another. Probably many of the books I wanted to sell back to them, were ones I had bought there in the first place, or in my other favorite bookseller, Book Soup.

I got the name of the used bookseller maven at the store when I went by there one time unannounced. By then they had closed the actual annex for the used books. I did not think much of it.

Finally, the other day I got back there and spoke to him. Not only were they not buying used books any longer, but the long established and surviving Bodhi Tree Bookstore, a fixture in our community, is closing. The owners sold the building. They are "hoping" for a new location.



To Bodhi Tree Bookstore Friends,

Good Gifts, Good Cheer

Holiday Sale 15% Discount on all items.
Purchases $200 and over receive
an additional 5% discount.
Come visit us. This will be our last Holiday Season
in this location.
We will be open to the end of December.We are continuing to talk to people interested in
the Bodhi Tree Bookstore legacy.
We are hopeful for a reincarnation of a physical store
in a few months in a new location.

Phil and Stan 12-7-11

I took my five bags and wended my way to Goodwill where I donated them and got a tax receipt. I admit, my sense of charity about books was not quite what it is for other things. I was hoping for cash for my hardcovers. I suspect the deducttion won't begin to cover what I spent, like 20 to 20 dollars on average, a pop. Oh, well, easy come and easy go. But now a days, I have to be less of a spendthrift for the obvious reason that my incoming cash flow just isn't what it used to be.


Driving around town that same day, along Sunset, I passed another place that "used to be". Back in the early 80s, it was a really hip restaurant, Scandia. I ate there once. After many a year in business, it went by the boards and now is just another building with a history people may or may not remember.

Places are memory joggers. If they haven't changed for a long period, you get the feeling they never will. And that is comforting when you see your life speeding by. It is tomorrow what it was yesterday when you were there. And then when it's gone, a sense of safety for a solid frame of reference, is gone also. And the loss even chips a little bit at the memory.


I began thinking of various places that are gone now, that I thought would always be there because they had been for so long. Markers of my life and many before mine. You know that moment in Back to the Future when Marty McFly notices that a picture of him and his family is disappearing piece by piece until only he remains? It is kind of like that. As defining places of defined moments disappear, a little chill goes down my back, along with a sense of final loss that no new memories will be made in that location in its former incarnation.


So, I guess I want to pay my tribute to those places about to be lost to the next generation, and those that already are:

The Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills off Sunset. Gee, this is where I saw my first Los Angeles celebrity, Michael Callan, in a discrete corner. About to close.

Carlos and Charlie's also once of Sunset Boulevard had this really amazing tuna based dip. I saw one of many performances of Joan Rivers there, in my early years as an attorney in Los Angeles. I used to make sure to take out of town friends for a kind of nouveau Mexican. And great Margaritas.

Also on Sunset, Tower Records. Big barn compact disc and movies. Both sides of the street. My friend Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith apartments saw my fave Pierce Brosnan there flipping through titles. One side is rented. The other languishes still may years later.

Perino's on Wilshire. A nice old style cozy ristorante. Now it's an apartment building and not a very stylish one at that. It is NEXT to a stylish old building.

The Fairfax Theatre, corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly. They tried to keep it, that old movie house, for a while it was kind of an art film place. But it is more important to have another pre-fabricated condo building near the Grove.

The Pan Pacific Theatre on Beverly Boulevard.  By the time I moved to LA in 1981, it was really a shell, the last major thing that had happened to it was the filming of a really bad movie, Xanadu. This, I saw in New Rochelle. I admit to liking the title theme. In the days before I had a car, I was walking down the block as it was burning down, surrounded by a black smoke cloud. It was arson.

Back in the day, probably before I moved there, but I remember passing it, was Flipper's, a disco roller rink that Cher owned. Corner of LaCienega and Santa Monica. Today it is a more traditional item, a Rite Aid.

More recently, my dad's (and uncle's) favorite supermarket, Jon's on Fountain and Santa Monica, was closed, not because it did not have really good business, but because, yes, they are building a new condo building on the site.

Oh, I probably have ten or twenty more, but you get the picture. Nothing lasts forever. Change is the order of things. You wish the change is for something better.  Sometimes, it is. Often it is not.

Either way, there is a little sadness.

Well, Book Soup also has a comfortingly creaky wood floor. Maybe I'll go over there tomorrow and rustle about. I think it will make me feel better.

Hugo, and Finding Our Place on the Walk of Our Lives

According to Robert Barron in the book about Catholicism called "The Strangest Way", our "existential choice is not between having a story or not, but rather between acquiesing to one's role or resisting it" (p. 134). He adds, "(o)nly when the whole plot is unfolded do we see how each finds its place in the story" (p.141) We do not know as we are walking through our days, where our movements and interactions ultimately fit. My sense is that this is the existential choice for all human beings, at one level or another, the difference being how each of us sees the ultimate cosmic painting, with or without God.

As I was watching Martin Scorsese's foray into 3D, the new movie "Hugo", it was this observation in Barron's book which came to me. I had not thought much about it of late, though it is a favorite. So really and truly, the movie was a catylst propelling it back to my mind much like the silent film pioneer George Melies propelled a fictional rocket into the eye of the man in the moon!



A little boy, Hugo Cabret, is the son of a master clockmaker.  Father, a kind and sensitive man, and son, together seek to repair an amazing piece of machinery, an automaton, its body wire and gears, its face robotic, but oddly peaceful and sweet. In its original incarnation, and set in motion by a special key of which they do not have possession, the automaton could write. Before they can complete the repairs, the father is killed in a freak fire accident. Hugo is taken in to live in the dismal heights and bowels of a Paris train station by a bullying and drunken uncle who is the caretaker of its many large and small clocks. The uncle disappears. The boy simply continues the work meanwhile attempting to find (meaning steal) parts with which he hopes to finish the repairs on the mechanical man so that he might, in his heart broken fantasy, receive some communication from his dead father. He is constantly chased, particularly when he grabs a bit of food, by a manic police officer in charge of the law orderliness of the station. This is a sad soul himself, once an orphan, with a leg in a brace, who seeks, but seems unable to find love or companionship, although he has his eye on a pretty flower girl.


A curmudgeonly old toymaker, with a kiosk in the train station, becomes Hugo's most pressing nemesis when he catches the boy with the errant parts he has gathered. He not only takes the various gears, but also a notebook with intricate mechanical drawings which the boy treasures, a handbook to the repairs of the automaton. The old man seems mesmerized by the notebook, and not only refuses to give it back, but initially and cruelly gives the boy ashes to prove that he has burned it. Hugo is persistent and follows the man home. A child there, a ward of the old man and his wife, named Isabelle befrieds Hugo and with him seeks to unlock the reason for the old man's interest and his cryptic behavior.


At first Hugo is reluctant to admit Isabelle into his world, one of which nearly no one knows. But Isabelle is an adventurer, grabbing the gusto of life and she is enthusiastic about her role in helping Hugo. He shows her the automaton. It being a world of synchonicity, Isabelle has a necklace in the form of a key that precisely fits the mechanical man. When finally it re-activates, it turns out not to write, but to draw and what it draws is a picture of a man in the moon with a space capsule in one of its eyes. The signature is all it writes, "Georges Melies".


The children go to the large library and discover that Melies is a long forgotten pioneer filmmaker of its earliest years. History records that he is dead, but the children discover evidence that in fact it is the deeply sad old man who has bedevilled Hugo and is raising Isabelle.


Another twist of fate brings the children into acquaintance with an admirer of and expert in all things Melies. This man has what he understands to be the only extant copy of any of his films, the film that is represented by the drawing of the automaton, an invention of the same George Melies.


When they all appear at the home of Mr. Melies, now living under an assumed name, Melies wife, fearful of dredging up the pain that has left her husband emotionally broken at a career that ultimately seems to have meant nothing, nearly sends them away. But beckoned by a chance to see the one remaining film in which she appeared--she was usually the star of the Melies films--she allows them to flicker it in another room, so as not to disturb the old man.


His ears are sensitive to the sound of a projector and Melies has attended the brief screening without their awareness. He laments the act of impulse that caused him to destroy his sets and his copies of films, and the loss of all including an automaton that he built many years before which had been lost to him.


Hugo, now having the full secret of the machine that so connects him to his late father, runs back to the train station to bring it to Melies. Waylaid by the inspector who has found out that the boy's uncle died in a drunken stupor and drowned in the Seine, the boy is slated to be sent off to the orphanage. But moved by the love of his flower girl and the entreaties of other denizens of the station's kiosks, the sad inspector lets the circle close joining all these disparate stories and people and bringing them into a holistic community of love. 


Hugo's love of his father, the passion for something they shared, though seeming futile at times and unlikely to be requited, fit into other lives and into other stories, all making one tapestry. He pressed forward though he knew not where he would end, and in so doing, he found himself, and helped others find themselves for their posterity.


The movie has received mixed reviews. I found it to be a splendid infusion of well crafted optimism. I do not usually like 3D movies, and I heard my friends next to me commenting that it was unnecessary, but it seemed like a perfect extra brushstroke to me. When the boy ran down the steps and corridors of his maze like hideout, I was carried with him, I felt his heartbeat, his urgency, his intensity and his fear. I wanted to touch, and felt that I might be able to do so for REAL, the books, and the face of the automaton. I was in their world.


Every moment is precious because there are no accidents. It is just as true perhaps that there are no accidents because every moment is precious.  Let us pay attention to the moments and remember that whether we realize it or not, we each have a role to play with and for each other.

Bohemian Delight

As I wrote in my last entry, I am very slowly getting used to having the freedom to construct my days as I wish. Or experience them as they unfold.

When I woke up late this morning, I remained in my bed surrounded by the cats. I stretched long and leisurely. I had a call from a colleague/friend at my former job, and arranged to meet her and a few others a week or two hence for lunch. I called my aunt to be regaled with stories of the various power outages from our Santa Ana of last night. Then I got up. I made my coffee. I fed the felines who had trailed after me into the kitchen, I  sat in my favorite swivelling and rocking chair, and watched the still strong winds bending the tree outside my window and worried that it would break. It was already 12 noon.

I returned to the non-fiction memoir. I hate it. I love it. I can do it. I can't. I have new found respect for the professional writer, who makes, or tries to make a living with words.. There is nothing quite so difficult, and truth be told frustrating. I felt something of it when I wrote briefs and could not quite find the turn of words that conveyed my thought, but creative writing, whether about real or fictional events, is a torture.


Let me digress for a second. What about blogging? How does that fit in between brief writing and working on a memoir that someone will publish one day? Blogging is more like a casual conversation. Yes, you have to think about it. You have to have a beginning, middle and end. Maybe you have to even have a point. But because it is more informal by nature, and the urgency to edit is not (at least for me) there (perhaps it should be), it is less of an anxiety to do it. But this thing I am trying to do, this making a book, is in a unique category of life efforts. I now understand the old cliche, "I hate writing, but I love having written!"

But also, there is this moment, maybe even endorphins do kick in as they do with a runner,or when a trial lawyer, which I used to be, has that "Perry Mason" moment, when all the fear about whether it is worth doing, it is being done well, it will ever be received well if it is seen, just doesn't matter.


Two hours went by and it was only when my back hurt (this is going to be a problem I see, I may need a real chair for this work) that I stopped. I decided to print out what I have done so far, and take it with me to Starbuck's where I would have a Venti hot chocolate and take a few moments to see how it was flowing, maybe make a few edits. 

Today's working location, pen, paper and a hot chocolate!

I got there about three. One of the things that has truly amazed me about not having a regular job is that there appear to be a whole lot of people in the same circumstance. And they do not seem to be suffering the trials of the unemployed. They are ordering up all sorts of desserts. They are parents with kids. There are computers on every table, with people making cell call after cell call. It was like the proverbial Grand Central Station in there. I barely found a place to plant myself, but happily it was in one of those deep leather chairs that they have now. Mostly the constituency around me changed. A father and his son chirping in a mix of two languages he is learning.  Said the father "I have no idea what he is saying."  Several well coiffed tall young women with their perfectly matched outfits, and their soy lattes. Across from me was a man who I think was working, and e mailing various things to potential consumers of whatever it was he did. He'd call someone. He'd get up and go outside for a cigarette, asking me in a most friendly manner if I would be there a while and would I keep an eye on his computer. (I did). I had never done this, in all the years, be in a Starbuck's for more than a few moments on my way to somewhere else. But I was seeing the regulars greet each other. This was indeed a destination and one that people inhabit for a long time during a day.


I found myself, well, working on the pages I brought with me. I found myself revising, as well as editing. There was something pleasant about the substantial beginnings of a book by the Djinn.The sun went down and the shades went up. It had been dark for an hour or more when I had finally finished my now cool hot chocolate and I found myself tired from concentration. I said goodbye to my new and passing acquaintance across from me. "Take care", he said.


I had been WORKING in this social environment, but also feeling comfortable amid the noise and the interactions which surrounded me.  It is not what I am used to but it has its own rhythm.


I always wanted to live a bit of an unconventional lifestyle, and here it is, my version.. I want to learn to embrace it. I am in the unusual position to be able to do so, without danger to my very existence. I am most fortunate and grateful, in between the anxiety.


The key for me will remain not imposing old ways of being upon this new way of living. And today I experienced a little of its delight, if only I would tame the type A personality that has been mine since I can remember. I think, also, it is important to this new way of being that I have no expectations of the day, or of myself, except to go forward and to learn, and to live, indeed, as if it were my last day.

It's 2:15 A.M. What AM I Doing?

Well, I'll tell you. I am about to go to bed, I think.

It has been hard, I think I have written in these pages, to sort out a structure for my days. I have chosen, at least for now, not to go back to a 9 to 5 existence. I want to write. I want to paint. I want to read. These things need not be done in a 9 to 5 frame. But up to here, I have felt guilty that I have not forced them into this frame. I like to go to bed late, in fact, my body clock has always been stay up late and get up late, even when my life role did not allow it. I have been getting up late and going to Mass, and then filling the day with various activities, some planned some not, but I have not been able schedule my writing or painting or reading.

In the last week or two, something has happened. It has occurred that being disciplined about working on something I want to does not mean that it has to start and end at a particular time, so long as I do it.

In terms of writing, I had so many ideas for  projects that I could not settle on anything, until the last couple of weeks. I have returned to a non-fiction project I began years ago. I am not sure that if I ever finish writing it I will ever seek to publish. But I decided finally to stick with it, and leave the other writing projects aside. There is, as Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith Apartments no timetable.

And so, like other nights, tonight I found myself sitting in front of my computer at around 10 p.m. just to "look at a few things" on this massive task that might one day be a book. There is so much material to whittle down into something manageable. I am not even sure I can do it. But once in front of the computer, I found myself drawn in and committed and then it was well, 2:15. What did I accomplish? More than I would have if I simply fretted over the structure of my days and night. I worked. It was good.

Maybe this is my pattern for now. What my pattern will be tomorrow, or the next day, who knows? My life may not look much different to anyone outside looking in, but it has changed irrevocably. Within the limits of human frailty and life circumstances, I can do what I want with my days.

I am still not used to it. But I can feel a shift coming. It is a quasi-bohemian life, I guess. But it has a logic and creativity of its own. I need to cherish it, while I can.

I'll keep you posted. But I think I said something a while ago about going to bed. Good night, or is it good morning?.

The Remembered

Anyone who has had a family member, or close friend, die (as ultimately happens to all of us) knows that when the time of year of their passing was around a major holiday, that holiday is forever interwined with a particularly exquisite sadness of loss. There is also the need, almost a mission, to remind the world, albeit one's microsmic one, that this person not only existed, but had an impact. Time passes, the sadness does not really attenuate, but the mission of assuring remembrance becomes harder.


When my mother died in 1974, thirty seven years ago, I knew few of the people who I call friends today. There are a couple.. There is Virgina Kelly, and Barbara Donovan, and Virgina Rohan, all former denizens of the same grammar and high school in the Bronx.  Virginia Kelly's mother and mine were fast friends, one of the few she had in my memory. As to Virginia Rohan, my mother loved to share discussions of the latest fashions, one of which she called "fun fur". There are relatives, my cousin Carol, my Aunt Teri, my Aunt Kathleen (although she is at a stage in life, nearly 90 in which she thinks both her late sisters are alive), who had regular interaction with my mother. Until she became ill, though, my mother was something of a mysterious recluse. Few people except her immediate relatives came into the apartment and my mother had some kind of secret which she shared only obliquely with my father and me. She claimed she was a hand model. I'd go through various fashion magazines and point to a hand that looked like hers, long fingers, long perfectly polished nails and ask "Is that you?" She'd say yes, but I never was sure. She went somewhere. Dad was sure of it. She talked of people named Robert (pronounced by her Ro-Baire, and Evelyn (EVE-lyn) and Lisa (Lee-za)) in the fashion business with whom she'd sometimes lunch. She insisted I had met the latter. Naturally I did not remember as I had been age 2 or less. When she died, no one of them came to the wake or funeral. As the years passed, I came to question this occasional career. When she succumbed to the wildly metasized breast cancer without ever having been told by doctor or my dad and I that she even had cancer, the internal world of this woman which had already been a major mystery was fully closed off. There was insufficient information left behind to explore whether the fashion people she referenced were ever real. She was only 48. In her last 14 months she had in some odd way been freed from rigidity and coldness which had, to my child's eye, defined her and her relationship with me. She was the mother I had always wanted. And so, in an incongruous way, the time in which she was sick was the best of our relationship. I was old enough to appreciate it at 18 when she was diagnosed and 20 when she died Thanksgiving weekend.


If I "google" my mother, nothing comes up. I hate that. She was beautiful. This is the last picture I have of her, a month before she died, at a wedding. She was buried in the outfit she wore that day and night, a day in which she was happy, and soft.  I thought she might survive.

So, I guess this is a forum in which I can, along with my other slowly developing blog about my dad, Legacy of a Courtly Curmudgeon, honor her and keep her in the world, a world she would not even recognize (we barely had video players in 1974). I wonder if she would have blogged? At least I have a little of her handwriting


Notebook of my mother's addresses and other items, these of stores and theatres in the Bronx, ages ago.

She is buried back in New York, in an upstate town called Valhalla.  I have visited her grave only rarely since I have lived here so many years. But I do visit my dad's niche fairly frequently, although I realized today, not since the summer. Tomorrow I go to the home of Len Speaks for a gathering we used to attend together. Often in his cups commenting on how this latest party "was the best" he'd ever attended, he would mention my mother with a combination of wistfulness and regret. Theirs was a long (28 years, she was only 18 when they married) and complicated connection, but it was an intense and I think cosmic one which affected him until the day he died nearly four years ago, at 90. He always felt that he had not done right by her, although from all I could see he had worked to make her happy. Happiness was for her elusive until life itself was ebbing. Another of the mysteries that was my mom.


Suddenly today, I HAD to go to vist Dad's niche at the cemetery in Culver City. To talk to both of them. To remember both of them. It was late in the afternoon, and traffic was lousy. I was distressed that the little flower shop in the cemetery was probably closed by 4 and it was already after 4. My dad was not particularly interested in flowers, but I have found it essential to dress up the space by bringing them when I go. It is just a token of remembrance. I felt actually a little anxiety at not having anything to bring, so much so I actually considered looking for flowers on the grounds to pick--although I felt that was somehow really bad form and did not do it. As I got there the marine layer was coming in, vying witht the remaining sunshine. I thought it might be gloomy in that little hall where his niche is, but it was quite the opposite, the birds were still active and the natural light was still caressing the area, along with the cool breeze. As I walked down the corridor, it looked like there WERE flowers in the holder of Dad's niche. There were. I began to cry. I had, I have no idea who did that. There are only a few people who know that this is the weekend on which my mother died. Was this remembrance of him by way of remembering her also? There was no one to ask. I had forgotten my cell phone and did not have a camera with which to take a picture of the sweet bunch of red carnations surrounded by baby's breath.


But I can tell you what I was, grateful, that my dad who had few friends left at age 90, was remembered by someone other than me.
 

God Bless whoever you are.


I admit to wanting to know. . . . .


Requiescat  in pacem. 





You Learn Something New EVERY Day



Charles Stratton aka Tom Thuimb and his lovely bride Lavinia 1863

In search of the vocations and/or avocations for the third act of my life, I am exploring reading books for a group called "Learning Ally." You would know them under their previous monikers "Recording for the Blind" and in the 80s and 90s, "Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic". What has become manifest for the organization is that the visually impaired are actually one of many who can use the assist of this form of educational aide. It is a wonderful tool that frees so many people, young and old, to learn without restriction.


I thought that while I was going down a new potential occupational road, I should also use my ability to read and enunciate in a manner that gives back to the community and reflects my gratefulness for a gift of gab and narration that was given to me by Divine Providence and the right confluence of genetics.


The organization is run by a great bunch of young enthusiastic men and women and I began my training two weeks ago. You don't jump immediately to reading yourself, but in fact begin by checking the work of other long term volunteers. Everything is computerized now and so with headphones planted, I listened last week to a college primer on psychological development.


This time, I learned about Tom Thumb. I checked virtually the whole book (it was only about a 100 pages). I remember seeing a movie about what I understood to be a totally fictional Tom, played back in my childhood by the dancer Russ Tamblyn (father of Amber of the Travelling Pants). And I suppose he is or was in that stories abotu him began way back in the 17th century.


But a REAL person existed who took on the name and the characterization at the age of 5 or 6.  He was born Charles Stratton and found himself a lifelong employee, then partner of the circus show producer, PT Barnum. Mr. Barnum made a career out of his pronouncement "There's a sucker born every minute", and was a purveyor of what used to be known as the "freak" show back in the mid 1800s and into the 1900's. Finding Mr. Stratton, he created an international sensation, claiming that the boy-man was age 11 when he was age six. True Mr. Thumb never grew to any great height, but he did grow about three to four inches more than his original stature upon discovery by PT. He took London by storm meeting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (before he was in a can). He married just around the time of the Battle of Fredricksberg during the horror of the Civil War and was a celebrity of his time distracting people from their woes. He died of a stroke in his early 40s and his lovely wife, remarried another little person who was either for real or not, a Count.


What else of importance did I learn today? And I have to tell you, I feel like I could now become a successful Jeopardy contestant if my memory allows  because of this new volunteer job.  You know the word "humbug"? I never really understood what it meant, partcularly as used in the short sentence by Scrooge to demean the Christmas holidays, "Bah, humbug!"  Come on, do you know what it means? Really. You always knew? Well, alas, my education has been lacking but thanks to PT and Tom I have been enlightened and I am delighted in the extreme, almost as much as when I discovered the word "quidnunc" (Really, look it up).


Well, until Mr. Barnum redefined the word to his liking, a "humbug" was a deception, a fraud, like many of his featured players.  So, when Mr. Scrooge was saying humbug, he was not just saying he did NOT LIKE Christmas, but that it was a fraud. Oh, no!


But as for me, I am purely excited by the day I have had, learning about Mr. Stratton aka Thumb, his wife, his life, Mr. Barnun, and the true meaning of the word "humbug".  This not working thing will be endless discovery I am thinking.


The Unchangeable Heart of a Faith

One of my friends is a seminarian. After more than one career, and in young mid-age, Scott has discerned a vocation to priesthood. He has immersed himself in difficult theological studies, he has studied Spanish in Guatemala by living with a family that spoke no English, and now he is spending nearly a year as an intern at a large parish in Los Angeles, to taste the life of ministering to a community of believers.
He invited a few of us from his former parish to come and hear him give the homily at yesterday's Sunday Mass at his temporary home, and assignment, St. Mariana De Paredes Catholic Church in Pico Rivera, California.

It was a gloomy day, and a particularly rainy one, with flooding everywhere. If I had not volunteered to drive, I don't know that I would not have considered taking a "rain" check on the 40 or so minute journey. preferring my closer more familiar parish and a quick return to my apartment to hunker down under a comforter. But aside from my promise, I have a soft spot for those who commit themselves to faith beyond laity and for the thoughtful process that begets the commitment and so seeing Scott speak to us as he moves toward his consecration in persona Christi. I did not want to miss this part of the transition.


The rain was still coming down as we arrived. The parking lot was, however, well filled, something, alas, not true of my West Hollywood parish on a Sunday, rain or shine. From what I could tell this area is rather industrial, and the constituency of the parish, a barn sized cinder block building, appeared to be hard working class, family, an equal merging of children, young, middle aged and older clearly long time members. It was a meat and potatoes parish, reminding me a lot of my childhood parish in the Bronx, Christ the King. In some ways, I have become a little grand as a dweller in the heart of movie industry-dom, in a parish full of Hollywood types, single adults, with only a spattering of kids, scenic designers, producers, the odd character actor, writers and wanna be's. Our parish is small and neat, maybe 1000 all tolled, where in this parish we are talking over 6,000 and one mass after another to accommodate the full occupancy of each. This was a buzzing place.


At my parish, I haven't seen a guitar in the nearly 30 years I have been a member. And I have to admit, that makes me quite content. I always thought that the liturgy lost something when the music became haphazardly folksy. But that bias admitted, I have to say that the little group of young people with guitar and keyboard and well crafted harmony was reverent AND joyous and I found myself joining the hymns I recognized. I found myself watching the wriggling families and the coughing elders being eyed suspiciously by their pew compatriots.


Scott actually comes from a farming family in Scotland, so when he was talking of Jesus' admonition to the apostles, and so to us, "Feed my sheep", he was talking literally and figuratively. And when he distributed communion, he and a deacon, both near our way back pews, I was taken by how much love there was in their giving of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. They were smiling, with reverence, but smiling nonetheless as each person came toward them, touching, with the sign of the cross, those too young to receive or those who did not find themselves ready to receive.


What came to me watching these men is the wonderment of the reality that with all the external differences from one parish to another, organ versus guitar or keyboard, expansive serious or relaxed ritual, rich, middle class or poor in attendance, ethnicity, size of the crowd, for all 1.18 billion Catholics the world over, the heart of the faith is identical. We say the same prayers (and will continue to do so as some of words have been retranslated to accord with the language from whicih they come; I admit I like that we go back to "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault" in the Confiteor) which have the same meaning for one and all in accord with Tradtion, the Scripture and Apostolic guidance.


Whatever the debates by rationalistic man (and woman), it is hard to read the words of St. Clement of Rome (consecrated it appears by St. Peter himself) in his letter to the Corinthians and not recognize something that is at its core properly unchangeable. Christ died (and rose) around 33 A.D. This was written circa AD 60-70.

"The Apostles preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ has done so from God.  Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the Apostles by Christ.  Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the Will of God.  Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Spirit, they went forth proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was at hand.  And then preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits of their labors. . .to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterward believe. . . ."

Scott is following in a sacred order both in role and in the succession of time that was preached in the same century in which Christ lived, died and was resurrected. Truly, it is awe-some in the traditional sense of the world. Worthy of awe indeed.

Missing You Desperately: My Friend Noreen

Noreen at a party in the Bronx thrown by yours truly with ample assist from my late dad.
Circa 1979

So long ago all this was. And it seemed it would all last forever. We were twenty somethings, not that long out of college and staking our places in the world.  I offer this to the next generation---that old saw, but true one--CARPE DIEM!  It does go so darn fast.

The people I met at college and law school, they have sustained me through the years. Noreen was one of those I was so lucky to know for many of them. When I first moved to California, she called my dad regularly to be sure he was all right (he moved here 8 months later).

She used to say in her notes to her friends, particularly those of us who left  New York for other climes--"Miss you desperately".

It is one year in a few days since Noreen died.  She was a kind, loving, smart friend. A whole bunch of us miss HER desperately. And won't forget her. 

She was, by the way, a good writer. I have kept the link to her blog on mine and I would say, take a look. Sounds of the Past. It keeps her among us. And Facebook. I love Facebook for that, among other reasons.

Happy Thanksgiving Noreen. Commend us to God who no doubt keeps you close.

Walking in the Neighborhood

You know how, after occasions both happy and sad, the initial frenzy of activity tends to slow down?

That has sort of happened with me, these nearly five months since my separation from my prosecutor's career. For the first few months, there were few days of simply being home. Not only did I have the new voice over classes, but I was meeting up with people for breakfast, lunch and dinner or combinations thereof all the time. Right now, my voice over classes are in hiatus (for me). Although I continue to meet for breakfast with one of my co-severed from the job colleauges during the week, have begun volunteering at places like Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic)and have had various social occasions at old haunts like Papa Christos in mid-LA with former colleagues/friends as I did yesterday, with the days shorter and the novelty of my situation wearing off, I have also found I am not filling every moment.
This is difficult for someone who had a work day structured for 30 years, even if it is otherwise a most desired liberation.

Today was the first day I felt that I had nothing whatsoever to do, and it alarmed me. Really, if I were a truly meditative sort, I would have found the time and quiet energizing. Instead, I worried that I would cease having goals. I suspect I have a little seasonal affective disorder along with my other neuroses, and the clouds of the day might have contributed to the anxiety.
I got up later than is even usual for me. I knew I could easily have stayed in bed all day with the gloom outside, but I forced msyelf up and after a cup of coffee, out. I decided on a short walk.

Walking is something I love to do, but for some inexplicable reason have not been doing for quite some time. The gloom provided a cool, so it actually was a perfect day for a stroll. I stayed initially off the main drag and wandered past various houses on the way toward Santa Monica Boulevard. The houses may be close together, but they are all different and charming in their differences. I ended up near the intersection of Fairfax and Santa Monica and decided to go back south to get a closer look at some of the newer establishments at the bottom of the various condos built in the last few years. Yet another high scale pet store. Yet another coffee shop, but this one not a Starbucks. As I got back toward Melrose, Fairfax High School was letting out. There was a sea of noisy students at the bus stop, none of them making way for the pedestrians like myself trying to circumvent them. I passed a young girl three some, one of whom was saying something like, "She never f-----ing called me." All of 15 and she litters her conversation with the gems of the English language.

As I was moving toward Canter's, the home of the Kibbutz Room, and many an old time rock star n his or her hey day, I saw a man walking haltingly in front of me. Homeless soul, and since he seemed to be touching the ground at intervals, an obsessive compulsive one. As I crossed Fairfax toward Rosewood, another homeless man said, "I love The Love Boat. Do you have any change". I felt a little guilty saying what was true, that I had no change, when I knew I had two twenties. But that seemed to be asking to much of my guilt to give up one of them. That is an interesting consideration for this blog, or for any idle conversation. Should I have given him my twenty? I cannot say I have never given a larger bill, a ten or a five in the past. But today, a twenty seemed a little excessive, based on the non-sequitur nature of the request. Even if I did like the Love Boat (should I admit that) in my younger days. (Love, exciting and new. Come aboard, we're expecting you!).

I decided to press on. Go east, Djinn, toward Gardner Street.  I have been looking for decorative rocks to stick in a non-growing area of my comfortably seedy back yard, so I thought I should toddle to Rolling Greens, a combination plant and unique gift shop. It used to be where my mechanic was, Town Tire Company, until the owner, a gruff but accommidating guy, retired. The new owner kept the basic facade and made it into this rather upscale but approachable store of things you don't need but must have.

It smelled of Christmas, pine, and cinnamon. I got the pebbles and like four other things I did not intend to buy. I browsed and browsed. On one of the cashier stands, one of the owners had placed her scottish terrier in a lovely basket for sale, who was amenable to much petting. The dog, not the basket.


I am always amazed at how I intend not to spend money and then inevitably do. But I had my lovely bags with my lovely little things, including an ornament that looked suspiciously like my friend Carol's Springer Spaniel Rosebud, which I had to get for her. And I walked contentedly down Beverly Boulevard now, toward my block, past the vintage store. I tried to take a picture of the old time cash register for all of you, but it did not come otu well (through a plate glass window). And then I had a cup of coffee at Buzz and watched the people go by at the corner of Grove Drive and Stanley Avenue. 

                                                                                        

Just a short three blocks from my apartment, I found that my mood had lifted. I got home and took my


It was a nice day, it turns out, just walking in the neighborhood.  In the moment. Without expectations. That's the ticket.

What IS My Job?

It is now four months, and change, since my career as an ethics prosecutor was ended. I will keep my law license active.


It sometimes seems that what I considered my mission in life, as it were, attempting to hold the line on ethics (which I have often likened to Sisyphus and the boulder that rolls on him for eternity) was important only to me and it is done.

The enforced turn of events has left me plenty of time to consider the nature of success and its extrinsic and intrinsic measures. On Maslow's scale of  the hierarchy of needs, there are five levels. The first is physiological, food, shelter, and the like. The second is safety, of body, resources, like employment, health. The third is family, friendship, the intimacy stuff. The fourth is esteem, achievement, confidence, respect of others, respect by others and last, that pinnacle, self-actualization, acceptance of the reality, morality, solving the problems before you, creating. I guess some of the measures of success and our needs have common ground at least from a psychological and societal point of view. I have a number of these needs met, and I am grateful for it. Achievement?  I am not sure.  I certainly self-actualized there. I came across the country. I passed my second bar, while working full time as a secretary with no time off to study.  I found my niche. I moved up in the ranks and managed large numbers of people. I taught. I studied psychology at night for a number of years. I even interned as a supervised therapist on nights and weekends for a couple of years. You know that old saw, does a falling tree make a noise if there is no one to hear it?  If it is about the doing, and the accomplishing, then I do not need anyone to say, "yes, you did good." Back to the old intrinsic motivation. But extrinsically, well, let's just say, of late, I've taken a hit or two, and it would appear that investing in that 25 year career (30 if you count the five years before as lawyer in New York and secretary and lawyer in California), was a bit like buying a "pig in a poke".  Did I get what I bargained for?  As you can imagine, I swing back and forth on this subject.  If this was the right place and right mission for me, then yes, I achieved that mission. If I was looking for public acknowledgment of my efforts, I was a fool. 

Believe it or not, this is all preamble for a quote I ran into last night, when I could not sleep. Some of this consideration overlaps into the spiritual realms for me. You know, the why am I here, what was I meant to do bailiwick. I have no idea what the name of the EWTN show was (yes, Catholic Television, 370 for you Directv subscribers), but I find lately in particular that when I am having a debate in my head and heart, God speaks to me in these little encounters (I can't prove it, but I believe it, which I guess is the essence of faith) with the TV and happily also with real people!  Up goes a picture of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, not exactly a slouch in the self-actualizing category, with the statement, "It is not our job to be successful, it is our job to be faithful". 

I think it might be said that Mother Teresa sought neither her own self-actualization nor did she seek extrinsically granted esteem. She simply was a faithful Christian.  Naturally, I have been focusing on the wrong things.  From my perspective as a Catholic Christian, I am actually overcomplicating things. It is really simple. And it will be liberating, if I allow it. Success, extrinsically or intrinsically meansured, should not be my direction. It probably never should have been, but even the dear sisters of my old grammar and high school talked int terms of worldly success and I was geared to it as well by a very persistent parent, my long late mother.  Nothing wrong with it, but perhaps in time, I let it all overtake me.  

The thing about what is truly simple? We don't find it so. I don't find it so. I resist the obvious because it is counterintuitive in the world around me. 

Even as I write all this I don't think I have sorted it out. But that quote, that direct piece of purity, that has hit a mark.  

Has it advanced me in my search?  Maybe. God willing.

Fire Escape Diva

A month or more ago, I submitted a piece to a little magazine called Back to the Bronx. It was acknowledged, but I am assuming that it did not make the cut having heard nothing further. I think it is pretty good. But I leave it to you. And either way, I kind of want to have the memory join the internet nostalgia train.

The actual fire escape is long gone but the image is accurate of my child's balcony.

I have been living in Los Angeles for more than half my life. Yet, I am a Bronxite through and through. To say I am “from the Bronx”, specifically Townsend Avenue between 174th Street and Mt. Eden Avenue, is to say effectively that I am from another planet, so different is the lifestyle here from that of our beloved Burrough. I live now in a neighborhood that people think to be quite urban, crushingly so. But here, at midnight I can look out my window and hear crickets and see not one car for ten minutes. This is nearly “the country”, as we used to call any place that was over the George Washington Bridge. There is no comparison of here to there. To be from “the Bronx” can certainly only be understood by those who grew up there. Trying to describe it to the native-born of this climate heaven is often unsatisfying. I must seek out my own, those of us, even the most protected by our parents, who played “scully” on the sidewalk, or learned to roller skate while going downhill, stoop sitting as the sun went down while eating a too quickly melting Chocolate Éclair Good Humour Bar.


I have many favorite memories made shinier by the passage of time and the encroaching sentimentality of the proximity of my dotage. But this one nearly physically sends me back to a time and place long gone. I am no more than 8 or 9 years old. I can still reach out and grab my joy at what was for me a rare unguarded moment on our one bedroom fire escape. My parents and I, the only child, lived at the back side of our building, 1596 Townsend Avenue, overlooking a long, cavernous alley that faced another building of equal size. It was my version of “Rear Window”, with views into the lives of neighbors I would never meet but about whom I would always speculate, even to this day. Our fire escape, on the fourth floor of a five floor brick walk up, was the balcony to this world.

I have told more than a few horrified Los Angelinos that we played on those fire escapes and without supervision, except for an occasional visual check, and a passing, “Don’t stay out there too long!” It was dangerous. It was gloriously dangerous. One of my aunts and an uncle, lived next door to us, sharing the fire escape. I would move along the wall (to avoid the stairwell and the space into which the stairwell descended, no doubt to certain death) to get to their window and then, surprisingly without being a pint sized peeping Tom, returning to my own. I just wanted to see if I could make the journey, as I was actually afraid of heights.

With a blanket to cover the metal slats so I could not look down, I owned the space. I brought all my dolls out there. I could see the curtain moving on one of the windows across from me, some neighbor afraid to be known, but always wanting to know what was going on outside her little apartment. I could hear the vibrations of the violin played by someone else whose curtains remained steadfastly closed. I always assumed it was a man. Only today, as I write, do I wonder whether perhaps it was a woman, longing to have a career like her male counterpart in a time when that was not so readily possible. Even then, hearing the strains of a concerto for violin the name of which I never knew or cannot remember seemed incongruous with the location, a dirty, dusty, gray concrete and brick setting. But it was a wondrous incongruity that perhaps planted the seed in me that grew into a desire to cross a boundary few in my family ever did—to leave New York and go somewhere else and try to be something different-- maybe something creative that was not available to my parents’ generation.

How often did I go out there? I don’t remember, but it was likely at least once a week. All children pretend, but as an only child, I cultivated pretend into entire screenplays. But it was almost always directed within, to myself where no one else could hear and certainly no one could critique.

I have rarely acted out my impulses, less then than now in any case. And to be frank, the last major impulse I had, upon which I did act at the advanced age of 27, and after law school, was to move to California. I cannot tell you how many people told me that I would fail, either directly or indirectly. And yet that impulse turned out in my favor, all of the bumps and potholes notwithstanding (they have those here too in Los Angeles!).

On that fire escape, when was it, in the early to mid-1960s, there was no thought of someplace like California, except when I watched Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” on my parents’ black and white television or when my mother mangled the name of one of her favorite actors, Ricardo Montalban (she would say “Montalblan”). There was only, in one unexpected moment, the need to express myself fully, from this jutting stage to the empty alley world of which I was the only inhabitant. It was a, me I did not know. The uncharacteristically brave one got up from her blanket, abandoning her dolls and went to the corner of the fire escape. Pressing against and embraced by the rusting railings upon which I/she placed her hands, she surveyed the alley as an opera singer might her theatre and her adoring audience. But this was no gilded theatre. There was the laundry that hung out on some of the lines. On the ground below there were the trash cans amid which cats lived and bred and sometimes died.

I was the child-diva aware of no living creature, although surely behind one of those windows someone was watching, with veiled amusement. Had I been aware of any such person, perhaps I would have interrupted my impulse with my then usual fear and meekness, retreating to my bedroom. But there being no one of whom I was cognizant, including my mother, I felt free and even invulnerable. I began to sing, and loudly enough so that the alley echoed back my tune. I would be lying if I said I remembered the music I selected. It could have been some television theme. It might even have been one of the Latin dance songs that my father favored in those days, a rumba, a meringue, a mambo. It doesn’t matter to the memory. It was fabulous simply to let go! The more my sound echoed back to me, the more I wanted to hear the echo. The whole thing probably lasted no more than a minute or two, but what a magnificent interlude.

I lived sixteen years in that apartment. My desire to hang about the fire escape no doubt waned shortly after this episode. I never burst into song there again, this much I do know.

I would love to be able to visit that back alley and look up at fire escape where once I intoned in unalloyed innocence, before I knew who I was or would become. It remains a great regret that the building, and I see from looking at Google maps, many of the surrounding buildings, was a victim of the struggles of the Bronx during the late sixties and seventies. We moved to the area around the Jerome Reservoir. My mother died only four years after that. The innocence of that day on the fire escape on Townsend Avenue naturally dissipated with the process of growing up.

Although the good news is that a public school stands on the site and so a meritorious use of the space is being made for future generations, the bad news is that I have few photographs of the building and must rely almost exclusively on the memories. I want so much to be able to show to my later in life friends, the ones who did not know me when I was taking the number 1 bus on the Grand Concourse to school, a picture of that alley, the fire escape, the building across the way. I want to convey to them what I saw that liberating day as I belted out a song, without care for past, present or future. I want to convey the smell of the Bronx on a summer’s day. I want to convey that which created the essence of me, the Bronx kid who moved across the country but still, in a way, standing on that fire escape trying to grab the gusto of life.

By the way, there was no way that I could know that day all those years ago, that I would meet my mother’s fave, for ever so brief a moment, at my Los Angeles Church—Ricardo Montalban. He was congratulating me, not on my singing, but on my reading from a lectern. Close enough.

I wish my mother had been alive for me to share that moment with her. She would still have gotten his name wrong.

It’s a long way from the fire escape.