The Pleasing Artifacts of Days Gone By

The packing continues for the move I hope will be accomplished in September, sometime, to my dad's condo. Aside from the packing, there has been shredding of documents that go back more than a decade, mine and my dad's, there have been donations to Good Will, there have been deposits by what I call the "magic tree", the tree outside my current place where, if you leave something you no longer want, someone comes by and adopts it for his or her own. I recently left a free standing bar out there, and I was delighted to see a young couple grab it up! There has been a whole loftof plain ole tossing of things that I have held onto for years (see the entry about how hard it is to get rid of stuff, going back a few months on these pages). It has been hard. The item pictured above is just one such particularly precious piece. It came with me from New York nearly 31 years ago, just about as empty as it is now, and I had it with slightly more liquid in it, some five years before that.

Yes, it is a barren bottle of cologne, called Aliage, which I wore until the contents were no more, except for a few drops that still cannot be sprayed out from the bottom. Perhaps because of the trouble the gifter took to have my initials placed at the top, the item has had even more value to me on the sentimental scale.

For the briefest of three months or so circa the fall and winter of 1975, I sort of dated a classmate--the second and last one, in college.With me, dating was always a bit of a "sort of". Don't get the idea that I am blaming anybody but myself. I just wasn't good at it, and never became good at it. Therein lies another tale, perhaps to be told, or not, we shall see. This young man was in a class taught by an aged stage actor, Vaughan Deering--who carried clippings from his 1918 appearances on stage (I believe as Iago) in San Francisco in his pocket, and lived at the now defunct Lamb's Club, and who, was a prototype for the absent minded professor except one who looked like he was homeless. Len Speaks will remember this class, not only for Mr. Deering's distress at the lack of our actor abilities, but for the fact that he was the note passing conduit from my would be suitor to me, one I recall inviting me to meet him by the coat rack at WFUV. I was suspicious of these entreaties because he had been involved in an intense relationship with another of our classmates, which had broken up with equal passion, and I knew he wasn't over her. And I knew, and I say this with absolute honesty, not self-deprecation alone, I could not compete with that lovely girl on any level.

But this was the second time I had actually been pursued with such obvious intensity (having not been pursued at all before) and well, he was already a friend, and I already liked him. He was New York cute, which for me is a little rough edged but with a boisterous sense of humor. So, for those few months, we went out casually and I enjoyed his company. It was he, I guess around Christmas, who gave me the cologne in the initialled bottle. I still have the card he sent with it (yes, I do. . .) a sweet thank you for my being there for him at a tough time.  By January of 1976, he transitioned to the woman, also a classmate, who would become his wife and with whom he had his two beautiful children. I was hurt but I never believed he was serious about me.

It was indeed the sweetness of the gesture of initials on the bottle that made me keep it, and I think, looking backward to my too quiet salad days, it was a reminder of things that could have been but weren't mostly because I lacked the necessary social and romantic skills. Or was afraid of them.

That bottle represented the possibility of youth. It will be hard to let it go, this bottle. On the other hand, I realize I don't need it in the same way anymore, even as only something to discover in the back of a closet and take in my hand with a smile. It will be enough I think to have the picture on this blog.

And move on, with a contentment that surprises even me, to another chapter of my life, with gratefulness for the ones in the past.  

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The Quasi-Bionic Djinn

Up until I was 18 years old I had great teeth, not even one cavity. And then it all changed. Probably my less healthy diet, but I really never knew for sure. Suddenly I had a plethora of decay and fillings. By the time I came to California in 1981, I still had my teeth (except for a couple of wisdom teeth that did not fully develop), but they were filled with gold, amalgam and man made porcelain type products. My father thought this was mighty fine, as he had lost all his teeth in his 20s, and was wearing dentures while he fought in WWII.

I had a wonderful dentist from about 1982 until hummm, I can't exactly remember, the early 2000s, I am thinking, Roy Nakaiye. We even dated a couple of times; I met his lovely family, but I just did not see us as a couple. He stayed my dentist until he retired to Florida (he was an avid fisherman) and sold his practice. I did not like the crew that replaced him, who seemed to have checklists of all the cosmetic dentistry that they felt needed to be done for the outrageous prices that these non-urgent repairs required. They called and sent me notes of such a number and caliber that I considered they were less concerned about the well being of my mouth than of the well being of their pocket books. Although not necessarily a wise decision on my part, I avoided them henceforward and had no dentist for three years or so.

Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith Apartments had the same problem I did--for Roy became his dentist as well upon his transplantation from NY to LA. It was he who introduced me to my new dental office, Hanna Hoseli. When a dental pain became too much to bear, I sought her out. I fell in love, with the office, with the receptionist/office manager, he sister, and with the fact that I was always the only one waiting as the prior patient left--Hanna's approach was that each patient required her full attention, for a full hour at least, and there was no serial seeing, or it was limited. And she worked with steady hands and a quiet patience. After only a few visits, she became ill (she later died at far too young an age of brain cancer), and the young woman she hired to stand in for her while she fought her battle Nicola Malik, was in her mold, although she had not been licensed that long. I hated to lose Hanna, but I knew Hanna wouldn't select someone who wasn't a chip off the old block. I had let a germinating problem fester into a big one, an old root canal that had fluctuating pain. It would hurt. I'd take aspirin. It would go away, and then the cycle would begin again, until it hurt just too much. It was a tooth that Hanna had recommended I see a specialist over--of course I didn't.

By the time Dr. Malik saw me, she told me the root was fractured and the tooth, pretty well infected, couldn't be saved. She referred me to an oral surgeon, Dr. David Salehani in Beverly Hills (apropos of nothing, it was the building where in a Hamburger Hamlet I saw my very first LA celebrity, back in 1978, Michael Callan--anybody remember him?). He pulled the tooth, in a most elaborate display of surgical care, cleanliness, etc, but they still pull a tooth with what looks like a pair of pliers. My other teeth were ok, so I wasn't going to have any removed for a bridge. So onward to the dental implant, which is quite the process. I had a bone graft that day (I had to stop him for a little more information when he used the word 'cadaver'; you see the material is made from cadavers, along with some synthetics--thank you whoever's bone I now have integrated into my upper small molar space), and the I waited for three months to see if the graft would take. It did.

So yesterday, was the second, biggest part of this process--the actual implant. Yes, essentially it is a screw that is put into the space where your root used to be--and this is done after drilling a nice little canal into that newly replaced or edified bone area. It's all just below the sinus (you shoulda seen the consent form!). But I felt secure somehow. This doctor is young (if he's forty I'd be surprised), with just enough gray at his temples to allow for a sigh of relief and his calm is profound. The office is high tech and spare. The implant--it's made of titanium, right out of the Bionic man, or woman, in this case. It took all of 45 minutes for the whole process, which included a few moments to twist the screw into place such that I felt like I was a tire--I could hear the click, click, click until it tightened.

I was expecting a fair amount of discomfort when the local wore off, I mean, the man used massive drills right into my bone and there's a screw in my face now to which in another three or four months, assuming the implant "takes" which he thinks likely, will be added a crown.  But except for a bit of throbbing an hour or two after the surgery--I admit I took ibuprophen with codeine, just in case, because I was going to a Dodger game with Lenspeaks, I woke up this morning with nearly no discomfort, except for the sites where the needles went in to numb me up.

So, here I am, the happy quasi-bionic Djinn.

A La Recherche du Temps Perdu

Two intersecting ordinary events have triggered this entry. The first is that I am getting ready to move from my rental apartment, in which I have lived for over 30 years, to my dad's former condominium. The space is roughly the same size, but it represents a shift in my time space continuum. My dad died over four years ago. My long time job/career, as those of you who follow the DjinnfromtheBronx blog know, became moot. While a good thing, in retrospect, that change was seismic as well.--that which I had invested a quarter of a century was proven to be like the mist, fine and transient.The girl who came to this apartment at age 27 has become the seriously older woman of age 58. Like the Professor in the Time Machine, I have watched life change from out of my window as time passed. Unlike the Professor, as I moved into the future, I did not remain young. The second thing was catching up on the blog of my friend from a couple of weeks ago, his paean to the now late Ernest Borgnine, and, in particular, his role in "Marty".  That role resonated with me as well. Aside from the location appeal--it was shot in the Bronx back in a more innocent time just around the time I came onto the cosmic scene--Marty is the story of the everyman, the not so beautiful people. He is the Italian butcher who still lives at home with his widowed mother at the age of 35, and though trying to keep up with the better looking (they think) guys who search for the girls at the prim and proper dancing halls prevalent in those days, pretending that he's on the "make" for something lithe and pretty like all the sensible guys, he is a man full of a sense of inadequacy and loneliness. He watches the parade of men, like his brother, who find if not the loves of their lives, the companion of their days, and he wonders how the heck he managed not to get whatever it is that other men have, if not good looks, some vague charm that overcomes them. little later in the time scale, I would know these people, who lived and died in the Bronx, and I could easily have been one of them, as someone who never liked change. Luckily I hated the weather there and liked it better here, or I'd probably still be near the Jerome Reservoir, walking down to 233rd Street on a muggy summer's day.

Well, maybe it was a third thing that set me to this entry. I pulled out my photograph albums for storage in the little space that comes with the condo's garage. And the albums with the detritus of occasions long since past, a ticket stub, letters, diplomas, articles, term papers, report cards--the proofs of my "success". As I look backward at my own face, at 5, at 20, at 27, at 30 something, my fortieth birthday, I don't entirely recognize me.  I see in that face, in that time, something I clearly missed then, potentiality, even prettiness. You see, except for fleeting moments which were more about convincing myself, than about a real feeling, I always thought I wasn't particularly pretty. And of course, I sealed my feeling by fighting a  weight problem, well not fighting it, really, as I eat and always have eaten, obsessively.  I have done many things, obsessively, one replacing the other and occasionally overlapping the other. Well, I suppose it was understandable, considering my high school graduation picture--talk about a bear like visage with a helmet of hair and fuzzy eyebrows.

Well, that's how I felt. I remember it well. Oh, yes, lots of kids feel that way. I know we are a vast club. And looking at the other pictures in the yearbook, the others did not fare much better. But that's how I see it now, not then.  Guys see themselves as Marty. I saw myself as a cross between him and the girl that he meets that everyone says isn't good enough for him. You know, the girl most likely to be a wallflower.  Every time I ever watched that movie and he said, "You ain't the dog you think you are.," or something like that, I cried, a little more or little less depending on the state of my dating life, which did not begin until sophomore year of college--you can't count Ginny's cousin for the Sophomore Tea or Denise's good friend Ray, so I could get to the Senior Prom at all.  He was shorter and thinner by the way, so my already pretty shot self-esteem was fully exploded when he noted the height disparity--or was it, as I remember that he pointed out I was "bigger" than he was. He later sold me an annuity which I think I lost money.

But it was more than thinking I was a "dog". It was about something missing in my training, or my learning, outside of the educational training, the intellectual stuff (though I am not much of an intellectual if it comes to that for all the effort thrown that way). Attracted though I always was to men (yes, really, for those of you who think I am gay, not, as a la Seinfield "there's anything wrong with that"--for we each have our paths in life), I had no meaningful commerce (my apologies to James from Monticello; he actually asked me out in 1970, but I didn't realize that's what he was doing, so oblivious was I) with them until college and I was ill prepared in every way to encounter them when I got there. So what was in fact sufficiently attractive was hiding her light under a barrel for fear of what to do if the light got out, plus all the other psychological twist and turns the mind takes in order to convince itself that something stupid in behavior makes sense.  I just didn't "get" what other people, boys, and girls, men, and women, seemed to as part of the rites of passage. I wish I could say that I ultimately did, but I can't.

So, here I am in one of the pictures I actually always liked--there were about 15 of those pictures in the multitude of pictures taken of me over the years--circa 1982 ish in Santa Barbara. That makes me about 28--oh boy. . . .y'd never know that this face hid a mass of neuroses, fears, a hatred of her very vessel, her body and knew, at some very deep place--no doubt the essence of self-fulfilling prophecy--that she'd be a spinster like one of her mother's three sisters.

The title of this entry is from Marcel Proust, alternately translated as "In Remembrance of Things Past" or, "In Search of Times Lost". Well, the latter is more my sense of things--I am, as I pack up and shift gears, in ever my so small a way, in search of times lost--lost because of choices that did not seem to be choices, but now I realize despite every bit of resistance that tugs at me, were indeed choice. My "can'ts" as often my therapist tried to get me to see were "won't's". They still felt like "can'ts". But now it all doesn't matter that much to me--my mind and soul, if you will, has gone in a different direction, which may be hormonal or Divine Mercy, or both.

I'm guessing that everybody, whether he or she will admit it or not, realizes that in those things which did not "work out" in relationship--was a matter of being one's own worst enemy. I certainly twisted myself into knots most of my life.

The thing about "Marty" is that he wakes up faster than many of us do. It's his game to win or lose. Well, that's the other reality--it isn't a game.

I have had a very full life in my eccentric way. So, if it seems I am, I'm not complaining. And that is a first! I spent much of my life doing just that--complaining. To myself. To my journal, which was my alternate self. To my father, when he was alive. Probably to a few people that I would deny I complained to if they said, "Oh, yeah, you complained to me." 

And, what hasn't been enough, well, I'm responsible for that, but don't press me on it 'cause I could easily look for some external force to blame, and have, and will again.

The time that's lost, it's gone. End of story. Won a few, lost a few, failed to play the game more times than I'd like to count. Thought I wasn't invited to the game, truth be told, my mistake. But, if I live a statistical life, I have time to use without reserve the time left to me. I don't mean in activity per se--I'm talking the things that are ineffable, the mind, the soul.

So, what's the bottom line--grab with gusto the time forward, which will quickly be lost in the haze of memory. What will that look like? I have no idea. But if I have learned anything from Marty, it's better late than never. And, if I haven't said this before, though I think I have, I am happier than I have ever been, and I am grateful indeed.  I have good friends and a blessed life. What I don't have well, it's part of my journey, and you know what, it's not too late to use each day well.  There's an entire universe in a day!

Sherlock!

The exclamation point is my addition to the Great Detective's name, expressing my continued affection for the Arthur Conan Doyle character and his excellent reproduction in modern dress by the BBC, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (oh, what a name is that1) and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson.


For me, the last really good Sherlock was Jeremy Brett, and that was the 90s. The idea of updating him may not be particularly original--after all, even Basil Rathbone flashed forward from late18th Century Holmes to WWII Holmes in name of the war effort. And I did not think he lost anything in that translation. But bringing him into the 21st Century, hmmmm?  Well, for me it works, because they have kept all the basic premises of whom these men are--and personally I have liked the last few later versions concept of smarting up Watson--which really is more true to the written stories anyway.


So, about a year ago, I was flipping channels and ran into the end of the first episode (they do them more like movies than a TV show) of Season One--where Holmes and Watson meet. Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street, which is next door, in modern London to a little cafe called "Speedy's".  Watson is a doctor back from his war, Afghanistan where he was wounded, in the leg. Holmes is the violin playing, fast thinking, easily bored character, 7 percent solution using man we need him to be, in rooms that manage to be modern without sacrificing the feeling of well crafted clutter, and they give him a little bit of the air of a throwback to an earlier time, while incorporating all the interests of the old time Holmes (in the newest scientific methods) into the world where such interest is commonplace--but our new Holmes is more adapt than anyone could ever be at it. I love this relationship between the two men, the psychological closed offness (he's probably either a schizoid or Asperger type, our Mr. Holmes) of Holmes, the sexual ambiguity of his character that comes mostly from his focus on other things that interest him more, the next case, and the heterosexual insecurity of Watson at being considered too close to Holmes (in a more recent episode he asks "what are they saying when they say I'm a confirmed bachelor?"). What I see is a close relationship not based on attraction but on the essence of soul friendship.  And it's a relationship that requires work, for Watson, having to try to tame the narcissism of his all too smart friend and Holmes trying to learn an empathy that does not come natural to him, plus the idea of having any friends.


So, I had to rush out and see if there was a DVD, since likely it was that if I was seeing it for the first time on Public Television, it was a year or more old already, having been broadcast in the UK. And there it was. I refreshed myself on the first episode and then the remaining two, and then, not hearing about whether or not it had taken off there in the mother country, or here in the colonies, hoping that it had, cause I wanted more.


And then the other day, I ran across a part of Season Two on PBS, the second of the three episodes each of which uses the original stories, this one the Hound of the Baskervilles, wherein we find out that the Hound is a product of the chemically altered mind. And Holmes almost doesn't realize it and thinks he cannot trust his OWN eyes. And off I went to Barnes and Noble and found it, and watched it, meeting the 21st century Irene Adler, and oh, yes, being reintroduced to James Moriarity, more sociopathic than anything I've seen on TV, a bit more Heath Ledger Joker, but not so much that you despise him quite as readilly as, well, I did the Joker of the Batman movie.


Happy Camper am I, with Downton Abbey coming back soon, and knowing that Sherlock is a hit.

Forget the movies they are making right now--which are insulting to Conan Doyle's conception. This TV show is an homage.  As for me, I just got a Sherlock ringtone!

Exorcism Exercise at the Geffen

I have never read the book, "The Exorcist" nor seen the movie of the same name. Oh, of course, I saw clips of the movie. I mean it was the talk of the 1970s, and it still gets on lists of horror films to be seen. But I avoided it, even though part of the movie was filmed at the language lab of my college.
If the movie, and maybe the book, asks the question, "Do you believe in the devil", well, it really wasn't a question for me. I believe there was a beautiful angel, Lucifer, the bearer of light, who decided that he did not want to answer to his Creator.  He was cast out of heaven to begin his dominion in hell, cut off from the Divinity he so ruthlessly sought to wrest. And so began the work of the Tempter against God's other creatures of conscience, mankind. 


I had a couple of encounters with him, as far as I am concerned, or some part of his realm. When I was a kid, whenever I stayed at a certain friend's house, I always felt uncomfortable, like someone or something evil was watching me. I discounted it until I idly mentioned to my friend my creepy feeling. She said, matter of factly, as I recall, "Oh, we have a ghost".  When their schizophrenic next door neighbor broke into their house while we were lunching on day, carrying a knife, holy water, and candles, I came as close to the devil's business as I ever wanted to do. And I'd heard about some of the scenes in the movie, which I simply found distasteful--they seemed too blasphemous to me, with my Catholic background.


So, I don't know exactly what made me say "yes" to the invitation of Len Speaks to see the recently opened stage version at the Geffen Playhouse. Maybe it was that he told me it was less horror (and so I later read) than psychological drama. But having said, "yes" I can now say dear Len Speaks, I considered backing out. I won't go so far as feeling that by going I was maybe committing a sin, but it was pretty close to that feeling. 


I was relieved we were in the balcony. If there was something ugly I'd not get a clear view. And we were close to the exit, just in case I needed to go into a hallway to save my soul. I was a bit discomfited immediately by the single set, which stands for the home, and bedroom of the possessed girl, Regan, that looked exactly like the inside of a Church, a Catholic Church. On the altar like table, which doubled as Regan's bed (oh, yes, those creative theatre folk!) there was a set up for the Mass, a Chalice was covered by a veil, and the girl's bedsheet was also the altar covering. I couldn't miss the big cross hovering over the altar/bed, but I did initially miss the lamp that signifies the Presence of God in the tabernacle. When I saw it, I cringed a little.  The first thing the girl does (played happily by a child like adult), is take that chalice and the large unconsecrated host and breaks it up, like a priest, turning the chalice upside down and using the pieces in a Ouija board sort of "game" in which she is summoning the evil within her. It was not looking good, but Djinn what did you think you were going to "Carousel"?


You know the story, right? Mom, Chris, played to exquisite woodenness by Brooke Shields (who I think is a good actress, wrong role), is an atheist, whose beautiful daughter is acting really weird. She urinates in odd places, like on people's shoes. She speaks in languages she shouldn't know. She cusses a lot in them. She predicts the death of an"uncle" an actor who drinks too much and like one or more of the producers or writers of the play, is a smug "fallen away" Catholic. I say smug, not because of the fallen away part, but because they make it sound like only intelligent people "fall away." Oh, and Regan/Devil actually kills dear uncle, which is why Chris doesn't want any kind of social services, or other authorities involved. Doctors can't help or try to explain the child's behavior away by calling it plain old mental illness. So, she goes to a priest, Fr. Damien, who is busy doubting God, the devil, and Daniel Webster played to exquisite woodenness by an actor whose name I don't remember. (You'd think he was dealing with an errant fly the way he reads his lines). He is also feeling guilty about how he treated his mother in her last illness. Chris, the non-believer, has to exhort Damien, the kinda believer, to get an exorcist in there to deal with Regan. And the devil is looking forward to another fight with that particular exorcist, Fr. Merrin. (Richard Chamberlain who is back to using his English accent. Don't get me wrong, I have a copy of the Thorn Birds and I love Richard Chamberlain, but Fr. Merrin is really nothing more than a way to move the story along, whenever the dialogue is unable to do it). Fr. Merrin does a preliminary exorcism in which Regan levitates (thanks to Penn of Penn and Teller amid her other gyrations),  Fr. Merrin though has a weak heart from the last encounter. And he dies rather quietly (and very much like Father whats-his-name in The Thorn Birds) requiring Damien to get out of his civvies and into his cassock and sacrifice himself to banish the devil from the little girl in the exorcism majeur. Oh,the sacrifice is emphasized by a spray of blood from the hovering cross. In between there is banter about God, the nature of evil, doubt, belief, man's responsibility (maybe), free choice. For my part, and forgive the flippancy, Lord, God seems to be wisely absent from the proceedings nothwithstanding the light signfying Him..


The execution of this play, apparently going to Broadway (say it ain't so), was, amateurish for all the pablum in various high brow papers and on line sites about the streamlining of the book and avoiding the horror of the film. One of the reviewers said the dialogue was stilted. I think that was generous. With rare moments of coherence the script was abysmal. They were going for gravitas. I will stop short of saying they got "drivel", but that too is a close one. The voices, often saying the Hail Mary, were distracting and reminded me of an episode in Star Trek where Captain Kirk was caught in a world of too many people, but thought his ship was empty. Everybody drank out of chalices, like they just had them lying around the house. I'm guessing that this was considered a really stunning idea by the artistes. Heavy handed.


Since the book was written by a Catholic, and I've never read the book, I cannot say whether the massive misunderstanding and mockery of the Catholic faith is Blatty's or the adaptation. There was also confusion on the part of the play writers about whether it is the Devil or man who causes things like Rwanda. It ain't the devil folks, although I'm sure he's delighted. 


Frankly, to be fair, I'm not sure this is a story that can be done on stage. Maybe if you insist, one does  it a la "My Conversation with Andre" where an atheist, an agnostic and a priest sit and talk about these weighty subjects. Or maybe it's just better to leave it all alone and let philosophers and theologians have at it, which by the way, they have for thousands of years.


And if you insist on going to Broadway, well, it really needs work.  

July to July

During this last life changing year, I had the chance to read a book the name of which has been escaping me. It was written by a woman who used to work for Martha Stewart Enterprises in a high powered, money making position..At the height of her success, she walked away to live in her ramshackle home in some rural community,writing and gardening and discovering herself. Throughout the book she repeated the question "Who am I if I'm not XXXXXX. @MarthaStewart.com?" 


I resonated with her story, although in my case, I did not walk away from my career, as those of you who read this blog know. I might have, even likely, decided to leave in a few months or a year, or two, but I didn't. Having invested 25 years of time, sweat, passion, doubt, mission, doing my truly niche job, at which, if I do finally say so myself I was quite skilled, I was, literally in the space of five minutes, no longer Djinn, Assistant Chief Trial Counsel.. For the speed in which I and several of my colleagues were told our long services were no longer needed, it almost seemed that I had never been there at all. I knew I was not indispensable, as I have no doubt written here before, but to find out how utterly dispensable I was, wreaked havoc on my not inconsiderable ego. Everything, from getting good grades at the Mount back in the Bronx, to graduating magna cum laude at Fordham, to tolerating law school, which I thought a useless preparation for the real world, to working for the Corporation Counsel as an intern during law school (the summer of Three Mile Island), to the nuttiness of the Law Offices of a Madison Avenue lawyer, passing the Bar in California, the nuttiness of another Law Office on Wilshire Boulevard had led to that quarter of a century as an ethics lawyer and prosecutor. And then it was gone. I was one big step behind the author who made the knowing and intentional decision to leave her career. I needed to absorb the trauma of forced separation before I could do anything else. I credit myself (oh, yes, yet again!) with having done better at that and more quickly than I would have supposed given my personality. And for the last year, I have been trying to see who I am if I'm not, Djinn, Assistant Chief Trial Counsel.


Well, first I began writing more in this blog. I thoroughly enjoy it. A few good friends and some lovely strangers in places like China and Russia apparently have been among my audience. For a few months, I wrote in a religious blog, describing the spiritual dimensions of becoming unemployed, including charity, and forgiveness and recognition of Providence even in the most unpleasant of life's events. I almost took a part time legal job at the behest of a good friend and old colleague, getting into the ground floor of a special administrative court for the Transit Authority. But I decided that it was the "wrong" road for me just then. I have remained an active lawyer, at least for 2012. No matter how much you discourage it, people insist on asking legal questions. I have referred more people to the Legal Referral Service of the Bar than almost I did when I worked there. Lightening would have to strike twice for me to find the kind of career that fit my psychological being so well. I am not holding my breath.


I have done a fair amount of reading. I painted a couple of canvases. I began a renovation of a condo I now own since Dad died. It has been a long slow haul and remains unfinished. I took three voice over classes and remain on line occasionally sending an audition. Because it costs money to do a demo tape and for now my cash flow is flowing into the direction of the renovation, I have put that on a temporary hold. I read for Learning Ally.  I help in a couple of charities, one very dear to my heart, also written about in these pages, The Sisters Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick. I have begun to pray more, though distraction remains a challenge. I go more often to Daily Mass, serve there, and bring communion to one or two sick. I decided to stop the ministry at the hospital--it just wasn't a good fit. As you also may know I finished the first draft of a memoir I may never publish, and am now 100 pages into a revision. It was way too long at 417 pages. It is at present 371, with much much more to cut.  I have found that I don't write at any set time. The mood strikes. I can sit for an hour or several hours, or minutes. I just let it happen.


The days unfold. As one of the colleagues who left the Bar on the same day I did has noted for herself, I have learned not to be self-punitive because every day does not have the same structure. There has been the odd crisis here and there, but I find myself happier overall than ever I was in many a year. I've renewed my passport in case I get over that renewed fear of flying and I actually do take a trip somewhere, like Ireland or England or both. Now that there are no cats (although a new cat in the neighborhood has been visiting more than I'd like) in the backyard I started to feed the birds and it is a peaceful marvel to watch them dive into the little container to get their fills.

I used to think about "fame and fortune", moving "up" in the world. I moved up, in a limited way, and then it was gone. That was a lesson in humility. I have come to believe that humility is the key to happiness. I'm not very good at it, the idea of "fame and fortune" still intrudes, but I get to practice every day. If you're laughing, really I am trying!  I realize that people will perceive me in a largely different way than I perceive myself. I can't say which of us is right. I used to struggle with that, a lot. I needed to believe that my perceptions were reasonable. I am doing my best, that's all I can say.

My mother died when she was 48. My dad when he was 90 I don't know where the ball in the roulette wheel will fall for me. But what I've come to, with occasional lapses of old neuroses, is that every day is a world unto itself to be embraced and savored.  I'm going outside now with a glass of wine to say Evening Prayer. That may not be how the monks are doing it, but there you are, one Djinn's approach.


Let me leave you with a small piece of a prayer by a very famous lawyer who saw his fame and his life taken from him for what he perceived a greater Good.  I used to have it hanging on my lamp in my office.

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I am surely no longer Djinn, Assistant Chief Trial Counsel.. Maybe I never really was. Who I am remains to be seen, in God's good time. But overall I think it's been a good year.   

Manilow (Still Has Some) Magic

Life is really one big circle. In 1977, I was working for a New York radio station, courtesy of a kind friend, Joe Persek, WXLO, 99X. I had put off law school for six months thinking that I might try my hand at radio broadcasting, the college version of which I had done already for five years.  The main job I had was related to the weekly top ten. One afternoon, in between management sweeps of staff, I was passing by Jay Thomas' studio and there was a freshly famous (by a few years) Barry Manilow. And fresh faced, with the shaggy hair of the period, casual jeans dress, and, of course, the renowned nose that somehow did not prevent him from being kind of attractive. It was definitely the oozing charm. I didn't speak to him, of course, respecting the boundaries of famous/not famous and employee/stay out of the way rules.

Last night, 35 years later, he brought his now retro showman self (he made a joke about how he was the "Justin Bieber" of his day, apt, but a little sad for those of us of a certain age), to the Hollywood Bowl. As he said, he's been a lot of places in between. So have I, though perhaps not so glamorous. And so too the mostly senior-ish crowd who sang every every song that Manilow wrote (yep, including "I Write the Songs") when all of us were fresh-faced and on our way to who knew where.  I was tempted to ask "Who ARE all these old people?" until I realized that someone was probably saying that about me!

But I didn't feel old when I walked in there, and I surely did not while I marvelled at Barry's style and grace, even when in lower registers he seemed to struggle with his voice. Then he'd pull out the Manilow I remembered. I felt like I needed to run home and stuff my I-pod with songs I had actually forgotten about, "Even Now" among them.  How did I forget to put Manilow on there?  Sacrilegious almost!

I remember pushing the door open of WFUV's engineering room as "Mandy" played time and time again, when, was it 1975?  I watched the crowd last night waving their red glow sticks and I could touch the nostalgia, the sense of delight at a summer time machine evening, each of us conjuring memories of where we were when we heard each song.. And yet, there was a connection to 2012, as some of the crowd clearly had not been there back in the "day". The kids next to me couldn't have been more than 20 something. And as some of the more romantic tunes were crooned, the young man with the Corona put his arm around the young girl with the tasteful glass of white, and they smiled at one another. 

I see why the old talk about the past so much- people and things which used to be right there, part of a taken for granted existence--it's something to hold onto as life whisks by. When a Manilow appears on stage, we can say, "Oh, things are safe, things are like we remember." And then we lose someone like Andy Griffith, and we have to recognize that things just aren't the same, and neither are any of us.

But for an hour and a half last night, we had the magic of old. And Manilow was still around to give it to us.

Even now.