Thanksgiving

In no particular order of importance, I am thankful for the following in my life:

1) Zoe. Ok, I said no particular order of importance. So, I lied. What can I say? She's my daughter.

2) I got to do a cross-country motorcycle trip on the best bike God ever designed (and allowed BMW to build.) A K1200RS. I only wiped out once, had my bike vandalized once, and got a speeding ticket for doing an unmentionable speed, BUT no damage to any bone in my body.

2) I got be a deckhand on a schooner for summer in Maine. We'd take on a dozen or so passengers, leave for six days of harbor- and cove-hopping, then return for 24-hour shore leave and do it all over. I'm thankful that the worst part of that whole experience was losing the straw-pull with my fellow deckhand. The stakes: having to unbolt the head after a passenger had, uh, used it, and couldn't flush it down. I had to dump it overboard, clean it, and reassemble. Well, at least now I know how to do it if it ever happens on my boat.

3) Four high school friends and I piled in a VW van and tooled around Greece for five weeks, camping by rivers and on beaches. For three days I laid with a high fever at our camp on the beach. And when we got back, my mother said, "I told you before you left that there was a deadly virus going around that killed several young people!" Oh yeah, that's right; she did. We forgot. I am thankful I had such a good time and it wasn't spoiled by my death.

4) I am thankful that I got to play regularly on the Alice in Wonderland bronze sculpture in Central Park when it was still so big that it took both of my hands to hold onto Alice's extended finger. I have gone back and it appears that sculpture is still a favorite with kids, but it has shrunken significantly.

5) It took me ten years to achieve my dream of owning a weekly newspaper. I ran it for five years with my then-wife. I am thankful that I was at such a helm of tremendous community influence and responsibility and no one egged our house even once.

6) I have known true love. I am grateful that I have gotten beyond the period in my life in which I didn't think I ever would again. (Did a lot of damage in those years; to myself and to others.)

7) I got to grow up in Germany and get an international perspective on how arrogant and ignorant America is.

8) I got to live in America and get perspective on how pedantically bureaucratic and emotionally constipated Germany is.

9) I sailed straight east on the Atlantic ocean for nine days. We were so far out that we were completely dependent on ourselves. The part I am thankful for, is that the seasickness subsided after the first 48 hours. And that we had GPS to find Bermuda.

10) For seven years, I got to be a Captain of Industry when I took over my father's manufacturing company. I had the complete playset. The factory, 150 workers. International deals. Business trips all over the place. And then I got the accessory kit too: the sports car, the, um, lifestyle, (that means women.) But seriously, it was hugely satisfying to grow a company (which I -- perhaps unfairly -- had always criticized as purely capitalistic) in such a way that the employees enjoyed it, and the banks were impressed. But the part I am really thankful for: when it all tanked, I never missed any part of that. Not the money, not the fast and loose lifestyle. I am thankful my parents taught me that materialism is not what makes you happy.

11) Twenty years ago my partner at the time and I went over to new friends' house for a get-to-know-each-other dinner. The guy of the other couple and I ended the evening in a two-hour long argument over art and capitalism that ruined the couple dating thing before it even got off the ground. I am thankful that he and I haven't stopped arguing since. For the latest on what riles me, click on his link above my profile.

12) I am white. Financially secure. Live in America. That is to say, as much as anyone hates to admit it, I am thankful that I belong to the oppressor class. Oh yeah, I am male too. But I am not convinced that we are the superior gender. Just brute force that's kept us there until now. Two three generations from now? Beware, my sons.

13) I am not allergic to coffee, chocolate, stinky cheeses, Hungarian salami, olives, and wine. I am grateful for the last one in particular.

13a) I wanted to make a smart-ass remark and say that I am thankful that I am not addicted to any of the above either. But that is not true. In fact, it has just taken an enormous amount of self-discipline to step back from being an alcoholic. (I am hesitant to use that word, but what else can you call it when you used to get drunk every single day that God let the sun shine on this beautiful earth?)

14) I have lived so many lives in my time. Seen so many countries. Lived as a scholar among books and as a woodsman in a hunting camp. Rural and urban. So many jobs, divergent careers. Wealthy and poor. Drunk and sober. From school drop-out to best-in-class. With dogs. With cats. Didn't care for the reptiles. Volunteered for a battered woman shelter and yet enjoyed my share of fun spanking. Motorcycles, VW camper van, sports car, sailboats to comprise a fleet, skis, rollerblades, banana-seat bicycle.

15) Some people are born with musical ability. I am tone deaf. Some have incredible mathematical minds. I need a calculator to count my fingers. I am not the rifle, but the shotgun: scattered and unfocused at times. But there has been one thing that I have been able to rely on as something I was good at in life. And that thing has sustained me in life. Helped me through tough times, and provided me with opportunities during the best of times. And that is writing.

I know I am more at home than most in the landscape of language. And I enjoy this landscape. The other day I was writing about a lack of homeland. Maybe this is my homeland. Words. Towering novels off there in the distant horizon which I have been threatening to ascend some day. But for now, here in the rolling hills of letters and essays, I am enjoying these rivers of thoughts. Every now and then a sentence will take me by surprise and sprout up, quickly branching out into a poem. And there are some low hills here too of short stories on whose summits I gain surprising insight into my own psyche.

I am grateful for being gifted with writing.

My mother; High Priestess

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.

That sentence, as simple as it is stunning, opens Alice Siebold's new novel, The Almost Moon. I have not read the novel yet, but I am anxious to do so.

Anyone who has lived with, what I have come to call, "an emotionally dynamic" mother understands the spectrum of feelings about a relationship that myth and legend says should be simple and nurturing.

I have (and will again) written caustically about my mother, but today is a tribute to her. Well, mostly.

I was listening to the radio yesterday -- an interview with a gastronome -- and Lona came to mind.

Lona was an extraordinary cook. As well as Nabokov knew language (did you know that English was his third language?) Lona knew flavors. She knew how to create their taste and their texture. What she wanted your tongue to feel was downright erotic. (Incestuous, as her child?)

Recipes weren't instructions but inspirations. Cook books were sheet music with the notation: improvise. Just by tasting a sauce, she could recreate it the way some musicians can listen to a piece and, days later, reproduce it exactly.

With an annual exception, she never baked. This was almost a point of pride with her. And how befitting that was to this woman whose complexity rarely exhibited behavior that one would call traditionally sweet. In fact, she considered baking somehow beneath her. Baking was, in the same way she was a social snob, a lower class of cooking.

The fact of the matter was that baking leaves no room was inspiration or personalization. You have to follow a formula exactly. Just this amount of flour to exactly that quantity of baking powder. My mother, the authoritarian -- the lover of rules and rulers -- hated rules, rulers and having to follow rules.

But once a year she made cookies. Tons of them. From Thanksgiving on through Christmas eve. We were forbidden, upon pain of spankings, smackings with a wooden spoon and yelling of having any more than a rationed cookie here and there before Christmas. But on Christmas ... oh my god ... it was cookie heaven. We ate ourselves sick.

It just so happened that yesterday while I was listening to the radio interview with the gastronome, I was beginning the annual cookie bake with my daughter, using Lona's sacred recipes of course.

And so, she was on my mind. I was chopping walnuts and over at Zoe's station, the flour was flying and the mixer whirring. As we worked, I remembered a yellowed newsprint article. Something about her pulling one of her authority-defying stunts at an airport. There was a grainy photograph. Roy de Groot was involved. He was a well-known food writer at the time. I remember his towering height. And -- intriguingly for a gastronome -- he was a blind gentleman with a seeing-eye dog. Roy de Groot was a frequent visitor to our home in Manhattan (in which Lona had the kitchen custom redesigned for two ovens so she could cook for enough people at once.)

After the cookies were baked, the cyclone aftermath somewhat cleaned, Zoe driven home to her mother's house, I retreated back to my study that night and got on the internet. The New York Times. Archives. Search for Dubilier. Useless because of a distant relative who is in finance and dominates search results. Ahh, but Roy de Groot. Bingo.

December, 1966. Roy de Groot has a shipment of specialty foods from France held up at the customs office at JFK because of wild boar pate. The article about this event is a tribute to classic Lona at her best.

Mr. de Groot negotiates with the customs office at JFK to the degree of success that they grant him, apparently by written "communique" (I love the language in this 60s article) to enter the airport compound for

"the purpose of inspecting the seized merchandise, which inspection may include, if desired, a tasting of the merchandise."

Along with three others, Mr. de Groot invites Lona to be part of his tasting committee. She organizes the event, complete with a "hampery" including bread and "beautifully starched napery, sterling silver forks and an assortment of wines."

Upon arrival, it is clear who is in charge. The reporter writes, "Mrs. Lona Dubilier ... seemed to be the high priestess of the tasters." She is pouring out wine, slicing bread, serving up the various delicacies, and taking notes on committee's comments.

The article is so classic 1960s in that it also openly displays the class distinctions of the time. The reporter almost mocks the customs official. Though he allows that Chester Smith is hospitable, he also mentions that the shy and smiling Mr. Smith is "coatless."

Lona, meanwhile, ever the lady, knows that in high society (as she would frequently remind us) one treats "the help" with just as much class as one's peers. This obviously impressed the reporter who wrote:

Mrs. Dubilier turned to the coatless Mr. Smith, who had tasted nothing, and didn't look as if he wanted to. He was still smiling.

'Mr. Smith, would you like to clear your palate with something?'

'No, thank you,' Mr. Smith said with a smile.

And then Lona, having performed her duties as an organizer, a tasting stenographer, a lady attending to the working class, decides it's time to let the world know that while she is all that, she is also, after all, the high priestess. This title is not earned without asserting it. And one asserts it through challenge.

Here an exchange between Lona and Mr. de Groot (who was a baron) following their tasting of the wild boar pate, the piece de resistance:

'Yes I like the sanglier,' the Baron repeated.

'Baron,' said Mrs. Dubilier, the chief note-taker, 'I think you have so much snob in you, you think the sanglier is better than it is. Try it again, and try to forget it's boar.'

'No, I disagree with you, Lona,' the Baron said. 'There's a gamey flavor about it.'

Ah, beautiful. I like the patronizing phrasing, "try to forget" with its implication that she is not convinced he can accomplish such a feat.

I am attaching a picture of the article which you can click on to see larger, but it probably isn't large enough to read. If you could, you would notice that the reporter happens to be none other than Craig Claiborne.

Though there is no evidence for my final assumption, just knowing my mother, I am convinced that it was her idea to have this whole episode elevated to public spectacle by having it reported in the Times.

It is the signature of a High Priestess.

Declining radius of responsibility

There is this super schlocky book out now, called The Secret. Something about how we can create our own realities.

Yeah, yeah.

The problem I have with these books (which come out every few years under a new title) is that they are nothing that our mothers and grandmothers didn't tell us.

The Secret can be distilled into the six words my mother used to tell us four kids: "Fake it until you make it."

In other words, if you wanted to be happy, then smile. You know what? People will be smiling back at you. They will be friendlier to you. And you will fall into conversation easier. And guess what? You'll be happier.

If you want to be president of the United States, start acting like you want that. You can get something without acting like you want it.

Big secret? I don't think so. Good advice that needs to be repeated to every generation? Absolutely. Except, in my grandparents generation, it was expected to be part of the parental duties; not something for which you tried to get a book contract.

Nevertheless ... life is odd. Call it The Secret or call it plain ole faking it.

Joel and I decided to re-commit ourselves to writing with this blog project.

Because of that, I decided to read novels again, which I had neglected for a year or two. I read a book called "Sin" by Josephine Hart. She wrote "Damage" which was filmed with Jemery Irons.

Because of that, I found the framework for a story that has been lurking in my mind for some 20 years now.

Because of the blog, I connected with a blogger through Joel. Her name is Jennifer and writes a wonderfully witty, self-deprecating and literary journal-type blog called Quidite.

Because I read her blog, she reconnected me with a particular Raymond Carver story that is relevant to one of my short stories.

And now, a few odd, random things happened for which Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity:

My daughter spends the weekend with me and wants to go to the public library. We do. She wants to spend time in the young adult section. I spied a "For Sale" rack by the entrance and tell her that I will be down there. And there, low and behold, amid the 70s remains and paperback mystery surplus books, is a hardcover collection of Carver short stories. It's three dollars. (No, I shit you not. Three dollars. Even the librarian who gave me change for my five, was surprised at my find -- doubled checked the penciled price and reluctantly released the valued volume.)

Ok, ok, that particular story was not in the collection. But, as my mother used to say: Don't confuse me with facts. The upshot is that I WILL find the relevant Carver short story. I DO have the structure for a long overdue novel. And I AM writing more these days than I have in a few years.

So we get home, my twelve-year-old daughter and I, and she asks me if I have ever had the experience of knowing beforehand what is going to happen in my life. As in Deja-Vu, I ask? Well, no, not that. THAT she has frequently, she says. (Which is a whole other intriguing matter.) But knowing much more in advance. Like seeing things.

Hmm, now I am wondering about my entry from a couple of days ago. I don't want to burden her with a vision I had of myself when I was a teenager of being a loner and now worrying if it might become a self-fulfilled prophecy. Too much information for a twelve-year-old.

Is my experience of this writing blog and reconnecting with fictional inspiration the same thing that she means. Am I a poster child for The Secret? I recognize the serendipity of it all, but no, I don't think that is what she means.

What, exactly, does she mean by that question?

My daughter is an uncommonly evolved person for her age. (Has been at every age.) Precocious, some say. She is adept at evasion and though I probed (without wielding a two by four) she sticks with simply the statement that she was asking ME if *I* had that experience. She was not talking about herself, she says.

Hmm, let's see, I think to myself. I knew I wanted a newspaper when I left college, and ten years later, I had one. I knew I wanted to grow my father's manufacturing business when I took it over and, within a few years, I was entering international joint operating agreements. Does any of that count?

Fake it until you make it?

The Secret?

Create your own reality?

Serendipity?

Or am I just a lucky Sunday child who has a bit a brains, the fortune of being born white in an absurdly rich country, with enough means to make my dreams come true?

Any way I look at it, I have precious few excuses for not being responsible for my own happiness.

PS: How did I finally answer? I said that I know that I have had those kind of experiences but I couldn't remember specific examples. And that is God's honest truth. I also told her that sometimes the world works in ways we cannot fully explain or understand. It is best just to accept it. And trust it.

Actor cum writer cum ... what? Zen master?

My brother Daniel is an actor. After a formal finish carpentry apprenticeship in his late teens and then a short stint of studies in psychology, he finally found, well, his voice in acting.

He has been an actor for some 25 years now, but this past summer, he left his troupe to pursue an uncharted path. There are no specific plans for what is next. He lives extremely frugally, with some state assistance and some family support. He has made a lot of sacrifices in his standard of living to make this choice. (His beat-up scooter car may die by the time I finish this entry.) This step away from acting is also motivated by a desire (being a single and primary parent) to spend time with his daughter who lives with congenital rheumatoid arthritis, but that is another story.

This story is about something that started within him a number of years ago. But first, you have to understand that what served Daniel well as an actor was also one of his challenges. He always had an edge to his pace through life. His foot would twitch. His speech was rapid. And sometimes excitement would trip his tongue. His myopic, single-minded focus expressed itself as impatience.

Several years ago, without telling anyone, with no big fanfare, he started sitting. Just sitting. Not thinking, not fidgeting, not hoping, not regretting. Just sitting. Meditating, if you will, but that implies focusing on something, whereas the Zen work he was doing was aimed at mind clearing.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I have never seen a person change so much in their lives. He began listening. Asking questions. Instead of arguing, he was quiet. Our family is quite dynamic and so when someone becomes quiet, it is almost more threatening. But that was not his goal. He just did not allow himself to be caught up in the whitewater of family turmoil.

This "sitting" had such a profound effect on his persona, that I began asking him questions about it with the thoughts that he had some answer for me that I could acquire. He was hesitant to answer. He said something like, "As soon as you talk about it, it can sound cliche. It's really just sitting. And if you do it, it provides the answers itself."

I did start sitting. Not with the regularity that he is sitting. And I have seen a profound effect on my life. My ability to accept life. Just as it is, however it is. But that is irrelevant to this story.

This story is about a completely stunning development in Daniel's life that I just found out about today. Apparently, it has been happening for some time now, but just like with the sitting, he doesn't talk about it. He is not the public emotional masturbater that I am with this blog.

Recently he mentioned that he has been writing. Writing, I asked? I was interested since I have never seen anything written by Daniel. His preferred form of epistolary contact is a postcard with a single funny comment. Yes, writing. I asked him to write me what he was writing about.

And in this morning's email, was a 1,300 word letter in which he wrote about how he was struggling to commit to what every artist struggles with: finding the time and energy to dedicate yourself to something which you wonder is worthwhile in the first place.

The overall direction of his writings are musings on Zen. But he explains that each musing is a mosaic stone; indistinguishable as to his broad views on Zen. And therefore, he was hesitant to send me anything. Not yet. Not until he had more stones assembled.

But the most stunning aspect to his letter was this: He is a fantastic story teller. This man who has never written more than a grocery list or smart-ass birthday card, was suddenly a brilliant raconteur. His letter was about how he discovered why it is important to dedicate ourselves to even the slightest whiff of inspiration, and he was as eloquent as Rilke in his "Letters to a Young Poet." And in his recounting of his turning point, no novelist could have written the passage more vividly or succinctly.

In the first part of his letter, he talks about having ideas and insights during his daily sit. He would scribble the thoughts down to elaborate upon in writing later, but never got around to them. The writing and expansion of those ideas was always "last on the list." So, he began rearranging his life to make room. And finally, he began writing.

And then there is this beautiful story in his letter:

"I didn't start that way, but then I had an encounter that opened my eyes. At Nicky's birthday party in Hamburg, I met this Andonia. Remember? and she called at some point and asked if I wanted to come to Hamburg and watch her movie that she just finished producing. I agreed and drove up and watched the movie with her together in the livingroom on the TV. It was her first movie. Not my style, a little stilted, but considering it was her first movie, and written by herself, and directed by her, and she did all the editing, I was stunned. Considering all that, it was super! I asked her if it was a college thesis. She said no. But somehow for school, right, I asked? and in complete surprise, she said no. And why did you film it, I asked? She looked at me with big eyes and said: Cause I wanted to. She didn't say anything else. Cause she wanted to. That bowled me over. I was hit by a Mac truck. In the middle of the semester, between school assignments, lessons, working for a paycheck, cooking, cleaning, shopping, living, she just shoots out a movie on the side. Cause she wants to. On the drive home it consumed my thoughts and a few days later, during meditation, the realization came to me: there is no sometime, sometime is never, there is only now. I understood how, for years, I stood in my own way."

We read that and have to ask ourselves: Are we standing in our own way? What would we do, if we really wanted to?

Plagiarizing patience

I have been struggling to come up with something to write during my stay here in Florida. I wake up in the morning, remembering before all else, that I must write something for this blog in order to keep my promise to my blogging buddy Joel.

I hope coffee will bring, along with the first jolts of life to my body, some sparks of inspiration for a topic. But nothing. During the day, I keep my eye out, like a cop on a beat with an APB for a robber, for some event, some picture, some interaction that will provide me with the raw material to carve into a piece.

Nothing.

I am embarrassed because it was my idea to start this damn blog. And it was I who was so insistent with Joel to stick with it when he wanted to retreat just a while ago.

Today with doubled fervor, since I missed yesterday, I craned my imagination at every turn to spy some spark, spur or stimulation.

I contemplated for a brief moment calling Joel and capitulating on this project. It wouldn't be the first time we have enjoyed sprints of creativity and allowed them to crash on the shore of daily chores and jobs and family. It's okay, we take them up again and again. But I thought it was too early to give up on this exercise. It has only been a couple of weeks.

And then, the bastard said this in yesterday's post: "Learning to work through what challenges our patience and attention is the parent of all other skills."

Bastard.

So, this is a cheating entry. It is blatant plagiarism of commitment. (Hmm, didn't know that could be done, but that is exactly what is happening here.) In other words, I am just going to leave it right there, with Joel's words. They are good ones to remember in this day and age of multi-tasking and accelerated desires of instant gratification.

Lucky

I am in Florida these days spending time with my father and my stepmother. He has been diagnosed with lymphoma and is about to undergo chemotherapy and I am here for the emotional support and, as things get difficult for him, to physically help out.

My dad is going to be 83 in a few weeks. He does the crossword every day and plays golf every other. Strong as an ox, sharp as a whip. A curmudgeon, yes, but a witty and charming one. An irresistible combination of traits. No wonder my sister has a Daddy complex. If I were gay, I would have one too. Hell, maybe I do anyway.

I am keeping another blog for family and friends on his convalescence. In that blog, I wrote a piece that was meant to be somewhat humorous about what it is like to spend a day with him. Good humor does not hold a punch and so I let him have it.

I wanted to add to that blog that in addition to driving me crazy, we also get along famously. At one point, I said, "You know, Dad, we have a seriously dysfunctional relationship."

"Oh really," he said, taking the bait (though perhaps just to humor me,) "Why do you say that?"

"Because I am a 47-year-old man and I enjoy hanging out with my father."

Throughout the day (amidst the very activities that I was describing as intolerable in my other blog) he and I chatted about God and the world. We exchanged our recurring nightmares and offered interpretations to each other. During another car ride from one store to the next, I told him that he saved my life when I was eighteen by proving to me that parents can be emotionally "normal" which is to say: predictable, consistent, open, and honest. At another point, after he was rambling on about something, he stopped and said, "I guess what I am trying to say is that I love you."

I should have some poignant closing to this, but I don't. I guess what I am trying to say is that I love him.

A voice across 25 years

A voice, fluent, steady and sure is flooding images from the opening passages of the novel October Light into our brains with images of an old Vermonter, James Page, taking a shotgun and blowing a hole into the family television.

For me, there are several experiences I’m having at once; simultaneously; as if I am keenly aware that I am inhabiting (incarnating?) the Many Worlds theory. One experience is the vivid imagery of the story. I am there in that living room with that old curmudgeon James Page.

Another experience is watching Joel Gardner kneeling by a table lamp, reading this story. He is reading to a group of about twenty or so people gathered here at the home of David and Barbara Stanton to commemorate the author John Gardner who died 25 years ago.

I know that Joel’s synapses fire at a more rapid pace than most people’s, but listening to his story, I am truly surprised at how quickly his eyes can scan the words, and how fluidly his tongue can deliver them.

But finally, I am having a third experience. This one is odd because it involves distortions of what we commonly accept as reality. In this experience, it is not Joel reading October Light, but it is Joel’s father, John, the author. It is John’s voice, that quick, just a nuanced vibrato above a monotone stream of language. Its speed enhances the imagery, making the story vivid, urging you to anticipate the next moment, the next action, the next unfolding of the dream.

All of these experiences at once: James with his shotgun, Joel reading the text, John, channeled through his son.

Later, I will find out that one of the reasons that Joel was so intimately familiar with these opening passages of his father’s work is because once, in an attempt to understand that weight of each word, the directional power of each punctuation and the rhythm of John’s craft, he typed every word of the first seven pages of October Light.

That revelation doesn’t lesson the impact of the reading’s magic. In fact, it makes me appreciate it more. The words written by the father, later digested by the son, and last night, read in such a way that it brought all three to life: the story, the son, the father.

It was a truly wonderful evening with readings of John’s work by a number of people, each reading singular, but voices rising as a chorus.

And though I struggle with the romanization of drinking at such events, I will admit that – in the moment – I too fell into the enjoyment of intoxication mixed with astute conversations. Copious wine and gin lubricated the discussion on what comprises fiction with enduring relevance and how we are each Grendel, pleading with the dragon for the secret to life.

Death's scar and bad breath

So maybe there will be more parallels to this weekend trip than just the beginning of our blogs. In case you haven't read the last two blogs, my friend Joel and I are going to a commemoration event for this father who died 25 years ago.

So, last night, I got a call from my sister. She said my father was just diagnosed with lymphoma of the stomach or intestines. (More specifics after the biopsy today.) He is 82 and strong as an ox; plays golf almost every day; has all his faculties about him. (He gets frustrated if he can't finish the Saturday crossword puzzle in the Times.) An email from one of my brothers this morning, in response to the news, wrote: "So, even God is mortal after all?"

Well, in a nod to Mark Twain, we shouldn't be rumoring his death prematurely. This may well be just another battle scar. He had a small lymphoma removed from his neck about four years ago.

Anyway, this trip will have a father theme to it on both of our sides. Joel will be dealing the scar of death. I will be dealing with Death's bad breath in my face.