Autumn Leaves

Here in Henderson, Nevada the summer heat has arrived with a vengeance, 106 to be exact and it will be like that on and off, I imagine, for weeks. When I open the front door I am met by a blast of air straight from a kiln. Luckily I am often indoors writing and editing stories, trying to make a book happen.  Usually I work out for about an hour at a local community gym and return quickly. The autumn leaves for this blog allude to the days I am spending, sometimes or most times not living, for writing is not living, it is a mere displacement of concerns I have about myself. I see each day pass into a kind of regular monotony which has not escaped my notice. The heat, the monotonous and variable dullness jane and I come across here in Henderson makes me fantasize of ending the rest of my days in Florence — and why not? At least in Florence my inability to speak Italian might make me feel isolation is caused by a language barrier; here in Henderson speaking English doesn’t much help for this is a transient state with a transient population, exceedingly conservative, numb-skulled and Palinesque. ( A confederacy of dunces.) I miss the vitality and exchange of a New York street.

The next door neighbor is a fellow New Yorker (Italian) and we share our ethnicities as we would in New York City, blowing oxygen into each other’s mouths while we mutually moan the loss of the spice and vigor of urban living. We speak in code, rather we speak in tongues and those who listen only grasp a glimmer of what we are saying — the shrugs, the attitudes, the perceptions, the street smarts, the prejudices — the smell of a subway, the good-natured rudeness, the savvy, the kibitizing, what a good bagel should taste like, what good lox, onion and cream cheese give to that holy bagel, the beauty of a bialy, breakfast in a Greek Diner, a Carvel custard, a malted if you can find it, laced with Horlick’s powder (the secret ingredient), an egg cream which has no egg or cream in it except the chilled seltzer hitting into milk and chocolate syrup. We share experiences and we both become animated here in this dessicated desert fit for Gabby Hayes. Recently Jane and I went to the Carnegie deli on the strip and had a corned beef and pastrami sandwich which is called a Woody Allen, nothing like having a sandwich named after a molester. However, the knish we ordered came cold. (Jane has yet to eat a kasha knish.) Freud argued that hysterics suffer from reminiscences — you bet we do! It is 5:14 AM and I just noticed it is light outside while I ramble on about loss — and intent.

I have morbid thoughts about time, death and dying, the famous last words, the rosebuds I could whisper and the orneriness of my self — my stone reading: “Get your rocks off here,” or “Thank god, it’s over,”  nothing so splendid as Kazantzakis’ epitaph: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.” What a mensch! I reminisce in a non-nostalgic, unsentimental way of the days lived, those to come, the irregularities of living, its inconsistencies, the repetitive patterns, the losses, the sorrows, things I can never change and my failures as a father — mostly. That is the thing I would do much better. The race is nearly over, no cheering crowds, no encouraging waves, just the loneliness of the long distance runner. Realizing that over all these years I could have died at any moment and the only life I have is today and no more, I think on these things, struggling, always struggling, the metaphor of my personal life, to attain some completion, some sense of order or meaning but realizing that there is probably no such thing and that the most I can do is to emulate the fly or the cat or the donkey — be in the moment, for really that is all there is. I think not of heaven nor hell, human constructs and insidious dead ends; I think of the eons of evolution and ejaculation that led to my momentary spurt and this slivver of time I have been given by nature. I will be gone, guillotined and no longer ever be. When I see my son for my 70th birthday which is dramatically hard to conceive but it is coming soon, I will gently remind him to see me more often as this may be the last decade I may be given.  I need not have eternity. I would like to be some few cells in his cortex, a memory if that, of someone who bumped into his life and will bump out. Oh, what a grand game of billiards we unwillingly are part of!

I suppose I am better in mind and feeling than in reality for a cancer scare would mightily rattle my bones. But it will end, kindly or in agony, but it will end. I think I fear the dying process more than death itself. All this could be a bowl of fluff for we cannot predict our behaviors; we are not that consistent. And ultimately it is just words forming together, coalescing like white corpuscles to stave off infection, which I rally here — so bravely written! Who am I kidding? When death looms, all bets are off. On that merry note, feeling neither despair or depression, just seeking clarity as dawn is here, I leave you, reader to ponder your own mortality, for I do it on a daily basis — and you?