Apparently the aquifer has run dry, for I have not been able to compose any thoughts about what I want to say in these pages. A slurry of events these past eighteen days has kept me away from writing. Sometimes words just flow from my unconscious on to the screen, at other times I am literarily constipated. I recall a recent session with my therapist in which in passing I said I had nothing to say. She came back with the rejoinder that she felt I was “limitless.” A lovely compliment for my needy ego.
And then there is that mild neuroticism in which I feel guilty for not writing my weekly blog. I have to keep telling myself it is all a cosmic blowin’ in the wind, a solitary voice somewhere in the nowhere of universe or universes, as I see outer space, belching forth the pipsqueak mewling of one individual. This writer’s compulsion is ridiculous if I think about it, a need to express myself in some shape or form. And to write is much like human secretion, front and back, a necessity giving form, I say darkly, of nothing of much worth. Allow me to clarify.
In the past two weeks I decided to go with Wheatmark, a publisher in Arizona that I have had good dealings with. I hired an editor who worked on two of my previous books for about a thousand dollars (ouch squared!)But she is very good at what she does. I contacted a Holocaust survivor who has reviewed my books if he would write a foreword only to discover that at age 86 he is recovering from a cataract operation and a terrifying stroke that laid him low. I decided to dedicate my book to him, for he is a kind and loving man. I then reached out to novelist Duff Brenna (see Amazon) to write a foreword and he quickly assented which was a lucky stroke for me.I began to log in a separate composition book all the personal contacts I would follow up on when the book was published; additionally, I began to scour the websites for magazines, journals, newspapers and individuals I could send the book to for review. A very tedious but necessary job for marketing my book. Since the manuscript is Holocaust fiction, I face a plethora of sources which can be exhausting to my psyche. Given all this, I have stayed away from writing and entered midstream into life as it presents itself.
[This morning I heard from Ben Rapoport’s wife, Gloria, that he had died and was in failing health for about six months. What was touching and serendipitous is that the rabbi had Googled Ben’s name and came up with something I had written about Ben and “fear.” The rabbi used it in his homily so, in effect, I was there as well. I never know what I have written can be used by another, and in this case, I am so pleased, for Ben was a close friend and my mentor in all things psychological. But more about him in another blog. Gloria and the family were pleased with what I had said about him as a man. He was 84, escaped the Nazis, but death got him at last. He once told me he never thought he’d reach the age of 80, given his diabetes, heart condition and Parkinson’s disease. Dead at 84, but forever lithographed in my mind.]
I’m still thinking about Ben this next morning. Yesterday I took Jane to dinner, gambling at the local casino and I bought her new sandals for spring. I did all this because I remember well a rubric Ben had shared — Make Merry. So in honor of him I chose life yesterday and made merry. When I worked at his counseling center in the early 90s, I was informed that there would be a party for all the staff at the center. I asked why, wondering if it was someone’s birthday party, whatever. I was told it was just time to have a party. I asked Ben and he told me that in the Bible the Israelites made merry, just like that. No special reason, I imagine, except to revel in life, in existence. So next Wednesday, reader, do something pleasurable with your family or by yourself in order to make merry.
Jane now understands full well Ben’s gift to me, one of many over the years. You lift the cup of wine and toast le chaim, to life, any goddam time and day you choose to — how freeing!
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