I knew I would get here eventually. God. Fear. What?
I will not be swayed or misdirected this time. I’m no kid.
I am also afraid.
How does that work? Faith? Prayer? Done and done. Love? Well, from my kids, at least. Health? Check. Attitude? Also check, but wavering just a bit. Here’s where you come in god. Or God, if you prefer.
I am ready for my big break. I’ve been working working working. I’m not tired, I’m just waking up. I’ve found my voice. Found a fountain of ideas and stories to tell. Worth telling. I’m ready for my close-up. Let’s go get a hair cut, that often puts a little renewed confidence in my step. It is time to quit asking god for the help I need and making decisive efforts to solve the creative riddle before me.
I have some money. I can take social security in two months. I can not predict what will happen with the wild-ass election in two weeks. I can’t predict anything. I can’t count on my prayers being answered, I get that. I have to keep praying anyway. More importantly, I have to keep pressing forward with my *this*.
This.
And more of this.
Whatever I’m doing, writing like mad, I am tapping into something primal, electric, and intoxicating. Like reading Kerouac on his great scroll. He wrote the entire thing on one continuous piece of teletype paper, so he didn’t have to slow down to add paper. He just blew and blew. He might have, must have, admittedly, been jacked up on huffed speed. It was the thing. Worked for a while, I guess. But something else caught up with Jack Kerouac. The fame didn’t make him happy. Didn’t slow down his drinking. In fact, his fame and fortune crushed his physical body under booze, speed, and desperate living. He was not happy.
When you seen Mr. Kerouac in his final years, doing readings on television, you see a version of my father. He was so successful he didn’t know what to do with all of his money. (My dad.) He was bulletproof. Had a beautiful wife, four kids, and a mansion on the lake. Life was going his way.
He had no idea what to do with his anger and sadness. (Kerouac and my dad.) His success gave him the freedom to really express himself. Jack wrote and exposed ever more of his declining mental health. My father divorced my mom, tried to keep her from getting me or any money, and then built a new mansion on top of the hill overlooking the same lake. His alcoholic companion was no muse. More like a harpie.
So, what’s it going to be? What is it you want to be known for? When you are dead and your medical degrees and specialization certificates are rotting in your son’s hot garage, how does that inform my life? Don’t fucking wait. Stop hedging your bets with shitty jobs and half-assed efforts. Pick the point of your spear and poke poke poke poke at life. This life. This one precious life.
I live and breathe. I write. It has been so since I was about 10 years old. O. Henry cracked me up. Then Heinlein. But Walt Whitman in college tore my ever-lovin’ soul right out of my body. Here was my god. Here was my muse, my bard, my guide. Wonderlust packed with verbose poetry, poetic prose, and words that bounced around in my head, bounce around in my head still. Here was a man who self-promoted better than anyone in his era. A man who never gave up on his masterpiece. Recrafting and rewriting, typesetting, Leaves of Grass, and the ultimate swan song, Song of Myself. Each version revised, reenvisioned, and typeset again. He never stopped.
Here I am, Walt. God. Whomever.
The one. Me.
All the other motherfuckers doing whatever they do. There was nothing wrong with the day job. Nothing wrong with my son working a day job while he finds a way to pull his head out of his ass. Nothing is wrong. It’s me. I am the project. I know the priority. AI won’t do it for me, no matter how good my prompts are.
“What is the goal,” my friend asked. Again.
Fame?
Time?
Love?
Inspiration?
I was reading about some writer, probably Henry Miller, who had written and written all of the books he could think of. He was out of ideas. No, wait, it was Vonnegut towards the end of his life. Miller is the one who was still fucking young fans of his writing until the day of his last orgasm. He knew how to blow. “Ban my book? No worries, here’s another.”
I’m no Miller, Vonnegut, Thompson, Whitman. I am alive. I have arrived here on the shoulders of my father (the doctor) and his father (the doctor) and my mom who saved enough of his money to give me a stipend. Reading about Henry Miller in Paris with Anais and her husband, always begging for money. Writers don’t make much money. Besides, social media has killed reading outside of school systems. No one reads. Writers read, I guess. Writers buy books. I buy books even when I’m broke. I am not broke. I am buying more books.
Time to press into the red zone. The two-minute warning has given us a time-out. I see the way is clear. The aspirational plans are nothing if you don’t actually do them. The mantra for November, at the close of my sixty-first year, is
Fire All Of Your Guns At Once
Let’s see if I can explode into space before I die. Let’s gooooooooo!
