i’m drivin’ hard along the I-70. just west of kansas city. pushing 90, eyes on the rear view, lookin’ for the fuzz. the radio’s tuned into K-MAX, blaring kelly clarkson, carrie underwood, and miley
cyrus, the young estrogen tri-fecta! my foot’s heavy on pedal, and i’m dreamin’ of “oklahoma joe’s”
which has the best pork ‘n beef ribs either side of the mississippi. “joe’s” is situated in the back of this
little mom ‘n pop gas station off the highway, and i’m headin’ there before my eyes droop closed and my head hits the wheel. it’s three in the morning and i’ve been doin’ some hard drivin’. my hair’s greased back, and i’m thinkin’ roy orbison, tom petty, and kansas city here i come. KC, home of charlie “yardbird” parker, count basie, and wilbur harrison, jazz music floatin’ in the air 24/7 along 18th and vine, back in the day. back in the day….
nah, never mind.
none of that shit is true. i’m in kansas alright, but the I-70
is taking me to lawrence, the quite civilized college town, home of
the mighty jayhawks, where my friend, moose, a tenured university
professor in geography, will be celebrating his 60th
birthday on tuesday, three days hence. moose hasn’t shaved his
karl marx-like beard in three decades, and his brilliant, well chosen
ideas about ecology, farming, and home schooling haven’t
changed a lick in that amount of time either. i’ve flown in
from LA, where i’ve been living my middle age, going on 25
years now. ricky, skeeter, and chico have flown in too, from new
yawk, bethesda, and yuma, arizona, and they too, actually we four,
have already hit the big six oh. moose will be last, but we all grew
up together in the new yawk-long island suboibs of levittown back in
the day. you know the day: the post war, idyllic baby boom decade of
eisenhower and his buttoned down 50s. we sang in the “times
they are a changin’” 60s, along with bobby, joanie,
vietnam, the kennedies, pol pot, watergate, we shall overcome, sex,
drugs, and rock ‘n roll. of course, some of us sang, sexed, and
drugged differently, but that’s the interesting part….
i have a thing for kansas. it has to do with red ruby slippers, a new heart, a new
brain, and courage. you know, oz? as in, “wizard of”? how
many times did we all watch it? back in the day? i must have seen it
seven easters in a row, all in black in white: judy in black and
white, toto and auntie em in black and white, ray bolger, jack haley,
and bert lahr, all in black and white. glinda, the good witch, frank
morgan as the blowhard wizard, the munchkins, the wicked witch, and
the yellow brick road. i’ve been trying to follow it ever
since. that road. but where is it? what is it? following the yellow
brick road? what’s it mean? what’s the metaphor?
following your heart, your dream, your bliss? or walking down the
road of your parental units’ expectations? becoming their “son,
the doctah?” or becoming your own man? breaking or following
tradition? making money? becoming a “success”? in whose
terms? the world’s? your own? putting your mark on the planet
or retreating into your own private idaho, i mean, kansas? yeah, i’m
turning 60, i’m in kansas, and it’s time to evaluate,
reconnoiter, look into that all too harrowing mirror of life…
there’s three things i’ve been holding on to these last many years. when i
was young, i didn’t hold on, i looked ahead. i was led by my
ambition. i strived, i produced, i was driven. i took on the entire
world, sword and shield in hand, and i fought. i fought and i
thought… that i was invincible. i didn’t marry, didn’t
need permanence, i was foot loose and fancy free. i was an “artist”.
but now i think that maybe i was wrong. because i didn’t always
win. i fell down. i got hurt. i lost. after forty years, i got tired
of fighting. ricky, chico, and moose used to call me the “man
who never compromised”. and perhaps i was. chico always
preached “life’s a trade off, man”, but i didn’t
agree. i thought if you kept striving, kept your integrity, and never
gave up, that’s all there was to it. but now i think
differently. you see, the three things i’ve been holding onto
are home, job, and marriage. the big 3. security cards. three things
i never strove for, never wanted, didn’t believe in. why?
because it wasn’t the way; it wasn’t “be here now”,
live in the moment, like a rolling stone. it wasn’t free love,
trust the universe, fuck the man. were we wrong? we baby boomers? our
hippie, then yuppie, now bobo (bourgeois bohemian) generation? is
george will, the right wing columnist, right? were we self-indulgent,
narcissistic failures? were our blue jeans, long hair, and change the
world ideas just another youthful fad? do our kids, our mortgages,
our millions, our illusions, our illnesses, our 401ks make us just
another notch on the gun belt of life?
but see, my big 3 securities, home, job, and marriage, are far from it. secure. take a
look. my home. i don’t own one. never have. never wanted to.
i’ve always rented. seventy five bucks a month for my first one
bedroom in chicago when i was twenty two. a hundred and twenty five a
month for a three bedroom on halsted after that. then i house sat,
living on a hundred bucks a week for seven years while i danced.
moved back to new yawk, into the hotel woodward on 55th
and broadway, seventy-five bucks a week. scalped broadway tickets to
pay the rent. moved into a beautiful, hand-built loft on 23rd
and park, before guliani gentrified manhattan. sublet it illegally,
lost it in court. then LA, rent-controlled santa monica for ten
years, and now “lucretia gardens” in quickly becoming
gentrified echo park. i sublet the downstairs and the guest bedroom
to afford the pricey rent with one of the best views in the old
hollywood hills. but security? hah! the landlady can give me 60 days
notice any time she feels like it. it’s a free-standing, 3
bedroom private house. it’s not governed by rent control. the
lovely landlady, who i’ve had a decent relationship with for
over 14 years, can kick me out any time she gets the inkling to sell.
in fact, she gave me the 60 days notice a year ago, and i had to beg
to pay her $400 a month more just to stay. which is where i am at the
moment. but notice, i say “moment”…
job? i’ve been at one job for the last 22 years. at a prestigious private university
in southern california. for 17 years, i was an “adjunct”
faculty member. my contract was good for 6 months at a time. i never
knew whether or not it would be renewed, if i’d have a job the
next semester. fortunately, my students liked me, and my various
deans kept me on. i saw most of my fellow adjuncts go the way of the
world; new deans like to get rid of as much dead wood as they can,
hire their own men and women. five years ago, my third dean made me
full time. still no tenure, still no security. two years ago, i was
up for promotion. if i wasn’t promoted, i’d have no job
at all. fortunately again, my colleagues approved my promotion. i
like my job. i help form ideas in the minds of the young. i plant
seeds and watch them grow. i work only 8 months out of the year, and
my job and my art have allowed me to travel all over the globe. but
security? hah! i can still be let go on a year’s notice. if i’m
lucky, i’ll retire in 6 years. move to bali or the philippines.
open a little bed and breakfast. try to stretch my sad little 401k as
far as the oriental world will allow it. i’ll start all over
again. chicago. new york. LA. the great asiatic void. no guarantee.
no looking glass. no ruby slippers. no home. like a rolling stone…
then there’s the last of the big three, marriage. i married for the first time at
54 years old, to a young indonesian girl, less than half my age. she
didn’t speak much english and we shared few cultural references
between us. bob dylan? richard nixon? who’re they? george
washington, abe linclon, the same. we’ve been together for
seven years now, married for five, and what a long, strange road it’s
been. full of challenges that other marriages, which are, a priori,
full of challenges, never had to face. immigration. ESL classes. home
sickness. seven written tests to pass the DMV’s driver’s
test. language, language, language. age. age. age. culture. culture.
culture. wedding rings have gone flying across the room. plates and
paintings too. i don’t think many men in my position, in an
equivalent relationship, in my marriage, would have stayed. but i was
finally ready. and fully committed. i loved this girl and i wanted to
make the marriage work. she tested me in every way. she was a
twenty-five year old woman going on 16. she wanted money. things. she
wanted freedom; she learned what independence was here in america.
often at my expense. i considered separation and divorce many times
over the first five years. my friends and family told me to quit, to
get out before the damage broke me altogether. but i persisted. i
stayed. i earned this young woman’s trust. this june, we’ll
be celebrating her 30th birthday. we’ll have a truly
international group of friends joining us in our 60-day-notice house
on the hill, and we’ll be happy together. but security? hah! as
much as i’ve invested in my marriage, as much as i’ve
already gotten out of it, deep in my hippie-artist heart, i truly
know that it could dissolve, break, disappear, like quick silver, at
any given moment. sure, in kansas, marriage is supposed to be
permanent, enduring, “forever”, but looking at LA’s
unglamorous reality, and the national statistics on divorce, i know
that… things change. and that no matter how “secure”
one tries to make oneself, sometimes, life simply has other plans….
i look at ricky, skeeter, chico, and moose, all fine fellows each, collectively as
well. three have been married twice, and twice divorced. the moose
has been married just once and both his kids are out of the house,
one a resident at KU medical center, the other a first year med
student at KU’s med school. they’re both fine young
people. we went out to dim sum and oklahoma joe’s with them
both. what can it be, that three fine fellows are thrice divorced,
while just one, the moose, is still seemingly happily married and the
proud father of two medically inclined children? could it be the
water in kansas? the grain? dorothy’s “there’s no
place like home”?
touchy-feely kinds of question, me thinks. but i like the last of the three answers:
dorothy’s “there’s no place like home”. i mean, the moose married earliest of us all; he was the one who retreated fastest from the world, to the myopia and safety of kansas.
he got a tenured college job, had kids early, bought a farm,
capitalized in real estate, and made, seemingly again, “all the
right moves”. while each of the other three had unhappy or
unsuccessful marriages and chose to move on in their lives. the moose
knew what he wanted and sealed his options tight. he built his world
up, and inward, to insulate himself and his family against the
hostilities and vagaries of life. ricky and chico were lawyers,
working for the man most of their lives. skeeter sold software to the
marketplace and became rich. he too, was dependent on external
buyers. only the moose (and myself) constructed the “world
according to me”. we retreated into our own private idahos, or
in moose’s case, kansas, and we basically marched to the beat
our own drummers. we’re the most set in our ways, me as an
“artist”, he as an “academic”, and we’re
the most opinionated and stubborn of “da boys”….
life? what does she think of all this humanistic mumbo jumbo? well, only life herself
knows, but me thinks she’s smiling at us all, knowing that no
choice is ultimately “better” than another. that each
human being makes his own choices, based on a personal alchemy of
history, genetics, practicality, and emotional need. according to ike
eisenhower and the buttoned down 50s, the moose has done “the
right thing”: held down a single job, created a monogamous
marriage, built a nest egg, and raised two winning kids. but from my
point of view, he’s a long way from oz. i wouldn’t trade
lives with him for all the corn in kansas. nor do i think, would
skeeter, ricky, or chico. moose simply doesn’t take any
chances. he’s adverse to risk, to experimentation. he likes to
plan ahead and to create a future he can count on. he knows what he
thinks, limits his intake, including the meatless diet he never
varies from, and he likes to keep things under control. ricky’s
had one job his whole life and two failed marriages, but late into
middle age, he’s first making discoveries about who he is and
what he likes: jazz, classical music, zen buddhism, and asian women.
chico is an accident happening. he knocks things down, drops and
breaks things, has done it his whole life; but you never know what’s
going to happen wid da chico man. he’s a barrel of laughs and a
pain in the ass, but he’s still alive. and skeeter, well, he’s
already retired; he can do whatever the hell he pleases. he followed
his mathematical bliss and cashed in; now he’s ready to marry
for a third time and start off on a new mentoring career. his life
and his smile are open roads….
me? i’ve settled into the comfort of routine and middle age. but… along
with my three permanent in-securities, home, job, marriage –
there’s also the very first of life’s insecure touchstones, good health. you see, i had cancer in ’89 and i
could have cashed in all my chips, but for the lucky diagnosis of
hodgkin’s disease, which was one of the most treatable and
curable of all cancers. but what i learned very quickly from my run
in with a life-threatening illness, is that it’s a good
spiritual and practical approach to appreciate every day that you’re
alive, and to concentrate on all that you do have, as opposed
to all the things you still want or don’t have.
and with my upcoming hip replacement… i’ve come to
accept the fact that life could turn me upside down at any
unpredictable moment. and that ultimately, life’s opportunities
and surprises, and the reactions and choices i’ve made to them,
have kept teaching me and showing me that there is, in truth, no
security in life. that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent,
nothing is reliable or forever. yet somehow, i’ve come to
accept this proposition and live my life according to it. i mean,
look, i teach “improvisation” for a living. what does
that mean? it makes me learn spontaneity and impermanence anew every
day i teach. they say that one teaches what one has to learn. it’s
true. like when i travel, i don’t make an itinerary; i just go.
each day, i follow my nose, my instinct, and trust at the end of the
day, i’ll have a place to stay and enough money to pay for it.
sure, i spend a lot of travel time making decisions: where to go,
when to go, where to stay, what to see, but it’s my favorite
way to travel. in fact, it’s the only way. the way i live….
so on the night before the moose’s actual birthday, da boys all settle down in
front of the new kansas flat screen to watch one of our collective
favorites, “cool hand luke”. ricky and chico have most of
the lines down to the exact inflection of the southern prison drawl:
“shaking it here, boss”, “spendin’ the night
in the box here, boss”, and “what we have here is a
failure to communicate”. the latter makes us all howl, as
warden strother martin beats the indomitably non-conformist luke to
the ground with his impotent club of frustration. we all love luke,
the christ-like hero of the film, as played by the young and
steel-eyed paul newman. unfortunately, we’ve all forgotten how
grim the movie becomes, as luke is hunted down time and again after
each failed prison break. personally, i’m devastated by the
film and luke’s stubborn demise. when he bitterly admits to
dragline just before he’s gunned down by “the man with no
eyes”, that “i never planned a damn thing in my whole
life”, i can’t help but identify with him. luke and me.
consummate anti-heroes. ultimate outsiders. rebels without a cause.
yeah, that’s me, boss, never planned a thing that worked out in
my whole life. just grabbed that ring of opportunity and held on for
dear life….
so now i’m back in sunny california. i heard the missouri river over-flowed from
torrential rains just after we left kansas, and president dubya has
declared most of the midwest a national disaster area. good thing da
boys got out in time. all but one of us, that is. the moose is still
there, probably ‘til the end of his days. me, i’m still
makin’ plans. in six years, i’ll have been at the
prestigious university long enough. i’ll face my fears, look
myself in the mirror again, and kick myself out of my little house
and home. well, not really mine. hell, the native americans say none
of us really “own” anything anyway. yeah, i’ll kick
myself west. far west. so far west that it’ll be east. far
east. bali or the philippines. in fact, i’m taking reservations
now. if you want to spend a little time at my far out, far east,
villa manila, then just drop me a line. it’ll be like an
informal time share. you come visit ‘n stay with me on my 70th.
or 80th. if i’m still kickin’, that is….
but right now, i’m drivin’ south on california’s I-5, from san francisco to
LA. i just put my dad in an assisted living community. he’s
crawlin’ towards the end of the line, and he needs a little
“assistance”, if you know what i mean. it’s not
easy to do, but who said life was easy. she certainly didn’t. i
got the radio up loud, and i’m tearing down the highway. not
highway 61, a la bob dylan, circa 1965. no, it’s hard to catch
ol’ bob on the interchangeable bakersfield-merced-modesto-san
joaquin fm radio stations these days. instead it’s john mayer,
amy winehouse, and kanye west. three of my favorites. not to mention
jack johnson, death cab for cutie, groove armada, rx bandits, the
shins, or the big bad voodoo daddies….
but look, the hills are covered with a spring carpet of yellow mustard seed. the entire
countryside is in bloom from the recent late winter-early spring
rain. even the barren I-5 is singing. “the hills are alive”…
with wild green grasses topped with feathery coxcombs. with pink,
flowering fruit trees, oranges, lemons, peaches, budding with new
life. the cow shit still stinks around mid-drive, coalinga, but it’s
a beautiful day for the ride home. home? home is where the road takes
you. home is where the road goes. just follow that yellow brick road,
right dorothy? or in this case, just follow the wild yellow mustard
seed………
is it rollin’, boys????
