A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things. – Murray Kempton
The old man was trying to make sense of a journey that made little sense while he was taking it. The journey took him, took him for a ride. Held on when he shoulda let go. Let go when he shoulda stayed on. He couldn’t really remember always making the wisest choices for the best reasons.
Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it. Somebody once told him that. Maybe a hundred people. Didn’t make shit any easier.
Last night he had actually said aloud, I am having trouble understanding why I can’t drink every day.
Oh, but you can, the young redhead responded. You just don’t want to.
I don’t?
He liked drinking, but he had begun to suspect drinking didn’t like him.
Breaking up is so hard to do.
Had to admit he felt better the next day after less fun the night before. And feeling better is more fun than drinking. Sigh.
He spent seventy minutes on the spinbike accidentally watching a documentary about New York City in the 1950’s. Accidentally. Luckily.
Luckily because the old man thought part of the answer was imprinting.
This description from the back cover of the DVD. “New York in the Fifties is the story of a unique time and place, when New York was the hotbed of new artistic expressions, free love, drinking, hot jazz, and radical politics. The film combines stunning archival footage of New York with interviews and footage of icons of the day – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Mailer, Basie, etc.
“Offering modern day perspective and reminiscences are writers, actors, and artists such as Joan Didion, Robert Redford, Nat Hentoff, Gay and Nan Talese, John Gregory Dunne, William F. Buckley, and Calvin Trillin – all part of the rich cultural and artistic scene of the time.
“Based on the best-selling book by Dan Wakefield, the film also traces Wakefield’s restless rebellion in conformist Indianapolis, and his escape to New York with dreams of writing a novel, falling in love, meeting like-minded souls and questioning the meaning of life.”
The old man’s dreams and questioning had occurred not many years later. Those impressionable years, what dog experts refer to as imprinting. Coming of age outside NYC in the Sixties, the tale of that hotbed, explains a lot. Beatniks and Greenwich Village and Harlem jazz and Jackson Pollock. Oh, yeah, free love. Mess with a little fat white boy’s mind.
The old man could still see these black and white photographs in Life and Look and Post. Sexy young black and white hipsters smoke wafting through the party atmosphere skinny girls and high-ball glasses. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to be. That is who I want to do it with.
Trying to figure out how to do that. Is that really you? If that’s not you, then who the hell are you? And why.
All he figured out, don’t kick your own ass about how you got where you are. You’re here, face it. Look around. Take a deep breath. What now?
Doing evil, being evil, two completely different things, to the man’s way of thinking. His life had been good by his own measure. No trust fund, no rose garden, but he had all his limbs and a wife and a car and a dog. And he was old. Let’s not forget that. Took some doin’.
***
In the documentary, James Baldwin tells his buddy Wakefield something like this is all going to be forgotten. So, he tells him, you must write a whole shelf of books. A whole shelf.
The only thing the old man was missing was a shelf of books. A whole shelf. He had better get started.
Because what the journey had taught him, sometimes you have to let go, sometimes you have to hold on. And he was by no means ready to let go.
This time he was certain he was right. Pretty sure.