Maybe It’s the Light, or Lack of Sleep…

Usually when I start these blog posts, I actually have some idea of where I’m headedand what I am going to say. I figure stream of consciousness is fine for a private journal, but it’s bit presumptuous to uncork all that muddy water where others tread.  Beware, then, that today is an exception, and you might want to turn back if you don’t have yourboots on.  Welcome to my head, wherever it happens to take us.

I should explain that I woke up at 3:30 a.m. in order to drive down to Orange County with Monte, which may account for a bit of punchiness, but enough with the excuses already. The odd thing is, I feel good. I’m sitting in that coffee shop I like -- the one where the walls are painted gold and the morning light is warm, where the coffee is good and the Wi-Fi lively and dependable. In a little while I’ll be heading over to the assisted living facility to look in on my mother, but this island of time belongs to me, and maybe it’s just the light and the caffeine, but instead of the bleakness I often experience at this junction, I have a sense of well-being, and I want to share it.

I’m thinking about grace and how much I have been shown, and about the people I love. Family, friends, neighbors, fellow pilgrims...

Last night, for example, I received an email from a long-ago friend named Isao who lives in Tokyo and has been a member of a monastic brotherhood for many years. I met him in Syracuse in the 1970s when we were both students; over the ensuing decades he has sent me sporadic messages like little lanterns placed along my path. In yesterday's email he told me that in all these years he has never omitted my name from his daily prayers. That humbles me.

And please don’t wince…I’m not getting "political"…but I am also thinking about the passage of health care reform and the giddy phone call it elicited from my dear friend Cyd, who has worked hard all her life and through no fault of hers has been beset with an onslaught of horrific medical expenses for herself and her daughter; now she sees the potential for some help.

Or this post from Elise, a former student of mine, who wrote: In 2014 I will not be discriminated against because I was born with a faulty immune system. I can purchase health care at the same price as people without preexisting health conditions and will not be denied coverage because I have diabetes. I won't have to work for a big company in order to get health insurance! Thank you to every person who voted for or supported this bill; you have changed my life!

I’m also thinking about some old girlfriends I will see tomorrow, gals I rode bikes with when we were absurdly young and fit but didn’t know it, and about someone whose retirement celebration I am attending in the evening -- he helped me get hired in 1982, which marked the start of the best part of my life.

I’m thinking about touchstones and continuity.

And I am thinking about Lawrence Ferlinghetti because I heard on the radio that he just celebrated his 91st birthday. (I warned you not to expect coherence.) I saw him at a poetry reading a couple of years ago -- a living legend, and still a force to be reckoned with. He signed my old, dog-eared copy of Coney Island of the Mind, the very one I carried with me in the 1960s when I was falling in love with surrealism and light and possibly beginning to grasp that I might not live forever but not yet believing it.

And as it is late and I must get going, I shall conclude with his recipe for happiness, grateful that I have somehow managed to get some cooked up in my own life:

One grand boulevard with trees

with one grand cafe in sun

with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful

man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.