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Wednesday, October 30 What's it all for?
Last night, while I was walking home from Soho, I decided to reorganize the filing cabinet in my head. A better way to put it might be, the filing cabinet in my head decided to re-organize me. I’ve been so busy lately, that I’ve actually started shoving thoughts into the nether regions of my skull. Somewhere between Houston and 1st Avenue, they all came tumbling forward. How can I get published… more? Do I advertise or keep banking on word-of-mouth? When will I have time to paint? Should I go away to write? Is 5 business days enough time for a client’s check to clear? To I crack too many jokes in my writing? If you write about someone and it’s true do you have to change their name? Will they ever open the 15th exit on the FDR or will the fear of terrorists attacking the huge Con-Edison plant keep it closed forever? I must have looked a tad nuts, (well more than usual) this blonde chick in head-to-toe black tossing about these invisible notions as if they were bumblebees. But that wasn’t what my brain had in mind for me. A stronger thought seeped out and pushed all my day-to-day jumble aside. It whispered, “What’s all for?” What’s it all for? If I’m anything like the women in my mother’s family tree and lord knows I do take after my mother, then I probably won’t kick around this earth long enough to see my 70th birthday. So when do I stop and smell the hazelnut scented coffee? My mom lived longer than anyway in her family. She made it to 65. After a lifetime of striving for more, for herself and her children, putting aside for a rainy day, never flying to see, her beloved Paris, she finally announced, “Now I’m going to have some fun.” She had a stroke the next year and spent the last few years of her life in physical therapy, too sick to do much of anything. A lifetime of saving for a rainy day, that never came. I wonder, often, if she has regrets wherever she is now. I hope she’s in Paris. I learned about death at the age of 6. I think it was when my pet turtle died. It would be more accurate to say I murdered my darling turtle. I had no idea that leaving it on the dashboard of our car, on a hot day, while we went shopping would kill it. But it did. I still feel guilty about that. Poor thing. I moped about the house for days carting my dead pet with me and trying to sing it, beg it, coax it back to life, but nothing worked. We buried it in the back yard. That’s when I realized that everything ends. That I would end. At school the next day, I was sitting at my desk and I started to draw a cartoon on my desk. As I was creating my little doodle a powerful realization came over me. I would die, but this drawing could live on forever. I could cheat death by leaving behind something of myself to be remembered!! Rossi, the artist, was born. I spent the next 30 odd years attempting to do just that. Writing, painting, creating, desperately trying to leave behind something of myself as if I knew my days were numbered and the numbers weren’t too high. Now I’m stuck with this new dilemma; what’s it all for? We don’t take our possessions with us after we die. So the best we can hope for, if we’re lucky, is to take our memories, many folks don’t even think we get to take that. Most religions say the best we can do is to be good in our lifetime and hope for a reward later. I don’t know. When I die, I guess I’ll find out. But I do think that the best we can do for now is to stop postponing our life, while we’re trying to improve our life. I’m all for, getting published, getting heard, making money, buying a home..or two, but not when our ambition so blinds us that we push off being alive. We push it off for a rainy day. My girlfriend is in a mad race to make millions. She wants to retire in 10 years. She’s decided this. I salute her. I do. But we only get to see each other a couple days a week. She’s always exhausted, overwhelmed, worried. She’s inflicted a taskmaster on herself that no one should have to appease. When does her rainy day come? Will I be there to see the fresh, crisp, drops cascade off her smiling face? If I were an American Indian, I’d do the rain dance right now. What’s it all for? I don’t know, but after I post this I think I’ll go for a long walk. The sky is so cloudy today. I’m sure it will rain.
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