“Therefore I will be quiet,
comforted that I am dust.” Job 42:6

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

“Isn’t it time that, loving, we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight, something more than itself? For staying is nowhere.” Rilke

After Dad died, we went into Dad mode. That is, we got shit done. He died on a Thursday, Saturday evening was the funeral, Sunday afternoon the burial. My brother had to go back to work, but my sister and I got on the house and other jobs that had to be done. Those who have lost people close to them will recognize the pattern. Either you drown in your sorrow or you get up and move, and when you start moving, it’s hard to stop. For the next couple of weeks my sister and I went through the house like a hurricane and got it ready to sell. With my brother, we began the complicated tasks of dealing with the estate.

Weeks later, my sister back in Dayton, I sit in the empty house and imagine other places to be. My immediate thought is of New York. After the summer of my life, I was pulled into a wormhole and came out in my home town with my dad gone. I have always been ambivalent about my home town and find it alienating rather than welcoming. I could still hear and taste New York, and I felt like a boat that suddenly cuts its engines and waves come in behind it. I was dead in the water. Out of gas. Stuck. From the frenetic energy of New York and before that the road and before that California to nowhere.

Taking my sister back to Dayton, I took a familiar Blue Highway in West Virginia. We stopped at a train crossing, and I opened up my email on my iPhone. There was a message from Dean Palin from Cool University. I had won the poker game back in June when they folded their cards and let me take the pot. It seems now that, rather than play any more, they wanted me to take the money they had brought to the table and just leave, like for good. “The check’s in the mail,” she wrote, and my sister and I sat at the train tracks in West Virginia and marveled at the vagaries of life. Only a few weeks ago, I had just won a year-long poker match with the administration of a university, was living in New York, and had a father who was my hero and inspiration. Now I was a homeless, unemployed orphan who was about to get enough money from the poker match to retire, travel the world, and write. Life moves pretty fast, and if you stay open to it, it will break your heart and repair it, sometimes in the same stroke.

The stakes in the poker game were real enough that I had to decide what I would do if I lost. It didn’t take long: I would travel the world, beginning in South America, write, and live. I never really thought about what I would do if I won the poker game, much less get all the money on the table without playing another hand. It turns out the answer is the same. I will travel the world and write. My mind raced. First of all, I would not believe that a check was real until it cleared, but as stupidly as Cool University had played its hands over the past year or so, it is hard to imagine that they would lie about this. Still, I’ll wait. Secondly, I need to stay and take care of things at the house, at least for a while, and there are things left to do with the estate. So, I’ll wait. Thirdly, my son is getting married at the end of October. I can’t very well take off for the unknown and not attend his wedding. After that, however, and if the check does indeed clear, the world is open to me. I am now a writer, alone in the world except for my siblings and my friends.

The hard part is remaining quiet, being still, waiting, because staying is nowhere, and I want to be somewhere. I am in a liminal zone, and something major is about to happen. I went back and read some of the posts from my trip out here, and it’s there already in several of the entries, such as this one:

It really was becoming a vision quest of sorts. I was stripping away one life and waiting for another to emerge, and that new life would be born of the road. I liked feeling light and free, or as Walt would say, strong and content. This was indeed a sacred journey.

You can’t rush a sacred journey. I need to be quiet, comforted that because I am nothing, I am everything. I need to be still and know that I am god, in charge of my life and destiny but also dependent upon the sacred other. I need to know that I am the arrow, enduring the bow, about to be released into flight. Staying is nowhere, and nowhere is right where I need to be right now.

elegy |ˈeləjē|
noun ( pl. -gies)
1 a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.
• a piece of music in a mournful style.
2 (in Greek and Roman poetry) a poem written in elegiac couplets, as notably by Catullus and Propertius.

ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from French élégie, or via Latin, from Greek elegeia, from elegos ‘mournful poem.’

The plan was this: leave New York City on Tuesday, August 17, arrive in Atlanta, pick up Penelope, spend a day or two with St. Mary and The Wizard, a couple of days with my father, the weekend with my sister, then head north and west through Canada, making my way slowly back to Coolville, stopping along the way in Seattle to see Amelie and Susie and in San Francisco to see Indira. It was to be the mirror image of my June trip across the country, camping, writing, thinking, and soaking up the solitude and the sacred. The week before I left, I spoke to my father outside the Rector Street subway station. I was on my way to meet Vivien to see the new film about Basquiat. He told me stories, updated me on his health, which was excellent, then asked me about my summer. “Dad, it’s been the summer of my life.” When he asked why, I told him about the book, my friends, the city, and the women who make it beautiful. “They’re really that beautiful?” he asked. I assured him they were, like the one approaching me at that moment on Trinity Place. “Well, stop talking to me and talk to her. What are you doing?” I laughed at my ninety-year-old father, the player still, and watched her walk by as he and I said our goodbyes before I jumped on the subway.

Four days later Kaye and Robby and I were having a street dog in the little park just below the Wall Street bull. They wanted to do some shopping at Century 21, a few blocks up, and I decided to take a look at the Museum of the American Indian. I was a charter member, but I had never visited this one or the one in D.C. I was disappointed. The most interesting exhibit, Hide: Skin as Material and Metaphor, was closed, and the exhibit on horse cultures of the Plains was uninspiring. It had been raining on and off all day, and I hesitated going back out, so I wandered around the entrance hall looking for something interesting but found nothing. My phone rang; it was my sister. I said hello and the sound echoed in the airy hallway of the old customs house. I don’t remember what she said; I only remember the sound of her voice. It was the call I knew I would get one day, each day increasing the possibility: our father was dead.

Okay, he prepared us for this. The True Philosopher who studied death and worked at a funeral home and was almost ninety was dead. We could handle this. “It gets worse,” she said, “he took his own life.” I could feel my knees buckling. I walked outside and sat on the steps of the museum, the rain pelting me, my eyes seeing everything and nothing at the same time, my mind racing to try to incorporate this new reality. This could not be. It went against everything he stood for, everything his life had meant. I walked back toward my apartment like a ghost and called Robby and Kaye to come back and meet me there.

I was packed in fifteen minutes, back at the Vortex with Jey and Kwasi, calling Fyodor, my brother, and the airlines to try to get a flight to Tennessee. Nothing was available that night, but I got a 6:00 am the next morning. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway. I talked to my sister again and learned that my father had been taking a drug called Celexa (generic Citalopram), prescribed for the nightmares he has had all his life. He began taking it on Monday, and by Thursday he was dead. A story began to form. My dad was the victim of altered brain chemistry mixing with some ancient family history, and it was a lethal combination. Cursory research on the drug reveals that it lists suicidal ideation as a common side affect, and several class action law suits have been attempted but to no end. The FDA has allowed the drug to remain on the market. I was prescribed this drug in Boston three years ago when I experienced the event that gave birth to this blog. I chose not to take any of the pills. My father, hoping for some relief from his nightmares, did. It killed him. Of this, there is no question. He abhorred suicide, having experienced it first-hand a number of times in family members and friends. He loved life, took care of his house and property, worked every weekend, wrote nearly every day, and told stories to anyone who would listen. This was not him. He believed that life was good and worth living. He was a victim of the pharmaceutical industry—and history, and he was gone.

There was nothing to do but stay in the Vortex with my bags packed. Vivien and Taylor came down, Aurora and Carlos came from Brooklyn. Fyodor was in Maine and scheduled to return the next morning. Once again, we would cross paths, just missing each other, as we followed our own story lines. I called St. Mary of New York. I was supposed to go there for a meal on Monday. I talked to my brother again, but he was driving and on the way to the house, so I hung up and let him focus on that. Then, with nothing left to do, we all went to the pub. My son called me back there, and I told him, heard him struggle with the impossible reality as I had hours earlier. His confusion turned to anger—at doctors, pharmaceutical companies, ultimately, at life itself. An event like this is incomprehensible, and your first instinct is to put it into a category that is familiar and understandable, but that does not work. It was a rupture in the universe, a tear in the fabric of consciousness, a black hole from which no light could escape.

We moved back up to the Tower, overlooking the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero, my friends gathered around me like a fortress to protect me, a bridge to carry me over, a blanket to keep me warm. We did what we always we do: we talked about life, the city, women, men, books, ideas, food, culture. I sat quietly in the corner and watched it all, marveling at how even such a deep wound was already beginning to heal as love and life rushed to repair the damage done by death. Nine of us sat together on a summer night in New York and had a eucharist made of words and silence. Finally, I got up and opened a bottle of Russian Standard, poured shots for everyone, and made a toast to my father. It went something like this:

My father died today, and he died in a manner that was inconsistent with his life. I’ll be trying to deal with that the rest of my life, but for now, what I do know is that he was a good man who lived a unique life. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade but got his GED at forty-four and raised three children all of whom have graduate degrees. He served in the Navy in World War II and schooled himself on the event so that he could teach it to others, so much that he because the region’s most sought-after lecturer on it. He was the longest serving grand jury foreman for Sullivan County, and he did that in his eighties. He worked twenty-eight years at the funeral home, staring death in the face daily and without fear. He was a writer, a philosopher, a worker, a husband, and a father. He was my father, and I loved him. To a life well-lived.

How do you write about New York? How many words before you’ve lapsed into cliché? How long before you can hear a New Yorker mocking you for your lame attempts at lyrical descriptions? How long before the city itself swallows your regurgitated prose and mingles it with the other effluvia flowing through and under and around her? It is impossible to write about New York—and impossible not to.

Vertical. The city is vertical. It has to be. The only space is up. So it is a city of layers and levels, each a different landscape or cityscape, each a different culture. The nineteenth floor of my building downtown is a different culture than my apartment on the fifty-fifth floor. Different buildings emerge in different angles and light, and I see others on their rooftops and decks looking back at me, two different worlds reflected in the pupils of our eyes.

Horizontal. The city is horizontal. In the space of a few square miles millions of people live and work and eat and drink and make love and argue and scream and cry and laugh. Go a few blocks in any direction, and you’ve moved into a different neighborhood, a different vibe, a different world. People, buildings, and smells are different. Your movement on the street is facilitated or impeded by the nature of the life each neighborhood lives. Meaning is attached to the names: SoHo, NoHo, Chelsea, The Village, East Village, West Village, Hell’s Kitchen, The Bronx.

Transcendent. The city is transcendent. It rises above all description as vertical, horizontal, or any other. It is the sum total of its people, buildings, and landscapes, and then it is more than that. It is wholly other and therefore divine. It is the accumulation of the prosaic and quotidian and is therefore sacred. It is everything that is human, from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the evil to the good, from the Financial District to Washington Heights. It calls us to be larger, much better than we thought, and if we fail, it crushes us and keeps moving. It keeps moving. It keeps moving.

MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering,        
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.

Walt Whitman

We’re still piecing everything together, but it is clear that I had an epic birthday. After the thirty-block walk through Harlem at 3:30 am, I came home and could not sleep, so I lay and watched the light appear over the city and contemplated my situation. Fyodor woke up at 5:00 and said he couldn’t sleep either. We sat in front of the window and watched the sun rise while we talked about the book, women, and life. We thought about going out for breakfast, but soon enough I found myself back on his futon, only this time asleep. I woke up about 11:00 am and went down to the Vortex, also known as the 19th Floor Lounge. The Lords of the Vortex are our friends Jey and Kwasi who spend their days there working and holding court. Also, some of the most beautiful women in the world pass through the Vortex on their way to the sun deck or to work in the nooks and crannies of the common area. Fyodor and I write our book there while Jey and Kwasi conduct business (consulting for the fashion industry), but we stop often to tell stories, solve the problems of the world, and generally shoot the shit. It’s a good vibe, and it’s been a productive one too. But on my birthday, I took the day off from writing and just fooled around on the Internet, watched a movie or two, and wrote the previous post. Little did I know that the beast that is fifty was just beginning to stir.

Fyodor had purchased two bottles of Russian Standard Platinum for what was supposed to be a quiet evening toast. My birthday had gone from an event with fifty strippers à la Vivien to a small gathering of friends who would toast the end of my forties as the sun set over the Hudson and Newark. Vivien had taken a summer job that involved her virtual imprisonment in an NYU dorm with the children of the super rich who apparently had to be treated not much differently than the developmentally disabled adults I once worked with in Nashville. For example, a girl wanted a water, so she stopped at a street vendor’s cart and handed him her credit card. Vivien explained that street vendors cannot take cards, especially for the $1.50 a bottle of water costs. So she took her to an ATM and left her. The girl returned saying it didn’t work. Vivien went back in with her and took her through it step-by-step. It turns out the super rich girl was trying to remove $1.50 in cash from her bank account. Another example, because they’re so fun. Two of the boys, aged seventeen, decide they will go to a strip club. The bouncer tells them that they are not allowed in because of their age. A man watching nearby comes up to them and tells them that he can get them in for $50. They each give him $50, and of course he walks away. Then ANOTHER guy sees all this happen, comes up to them, and tells them that they have been conned, but he knows the owner and can get them in and get their money back for $50 each. I don’t think I need to finish the story, do I? Clearly, it was more important for Vivien to make sure that the children of the super rich survived their summer placement program than to celebrate her friend’s fiftieth birthday, so I forgave her for not getting me the fifty strippers.

Besides, Fyodor had to get up early the next day, a Thursday, to catch a train to Boston for a conference. Others had to work as well, so we decided on a quiet night with no strippers, only good vodka and words. “We will be in bed by 11:30,” said Fyodor with a certain finality. We weren’t sure it was going to be more than Fyodor, Jey, Kwasi, and me, but eventually we heard from others that they were coming downtown for the event, so Fyodor went out for another bottle. It all began as planned with some lovely toasts from Fyodor, Taylor, Famous Writer, Francesca, Jey, and Kwasi. As people arrived, they were asked to toast me. It was lovely. More and more people arrived. More and more toasts. Pretty soon, things began slipping out of control. By the time Kaye arrived, I was smoking a cigarette by the window and expounding on some theory of women, but I really don’t remember. Fyodor and I have taken the last few days to try to understand what happened. Apparently, Fyodor, who was concerned about the noise level in the apartment since we have already had two warnings since I have been here, would announce loudly (the irony lost on him at the moment) that “everybody should get the fuck out.” Then he added in a conciliatory tone “No offense.” Even as he was railing against everyone, whenever anyone new would arrive, he would welcome them like they had come from a long journey. There was wrestling (or rasslin’ as Jey put it), talk of inappropriate use of carrots, blood, and biting. Famous Writer, Kali, and Fyodor woke up with bruises, and apparently Fyodor took a header off a stool and bled all over his face, laughing the entire time. I still think they haven’t told us everything that happened that night, and maybe that is just as well. The greatest praise came from Famous Writer, an ex-Marine sniper who may be the hardest living man I know. He called it “the best time he’s ever had in New York” and “joyous madness.” His “person of interest,” Kali, called it “an epic night, one for the books.” I’ll have to take their word for it. What I do know is that Fyodor and I awoke the next morning at around 9:00 am, and it looked like a scene from the film The Hangover. There wasn’t a chicken or a tiger or a baby in the room, but everything else was pretty much like the film. We tried to remember what had happened, why Fyodor’s face was so bloody still, why he couldn’t walk, why there were earrings and an apple on the floor. Something about carrots. I looked at my text messages and immediately erased them, horrified and frightened that they would appear on a website somewhere. We gathered ourselves, and Fyodor left for Penn Station and Boston while I went down to the Vortex to work on the book.

As I was writing, Jey and Kwasi asked me how Fyodor was doing. I told them he was fine and tried to get a sense of what had happened. They were maddeningly cryptic but seemed to have had a good time. But they continued to ask about Fyodor, so I decided to text him. His reply was immediate: “Call me. It’s important.” It turns out that Fyodor had hopped the subway to Penn Station, and while waiting on his train to Boston, passed out. EMTs were called, oxygen was administered, and drama ensued. Then my friend picked himself up and got on the train. He was calling me from Boston to tell me the whole thing, and I’m still hearing about the lump on his head and how his knee hurts. Later Kaye came by, and we had lunch, and I got some more intel on the evening. Still, my fiftieth birthday lay like shards around me, pieces of memories and fragments of words that still don’t quite fit together. T. S. Eliot: “These fragments I shore up against my ruins.”

Vivien texted me and in her usually cryptic way asked me if I wanted to spend her only night off with her. Of course I did, and she even had the courtesy to say that we didn’t have to go to a bar because she had heard some things about the night before. I said I was fine, not afraid of shit, and ready for anything. I shouldn’t have said that.

Kay and I arrive at 49th and 8th as instructed, but of course Vivien’s at 48th “on the southwest corner.” I know she has asked someone this so she can impress me. She sees me coming down the sidewalk and screams, dancing her way up 8th Avenue, dodging the pedestrians, holding a bouquet of blue balloons that say “It’s a boy.” She looks beautiful, of course, and bubbles over with joy. I’m still not sure why I am carrying a bunch of blue balloons celebrating a birth as I walk with two amazing women through Hell’s Kitchen, but one bum screams at me “I want a balloon! I want a balloon!” I scream back “It’s a boy! It’s a boy!” and this seems to make sense enough to him. I know my friend well enough not to ask where we are going, but I do hear her talking to Taylor, so I’m glad to know that he is there. We keep walking toward the river until we arrive, and I look up to see Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club. Since I’ve known her, Vivien has been trying to get me to go to a strip club with her. I don’t know why. I don’t find them that interesting, but she does. What Vivien finds interesting, all of her friends must experience. Taylor comes out to meet us and is gone immediately, saying he has to find something to eat. I understand. She’s had him running all over the city looking for balloons and holding them while he holds our seats in the strip club. He is done. I walk in and find Michaela, Amy, Amy’s boyfriend Carlos, and Art waiting on me, smiling. I am overwhelmed. I haven’t seen these students from the Buffalo Center for over a year, and they are some of my good friends. We hug and kiss and marvel at the fact that we are all together again—in New York City—in Hell’s Kitchen—at the Hustler Club—on the day after my fiftieth birthday. Immediately, Vivien buys me a lap dance, and I turn to Michaela and say “This is so NOT feminist.” She agrees, and laughs with me. The lap dance is boring, as they usually are, and the conversation with the dancer inane. At the end she says “That’s $20.” I look at my friends, tell Christina or whatever her name is that it is my birthday, and that I think my friends are buying. She looks at them, and they look broke, huddling together to try to find $20 among them. They go to the ATM, but there is a $20 service fee just to withdraw cash. The stripper gives them some other options, and I whisper in her ear, “Maybe I’ll just get it, and you can get back to work.” She smiles, takes my twenty, and is gone in a flash. My friends think that she has just given up on them and count it a victory, a free lap dance for the birthday boy. Meanwhile, the drinks they buy are about $20 each and contain the cheapest alcohol you can buy. So they have brought mini-bottles of vodka to spike the drinks. We are clearly going to get thrown out.

And we do. But not before I get another lap dance from ? who is quite good, tells me she is thirty-one, can’t believe I’m fifty, and tells me there are “other options” for a mere $250. These other options include “maybe touching.” Then she puts her breasts into Art’s face, who recoils because he is gay. Art announces that he’s never been that close to a boob before, and the stripper named ? says he should give it a try. I laugh at the ludicrous nature of it all and because I’m happy that these friends care enough to try to make me happy on my fiftieth birthday. Vivien has bought a box of leis. There were fifty to be exact. Every time we saw a stripper take off her clothes, I was to put on a lei. She was determined to keep her promise of fifty strippers on my fiftieth birthday. In fact she tells me over the din of the eighties track playing in the Hustler that she called every strip joint in NYC to see if they had fifty girls working on any one night. Only the Hustler did, which is why we are here with fifty leis. This is getting joyously ridiculous.

I get into a great conversation with Amy’s boyfriend, who is Seneca. One of my favorite stories is from the Seneca, and he is proud of his heritage and happy that this guy he doesn’t know knows something about his people. As women take off their clothes all around us, Carlos and I get into a deep discussion about politics, mythology, and literature of the Seneca people. It’s much more interesting than anything else going on, and lots cheaper. By now I’m feeling pretty happy and loose, though it’s taken several of the mini-bottles to get me there. And we have to hide the empties behind the leather chairs. Then the bouncer comes up to us, interrupts Carlos’ and my conversation, and asks us if we would mind moving for a group of ten that has a reservation. This is bullshit, and I tell him so, loudly and with great offense. He goes away. Now my friends are scared. I’ve just told a Hustler bouncer to fuck off, waving him away with my hand while I continue to talk with Carlos. There are about six bouncers there that night, looking like you think a bouncer should look. Another one comes up to me and asks us to leave. “After all,” he says without irony, “you’re not even drinking.” I go off on him, railing loudly about the injustice of it all, the vapid conversation, the faux sexuality, the overpriced drinks, the bad music, the lame vibe. My friends are now wide-eyed and wondering what is going to happen. Deep down I know. Kaye and Michaela had already left, bothered by the unfeminist ethos and the overpriced drinks, and I know we have to leave too. But before we do, I give them a performance, ending with “You know what, we’re too cool for this place anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

Outside on the sidewalk, we have to wait while Vivien retrieves the balloons, which she will give back to me and make me carry the rest of the night. While we are waiting, a guy is outside with us, screaming at the bouncers that they won’t give him his Metro card. He is loud and totally New York. I join him in excoriating the Hustler Club, and he is enlivened by a brother-in-arms. The bouncers all turn to look at me. They are not pleased. It takes Vivien forever to retrieve the balloons and other paraphernalia she carries. This is normal. Everything Vivien does moves at a glacial pace, until she gets to where she’s going, then it’s light speed. It’s hard to keep up. Poor Taylor.While we were inside, the waitresses kept telling Vivien that she should come and dance there. Now the bouncer comes over to me and asks me to cool it. I go off on him again. He tells me that he did us a favor by letting us in tonight anyway because THEY HAVE A DRESS CODE. I look down at my new hiking sandals, the only shoes I brought to New York, my shorts, and my t-shirt, and I get all pissed again. I give another sermon on capitalism, sexuality, coolness, and classism. He can tell he made a mistake, but fortunately, he is a man about my age, and we share some knowledge of the world. He knows I’m just pointing out the obvious, and I know he’s just doing his shitty little job. As I rant at the world on 12th Avenue, he pats me on the back, and I shake his hand. It may be the most intimate interaction I’ve had all night.

But the night isn’t over. Leis around my neck, balloons in my hand (It’s a boy!), I walk with my twenty-something friends through the warm night, past empty warehouses, full clubs, and busy intersections. It’s a Thursday night in New York, and there’s more energy on the street at 2:00 am than most cities on a Saturday night. It’s wonderful to be fifty, alive, and with blue balloons that say “It’s a boy.” I lead the band of brothers, the ship of fools, the motley crew like a philosopher with his students. Suddenly, I see on my left a basement bar, House of Brews. Oh yes, that’s the next stop. We invade the quiet bar, take over a table, and bring the place to life. I order shots and appetizers. Art spills his shot immediately, probably $15 lying on the table. The waitress brings us another. I make a toast to good friends, quote some Whitman, and shoot the Belvedere. Now Vivien has decided that everyone in the bar, even those who come in after us, must wish me a happy birthday and get leied. Because she is Vivien, this happens, and it becomes a thing. Now everyone who wants to be cool has to come wish me happy birthday. It is amazing. Eventually, the entire bar erupts in song, clapping joyously in celebration of my life, and I am so, so happy. I look down and all the food is gone, eaten by my poor friends, so I order more, and protect it with my arms until I can get some in my stomach. Meanwhile, Michaela and Kaye appear out of nowhere bringing with them three forty-something men who have been buying them drinks at another bar. Michaela has been offering marriage counseling to them, but they seem pretty happy to me. They talk to me about how marriage is wonderful, and I begin to sober up. The guy across from me is a happily married man from Pennsylvania who worries about his kids and his job and his wife, and he tells me to “go for it” and “seize the day” and “live my life.” I can’t tell if he’s being serious or ironic, and I throw some things back at him to see. He’s being serious, and it makes me sad and sober. I think it’s time to go.

I visit with my friends a bit more, and we share stories and good times. We even talk about the poker game with the administration, and I tell them that I got an email a few weeks ago telling me that the university decided to fold, so the game is over, and I have won. Amy says something like “you won a long time ago; look around you Aristaeus; look at the love.” I did. What more could I ask for?

I grabbed a taxi home, and the cabbie talked non-stop about how New York was superior to Los Angeles. I didn’t argue with him at all. I just looked at the love.

First, however, some catching up . . .

I spent five days with my nearly ninety-year-old father. It was, as always, a time of philosophizing and storytelling, and we covered everything from war to women. One night a series of odd coincidences (about four if I recall), took us to a table right next to my ex-wife, Lukas’ mother. I had not spoken to her for sixteen years. It took us all a moment to recognize her, and when I did, I jumped up and gave her a hug. It was good, and I admire her courage for coming to our table. Lukas will be married this October, five days after my father turns ninety. It’s time to let shit go. My brother and I had breakfast together the morning I left, and I was reminded once again of how good it is to have a kind-hearted and generous man for a brother, no matter how old he is.

I drove back down to Atlanta but stopped first to run the Nantahala and Ocoee Rivers. There was a time in my mid-twenties when I did that a lot, and it felt good to revisit that feeling of being out of control, then in control, on a river. In fact the closest I have ever come to dying (except perhaps last night), was when I spilled on the Ocoee in 1992. I came up under the raft three times as I swam two Class IV rapids. The last time I popped up, it was beside the boat, and the guide pulled me in. Otherwise, I honestly don’t think I would have made it. I also did the Nantahala in a solo canoe on my honeymoon, and at one point got stuck on a rock. I was there for a long time in full view of everyone before me and my boat were pulled off it by a series of ropes and pulleys. This time I did the Nantahala in a “duckie” because they didn’t rent canoes, but I made it work for me, surfing waves and cutting back and forth across the rapids as it all came back to me. I had a trout dinner that night sitting over the river and had a lovely conversation with the couple at the next table. I stayed in the bunkhouse for $17, then got up to do the Ocoee Sunday morning. I went down with a great family from Anniston, and we had a blast. I didn’t swim any rapids, and our guide was terrific.

More good times with Lane and Mary before I caught the Amtrak in Atlanta for the 17-hour ride to Penn Station. It was comfortable, fun, and easy, and I would recommend it to anyone. Fyodor was there waiting for me, and we went downtown to his apartment on the 55th floor overlooking the Statue of Liberty and Ground Zero. I looked out over the Hudson River and marveled at my good fortune. I will be here until mid-August co-writing a book with my best friend about some amazing times we shared. I haven’t blogged because I wanted all energy to go to the book, but as today is my birthday, I’m taking the day off to write more freely and not worry so much about plot, character, and stylistic issues.

As for turning fifty, as I do in twenty minutes, I don’t have much to say. The numbers have only the meaning you give them. Last year, I spent my birthday drinking mojitos with a beautiful and mysterious woman. The year before was alone in Berlin. This birthday began at midnight as Fyodor and I walked from Wall Street to 14th, through Tribeca and SoHo, in the warm New York night. I caught the subway to Penn Station, then the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica, then the AirTrain to JFK, where I picked up Kaye from Los Angeles. She is beginning an epic new journey here, and I couldn’t be more proud to be the first person to welcome her. We took a cab to Vivien and Taylor’s apartment in Harlem, on 140th. We talked a little while, and I made sure Kaye was settled in, then I said goodbye to get a cab back downtown. Vivien laughed and said “Cabs don’t come up to Harlem, and you can’t stand on the corner at 3:30 and wait for one.” So Taylor walked me to the subway at 135th and said, “See, there’s nothing dangerous up here. Have a good trip.” I went down into the subway to see a hand-lettered sign that informed me that no trains stop at this station until 5:00 am, but I can pick up a train at 95th Street, a mere forty blocks. There was nothing to do but start walking down Lenox Avenue. There were no cabs, no buses, and not that many people out but just enough to keep you aware. I had plenty of time to consider turning fifty as I walked, and all I could do is smile at my life. Who else, on his fiftieth birthday, would end up alone walking through the neighborhoods of Malcolm X at 3:30am with no mode of transportation in his near future. Of course, I thought of Walt and how he would have loved this experience in his beloved Manhatta. God, I am so lucky that my road is open and my life is free. Strong and content, I travel the open road.

At 113th a cab appeared, and I waved him over. Thirty dollars and minutes later, I was back in the financial district, riding by the New York Stock Exchange, and heading up to the top of the highest residential building downtown, my home for the summer. The Green Lady held her light in the Hudson, and Newark shimmered in the near dawn. Fyodor lay snoring in the floor. I lay there wide awake in America and thought of the roads I had taken, the women I had loved, the friends that surround me on this day and others, and the strength and contentment I have won through pain and joy. Not bad, Aristaeus. Not bad at all.

Soon the beautiful and brilliant Francesca will call me when she emerges from the subway, and we will have a birthday dinner. Then we will rise once again to the fifty-fifth floor where good people, including my new brothers-in-arms Jey and Kwasi (Lords of the 19th Floor Vortex) along with old friends Fyodor, Kaye, Francesca, and Taylor, Famous Writer, and others will raise a glass of chilled Russian Standard Platinum and toast my amazing, ridiculous, glorious, bizarre, broken, and beautiful life.

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.

Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”

And with this post, I have just turned fifty to the minute.

I left Atlanta and took one of the great roads in the South, US 23 through north Georgia and North Carolina. It was a day for driving and for hiking, and I planned to stop along the way to do the latter. I had driven this road many times and had often wanted to explore Tallulah Gorge, so this time I did. Five dollars got me into the state park, and a lecture from the ranger got me down into the gorge. I had to sign something that said I was in good health and understood the dangers of the descent and agreed to abide by the rules. I did, and soon enough I was descending the three hundred-odd steps into the gorge and to the river. I know it was three hundred and something because the trail said so. I thought that odd until I realized that people probably counted them because it was a pretty steep descent. I made it without any trouble and rock-hopped my way across the river and down the left bank. There was supposed to be a pool down the trail for swimming, but I decided to swim wherever I wanted. People looked at me like I was breaking the law, and I guess I was, but I know a great lawyer in Atlanta.

Finally, I came upon a beautiful waterfall dropping into a large pool, so I stopped and jumped in. People coming down the trail kept going, but I was where I wanted to be. I swam against the current and right up to the falls and remembered my whitewater experiences of my youth. Maybe it was time to reconnect to those as well. I swam myself out, then laid myself out on a rock with my new (waterproof) hiking shoes dangling in the water while the sun shown down on me. It was a great moment of the trip, and I let it last as long as I could. When I got out, a mother and daughter were coming back up the trail and pointed out a snake among the rocks. “What kind is it?” the daughter asked.“ I looked at it, beautiful and mythological in the afternoon sun, and said ”That is an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake.“ And it was.

Several hundred steps up the other side of the gorge felt great after the river’s refreshment, and I met a family from August who shared a water with me. They asked me where I was from, and we had the conversation. I told them I was on my way to New York to complete a book with my best friend. Invariably, when people ask what it’s about, I say something like ”romance, love, travel, adventure, but mostly friendship.“ They nod and ask my name, so that they can get a copy when it comes out. I grin at their courtesy and optimism.

Up through 23 into North Carolina, and I am clearly out of sync with the traffic ethos here. In Boston and California, and in every other state that I know of, when there is a lane closure, you fill up both lanes up to the merge because that is more efficient. I know this because I thought it was wrong to do so when I was younger, so I researched it. When I moved to major cities, I discovered it was the practice. Not in North Carolina. A few of us tried to fill up the lane, but people got so pissed they pulled out of their lane to block us off. They were the moral policemen of US 23. I laughed and capitulated because what else is there to do?

Dad was out with his friends for his Monday night dinner, so I had the house to myself for a while. It was a good time to reflect on my memories there, which were good. Dad had, as usual, left out white bread, mayonnaise, ham, a tomato, and potato chips. I cut up the tomato and ate it, leaving the rest, and waited for my ninety-year-old father to return so that the stories could begin.

Of all those relationships formed at Parochial College, that of the Wizard and the Saint is one of the most unusual and one of the most rewarding, though it’s ridiculous to try to quantify or even qualify those relationships except in the most general way. What is different about the Wizard+Saint, I suppose, is that they’ve followed me educationally, geographically, and mythologically. Mary was the student who was bored and impatient with anything that wasn’t challenging and interesting, and I remember when she showed up in my class, I was a little nervous. It wasn’t my best class, as she would tell you, and still tells me even now. But at least she saw what I was trying to do and appreciated it enough to sign up for more of them. When I told my colleague in English that Mary was in one of my classes, she said “She’s smart, beautiful, and engaging. You’ll love her.” She was right. Lane and I both grew up religious in that Southern sense, moved away from it toward literature, and now are both writers. He kind of followed me as I moved from the Religion and Philosophy Department to the English Department, taking my classes in both departments, his interests evolving from religion to literature and cultural studies. I went to their wedding, even though I hated and philosophically opposed weddings. And I went to church with them, though I hated and religiously opposed church at the time. I seem to remember I lost a bet, which put me in church with them. It was a parochial version of Pascal’s Wager.

Then we didn’t talk much for a while. I was in Virginia at Backwater University, they in Dothan, Alabama of all places doing church work. Somehow I came upon Mary’s blog, and I found myself laughing out loud BECAUSE I COULDN’T POSSIBLY HELP MYSELF, and I also reconnected with Lane and Nick and Brian et al. Of course, this was before blogging was dead, so there were a lot of comments on the blogs, and a little community formed around them. Not long after I arrived at Prestigious University in Boston, Mary contacted me about a recommendation to PU Law School. I was happy to oblige and happier to imagine them living in the Hub with me, or near me, or just being able to see them more. When Lane asked for a recommendation to a divinity school “across the river,” I had a feeling they were coming to Boston and that we were going to be close again. Little did I know . . .

They lived with me and my wife and dog for a week or so, and I helped them move. They came to our house now and then to dilute the weirdness or celebrate the happy moments. Loss moved me to California and began this sacred journey, and they finished up in Boston and now live in Atlanta. Our paths keep crossing, and when they do, it takes us about 3.2 minutes to get into intense and intimate conversations where nothing is off-limits. Mary was asked about some of the trouble I had at Cool University and replied “I know everything he did out there because he tells us everything.” Tru dat.

I rolled into Atlanta on a Friday evening, and the same thing happened that always happens: conversation, drinks, food, music, laughter. After three weeks of road solitude, it was good to be in good company, people I know and love and trust. Second only to the road, it is this that feels like home. We had the added fortune to have Nate and Valerie come down the next day, and after we returned from Stone Mountain where Mary hiked to the top twice BECAUSE SHE CAN’T POSSIBLY HELP HERSELF, we had a lovely evening at Tin Lizzy’s with the five of us. Lane and I even celebrated our ten-year manniversary with a cupcake. Sunday morning I found myself in church again because Lane works at one north of Atlanta. It wasn’t too bad actually, especially since I was there “to be with those that I like.”

I stayed there for the weekend, then headed out Monday morning for my father’s house. And I spent the last two days with them before getting on the train from Atlanta to New York. I struggle to put into words the beauty and uniqueness of this friendship, so I simply won’t. But I would do anything for them, and they would do the same for me. I don’t know how all this happened, but I’m glad it did. This fall, they will come to California, and we will do it all there. I swim in it, as in a sea.

Memories rolled in like fog as I left New Orleans, through Mobile, and up to Montgomery, Alabama. I had been on most of the backroads in Alabama, so I gave up and set the cruise control for I-65. I lived in Montgomery for ten years with two different women. I started at Parochial College in the Religion and Philosophy Department, which was my first real job after the Ph.D. When I left ten years later, I was tenured and chair of the English Department. I resigned there in October of 2002 without a job prospect for the next fall. I knew I was done, and I was willing to mow yards if necessary to get out of that town and that college.

But Parochial College was a fruitful time and place for me, and I was lucky to be there. I was a young professor with a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies, and I came to a college with a curriculum that was unchanged since the 1950s. Within two years we had changed it to an interdisciplinary studies core, inaugurated team teaching, and were doing some pretty exciting things in the classroom. We were even recognized by the media and by our accrediting agency. When my comrade Milton came a few years later, we changed the Religion and Philosophy Department to the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies and created courses like Religion, Race, Class, and Gender. Milton and I also taught a physical education course called Buddhist Basketball in which we had games where you were not allowed to shoot the ball. We called it No Ego Basketball. We were crazy, and in the end he left after leading a rebellion that led to the resignation of the dean, the promotion of my future wife to dean, and my resignation, all on the same day. Moreover, the dean was a Shakespeare and Milton expert, so I was now his new department chair until I would leave in the spring. It was both a Greek tragedy and a Shakespearian comedy.

I came there married to a woman eleven years older than me who did not have a college degree but did have two children and left living with a woman six years younger than me who had a Ph.D. and Multiple Sclerosis. I made friends of students there that I have kept ever since, and I stay with them all over the country from Tucson to Atlanta to New York. Two St. Mary’s, Sharon, Lane, Nick, Brian, Stephanie, Joe—these are people whose lives were changed in spite of and because of Parochial College. I still get students from there who find me on Facebook and say things like “Remember what you said in that class that time? I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and I still think you’re wrong.” Or right, or you fucked me up big time, or my path has changed because it and for the better. While at Parochial College, I had a student tell me I was the Antichrist, and I had students offer to sleep with me. What would have been really interesting is if that was the same student. I spoke in Chapel once at Corey’s invitation, and a group of students refused to go inside and stood at the door praying instead. On two separate occasions at Parochial College, I wore a dress all day. It was a fascinating study in social semiotics, especially when I fell off my high heels while lecturing to a class of sixty-plus students on world religions. Nick dislocated my finger in Buddhist Basketball, which will fuck up his karma for several lifetimes. Sharon left the college for Arizona before she even graduated, but she still belongs there in my memory, doing her best to avoid my classes in biblical literature then relishing in them once she figured out we were reading it as literature not theology. St. Mary of New York came to my Massey Hall office, and we read poetry together—our own and others’. St. Mary of Atlanta reluctantly took my classes and STILL complains about the busy work I gave her in one (and she’s right.) But she also met her husband, The Wizard, appropriately enough, in my Technology and Science Fiction class. In fact, since I’m writing this in medias res to Valerie’s great chagrin, I will tell you that I’ve spent the last two weekends with Lane, Mary, and Val engaged in some of the most sublime conversations and some of the most ridiculous. Lane’s bourbon and cokes provide the inspiration for both. Two years ago last fall I married Valerie and Nate using my Church of the Latter Day Dude ordination. I also married Tripp and Anne Marie before I left standing alongside the college chaplain in my academic regalia.

This is the short list of stories from ten years of Parochial College. The 2.4 readers of this blog are encouraged to share others. And I haven’t even mentioned the time that I screamed at the president and told her that if she was not going to allow a gay and lesbian student group to get funding, then she should put on the front of the admissions materials in bold letters “WE DO NOT ADMIT GAY AND LESBIAN STUDENTS!” Oh, and there was the year I refused to go to faculty or committee meetings to prove that the dean held no one accountable for anything. (I was right because I wasn’t held accountable for that.) Oh, and there was the time when they refused to recognize Martin Luther King Day (this is a liberal arts college in MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA), so on the first day of spring semester I picketed the front gates of the college with a sign that read “Remember the Dream.” They recognized it the next year. Oh, and there was the time . . .

Now Parochial College is essentially a Bible college with football, and they are thriving. I pull in to Cloverdale in the afternoon, stunned by the heat and humidity, and wander among the ghosts. I try to get into the building where my ex-wife who is now married to my ex-friend has her (and his) office. I wouldn’t mind seeing them at all. Since she left, my life has been a sacred journey, and I wish her (and him) well. But the building  is locked up. I walk down to the main campus and see first of all that they have instituted a recommendation I made nearly five years ago to put gates around the circle of the main building and make it a pedestrian way. I go up to my old office, featured in the skywriting scene in Big Fish, and wonder who that person was who worked here. I see my ugly yellow couch now in the hallway. I wander over to my other office, where I lived when I left the other wife because I had nowhere else to go, just me and my dog and my books. Then I do the mythical journey, which was a tour of the campus through the lens of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell. I go to Massey Hall where St. Mary and I read poetry together, and there is nothing there but a volleyball pit. They’ve torn it down, which seems right.

I’ve seen only two people I know on this walk: the publicity person who recognizes me immediately and welcomes me warmly, and the new president who looks at me a long time trying to place me before he finally says “How yew dewin?” My god, why do we imagine that we are the same person from place to place. He shouldn’t be able to place me. I can’t even place me. The Aristaeus who was here was not Aristaeus. He was an arrogant, glorious, punk, and I am glad he is gone. Still, he is with me in a ghostly way. Like Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My god, who was this guy? Oh, and there was the time I told a class that the only way to interpret the Book of Job was to see God as a son of a bitch.

Brian bails on Nick and me for dinner, despite beer, El Rey, and Cuban cigars I have bought in NOLA for us to smoke. I meet Nick alone, and he doesn’t apologize for dislocating my finger in Buddhist Basketball, but he does something far better. He tells me that as he struggles with his student loans and taking care of his family, he feels like his Parochial College education was worthless except for mine and a couple of other classes. He makes a point to tell me how he uses what he learned in my classes even now as a youth minister, forcing his charges to question what they have been told and inspiring them to find their own answers. I am so moved that I cannot speak, which is fine because Nick carries the conversation for us. Maybe this ghost of Aristaeus wasn’t a complete jerk. Maybe I would have even liked the son of a bitch.

I ate crawfish and bread pudding every night in the French Quarter and felt like the decadent soul that New Orleans brings out. Beyond food, however, I was pretty tame. Even with the food, I was pretty tame, as obesity became a more prominent feature of the crowds. My great excitement was walking in the city. To counter my intake of actual food instead of fruits and nuts, I decided to discover a New Orleans hike that would have me burning the calories I was putting into my body. Audubon Park seemed like it was worth a look, and it was almost five miles from the Quarter. I got up in the morning, had a banana, and took off down Baronne at a healthy pace. It was warm but not too hot yet, though the day certainly promised to be a wet scorcher. As I often do, I found myself strong and content. Breathing deeply and walking quickly was its own mediation, and I considered my good fortune. No one I know gets to do this: wander countries and cities at his own pace, looking for mystery, magic, and étoufée.

I kept cutting south and west to make my way to the park, then I suddenly turned right on St. Charles Avenue. It was completely by accident, and I had been away from NOLA for so long, I had forgotten about one of its most famous streets. Now I was really moving, nearly running and almost keeping up with the trolleys that ran along the median. Decadent houses blended in with the quotidian and the capitalistic as I made my west on the avenue.

Loyola appeared on my right, then Tulane, and I turned into the latter for a rest and a smoothie since Audubon Park was across the avenue from Tulane. I made my way to the student center and found myself in the midst of a summer orientation for new students. Parents were there looking frustrated or anxious. New freshmen were there looking frustrated at their parents and anxious to leave them but also fearful of what may lie ahead. I ordered a smoothie and sat among them like Humbert Humbert surveying the scene.

Audubon Park was oak trees hung with Spanish moss—then a golf course! I stopped my walk, uninterested in watching putting. Then it was back to my hotel where I was greeted with “How was your walk Mr. Aristaeus?” I did this walk twice for a total of twenty miles over the four days I was in the Crescent City. I was, without a doubt, back in the South.

I wandered the French Quarter my second night looking for a good dinner. I wanted crawfish étouffée and bread pudding. I considered sticking to my diet of dried fruits and granola, but I didn’t know when I would be back to NOLA, and you sure couldn’t get crawfish and bread pudding worth a damn in SoCal. For the next few days, I was going to eat NOLA style. I wandered a long time before I finally found Ralph and Kacoo’s near Jackson Square.

There were only a few people in the main dining room on a Monday night, but the private room was packed. Beatrice was my server, and I told her that the Italian poet Dante had a Beatrice, and she was the love of his life. She smiled nicely, and I said “Are you the love of someone’s life?” Without hesitation, she said, “Yes I am.” I told her I wasn’t surprised. I ordered an Abita Beer and looked at the menu to find something called the Crawfish Quartet: fried crawfish, crawfish balls, crawfish potatoes, and crawfish étouffée. I couldn’t have been happier and ordered it.

I was sitting by the entrance to the private dining room and by an empty stage. On the stage was a small boy of about three or four. He had a number of cars lined up on the stage and was having a great time driving them around and parking them while his family dined at a nearby table. I sat back to survey the scene, and my foot hit something. I looked down and picked up a red truck like the models the boy was playing with. Figuring that it was his and had inadvertently rolled under my table, I picked it up and took it to the stage, where I placed it at the end of his row of parked cars. He looked up at me like I was a god and stared at me all the way back to my table. Beatrice came back with the crawfish and said “You carry small cars around with you to give to little boys?” I laughed and said “No, it was under my seat. I figured it was his.” Another waiter walked by, and the little boy showed him the car. He looked at me and said “You keep little cars with you to give to boys?” A little more defensively now I said, “No, man, it was on the floor. I thought it was his.” Then the boy’s father came over to my table and sat down. “That was very nice of you,” he said, “but we’ll make sure you get your car back before we leave.” This was getting ridiculous. “Really, it was here under the table, and I thought it must have been his, so he should keep it. ” The mother and friends were looking at me, so I kept talking to the father. They were on vacation from Albuquerque and were proud of Kayden who made friends everywhere.

After his father returned to his table, and I began digging into four kinds of crawfish, Kayden came to my table to play cars. We rolled the red truck around, laughed, and set up an obstacle course made of salt and pepper shakers, ketchup, and Tabasco Sauce. We had an amazing time, and the crawfish was incredible. So was the bread pudding that came after. Tomorrow I would find a long city hike, like I did in Austin, but tonight was about crawfish and cars. Kayden’s father came back over and asked if he could take our photo for Kayden’s “memory book.” I picked Kayden up and put him on my lap, and we both held the red truck as his father took our photo. Somewhere else far into the future, Kayden will take a look at ancient digital photos through his computer glasses, and there he will see himself with a solitary traveler with no name. They both will be holding a red truck and smiling.