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I hear the tiler on the second floor, Miguel from Colombia, doing his thing while his non-speaking apprentice cuts through tile on the outside lawn with a shrieker machine, annoying, I am sure, to the unknown neighbors. The neighbor to our left is a psychiatrist and his wife, a nurse; he works at a local university. He rents. As I type on these annoying chiclets, I feel fatigue. There is great news about my son which I’ll save for a better moment — he went out and hired a cast, got talented people about him including an Indie moviemaker and made a short documentary for the grand sum of $500. I am impressed but not surprised, elated for him and how he has broken through the matrix into his own reality. He is flying emotionally because he networked, advertised, organized and assembled a troupe of players and technicians as well as artists and made it happen. He is now an artistic doer! All this joy on the eve of Rochelle’s death, 10 years ago. Time flies as we die with it.

Two months ago Jane and I acted not on a whim but on strong feelings that Jane’s family was more than off the wall but at times vicious and that my ex was not only paranoid but also psychotic in that she was inventing situations. We investigated Nevada as best we could and made it happen. It has been a whirlwind adventure and there must be something to it because the street leading into our enclave is called Whirlwind Terrace. I know full well that months will pass before some semblance of regularity will take on shape and substance; meanwhile, I work on engaging other aspects of life,  reading when I can, shopping, blogging, carping, kibitzing, being annoying, laughing, being more than annoying and being anxious and worrying, all the delectable aspects of being neurotic. Just note: neurotics build castles in the sky and psychotics live in them.

Although not having a landline phone installed as yet, we use our cell. I am enjoying the temporary stay off the grid. I don’t wear a watch — never did like the control of time. The lack of communication is just fine and the TV is not up as yet which is also just fine and what is really fine is my using Jane’s laptop to delete all those emails I thought were critical — Thoreau: “Simplify! Simplify!” We are afloat in Las Vegas — no contacts of substance as yet, no real sense of the place, no social glue, except for one brunch we attended with Holocaust survivors. One is in contact with me. I gave a short and spontaneous talk and engaged them, several asking me questions about how to write their own stories. I would like to teach creative writing with a group such as this one, but we will see. 

I am just too tired to go on. So I end here.

I am writing this lament lying on a mattress 6 inches off the floor. I am typing on Jane’s laptop with its chiclet keys which suck. The Gates gadjet rests on a Casablanca ceiling fan box, the fan itself, recently installed, is blowing air about my buttocks. Things have not gone well. The paint job was poorly done and confrontation is around the corner; the newly laid carpeting was defective and has to be removed at no cost to us except we had to invest more to get better. Because of these delays, our furniture lies crated in our garage. Consequently we are sleeping on the floor, have no real dining table to eat at and are thoroughly stressed and inconvenienced. I am in a passive mode, realizing that shit happens and that people fuck you out of stupidity, seeking short cuts, negligence and lumbering imbecilities. One handyman we dismissed early because he was as communicative as Lon Chaney Jr during full moon. I realize full well that I cannot count upon the kindness of strangers.

We are encountering hard times and dealing at moments with bad luck, agonizing accidents and diminished human beings. I read a book written by a Holocaust survivor I met at a brunch last Sunday. We exchanged books. After reading it, I have no real complaints. I am not starved, I am not whipped nor have I had a rubber truncheon tattoo my body. I did not experience a young baby grabbed by its chubby legs and whipped against a railcar wheel, its brains splattered about. No, I will not complain but simply lament these shitty adversities and slosh through the dreck with fortitude.

Jane and I are made of sterner stuff. Between her mastectomy and rearing by a demented Scarlett O’Hara mother who smokes cheroots and thinks she is Miss Kitty, Gunsmoke’s great whore, and my trail of tears, we will make it. As I think about it perhaps I may get off on all this misery, a kinky secondary gain. It is all so tiring, wearisome and frustrating.

We try to get away psychologically from all this mess by gambling at the slots; we seek out different restaurants — many good ones at that. We shop for household items and in so doing pleasure ourselves on buying for our home, for we are quite taken with this well-maintained community. We notice little things such as showing ID whenever we use a charge card — Las Vegas is the king city for identity theft; Jane observes how too much of supermarket shopping is self-service. I observe that Vegas seems to be growing out of some desert embryo, for the desert and the acute mountain peaks seem disturbed by these invading ants. Vegas seems new to me and in continuing development. Again the species tears up the land. No one belongs in Vegas. It is a violation. Rightfully so, the Native American realizes how diminished we are.

The temperature a few days ago was 108. At times this Jew and Jack Mormon are about in the noonday sun. I am always aware of it but I am inured to it; out west it is a sign of friendliness to offer bottled water to customers, workers and those potential folk who will ultimately end up fucking you. The heat is draining and you have to keep gurgling water to keep one’s senses clear.

When this aging old fart with the libido of a satyr on steroids cuddles fetally next to Jane, all is well. Refreshingly resilient with a grand sense of humor which can contain the Hebraic darknesses I own, with an openness and willingness to think better of others, Jane and I are a hilarious team — Mutt and Jeffing our way through life. Jane never had the experience of buying cookies in a Jewish bakery. She reminds me that growing up cookies meant Oreos and Lorna Doones, not the buttery, nutty, and chewy delicacies I knew as a child. Recently at a gathering of Holocaust survivors, Jane sampled real Jewish food. It is not in her experience to buy cookies by the pound, freshly made. So, I found the same bakery for this event and we devoured half a pound of manna. That last sentence sums up what a Jewish husband — or any mensch should do. To care for another is to love.

I love my girl.

Jane is in a giddy or happy mood today as she is finishing off packing last minute items before we move next week. We will load her van with the necessaries of a vital trip — cpu, monitor, printer, essential files, cameras, lighting fixtures taken down only to be put up again, the GPS, “Trixie,” my meds and a sling brief case in which resides my next book in rough draft, “Working Through the Holocaust.” We don’t have much furniture but only critical pieces and art work and boxes of Jane’s books, for I am beginning to realize more and more as I dwell deeper in love with her that she is extremely intelligent and very good natured. I am fortunate to have found her late in life. She complements the jagged sides of me with softer clouds of her nature for she is a rarity, a kind individual.

I just finished taking lab tests to check for cholesterol and whether or not my hyperlycemia has evolved into diabetes — it has not and I have 128 for a cholesterol count which is terrific. So, I have escaped the guillotine once more. Medically I am sound but I do have to watch my diet and exercise, so what else is new at 68? Am I 68? Where was I? I live each day as if it were my last without screaming or shouting or thumping upon the floor. I have thought that living one’s life with vigilance and attention does not mean that Pluto veers off course. I just have the intent to enjoy doing whatever humdrum things that come my way. On the horizon is a new edition of the Tetralogy and a new book of short stories which may very well be the best I have done. I continue to write for in writing I determine who I am as I chanel and canalize my interior selves into a stirring and roiling Mississippi. I am feeling joyous about curbing my enthusiasm which is a Jewish characteristic, I feel. I “Larry David” my existence. I engage existence in dialogue and question, for I have been so conditioned. Only last night as I examined the lint of the day within my mind I realized that I speak to myself in the same tones I do when I verbalize. But it is more than that. I wondered, perhaps you do, what is that voice that goes over things in mind, that perseverates, that feels outrage, or mutters curses. What a curious phenomenon to talk to one self in dialogue, in association, choosing, opting, making choices, deciding, reflecting, musing and self-muttering. This ability we all have, some exercising it more or less than others, is something to behold — or feel — or experience, is it not, reader? We talk internally to ourselves. Is there a creature on this planet who operates in such a way other than homo sapiens? We may never know. And can we, or I, take this process and make it go further, improve upon it, or grasp it better so that it evolves into other ways of thingking or consciousness. While in bed last night I conversed with myself and the whole operation of it was quite splendid. I will observe and attend to it more and report back to you at a later time. Don’t dismiss it as naivete or a cliche, for there is not a human being alive who has seen his heart or brain and yet we know these organs run for us? We are in many instances controlled organically so that consciousness may exist yet we have no control over so many things in our lives? And what should we learn from that?

The mist is clearing as I write. The moving transition to Nevada is being organized by Jane and I down to Jane’s working on graph paper to locate what furniture goes into what room. It helps. The paint job is done yet unseen, the carpeting will be laid Monday and we will have to wait until mid-week to actually see all this, counting upon strangers to make our home pleasant. Appliances come later in the week, Cox cable, and the whole rigarmarole of making entry into a new adventure. We are ordering things, at least I am, on the internet –a fireplace screen, a standing bedroom mirror — to placate my anxiety and to give me comfort. I have always had a rich man’s taste and a poor man’s pockets, but that can lead to creative choosing, working delay to one’s end and the magnificence of immediate gratification. If I had to choose between barbecuing, going to a football game, riding a Harley or deep sea fishing, I would choose to buy  a print, an oil, a book, an antique or a fine piece of jewelry for Jane. I’ve always been attracted to art since I was mesmerized in art classes while in college,  learning the differences between Doric, Corinthian and Ionic columns. The Greeks said it first and said it best. When you look at a Doric capital you see the weight of the whole universe resting peacefully on that thrust of marble in eternal repose. No Ford Ranger for me. I have been smittened.

Give me the most precious thing of all — time, give me writing utensils — I adore fountain pens, give me time to think and reflect, give me Krishnamurti and Existential philosophy, give me art, or a beautiful hand made rug, give me a great movie, give me Conrad, Freud, and especially Kazantzakis, and I will not ask for much more in this world, other than bagels, bialies, a Charlotte Russe, Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, a sleek Duncan Yo Yo, a Raleigh 3-speed English racer, circa 1953, a good mitt, good packing snow, an American Flyer sled, any Lionel trains from the 50s, cold seltzer from a glass decanter, and an old-fashioned soda jerked cherry lime rickey (real limes, please).

Passively and aggressively as my nature is, I have flowed between both shores in my response to life. I dwell within and act out aggressively when that is disturbed. It is my nature and when I talk to myself late at night I examine it and all that I can observe, given the limited powers of my mind and the very idiosyncrasies of my existence. When I fantasize, I know that I would rather pass by an epiphany on the next street corner if I could enter a store and come to a philosophic understanding of my life, for meaning has always played a significant part in my existence. Call it a neurosis or characterological if you will, but meaning made me detest teaching and all that dreadful conditioning; it made me an enemy of all authority except that self-imposed upon one’s own self. Meaning gave me struggle and ardor and intent and ambition and all the qualities of the search; meaning gave me discontent which I rather cherish, for a contented person is a slob. And with that, I part.

Green Valley Ranch Hotel and Casino

I will need to sequester a small portion of my pension check for playing the slots as I enjoyed losing $20 here, $20 there. In fact, I found it kind of meditatively soothing as I won a little and then lost it, or bells went off and I hit a small “fortune” and then I lost it. Many a time I came close to winning a hundred or two hundred, but close is not good enough. I noticed that it was not the idea of winning so much that pleasantly placated me. It was something else. It was the chance that was alluring, not the winning necessarily. Around me, young and old, haggard and overweight, smoking cigars and cigarettes, focused intently, mesmerized by the designs on the spinning rollers. I just got the kick of spinning the top across the ground, having pulled the cord to give it momentum. It was the throw against fate and not the reward that appealed to me. I beamed at coming close at winning while others gyrated, spoke to the machine, moving their hands in demonstrable gestures to the gods of chance. 

Of course, what comes with playing is dreaming, of how money might be spent — on a dinner for one’s friends, on buying new carpeting, of decorating the new house, rarely of saving but of being a spendthrift. The dreaming compels the continuation of playing. The sirens of random chance, of good fortune, of winning are the susurrance within the casino. And as the 20 dollar bills are slipped into the serpent’s thin slot, as automatied sounds record its digestion and sounds cue you into beginning the game one has to mentally estimate how much one can avoid to lose. I noticed, obviously, that amount varies depending on how stimulated I felt — or how sparkling was the game with its ups and downs. So I managed to spend more than I needed to, leaving worrying about how much I could afford by the side. Ah, as the wit said, do not avoid temptation but enter it and be done with it. I concur. I felt rather free dipping into my money, believing in the illusion that I could replenish my wealth down the line. Well, yes and no, to that. What I can share is that I enjoyed myself without the stress to win but the excitement of cosmically watching as I lost money without a care in the world. Like sex, one should not struggle so hard in the giving but relent and allow oneself to take in.

I have made the environmental decision that I prefer trees and ornamentation to the hard surfaces of the desert lands.  The major highway (215) in Vegas strikes me as relatively new, but it is stark and barren. It has not been adorned with trees or shrubs. And in the saving of water, it is stark if not a stainless razor slash through the town, a Sweeney Todd cut. Yet the town is planning to make a man-made lake, so that on the one hand we have that old human attribute of rational duplicity, fooling ourselves on one hand and arguing with the other that this is a natural good to have. The split shows in the overbuilding of Vegas. After all, how many pedicure stores do you need or coffee shops? The jewels on the ring are the casino/hotels of the strip surrounded by cheaply cut smaller chips, of an inpure quality. It is a sad condemnation I feel, for this is what human beings do to their surroundings. We despoil and at the same time raise high great buildings and wonders. From a lousy bagel at a lousy Einstein’s to a great steak at Hanks, from a terrific giro at the Greek Bistro to a terrible omelet at the Sunset Casino hotel, from the beautifully manicured lawns and well-attended lanes and streets of Green Valley Ranch as well as the thoughfully planned out District, to the disarray of neighboring communities, chocked full of strip malls, perseverating the same stores over and over until one feels like throwing up at a curb.

I cannot make acute observations about the inhabitants for they strike me as polyglot, migrational, and in that is the hope that they may be more liberal in their views. The mix is appealing to my eye. It doesn’t take too long for my conditioned self to evaluate and record what kind of men and women are attractive to my social sense. We all, I know I do, eventually become automatic in our instantaneously sense of what we find pleasing and admirable and what we feel bigoted and prejudiced against. So  I will announce here that I find narrowness abhorrent, flip flops disgusting, Midwest hairdos bizarre bird nests, high heels a great invention for the male eye — it can save a woman’s appearance and restore her to some kind of attractiveness; mysteriously annoyed by elderly, very elderly, men and women with iv tubing under their noses because they have emphysema, with their little cannisters of oxygen affixed to their walkers, grotesquely playing at the slots; good-looking women slathering up their arms with tattoos as if the wives of Queeg-Queeg; the cheeky breasts of cocktail servers trying to cut out a living for themselves, these inflated mounds a  kind of sexual come on — ah, the species, for it still works. And there is more to add.

I like men and women of class, however you wish to determine that; eating outdoors in a warming breeze; elated by well designed furniture in an upscale store in The District; I dislike families or couples who eat their luxurious meals in upscale restaurants and rarely speak to one another or behave as if this is isn’t enjoyment of a kind. So utilitarian. I like to kibbitz and I do that with servers (waiters?), believing that joviality makes the meal taste better and that the waiter (!) does his work at a higher level if he is engaged. What was interesting to observe here in Vegas and elsewhere in my experience, is that the servers are not used to this. So after 15 to 20 served meals, here is this wise-cracking Jew making jest. However, it takes seconds and they are with me on the slope, especially when I insist that they give the check to the couple at the other table who strike me as cosmetically ugly and unpleasant individuals. Unpleasant people should pay all restaurant checks, a personal rule of thumb.

In Vegas I sensed the old Matt well up as I felt that the decision to move was more than right; it returned me to life, that I could engage other human beings of similar interests or better still, individuals who sensed or believed or simply knew that one must do more than live life, whatever that is, but to delight in the varieties of experience. I got it: you are a teenager, you shower in the late afternoon on a July day, throw on a clean shirt and jeans and smell how freshly laundered it is, slip into fresh socks, go down the elevator and that first cooling and caressing breeze of a late summer day arouses the cheap cologne you’ve put on, because you are going to the park to meet up with friends or to take another gander at that hottie that makes you have a woody.

When I look into the street across the way and the rest of this decrepit neighborhood, I realize the gross differences between the two realities I have experienced as of late — here I feel kind of dirty and beaten down by the “neighbors” and the shabbiness of the blocks. In Vegas I felt returned to life, and I cannot wait to leave this palpable lower class mentality behind me. I associate to teaching in a ghetto school about 45 years ago and how demoralizing it was for me, a kind of death in life. I knew that if I didn’t get out I would be eventually worn down to a nub. And I did move away and taught in a better school system. It is akin to knowing in your heart of hearts that you know better, deserve better.

In the three years I’ve been here I’ve watched the neighborhood become seedier and my house plummet grossly in value. Struggling, Jane and I have cashed in all our chips and charged our cards to manage a respectful down payment in order to sustain our mental well-being, and we have been successful at it and we are grateful to leave. I could not sell my house but I did rent it out to an elderly couple for a 5 year lease which in itself is remarkable. I dream of selling the house for it is a psychologogical drag on my mind, like resistant feces on one’s sole. I want to be rid of this home for it is a drag on me but I will get a depreciation write-off on taxes. I must give up control of a house I spent so lavishly on to bring it up to snuff. In New York one lives side by side with all kinds of differences, and one makes do with one’s apartment, condo or house, and one’s idiosyncratic neighbbors.  For some reason out here the decay, inner and outer, is vastly more apparent in the severe sunlight of the Southwest. In New York shadows conceal both wealth and misery, it is chiaroscuro. I will feel better when I am with my own kind, leaving that up to your conjecture. I may not have the money but I know class when I see it or when I exercise it. Tucson and its surrounding burbs has no class, it is a cow town forever. I am out of here! I accept the mistakes I have made but I have rectified them as well.

I was selling off furniture in my house for a few months to gather monies. On one occasion a local resident who had migrated to Green Valley purchased a water fountain I had. Asking about our reasons for leaving, she offered up that she could not grasp our departure because Green Valley was “paradise.” I ask you: who is the real schmuck? In her mind she came here, spending her savings to buy into “paradise,” and how could she accept that she ended up in a cow’s asshole. What is unimaginable to me is very imaginable to her! It takes time to decondition oneself and that never ends. Taste like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. However, given all the the particulars, she is a deluded woman. Much like telling a religious individual that religion in itself has killed more human beings than in all the wars since recorded history. It cannot be taken in and so it is dispensed with. So, I slink away looking for a newer horizon, the game is gone, the sheep farmers are fencing in the land, the towns are bringing sin and vice.

I go to “hide out” in the land of Canaan. I will dwell among similar kinds, share similar values, conditioned as I am. Blind as we all are. In my blindness, I will write a little, live a little, make merry, make a whole lot of mistakes once again, and so on. I like the wisdom in that old adage that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Who needs two eyes? I see a better way, a better truth and I went for it and apparently I will live it out.

Leaving in our car, it took us 7 hours to arrive in Henderson which lies in a valley. Having not traveled extensively in the Southwest I was taken by the harsh yet menacingly beautiful scarps of land, the desolation, the mountainous maw of it all, quite breathtaking, quite severe in places. The flatness of the terrain combined with the mountains and the barrenness lend it an air of harshness and toughness, real pioneer country. For stretches we saw nothing except  one or two homes or a small ranch and passed through a park of Joshua Trees which I am sure have a biblical backstory, for one could crucify a human being on its thorns. It was an apt tree for the clime and one could almost hear Jehovah telling Abraham to go out from here. In commentaries it is the first instance in which a god tells his people to leave from whence they lived. Translated, Hebrew means “dusty ones.” I stray.

The land has its beauty and I appreciated its flintiness and steeliness.

I will ramble with impressions and associations from here on in, for we spent a week closing on our house, which involves mind-numbing rules and regulations because of the new Patriot Act; the lending whores are now admittedly anally-oriented, for one must give evidence, regardless of one’s credit standing, of the legitimacy of monies in one’s accounts — decidedly McCarthyesque; playing at a local casino and joyously losing my money; eating at really superior local restaurants, to wit, Hank’s was a remarkable steakhouse restaurant within the Green Valley Ranch Resort that serves terrific steaks (would you like it medium plus?) and splendid salads; this particular casino has a wonderful breakfast place that served its own cured bacon in long strips and went so far as to have on its menu kosher salami and eggs, a specialized New York taste that is cholesterol ridden but must be sampled at least once in a person’s life. Las Vegas equals food. Imagine a cuisine and it is there to be had.

As I just said, food is paramount and of a high order. Vegas is a city geared to pleasure as well as sin. It promises satiety and it achieves that. As you drive the avenues and streets, one sees store after store in repetition of the same products, to wit, nail stores and ice cream stores and coffee bistros; it is almost like traveling with Anthony Bourdain through one of his hedonistic trips through Singapore or Hong Kong. It is overbuilt and they are adding to that. Sadly, there is a visual glut as signs bombard the senses. The Sunset Station casino/hotel takes up a city block (reminiscent of the hotel in The Shining ) and its interior is vast, although beginning to reveal a seediness to it. The food within its bowels is not good, alas,  but what it gives is service compounded upon service; it is all a service economy in Vegas. If you want your sheets coated with aphrodisiac, just ask. At night, although we had no time to go to the Strip, this one casino’s neon sign, perhaps a 100 to 150 feet high, stood out like some Easter island monument. One can feel immobilized by its neon stare. I’ve been on the Strip and nightime is almost daytime. In New York City the streets hold the darkness and the neon flashes above; in Vegas the streets glow, at least in my imagination. Las Vegas is New York City in its appetites, its gluttony, its capacity to fulfill needs and arouse one’s senses, except the Southwest is much cleaner. One may argue that littering in Vegas may make you feel offended, deeply so.

Our middle class community is gated with no parking on the streets which are a pleasure to walk and ride through. It has a gated pool, small and intimate, just to our liking. What sold Jane on it, for she came out to look at the home without me, was what is called The District, an area within this amalgam of different priced planned communities. What I will describe now is hard to put in words but gave me a real sense of joy as I walked the shaded streets — pine, maple and the manicured lawns all paid for by HOA fees, a western phenomenon. The District is a block or two long capped on one end by the Green Valley Ranch Resort, a casino with premium restaurants and handsomely appointed within. The streets flowing from the casino in this Greenwich Village-like setting are cobbled and the street trees festively adorned with white bulbs, making night-time alive. Upscale stores are across the way from one another, and benches and trees are placed about to gather, for at night they run all kinds of events for young and old — it is a kind of daily Mardi Gras. Quite striking, quite delightful to my eyes, I felt I was mixing with sharp people who dressed sharply –flashily outlandish– but with flair and aplomb. The stores stay open very late to accommodate the strollers and Vegas is 24/7 in any case.

As you near the end of The District, it is capped with a carousel for young children and a park that shows films for kids of all ages under the stars and far out one can see the Strip all lit up and I saw a sign that announced that Hyatt will be putting up a new hotel nearby. I could live at my home, walk 3 miles or so and be in an adult fairy land. It is not a geriatric Disneyland; it has all types, all shapes, all kinds of wealth, but generally classy which I like. In short, I was quite taken with the concept, for it is a concept in terms of how people should conclave and gather in pleasurable ways. At first curious about the apartments (?) above the stores I soon realized they were lofts; one can only imagine the prices. So here you have a Southwest concept of what I experienced in New York. One leaves one’s apartment or loft and is pushed right into the merry delight and rush of what only an urban world can do for one’s psyche — in Nevada all this is sweetened by warming temperatures, alfresco dining and strolling. I am a pig in shit.

We found our way around Henderson with a GPS, a woman’s voice telling us to make a right or left, or ARRIVING AT YOUR DESTINATION. We called her Trixie and often overruled her “wisdom” when our eyeballs told us differently and when our human common sense said no, that is wrong, fuck you, Trixie. Yes, we could have done it with maps but the GPS is fun and helpful but like Windows not completely well thought out. Jane comes from a generation one or two decades after mine so she has a facility for some of this technology and I do not feel threatened as a man to have her navigate, a ridiculous position to take in any case. So we more than managed until we felt our way about the streets and imprinted this data into our noggins. How shall I say it? I can play stoopball, boxball, marbles, curveball, and “Chinese.” I am retro. And you? I played in the streets and you play within doors. I’ll live with what I know as long as I am not judged, he says defensively. I actually, for the first time, perhaps in a decade or two, saw two teenagers playing  “catch.” How rare! All this in the District.

In the week we had, Jane and I closed on the house and I signed over 60 documents or so to finish that (Dickens would have had a field day skewering the system); got a painter for the house, a carpet salesman for all 1920 feet, a handyman who had a lumbering, obtuse way to him (he worries me), encountering all kinds of service people that were either recommended to us or we picked out of thin air which is not comforting. Given my darkened sense of humanity, I had to work on being more trustful which I was while holding my nose expecting mistreatment or blunders. People come from all over– Mark, the carpet man, came from Brooklyn and had recovered from a cancerous lymphoma, grateful to have survived and enjoying each day; he was very competent at what he did and we spoke the argot of “Brooklynese” and the thinking process that involves. Debbie, the blinds person, came from Virginia and took a while to take in my rapid pace, odd sense of humor; Mark enjoyed the joke about Helen Keller who fell into a terrifying hole in her backyard, and while so frightened beyond reason she screamed her hands off — this is the pitter patter I offer. Some Midwest folk are put off by my perverted Talmudic skill of asking questions at a rapid pace as if this was a sign of rudeness or indifference to their more casual ways of thinking, as if fast is bad, or quick is threatening. Fuck them, I tell myself. Questions good. Midwest not good, thump thump.

Doubtless I will generate more associations down the line, but Vegas looks like a reasonably good fit – a rich cosmopolitan variety here, ethnic variety as well, young and old, decrepit and vigorous, there is life on Mars unlike here in Green Valley where bed check is called every 4 hours. Las Vegas has a major university, art galleries, often in the hotels themselves (The Bellagio, for one), theater and cinema, bookstores and bagels and the Times as well as the tawdriness of having cocktail waitresses from ages 20 to 40 in the casinos, wearing the same black sheath dresses with cleavage to show their puppies, all demanded, of course, by their bosses, for this is a city to tease and cocktease — even the whores are tarted up so they appear attractive — for a moment, sleazy ten seconds later.

I will not touch upon the siren call of the different slot machines and how I succumbed. Unlike Odysseus, no one tied me to the mast. To be continued. We move in about 24 June. And that little horror will take about 6 months to adjust to.

Adieu!

I cannot remember the title of the book by R.D. Laings, a well-known psychiatrist of the Sixties. It may have been called “Knots,” for that matter. What I dimly retain of the book was a series of verbal knots he presented to the reader, in verse, mind you, rather convoluted and brilliant I must say, just like knots. I associated to a knot or knots while musing about this blog and the issue of control.  I will just blather from here on in. Control is a kind of rigid inhibition, I imagine. It is Custer’s last stand. One goes down fighting rather than giving up control. It is the Great Wall of China (Kafka wrote a story about that) in that all walls keep in as well as keep out. Control for me is the fear of invasion, so dark and desperate that one feels he or she will be swallowed up, incorporated into some dark abyss of the world — or the other. I imagine doctors walk the walls in defense for they cannot abide a loss of control — death.

Perhaps, metaphorically, human beings create walls and install controls because we are corporeal entities walking through and into this world. What is outside our skin? Or, better still, what inner labyrinths do we have that equalize the pressure(s) of the outside and the inside. It may be argued that although we are individual units we are really part and parcel of the “out there.” All is flow, all is flux.  I suppose, I guess and I imagine that we create controls in what cognizance we own or are given as human beings as a way of differentiating ourselves, of differentiating out. If that is so, some controls define us as individuals. I don’t feel lost at this point, only curious. I will try to concretize.

Dealing with the purchase of buying this new house in Nevada we have complied with all kinds of requests, some remarkably anal and quite ridiculous. Only yesterday we were informed that essentially the house is ours — the banker is on track with us, et al — but that the title company has not delivered the “Docs” to move into closing; that we are six behind; in short, delay again. What has been churning within me is that poor management, poor and incompetent workers, poor everything is holding up everything for no good reason; that the conjunction of several “forces” are retarding the process and that as the buyer I am being kept on hold, on the back burner while idiocies flow.  Clearly it is like Hitler as the sole cause of the Holocaust; too simple. He did not befoul himself with the implementation of his “ideas.” I can go back into time and I will not discover who is holding up simple processing of a mortgage; in fact, I am not buying a house, I am, apparently, seemingly, buying a mortgage. And so controlling this imposition upon me seems beyond my grasp. I could cancel the whole thing, ask for my deposit back — that’ll show the bastards; I could discover one knucklehead along the chain of incompetency and lose my not inconsiderable temper; I could choose not to push the river and allow all time and space to marinade a bit more. I could choose not to act, not to do, to observe, to cede all control, to surrender, to be spiritually oblivious to what is really a minor iota in the flux of life. I could give up all control. I could go out and merrily exercise today in the fitness room or fritter away the day.

What I might do is what I often shared with clients over the years when they faced all kinds of personal hurdles or difficulties in decision-making. I offered an image. One is on a beach and we all know that water comes up at different places along the beach. Sometimes the water reaches your feet and stops; sometimes it passes your feet and runs on. And at times water stops short of your toes. The client easily grasped that. I offered a thought or proposition based on this simple observation. Perhaps life is like that. That is, life does not come up to us like a straight and horizontal line all along the beach. Life is fractured, splintered, stumped, and spastic as well as spasmodic. So, the client proffered, what are you trying to get at? What I am getting at is that we deal with what we have before us first, not being shattered by all the other spurts and sprints of life coming at us. We don’t become paralyzed.  In other words, we don’t wait for the toast to pop. We crack open the eggs, get the milk and butter from the fridge, take our morning meds and so on. We don’t stare at the toast and wait for its completion. We are not fixated, as we often are when faced with a hardship or a difficulty. In short, I will play a game. I will shift focus and move away from a control issue which beckons me to lose it, rage and do something immature and convulsive. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Control is there. I am being controlled by some foreign substance, and I don’t like it. I want to choose for me in ways that I am not doubly devoured, once by them, once by myself. The controllers love it when you implode.

And I not above holding someone’s feet to the fire if they are impeding a just response. It comes down to the self knot. I want something. I can’t get it. The person or entity is beyond my grasp — in Nevada; there is no corporeal corporate throat to rattle. All feelings, all control really is in me. However, one has to measure how much shit one can take — ah, there’s the rub. So I must go interiorly, ask myself how many inner frences have to be breeched before I respond in measured ways; or, how much control will I allow to be exerted upon myself by others — or, even by myself. In all this the serendipitous result is one gets to know a little bit more about one’s self.  Well, I don’t like control. And control is all about us, isn’t it? I question authority which unnerves others. I question myself which is unnerving as well. Within me is a tethered child who despises all the controls that were imposed upon him while growing up. Give me a shears and watch as I go about cutting through these cords. Judd Hirsch as the very humane psychiatrist in Ordinary People tells his client who wonders aloud why he need come twice a week that “control is a bitch.” I loved that line, still do. I can live without controls much less controlling others in very subtle ways — just check out your relationships for examples. It is frightening to be free, to be free of controls. The Hannitys, Cheneys and Roves of this world give it away if we just look as if for the very first time. They are pinioned to themselves by controls, static and inflexible inhibitions and lack the humanity or flexibility of well-rounded humane individuals. They are the end result of imposed and self-imposed conditioning — religious training, rearing, et al. They are  knots, a macrame of neuroticisms, causes, “ideas,” and religious injunctions, whatever.

I am even writing this blog, as is my wont as a writer, to subliminate my not inconsiderable anger at being controlled by what are apparently CIRCUMSTANCES. Dammit, I can’t even get the names of people to confront. My own impatience compounds control into an unsavory personal brew within me. When impatience and control come together, historically I have combusted in this way or that. Age brings modulation unless you are a human twinkie, which many of us are. So I am with modulation.  I am trying to see, a la Krishnamurti what this whole issue is for me. Wouldn’t it be loverly that I lose the house because of my anger but gain greater insight into who I am? Now that is someting to ponder!  I’d take the insight, he bravely barks back.

(Bullshit! False bravado. What I am crying out, like the child in me,  is that I want both — insight and a house. Crybaby!)

We are waiting, Jane and I, to hear final word about the closing. Hopefully, it will be in the first week of June. We are faced with obstacles because of the financial paranoid state this country is in. And I find it hard to endure fools or underwriters who assume that you are trailer trash or corrupt, unlike them! Everyone is livid about the state of affairs but if you raise your voice they are not used to it, and I raise my voice at times because I do not accept the role of victim. I will comply but don’t blame me if my compliance leads to other misadventures that have nothing to do with me. Meanwhile, the garage is loaded with cartons for our move and Jane’s piano rests in the living room, its legs off, like a giant latke.

During this waiting period, Jane and I go over in deep perseveration her relationship with her psychotic family. Finally separating out, she finds it hard but knows it in her gut how impaired her rearing was and how conditioned her siblings are with a mother who is dramatically disturbed. We are both preparing for another adventure in our lives, for the last 10 years have been pretty awful for both Jane and myself. I just want to knock out a few more books, travel, enjoy my son’s life journey and prepare (ha!) for the grim reaper. At this point I am in no mood for systems, Phil, Wayne and Deepak, the Oprahesque view of this world, this inane culture, the Hanittys, Roves and Cheneys of the world. Often when I watch TV I imagine what my take on the show might be if I lived in Peru or Bagdad or Sri Lanka; my take would be that America is obsessed with bling, ambition, competition and MORE. We are a gluttonous people. On HGTV, homes and gardens, et al, one show has a real estate agent and a decorator evaluate kitchens that  have been redone. The average renovation is about $50,000 in the U.S. In this case the renovations can range as high as $85,000. The skinny of all this is that the real estate agent evaluates the kitchen as if a potential buyer in the present market, applauding this, denigrating that. Marble granite tops are essential. The values expressed are appalling. Kitchens rated on the basis of what others might pay for them. The designer chirps in with color and cabinetry and offers what is in and what is out. The whole premise of the show is to have the families see what their efforts may have done to increase the value of their homes. It is all envy, following the herd, competitiveness and aggressive show and bombast. If I were a peruvian, I would leave my dwelling and smell the night air, free of all this shit.

I feel for parents who have to guide their children through this morass. Parenting may become as critical as being a pastor or being pasteurized. We will all muddle through, I suppose, but I am constructed unfortunately with that self-appointed task to say that there is an elephant in the room — does anyone see it? In fact, that is the task of a good shrink, teacher or parent. I most admire The Emperor’s Clothes! It is a reality story, not a fairy tale.

This will be an important week, for we find out if we are all through with the financial hagglings we’ve endured; what is the final amount of the mortgage; does my ex pay up on attorney fees? making preparations for a possible trip to Vegas for me to see a house I’ve never seen; tidying up details to get out of this dreadful neighborhood in which anomie reigns; to be rid of Jane’s maliciously cloying family; to feel that we are moving psychologically. I feel so encumbered by the drag of details that a kind of malaise has set in that I am struggling against. Things are on hold. An uncomfortable state of being but like Jujy Fruit, you finally get it past your teeth and down the gullet.

Farewell.

To quote Chesterton: “I am cultivating the faculty of patient expectancy.” In other words I am trying to deal with anxiety over the hassles that are occurring on getting out of this sealed tomb in the land of the dead. The moving men are here today to move Jane’s belongings into my garage so that we may leave as a couple in mid June. I have not seen the land of Canaan. Jane bought the house in Nevada after I searched homes in the area, a suburb of Vegas. She is quite the capable woman and I am relenting or giving up control to her which is all to the good since it is one of my major defenses and a wasteful one at that.

Yesterday I had dinner with my sister and her husband and it is hard to see her as 65 or me as almost 69. We celebrated her birthday and anniversary. She has had a hard life. I remember in the 40s when she was diapered on a bed. Sadly, she said to me at the table that she does not remember ever having a birthday cake. I hope that was not so but it probably was the truth, whatever that is when we deal with memories. She and my mother did not hit it off, in part because my mother put too many of her casino chips on her firstborn, me. It was a remark from out of the blue and thus very telling. I feel that these sadnesses we all have are just a condition of living imperfect lives as if there are perfect lives.

In the last few weeks Jane and her family have separated out completely; they are a group of grotesques, childish, narrow, low functioning, mean spirited and dimly aware of anything but themselves. Oh, just plain stupid. Get the drift? I am also that Jew that has taken Jane away from them. Here, at 51, the separation, on one level, is done. I wrote a blistering — savage — email to her sister after the family ganged up on her, diagnosing how I see all of them in harsh language; ideally I wish I had the chance to have said it in person. Jane is a fighter and we are both glad to be out of here, god-willing. In fact, I had urged Jane after a recent blow-up to go to Vegas for relief and to scout out a house as well. All impulsive, spontaneous and serendipitously splendid — look at where we are today.

At moments I feel drawn back to working on my new collection of short stories, but I do not pressure myself knowing full well that my unconscious is editing, emending and drafting new sentences and producing new ideas. i just channel my work. I would like to have 2 or 3 more works done before I plummet into that black hole. I feel I am as creative now as I ever was and with a facility I have that I never did have and with a style that is solely mine which I let Jane tell me about because it can become eely and repetitive as a writer. The new stories are free as I am allowing myself to be bizarre and fantastical; some stories are in the traditional mode and others are a kind of magical realism. I am having fun. I hope to come in at about 175 to 200 pages. I want to feel the thickness of that book in my hands; Jordan does the cover once more and the title is: “Working Through the Holocaust.” The stories deal with Holocaust deniers, Hitler’s underwear, Eva Braun and her sexual response to Der Fuhrer, and a caring Jew from the future visiting a concentration camp prisoner with dinner. My imagination is unleashed!

Until a truth commission is formed and all documents are laid bare about our response in the Bush administration after 9/11 and there is no whitewash but convictions as high and as low the totem pole of responsibility, this country will deserve to be damned as a democracy. I do not have faith in Obama. He is a politician. On our cultural scene which is as barren as an Arizonan desert, there are very few voices that speak to our moral response for what we have done these past 8 years. We are a lost people. Parenthetically, this is a depression, denial will get you no where, and capitalism has revealed itself as imperfect as any other system. Oh, what foolish trust we place in ideas, people and things.

Watch us as a culture with banks, mortgages, Wall Street, real estate sharks and you watch the repetition compulsion alive and well, twitching spasmodically in gay abandon. We will not learn much from all this except to tighten our sphincter muscles, for as Americans, as a culture, we are into bling; everything is temporary, an aberration, a wrinkle in time, and progress is ever ahead, a one-way street sign. Show Americans a vortex, an eddy and they shriek. I suppose that old saw that defines cynicism as the last refuge of an idealist might apply here — but not entirely. I am not an idealist, far be it. Can’t we get it into our heads that the Constitution was written by slave-holders? That historically presidents are generally a mediocre lot; that we are purveyors of poison as well as other nations; that when this nation makes a shit it stinks like every other nation; that we are not the democracy we think we are; that we lie and cheat and maim with the best of them. What is fascinating and scary about this democracy is that we have turned it into a Hollywood production. If you think that Ronald Reagan was a good or great president, you are as delusional as he was. In fact, he scripted his role. In fact, are you now scripting your own? After all, this democracy requires subliminally that one lives a role in a movie. “The Matrix” was a wonderful metaphor if you grasped what it was saying about all of us.

No more.

With my periscope I am seeing Cheney who Hobbes might have defined as “short, nasty and brutish,” Darth Vadering the TV shows, exhaling toxicity like some primal creature. We actually have a “debate” in this country, if you call it that, about what is torture, the equivalent of describing a chicken as if we don’t know what it is. It only confirms my belief that democracies are closet dictatorships unless held in check — oh, Jefferson! that government governs best which governs least. We find it unimaginable, citizens, that we can play the Nazi game — I was only following orders. Jessie Ventura expressed it well on Larry King, that dessicated man who reads index cards for a living, when he advocated that every person from the President down to the private who participated in torture be prosecuted. You and I will not see that, but it is a moral necessity. Hurrah for Jessie! We are such hypocrites that it is mind-numbing. We prosecute others and allow the fungal Bush and the crabbed-corpulent Cheney to walk free. At heart I am an anarchist and when I went to college and read about them and their philosophies they were laughed at. I revel now in the richness of their thinking, Goldman, Vanzetti, et al. This country reeks in shame at this point.

At this point let me quote from Richard Burton, no, not that constipated actor, but the world traveler and iconoclast of the Victorian period:

“Do what thy manhood bids thee do/ From none but self expect applause;/ He noblest lives and noblest dies/ Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.”

Good words for this shabby age.

I am writing now before I take off to see a doctor about getting scoped. Dreadful preparations for that, drinking a purgative water based brew that cleans you out so that a fantastic voyage can be taken by the gastro man. Last year he discovered a polyp or two and now he is back again to see if I have a coral reef somewhere; it is a do over just in case something else is afoot. They scoped Cheney recently and discovered a black tin box in which a heart mechanism was discovered.

The house has passed inspection and we need to attend to some minor repairs, all to the good. We are dealing with the Patriot Act in which all monies have to be vouched for in this paranoid period we live in. Banks, like the whores they are, made it too easy to buy housing a year or two back, remember! and now they are making it inordinately hard to process mortgage stuff even if your credit is excellent. And we have bailed them out. The moral and psychological mayhem going on in this country is like the ocean waves slapping 20 foot waves over a a 10 foot high pier. One has to be anal, hypervigilant to pass muster. And when Jane and I had to resubmit data on what we felt was an invasion into our privacy I associated to this event. Allow me.

In 1999 my daughter was in a horrific car accident. All her limbs were broken or splintered. She was put back together by terrific doctors in an Albany hospital. It took a week or two to stabilize her and then she had to be transported down to New York City for further operations and rehab. The doctors I dealt with informed me that she had improved for the ambulance trip down state, that she was ready to go but when I queried as to time and date they informed me that they did not have a release. In short, the doctors had done a great job but a bureaucrat was holding up the transfer for no apparent  good reason. The doctors were being water-boarded.

I was angry as hell. I got the honcho’s name and called and the “conversation” was simple: “I’ve been told by doctors that Brett is ready to be transferred to downstate and that you are holding it up. Can you tell me on what floor your office is? I want you to know that you should get some security down there because I am coming down right now and I am going to tear your fuckin’ heart out of your chest. You can believe that, you better believe that…”

Half an hour later the release was given. I didn’t realize in my fatherly rage that I could have been arrested.

As I have said for years to those who wish to listen, that if I were 6 feet tall I would have been jailed decades ago. The rage in me is considerable, but I manage it just as we manage reactors. I use words, thank god for sublimination.

So fuck the Patriot Act.

I get scoped next Monday. Of course, I hope all will be well. I am now on that slippery slope that leads to the eternal blackness, as Jane termed it some time back. Futile…resistance is futile…to beg, ask, plead, deal, bargain, barter, weep, pray, dicker for anyone up there, or down there, to extend life’s moments. I get the sense some times metaphorically that I am constantly shuffling cards before a hand is dealt and as I await the hand I am also involved with the shuffle, and I realize that I extend or take my time with the shuffling because I am deluded into believing that it may affect the hand. It may or it may not, but a hand is going to be dealt. And no use asking for a new deck, one can’t take time back or all the wasted years dribbling along the court to a basket that is not there. Take the fuckin hand and be done with it. Anxiety increases before the decision. Take the call and take a look at the hand. Do the best you can. Alas, few of us have mature people around us to show us how to live, or be brave, or courageous. It would have been nice in my case if I had a nurturer who would have explained trhe workings of life’s compass to me. I could manage the voyage, but I sure could have used help to find directionality. So be it.

This blog ends now.