23 July 1940, Brooklyn, New York. In 1939 Hollywood had one of its greatest years in movie-making, Gone With The Wind, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye, Mr. Chips etc. In 1941 Citizen Kane was released which would haunt me for decades after seeing it as a very young boy. In 1940 Welles was a mere twenty-five, and so was my father. England was at war with Nazi Germany and my mother capitulated to the old battle-ax Grandma Flora, my paternal grandmother, by calling me Mathias Balogh after her father who was a Hungarian cantor. It was a name that I detested for much of my life. I was born into ignorance, obtuseness and a few steps above poverty, lower middle class, living much of my life to come in housing projects in Brooklyn and Queens. I did not see carpeting in a living room until I was in my late teens. Kentile ruled.
Periodically over the years I have stopped to evaluate and assess my age as I creep toward death. [In my recent book of essays, This Mobius Strip of Ifs, I have an essay called “At 67.”] In a few weeks I will be 73 and I have no idea what that really means other than its designation. Tempus Fugit is palpable and I can do nothing but watch it pass. Curiously I associate to Miss Mallon’s class in 1952 in Manhattan Beach. I recall doing some counting, trying to figure out how old I would be in the year 2000. 60! I don’t remember much of that or why I did it, but I do recall doing it. I could interpret it now, but I write about it because after sixty -one years it still stays in my mind. All of life, if I may generalize, is about the associations we make. A few bars of music from the Sixties may make me tear up or recall an old flame. What would we be without associations? Less.
The last few years have been ones in which my body has “betrayed” me — cardio-vascular issues, one carotid artery gone, filled up with a cholesterol-like pate, one left, so I am “at risk” the so-called tactful doctor informed me – a chilling comment; a bone spur comes out of nowhere like a disruptive rent in the ground and I need to be hospitalized for a spinal procedure to ease the pain which is much like sciatica; the onset of macular degeneration and the need for a cataract operation within two years, the retina specialist informs me; the subtle diminishment of my hearing which I am attending to. All these are precursors to my passing. I have been put on notice. And what am I to do with this knowledge knowing full well that “knowledge is death.” I can’t do anything but wake up and go on. I am open to suggestions.
A family doctor who I enjoyed going to because we had interesting conversations about movies, art, et al once told me that the “simple” mosquito wants to live, it is in its DNA, as we swat at it; the point he made was imagine how much DNA is in each of us. I don’t want to live forever, absurd; I don’t want to live so I finish a few more books; I don’t want to live to see grandchildren or to get to Greece and Rome; I just want to live more profoundly and even if I were given that spare change by some non-religious, evolutionary quirk, a moment of that would suffice. You know life is something we get close to and it is hard to separate for the attachment is intense. But it is in separating out that we define who we are.
The cumulative avalanche effect of the maladies above strangely enough does not depress me. At some level I await it, for there is a non-suicidal part of me that accepts the decay and inevitability of my living no more. I believe when it does come on the paws of cat’s feet that I will fear the loss of control, a major defensive construct in my being, like the Great Wall of China. To give up control, to let go might be more of a task for me than dying itself. It is fear! I am not a brave man, bit of a coward I must say, so I have no idea how I will handle the onslaught. I have no time for heaven and hell, man-made idiocies. Sedated with propofol, yes, Michael Jackson’s drug of choice, for my spinal procedure, it was very effective for there is no lag or sluggishness after you come out of a procedure. I had no dreams. I had nothing. I awoke. If death is like that, how magnificent. I think the complete absence of self is not so terrifying if you don’t philosophize about it for that is life guessing about death, ridiculous, I must say.
Parts of my life are in disarray and will be like that to my end. I am estranged from my daughter who, I believe, has no real reason for the estrangement except childhood grievances which she cannot metabolize or put aside — she chooses not to. Most likely she would not come to my funeral, her rage is so great for reasons she has not shared with me. I have a father’s pain beause I do love her very much, associations to her rearing are powerful in me. She lost her mother at 27, I lost mine at 20. And it will never be the same for her or me and that is part and parcel of living and life. Other than my daughter’s recalcitrance, her unwillingness to reconcile, I do not feel in disarray. I have lived too long, I think, not well, but too long. My successes have not been material ones. I have published books, become smarter and wiser as I learned through the decades, grew professionally, exploded in terms of creativity in my fifties and sixties. I have persevered. I have not quit on myself. I have not been as successful in my relationships which are more important than anything else in my world or yours.
I see myself as a difficult personality to be with, ask my wife. Explanations for all that are as rife as weeds, for they have been evaluated, analyzed, considered, interpreted and some of it grasped, some of it not grasped, even at this late stage of life. I have always found it difficult to have close friends; I do have one, thousands of miles away and ten years older than myself. I have held people at bay, not drawn them close. I have trust issues, the jargon says, and they are unlikely to be resolved in the years ahead. My alienating behaviors are ones I choose both consciously and unconsciously so that at 73 I just throw my hands up and resolve to accept the grumpy old cocker that I have become. My one old friend said it best about me: “Matt needs to be felt.” In that is everything, from benign neglect, to poor mothering, to dreadful fathering. Boo hoo.
I walk around like an impacted colon that cannot evacuate waste. I have a great deal to share and give and there are no takers. No one wants to know, like the last self-published book by a struggling writer. No one cares. I have all this learning without individuals who might want to hear me out. I live here in Henderson, Nevada and I cannot discover outlets for what I know –psychotherapy; writing; human behavior; human relationships; the collected intellectual lint of fifty years as writer, teacher and psychotherapist. I cannot give it away. Ebay doesn’t want it. I refuse to retire from life which is a cultural conditioner for the brain dead. You cannot retire from living, ask your DNA.
Should I like an old Inuit woman walk off into the snow storm so that others may live? I think not.
When we are young we can look far ahead and say that we have ten, twenty or thirty years ahead of us. I cannot say that I even have five years ahead. No one, in reality, should prognosticate in that way. We each have the next day. However, we do need to plan, I suppose, seek out, I suppose, so that we give ourselves this mental cushion of years that lie ahead. Perhaps that is the hidden motivation behind my 1952 arithmetic computation. Well, I cannot do that anymore. The time remaining is shorter now. If you are much younger than 73, you cannot get into my shoes, but I can get into what it was to be twenty or forty. You cannot imagine what it is to be so close to human finality as programmed by our bodies and organs. I am there and I can report it is a mystery and I cannot proceed well ahead for I am mystified by it all. I just suck on to the day as long as I can, squeezing the pips out of it. It is demoralizing to know that the days ahead are fewer than the days I have lived. Sad. Ah, but it is one part of the definition of life.
Feverishly, should I run through the Henderson streets holding in my mind the realization that time is short, that much is undone, much never realized by my feeble powers of imagination and thought; and what about my bucket list? do I have one? should I make one? Should I panic at what was not accomplished or realized or should I quake at the realization that what is left is much unrealized and unaccomplished? It is like a fevered dream.
How do I measure or balance all that I am with all that I have not become? What calibrating device do I use to make some fair and discerning judgment of my stay on this planet? Funny, this is what I would suggest we do from day one if only we had elders and teachers to instruct us in this perspective.
What I give here is something that just flew into my mind and found a perch. I would like to reconcile with my daughter before I die and express to her the profound love I have for her; I would like to share as a person or teacher some of what I have learned growing up in this world; I would like to have one moment of self-awareness that I would keep private to myself, for it goes beyond insight, because it is an awakening; I would like to have one long and serious talk with another human being about any of my three books so far so that I know I have made some impact upon another human; I would like a little bit more insight into how I have made myelf unhappy throughout life; I would like some semblance of peace as I close my eyes and slip away forever. And most of all, I would like to feel or believe that my loved ones, my wife, my son, my daughter might keep me in memory, for that is life of a kind.
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