look to the right, exactly 90 degrees from the terraced hillside back deck of “lucretia gardens”, and there are — the san gabriel mountains —

 

gently looming over the hazy glendale flats.

turn 180 degrees back to the left and there’s — the glassy silver rim of the pacific ocean, dividing the big sky of another multi-colored california sunset from the slightly high-rise sprawl of snarky century city and the equally-hazy flats of LA’s toney west side.

 

 

turn back another 90 degrees to the right, and there, straight ahead, is the white dome of the griffith observatory,

 

 

the shrubby tree tops of tom mix hill (of legendary silent film cowboy lore), and lo and behold… the iconic hollywood sign itself.

 

mountains and ocean and hollywood sign. oh my.

turn again.

still… there. mountains and ocean and hollywood sign.

not an illusion. not a dream. not a fantasy.

but… right there. right in front of my nose… in the bohemian hills of echo park.

mountains and ocean and hollywood sign. oh my.

a perfect trifecta of beauty, comfort, and seeming… middle aged “satisfaction”.

actually, at the house’s height in the hills, at my age, and amidst the neighborhood’s slow but steady climb towards gentrification, maybe it’s the “bobo” hills of echo park.

“bourgeois bohemian” being the more accurate description of people of my persuasion, former anarchists, artists, & hippies, who, via their ascent to america’s diminishing middle class, and their modest but no longer diminutive salaries, have reluctantly given up their former “bohemian” status as their baby boomer generation’s poor but righteous malcontents.

 

nevertheless… mountains and ocean and hollywood sign. oh my.

right from my back deck.

from the place where i live.

from the place i could have never imagined living.

it’s certainly nothing to turn up my nose on.

nothing to spurn.

something certainly… to be grateful for.

because here i am, in sir paul’s cranky and dotty “when-i’m-64^th“ year, looking out on my life from the lofty vantage point of appreciation. of gratitude. of…

what the hell?

something definitely must be wrong.

this can’t be my life, can it?

married for 10 years?

working at the same job for 26?

living in the same house for 19?

let alone, happily married and still in love.

let alone, still passionate and motivated to do a good job.

let alone, still renting, not owning, a home i call my own, where i’ve scattered the ashes of my mother, my father, and my criminal uncle…

…in my green-thriving zucchini garden.

 

yeah, apparently, that me.

trules.

i teach ‘improvisation” for southern california’s largest private employer, the well-known and prestigious institution of higher learning, USC, that seemingly hired me entirely by chance. i never applied for a job there. in fact, when i graduated from college in 1969 “with a degree in frisbee”, i never imagined opening another book, let alone working at one of these sterile academic behemoths. yet here i am, like most people i know, up to my neck in life, on a path that not only haven’t i really chosen for myself, but on one that i never even knew existed.

i mean, c’mon, when i reluctantly got my degree from the wintry university of buffalo shortly after the summer of love, do you think i had any idea that i would become an artist? a professional modern dancer a year after i skipped my own graduation ceremony, only to lose my virginity with one of my best friend’s estranged girlfriend in the tender city of toronto?

any idea that i would become a dancer-teacher at columbia college, chicago, in a field i only had 6 months experience in?

 

 

or a professional clown who ran for mayor of new york city?

 

or a poet? or a filmmaker?

or marry an indonesian woman 30 years my junior who spoke only a few words of english and who didn’t know who bob dylan or richard nixon were?

 

simple answer to all?

nooooooo!

the point being… most of us have no idea how life will turn out. how our lives will turn out.

no matter what our parents wanted or expected from us.

no matter how much career planning we and our counselors did.

no matter how much we believed in destiny, fate, or divine intervention.

no matter how much we gravitated towards security and away from risk, or vice versa.

life just seemed to be “what happened while we were waiting for our plans to work out”.

yeah, i’ve said and written about ths before, but how could i not?

whenever one searches for meaning or perspective in life, whether he/she is an agnostic, atheist, or a true believer, one has to come face to face with the seeming randomness of the draw.

this, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. it just… is. randomness, synchronicity, serendipity, simple good luck or bad, these are just labels that help us… if not understand… then to, at least accept, the ways of the world.

 

 

and that’s the thing… that brings me back to… the mountains and the ocean and the hollywood sign. oh my.

the seeming randomly winding road-less-taken that led me to… here.

to scenic and comfy “lucretia gardens”.

to a cushy and creative job at USC’s school of theatre.

to a strong and loving wife named surya.

yet somehow, maybe… i just don’t feel… worthy.

why?

maybe because….

i just never… planned any of it.

or even imagined any of it.

simply put, i/it could have ended up… worse.

and of course, it hasn’t ended yet. who knows what’s next?

and yet, here i sit at the keys, doing a lot better than i thought i ever would.

no, i didn’t become a famous artist, nor do i earn a lot of money.

i did have cancer, lose both parents and too many friends.

I spent a few nights in jail.

and i still do have lots of fights and battles every day about things i believe in.

but… over all… life has afforded me some grace, some privilege; and i have discovered some… appreciation & gratitude.

 

 

yet… another yet…

why is there still no contentment?

why are my dreams still haunted?

with annihilations, with fears, with awakenings that thrash me within inches of my life?

why is my mother leading me on a euro dirt road in an open wagon to the ominous gas chambers? with grease, black-haired hitler following just feet behind in his SS military car?

why do i wake up with self-impaled daggers in my gut, an inhalation away from my last breath?

why am i being fucked up the ass by some brutal butch bully?

night after night. nightmare after nightmare. just like my father told me he had. nightmares. just like my jewish friend, beth, tells me she has.

is it in the genes? in the species? in the tribe? have jews looked back over their shoulders so many times, for so many millennia and generations, in so many schtetls, during so many pogroms, that they have never stopped expecting the sky to fall?

 

dreams of annihilation. my whole life. from my insecurities? from my fears? how do i balance the mountains and ocean and hollywood sign, oh my, my “successful” and grateful outer life, with my inner demons?

i don’t know.

i’ve taken pills, seen psychics, done meditation, even believed in a god for a moment in time.

and yet, still another yet,

i am eternally haunted. i know the trick, the goal, is to let the outer world infiltrate the inner. for me to internalize the seeming success i have in the external world.

yet… still another yet…

it’s easier said than done.

otherwise, if it was so doable or so easy, the fat kid who was picked on so brutally as a child would be able to see the thin, healthy image he or she stares back at in the mirror of the present.

otherwise, the beautiful woman, so adored, so pursued, by men her whole life, would be able to stop purging, stop starving, stop abusing herself, in her own eternal hell of self-hatred.

otherwise all the starving, the poor, the bad and the beautiful, all the loveless and aching, all the bells of bob dylan’s chimes of freedom flashing, would be ringing more freely, more lovingly, less cruelly, than the sad, tolling bells of human experience and reality.

just a little relief, huh? that’s all we want. just a little relief from the aches and pains. the losses, the falls. the scars, the bruises. the insults, the rejections. the little deaths and lacks of acknowledgement. the unpaid bills, the ungenerous ex-es, the over-commitments. the unrequited loves, the ungrateful kids, the wolves at the door.

fuck! shut up, trules. you live in the old hollywood hills. just above the old charlie chaplin silent film studio. just a stone’s throw from tom mix hill. just a mile from the hollywood sign, as the crow flies.

turn to the right, trules, and there are the naked san gabriel mountains. turn to the left and there is the mighty pacific ocean. in all its beauty. in all its grandeur.

what are you complaining about?

shut up, trules, and… count your blessings.

so what if you don’t believe in an omnipotent, benevolent god made in man’s image?

so what if you still have those goddam annihilating nightmares?

so what if you can be evicted from your lovely “lucretia gardens” on 60 days notice? lose your job and livelihood any time your boss chooses? lose your wife any time she chooses?

so what? so what?

 

just… shut up…

and be grateful.

 

 

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