i’m drivin’ hard along the I-70. just west of kansas city. pushing 90, eyes on the rear view, lookin’ for the fuzz. the radio’s tuned into K-MAX, blaring kelly clarkson, carrie underwood, and miley cyrus, the young estrogen tri-fecta! my foot’s heavy on pedal, and i’m dreamin’ of “oklahoma joe’s” which has the best pork ‘n beef ribs either side of the mississippi.

 

“joe’s” is situated in the back of this little mom ‘n pop gas station off the highway, and i’m headin’ there before my eyes droop closed and my head hits the wheel.

 

it’s three in the morning and i’ve been doin’ some hard drivin’. my hair’s greased back, and i’m thinkin’ roy orbison, tom petty, and kansas city here i come. KC, home of charlie “yardbird” parker, count basie, and wilbur harrison, jazz music floatin’ in the air 24/7 along 18^th and vine, back in the day. back in the day….

 

 

nah, never mind.

 

none of that shit is true. i’m in kansas alright, but the I-70 is taking me to lawrence, the quite civilized college town, home of the mighty jayhawks, where my friend, mick, a tenured university professor in geography, will be celebrating his 60^th birthday on tuesday, three days hence. mick hasn’t shaved his karl marx-like beard in three decades, and his brilliant, well-chosen ideas about ecology, farming, and home schooling haven’t changed a lick in that amount of time either.

 

i’ve flown in from LA, where i’ve been living my middle age, going on 25 years now. reaper, peter, and big rico have flown in too, from new yawk, bethesda, and yuma, arizona, and they too, actually we four, have already hit the big six oh. mick will be last, but we all grew up together in the new yawk-long island suburbs of westbury back in
the day.

 

you know the day: the post war, idyllic baby boom decade of eisenhower and his buttoned down 50s. we sang in the “times they are a changin’” 60s, alowe shall overcome, seng with bobby, joanie, vietnam, the kennedies, pol pot, watergate, we shall overcome sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. of course, some of us sang, sexed, and drugged differently, but that’s the interesting part….

i have a thing for kansas. it has to do with red ruby slippers, a new heart, a new brain, and courage. you know, oz? as in, “wizard of”?

 

 

how many times did we all watch it? back in the day? i must have seen it seven easters in a row, all in black in white: judy in black and white, toto and auntie em in black and white, ray bolger, jack haley, and bert lahr, all in black and white. glinda, the good witch, frank morgan as the blowhard wizard, the munchkins, the wicked witch, and the yellow brick road. i’ve been trying to follow it ever since.

that road. but where is it? what is it? following the yellow brick road?

 

 

what’s it mean? what’s the metaphor?

 

following your heart, your dream, your bliss? or walking down the road of your parental units’ expectations? becoming their son, the doctah? or becoming your own man? breaking or following tradition? making money? becoming a “success”?

 

in whose terms? the world’s? your own? putting your mark on the planet or retreating into your own private idaho, i mean, kansas?

 

yeah, i’m turning 60, i’m in kansas, and it’s time to evaluate, reconnoiter, look into that all too harrowing mirror of life…

there’s three things i’ve been holding on to these last many years.

when i was young, i didn’t hold on, i looked ahead. i was led by my ambition. i strived, i produced, i was driven. i took on the entire world, sword and shield in hand, and i fought. i fought and i thought… that i was invincible.

 

i didn’t marry, didn’t need permanence, i was foot loose and fancy free. i was an “artist”.

but now i think that maybe i was wrong.

because i didn’t always win. i fell down. i got hurt. i lost.

after forty years, i got tired of fighting. reaper, peter, and micky used to call me the “man who never compromised”. and perhaps i was.

big rico always preached “life’s a trade off, man”,

but i didn’t agree. i thought if you kept striving, kept your integrity, and never gave up, that’s all there was to it.

but now i think differently.

you see, the three things i’ve been holding onto are home, job, and marriage.

the big 3 security cards. three things i never strove for, never wanted, didn’t believe in.

 

why?

 

because it wasn’t the way; it wasn’t “be here now”, live in the moment, live like a rolling stone.

 

it wasn’t: free love, trust the universe, fuck the man.

 

were we wrong? we baby boomers? our hippie, then yuppie, now bobo (bourgeois bohemian) generation? is george will, the right wing columnist, right?

 

were we self-indulgent, narcissistic failures? were our blue jeans, long hair, and change the world ideas just another youthful fad?

 

do our kids, our mortgages, our millions, our illusions, our illnesses, our 401ks make us just another notch on the gun belt of life?

 

 

but see, my big 3 securities, home, job, and marriage, are far from it. secure.

 

take a look. my home. i don’t own one. never have. never wanted to. i’ve always rented. seventy five bucks a month for my first one bedroom in chicago when i was twenty-two. a hundred and twenty-five a month for a three bedroom on halsted after that. then i house sat, living on a hundred bucks a week for seven years while i danced.

 

next… i moved back to new yawk, into the hotel woodward on 55^th and broadway, fifty-five bucks a week. scalped broadway tickets to pay the rent. then moved into a beautiful, hand-built loft on 23^rd and park avenue south, before guliani gentrified manhattan. sublet it illegally, lost it in court.

 

then LA, rent-controlled santa monica for ten years, less thn $300 per month!

 

and now “lucretia gardens” below market rental, as it’s quickly becoming gentrified echo park. sure, i sublet the downstairs and airbnb the guest bedroom upstairs to afford the pricey rent with one of the best views in the old hollywood hills.

 

but security? hah!

 

the landlady can give me 60 days notice any time she feels like it. it’s a free-standing, 3-bedroom private house. it doesn’t have the city’s protection of rent control.

 

the lovely landlady, who i’ve had a decent relationship with for over 14 years, can kick me out any time she gets the inkling to sell.

in fact, she gave me the 60 days notice a year ago, and i had to beg to pay her $400 a month more just to stay. which is where i am at the moment.

 

but notice, i say “moment”…

 

job? i’ve been at one job for the last 22 years. at USC (university of southern california), LA’s prestigious private institution  of higher learning.  i was an “adjunct” professor/faculty member for 17 years. my contract was good for 6 months at a time. i never knew whether or not it would be renewed, if i’d have a job the next semester. fortunately, my students liked me, and my various enthusiastic deans kept me on.

 

unfortunately, i saw most of my fellow adjuncts go the way of the world; new deans like to get rid of as much dead wood as they can, hire their own men and women.

 

five years ago, my third dean made me full time. still no tenure, still no security.

 

two years ago, i was up for promotion. if i wasn’t promoted, i’d have no job at all.

 

fortunately again, my colleagues approved my promotion.

 

i like my job. i help form ideas in the minds of the young. i plant seeds and watch them grow into health flowers, plants, and trees.

 

i work only 8 months out of the year, and my job and my art have allowed me to travel all over the globe.

 

but security? hah!

 

i can still be let go on a year’s notice.

 

if i’m lucky, i’ll retire in 6 years. move to bali or the philippines. open a little bed and breakfast. try to stretch my sad little 401k as far as the oriental world will allow it.

 

i’ll start all over again.

 

chicago. new york. LA. the great asiatic void. no guarantee.

 

 

no looking glass. no ruby slippers. no home. like a rolling stone…

 

 

then there’s the last of the big three, marriage.

i married for the first time at 54 years old, to a young indonesian girl, less than half my age. she didn’t speak much english and we shared few cultural references between us.

bob dylan? richard nixon? who’re they? george washington, abe linclon, the same.

 

we’ve been together for seven years now, married for five, and what a long, strange road it’s been.

 

full of challenges that other marriages, which are, a priori, full of challenges, never had to face.

 

immigration. ESL classes. home sickness. seven written tests to pass the DMV’s driver’s test. language, language, language. age. age. age. culture. culture. culture.

 

wedding rings have gone flying across the room. plates and paintings too.

 

i don’t think many men in my position, in an equivalent relationship, in my marriage, would have stayed.

 

but i was finally ready. and fully committed.

 

i loved this girl and i wanted to make the marriage work.

 

she tested me in every way. she was a twenty-five year old woman going on 16.

 

she wanted money. things. she wanted freedom.

 

she learned what independence was here in america. often at my expense. i considered separation and divorce many times over the first five years.

 

my friends and family told me to quit, to get out before the damage broke me altogether.

 

but i persisted. i stayed.

 

i earned this young woman’s trust.

 

this june, we’ll be celebrating her 30^th birthday.

 

we’ll have a truly international group of friends joining us in our 60-day-notice house on the hill, and we’ll be happy together.

 

 

but security? hah!

 

as much as i’ve invested in my marriage, as much as i’ve already gotten out of it, deep in my hippie-artist heart, i truly know that it could dissolve, break, disappear, like quick silver, at any given moment.

 

sure, in kansas, marriage is supposed to be permanent, enduring, “forever”, but looking at LA’s unglamorous reality, and the national statistics on divorce, i know that… things change. and that no matter how “secure”
one tries to make oneself, sometimes, life simply has other plans….

 

 

i look at reaper, peter, big rico, and mick, all fine fellows each, collectively as well. three have been married twice, and twice divorced. the mick has been married just once and both his kids are out of the house, one a resident at KU medical center, the other a first year med student at KU’s med school. they’re both fine young people. we went out to dim sum and oklahoma joe’s with them both.

 

but what can it be, that three fine fellows are thrice divorced, while just one, the mick, is still seemingly happily married and the proud father of two medically inclined children? could it be the water in kansas? the grain? dorothy’s “there’s no place like home”?

 

touchy-feely kinds of question, me thinks. but i like the last of the three answers: dorothy’s “there’s no place like home”.

 

i mean, the mick married earliest of us all; he was the one who retreated fastest from the world, to the myopia and safety of kansas. he got a tenured college job, had kids early, bought a farm, capitalized in real estate, and made, seemingly again, “all the right moves”.

 

while each of the other three had unhappy or unsuccessful marriages and chose to move on in their lives, the mick
knew what he wanted and sealed his options tight. he built his world up and inward, to insulate himself and his family against the hostilities and vagaries of life.

 

the reaper and big rico were lawyers, working for the man most of their lives. peter sold software to the marketplace and became rich. he too, was dependent on external buyers. only the mick (and myself) constructed the “world according to me”.

 

we retreated into our own private idahos, or in mickey’s case, kansas, and we basically marched to the beat
our own drummers. we’re the most set in our ways, me as an “artist”, he as an “academic”, and we’re
the most opinionated and stubborn of “da boys”….

 

 

life? what does she think of all this humanistic mumbo jumbo?

 

well, only life herself knows, but me thinks she’s smiling at us all, knowing that no choice is ultimately “better” than another. that each human being makes his own choices, based on a personal alchemy of history, genetics, practicality, and emotional need.

 

according to president ike eisenhower and the buttoned down 50s, the mick has done “the right thing”: held down a single job, created a monogamous marriage, built a nest egg, and raised two winning kids.

 

but from my point of view, he’s a long way from oz. i wouldn’t trade lives with him for all the corn in kansas.

 

nor do i think, would peter, reaper, or rico.

 

the mick simply doesn’t take any chances. he’s averse to risk, to experimentation. he likes to plan ahead and to create a future he can count on. he knows what he thinks, limits his intake, including the meatless diet he never
varies from, and he likes to keep things under control.

 

the reaper’s had one job his whole life and two failed marriages, but late into middle age, he’s first making discoveries about who he is and what he likes: jazz, classical music, zen buddhism, and asian women.

 

rico is an accident happening. he knocks things down, drops and breaks things, has done it his whole life; but you never know what’s going to happen with big rico, man. he’s a barrel of laughs and a pain in the ass, but he’s still alive and “cookin'”.

 

and peter, well, he’s already retired; he can do whatever the hell he pleases. he followed his mathematical bliss and cashed in; now he’s ready to marry for a third time and start off on a new mentoring career. his life and his smile are open roads….

 

me? i’ve settled into the comfort of routine and middle age. but… along with my three permanent in-securities, home, job, and marriage – there’s also the very first of life’s insecure touchstones, good health.

 

you see, i had cancer in ’89 and i could have cashed in all my chips, but for the lucky diagnosis of hodgkin’s disease, which was one of the most treatable and curable of all cancers.

 

but what i learned very quickly from my run in with a life-threatening illness, is that it’s a good spiritual and practical lesson in learning to appreciate every day that you’re alive, and to concentrate on all that you do have, as opposed to all the things you still want or don’t have.

 

and with my upcoming hip replacement… i’ve come to accept the fact that life can, and will, turn me upside down at any unpredictable moment.

 

and that ultimately, life’s opportunities and surprises, and the reactions and choices i’ve made to them, have kept teaching me and showing me that there is, in truth, no security in life. that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent,
nothing is reliable or forever.

 

yet somehow, i’ve come to accept this proposition and live my life accordingly.

 

i mean, look, i teach “improvisation” for a living. what does that mean? it makes me learn spontaneity and impermanence anew every day i teach.

 

they say that one teaches what one has to learn. it’s true.

 

like when i travel, i don’t make an itinerary; i just go.

 

each day, i follow my nose, my instinct, and trust at the end of the day, i’ll have a place to stay and enough money to pay for it.

 

sure, i spend a lot of travel time making decisions: where to go, when to go, where to stay, what to see, but it’s my favorite way to travel. in fact, it’s the only way. the way i live….

 

 

so on the night before the the mick’s actual birthday, da boys all settle down in front of the new kansas flat screen to watch one of our collective favorites, “cool hand luke”.

 

rico and reaper have most of the lines down to the exact inflection of the southern prison drawl:

“shaking it here, boss”,

“spendin’ the night in the box here, boss”, and

“what we have here is a failure to communicate”.

 

the latter makes us all howl, as warden strother martin beats the indomitably non-conformist luke to the ground with his impotent club of frustration.

 

we all love luke, the christ-like hero of the film, as played by the young and steel-eyed paul newman.

 

 

unfortunately, we’ve all forgotten how grim the movie becomes, as luke is hunted down time and again after
each failed prison break.

 

personally, i’m devastated by the film and luke’s stubborn demise. when he bitterly admits to dragline just before he’s gunned down by “the man with no eyes”, that

“i never planned a damn thing in my whole life”,

 

i can’t help but identify with him.

 

luke and me. consummate anti-heroes. ultimate outsiders. rebels without a cause.

yeah, that’s me, boss, never planned a thing that worked out in my whole life. just grabbed that ring of opportunity and held on for dear life….

 

 

so now i’m back in sunny california.

 

i heard the missouri river over-flowed from torrential rains just after we left kansas, and president george dubya has declared most of the midwest a national disaster area.

 

good thing we boys got out in time. all but one of us, that is. the mick is still there, probably ‘til the end of his days.

 

me? i’m still makin’ plans.

 

in six years, i’ll have been at the prestigious university long enough. i’ll face my fears, look myself in the mirror again, and kick myself out of my little house and home. (well, not really mine.)

 

hell, the native americans say,

none of us really “own” anything.

 

yeah, i’ll kick myself west. far west. so far west that it’ll be east.

 

far east. bali or the philippines.

 

in fact, i’m taking reservations now. if you want to spend a little time at my far out, far east, villa manila, then just drop me a line.

 

you can come visit ‘n stay with me on my 70^th.

or 80^th.

 

if i’m still kickin’, that is….

_______________

in the meantime, i’m drivin’ south on california’s I-5, from san francisco back to LA.

 

i just put my dad in an assisted living community. he’s crawling towards the end of the line, and he needs a little
“assistance”, if you know what i mean.

 

it’s not easy to do, but who said life was easy.

 

she certainly didn’t.

 

i have the radio up loud, and i’m tearing down the highway. not highway 61, a la bob dylan, circa 1965.

 

no, it’s hard to her ol’ bob on the interchangeable bakersfield-merced-modesto-san joaquin fm radio stations. instead it’s john mayer, amy winehouse, and kanye west. 

 

but look, the hills are covered with a spring carpet of yellow mustard seed. the entire countryside is in bloom from the recent late winter-early spring rain.

 

even the barren I-5 is singing.

“the hills are alive”

 

with wild green grasses topped with feathery coxcombs. with pink, flowering fruit trees, orange blossoms, lemons, peaches, budding with new life.

 

the cow shit still stinks around mid-drive, coalinga, but it’s a beautiful day for the ride home.

 

“home”?

 

home is where the road takes you.

just follow that yellow brick road,

follow the yellow brick road….

 

right dorothy?

or in the case of california, just follow the wild yellow mustard seed………

 

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