32 - all it takes is some risk
No one said it would be easy
Did anyone tell you the road
Would be straight and long
Relax your mind and give it all to me.
You know, and I know, our love is strong.
—Trans Fatty Acid (Kruder & Dorfmeister Remix Edit) - Lamb
~~~
Fortune smiled. Ran into my landlord and she’s been following the story, asked what was real and what was fiction. I smiled, “Oh, you know, it’s a novel.”
She says, “Listen, I’ve a property in Del Mar. It’s unusual, different, and it has a view of the ocean. I’ve listed it for not much more than you’re paying for your studio. It is a touch run down though,” she chuckles, “if indeed you’re looking for a space.”
Best landlord I’ve ever had. She’s a part-timer when she’s not landlording; it’s something that keeps her engaged, teaching French at an all-girls school in Mission Valley. And she’s a filmgoer, always attentive to the latest release in the art houses. She nailed it when she raved about the film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. A grand bit of storytelling, based on the fictional-real encounter of Gabrielle Chanel and the composer Stravinsky.
“Well,” I said, “there’s a good bit of truth in apart… I really am looking for a larger space. Give me the address and we’ll take a drive-by look.”
Got excited. Hate moving. To avoid the torturous search, to find the perfect spot for a hideaway, aloof and sequestered, a minute’s stroll from the Pacific. Damn.
Camille got excited too. She’s ramped, just registered for the MCAT. Her test is in June, and the application window for med schools is June to November. If she gets accepted, then we’re talking the fall of 2012, and life changes yet again.
A love nest in Del Mar would be splendid and sublime; the two of us could take Camino Del Mar/Torrey Pines right into work. 10 minutes to the Cancer Center for her, 20 for me to REACH. Sunrise on the left, ocean on your right, first thing, starting your day, the grand Pacific, waves crashing in. The way you get to work not insignificant. Consider how many are in commutes, to and from, for an hour or two, on the freeway, bumper to bumper, every flipping day. Couldn’t do it. Never have.
~~~
Yes indeed, time to hunker down. She’s doing the The Berkeley Review. Full-time nursing and MCAT prep, study mode, and a little loving on the side. Max as the ever-present side dish, or maybe I’m that snifter of tawny for her, she swirls and swirls, the aromatic, sipping slowly, a delighting in and taking pleasure from. I can hear Amanda Blank in Escobar’s Only You; played it over and over, months on end before we hooked up,… to crave her touch, to have her near, and to know that she craves it too, a sensation that you can’t live without it, without each other.
I am the freak-eunuch, the anomaly, receive love from those such as I am and you may never be able to love in the usual way again. Love nests built in concert with the freak-eunuch make a difference when you’ve got so little time for the social, when your families are not nearby, in other locales, and you decide it’s all about the work, and the studying, the love, and yes, simple human touch. We all need it. It makes everything you do so much more doable.
A sterling writer I’ve just come to know recently mused: “All it takes is some risk and a little lovin’, and you end up on an entirely new path.” No truer words have been uttered. And all along the way you have to keep reminding yourself, “Why the hell not?”
Simplifying… a less is more life with a grad student, my inamorata, vintage hours, quality time, and selected fine dining, and study, study, study. Even after college, I never broke the study habit, am not a scholar, not a published author who’s driven into the library for this or that research that informs the story he’s telling or the non-fiction narrative he’s crafting, am simply a writer of probe-goads, self-defined, no success, no social role or status, this allowing for unending failure and a recognition that it’s necessary, that one doesn’t need to give it up just because it fails to draw interest. You can make a living doing other things; the writing always a complement to the life lived.
We set up a date, a drive-by viewing of the tri-level townhouse and a return to Blanca….
~~~
Sitting in the booth, across from the bar, candlelit and the ambiance of romance, over the top and upscale. We’ve had so many dinners like this, and so many more to come. We sit down and the guy behind the bar, Bernard, remembers us. And he brings over a wildly delicate appetizer, two very small ramekins of butternut squash soup, stew like, with a marvelous chunk of a perfectly braised short rib floating on top. JESUS~! We both beamed. I turned to Camille, “Martinis?” She nodded. Blanca pours Junipero Gin and Vya vermouth, so rare, and I gave him the instructions, shake it gently, on the rocks. He smiled, “You got it.”
The tri-level seems perfect; it’s in a string of 80s stucco row townhouses, yet not connected, funky and asymmetrical, and there’s a courtyard, simple design and sweet, au naturel, succulents and cactus, and though most would see these buildings as rundown, they’re really quite remarkable. Stucco ages nicely, there’s a lasting quality to it, on the coast especially where there’s always moisture, as if the plaster never stops curing. We’re already sold, without seeing the inside; we’ll take pains if it needs help. The ocean view is distinct, exhilarating.
Kind of scary to imagine it, how things can change when you set up household, when the dynamism can be undermined by routines. Bernard delivers the martinis, and I turn to Ms. Durand, ever so gaga, as gaga as I’ve ever been, flipping unfathomable, I lift my glass, and she says sardonically, “What the hell?” I respond, “Seriously.”… We had been walking around the complex, and she kept saying, “Are you kidding me?” I kept saying, “I know, I know.”
I lean over and kiss her just below the ear, and say, “I love you.” Below the table, she grabs the inside of my thigh, and squeezes, up above she looks at me in a way indescribable, a stirring glance so distilling and quintessential, it’s as if all the moments I’ve ever lived through are right there, what I’ve enjoyed, what I’ve suffered and endured, all of it, the high points and low, all of what makes me, me, images streaming in: that first kiss as a fifth-grader, Susie Klein, the unshakeable mystery in it, the warmth, the stirring of something inexplicable; watching my father intervene, defending my aunt from his drunken and abusive brother, knocking him out and turning to tend to her bruises and cuts, my first glimpse at courage and compassion; hearing my mom break into sobs when the word came that my grandmother had died, not understanding what it meant; gawking at my sister’s cheerleading team as they practiced their routines on our front lawn, her younger brother of five years peering through the plate glass window, enamored; coming home from school and seeing Tiger’s nose pressed against the gap in the gate, hearing him begin to rustle and whine, his black and white Springer Spaniel body in happy contortions, his buddy had returned; and on and on and on; and more, coming to after a four-story fall, a plank broke, on the job, the other crew members stepping off, and me and the nozzle down to the ground, spraying plaster along the way, and my old man stepping over as I’m rousing, and he says, “Get your ass up. You’re fine. Get back up there!”
A wise man. It made a difference, and when your nose is bloodied, when you fall, when you’re thrown for a loop, when the unexpected arrives, and it’s not pleasant, flat out insufferable, well, full-on, this life isn’t for the timid and genteel, pluck is required, you have to climb back up on the scaffolding, conquer the fear and keep on truckin’.
Shouting out to the old man, George Kinney: I love you.
Sunday, April 10, 2011 at 2:23PM 
Reader Comments (2)
Life takes pluck...I like that. Just when life seems to be skimming by, being good, some serious obstacle presents itself. Then it takes all you have within you to carry on in the face of problems and putting out energy to overcome the obstacle. That is pluck...that is a well lived life. You are singing my song, Mark.
Mark has never been known to carry a tune. And if you asked him, he'd tell you that the word pluck came to him from the grand American poet Walt Whitman. It's one of the good gray poet's favorite words:
Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures?
Do you think the great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best-built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?
Away! These are not to be cherish’d for themselves;
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them;
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.
The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.