Have I been blind
Have I been lost
Inside myself and
My own mind
Hypnotized
Mesmerized
By what my eyes have seen?

      —Natalie Merchant, Carnival

~~~

New Year’s Eve at Amber’s, it’s nearing midnight and we’re out on the balcony, you can hear revelers in the neighborhood, the party about to climax and Camille says to me, “I feel old.” Now the oldest among her friends, then she caught herself, a wry smile from her as I’m the oldest at this party, by decades, a party of atypical students, nurses and fellow travelers, and of course I smiled back, kissed/bit her ear lobe, and reminded her of that famous Picasso line, “It takes a long time to become young.”

I had been sipping judiciously, switching off between club soda and Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout. Camille was drinking Allagash's Bourbon Barrel Aged Curieux. Both of us drinking out of snifters, near snooty, Amber making fun of us. At ball-dropping time, with snifters in hand and surrounded by each and all on the balcony, fireworks down the street, we toasted, kissed and whooped it up. Then the balcony emptied, some folks heading home, others lingering. I went into the kitchen, grabbed up two more bottles, saw Amber, gave her a hug, such a dear, and she says, “Is Camille okay? She seems sad.”

“She’s fine. Her last New Year’s in San Diego.” And Amber says, “Now I’m sad,” gives me another hug and kisses me on the cheek. “I’m going to miss her, and you.” As I was about to head back to the balcony Amber said hold on, went into the living room and announced, “Okay, time to mellow out y’all.” and she put on a greatest hits CD of Patricia Barber. One of my favs began to play.

Back on the balcony, leaning over the edge, nuzzling up to Camille while Amber cozied up opposite. They began a conversation in hushed tones, and when Amber said, “Blondes helping blondes,” I smiled, got lost in my own thought, reflective and preoccupied, staring down at the fireworks still sparking and crackling, thinking about our time in Los Angeles at Christmas. We took a three-room suite at Loews Santa Monica and hosted Sonia and her youngest son, Paul. Sonia’s oldest spending the holidays with the “Ex.” A different kind of holiday, a last splurge before becoming poor again for the med school long haul. I had proposed we travel to San Francisco or Seattle, even Portland, get a room at an upscale hotel, wine and dine, do some catch up on the long list of must-see films. And Paul says, “Why don’t you come to Los Angeles?” He had, for the last seven years, traveled north for the holidays, Turkey Day and Xmas. I said, “Hells yes!” and proposed Loews. He went for it, Sonia agreed to drive down from the Capitol City, and Camille and I said we’d pick up the tab.

We got there first and hunkered down, sitting on the veranda at sunset, taking in the view. Sonia and Paul would text us from the bar downstairs when they arrived. Four weird and wonderful days in Santa Monica, strolling along the boardwalk/beach in 70 degree weather, hanging out at the Shutter’s’ Pico Bar, long conversations rambling and spontaneous, and making film forays to the Westside Landmark. In four days we saw three: Hugo, The Artist and A Dangerous Method. Sonia and Camille were able to get a sense of each other, engaging for the first time since Pops’ funeral, and Paul?, never more charming, working to break out as an actor, about to start a small production company, and just a riot to be around. He ramps me up, it’s as if we’re always in a scene, improvising, putting the finishing touches on a script that’s in constant revision. One morning he took us to one of his fav hangouts, Aroma Coffee & Tea, near his home in Studio City. And it’s like we stepped into an episode of Cheers, friends behind the counter shouting, “Paul!” and he sheepishly looks away, smiles and waves them off, then introduces us all. Oh so curious to step into the day-to-day routines and environs of loved ones we're rarely around, to see them comfortable and slightly embarrassed by the intimacy and familial touches of their everyday lives. A young man beloved. And Sonia? So splendid to see her in a different frame of mind, at ease and calm, nearly five months since the life-changing three-month ordeal of managing Pops’ unfortunate end. A renewing holiday for us all, frolicking about in West Los Angeles….

~~~

On the drive home from Amber’s Camille mentions she’s been thinking about kids, about the possibility at some point of creating, having a family of her own. There was a time that this conversation would have been unwanted and difficult, but I’m a new man now, living a different kind of life, and it’s vintage Camille, in a mellowed glow, drunk but not, and she begins the conversation with, “I know you’re shooting blanks…”

L O friggin’ L full-on captures it, she so cracks me up. At ease with the one you love, a bedrock trust developing and expanding, and what in another context would have been a blow to the ego, to the “manhood,” an offense and trespass, I laugh and tell her I have indeed imagined what it would be like to be a parent, and though scary it is, something I have never wanted or desired, I admitted that there was an allure, something about her, us, the future, it’s like I’m ready to craft a plan, make it happen. I went off about two particular coworkers who had adopted children, warm-hearted and free-spirited educators and parents. And by all accounts it has worked out, charmed they are by the new creatures in their lives. Of course there are other options if she’s interested in going through the physical experience of carrying her own child, giving birth; and hey, the data’s not all in, repair and renewal taking its time, the testosterone slow and incremental in its return, and maybe, just maybe, the spermatozoon really do make a comeback. I told her all options are on the table, when she’s ready, however it plays out, parenting, why the hell not?

~~~

Couldn’t fall asleep. I was propped up on my wedge pillow, with Camille nestled in close, gently snoring. Here I am, in love with and attendant to a physician-to-be, the thought of it, to be a parent, to create a home and a family, so stirring to imagine, so unsettling. I’ve gone over five decades living on the fly, believing there was only one person I could take responsibility for, only one life I could manage and direct. And now this, we had the conversation, it’s real, not a thought or an idea but an engagement, a commitment to partner with her in taking responsibility for a child, or children, to love and adore them, to guide and educate a new citizen of the 21st century.  (Dang. I said I’d never write the word “love” again. I lied.)

Given the global upheaval, the unending and swirling rebellion and chaos, why would anyone want to bring a child into this world? How do you go on, imagining and creating a life of simplicity and joy? How do you maintain your sanity and strength, independence and compassion when there’s so much wrong, so many crazed and maniacal souls all round? I've said it before, the answer supersedes and circumscribes all other reasons, one word, one way, one experience.

A good friend and coworker, one of REACH’s sterling and committed directors in the California Heartland, sent me a link the other day to the blog of one Susan Niebur, an astrophysicist and parent, who valiantly fought to survive inflammatory breast cancer. She died on February 6th. This wise and fierce human being, with grace and dignity, said it all in her blogging mantra:

“All that survives after our death are publications and people. So look carefully after the words you write, the thoughts and publications you create, and how you love others. For these are the only things that will remain.”

To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is not easy… ’tis a rugged road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble motions; ’tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us from the common and most recommended employments of the world.

      —Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

~~~

I’m sad and unsettled. I’m at that crossroad, that pivot point where you look back, see where you’ve come, the how and why of it, trying to understand and put into context, and it’s not the smaller context of the string of ephemeral moments that have come and gone, but the larger context, that matrix of meaning and substance, the placement of a self among selves; who am I and what’s been the effect of this mundane little life?

Last week, after assisting in some updates to our organization’s internal website, my boss replies in an email, “You’ve always been such a joy to work with, such a splendid resource to everyone at REACH.” The message hit home, and it was past tense, sounding ominous, “You’ve always been,” instead of “You always are.” And of course, I know I shouldn’t feel sad, I am committed, Portland in the fall, another adventure on the horizon, and I’ll give plenty of notice, have never been one to give just two weeks and go.

I am wistful and melancholic in the remembrance, this the longest stretch of time I’ve spent with any one employer, nearly 11 years. I have been aloof for far too long. I have come to realize how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to work with, assist and support such a grand group of souls, a cadre of whole- and warm-hearted educators, joining with them in their desire to reach out to and educate the least-served in our communities. There was a time I resisted REACH’s culture and its emphasis on the familial; but there’s no avoiding it. If you do work you find meaningful, and if you’re joined together by a making-a-difference mission that’s unrelated to the profit-motive, you become connected to and comforted by the passion and love. You become a seed ground for visionary thought and attitude. It creeps into your life, inspires and emboldens. The idea of “success” takes on a whole new meaning, it’s no longer about money, no longer about acquiring possessions, no longer about being a member of the “ownership” society. It’s about selflessness and service, care and concern for others no matter who they are, no matter their situation.

“You are the world,” as the sages say. And you have to ask, is there a way for us to create a global culture, an interconnecting nexus of sub-cultures where innovation and creativity are what’s prized, where the focus is on contributing to the community, on educating, assisting and supporting its members not marketing to and manipulating them out of greed for one’s own profit? A new ecology? A new art of living? A sustaining interconnectedness at the deepest levels of experience that transforms how we are in the world? A development of our creative energy and enthusiasm to imagine work and a workplace that positively impacts and changes the lives of others?

~~~

Nothing I’ve done in my life has been extraordinary. I’ve never sought “career advance,” have never been competitive, never wanted to keep up with the Joneses. As I grew up it became clear all I ever wanted was to live honestly and forthrightly, and do good work. Again, you have to ask, how do those of us who are ordinary and not spectacular, those of us quite simple in our day-to-day wants and desires, those of us without money, power or prestige, those of us not easily bored, those of us who can be entranced into an ecstasy by the simplest of things, a morning stroll in the park, hearing the squawks of the sea lions resting on the cliffs below or the sight of pelicans in perfect formation cruising the slipstream,… how do we stay sane and happy amidst the crazed push-pull and presto-pronto frenzy of the get and spend? There’s one word, it applies to everything we do, it’s in the stillness of the daily round, from one moment to the next, it can drive and determine the tempo of our lives, it encompasses all the superlatives: grand and glorious, magnificent and marvelous, splendid and sweet. I vow to never write the word again but to let every action and deed be animated and vivified by the rippling and revolutionary sensation of it.

~~~

Norah Jones and Tony Bennett capture it in Speak Low. It's as if we've been missing the sublime, the elegance and simplicity in every thing we do. We've got to slow things down, to give ourselves over to a different rhythm and pace, speaking low, yes, and softly, and circumspectly, and romantically:

Our moment is swift,
like ships adrift,
swept apart, too soon
Speak low, darling speak low

If we come to any solution of our ever-rising questions, it is never by studying the law that we find satisfaction, but by diving deep into love and letting love inspire us.

      —Sufi message from Hazrat Inayat Khan

~~~

On the mid-day trip home from Louisiana, Camille and I engaged. The conversation began at the Praline Connection, Concourse B at the Louis Armstrong Airport, and lasted, on and off, the entire flight. We had ordered up bloody marys and shared the "Jambalaya with greens"… beyond the goddamn pale!

It all started when I said I could live in New Orleans. She chuckled, said she wasn’t surprised, me the romantic taken in by the not-real, the New Orleans you get a glimpse of on a first visit, a tour-look. She said I watched too much HBO. I had begun watching David Simon’s Treme on DVD before we left on the trip and I was taken in. Simon’s one of our grand writers, creator/author of The Wire, and sure, I get it, the description is not the described, drama’s not the day-to-day, no ellipsis, but dang, there’s something going on in that city, soul and spirit, so close to death, nearly drowned, and maybe that’s it, I know what it feels like, know what it is to be down and out, hopeless, seeing clearly there’s nothing else but the moment you’re in, that you have to take baby steps, with death along side, a constant reminder as you repair and rebuild. No sure things….

I was all giddy and gaga, fired up and she was remembering, her mother’s death, a father who disappeared, and Martin, her first real love. Andrea had asked about him, he had been with Camille on previous trips back. She was on edge, and I think out of her own doubt about us, about our off-template connection, she asked if I was having doubts about going to Portland (I expect she’d heard from Amber about my “Damn You” message, sent in the wee hours on our first night at The Hotel Modern.), and she asked it in a clear and unequivocal way. She was asking if what we had together was something worthwhile and adaptable, something that could last and endure and grow. The question got to me, and it felt like our first meeting, that first conversation when I was lonely and just beginning to feel the effects of being loveless and out of “touch.” Beaten down I was, a profound and pivotal moment in my life, and though the test results were optimal, a clear indication I was headed for remission and survival, I was suffering, miserable, and BAM!, she strolls up, a compassionate and caring nurse, stepping right in, fearless and unassuming, forthright, setting my imagination on fire, and she gets me to think of the future again, to imagine being in touch again, of loving again.

I was moved and unsettled by the question. She was calling me out, and no matter how much you think about such things when you’re alone, when you sit still in fierce self-appraisal and ask yourself what you’re doing, where you’re going and what you want, well, there’s nothing like being face-to-face with the one person you can’t imagine living without, and the question gets asked and there’s no avoiding the truth. These kinds of moments are few and far between, near kitsch, but when they come you recognize it’s an opportunity to slow down, to step off for a moment, mark and measure what you’re feeling and thinking, a moment to attempt clarity, to find the right words, honest and direct. We were sitting at the rear of the plane, Camille taking the window seat. It wasn’t a full flight and we were alone in the row.

“Damn it Camille,” I turned to her, “doubt’s my middle name. You know that.” She glared, “So you are?”

“Sure I’ve had some doubts. It’s scary, not easy, and I don’t think I’ve wanted to admit it, to consider it, but here it is…,” a silence, ever so brief, long enough for me to gather myself, to keep my composure, “I can’t imagine living without you. Full-on. It’s just so god-damned unsettling and horrible to think about, the pain, to be in a moment where we’d see the end, that we’d need to move on. I never want to go through that again, the disconnection. I’m feeling like this is it. You’re the one. I’m committed, I’m in this for the long haul, whatever that means. And I’ll certainly be dropping off before you, way before, you’ll have another life after me.”

She blanched, “Max!"

“It’s true. Let’s be real. Sure I’m in remission and I’m a survivor, but I’ve only got 20 good years left if I’m lucky, maybe 30, and all I know is the thought of not loving you, of not seeing you, not talking to you, to know that you’re not going to be there at the end of a long day, that there’s not a stroll to look forward to, or a cuddling up, to not have you in my mind the way I do, and you’re always in my mind, you’re coursing through my veins. There aren’t words, I… I love you in a way I’ve never loved before. Maybe it’s my age, I don’t know.”

I ramped up, told her I’ve never been so lucid, so keenly aware of how inattentive we are when we’re young, almost always in a hurry to get somewhere, presto-pronto, one track minds, on the rails, never pausing, so scary to pause and ponder, to realize this is it, one life, here and now, and yet in a frenzy we keep going, keep busy, on the way, anticipating, craving, looking to arrive, never arriving, always an eye on what’s up ahead, the next amusement, the next entertainment, the next distraction…

“It’s weird,” I said, “to say it aloud, time stops when I’m with you. Nothing else matters.” She grabbed my thigh and squeezed, leaned over and gave me a kiss. Her mood began to change and we eased into a conversation about the commitment and passion of true physicians, the healers. What it means to give yourself over to a decade or more of training and study. She’d be in her 40s before she got her M.D. and it seemed surreal to think of how she’d gotten here, that she’d always loved the clinical moment, being with patients, connecting with them, and she says, “There’s a kind of poetry in pain, in the instant you realize you have an opportunity to help others, to assist in alleviating their suffering.” She talked of being a different person with different patients, that it was exciting and a mystery, a constant revelation and insight into our many selves, who and how we are with each other. I listened to her talk about the coming challenges, how Portland appealed, and I chimed in, remembering to her my last visit, Maya and I had gone into the Industrial District on a recommendation, the Le Merde Lounge and Le Bistro Montage, and we were in a fight, one of those moments you’d like to have back and relive, because it’s a place for sipping, and savoring, and loving. It was a miserable evening, and I told her I looked forward to returning, to strolling in and experiencing the corner lounge/bistro with her, in a new life, in a new way, “You’ll love the place, Cajun and Creole cooking, New Orleans and Baton Rouge inspired. It’s just the funkiest, coolest place ever.”

Then I fessed up. Told her I a saw Maya on Wednesday when we were flying out.

“No way.”

“Yep, she passed right behind you, and I just freaked. I’ve not seen or talked to her since I left University Heights over two years ago, and I couldn’t deal with it. She had been the love of my life, and there she was, in background, twenty feet from you, and she pauses, and you’re half annoyed, as I’m frozen in the cabby’s back seat, wanting to hide, to not remember. So fucking pathetic, I know. You have to laugh. Luckily for me she passed by and all the pain and suffering along with her. It’s so fucked up, and the truth is everything that happened with her led me to you. I mean I get that. But she just unsettles me. I don’t know how I’m going to be when it happens, when I see her and have to talk to her, if it ever happens. Maybe it never will. I’m okay with that.”

~~~

We looped back round to the challenges of medical school and her thoughts of how the work of a nurse is primarily different than the work of a doctor, that the one is about meticulous attention to the step by step, the process, rote procedures and unvarying excellence in the delivery of care, and the other, something larger, more dynamic and creative, where’s there more opportunity for error in the consulting room, in the analysis and interpretation, the risk involved and the responsibility you have to the patient. It’s this risk and responsibility that attracts her, the want of being in the moment where you see something no one else sees, and you craft a plan, and make your case and then you see how the person responds, the development of trust, a forging of a unique relationship, the possibility of positive outcomes/results of your compassion and hard work, and the joy and satisfaction of making a real difference in the life of a fellow human being.

And of course I went off about Seymour, my “now what?” moment, and it’s all of a piece, how do you live a life, what do you commit to, especially now, for folks like me in their third and final act. And I mused, began to philosophize about what might happen in the Northwest, how our lives would become different yet again, that in incremental ways we can effect change, that in the simplest actions based on a genuine and loving empathy, the actions of a few taken together become a kind of revolution of the soul and spirit. And in the choosing to live differently, to see, understand and be with our fellow human beings in a new and contrary way, our humblest and most mundane moments can stand for something other than what prevails: the greed, the envy, the spite, the competition, the back-biting, the division, the ugliness, the violence. No matter who we are, no matter the situation or circumstance, our want of doing no harm, our desire to assist, support and care for others, not only family and friends close in but each and all we come in contact with, becomes transformative and alchemical, a baseline for revolutionary change; not a revolving pretense of change but an authentic transformation and vision of what’s possible.

~~~

There’s a line in Soderbergh’s film Che, an interviewer asks the former physician and iconic Latin American rebel leader, “What is the most important quality for a revolutionary to possess?”

Che responded, “Love…. Love of humanity, of justice and truth.”

I've always admired people who force the hand of destiny, who don't readily accept a limited life, but demand something more of themselves, challenge themselves to attain something beyond what has been offered or what comes easily.

    —Kevin Kline, in a Zeitgeist Films Interview

~~~

No accounting for such things, the crippling effects of time gone by, seeing her for the first time since walking out in 09. If you’ve loved another the way I loved Maya, and it ends, there are no easy, comfy-cozy transitions to reinvented connection and friendship. It’s life altering and you simply have to play it out, melodrama or no.

Camille and I were at the Southwest terminal. She was out of the taxi and grabbing up the bags from the trunk, while I waited for him to run the credit card. As I turned to get out of the cab, to join Camille at the curb, I saw Maya passing right behind, and she stopped, thinking to herself, had she forgotten something? Fuck. I got flustered, leaned down, pretended to have dropped my credit card. I wanted to be excited to see her, to yell out, “Hey You!” but I was scared shitless, hesitated, then the cabby asked, “Everything alright?” And I said yes, and when I rose up she was moving away, pulling the “Tourister” behind her. She didn’t see me, thank god, and when I got out of the cab, Camille noticed. “You okay?” “I am now,” relieved beyond all measure, gave her a kiss and lingered with it. “Let’s do this!” We grabbed up the bags and headed to the gate in the opposite direction Ms. Barnes was moving. And just like that, my heart having skipped more than a few beats, I was able to avoid a most frightening prospect, to see her up close, to hug her and remember, and right there, you can’t hide in such moments, there’s a transparency and authenticity in it, and Camille would have been witness to it, and I can’t tell you what might have transpired. I think that’s the frightening part, would I just go weak in the knees, remember too much, begin to conjure a different narrative than the one I’ve conjured so I could move on and let go? Would my constructs for moving on be undermined by the sensation and memories of the elemental connection we once had? So glad I didn’t have to find that out. Not now.

On the way to Baton Rouge we were, via New Orleans. Car rented for a full Durand tour. Hometown, where she was born, then a drive to Baton Rouge for the Thanksgiving festivities with Aunt Andrea and her partner Nell (and their friends), a visit to her mom’s gravesite, and a stroll in the greenbelt she so loved, Baton Rouge’s Capitol Park. I didn’t let on that Maya had been 20 feet from her on the outbound, that I damned near had a stroke, that I didn’t have it in me to face her, to introduce the two of them, that I chickened out. Jesus. Have always been a coward with Maya, entranced and accommodating.

~~~

Am going to love traveling with Camille. She gets into the spirit of it, as if this is when she’s most at ease, out and about with the crowd. Time to mix it up, be different. She wears hats. She has an array of fedoras, and she’s got her lush blonde hair all tucked up inside. And I own an array of Basque hats and I’ve gotten into the spirit with her, and it’s as if we’re both inspired by the likes of Bill Cunningham, cruising on the sidewalks of New York. And dang it, thinking about that NYC documentary on him, and I can hear Cunningham, a “true egalitarian,” saying, "If you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do. That's the key to the whole thing."

Double dang, money, capitalism, socialism, a different way, and on the flight out I had decided to finish reading Richard Seymour’s The Liberal Defence of Murder; a ripper bit of political history Amber lent me after we had more than a few conversations about Occupy Wall Street. She had found it at Left Bank Books when she last traveled to Seattle, and she went off, said she couldn’t wait to read it, but didn’t have time right now and that I was welcome to read and mark it up.

Two-thirds the way in I had marked it up so badly I felt pangs of guilt and bought her a new copy. Told her that Seymour was having an unsettling effect, as if he were laying out a truth, a framework of understanding, that encompassed the lives of my grandfather, my father and I, revealing the never-ending and ongoing lies of government propagandists and corporate PR, and in this case the lefty liberals, the “humanitarian interventionists,” just the worst, a barbarism and imperial cruelty, legitimated and justified over and over and over again. Oh so appalling. Seymour’s the real deal, a scholar’s scholar, a Marxist critic detailing the labyrinth of lies, 73 pages of notes/citations providing a road map to the truth. And it’s like, who’s trustworthy, I mean really, who can you trust? And I can hear my grandfather, a union man who was forever the cynic, always calling out his legislators as “greedy crooked bastards.” And I always thought he was a clueless old codger, cynical and cantankerous, and now, fuck, sage he was, right to the end.

I admitted to Amber that I wasn’t sure what do with the information, with the questions Seymour was asking. He's a freethinker, and I had fancied myself to be the same, yet I’m not a joiner, not someone who climbs on board and goes shoulder to shoulder with his comrades, not an easy thing for me, but Seymour just fires you up, and you have to step back, ponder and reflect. What do you do? The book’s that good; it demystifies the propaganda and belief systems we're immersed in, and if you decide to sidle up to the truth, to make it your companion and throw belief overboard, well shit, it's like, "Now what?" Years later this is one of those moments you point to and say, "I ended up doing this, and doing that, and I landed here, pretty much because of Seymour."

When I finished reading the book I emailed Amber. In the subject line I wrote, DAMN YOU! She hadn’t imagined the impact, how it would rile me up, and of course I just love these kinds of things, the unexpected, but this is a biggie, can’t see clearly the consequences, what comes next, how the course of my life will alter, but damn it, it’s going to alter. Told her I’d certainly want to meet up with her down the line, when she found time to read it, that maybe we could have coffee, maybe at the Claire de Lune, a working class café in North Park, near where she lives and not too far from SDSU.

And here I am, aging and nearer to the end than to the beginning, “retirement” is certainly out of the question, never lived my life in that typical way, a contrary I am, and then this engaging 20-near-30-something, a good friend to Camille, gives me a book, and I can’t help but think it’s time to make yet another change. Compelled to mull it over. What and how to do it? Is there an organization or a nonprofit that’s on to what Seymour’s on to? And if you’re not a writer, or a scholar/academic, or a union organizer, or a politico, what do you do with this information? Should I be going with Camille to Portland? Can’t imagine not going. Maybe get on with Powell’s Books up there… just hunker down in simplicity, voluntary poverty. Camille will be on the cheap, in medical school, then residency, a long time. And damn, thinking about it, Che was a physician before becoming a revolutionary. Socialized medicine? Don’t know, don’t know. Back to working in a bookstore? Fuck, I mean seriously, now what?

All that has been written about women by men should be suspect, for the men are at once judge and party to the lawsuit.

      —Simone De Beauvoir, Second Sex

~~~

Thinking of mother, thinking of Sonja, thinking of Susie Klein, that first kiss, and all the women who have come into and out of my life. Camille was on a call with her Aunt Andrea, letting her know we’d be in Baton Rouge for Thanksgiving. She was in the kitchen leaning against the wall looking out to the ocean through the backdoor window, iPhone in hand. I was on my way into the kitchen when I could hear her, and I stopped and peeked in. She didn’t know I was watching, stealing a glimpse. She was enrapt, her tone gentle and trusting, you could hear how much she loves Andrea, how much she means to her, how humbled and proud she is, sharing the news, her next challenge and journey, becoming a doctor.

~~~

Camille was working her usual Saturday shift with Amber and I decided to begin the day at E Street Café in Encinitas. Before heading out I grabbed my dog-eared, marked up copy of Second Sex, thinking I’d peruse the marginalia and underlined passages from 20 years ago.

Once nestled in at the corner table by the window, sipping on a hammerhead with foam, it occurred to me that I ought to attempt a summarizing, a kind of writing exercise to reconsider the impact of Simone. And then I thought, “Why not a series of Saturday morning messages to Camille and Amber? How apropos, how transparent and self-disclosing, how odd, how probe-goading and revealing, and if they get weirded out I’ll stop. No harm, no foul.”

And I went for it, and the first message began this way:

You're in for a treat!  I've decided to reread my marginalia and notes to Simone’s Second Sex. I've created a plan and made a vow, and my intention is this: There are 25 chapters in the edition I have, and what I thought I'd do is write one-page responses to each. They’ll be coming to you in the form of bi-weekly email messages. Sound exciting? Ha! Prepare yourself. Here’s #1.

~~~

I opened with the epigraph above: “All that has been written about women by men should be suspect…”

And I ask if we couldn't take it a step further and say all that is written about anyone by another should be suspect. Let us at all times teach and encourage face-to-face communication emphasizing self-disclosing, uninhibited expression, a dynamic dialogue, open and honest. No more chitchat, no more gossip. Why not learn to pay extra-special attention to what others say and do, why not learn to read them as living books, why not try to avoid the 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay of others, why not draw our own conclusions, always tentative and open to revision, based on direct, firsthand experience?

When I was a bookseller years ago I bought for, and maintained, our philosophy section, and the books that sold regularly were not the ones written by the systematizers or critics or biographer/scholars; it was the actual works, the words of the originals, of those so powerful, so eloquent, so engaging and thought-provoking that others found it necessary to write about them. And now I'm thinking of you two, using the language of Simone, "free and independent existents,” women who've learned "to be" and who are fearless in the want of becoming, of being "free and independent emergents;” and now thoughts of my mother and so many other women I've known, women who did not learn to express themselves freely and fearlessly, women who we're "kept in a situation of inferiority” and then in fact pointed to as "inferior.” And it's here that De Beauvoir gets to me, when she lucidly articulates the struggle of women who have been denigrated repeatedly, not encouraged, not treated with potential and promise, conditioned from all sides that they are "inessential” and "others” to the men in their lives. And Simone asks if it isn't obvious that the situation of women in history afforded fewer possibilities. And she underlines and reiterates that life is dynamic, that situations aren’t fixed, that life is changeable, and that situations AND women are changing. And she goes further, indicates she's "interested in the fortunes of the individual as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty.” And my mother comes to mind again, so constrained, so inessential, relegated to otherness, a woman who believed her role was to make others happy, who rarely if ever acted in the interests of her own liberty. And there are times when tears well up, when I think of her spirit being beaten down and circumscribed by those she lived with and loved, of the promise and potential that was stifled and unacknowledged, of the electro-convulsive shock therapy, and more tears, damn it!, that she was never able to come to these words and rejoice: “Subjects play their part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence. They achieve liberty only through a continual reaching out toward other liberties.”

So very unfortunate that she never got to the point of exploration where the words of De Beauvoir would register and resound with meaning: "The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspirations of every SUBJECT (Ego)—who always regards the self as the essential—and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential.” And it's quite clear now, my reading of Second Sex was a reading of my mother, a building upon and rounding out of my personal experience of HER.

It seems to me, looking back, so many years later, that much has changed, so so much, thinking of you two, thinking of all the forceful and fierce women I’ve known and loved, thinking that the reading of this one book was a kind of redemption, a realization and an awareness of what mother was up against, how great her task was.

Lessons for us all, women and men, that we may develop inner strength and depth of feeling, and become ardent and self-defining, bold and compassionate.

He had fitted in wherever he found himself,… But he had never taken root. He had fitted in sufficiently to satisfy his fellows but not to satisfy himself. He had been perturbed always by a feeling of unrest, had heard always the call of something from beyond, and had wandered on through life seeking it until he found books and art and love.

      —Narrator in Jack London’s Martin Eden

~~~

To live your life in a way that focuses always on the moment you're in, to embody the idea that it's not about where you're headed but where you are. Life’s a dance, a waltz, if only to imagine it.

Meaningful coincidences abound. A year from now we'll be in Portland. It’s disorienting and quite surreal. Beginning again, another journey, and it occurs to me, in the time I've known and loved her, and let me underline it, I fell in love with her in those first moments, end of December 2009, when she walked up, pushing her infusion cart and introducing herself, I knew it then, these things really do happen, and you shake your head in wonder and delight, no telling how it all plays out after, but you know, and if you don't ignore the chemistry, the immediate and unmistakable connection, you become an adventurer, a traveler in the intimate realms, and I’m here to tell you, once you give yourself over to it, once you become a disciple, all bets are off. Prepare to receive glad-tidings and goodwill, prepare for pain and suffering, prepare to live.

~~~

It was 2008, late summer, and I had just gotten into the clinical trial. The initial therapies, combined androgen blockade and radiation, had slowed the metastases, but it was clear the dread cells were on the rebound and moving quickly. They had traveled to the bone and my only hope was high-dose chemo and the experimental drug Atrasentan. I felt doomed. Along the way and as I got to the third cycle of chemo something happened. Fortune smiled and I got to “zero” in the test results, no discernible cancer cell activity. There was promise, a glimmer, and it was here that Maya cried out in her misery. She was unhappy, wanting to make a change, and we had traveled to Portland previously, loved the city, the urban environs, Powell’s City of Books, strolls in the park along the riverfront, cafés, restaurants, we had talked of moving, before the unraveling, before the cancer diagnosis, and now, it was on her radar, a change of venue was needed, and she made her case, and I told her I’d have to think about it, that I had nine more cycles of chemo to go. The clinical trial wouldn’t end until 2011 and I needed to stay at MCC for another year, if not two. This my best shot.

It was a Wednesday night, she had grumbled all through dinner, the free spirit in her wrestling with the one who sought to settle down and buy a home. Maya’s a traveler at heart, and this was a turning point, to hunker down or keep moving, and I was all for making the move, but dang, this cancer, have to tend to it, survive the onslaught, and we’re laying in bed, in the dark, staring at the ceiling, speaking softly, both of us struggling, trying to hang on, find a way, and where once we’d cuddle up and hold on to each other, we turned away, the loneliness palpable and real, and I curled up, self-protective and fetal, body and spirit under siege, and I said, “I’ll email Morgan in the morning and ask him about the cancer care in Portland.”

Dr. Morgan came back upbeat and praising. An excellent cancer center there, Knight Cancer Institute, and he had recently seen a presentation by, and met with, one of their lead urologic oncologists. “They’ve got a first-rate prostate cancer team.” I had framed my questions to indicate I had every intention of completing the trial, that I had hope now, and that survival seemed possible. The future beckoned. He was supportive and encouraging. I was at work when I received his message and I turned it right around, forwarded his comments to Maya, added in a sketch, a first thought and plan, elated I was, thinking this could be the moment where we find our way back to each other, to renew the connection. Loneliness be gone.

When I sent the email I half expected she’d share in my elation. She’d have to wait if we were to go together, and I was okay if she had to get herself there immediately. I would join her when the trial completed. She never responded. When we sat down to dinner that night, it was more of the same, another horrible day at work, more grumbling about egomaniacal partners and incompetent support staff. It was as if the Portland conversation had never taken place, as if it meant nothing if you couldn’t just do it now, say yes without thinking it through, we’re going, no mulling it over, no circumspection and weighing the consequences.

I wasn’t feeling well, six days this side of the last infusion, infusions always on Thursdays, the steroids wearing off by Saturday night, and you go horizontal, in pain and unable to move by Sunday morning. Then on Mondays you drag yourself out of bed, get yourself to work, a reason to get up, a reason to live. And as each day passes in the three-week frame, before the next cycle of poison, you kinda/sorta come to life, you feel a little better. And though the cycle three results had lifted one doom cloud, others were forming, the severance was slow-going, and we were no longer touching, and I was beginning to lose my fight. Beaten down I was. And I began to take the path of least resistance, this the height of my adventitious ways. We never talked about Portland again. Not a word. And of course, our misery grew and grew, and she began to spend more and more time at work, she faced off with the difficulties there and overcame them, she began to focus on the one thing that had meaning for her, that made a difference in her life, where she had some measure of control. And she made up her mind, she’d become partner, she’d assert herself further rather than walk away, she’d hang tough and make it HER workplace, be a player, transform what was wrong, fix the problems. And we stayed together, and all the while we were unraveling, and it was clear for anyone to see, we were no longer right for each other. The disconnection was nearing completion and I was just holding on, impotent and suffering.

Four months after I walked out of the relationship, four months after chemo completed, I thought about the Portland moment, her crying out, her despair, her want of heading north. It was a flashpoint. In a parallel life this is the moment she courageously and boldly walks out, where she confronts her loneliness and the truth of a dissolving and dying relationship, where she frees herself from the ties to a man who was not like the men she was now drawn to. But in this life, when she looked at the man who once charmed her, the man once spirited and strong, all she could feel was pity; she could not act, could not say I’ve got to leave. So weakened I was, so without strength and spirit, I simply persevered, unable to initiate the break, and for one more insufferable and miserable year the two of us hung on, putting one foot in front of the other until we could no longer bear it, until the pivotal and propitious scene presented itself and we were able to end it.

~~~

And now, over two years later, in remission, seemingly a survivor in full repair, I have decided to accompany the love of my life to Portland, Oregon. Not Maya, but Camille, the strangest thing. She had applied to 11 medical schools and was accepted by six, one of which was UCSD. Virginia, New Mexico, UCSF, Massachusetts and the Oregon Health & Science University. In the conversations we had leading up to her decision, I found something exciting about every possible locale. Choosing UCSD seemed a no-brainer. No uprooting, familiar environs, a known healthcare system where friends and trusted colleagues reside. Yet, she’s ready to move on, to let go of and die to the nurse-self and be reborn as the physician-self. Such wisdom and insight, she understands that it would be much easier to manage the transition when folks aren’t seeing and remembering you as the one who takes orders, the one who provides care based on the diagnoses and plans of others. Now she’d be the one conducting the exam, conjuring the diagnosis, leading the care.

When Portland came up I couldn’t contain myself, said I loved the place, had been there a few times, lush and green, noticeable seasons, colorful falls, wet winters, yet the climate’s temperate, referred to as “oceanic” and there are two glorious rivers, the Willamette and Columbia, and I recommended we take a trip, visit the schools in the running. But she had made up her mind, confessing that the University of Washington was her first choice, hands down. Had they accepted her we’d be headed to Seattle. But OHSU was right there, #3 in primary care, and a school with smaller than average enrollments, nearly half the size of Washington’s typical class. A quick and easy decision, no teeth gnashing, no doubts, it just seemed right.

She has been talking about making the Northwest her home; she's asked me about it... well dang, I have all these years resisted it, the idea of home, an anchorage, the settling down, but now, time, age, circumstance and most of all, her presence, has made it seem like the logical next step.

~~~

Reflect upon and think about all the pivotal scenes in your life. They’re readymade for your interpretation and mythmaking. Always a conjuring, so much that transpires, unfathomable and unimaginable. No accounting for or predicting the turning points, where we decide, act and set a course. Ready yourself, be prepared… yes, traversing the dance floor, round and round we go, yes, life’s a dance, a waltz, and isn’t it a joy?

~~~

It’s a little after 6:30 a.m., sun just up, sitting at Panera Bread, at the far end of the bar facing the intersection of Wall Street and Girard, and through a massive plate glass window I have a view of the stately Athenaeum Music & Arts Library directly across, and to the left the Grande Colonial Hotel, an Old World structure on Prospect Place, only the upper floors of the hotel within my line of sight towering above the mom and pop stores just below, then going west along Girard, across Prospect through the eucalyptus trees south of the library, beyond the gently swaying palm trees, past the hotel, there’s a corridor that runs right to the Pacific, a stirring view, and now hummingbirds zooming up, pausing, gazing in, then darting off, and seagulls breezing by, swirling down and soaring upward, heading toward the corridor, and such moments, vivifying and renewing, feeling loved and loving after a tough week at work (didn’t give notice, am playing it out, can’t walk out on them now), words here can’t capture the all-at-onceness of it, oh so pivotal, a reminder, nothing more important than this, nothing, this a frame for living, for everything we do: love.

~~~

That I’ve never taken to Jack London until now is beyond me. Camille and Amber were on a girls’ night out, and I rented a copy of Caroline Bottaro's Queen To Play, a sweet story, going along, Hélène’s acquiring a taste for chess, realizing she has a gift, the ability to see the board, the players, the whole of the game, all of a piece, and at her tutor’s urging, professor to chambermaid, she begins to read, and the pivotal scene, the one that led me to London, she’s reading Martin Eden aloud, "The real world was that of his mind and the stories he wrote the only possible reality." And I paused the DVD, replayed the scene, “The real world was that of his mind…” an assemblage of stories and narratives, conjured and made real by each and all, everyone a witness to events that come and go, day in and day out, our routines for living and surviving, the sun sets and rises again, round and round, cyclical and orbiting, centrifugal and centripetal, and it’s quite stupefying, to see so clearly that living isn’t diachronic and sequential, that the linear is an illusion and the travail and misery in the world often comes from those who’ve imagined the whole of it, from birth to death, the alpha and the omega, as only a straight and clear cut line to the end, knowable and understood. So much bullcorn… it’s the storytelling that’s the end all, our intersecting stories, malleable, changeable and dynamic, not predetermined, if only we could see it—our imagination and the power to reframe, rewrite, reinvent—our power to change course and make meaning as we look back and take stock.

On the spur…, ordered up a digital copy of Eden, another moment of the unpredictable, unforeseen, one book/one story leading to who knows where, to a conversation, to another book/film, to an insight, to a feeling, to a thought, to an unanticipated connection with another, and you have to stay open to the mystery, you never know what’s coming your way, a flippin’ adventure it is.

At last Friday night’s dinner and a movie with Camille and Amber, there’s a point during the meal where we get to talking about gender studies. Amber, an RN who put herself through school, getting her nurse’s license from San Diego City College, and now looking to finish off her B.A. at SDSU in Women’s Studies, and it’s an odd conversation, apropos for this likely union leader, and she mentions an essay she just read by Kate Bolick, All The Single Ladies, and Jesus H., Amber’s taken in by the questions asked and answered. Bolick reporting that at the age of 28 she ended a “good relationship,” wasn’t quite clear on the why, the guy she dumped exceptional, smart, handsome, kind, and all she could conjure was “something’s missing,” and that she couldn’t imagine settling down at that moment, and when she ended it, how horrible, the tears, the sobbing, and I chimed in, asked Amber to send me the link, and I shared how terrible it was when Maya and I ended, I had said no to therapy, made up my mind that it wasn’t worth it, something was awry, and Camille jumped in, her ordeal with Martin, there’s fear, and a risk and you just have to go for it, go with your gut feeling, you have to trust yourself and endure the pain of it, the doubts. And Amber continued, Bolick nearing 40, and she has this vision, a parade of ex-boyfriends/lovers running through her mind, and she’s thinking about what it means to be alone, and she asks, should I stay single or get married, find someone passable, someone “good enough," like the guy she dumped the decade before, and we get around to it, the “falling in love,” finding “the one,” and what a crapshoot THAT is, and maybe it is an illusion, another one of the myths we perpetuate, and it’s unsettling, to say the least, that in a year’s time Camille and I could end, that’s so fucked up, don’t want to go there. And I get all philosophical on them, offer up the opinion that both of us, women and men have to know who we are and what we want, we must be self-aware and have to understand that as time goes by, as our experience shapes and alters us, we have to embrace the change, that it’s a new ballgame, that the traditional is no longer serviceable or useful, that we have to get on with it, live and love in our own way, even if it’s contrary and idiosyncratic, a way that may not be approved of or sanctioned by significant others, friends or family. There’s no panacea, no perfect one-size-fits-all frame. The marriage frame one among many.

And I asked Amber if Simone De Beauvoir was on the horizon, “Can’t imagine Second Sex not being on one of your assigned reading lists.” Both she and Camille had heard of Simone, but neither had read her, and they were both taken in when I admitted to having read Second Sex back in the 90s, attracted to the philosophy and the history, that it had affected me deeply, transformed my understanding of what my sister, mother, aunts and female cousins had been faced with, and of course more light shed on who and how I was with my ex-wife, girlfriends along the way, even Maya, at the beginning; and it’s like reading De Beauvoir, hearing it all from this brilliant and wise woman, a clear self-report and honest investigation, it then becomes mirroring, and you come to see yourself in a new way, and you can’t understand yourself without understanding the other(s), the conditions, the beliefs and assumptions handed down to us, sexus and nexus, and I was going off, remembering the most salient point for me, the one thing that stood out all these years, that modern, self-determining and free-spirited women are “physically present in the world,” assertive and forceful, never shying away from or backing down, and my ex-wife was this way, androgynous and idiosyncratic, and Maya too, and of course Camille, the epitome, and based on what Amber’s saying sounds like Bolick’s nailing it, asking the right questions, can we have both autonomy and intimacy in a loving relationship?

Certainly a challenge to be yourself, to be self-aware and accepting, to not compare or compete, but to be loving and empathetic, and when someone interests you, when you feel the draw, then you have to let go, move toward that which attracts. Grab a compass and go. Find a way, get close, discover and be intrepid. Human intimacy the one true adventure.

~~~

Camille picked up the tab, and as we were exiting we were serenaded by Madeline Peyroux, and it made me smile, into and out of environments, music always there, piped in and shaping the scenes of our life, in the café, the restaurant, the bar, the grocery store, the salon, even when we’re walking or running, or in the gym working out, we’ve all got the music running in from our iPods, Smartphones or imagination, and I hold the door open and follow them out, always following along and in tow, the one now has become two, Camille and her pal Amber:

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love…

… the surprising, bucolic tranquility of this corner of the world comforts me, even if inside I still feel turmoil, or better the rumbling of turmoil: a kind of distant but not too distant agitation, the way the rumbling of traffic is distant but not too distant, down there, that sounds muffled and soft up here but still makes it up here anyway…. A quiet chaos is what I feel inside. A quiet chaos.

      —Sandro Veronisi, Quiet Chaos

~~~

On the Saturday Occupy Wall Street took a turn for the dramatic, when globally hundreds of thousands of human beings stood together and marched in solidarity condemning the unfettered and unregulated greed of the most clever and avaricious among us—the plutocrats, the financiers and capitalists and their on-the-take and self-serving lackeys (renowned economic scholars and government officials), Camille and I held a dinner party.

Time: 6:30 p.m.
Location: Our tri-level in Del Mar.
Guests: Nurses and their significant others—friends of Camille: Sam Briggs, Molly Ames, Sandra Nash, Jack & Mariya Oliver, Enrique Rojas & Marisol Carrasco, and the inimitable Amber Hughes.
Menu: spaghetti with marinara, Caesar salad, mini sourdough baguettes, prosciutto cheese rolls from Trader Joe’s, and 18 half bottles of Coltibuono Chianti Classico
Music (“Dinner Party” playlist, an hour and a half on a loop):

- Bye Bye Blackbird - Patricia Barber
- Via Con Me - Paolo Conte
- Pacific Coast Highway - Nils
- Survival - Annette Peacock
- Sara - Bob Dylan
- Need Someone - Stubborn Heart (White Label)
- Sleep Away - Bob Acri
- Bad - Wide Awake - U2
- Insomniac Olympics - Blockhead
- 1940 (AmpLive Remix) - The Submarines
- Sweet Tides - Thievery Corporation
- Dog Days Are Over - Florence + The Machine
- Crazy - Diana Krall, Elvis Costello & Willie Nelson
- The Best Is Yet To Come - Tony Bennett & Diana Krall
- Bach's Goldberg Variations (1-4) - Murray Perahia

~~~

It’s 4 o’clock and I peek in on Camille, she’s sitting on the veranda, relaxing, reading a book, and I come in behind and give her a kiss on the neck; she reaches up and runs her hand through my hair. “Going down to start the sauce. I’ll take the Bose down too.”

I put the “Dinner Party” CD in the player, cranked it up and got to it. Changed up two things on the marinara. I let the soy crumbles (Yves Meatless Ground) marinate in tomato sauce with the oregano, basil and minced carrots beforehand, and I used one large can of Contadina Italian tomato paste. Time to simmer, an hour and a half. The time in-between, reading Sandro Veronisi’s Quiet Chaos on my Droid, (got it on my MacBook too), my first novel using Amazon’s Kindle App. Mind-blowing, weirdly intimate and a joy. And Veronisi? Oh my god. Am two-thirds the way in, and if it continues in it’s whirling and dynamic magnificence this post could be the last for me. I may have to stop this probe-goading charade. A common, ordinary man wanting to enhance and enliven his life through the development and use of language engaging a master like Veronisi; so god-damned exhilarating, so stirring, so downright humbling that I can’t imagine writing one sentence that could match the most banal of intervals in Veronisi’s narrative. This could be my “kill me now” moment, an aesthetic high point, elevated thought and emotion from a prize-winning author, the loving caresses and intimate touch of a woman, whole- and warm-hearted Camille Durand, and… well, let it all end right now. I’m good.

She comes downstairs and prepares the salad dressing, chops up the lettuce, rinses and spins it, into the fridge to cool and crisp, croutons from Panera Bread, and I’m uncorking the half bottles then slipping the corks back in, and it’s zero hour, the doorbell rings, and she turns, grabs my arm and pulls me to her and we hug; then a long, luscious and arousing, “I love you, don’t want this moment to end” kiss. Acri’s Sleep Away starts up, I go over and turn it down a touch, and we’re off.

~~~

As I’m sure you’ve surmised sociality is not my thing, have always been aloof to and distant, except when on the arm of such a woman as Ms. Durand, where she leads I follow, in tow and attendant, and in these kinds of moments I’m generally silent, listening, not a talker, and quite the joyous one when others tell their jokes and stories. I’ve got my mother’s laugh, and if you get me going folks will freak, think I’m over the top, crass and uncouth, yet, I’ve been told it’s infectious, and I can’t help myself, and it’s probably best for me to be in the kitchen for these kinds of evenings, and the last to arrive rings the doorbell, my queue to finish slicing the prosciutto cheese rolls, and before heading into the kitchen, a quick look and a double take, Jesus, it’s Amber Hughes, she’s striking, 26, 27, can’t tell, Jesus, and I’ve never seen her at the Center, the other nurses I’ve seen, been introduced here and there, Sam, Molly, Sandra, Mariya and Enrique, even had a full infusion moment with Mariya way back when.

Anyhoo, into the kitchen I go, and I’m putting the tray together, all are sipping their Chianti, except Jack, he wanted beer, and I had stocked some pale ale and Guinness Extra Stout, and he opted for the stout, and Camille’s about to give Amber the tour and as I turn to head out with the prosciutto, they come into the kitchen, “And this is Mr. Kinney,” saying it with joy and pleasure, “Max, this is Amber.” I’ve got a kitchen towel on my shoulder and I put down the tray, wipe my hands on the towel, then reach out, “Hey. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Camille often talking about her like a proud big sister. Amber replies, “Likewise.” We shake, an awkward moment, and I expect, if they were into reading minds, understanding the look on the faces before them they’d see that I was stunned, standing before two of the loveliest, most ravishing and remarkable women I’ve ever laid eyes on. There’s an ease and openness about them, a strength and confidence that’s both intimidating and charming, all right there for anyone to see. I offer them the prosciutto, and they both take a few slices and head upstairs with Mariya and Sam, on the final tour of the evening.

~~~

“Damn,” Enrique says, “this prosciutto's killer. Where'd you get it?”

“Where else? Trader Joe’s.” And the conversation turns to everyone’s favorite TJ’s product. Makes me smile and I head back into the kitchen, everything’s ready, water’s at a boil, two giant pots, a pound and a half of pasta, ten minutes to cook, al dente, Camille comes in, assembles her salad, everything’s arrayed, buffet-style on the Paloma, plates and utensils on the counter, help yourself, come and get it, and everyone spreads out in the living room, comfy cozy, pillows and easy chairs, two small couches, and a low-lying mantelshelf in front of the fireplace, each with their glasses of wine, their half bottles of Chianti, and as Annette Peacock’s Survival comes round, oh so apropos, I turn down the music a tad more, and we’re eating, and I focus on Amber’s conversation with Molly, and she asks if she’s seen Inside Job, and she hasn’t, and Amber goes off, talks about what’s happening in New York right now, and across the globe, the Occupy movement, and next week’s film release of Margin Call here in San Diego; and everyone begins to pay attention to this particular conversation, and it becomes one conversation, and it’s unusual when as many folks get together, mixed in with significant others, different backgrounds and routes to the work they’re doing and the relationships they’re in, that everyone agrees, no dissent, no one defending “free markets,” no one defending the horseshit dream of each American having a right to amass exorbitant sums, the dream of having the opportunity to become the next gazillionaire, and of course it’s not a dream but a legitimating and evil conjuring by malicious, mean-spirited and soulless philosopher-economists who can’t imagine an economic system that’s based on collaboration, cooperation and fellow-feeling, a system that seeks to prevent and/or regulate the tendency of human beings to disassociate themselves from the pain and poverty of others, even when there’s a direct correlation to that suffering, when one’s way of life and attitudes on organizing society are directly related to the exploitation and manipulation of others for one’s own gain.

Oh so stirring it was when Amber revealed she’s looking to get involved with the CNA, the university’s nurse bargaining unit. She’s fired up, talking about National Nurses United, and their support of the Occupy movement. And we were all enrapt, felt like I was watching Made in Dagenheim, where women got fed up about unequal pay, enough is enough, and now Main Street, everyday Americans taking to the streets, angry about the economic state of affairs, finally pissed off at the right people, and Amber, oh my god, engaging and ramped up, a born leader, we’re all taken in,… dang, what a grand surprise.

~~~

The party wound down, all gone but Mariya, Jack and Amber, and I was hiding in the kitchen, starting the clean up. Amber strolled in and said the sauce was sublime and thanked me for the evening. “Thank Camille.” And we get to talking, and I mention that my Pops was a labor union president before running his own business. And we both agree that it’s maddening how unions have gotten a bad rap, that the constant and besmirching din of well-meaning people misses the point, that organizing and cooperative endeavors, the want of fairness and an alternative to top-down thinking and living, the unrivaled brilliance of the collective bargaining idea, well, it’s a topsy-turvy world we’re living in. And we come round to Howard Zinn’s The People’s History…, and the rage, challenge, difficulties, struggles, the ugliness of the oligarchs and plutocrats, these monarchs of the postmodern era who’ve lost touch in their will to power, this likely to inspire new revolutions, and maybe OCCUPY is the first glimpse of what lies ahead.

Mariya yells from the front door, “See you tomorrow Amber. Thanks Max.” Amber peeks out of the kitchen doorway, “Okay. Good night Jack.” The front door closes and she turns back to me, asking if Camille and I would be interested in going to see Margin Call next Friday night. There’s a late show, she and Camille working till 6, “We could do dinner first.” Camille walks in right behind, and says, “We’d love to.” Excited, I offer up the possibility of going to Isabel Cruz’s new restaurant near Balbo Park, Barrio Star, and they both say yes. Double dang.

“Well, I better get going.” The loveliest ladies on the planet hug, and Amber thanks Camille for a marvelous party. “See you tomorrow?” “Yep,” the two of them pulling a Sunday shift with Mariya. “Max, good talking with you.”

“You okay to drive? I am the designated driver here.” Camille laughs and Amber says she’s fine. Camille walks her to the door and returns. I’m at the sink, and she comes over, kisses me on the cheek, and asks, “You got this?” “I do.” She heads upstairs, and I can hear her running a bath as I finish it off, presto-pronto, the kitchen done, the dishwasher on, more water sounds, a filling up and a swooshing back and forth. I put the living room back together, turn off the lights and head up.

Camille, ever so devilishly, peeking at me from behind the bubbles that engulf her, and I’m sitting on the toilet seat opposite, and she says, “Well that was fun.”

“It was, and Amber? Jesus…”

“I told you.”

“Listen, don't want to freak you out, but I’ve been a little off at work. Thinking about giving notice, taking some time. Don't know. Pops left a pretty big chunk, and I’ve got more put by, and Sonja’s got a line on a realtor who’s going to manage the sale of the house,... I don't know. You’re going to be in med school next fall, a move is in the works unless UCSD is in the mix, and I just think it’s time.” Told her that I had been headhunted via LinkedIn on more than one occasion, that my temperament and personality works perfectly in customer support environments, and it’s like these headhuntings inspire confidence, that your skills and talents are worthy, folks seeing beyond your age, and I’m thinking why not volunteer for a while, at a nonprofit in need, and more time for reading and writing, relaxing, and maybe I do get published, ha ha ha.

She asked about healthcare, the cost, and I said “Well, it’s a risk. I am in remission, and it’s weird, it's like I’m on the way to being the healthiest I’ve been in decades. I can Cobra until we get settled, wherever that is, and I’ll look for work again then. I would expect there’ll be first-rate care where we land, seeing how it will be a university, a medical school,” she smiles, “and you know what, you never know what’s going to happen, right?, and if you limit yourself, if you’re afraid,... fuck that, you said it yourself, there are no guarantees.” And she smiled again, seemed at ease, and understanding, I could see she liked that I was imagining my future along with hers, following her to the medical school of choice.

~~~

Every now and again she puts on one of her silk, chemise nightgowns, this one’s white, with cream-colored lace borders at the hem and neck, and we slip into bed, and she’s warm to the touch, always after a hot bath, and she’s facing the veranda, the slider open slightly, crisp and cool ocean air, and I’m cuddling in right behind, under the covers, and I’ve got my arms around her, and I’m thinking I've never felt so alive, so connected and dependent upon another. What is it? Things happen, and you find yourself here, a moment where it's not possible to imagine being out of touch, can't imagine their absence, the longing it would inspire, and my grip tightens, and she reaches back and lays her hand on my thigh, squeezes it, and doesn't let go.

The novelist Virginia Woolf imagined people walking past Montaigne’s self-portrait like visitors in a gallery. As each person passes, he or she pauses in front of the picture and leans forward to peer through the patterns of reflection on the glass. ‘There is always a crowd before that picture, gazing into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is they see.’

—Sarah Bakewell, How To Live – Or – A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer

~~~

We were sitting at the Bleu Bohème, at the end of the bar, it’s dark, and if you let yourself go, you can imagine you’re in Paris, a little corner bistro, and we’re nibbling on their “Escargots à la Portugais,” she’s sipping on a merlot and I’m nursing a club soda, and they always bring a half loaf of warm whole wheat, with whipped butter, on a rustic cutting board, and it’s heaven, and I’ve got Bistro Blue in my mind, Cynthia M’s La Mer running through, and Camille, on her second glass, mischievous and with a sparkle in her eye, says, “Okay, I don’t want to be unfeeling, but it’s so so nice to always have a designated driver around.” I lifted my glass for a toast and shot her a look, glasses clinked and she chuckled, reached over and pinched my ear lobe.

“Ouch!” I laughed.

Later, we stepped into the Ken Cinema across the street to see Mozart’s Sister. And what a sublime and engaging film, not surprising to learn that the 18th century genius had a sister, that she was not encouraged, of her time, hindered and prevented from developing the talent and skill she possessed, and even today, still going on, thinking of mother, and her wife-beating father and later her domineering husband, Pops, and she never got an ounce of encouragement, not a drop, and she became a kind of loving “drudge,” her own word, conjured and expressed to me in the year before she died. I never stopped trying to encourage her, to say it’s never too late, but she had settled in long ago, had lost her pizzazz and would routinely refer to herself as “frumpy.” And it just pisses me off, she was a striking and vivacious woman early on, and yes she was troubled, not sure, asking questions, and no one in her circle able to understand, to provide guidance, and she ends up getting the treatment of her time, electro-convulsive shock therapy, a kind of electrocution of the soul but she didn’t die, and thereafter she never had it in her to stand her ground, to demand loving consideration and support like the women of the generation to follow, she lived in fear, couldn’t manage the unruly and it’s weird, thinking about it, a bit of self-awareness, I have always been drawn to women on the way, women developing and meeting challenges, leaning in, strong and fearless, and here I am, off-template, nearly 60, hooked up, yet again, with a superlative female, so much younger, a woman undecided about motherhood, a woman working two jobs, full-time at the Cancer Center, and part-time at San Diego Hospice, now socking away every dime in preparation for more loan debt that will come with medical school.

And you have to ask, in these moments when you pause, maybe a quiet moment in the bathroom in front of the mirror, and you’re buck naked, and you smile and you think, “What the fuck? Where have I come? And why?” Yes, why? Each of us answering that question differently, each of us idiosyncratically engaged, immersed in the details of making a life.

Standing there, unmasked and clear seeing, why do you continue? And it makes me smile, at least three levels now, the life lived (MKB), the fictive identity at play, then the character created, imagining his own fiction, and so on, the self as construct, a fluidity, oh so powerful and dangerous, and it’s crazed, am I Max? Who the hell am I? Am I simply the creation of another?... I guess all of it an anchor in some sense, a place where we tether ourselves to that which lies within, a place no one has access to, and if anyone wants access, well, why? Why would you want access?... and, well, maybe we ALL want access, maybe that’s the power of and attraction to art, to great writers and poets, filmmakers and composers, architects, everyone in their own way an artist in life, each of us with his or her own particular imagination, and each of us, if we make time, plumbing the depths, beginning to see that there’s nothing more than this, our creations: how we are in the world, who we are with others, our collaborations and connections, what we produce, what we emphasize, all of it, a creation, and it’s here where we reveal what’s within, everything we say or do a snapshot of ourselves in a particular moment, a revelation, nothing truer, nothing more real, nothing more to the point.

Fiction?

Our lives imagined and created, mysterious. Why not allow for that which is most unruly and wild? Why not attempt to get at truths not revealed through direct examination? Why not stay on the periphery of the factual and real, one simple remove away, on the edge of the life lived, a unique perspective, an angle of insight that makes use of the existing light, that captures the intervals and interstitial?

It’s like the pace of our lives is so hurried and ramped up that we’re convinced the intervals and interstitial aren’t important. We’re moving so quickly that we seem convinced the only things worth pondering are those things we have words for, those things directly and prominently displayed and known.

I am in tears and I don’t know why.

The book is not to be taken as an injunction… but an invitation to all readers to story their lives, to recognize every day's weave of narratives, to confer form onto experience so as to see the unthinkably complex matters of our work.

— Rita Charon, Director, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University

~~~

We were on a stroll, sauntering along Camino Del Mar, going south, over and down to the water's edge, and as she often does, she turns the moment into a kind of tone-poem, talking about the day-to-day, how it will all change when she hears back from the medical schools she’s applied to. Where will we land? Eleven schools, and much to my surprise, she has focused on those that are known for their “primary care.”

At dusk, the Pacific calm, waves gently rolling in, and we’re grabbing up stones, tossing them out, trying to skip them on the surface, and she goes on about how the quiet moments we spend together, most often in routine, that there’s romance in them, in the simplicity, and we make it so, we endeavor to heighten and vivify, make the ordinary seem extraordinary, it’s what we choose to emphasize and create, and for her, these are the anchoring and key elements that keep us sane and in love, and better able to meet the travail and challenges that come; and I can’t disagree, ultimately, yes, we do spend more time with others, more time sleeping, more time alone than we do in each other’s company, a moment together in the morning, and at night, sitting down to dinner when we can, our walks, films, music, snatches of time on the weekends when she’s not working, spontaneous moments of lovemaking, in quantity the least in duration but in quality the most important, the pivotal and paramount, the loving anchorage that keeps us grounded and reminds us of what’s crucial and significant, a place where we can make our larger love, of life and for others, more personal and intimate, a place we call home, and whether you’ve purchased a half acre in the hills, or a remodeled craftsman in an old neighborhood, or you’ve leased a cozy cottage on the cliffs or a tri-level townhouse in Del Mar, it’s home, where it all makes sense, where we’re able to connect intimately and I want to agree with her completely, but I don’t, and I say nothing, thinking what’s most grounding and pivotal for me comes in the moments when I’m here, trying to find the right words, to capture what’s happening, to make sense of it all, and while she’s musing I can’t help think about the often spirit-murdering and deadening effects of habits and routines, how it’s so easy to go to sleep, to forget and not think about what we’re feeling and thinking, how the presto-pronto pace feeds on itself and time just begins to pass at breakneck speed, and you begin not to notice things, inattentiveness comes as a matter of course, and I can no longer contain myself, and I ask, “You seem to have less and less time for yourself, doesn’t that get to you? I’d go nuts if I couldn’t steal away. You’re immersed…. And you know, there are times when I want to see more of you, and it’s like I can’t, it’s just not possible, unless I become a coworker or a colleague, and of course that IS impossible, and I don’t know, you look around, and it’s true, what you say, that intimates, lovers and spouses spend more time with others at work and on the road, often dynamic and exciting circumstances, and…”

“Hold on,” she says in a chuckle, “I see where you’re going there. Dalliances and affairs happen for a reason, some part of the love, the connection, it’s gone, and it’s not boredom, that’s not the problem, it’s something else, and I think you have to be clear on what the connection is, how it works for you, why it’s important. And I think I know you a little bit, you have to see it, I’m not Maya, I’m not her, I’m not your ex-wife either, I’m not Claire, I’m like no one else you’ve ever been with,” she’s having fun now, and I smile, so god damn charming, “and what’s most important to me I think is most important to you, it really is about the simplest of things, about goodbye kisses, about sitting on the veranda together, about holding hands, running errands, taking naps, cuddling up, seconds, minutes, hours, precious moments in the day-to-day; that’s what matters in the end, what makes a difference.” And with that she turned and threw one last stone just as the waves rolled back into a stillness, and the dang thing skipped nine times, and I shouted, “Oh!”

~~~~

On the walk back home she asks about having a dinner party, admits we’ve been keeping each other hidden. Friends? Coworkers? Dang, a dinner party? Jesus, the worst, I am so not one for the social, so want to go and hide, and she says, “Why don’t you make that vegan spaghetti sauce, you know the soy crumbles and minced carrots. Let’s see if they notice it’s not ground beef.” And she makes me laugh, and I’ve been trying to perfect my mom’s sauce for two years now, substituting soy for meat, a sauce that was like a hearty soup, rich and flavorful, a recipe that never got written down, and I say, “Okay, and you’ll do the Caesar salad?”

“I will. And we can buy a couple of loaves of that rustic Ciabatta you so love, and, what was that Chianti you brought home for me the other night, that half bottle?”

“Coltibuono Chianti Classico.”

“Yes, Chianti, buy a case, an Italian feast.” She laughed.

~~~

Am already queasy, this will be one of those occasions, moments Doc Triple M said it would be okay to drink, the now and again. And I’ll need more than a half bottle before the guests arrive, and double dang, did I mention I’m off Lupron? Yep, apparently the testosterone is starting to creep back in, had a morning erection the other day and I couldn’t quite believe it. We had set the alarm for 4, and it had gone off, playing KPBS jazz, and we were spooning, not wanting to get up, and she cracks, “What’s going on back there?”

I giggled like a schoolgirl, reached over and hit snooze.