“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the entire universe.” Carl Sagan
I’m busting here. I seem to be continually changing my mind about how I want to begin this tome, or whatever these kind of things are called. Maybe, because I am so accustomed to writing on a pretty constipated schedule. I just shattered the pattern by skipping an entire week!
The occurrence of my birthday just around a week ago was a clear dereliction of the writ of the writer, at least based on how I’ve been writing for years now.
I had this whole idea of what I wanted to write about for my birthday. Every damn Friday, I come home after work and start writing my next blog post, something I have almost always thought about for days prior to sitting down in a showdown with the blank screen. I did write a bunch of stuff last week and I may just use some of it this week and you will never know the difference!
Wait, I am still talking straight in the now and I want to share a couple of things, before we move in and out of what I was thinking last week and what I am thinking this week, a bona fide mind-meld.
I have been thinking about some weighty kind of shit, which I do want to talk about. I brought Flaming Lips to the brewery today, just because it was too Kauai beautiful to keep a sheet over her. Before getting on the bike to return home, I was thinking about how I wanted to begin this dangerously, complicated story in as sincere a voice as possible. Then, I took off for home on my bike, afternoon sun in my face, with Willy Nelson and the other Highway Men singing about living forever.
While rubber-spined on my bike, I made up my mind to start this story with that story, and for no particular reason either. Then, right before I sat down right here, I had this flash that what I am actually doing is inviting you into my world for a handful of minutes. Any time I start writing, it’s like opening the front door to my mind and letting you in. Of course, it means you are also guests, so be nice. I wouldn’t want it any other way either.
The truth is, last week, I was wrestling with some stuff that was hard to find the words for, which is theoretically why I do this thing.
When we are young, it’s all ahead of us. Birthdays are these stepping stones to ultimate liberation. Somewhere in the distant middle, we begin to feel a balance that can swing in many directions, choice and responsibility waiting at the dance, which goes by the name of adulthood. The idea of being an adult feels kind of static, while growing up has a fluidity to it. I am still growing up and don’t give a shit about being an adult.
I have always loved this birthday thing. I need a new ticket to run around the track each year, each revolution unique to itself. I think the dance changes, predicated on our awareness. We either keep the beat or step on our own toes.
Here’s the deal, the closer I get to heaven, the more I seem to have this all-inclusive mojo happening fairly often. It is now crazy to me for anyone to be thinking about the future if it does include all of us, regardless of continent, language, religion or skin color. Without everybody, we have no one.
I wanted to try and write about how my awareness of the passage of time, ensconced in a profound awareness of its disappearance, has simultaneously expanded my vision of space, and where I fit in it. For me, as time disappears before my eyes, my concept of space seems to be expanding, as if its compensating for the time loss.
Time and Space start coming together, weaving an infinite tapestry. Their dance is the waltz of forever. More and more, I am looking for my place in all this. Last week, all of this felt like too much, beyond my vocabulary. I just didn’t think I was making my point. I also decided to give myself a birthdaypresent and not write about my damn birthday this time!
I swear I just got it, right this second. I am looking toward heaven, which is this phenomenal, all encompassing sensibility, a tribute to the preciousness of time as it folds into limitless space.
I would have been thrilled to make an apple pie with Carl Sagan. His simple recipe includes everything that ever was and ever will be, with no regard for past, present or future. I know about this idea of the interconnectedness of absolutely everything. I often think, as I have gotten older, this singular idea governs the Universe.
While I can write about my own journey, which I have just done, I know there is so very, much more. I think quantum physics visited the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree or vice versa, who cares? They were both first. It is what Chef Carl was referring to in his Apple Pie recipe.
We live in such an infinitely complex web of moments, each one altering the one prior and the one to follow. I guess I got stuck in all this stuff, because of my birthday. I kind of seized up creatively and decided to squat down on the word nest for an extra week and see what hatches.
So, it seems like time’s territory is shrinking, while the acreage of space is expanding for me. I took advantage of the week’s reprise. I think we are the last to find out what is going on with us, because by the time we are made aware of it, it has passed, life’s sleight of hand.
I am glad I waited 7 days from my 77th Birthday to share this. I also never even thought about the incredible significance of 7, let alone a back to back deal. Thanks to Laura, i got stopped in my tracks, inhaling the significance of this number and its being repeated. I never thought about how cool the number 7 is and, Oh My God, it is a hot shit number.
I have enjoyed the numerical pairing this entire week and it is as close as I will get to 7 and 7 and 7 in my life.
PS: That’s a picture of me kissing my grandson, sharing the secret to all life, at his Bar Mitzvah celebration in Newark, NJ.