“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac
I had a story ready to go for this time and it was already up around 1,000 words. I wasn’t thrilled, because i was trying to make up a story that didn’t deserve to be one.
I will tell you about it briefly, because I really got something I want to write about, which was a complete surprise. My sweet lady is very conscientious and cares about recycling and doing the right thing. I, on the other hand, have very little faith in us seeing our way out of the shit show we have created.
The night before, we had dinner with her daughter, who is a delightful young lady, with a damn good head screwed on her shoulders and a sweet heart resting comfortably in her chest. I got off on one of my Zen induced jags about the idea of dependent co-arising, the interconnectedness of absolutely everything. No effort is too small to make a difference, which is how I feel about my writing, read by a handful of people.
I said something dumb that next morning, impatiently denigrating my partner’s desire to not contribute to the landfill. Digging a hole in the ground to bury garbage has to be thousands of years old as a “solution” to handling waste. On an island, which by definition is land surrounded by water, it is insanely stupid, considering there is now technology to deal with it.
However, her desire to do the right thing under the circumstances is exactly what I meant when I was talking with her daughter. It made me feel rather duplicitous, a word I had to look up, because it sounded good, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Well, it was yet another lesson learned by yours truly. It really upset me. Here I am in my platitudinous writing, but my big mouth can still be kidnapped by a small mind.
Last night (8/22), I came home and there was a skinny envelope sitting on the table by my front door. Unable to read anything in the dark, I assumed that this kind of envelope was either an overdue bill or some unwanted notice.
I came in the house and immediately turned on the light to see what this lethal missive was all about. I’ll be damned, it was a check for writing I have been doing for the County. I am never one take anything at face value, because the writer in my cannot put up with that. This piece of paper turned me into tears, traveling through my whole life and returning to this moment, within seconds. I got paid for writing and its significance warranted a story and it couldn’t wait, because that’s how important it is to me.
Fortunately, I am not governed by the constraints of any kind of literary style, or anything else for that matter. I write whatever I want, however I want. I knew I had to ditch the story I alluded to above, but everything I have ever written has meaning to me and I just couldn’t delete it, like it didn’t exist and I didn’t care about it, because that would be a lie.
In 1957, when I was twelve years old, I got my first job. It was in a delicatessen on Fresh Meadow Lane in Queens. I was in sixth grade and I’d fly out of class at lunch every day and get to the deli before my classmates. I was the waiter and served most everyone hot dogs and fries. Of course there were no tips, but I was paid fifty cents a day, $2.50 for a week!
From there, I went up to Union Turnpike and worked at Turnpike Men’s Clothing Store, owned by Al and Milt, who treated me like a grown up and it was wonderful. I learned to engage with adults and was deadly at guessing inseams and shirt sizes. Since those early days, there has never been a time when I didn’t have a job. I had summer jobs right through high school. My mother did an incredible job raising two boys all by herself, because we lost her husband and our father when we were quite young. I liked being able to take care of myself and never once felt burdened. It was simply the right thing to do.
In ’65, in my junior year at Queens College, I started working full time and haven’t stopped, nearly 60 years later. I got a job as a page, an usher, at NBC and worked the Tonight Show for several years, when Johnny Carson was in NYC. From then on, I worked in the broadcast advertising business for over 20 years. I was at NBC for a few years after paging and then went on to work at four very large advertising agencies. I tried my hand at sales and worked at three different cable networks, in the very early days of cable, when MTV was a phenomenon. I closed out my time in that industry and my time in NYC, working for a distributor of television shows, selling advertising time in them.
Now, why the hell am I telling you all of this? What does that check have to do with any of it? Well, obviously I think it does, or I wouldn’t be off on this resume resuscitation. In ’87, I left NYC and that whole way of living, for a life in Santa Fe, NM. The writer was still buried deep inside, because there was more life to be lived, before I ever thought about sharing it on paper.
I lived in a small adobe home, wedged into the side of hill and the walls were filled with tires, filled with sand. I am this guy, coming from NYC and now living on five acres in the middle of nowhere, in this little adobe womb. Within days of arriving, I started working on a John Huston film festival, parachuting right into the middle of life in this small town. I never once felt out of place either.
My spirit was freed and I could be and do whatever I wanted and did I ever do stuff in my time there. In the summer of ’89, I promoted a major concert series called Music in the Pines. I helped put a radio station on the air for a couple of years. I was in the book and audio book publishing business. I spent a few years trying to launch a British record label and actually got a major distribution contract for them. I was in the nature tourism business for a while and spent time in Central America, one of the great adventures of my life.
Believe me, I am leaving plenty out of my time there. However, I can’t leave there without saying I developed a solid rapport with the Buddha and we have been tight ever since.
This check has reminded me of so much in my life. It is like I was too busy living it to write about it, plus I never imagined being a writer anyway. In a way, it has been like a living recipe for story. I had a wonderful life in Santa Fe, convinced life is meant to be a journey and enjoying the ride is crucial.
I have had a night to think about this story and no, I am not going to start over again. However, I did rethink the significance of the check and have changed how I view it and I will tell you why. First of all, I have been writing throughout my many business lives, because you have to. However, I never just wrote to write, if you know what I mean.
When I got to Kauai, after Santa Fe, I actually did get paid to write and that is one of the things that hit me after laying down this story to this point. I connected with the Kauai County Farm Bureau, when I first got here. I actually ended up writing full page stories, called Grower of the Month, where I interviewed some of the legends in the farming community. I got paid. They appeared in the forerunner to ForKauai at the time. Somehow, I also ended up writing monthly stories about Rice Shopping Center and Ching Young Village and got paid for those as well.
Compared to my many pursuits in Santa Fe, I have had relatively few here. I spent a number of years over in Lawai, working on developing a horse and cattle, cubed feed and much to my disappointment it didn’t work out. I have been with the Kauai Beer Company since its inception, back in 2013. Over the course of my time here, I have gotten to know quite a few people, partially because of some civic minded pursuits. In addition, I worked on the Mayoral campaigns of both Bernard Carvalho and Derek Kawakami.
On Halloween night 2011, I guess you could say I officially started writing. It was when I began a 337 page memoir to my grandson, called Halloween in Portland. I have been writing on my blog, mindandthemotorcycle.com, since November 2014, with nearly 500 stories, just like this one. From the moment I began that book, until now, writing has been my passion.
So, the idea of finally getting paid to write is really not the significance of this very long story. Starting from waiting tables at the deli on Fresh Meadow Lane, until now, I have had more jobs than most of you, many of which I have not included, for fear of boring and numbing you and ultimately losing you before this ending.
The real significance of that check is that getting paid for writing will likely be the last job I have. Pushing 80 and actually having a new job is incredible to me, all by itself. The fact that it is for writing is what really struck me. You can only look back from where you are at the moment. With that check, I can look back at my life and feel like I am doing it as a writer, something I never thought possible when I started that book.
I am filled with gratitude.
LISTEN TO THE STORY HERE
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459/episodes/15635838-i-got-paid