“It is a fucked up world, but we can do our small part to push back the darkness. Keep up the writing. It’s a big part of what makes us human.” Phil Balboni, The Daily Chatter
I got that short message from Phil, in response to a note I sent to him. I subscribe to his news feed, where you find stories from countries you didn’t know existed in the first place, like Djibouti. OK, what’s the capital of Djibouti?
I know I’ve written before about the weirdness of any kind of creative expression. The precise moment you share your words, your painted canvas, or your strum and hum with a guitar for just one other person, you have parted the curtain between private and public.
I don’t know who the hell any of you talk to when no one else is around. I have been talking to myself my whole life and we have never had a single disagreement. Before you get nervous, I don’t move my lips. I first started seriously thinking about writing, somewhere in my early Thirties. I was living on the ground floor of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I had gone through an unpleasant divorce and was living alone for the first time in my life.
The metaphor of leaving home never stops shocking me. We can just call it change, which is always inches out of reach, until we realize it is already in our pocket. Blowing up the myth of the house in the burbs and eternal happiness busted me up pretty badly. The fact that two, innocent young boys were forced to eat emotional shrapnel as a result of my divorce still makes me sad.
I had begun therapy around that time and being angry with my mother, because of her imperfections, was revelatory. What better time to write? I bought a used typewriter and it wasn’t even electric!. I drank some beer, smoked some pot and sat down on my bed, the typewriter looking up at me, patiently staring and waiting. After a huge, personal fanfare about my becoming a writer, leading up to this moment, I haltingly typed a paragraph and burst into tears. I had no idea back then about what Phil is sharing with me now. I was in a lot of pain and pushing back the darkness was beyond my ability.
Several life times later, living through changes inconceivable to me in my Brooklyn days, I started doing this thing you are now reading. I have kept myself company through all this time and I have heard all my stories in the first person. The thing that honestly got me going was love. I miraculously managed to write a very long love letter to my grandson, making sure he would see me the way I wanted to be seen. I figured I’d do it by being as honest as I could and hopefully never at the expense of anyone else. I always carry copies of that book in the trunk of my car and share it every now and then.
I got to Kauai in 2003, already in my late Fifties. My career path looks like a Rorschach, having done more than most people could imagine. I was selling Gospel music videos on Black Entertainment Television as my income source when I arrived. Sometime after the demise of that venture, I ended up working on a project that exposed me to terms like Peak Oil, used to describe that time when the supply of “affordably” extracted oil will become prohibitively expensive, causing the collapse of the global economy. It kind of makes you want to leap out of bed in the morning to greet a new day.
I was really starting to deal with my own limitations, one of the reasons why I came here in the first place. When I was a kid, I thought I would somehow make a lot of money and eventually retire in paradise. I don’t remember exactly when it hit me that I needed an alternate strategy. I banked a huge amount of experience in my life, but never gave much thought to savings. It didn’t seem like a good idea to keep waiting because my age was increasing at a much faster rate than my bank balance. I came here on the wings of Gospel music, but after my soft landing, I began to look around at the state of things in the world and it wasn’t pretty.
Finally, we can get around to why those few sentences from Phil, got me going. Crossing into my Sixties got me more conscious of my age than ever before. The idea of time remaining no longer felt like a distant concept. I guess that could be debilitating or motivating. I think it is a choice you can actually make, based on how you want to spend the rest of your life, especially if you’ve learned anything along the way.
While stewing in my chronological gumbo, I was getting a very strong feeling that the world was in bad shape and much of it has to do with the role the United States plays in it. In defense of the Empire, it is merely following in the footsteps of those that came before, each one improving on its addiction to domination. There is an inherent stupidity in this timeless strategy, as evidenced by the continued demise of each ruling society. Finally, we have a living example in our own White House of how greed and ignorance are such a cruel combination, signs of weakness and certainly not strength.
I started hearing a voice inside, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was saying. I knew it had to do with writing, but it was stuck in my throat. I had really begun thinking about my time here and the news each day seemed increasingly insane to me and that was way before Trump. The momentum was building and as I mentioned above, love provided the answer. A series of events led me to the idea of writing my story to my young grandson and the voice would be the same one I have been hearing since blinking in the light of my first breath.
Phil attempts to push away the darkness by writing what is going on around us. I am thrilled to be writing about what is going on inside me, which helps make me feel human.
Thanks, Phil.
The capital of Djibouti is, you guessed it, Djibouti