This is the last one in the three part series. You can read the first two if you like, which will provide some context.
I remember the night my father died. I was nine years old, all alone in the bedroom I shared with my brother. He was visiting our cousin in Brooklyn. I know we all have certain moments in our lives that we continually return to, no matter how much time has transpired. Daniel Feinstein was my father and after all these years, he still is. Whatever the trajectory of my life, his sudden death altered its course. We can argue whether it was an accident or part of a grand design, the strings attached to the puppeteer in the sky.
It was unusual for a young kid to lose a parent and divorce wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today. It separated me from everyone else. I also thought about things my friends would never consider, like the nightmare of being orphaned by the death of my mother.
As a writer, you can’t possibly write without separating yourself from your story. You make observations from outside. I also think it is the same for comedy, that same outsider looking in. At an early age, I could make my father laugh and I have no idea where it came from. It was just this thing I could do. After his departure, I kept the humor going as a way to make sense of things, a coping mechanism. Several light years from that time, humor is now a momentary respite from a world that makes no sense at all to me.
I am not sure how we become who we are, our personal evolution. If you told me that night that I’d be here so many decades later, having lived a pretty decent adventure so far, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea what your were talking about. You mean I am going to go from Queens, NY to countless homes and jobs in the broadcast advertising business in NYC. I am going to leave my wonderful little boys and blindly travel to Santa Fe, NM, staying for sixteen years. I am going to be a volunteer fireman and do so many things there; I’d need a calendar, pencil and paper to sort it all out. As if that wasn’t enough, I would take a one-way flight to Kauai, HI and build a wonderful life on the Garden Island for the passed thirteen years.
Now, I am going to tell you a secret. I wish I could remember how young I was when I started thinking I was here for a reason. It wasn’t some grandiose, stupid kid stuff either. I believed there was a purpose to my life for a long time, a long time, but it remained a vague, shadowy sense. No, I am not on a mission from God and she has nothing to do with any of this, at least for now. Writing has something to do with it, but not in any ego driven sense. For as long as I can remember, I thought I was too young and inexperienced to stand up tall and have something to say. I marvel to see people in their twenties speaking with incredible poise, authority and certainty. As a perennial outsider, I never felt sure about the future. The more I looked around, the more I wanted to find a vocabulary to talk about it.
We can carry our dreams and secrets deep within ourselves our entire life and many of us never dare to embody them. Coming to Kauai had something to do with my awareness of time passing and showing that little boy there was so much to be gained by sharing your self with others.
We are now back at the beginning of this thrilling three-part expose, which began with the story of how I came to be writing my one and only book, Halloween in Portland – Diary of a Mind. When I sat down the second time to add to what I had written the day before, I knew this book was the beginning of trying to find a place for this quiet passion of mine.
Even if you are the only person reading this post, I want to thank you for taking the time.