The Wheelchair Storm Tableau

One day when I was perhaps four, I woke up and my hip hurt. I don't mean the outside bony part of the hip, I mean the inner high muscular groin part of the hip. The pain was inside. It seemed red.

I got out of bed and crawled downstairs. In my memory, walking was still new enough that I took this new development in stride, perhaps this was just what happened. One day you could walk and the next you couldn't. All part of the learning process.

I crawled into the kitchen and my mother looked down at me. She seemed surprised. She asked me why I was crawling and I told her my hip hurt.

The next interval is lost. I'm sure I must have gone to my pediatrician. I don't know if he made the diagnosis or if I was passed on to the hospital. I had synovitis, which is an inflammation of the hip joint that only occurs in young boys. In young boys who have had bronchial infections, occasionally the infection travels to areas of the body that are growing quickly. Synovial fluid serves as a lubricant for the interior of the joint. The fluid itself becomes infected in synovitis.

This is what I had.

Next thing I know I am in the hospital. In some cases all you have to do is take antibiotics and the infection will cease. For me it wasn't that easy. If antibiotics fail to reduce the inflammation other steps must be taken.

In my case they dislocated my hip. For a few days. I remember a dim shame from having to use bedpans. I couldn't get up and walk because my leg was suspended above the bed. I grew very attached to a young nurse who looked over me. Months later I saw her in church with my mom and the blush that crept over my whole body was incomprehensible to me at the time but I see it now for what it was. I was in love.

Once I returned home I had to be in a wheelchair. Again, memory is hazy. I feel as if I was in the wheelchair for a single night, a night during which a huge thunderstorm rocked Rhode Island and knocked out our power. Since I couldn't get up and down stairs I was sleeping on the couch. At a particularly loud thunderclap my sisters woke up and rushed into my parents room upstairs. They all came downstairs to be with me.

We sat in our little living room. It had an Oriental rug and a dark red couch. The bay window that looked out on our front yard seemed gigantic to me. I was in my wheelchair and the lightning flashes bounced off the metal of the wheels.

I know that I must have been in the wheelchair for longer than one night. I know that my homecoming probably didn't coincide with the storm. So in many ways my memory is faulty.

But the feeling I got surrounded by my family? The intense closeness, the wonder at the lightning, the thrill of the power of a storm countered by our snugness...these are not even details to be remembered. They are in my DNA.

My hip has bothered me from time to time throughout my life, most markedly during high school when my growth spurt caused the old synovial wound to ache and catch. I missed a few soccer games because I jumped from three rows up in the bleachers and it seized up.

And even though it hurt, somehow there was always a kernel of warmth in it, a sweet memory of the love that enveloped me as a child.

I, Proteus

Nagle Jackson directed me in 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' at Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill. That experience was life changing for me in too many ways to count. It was my first Equity job, I met Melody, I got healthy for the first time in my adult life.

So when Nagle called me and asked me to come to Santa Fe for thirteen weeks to play Proteus in 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' I jumped at the chance. An actor had to drop out at the last minute so I didn't have to audition, I just had to get on a plane. My daily life was quite stressful so I'd be lying if I said that I'd have gone anywhere to do any play. The Santa Fe/Shakespeare connection was icing on a troubled cake.

The best part of this gig was that I'd be reunited with some old friends from Providence. Tim, Laura, and their son Revere. Or Reeve as I knew him. Laura and I had met while doing the play 'Kind Ness' at Perishable Theater, the same production in which I met Maria.

They'd lived in Santa Fe for some time and I looked forward to seeing them on a regular basis again.

I was housed in a pink adobe type hotel/apartment complex and given a Volkswagen Beetle with flowers painted on it to drive around in. They seemed apologetic about this but I was over the moon. I'd owned a Karmann Ghia in college but still vaguely remembered driving around in a Beetle with my folks when I was one or two.

I could walk to rehearsal, there was a pool on the premises, and I got a temporary membership at the gym up the street so I could work out.

The landscape was a shock. I'd never spent any time in the West. It took me about twelve of the thirteen weeks to acclimate myself. I wish I'd been able to shift faster but I spent much of my time like some New York cliche, chafing at the pace and style, bitching about how you couldn't find a newspaper and that life shut down after nightfall.

I could have been taking hikes, exploring the insane landscape of the Southwest, drinking in my surroundings. I was wound too tight from the stress of what I'd left behind to unravel in a new place. In fact, I think I just relaxed this past year for the first time.

We were to perform outdoors in a theater nestled high up in the foothills at St. John's College. The backdrop was unbelievably beautiful. The rehearsal space was in the center of town and our stage manager had taped out the dimensions of our stage in the room. It seemed huge and it was, especially when put into its actual context under the stars.

There must have been some amplification of our voices but I know we weren't wearing individual mikes and the performances were informed by how loud you'd have to be to reach 1,000 people sitting out of doors with all of the sounds of nature adding to the tapestry.

Nagle Jackson had a style so relaxed that it sometimes seemed as if we were barely rehearsing. I still am not sure how he did it. Especially since there was quite a bit of intricate staging in the play. It was like watching a lawn grow. You start with dirt and the next thing you know everywhere is green. And you don't feel like you did anything in particular to make it happen.

I spent a good bit of time outside of rehearsal sitting with Tim, Laura and Reeve in their apartment, talking about their lives, my life, life in general. Storms were brewing in my life (I was to break up with Maria in January in New York, it was August in Santa Fe) but in general I was content in the desert.

Proteus is a character who betrays his love to pursue the love of his best friend. He lies, cheats, and ultimately threatens taking the object of his affection by force. He comes to his senses and restores his friendship and his love. All is forgiven. Shakespeare was not rigid in his views of humanity. He created a character who could contain those complexities and he trusted the audience to accept it.

The legend of Proteus involves him transforming into various beasts even though he was nominally associated with the ocean.

I wandered around the desert like a chameleon pressed up against a kaleidoscope. The ease with which we mounted the play and the reunion with my old friends left me relaxed enough to be able to truly contemplate my predicament. I felt once removed from the stress but could see it playing upon me all the same.

At the time I couldn't help but view my desire to change my life as some sort of defect of character. I couldn't imagine choosing to be away from Cashel on a daily basis but I couldn't imagine staying married, either. It has taken me a long time to handle that juxtaposition, to believe that I can be a good father in spite of the dissolution of the union.

This has been difficult in my relationship with Melody, it has wreaked havoc in my sense of self, and it has left me at times completely lost. Just as quickly I'll feel one-hundred percent FOUND and at ease, which while reassuring is MADDENING in its unpredictability.

Tim and Laura talked me through all of this as it happened, not in spastic waves of emotion but over tea, calmly. I'll never forget it and I'll always be grateful to them for that. And to everyone else who approached my ledge hoping to talk me down from it.

And to Nagle Jackson and Shakespeare for giving me my day in the sun.

Shore Supply, Under 12, Rhode Island State Champs

When my parents brought me to the sign-up day for the Youth Soccer League, I did not know what "soccer" was. The athletic fields at the University of Rhode Island teemed with kids from ages seven and up who showed up to learn the game. Now, I will have to check with my mum but I feel as if this was the inaugural season for the YSO in Little Rhody. Meaning that I was in the first wave of Rhode Island kids to play the game.

By the time I was twelve I was pretty good. I played left fullback. Most of the other kids who played defense seemed to feel it was a snub. They longed to shoot, to score. I never felt that way. I loved being the fly in the ointment, the guy who ruined your chances. I wasn't fast, I didn't have great ball-handling skills and I wore prescription wrap-around goggles. I liked that I looked weird. I felt it gave me an advantage.

I don't remember being aware of wins and losses during the first couple of seasons. I do remember one game in which I scored two goals from my defensive position, going on long sideline runs and bearing down on the goalie until the angle was perfect and depositing the ball in the back of the net.

But when I was twelve I was placed on a team called Shore Supply. From the start we were a very difficult team to play. If I remember correctly we only lost two games all season long and wound up with a final record of 12-2. The league playoffs were hard fought and we faced one of the teams that had beat us during the regular season.

We prevailed, winning our division. Some sort of State playoff followed and that part is hazy. I don't remember how many games we had to win in order to get to the finals but whatever it was we reached it.

The State Championship was held on a Saturday morning at a soccer field on the East Side of Providence. The field was in rough shape, rocky, peppered with stretches of grassless dirt. It sat tucked in between industrial spaces on the edge of the harbor and the wind whipped in making long passing difficult to control.

I don't remember the team we faced. They seemed darker skinned than us and more city. I remember some of them spoke Spanish on the field. I played the whole game.

It was a close contest.

I have seen any number of championship celebrations in my life. I've seen the Boston Red Sox finally celebrate a World Series title. I've seen the Celtics win in two different decades. I was at the Patriots first Super Bowl victory in the Superdome in New Orleans.

None of them can compare to the thrill I felt when the horn sounded and my team, Shore Supply, became Rhode Island State Champions. We were the best team in the state. We piled on top of each other, hooting and hollering in a frenzy that was almost absolute.

Many of the players on that team would later play for the High School team that also took the State Crown. I'd been headed for a Varsity spot when I blew out my ankle tendon sophomore year so the title was bittersweet because I watched it from the stands with the rest of the student body instead of from the sidelines.

But for one day in my life I stood on a playing field and felt the thrill of knowing that we'd taken on all comers. We were State Champions.

3,000 Hits, 400 Home Runs

I had a poster of Carl Yastrzemski on my wall as a kid. I dreamed of playing left field for the Boston Red Sox and becoming the third Hall of Famer in a row to grace that hallowed space, following Yaz and the immortal Ted Williams in a line of excellence stretching back to before World War II.

Alas, my dreams went up in smoke early. I had a natural affinity for baseball but my physical gifts were average. My desire made up some of the difference but by the time middle school rolled around I was too near sighted and scrawny to even make the baseball team. I switched my competitive gear and turned to track and field, becoming a pretty good long distance runner. But there is a deep pang there that my baseball days ended too early. I played Babe Ruth League but even there I mostly rode pine.

My family would sit on cool summer evenings and watch the Sox lose. The sad history of that squad is widely documented and that is not what this post is about. But the context dictates the mention. I'd had my heart broken at 6 in the 1975 World Series and thumbed through a scrapbook of the 1967 Impossible Dream season that my dad had kept. But none of that dulled the quotidian joy of witnessing the slow unspooling of hot stove drama on a tiny TV.

On nights when the games went too late I would listen in my bed.

Two milestones approached for my favorite player. At the beginning of the 1979 season, both 3,000 hits and 400 home runs seemed in reach. No American League player had ever reached both.

By mid July he'd reached 399 home runs. All of New England held their breath. A group of URI Faculty had rented a bus to go up and see a game. My dad got us tickets and we walked up to the Memorial Union on the URI campus to wait with the rest of the eager Sox fans.

The bus broke down somewhere en route and by the time word got to us it was too late to make it up to Boston. I was crushed. I remember walking home wearing my baseball glove, a glove I still have to this day. My dad put his arm around me and spoke softly to me, telling me he was sorry it had worked out that way. In my memory we went home and watched the game as Yaz parked his 400th. But that might be wrong. He might not have hit it that day...I honestly don't remember. What sticks with me is how good it felt to have my dad's arm around me.

The season wore on and Yaz haltingly raised his hit total. By this point in his career he was over 40. He was a chain smoker. How he was still in the big leagues is a testament to his natural skill. But he was not fun to watch. Labored. But still capable of coming through in the clutch.

Cut to Tuesday, September 11th. I am ten years old. I've started fourth grade. I get home from school. My Uncle Jimmy calls the house and tells me to get my glove ready. He is coming down from Massachusetts to pick me up and bring me to the game. It is already almost 4PM and I can't figure out how we are going to make it to Fenway in time. Yaz has 2,999 hits. The Sox are playing the Yankees. Former Sox ace Luis Tiant is going for the Yanks. It is a script you couldn't have written, set up for Yaz to reach 3,000 against a hated rival.

Jimmy squeals into the driveway in a Honda Prelude, which to me is the height of chic and cool. I run out in my Sox cap and glove and hop in the passenger seat. The speedometer was an LED which I'd never seen at that point. We chatted about the game and life. I looked at the LED. It read 96.

We almost rear-ended a car on Storrow Drive and hurtled Ace Ventura style into a parking spot during the 2nd inning. Yaz had not gotten a hit in his first at-bat which we'd breathlessly listened to on the radio. We hustled from the car to our seats which Jimmy must have murdered someone to get. Directly behind the first base dugout, three or four rows back. I remember vividly that Carlton Fisk was standing in the batter's box when we got to our seats and he seemed like a giant. I've never seen anyone that large to this day.

Yaz went 0-3.

He got number 3,000 the next day.

I just missed each moment. But the moments that I got from those near-misses are as precious to me as what the folks in the seats at Fenway got. And years later my dad and I would cheer from the third base line as Yaz knocked in what would be his final RBI. Impossible Dream, my ass.

Last Call

I was a bartender with a catering company out of Pasadena called The Kitchen For Exploring Foods. This particular gig was a wedding reception held at a museum in Pasadena. It was an outdoor courtyard with cobblestone underfoot and vine covered light brick walls. What happened that evening has burned those visuals in my brain forever but I have blocked out the name of the museum. And what was in a particular glass.

The groom gathered us bartenders before the party to coach us on the liquor he was providing. He was some sort of wine expert or spirit salesman and seemed to be more excited about the drinks than the fact that he'd just gotten married. He seemed to want to drink with us.

I never drank on the job. I knew some of the bartenders did but it just wasn't my thing. So his insistence that I had to sample the rum he'd found just for the occasion that came packaged in round bottles with wicker jackets was mildly annoying. I needed to prep my station and this bore was droning on about the way this particular rum stayed on the back of your tongue and you had to drink it straight and I wasn't to make anyone any mixed drinks with it. They could have it straight but that was it.

Inwardly I made a note to make the first person who came to my bar a margarita with the shit.

His dedication to getting lit seemed to be an indication of the type of crowd we were playing host to. I was stationed in what was probably some sort of sandwich gazebo when the Museum was open. It was a cool late summer night. Perfect weather.

Some weddings you cater are tame, some ragged and wild. This was a strange mix of the two. It was a drinking crowd. And when I say that, what I mean is that they stayed at the bar as opposed to mingling amongst each other. Most weddings people will wander up, get what they need and wander back out in to the maelstrom.

But with these folks you'd have thought there was a flat-screen TV with a big game on. They stayed with me. They drank their drinks and asked for refills which I poured out over the bar into the plastic cups that they didn't bother to throw out.

The father of the bride was leading the charge. A big burly red-faced man he seemed the life of the party. He'd come to the bar with a group of guests and order drinks for all of them as if he were paying at a bar instead of paying our boss with a check. He always had a drink in his hand. Sometimes two.

He and the groom sampled the famous rum they'd gotten just for tonight. The groom double-checked with me to make sure I wasn't wasting it on something as gauche as a rum and coke. I assured him I wasn't even though there were probably three people within ten feet of him who were drinking that very rum mixed with whatever they'd asked for.

Dinner was an after-thought even though it preceded the dancing. Tables were half-empty even with steaming plates of food because the majority of the guests were up with me at the bar.

A light show started and the DJ started playing music. Even in the open air courtyard it was so loud that a kind of claustrophobic party vibe ensued. The one hundred and fifty or so people present crowded onto the dance floor the way people stuff themselves into a kitchen at a house party even though larger rooms are right there to be taken advantage of.

Now my clientele were sweaty and thirsty instead of poised and glamorous.

I remember feeling pressure from this group to party with them, as if any holdouts cast some sort of aspersion on their own behavior. This wasn't uncommon at these shindigs. I still don't really understand it, why a group who ostensibly know each other would need strangers included in their revelry. I had a general feeling of disdain running throughout my body.

Now, full disclosure here. In looking back on this time, misanthropy was the dominating aesthetic in my thought process. I did not look kindly on my fellow man. You've all seen the moment when a person rants about something and an onlooker rolls their eyes and says, "Projection!" I was a walking embodiment of the syndrome.

Dissembling aside, I did not hold this group in high esteem. I was impatient, I sensed that they would be drinking well past the time we'd been scheduled to be there and that I'd probably be the only one left on the scene, held hostage by the alcoholic urges of the groom and the subtle feeling I got that he wasn't all that eager to start his new life with his new wife. He'd just as soon stay at the bar as go consummate.

At one point the father of the bride staggered up to me. He was bathed in sweat from dancing and his shirt had more fabric moistened by his exertion than fabric that remained dry. His suit coat had disappeared. He tried to order a drink from me but seemed too drunk. I tried to figure out what he wanted but eventually he just smiled and waved me off, as if the effort to explain himself had made him realize that maybe, just maybe he didn't need one more drink. He shambled off towards the dance floor where I saw him rejoin his daughter in her white dress. The condensed crowd closed in around him.

The next time I saw him he would be technically dead.

A shout pierced the air and the music stopped. Even though it was a laptop, in my mind I hear the sound of a needle scratching off of wax. Cries of "Call 911" and "Oh no" filled the air. The temperature seemed to have dropped and breath was visible in front of all but one. Through the circle that surrounded him I saw the sweat stained shirt of the father of the bride.

Chaos ensued. Waiters hovered as far from the dance floor as possible except for another Brendan. A good looking surfer kid who'd become a friend. He had just become an actor and had the kind of physical presence and easy attractiveness of a Josh Hartnett or Ryan Reynolds.

He came up to the bar minutes later, angry. It seems that a doctor in the wedding party had tried to perform CPR. But the stricken man had vomited and the doctor had vomited himself upon attempting mouth to mouth. He'd not let Brendan try even though Brendan was a lifeguard trained in CPR. He knew he could have done a better job, mostly because he sensed that the doctor was drunk. In the moment I believed Brendan and I've always wondered whether that could have been the difference that saved the man's life.

The hush that fell over that courtyard was terrible. Our manager instructed us to pack up as quietly as we could but this soon seemed awful and he reversed the decision and told us to wait until the guests had all left. The ambulance pulled into the courtyard sirens blazing and I'll never forget the vision of a bride in a white gown climbing into the ambulance that held her father.

I thought of the moment when I'd last seen the man, when he had wanted to order a drink but couldn't articulate what he wanted. He must have already been dying at that moment. I tried to remember the penultimate visit he'd made to the bar, when he had ordered what wound up being the last drink he'd ever have.

I couldn't remember it. The name of the drink and the name of the museum still seem lost forever, lost like the dream of a little girl hurtled forward from childhood to the moment that ought to have been her most cherished but now is etched, transformed into a wound in her full grown psyche.

Before her father died I'd given it six months. I try to be more charitable now.

Re-Entry

That forever word is a bitch. To be clear, I never said I was leaving this blog forever. But it kind of felt that way. And here I am a mere weeks later??? Who the fuck am I, Brett Favre?

No, but I got what I needed from the hiatus and now I'm ready to lead this blog to the Super Bowl. And I don't care if my old fan base is pissed off about it, I don't care if people think I waffled, I don't care if they think I International-House-of-Pancaked.

In the words of the immortal and sadly unknown rap genius Pimp Fu, "I just don't give a FUck."

I'm going to start with where I'm at right now. After a disastrous trip to the dentist left me unable to eat solid food for about three weeks, I had lost enough weight to want to keep it that way. So I upped my workout regimen considerably. For the past seven weeks I've been a veritable gym rat, doing two upper body workouts, two lower body workouts and continual cardio stints.

Anyone who tells you getting in shape is hard needs to reASSESS. Because it is not hard, it just takes commitment. I promise you, if you work out 4 or 5 times a week for 30 minutes your body will change. And girls, I know you love to think that 45 minutes on a treadmill is a great workout but it doesn't do jack-doodle. 15 minutes of running really fast is way better than a steady 45.

Why have I shifted from books, music and all that esoterica to a rah-rah workout tape?

What can I say. It's just where I'm at.

I'm doing a play. I'm writing a lot. I have many irons in the fire but the thing that is keeping me stoked these days is walking out of the gym with my arms shaking and breathing heavy.

Glad to be back on the pomp.

The 3 Year Virtual Time Capsule (February 7, 2007 to February 1, 2010)

So here I sit on top of my blog, having counted randomly fifty albums, fifty books, and upwards of fifty concert recollections and I'm left with the question, "What next?"

If I trick myself by writing about a book, album or concert I have no problem revealing details of my life that occur to me. But if I sat down to merely expose my past I'd immediately clam up and say that I am too private to do something like that. This after almost three years of sharing very intimate realities from every phase of my life.

I won't write about film or actors because I don't feel as if I can be truly objective. I am way too firmly on the side of the actor to do that. I champion anyone who has been able to make a living doing this. Even if I personally do not respond to their work I will publicly be positive. Those who know me will scoff at this because I've certainly been brutal in my assessments when talking about actors and actresses but to quote a great song by Del Amitri...

So I can curse her memory
But don't try telling me
That she was not an emerald
In a mountain of coal

In other words, actors are my people and I'll defend 'em. Even the ones I abhor.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I've reached another cross-roads here, a point that I knew was coming once I started the 50 Books List. I knew once I finished that list that I'd truly be at a loss as to what this blog would look like. Or if it would continue at all.

I've challenged myself to be more productive as a writer this year but those goals are not centered around this blog. I started writing here to train myself to write every day (or as close as I could come to that). The idea was always to take that skill once I'd acquired it and apply it to something that could actually line the deep echoing hollow of my long suffering wallet.

I've made inroads in that regard that I'm attempting to rile up blood lust to pursue. I have a competitive streak a mile wide that was always engaged by the business of show and since I've been removed from that process to a large degree the killer instinct in me has been champing at the bit. Unfortunately that instinct turned against me for a time when it had no outlet and I've had to do some restructuring in order to keep that from happening.

Now that I've really begun to channel those energies in a different way I've been slowly gathering steam.

Again, all of this is just a way of articulating a kind of farewell to this space. I am not even sure how many regular readers I have. The most comments received by anything I've ever written turns out to be spam generated ads for Asian porn. But I have been very grateful to the people who checked in with me to hear what I had to say. Knowing that there were possible ears and eyes really does transform your writing. Even if those eyes are Japanese school girls.

So I'm gathering my inner town council, my commemorative committee, my artifact collector, my journalist, my crazed artist, my family man and I'm thanking them for having contributed souvenirs to this gleaming cube buried in my backyard for future generations.

I am saying, "This is what it was like for me near the end of the Oughts as I looked back all the way to '69."

My life began as men walked on the moon for the first time. Today I sit and type these words out into the ether, perhaps turning my back on this blog, a thing that isn't really a thing, a thing that didn't exist when I was born.

I feel truly fortunate that I happened along when I did. Thanks for reading.

Book 1: In Search Of Lost Time: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

For many years this six volume masterwork by Marcel Proust was known by a different translated name. 'Remembrance Of Things Past' was the title widely accepted until D.J. Enright's new translation in 1992 appeared. My father set about reading this new translation. He was determined to finish it before he died. And then, I believe, he deliberately refused to do so.

The French title is 'A La Recherche du Temps Perdu' and the key word there is 'Perdu', which is the past tense of the verb 'perdre', or 'to lose'. To translate this title without the words 'Lost Time' is egregious almost to an offensive level. I liken it to Demi Moore and Company deciding that Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece 'The Scarlet Letter' just didn't pack the right kind of punch as is. Like painting a mustache onto the Mona Lisa. Idiots.

I remember feeling a surge of interest in the book once the title had been changed from its bland predecessor. 'Remembrance of Things Past'??? Sounds like a Lawrence Welk special highlighting standards of the '40's. 'In Search Of Lost Time' is a far apter title, capturing the ache inherent in every single syllable, articulating the unspoken continual impossible dream we all share.

All six volumes taken together add up to over 4,000 pages. And these are no Robert Parker (RIP!) three yeses, two no's and a gunshot from Hawk pages. These are dense to an almost pathological level. So far I have only completed the first two volumes and each made 'Ulysses' seem like a graphic novel. Sentences begin, falter, twist, divide, multiply, regain thread, evaporate, shift direction entirely, soar off into rumination on several concurrent topics, and finally resolve, reminding you that every word contained therein did, in fact, refer back to the root. The imagery and expression is breathtaking, the psychological scope enormous, the talent undeniable.

I am not sure exactly when my dad decided to read this series but he kept struggling along with it as his health deteriorated. By the time I expressed interest in it he was on Volume 5. He curled his lip up and waved me off with his good arm, such as it was.

"Just read the first one. Forget the rest of it."

Now, I found this hilarious on several levels. First of all, if anyone ever had any incentive to remove struggle and difficulty from their recreational life, my dad did at this point. Each page was a physical labor bordering on Herculean levels. The concentration it took me in relative health was enormous. For my father I cannot begin to imagine how he did it.

I began to read 'Swann's Way' and I would update him on my progress. We laughed together over the phone about the narrator and what a little momma's boy he was. He describes in excruciating detail the tricks and devices he comes up with to try to get his mother to come up and visit him while he tries to fall asleep. The language and expression are formal to a forbidding degree but once you get into the rhythm of it it is actually quite hilarious.

Then he would just give me a status update of sorts on how much further he was along the way. Finished Volume 5. Started on Volume 6. Speaking about this book was one of the few times he mentioned his death directly.

After my sister's wedding, a tale I cannot really begin to tell, I asked him when he was going to finish Volume 6 because he was quite close.

His response was gruff and funny, like he always was. He knew how many pages were left, how long it would take him to get through it. He was going to wait until the doctor said it was just about time to go.

The day approached. We held our breaths with each one of his. I've never seen suffering even close to this level. And yet he still managed to make jokes, show affection, connect with us. But finally even these qualities seemed to be taken and he was essentially gone from us while tethered ever so slightly to the frail form that rested in the living room sun.

We would take turns and read to him from the final pages of Marcel Proust. By a trick of publishing, it appeared that there were at least one hundred pages remaining. We had not taken into consideration the Appendix. What seemed to be chapter upon chapter to be gone through was merely footnotes. And as my sister sat with him and read, as the final moment gently approached, the hourglass rushed too quickly and all of a sudden he was gone.

When she looked up he had left.

One simple turn of the page remained. Now, anyone who ever met my dad will tell you. This was a smart smart man. He had ample time to finish that Volume even before we all convened to be by his bedside. He knew what he was about.

There is a defiance to that refusal which is very much in keeping with his character. He wanted every second he could get. He didn't want to lose any more time.

For Sheila, Sheila, Brendan, Jean, Siobhan and most of all, Bill...............

Book 2: The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

'The Yiddish Policeman's Union' imagines that Israel did not last after being established in 1948 and that a Puerto Rico like settlement off the coast of Alaska has thrived for 50 years, part of and separate from America. The settlement will revert to American territory and the Jews once again will wander, being forced to leave a bleak landscape that they'd desperately carved into a makeshift homeland.

At the time of its release my family was reeling with the knowledge that my father was not going to recover from the cancer he'd been fighting. So a novel that supposes an imaginary city was, for me, akin to a grim drug, one that helped with your symptoms but had consequences of its own.

The funny thing about Chabon is that he seems to love writing what he calls 'genre fiction'. He talked at length about wanting to do a detective novel and adopting that hard-boiled terseness that is so evocative of that category of literature. He kept it up for about three tight pages and then the real Chabon comes out and sentences last pages and pages last chapters and parentheticals threaten to turn into their own novels.

But, even with the over verbosity wrestling with the nature of the form, Chabon has written a corker of a tale. Meyer Landsman is a Sitka homicide detective losing a long battle with alcoholism and depression. He pines for his ex who just so happens to be his new boss. A chess player in his building gets murdered which he takes rather personally and he sets out to solve the case.

Along the way Chabon gives us a snapshot of a city that never existed. You start to feel the streets, to sense the geography of the place, to truly sag under the weight of the oppressive cold and oncoming dread of relocation. The murder may or may not be related to this seismic change and Landsman risks what is left of his career to pursue a case that everyone wants to bury.

Several times during the reading of the novel I'd find myself forgetting that NONE of this actually existed. When a detective novel happens in New York or Chicago or Boston, the very reality of those cities lends a credibility to the story that enhances the tension. Here Chabon weaves it whole cloth.

And that is what my family did as we journeyed along with my father. You'd think there'd be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. But that was not how my father operated. I'd call from the west coast every day when I got out of work and if my father felt well enough we would chat. He mostly wanted to know what I was up to. We didn't discuss what was happening to him. It would have been like having a conversation about air.

We'd chit chat about the Celtics, about the Red Sox, about whatever he was trying to read at the time, which was slow going because of the pain he was in and the drugs he was on. He'd ask me about Cash and we'd just bask in what a good boy he is.

With 'The Yiddish Policeman's Union', Chabon has behaved like a god of sorts, wiping history away with a stroke of his pen. The citizens of Sitka go about their daily lives trying not to see the future which is staring them in the face.

As if everything was normal.

Book 3: Different Seasons by Stephen King

When Stephen King published this book in 1982 it was seen almost as a joke. The horror guy? Four short novellas? None of which have any spooky monsters? The world at large was ready to laugh him off the stage. So even if you don't connect with King as a writer you have got to respect the courage it took for someone to undercut their own image so thoroughly in service of their muse.

Imagine Tom Cruise taking a small part in an ensemble Broadway drama. Britney Spears mounting a tour in which she sat on a stool in front of a bass/piano/drum trio and sang standards. Angelina Jolie playing a regular person. Harrison Ford doing any independent film. (Quick aside...just watched 'The Mosquito Coast' for the first time and I am now DESPERATE for someone to save Harrison Ford from himself...Peter Weir??? Are you listening? Can you put something REAL together for Harrison Ford, please?)

Whatever you think of those examples and their current career trajectories, the point is that for them to completely go against the grain of what has made them who they are would be a supremely courageous act. It might not work, it might backfire, but they must be commended if they TRY.

Now, Stephen King in 1982 was seen as a JOKE. In spite of the fact that Stanley Kubrick, one of the greatest artists of all time in any genre, had responded to his creation with a masterpiece of his own interpretation, in spite of the overwhelming connection the public made with his work, his writing was looked at like a succession of car crashes on the highway. Riveting but hardly artistic or human.

So what does he do? He comes out with four novellas. Which in and of itself is not common. To make matters worse, none of these stories have the least bit of supernatural gore. They are all real plausible human stories.

Of the four stories, three have been made into SUPERB movies. The first was 'The body' which became 'Stand By Me'. This film, along with 'The Princess Bride', 'Spinal Tap' and 'When Harry Met Sally', make a great case for Rob Reiner as the Film Director of the 1980's. Who else had a better run than that?

'Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption' famously became 'The Shawshank Redemption'. And 'Apt Pupil' is the grossly underrated 'Apt Pupil' with Ian McKellen and the late Brad Renfro.

So. From a man who'd called forth demons, vampires, werewolves, and unspoken evil, we now had four kids on a life changing hike looking for a dead body, an unjustly imprisoned man who grimly clings to hope over almost thirty years in jail, and a twisted young man who blackmails a Nazi war criminal into telling him the grisly details of everything he'd done.

Again, you might not respond to the writing style or the films in any way whatsoever. I've gone over this territory with King and I can't blame anyone who doesn't feel the way I do about his work. But if you can separate those things and see the risk he took, the gamble inherent in taking such a radical left turn away from your hardcore audience, you will begin to get a glimmer of what I'm talking about.

The great artists never rest on what they've already accomplished. They are bored with what they just did. Their lifeblood pumps only in the face of a new challenge, a new idiom, a new path. We cheer them when they rediscover this trait after having abandoned it (John Travolta, Robert Downey, Jr., Mickey Rourke, etc.)

So here's the challenge. Imagine yourself in Stephen King's shoes in 1982. You have countless manuscripts in your drawer that your fans would eat up. You don't know the future. Plenty of writers as popular as Stephen King have faded into obscurity when it seemed like they would never disappear.

What do you do? What do you turn in?

The next vampire epic or the personal story?

That takes balls. I don't know about you, but I'm following that guy's lead.