Day: May 17, 2016

I don’t know why, but I see the next few days as healing for me. Maria and I work hard, every day, all day, and almost all of the time. We haven’t had an actual vacation in five or six years, we have figured out how to have sweet and short treks to recharge and heal and love one another in every way we can.

Our treks are really about us, we have fun wherever we go, and the Big Shot in me is a ghost now, the first-class flights and posh hotels are a memory. And I don’t miss them. I love figuring out how to get away to interesting places, talk, eat, sleep, love, read, walk and walk, take photos, find good places to eat.

But I also see the importance of pausing, I don’t care to burn out or wear out. Or to permit people to get sick of me.

And heal. We have packed up the car. The room has a kitchenette, we are bringing cereal, fruit and milk for breakfast. I am bringing two cameras, one for black and white, one for color. I will share them with you when we return on Friday morning.

It looks like sunny, chilly but comfortable days, and the ocean is always healing for me, and sustaining. My friend Scott, determined in his efforts to help me embrace Tai Chi, suggests moving in keeping with the movement of the waves. I like that idea,  I’ll try it early every morning while Maria is still asleep. I am going to try. I told him he better e-mail me some writing.

We are determined to help each other this time.

Maria needs time away from her work, she does it so intensely, she is wonderfully light and free away from it. The minute the car pulls out of the driveway, her worries and thoughts peel away and she opens herself to fun and peace of mind. I’m learning to do that myself.

We are so lucky to have each other. I am grateful every day that I never gave up on love.

I’m bringing the three books above, I am reading all three at once and loving them all. One is about the life of a New York City police officer, the second is about the intelligence of animals, the third about the fascinating bond between George Washington and the man who betrayed him and his cause, Benedict Arnold. That should keep me occupied.

I am bringing my Iphone to listen to “Hamilton,” the  music of the play and Beyonce’s new “Lemonade” album. I will have some lobster and crabmeat, maybe every day.

We will not be gone long enough for me to read all of these book and listen to all of this music, but I will give it a shot. i have a restless mind, it is never still anywhere, and it can cover a lot of ground in three days. I’ll give the blog a rest, but I will miss it, and also miss my remarkable new kind of community. I am lucky to have it, and I know it. See you Friday.

I watched a Netflix show I like very much, a bittersweet comedy called Louie, the show is funny but also not funny, it captures real life in a powerful way sometimes. It is much too honest to every appear on the commercial sanitized networks, but creativity live on the edges.

In the show, Louie, the comedian quit a job working the lounge at the Trump Casino in Atlantic City, he had violated a contract promise not to denigrate gambling or make fun of Donald Trump, and he violated both and was fired. Given the choice of behaving or quitting, he decided to quit.

Wandering the casino, he ran into the late Joan Rivers, who was performing his comedy act on the casino’s big stage. The two met, and she invited him up to her suite. He told her that he quit, and she told him in a very direct, even impassioned way, “Don’t Quit. You can’t quit.”

There are ups and downs in the creative life, she said, sometimes you are up, sometimes down, sometime bankrupt, sometimes flush, sometimes popular, sometimes not.  Sometimes you are forgotten, sometimes in the light. But we never quit, she said, this is not a job, it’s a calling. Don’t ever quit.

This exchange affected me in a very personal and powerful way, because it is just what I would have told Louie, or any young writer or artist or person seeking a creative life, a calling rather than a  job. Parents always tell me they tell young writers and artists in their families to get a day job, and this always makes me sad, because people with day jobs very rarely get to pursue their adventure. It is too easy to quit, and once you quit, it is not always easy to come back and give up the things you have acquired.

No one who lives a creative life ever feels secure or really safe, not in our country, that is the toll paid for a meaningful life.

The reason is that the creative life, while wonderful, is hard. And given comfortable and secure options, it is hard not to take them. Every time I stumbled or fell, every time I was down, every time I thought I was over, or had been pushed aside or forgotten, I gave myself the same speech Joan Rivers gave Louie. Don’t quit, don’t ever quit.

When I get angry, or feel badly treated, or dismissed, I want to quit. Don’t quit, I tell myself, even though it took me some time to learn that.

No matter what they do to you, or say about you, no matter how many times you are broke or frightened or feel that you are done, don’t quit. Don’t ever quit. My career as a writer has taken almost every imaginable turn. I have been a best-selling New York Times author five times, been shunted aside by a publisher, rejected by editors, seen bankruptcy and despair, been dismissed by critics, praised by others, in and out up and down.

Two years ago, I was convinced I would never write a book again. My life-long publisher, now thoroughly corporatized,  had abandoned me and my work.

I will write a book again. I have a book coming out next Spring, another idea awaiting approval. I am not done, I am not ever done. And I did not quit. If you seek a creative life, then Joan Rivers is absolutely correct.

Those of us who choose this kind of life do what we do because we love it, and we cannot really do anything else. It is a calling, not a job, we are often called upon to be discouraged, to be more secure, to live a saner and more rational life. We lick our wounds, swallow our pride sometimes, get hurt, feel used, rake ourselves with self-doubt,  but we don’t quit. That is what I have learned.

When I was eight years old, a voice inside of me told me I wanted to be a writer and needed to be a writer.  Sixty years later, I am a writer and that is my life and my calling, and I will never quit, not while one single person will read a word that I write.
And even if there are none.