FollowAs a real writer now (that first book review, which calls me an accomplished novelist is defining) I’ve been asked a variety of questions(varying degrees on depth charge scale). As a centrist and Universalist Unitarian (I take those on-line psychological tests all the time. They keep popping-up and arriving in my over-protective mailboxes. If my mother was around, I’d never be hard copying, like right now, the fact I’m one of those UU people. She wouldn’t understand that fact and also the third chapter in my novel which gently touches (as in a handshake and brief kiss) the verboten topic of inter-racial curiosity. Imagination with real sound effects: my cell phone rang (Nessun Dorma tone) and my mother is yelling at me. Where did all that come from? And I want you to tell me the truth, I’m your mother. Did you ever take an African-American girl to the Shark River? Meanwhile, I’m thrilled, my mother, actually used a politically correct word. And I answer her and my cousin from Texas who also called, lest ye all forget, this is all pure fiction.
Questions from the loneliness and abandon of an exercise bike abound on a Saturday morning, whilst my teacher wife attends to the extra-curricular activity of grading papers(and I fear new politicians expect working from the house 20 hours a week is all part of the new job description). Moments ago, pondering the fact that Ponce De Leon searched for the fountain of youth and I’m sitting on it and pedaling, I asked myself how important is becoming a novelist. It’s my life now, a reason to believe (an old favorite folk song) and one of those pure existence justifications, being put on this earth to write. And I believe that. Wow( a wonderfully youthful word. How many card carrying AARP members use it regularly? My wife complains, who says that?) I believe that spiritually, I’ve arrived; so much so, it could very well be novel number two, the journey to arrival.
So the question of the day (dripping in salty sweat, the best kind; you can taste with your tongue, which means you’re burning real calories) does my family and world understand the huge importance of my novel, man child in a new promised land? So many expect free hand-outs and too many don’t bother to order my child which took me ten years to deliver. Talk about long gestations. Baffling and smothering is the disappointment. It sweeps me back to sophomore year in college when my room mate, fraternity brother until the end of time, forgot to fix me up for homecoming. Six months later we still weren’t talking to each other. What about fraternalism and purity and body(sounds like an old beer)? I finally realized in 1965 that it really didn’t exist.
I realize in 2010 that man is an island and there is no family(except for a random few on either side of the yellow brick wall) Would I ever love to hop on H.G. Wells ‘Time Machine’ and go back and meet the person who defined family(not going back to meet George Washington, Albert Einstein, Dr. King or Ghandi) It’s not a real word or concept but perhaps an excuse to leave an estate to the person who shares the same blood that grabs a white puffy shirt forever and never leaves. Family across the breadth of the planetary home doesn’t exist. Life has been filled with road signs all along which you never bother to read or pay attention to. Arriving as a caring novelist, riding the exercise bike, I just saw a road sign (life at sixty plus, no longer infinite, helped me spot the sign) which was colored traditional black and white, “No More One Way Streets” An arrow points in three different directions.