I'm OK, I'm OK �� aren't I? - a man evaluates his life - Laity - Cover Story

In late August, with subtle colors just beginning to show up in the trees outside my dusty window, I take stock of the year past. I grip my pencil with resolve and purpose, and start on the top of the page, on the left side.

* Age: Thirty-six. Not young, not old. Aristotle thought that thirty-five was the peak of a man's life; everything after that was a slide down the hill. Nothing to be done about it. I am camped out in mid-life, right on the continental divide. Soon all my water will flow to another sea. I think about the time left to me and I realize that time is without apt metaphor or simile. Time is not like anything. Time goes too fast, and children sprout like weeds, and the men and women I love decline and fall, also like weeds. Nothing to be done about it.

* Health: Overall, not bad. In the larger scheme of things I am ruddily healthy, neither thin nor fat, neither acrobatic nor decrepit. The mind works relatively smoothly. I had back surgery last year, I had back surgery this year, I'll have back surgery next year, probably. Maybe I should just plan on it every year, like Thanksgiving. Maybe I should have a special meal around the event. "Ah, Surgery Day," I'll think, and envision succulent salmon steaks and heaping mounds of peas, and nameless uncles sleeping off the meal in the parlor, with their vests half-buttoned and their cigars smoking themselves quietly, the columns of smoke rising in unbroken columns toward the ceiling.

* Hair: Hanging on with surprising strength. Some years ago there was a brief flurry of activity on the flanks but the center has held firm. Encouraging.

* Beard: Status quo. I would like it to branch out, to strive for Melvillean and Whitmanesque proportions. It declines to do so, striving only to be a suitable beard for a rabbi. We maintain an uneasy alliance; it keeps growing sideways and I keep cutting it unevenly. Neither of us is quite on the ball here but there's time.

* Eyesight: Hopeless. Dimming fast. Nothing to be done except to praise the man or woman who invented spectacles. Many times I have thanked my stars that I wasn't born to a Sioux family 200 years ago. Everyone else would ride off to raid the neighbors or slay grizzly bears and there I would be, old Wood Eye, keeper of the fire coals.

* Nose: A major item, period. Nothing to be done. Have reached a truce over the years. I have promised to not let it be broken anymore, and it has not gotten any larger or lumpier for some years. Time has conferred upon it a size and dignity not unlike that of the Matterhorn.

* Wealth: Relativity is the word of the day here. There is no wealth to speak of, and yet my shoes are clean, my car hums, wine sparkles merrily on my table. I pay the bills on the first day of each month, rounding off numbers to my own detriment in my checkbook and carefully securing the bill envelopes with a large clip. I mail them together, giving them all an even chance to get where they must go. As I drop each in the mailbox I scrutinize the envelope to make sure that I have carefully printed my return address. After the bills are paid every month there is approximately $200 left over. In 192 1, the year my father was born in Pittsburgh, his father earned less than that every month. He sold glass. For a year he had three children before the baby died. Her casket cost a lot of money.

* Love Life: To be loved with such humor and compassion is not what I expected. At age twenty-eight, after a truly egregious series of miserable misadventures with girlfriends, I retired from the field, taking up residence on a sandy island. Withdrawal and contemplation were in order. I flew kites and played chess and carefully noted the changing plumage of seabirds. In the spring I met a painter. Two years later we married; six years later she is feeding a delightful and energetic child named Lily. "I love you more than I can say," says my wife, in characteristically direct fashion. I don't believe any further comment is necessary. I keep an eternal eye on the weather of my love life. The weather is remarkable.

* Occupation: Editor, writer. Organizational skills, nil. Long-term planning skills, negligible. Am pleasant and amiable for the most part while at work, get most of my work done, fudge only under extreme duress, occasionally write a blinding sentence. Books published: none. Prospects of same dimming. Waters are flowing west. I am writing shorter and shorter pieces. I am glad of that, I say to myself; perhaps, after years of practice, I am writing only those words which should be written. Perhaps I am editing myself with subtle grace. But I think of James Joyce, finally reduced, or elevated, to writing only a couple of sentences a day. He would spend all day writing two sentences, emerging triumphantly at dusk to announce to his wife that he had written two superb sentences. Joyce's children went hungry a good deal and he spent many years teaching English lessons, a job he hated. On the other hand, he is famous and his books are devoured all over the world. Jury still out on this matter, I think. Maybe I should write a brief essay about it. I wonder a lot what James Joyce's wife said to him when he announced that he had written two good sentences that day. William Blake's wife used to serve him an empty plate at dinner, to remind him that they had no money. It is said that he smiled at her deft poetry.

* Reading: A happy and disheveled mess. No organizational principle whatsoever. The same day finds me reading cartoons, a mammoth poem by William Blake, an article about moles, an essay by Charles Lamb, the police log in the local newspaper, an impassioned defense of the spelling bee as competitive educational experience, a traffic survey, two pages of Paradise Lost, and the list of ingredients on the side of a cereal box. And that was just today; I hear the belly laugh of tomorrow in the distance. Here too, I don't believe anything can be done. How many times have I told myself to write down lists of prospective books, to order my reading with some purpose in mind, to observe at least the semblance of a pattern? Many times. But one thing leads to another. As soon as I finish reading this long essay about Quebec I will certainly buckle down and finish sickly old Marcel Proust, who is coughing in my study. Right after that I will certainly buckle further down and mop up those last few books I'd wanted to read before I finish that essay about Blake. But what do I find next to the magazine which contains the Quebec essay? A travel book containing a long essay about Toronto. Must read! Despair! Joy!

* Spiritual Life: In same state as reading life, I'm afraid. Joyous and disheveled. Flashes of discipline pop up here and there like walkways in a swamp but they are quickly overwhelmed by the mud. A puzzle. I have decided there is a god. Documentation on the matter is unavailable, but everyone has a pet theory. Religion is like management, a nebulous idea on which everyone is an expert. The easy road would be to avoid the question, but I have to be honest and face up to the fact that God is eminently probable.

* Sex Life: Excellent. No further comment at this time. This is a family magazine.

* Wisdom: Nebulous. Not much to be said about it by the subject of analysis lest he be accused of hubris. Commenting on your own wisdom is like giving yourself a nickname.

* Heirs: One, a girl. She is a small girl the size of a wood elf. To her I bequeath my precious live Springsteen tapes, my books, the copyrights to my published writings, and whatever car I possess at the time of my demise. If I own a house then I will bequeath it to her also. I will be sad to have to die, but even sadder is the fact that every year I love more people and I'm not positive that I'll see them after I die.

I believe this covers the major points. Most parts of the body and mind are, considering the years of wear, performing with remarkable efficiency. The machine chugs along. The heart continues to grow more tender by the year and my memory is unaccountably expanding. I remember everything with increasing poignancy. I watch out for nostalgia, which tends to lend a saccharine taste to things, but this enormous expansion of emotional memory seems to be an honest, straightforward sort of boost. My childhood was pleasant but not bucolic, for example. My adolescence was a tad painful, my young manhood confused, and my adulthood a constant surprise. Here I am, in the middle of the highway, walking along the median strip, observing the vibrant weeds with interest. Things whiz by on both sides. I don't know where I am going or where the exit is but I find the median strip fascinating.

Will keep you posted.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Commonweal Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group