I realize that I rely on luck in ways that are not altogether rational.  Up to now I’ve been able to say — to myself, for one, a listener with whom it is often hard to argue — “Nothing serious ever happens to my health.” Sure, so far. Does that truly mean I can take my own health for granted?

So am I in fact protected from things like heart attacks, strokes, cancers of all kinds, diabetes — simply because I haven’t been afflicted with these before? Am I also protected against things like falls and the need for replacement hips and knees? Okay, what about death itself, a rather important outcome — can my previous record, my “past performance,” protect me from that which cancels the ability to fight diseases, drink wine, eat in restaurants and breathe — not to mention the ability to move from place to place (“travel”) while being aware of what’s interesting about where you are? [more…]

In May or June 1956, when I was 12, my parents planned a summer trip into Mexico with several of their best friends. I would be sent to Blue Mountain Camp in the Catskills, near Pine Hill, New York. But to enhance their trip, they hired a large stately black man with graying hair, a Dr. Marc Desgraves, a Haitian, to teach them some Spanish.

Now as it happened I had started my own study of Spanish nine months earlier, in Señor Zago’s twice-a-week class at just-opened Van Wyck Junior High in Queens. I had been picking it up quickly, in part because I loved the language itself, and I enjoyed teaching myself the Latin American pronunciation instead of the proper — but in my mind less useful — Castilian that was then taught students. Spain had another decade or two to go under Franco, and who would want to visit there in the meantime? [more…]

When he was 25, my friend Raja, then known as Alvin, said seemingly brilliant things. For example:
“No one can be beautiful all the time.”
“But almost everyone is pretty much nice-looking.”
These dicta have stood up well over the years.
To them can be added Denis O’Donovan’s insight that no one is sexy all the time.
It should be mentioned that someone must have said, “Being sexy is a matter of thinking you’re sexy.” Whoever said it, that’s held up pretty well too.
Denis the great 70s Gestalt therapist said, I think, there are days when everyone is attracted to you, everyone, even dogs and cats follow you. But there are other days no one can be bothered with you no matter what you do, people turn up their noses, those same dogs and cats find they have better ways to spend their time.
Wow, there are so many stories of people trying to be sexy, to be “hot,” but nothing works. You can’t trick people. It’s like interviewing for a job. [more…]

Lumps in farina — often hidden so that you had no chance to brace yourself — were a scourge in childhood. Scary and creepy… When your tongue senses the advent of one of these you feel something is terribly wrong. It’s not just disgusting, you’re way beyond that: something has gone wrong on a universal level. A gear has broken, the toilet is flowing backward, you can’t get air into your lungs any more. Perhaps this is how it feels an instant before true death. “I’m dying, Archibald,” you might say as the absolutely shocking certainty of the thing mounts. [more…]

On our very last international trip we returned to Italy, where — two years earlier — we had arranged to spend a year.  After my wife Grace’s devastating metastasis, that year was reduced to a mere 2 weeks.  But now we were back in our town in the Cilento, in Campania, 2 hours southeast of Naples, and then later in the village in Umbria where we’d stayed 9 years earlier.  And finally, on our last two nights, with Grace struggling but then feeling well enough to take the bus from Maestre on the mainland, we reached Venice, which had been so beautiful in the past. [more…]