I’ve been trying to spend more time in nature and less in my head, more behind the reeds watching herons feed or ospreys nest and less behind a desk staring at a computer screen. Even now, as that is where I am, it isn’t my eyes that are strained but my anxiety level. Things changed rapidly for me over the course of the past several years, and I kept tacking, changing course based upon the prevailing winds, instead of finding some safe harbor to wait it all out for a while, reevaluate, well, everything, everywhere, everyone. 

So, pushing the triteness envelope a bit, better late than never. 

So let’s start with that, with Never.

Over the course of my adult life, I’ve been more than a little fortunate. I’ve seen a healthy swatch of the planet, built a satisfactory career, met and became friends with people of every possible path, hiked and trained with my son, built a house, and written a few memoirs. But laying out my CV or writer’s guild list is not my point, it is the “never” part of the past four decades which haunt me. I never rode my bike to Coos Bay, Oregon, and while that means nothing, absolutely nothing, to anyone, it is significant to me. Do you have a “never did” list? I do. I don’t need to write it down, either; it goes everywhere with me–to the river on walks, on trails when we explore the wilds of Virginia. It was on my sleeve when I hiked to the Wind Caves in Utah, and it holds my guts in its grasp every single time we walk the docks past sloops and ketches just back from the Caribbean. 

Never. I have two manuscripts under contract, but it is the two on the shelf behind me, hundreds of pages each, marked up, folded, crossed out and covered with notes, that I fear will never be published that wake me up at three am. Sometimes the tigers come and I see them there at the end of the bed, flipping through one of the binders, or tracing a map with a claw. I do not want to die before I can cross so much off of my “never did” list, but that is going to happen. It just is, so, honestly, tell me this doesn’t happen to you too: I freeze up, get brain lock, and since I have no idea where to start or which one is most worthy of attention, which one most likely still has some spark to set some fire in me, I just step back further, satisfied and safe in the “could have been” folder, sister to the “never did” folder. I never used to be like that; I had no problem embarrassing myself throughout my youth, my twenties. Where is that person? Probably in some 1980’s safe harbor somewhere recovering, waiting for the winds to change. 

I wonder how many parts of me I’ve left tucked in some cove somewhere, moving on only with those parts of myself I knew would be okay. 

Way too many nevers.

I never got to play a dead body at the beginning of “Law and Order.” 

I never met John Denver, though I came really close once at the entrance to the arena where he was waiting to pass through the bleachers to play in the round. I stood with a friend of mine who was the spitting image of him. I said, “Hey John!” and he looked, saw my friend, smiled, laughed, and said, “Far Out!” and went onstage to play. I am well aware this is permanently in the “never” column. That’s my point. 

I never played Bjorn Borg in Tennis. Never ziplined across the Straights of Gibraltar. Never cliff-dove in Guatemala. Never wanted to, actually, but that’s not the point.  

But…still….I 

never walked around Brooklyn with my father. Never sat on a bench in Marion Street Park with my mother and listened to stories about her childhood, there, on set. 

Never will.  

Time has no patience at all. Not one fat second will lose an ounce on my account. 

So perhaps I need a new variation of “never.” 

I’m never going to miss the beauty in life. In my life anyway. 

I don’t know what happens when we die, and neither do followers of Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus, Abraham, Springsteen, and Beyoncé, despite their pontifications to the contrary. But I am confident some grace must be given for noticing the colors, the immaculate presence of astonishing beauty. 

The way the water is just the right shades of blue and green, sometimes turquoise, and the sky too, a powder, just enough to contrast the snow-white gull lifting and diving again. The forsythia, the azalea, the crepe myrtles and dogwoods, the buttercups and dandelions, the house wrens, the indigo buntings, the sandpipers and great blue herons. The osprey and eagles vying for the nest, the reeds measuring the tide, the pull of the soft sand when the water ebbs fast, and then the salt on ankles and thighs, stomachs and shoulders when the the water flows again, and the tide comes in again, and the sun pulls itself up over the edge of the horizon again. 

Certainly credit can be given for noticing this. I mean, the mistakes and shortcomings which saturated my life might be eased by another glance at the eucalyptus trees, the black walnut, the melancholic weeping willows and the lilies, of course the lilies. 

I may leave behind manuscripts and unrecorded songs, I may forget to tell someone I love that I love them, and I may not have held up my end of way too many bargains. But ask me about the kettle of hawks above Wachusett, or the osprey diving for oysters out at Tangier; the roll of fog coming across the hills of the Southern Tier or drifting across the bay from Fire Island. I have not only noticed these things, they have embedded themselves like chapters in my life. 

I’m going back outside. If I have to choose between finishing that manuscript in which I measure losses and gains, tragedy and exasperation, or going for a walk along the river, watching the sun slide away, hoping beyond hope I get to see it one more time again come morning, I never have to wonder where my faith falls. 

I’d like to acknowledge a few people without whom few things in my life would be possible. My parents, of course, and God, I’ve got to acknowledge God, it’s required of these kinds of things. I’d like to thank the friends that got me here, like Eddie and Steve, Mike and Dave, Sean and Tom, Tom and Tim, oh I could go on, yes I could go on.

I’d like to thank those that influenced me: Tim and John. The Muppets and the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed for reminding me that “everything will happen when it’s going to happen.” Jackson and Bruce and Billy and Eric, Jimmy and Neil—the other Neil. I can’t forget the places along the way: the shack and the dives. The Club and the Bull and Finch. The Golden Tiger and the Blue Door Blues and Jazz club where they don’t play blues nor jazz and the door is brown, but really that makes me thank them more. I’d like to thank those who took a chance on me and then broke it off; and those that said I was worthless which only forced me to do something valuable out of spite.

I’d like to thank Spite. God Bless Spite.

I’d like to acknowledge the people who left impressions on me that cannot be repaid. The profs and elementary school teachers. Mr. Kingston for caring what kind of adults we would turn out to be; and Mrs. Guidice for understanding we were only five years old and for instinctively knowing what Yeats meant when he wrote that “education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

I’d like to acknowledge that I’m impatient; that I’m intolerant of people who repeat themselves; that I’m prone toward wandering instead of being focused. I have to acknowledge right here that I’d much rather have taken more time after high school; and then after college instead of ending up in Mexico headed instead to New York. I’d like to admit it was simply a matter of thinking something would simply drop in my lap.

I’d like to acknowledge that I am irked by people who use sentences in the form of a question when they’re not really asking anything. I’d like to acknowledge I’m as curious as to what happens to the assholes who I’ve taught as much as I wonder about the honor roll members, who often, I must admit, are equally assholic.

I’d like to thank my son for teaching me how to be a father and my father for teaching me how to raise a son. I’d like to acknowledge it might be the only thing I never tire of doing. I’d like to admit right now I tire of doing everything else really pretty quickly.

I’d like to have known my grandfathers.

I’d like to thank Camus for making me question everything but then reminding me that I will “never live if I spend my life looking for the meaning of life,” and Indiana Jones for making me think I know everything. I’d like to acknowledge the people who pick up the cigarette butts most people flick out the window because they’re too-lazyass-howl-at-the-moon stupid to use their ashtray. I’d like to acknowledge Aaron Sorkin for some of these lines, including that “most writers would rather have people know them on paper.”

I’d like to thank Kathleen who I knew when I was five. And Kay, of course, whom I knew a whole bunch of times, and the early morning calls of cows in the distance, the never-ending rows of stripes on the wallpaper.  I’d like to thank Essie for not humiliating me. I’d like to thank Lynn and Kathy and Michele—not that Michele the other Michele—for teaching me how to talk; and Mary and Joan and Margo and Lisa. I do not wish to thank Stacey. Freak.

I’d like to acknowledge people like Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa for making me realize I’ve really done nothing at all. It was Al who warned us that “in everyone’s life, there is a time the fire will go out,” but before he got to the truly depressing parts, Mother T added that “we fear the future because we are wasting today.”

I’d like to thank my inexperience in starvation, my ineptitude in homelessness, my warless neighborhood, and the plague-less road I’m on. I’d like to thank John and Dan and Harry and Jonmark and Neil (the other Neil) and Janis and the other Janis and Joni for the oxygen.

I’d like to take some time right now to acknowledge the passing of time, the quickness of life, the fleeting moments during which we are truly passionate, the ability, the possibility, and the stability. I’d like to recognize my ability to know when it is time to move on, to let go. I need to thank Toni Wynn for telling me that “life is paper thin” and my brother from a different mother, Tim, for understanding how “some things just take root in the brain and don’t let go.”

I’d like to thank my son for four weeks in Russia, five weeks in Spain, a thousand sunsets at the river, and a reason to carry on.

I’d like to thank myself for not hurting anyone. I’d like to thank those I might have hurt for dropping my classes. Ironically, I’d like to acknowledge I’ve hurt way too many people. I’d like to take it all back. I’d like to give it all away. I’d like to leave it all on the playing field.

I’d like to go back one more time and tell Dave and Bobbie and Joe and Cole and Tricia and Rachel and Debbie and Lianne and so many more that they are the reason I would not want any life but the one I’ve had or I would not have known love, I’d not have understood life is a quest, and we ride on together, even after the others are gone, in search of some adventure, only to find out what we are truly searching for is ourselves.

I’d like to thank melancholy for being the proof that its been an incredible journey so far. Yes, I’d do it again, I’d go back and run one more time on the South Shore beaches where I grew up and head to Point Lookout where my grandparents lived, where we’d walk along Freeport Avenue smack dab in the middle of the road where the cement slabs met along long strips of soft tar, and we’d press our toes into the tar as we made our way to the ocean, and be two behind my sister, one behind my brother, in front of some cousins, and later we’d go back to the house and explore the ancient attic.

And we’d drive home late that night, and in the early, misty morning I’d wake to the sound of foghorns drifting up from the Great South Bay.