meanwhile back at the ranch

The end of my reign as co-editor of the teen page of the Jewish Community News was greeted with specific relief by Stuie Rosenberg who said, "Thank God." Maybe forty years later my friends Gale and Bob somehow came across old copies in the Center basement and showed me one. Whereas others are instructed in their native language, I somehow had failed adolescentease, and my helpful column was about the pressing question of agnosticism versus faith. To my great surprise I read the whole thing without a blush of embarrassment. The point, dear reader, (that's you sfgirl) is to ratchet up this great opus to the level of borscht belt comedy; i.e., "There's people out there." And in here.

You'll perhaps recall the Woody Allen short story featuring a cabinet of Dr. Calgari that allows the cabinet enterer to woo Madame Bovary in the flesh, that particular cabinet enterer being a devotee of Flaubert. He woefully ended up being pursued by a hairy intransitive verb. I pursue greater ends. Like Thoreau , I have concluded that men have somewhat hastily concluded that the chief end of man is the greater glorification of God. I think God would like something greater from us.

Which brings me to August, 1989. The scene: the Berkeley hills. A lovely summer's morn, me lying abed in our friend Heidi and Alan's home, while they vacation on San Juan Island. The bed rocks. The local TV talk show host says, "Whoa." Turns out to be a premonitory tectonic shift that heralds the disruption of the first game of the World Series, the collapse of a span of the Bay Bridge, and havoc in North Beach. But here's where it got really interesting for yours truly. The TV is showing random scenes of destruction, which I'm watching back home in Ithaca (literary device; I didn't and don't live there) in October. They show that a large chunk of concrete has fallen off the top of the Oakland Coliseum somewhere just down the rightfield line from first base. (cue the da-da-da-da from Jaws) Goddamn. My son and I were sitting right about just there when we watched the A's play one sunny afternoon on our August visit. Then they show damage in Candlestick. Son of a gun, my son and daughters were sitting up and behind first base for a Giants' game later in that vacation. That's where that damage was. This is the day after the quake, and I've not been able to get through to either my daughter in SF or my daughter in Santa Cruz. Eve, in SC, finally gets through to me and swears she was inside Sunshine Center at the onset, and runs out. This was pretty directly above the epicenter.
Now, there's a guy who figured out the likelihood of anything happening to you because he was so impressed that he happened to be in Berlin the very day they started tearing down the Wall. So I figured out that if this was a sign that God was trying to communicate with me, he was clearly trying to do it for everyone else in the world, too, no? OK, so maybe He isn't trying.
Accidents happen. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

But you know, or you will, a lot of funny things have happened to me. Like George Thorogood said, "Everybody's funny. Now you funny, too." One whiskey, one scotch, one beer.

testament

Being of sound mind, I do attest that all that follows is true. If there is nothing new under the face of the sun, and if it's all been said, but not to me, then.....what? Is there only the same old story? The never-ending Shakespearean rag? Then why would samadi be the beginning of spiritual life? Youth wants to know.

I was born 3 Tishri--1942--where Stephen King gets his ideas from. Do I need to tell you about my goddam childhood? In brief, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I determined to understand everything and to imbibe the wisdom of the ages. In short, me mum and dad, they fucked me up. Nothing new there; I did the same to my children. But now that I have presumptively reached the last third of my life, I am now determined to complete my assigned task. The last will and testament of William Jay Goodman III.

Always embrace delight.

"Ein arkhay hain logos." said John Crossett, more than once during freshman English. It turns out that the writers of literature, as he subtly demonstrated to us, the great unwashed, were doing something more than spinning a yarn. They were not only weaving a tapestry, they were trying to weave us into it. Or maybe show us that we were already a part. I already felt like Job because of my acne. In fact, that first month of college, as Arnie Raphael and I were being driven into town, in humiliated riposte to my brother's question "Why do you have so many pimples?" I made Arnie laugh by saying, "The curse of Job." Arnie could attest to this if he had not gone down with Haq Al-Zhia. Better a live dog, eh? But I digress. Literature, the life of the mind, meaning, art, erotics, athletic prowess--these were the things that mattered to me.
And I would have liked to have had some friends, but they say you can't have it all, especially if you're a pimply, self conscious, arrogant geek, albeit with a sense of humor that some appreciated. Freud, a little appreciated Jewish humorist, was quick to show its darker side. Not so dark as the slimy muck of mysticism, of course. Shema yisroel.

If I was born in September, was it 1942 or 1960? In '60, we read the Iliad and the Old Testament--in their entirety. And the Oresteia, and the Oedipus trilogy, and Henry IV, and the Phaedo, Apology, Symposium and Crito; and Walden, Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Passage to India. And Paradise Lost. And Lear. "Tell me, " Mr. Goodman, "Why does God have to ask Adam questions?" asks Crossett. I forget my answer. But a real good question. I forget which chess grandmaster said, "I only see one move ahead--but it's the best move." Yes, answers are lead; questions are gold. Aren't they?