Once More Around the Sun!

Some Reflections On A Very Very Fortunate Life

Well, it’s one more orbit around the sun on Spaceship Earth for me, and as I’ve made a habit of doing for the past few years, I find value in considering the fleeting nature of, well, everything.

But really, how amazing is it to think that our greatest strength is our impermanence. It's all made up, time. None of the stuff in your head - what you’ve been through - is really the past. It all happens all the time right now, until it stops so how lucky is that, how lucky are you?

I can still hear my mom's voice singing to Hey Jude on the transistor radio atop the fridge. I can feel the oil soap on my hands and smell the grease as I joined my dad at the sink after he came home from work.

How the ground shook watching Columbia lift off for the first time, and then how my soul died a little watching her burn up.

Crying the first time I saw Paul McCartney sing Yesterday, and the first time I gazed at the Grand Canyon, or finished “A Tale of Two Cities,” or held my first book in my hands, or held my daughter for the first time (and many times after), or held Meena as we watched the moon rise over Everest. Or said ‘I do’ atop Mt. Lafayette.

And all the pain, and the music, and the crashing, out-of-control joys. Her and I sitting at the kitchen table during COVID learning about sharks. Getting the phone call that confirmed a contract with Falcon, my first national publishing house. Getting the phone call of my being appointed director of my beloved library. Getting the phone call that my dad had passed.

The chicken feet and the momos and the tofu and gulping down an orange Fanta at Snake Pond in Kathmandu. The grilled hot dogs with hot sauce in a park in Philadelphia with the Ben Franklin Bridge sparkling behind a stage upon which Max Roach attacked his drums like a savage. The pure chaos of India spinning me into delirium as I held my baby on an overnight train to her great grandmother’s farm. The raw, brilliant blindness of a Kansas sunset while Velvet Underground played on the radio. Cabbage straight out of the dirt and the London Bridge in Arizona.

I touched Stonehenge and I touched the tree under which Buddha was born and I walked on the same stage where Patsy Cline and Elvis and Johnny Cash had played. But I’ve also sat in my warm living room, sipping coffee and listening to my daughter play Fur Elise on our piano. I am blessed beyond words.

Time isn't lost, it's absorbed, it is what I am today. Today is a day like any other, no pause, no rest, but some reflection. My friends, how incredible and amazing that you’ve all decided to come along on this ride with me. Maybe some tacos tonight? Maybe I’ll play some of the heaviest screamy metal I can find to drive my family nuts, or maybe I’ll play Hey Jude for Little Bean.

And we’ll sing the Na Na Nas together as loud as we can, and a generation will reset and we'll all spin out of control together.