Not too good at the moment. I really am at low ebb. I have so many websites to rescue and correct. And not the energy to do it. I’m 68 and feel 88. The only thing energizing me is this diary idea with you. I have in you the one person who hasn’t heard all my stories. Better (worse, whatever), the stories are great stories. I was once, many times, a hero. In many disciplines, moments, contexts, times. And now I can barely walk. My wife is estranged. Because I have learned she is not on any side but hers. I still love her fiercely, but she is Boudica and I am only King Arthur.. She hid from me the fact we were $50,000 in debt. Until they started closing down the electric and phones. So I fixed it. We declared bankruptcy. Which we are still in. I had been thinking we were okay. Never was looking for a palatial retirement. But then she bombed me with penury. Okay. I can live with too. Somehow she is not responsible. Legally, I no longer exist. Pat owns everything. Why there will nev...

 Which is the direct opposite of what I’m saying. I understand everybody. What a burden that is. I left my family on the awful expanse of the Leonardo da Vinci ballroom and went and stared into the abyss. The ship was going to die. And I looked it in the eye. Deep. Hard. And I won.

The hard thing for you to remember. The hardest thing. I was always a Freak. A Freak distorts every experience around him. I wrote The Naked Woman and invented the concept of the 20,000 IQ, because I had one. I understood quantum mechanics before they devised it. I have messed irretrievably in your life because I am in it. Old psychic from Yellow Springs, Ohio, told me I was a scary guy, fifth century AD, who came back, not willingly, but because he had some wrongs to right. They were scared of her. Witch of Yellow Springs. What they called her. No kidding. YShe was scared of me. Made her husband withdraw from me. Well, I have no one else to tell. Only you. You want to hear? Reluctant returner or incredible idiot? Your choice.

After your mother threw me out, I went into a funk. I was drinking a lot. But I was still writing, some of my best work (more about that later). We didn’t talk much. She had a favorite TV show that was always on when I visited her of an evening. Murder She Wrote. She couldn’t follow the plots. We exchanged pleasantries. I didn’t usually have to help her off the toilet. But when she needed it I did that too. But God has always been tapping on my shoulder. He did again that night. I woke up suddenly. There was no electricity. No reason for me to know that. My bedroom had no lights, along with no sheets or other niceties. But there was no sound from the street, no light. My customary silence and darkness had roused me. I ran downstairs.  Her breathing apparatus was not functioning. I removed the ones that weren’t working. I found an oxygen bottle and attached it directly to her face mask. She continued breathing. Then I went back to bed. Then she started boasting I’d saved her life. I...

  Mostly a true story . Trying to get you to talk. It’s a pretty long list. Didn’t talk to most of them. You and I grew up geographically close, the Reeve house in Greenwich. The Samuel Tyler house was only a mile away. Where I grew up. But we lived very different lives, and I didn’t tell you much about mine, because I was the evidence of failure making your dinner and wanting you to believe you could still have a happy ending to yours. I was wrong. I should have told you. Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemon, Gloria Steinem, Jimmy Dean, Muhammed Ali, Stevie Tyler, Mick Jagger, Isaac Asimov, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bud Collins, the BeeGees, and the roommate of Frances Scott Key Fitzgerald. A story goes with every sighting. Anyone you want to know about?

 He started this way… 8 Comments David Solin What circuitous journey have we travelled in the past 200 years, to get from “Ain’t I a Woman” to “I’m not a biologist”? Life is exactly like this. A FB friend, a Yalie, still doesn’t get it. Nobody gets it. Thinking you maybe do.

What should I tell you about first? I was a great writer? I was. I was a great international management consultant? I was. You tell me. My life changed when it became entangled with yours and your mother’s. You tell me. What do you want to know? Let me start another way. What have I ever told you about me?

  I don’t really like weddings. Promises . I hate it in all the cop shows when the detective “promises” she’ll get the killer. She should know better. Another one I missed. S’okay. Lost my best friend from prep school and college. His family didn’t let me know when he died or when he’d be buried. I was goy, after all.  Lost my second mother. Ever had one of those? She loves you as much as your own because she sees something in you that makes her heart leap. I was the last one she really talked to on her 90-ish deathbed,  and I think I eased her way in over the phone. But the son whose childhood I turned from loneliness to 20 years of camaraderie resented my talks with his mother, and they didn’t tell me when and where they buried her. So I can’t promise the wedding I didn’t attend will result in a beautiful and long-lasting marriage. I hope it will with all my heart. 

  You never saw that me. This guy never made tuna casserole. He was feared, more than Sonny in Miami Vice.

Ask her. She knows about four trips between Delaware and Greenwich in one night. But does she remember she insisted she insisted I see my father the day before he died when I didn’t want to, and we wound up conceding we loved each other? I owe her. Does that make up for the 12-inch bone-handled carving knife she kept under the bed for five years? 

What I have most admired about you over the years is that you are sane and kind and resilient. And you’re the only one I’ve encountered whom I endeavored to teach something who actually learned what I taught.  Not everything. Couldn’t teach you geometry after I saw your textbook “The Shapes of Things.” But I did teach you how to write, which you learned well. Your eulogy for Pop-Pop was lovely. More importantly for an old rogue like me, I taught you how to drive, stick shift and all. In the ruined Acme parking lot. And you taught yourself the rest of driving. So proud for my old beating heart. Except for speeding where you shouldn’t.  No reason why you should be sane. But you are. Level-headed, more than me, and I’m a one-time corporate star. More about that later. As I warned you. Wanted your thoughts about what dishes should be in my Single Guy Cookbook. My memory isn’t what it used to be, and I keep spinning round dishes nobody remembers. Ike maybe they didn’t like them aft...

I’ll never tell. You’ve had a large, extended family with a lot of loud mouths at work and dirty dealings under cover. I had a small closed family where are mouths were expected to be buttoned up and there were no secrets under cover because everyone kept their secrets. Both dysfunctional, like all families. How did I come to write about punk writers on South Street in Philly? I had no other choice. Every writer starts with an autobiographical novel, usually terrible and amateurish. I had one of my own, never finished. Because I couldn’t keep my actual life and family from creeping in. It was called Night Solo. But my father’s voice was in my ear. Everything in this family stays inside the family. Not a cult pronouncement, just an upright private Episcopalian one. So for my first major work I chose instead to invent an entire community. Estranged, lost, abandoned by everyone, just not as well educated as me. So I invented a technology that enabled them to fake it. Presto. Punk City. Mo...

Me being Tom Waits or somebody… You can ask me anything. And I will answer honestly or defer to a future revelation. Mostly I’ll answer right away. Sound fair?

 I wish I had more to pass on to you.  I thought of this instead. Maybe you could make copies to hang onto when everybody else has forgotten. As I’m thinking of it, this might be my only chance to have an honest talk with you I’ve never had with my sister. I will never link this site. It’s yours and mine. So you should feel free to comment. We might actually talk this way. Lots of things I want you to know about me. Lots of things I never said I should have. I think you’re a miracle child. Wish like hell you were the child of my loins but I will never have one of those. Yet I am more than content to have you as a step-step-daughter. I need to tell you things that seem like boasting. I’ve had a hell of a life. Truly. I wasn’t always a drunk lame loser in life. A thing I need you to know. Even if that’s what I seem like now. You were a game-changer in my life. Maybe the important one a man can have. Someone I really should be trying to live up to. Most of my life has been writin...