When you consider that 25 years ago, I had just taken my first trip on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, and that 25 years later I have completed a book on the experience, well, that’s something. Anyone who reads the above line and wants to penetrate deep into the heart of my reality may be able to spot one telltale word. “Completed.” Yes, the book is done. I am done. I am done with the book. Jane is done with me writing the book. Who wrote the Book of Love? Me. So don’t wonder, wonder, wonder. You’ve got the dude.

Why is the book suddenly “completed?” I mean, consider the many years of floundering around with the thing. Why call it off now? Because the third person to take a critical look at the thing, described as one of the toughest critics in the London editorial group I use for this purpose, said fine. Good to go. In fact, good in general. Very good, at that. Modesty will get you nowhere, after all, particularly in the world of words. 

I was all set to admit literary defeat and publish the thing myself. But now there’s a chance that something else may happen. Or it may not, of course. Either way, I have decided that this is the judgment I have been waiting for. Because the reader, an occasional columnist for the Financial Times, works for one of the London publishing houses. And that’s good enough for me.

To be honest with myself, I must also add that he told me that the manuscript was hard to read, because at times it was so painful. That’s fine. Not exactly the usual thing to attract many readers. But who knows? Whether it attracts or repels, it is done.

So what now? Honestly, this isn’t so easy to answer. I feel somewhat at loose ends. But it’s good to loosen ones ends. Each day is an unknown. Hell, each moment. I am going from urge to urge. Of course, whatever my urges, this life is circumscribed by orthopedic and neuromuscular reality. No, I cannot throw caution to the musculoskeletal winds. So, there’s that. But those confines aren’t so bad when one considers that I am happily retired, have a great wife, live in San Francisco, and our dog Poppy is a font of unconditional love.

And this just in…. A dermatologist at Kaiser, my local healthcare provider, rang to tell me that the red spot on my arm was a basal cell skin cancer. The good news being that she cut the thing off when I saw her on Tuesday. Not the arm, to be clear, the red spot. Get it? Life’s possibilities are expanding in all directions. Until they start contracting, which I concede, could occur at any minute. But what the hell, I will abandon this mortal coil with the book done. Well done.

So what’s to complain about? There is always something. The basil I was growing in the greenhouse has succumbed to something. RIP, basil. What happened? Well, don’t blame it on the usual suspects, colder nights. No, one can speculate that the powers that drive creation made a little celestial sboo-boo. Watching the unfolding narrative of my life, they confused basil with basal cell. And decided to kill both. And meanwhile, I would be wise to mourn neither. Their time had come. And what time is that? Autumn. September, November, In the sequence Kurt Weill used in “September Song.” With the further observation that “the days dwindle down to a precious few.” Right on Kurt. And please, someone, remind me that by the time Kurt Weill was my age, he had been dead for 25 years.