LIFE’S SURPRISES

Some of you—I hope—have probably been wondering where I was. Others, perhaps the majority, haven’t missed me at all. But here I am, finally, back again.

I have no legitimate excuse for my absence except, perhaps, a lesser concentration level for multi-tasking than I once had, which, back in the day, was so formidable that it surprised even me. But then again, it’s not like nothing happened and that I’ve just been a lazy bum. How it can best be described is that, for the past six weeks or so, I’ve been living through a series of rather existential surprises.

No, I didn’t win the lotto...although hope springs eternal. But I have been awed by the fact that just when you think you’ve got everything figured out and know exactly where things are headed, destiny proves to you just how full of crap you are.

Last year, as many of you already know, I had a bad year. In fact, I nearly died...twice. But when all that was over with, and I was on the mend, I had a whole new outlook. Suddenly, few if any of the things that had appeared of capital importance to me the year before now seemed of any consequence whatsoever.

What happened?

I had been graphically reminded of something I knew all too well when I lived through dangerous times back when I was young to middle-aged. Basically, that while, like the inimitable Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over,” the chief fact of life is that all you’ve got, whether you’re nineteen or ninety, is right now! And as such, the present is the most precious asset you own, no matter what your reality might be.

Yogi Berra, "It ain't over till it's over"

Arguably there are present realities that are better than others and moments when you might ask yourself, “What’s the use?” But the alternative is that you cease to exist and such questions become not merely rhetorical, but are no longer even in the realm of asking.

What you do with your present moment, then, should be of paramount importance. And maybe the greatest trick of all should be learning not to squander it on futile striving. With the key word here being “futile”, because, also whether you’re nineteen or ninety, there’s never a day that you shouldn’t strive for whatever you can to make you feel fulfilled. You just need to stop sweating what doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. 

To quote amazing superstar Cher—who, let it be said, is in my same age group, but is otherwise so out of my demographic that she resides in the stratosphere, while I, as my eloquent Aunt Marilyn says, am “down here peckin’ shit with the chickens—“I’ve been young and I’ve been old. Young’s better.”

And, to a certain extent and depending on what kind of youths we’ve had individually, this is probably not a very original quote. However, Cher also once said, “I feel like a bumper car. If I hit a wall, I’m backing up and going in another direction. And I’ve hit plenty of fucking walls in my career. But I’m not stopping. I think maybe that’s my best quality: I just don’t stop.”

Bravo!

Cher at 70--The Bumper Car Theory

My bad year last year actually turned out to be a good year because it proved to be a wake-up call, like those we get from time to time, that helped me get my head back on straighter than before. I already started being aware of this while lying in a hospital bed feeling sorry for myself, unable to get up, even to go to the restroom, because there was a tube in my side attached to a canister into which a couple of quarts of blood were being siphoned from my ruptured lung. At first I was alone in the room, but then, while I was being visited by a doctor and a nurse, I saw out the corner of my eye how a guy came in and lay down on the other bed, fully dressed, coat, shoes and all, and lay there stiffly, staring up at the ceiling while the medics finished doing whatever they were doing to me.

I was thinking, “Crap! Just what I needed. A roomie!” All I wanted was to be left alone with my injuries, not to be bothered. I had basked in the isolation of intensive care, and now that I was in a private room, I still wanted to be able to lie there concentrating on trying to get better while self-indulgently wallowing in poor-me-pity.

“Maybe if I ignore him...” I thought. But as soon as my doctor and nurse left the room, the guy, who was waiting for them to finish admitting him, sat up on the edge of his bed, looked over at me and said, “Carlos Plastina, pleased to meet you.”

I tried to be non-committal, but with Carlos it was impossible. This was at about nine in the morning. By noon we not only knew each other’s medical histories—he was a cardiac patient with a couple of surgeries to his credit, who was now back in to check out why he’d had some severe chest pains the night before—but had moved on to much more interesting things: our professions (he was a self-employed baker with a real passion for breads and pastries), our mutual former lives in Buenos Aires, our very different youths in two separate countries, our worlds in general and how they were different and how they were alike. By the time lunch came, I’d also been introduced to his (second) wife and to his son (by the first wife) who was also his business partner, and, as it turned out, a close friend of his current wife’s.

If Carlos was a highly professional baker, who had made something of a local name for himself, he was also a hilarious amateur comic. Within our first couple of hours together, it was as if we’d been pals for years, and I kept having to say, “Carlos, stop it. Don’t make me laugh! You’re killing me!” But then he’d tell me another joke, or make some wisecrack to one of the nurses, and, again, I’d have to try hard not to laugh the drain out of my side.

And suddenly, I thought to myself, “This is the most fun I’ve had in ages!” Who’d have guessed that three days before, a team of doctors had been working into the wee hours of the morning not at all sure they would be able to keep me from bleeding to death. I figured, by the time I got out of the hospital, the same day Carlos did, that we would be friends for life. That we’d call each other up, meet for coffee or a beer, stay in touch. We didn’t. It turned out to be a hospital friendship. Two guys in dire straits, like shipwreck victims sharing a lifeboat, who for a brief time couldn’t be closer, because where they are right then is all there is. But as soon as the threat is abated, it’s back to business as usual.

Still...that living the moment, you realize somewhere deep inside, is what life is all about. If only you could bear it in mind when the everyday world again clouds your judgment.  

Anyway, when all of that was over, and I was back home, I tried as quickly as possible to get back into the swing of things. Part of my workload had already been reduced for me. A publisher for whom I’d been translating a bilingual magazine for over a decade was having budgetary problems—he subsequently went out of business—and decided that a good time to dispense with my services was while I was in intensive care.

Nice guy.

But that was okay, I figured, since I’d been wanting for a long time to slow down a little and increase the time I spent working on my own writing: the newsroom memoir that I’d been struggling to complete for over ten years, several books of selected essays that I was anxious to publish on Amazon, pieces of a half dozen novels abandoned in my desk drawers, and so on. There never seemed to be enough time. Now there would be more and I still had my other full-time client of a decade, a man with whom I’d researched and helped write a couple of books and whose bilingual blog I had created and helped him keep up, and for whom I’d written speeches and presentations.

But then, toward the end of the year, he let me know that his wife was terminally ill and that he was suspending all non-essential activities to accompany her. He was sorry. It was all very painful. But despite the long friendship and working relationship that we had enjoyed, he would no longer be using my services.

I said I understood and I sincerely did. But from my own selfish viewpoint, here I was, at age sixty-nine, out of work for the first time in thirty years. But then I thought to myself, hey, when was the last time you were out of work for any time at all before somebody came looking for you, without your even having to send out a résumé? Besides, all these years, isn’t this what you’ve always longed for, to be able to devote all of your time to your own writing. Relax! Life’s short.

So I put out a feeler here and there for random translation work and started dusting off my half-finished manuscripts to work on them. This went on for six months and I was reasonably content doing what I was doing. But still, when you’ve been a fully employed wordsmith for four decades, a dry spell starts making you fear that nobody out there knows you anymore, or cares. As age seventy edges closer you can have the nagging feeling that you’re over the hill, that your days as a literary hired gun are finished, that you’ve become obsolete.

But I put those negative thoughts out of my mind and concentrated on my own stuff. Then, one day, earlier this year, I get a call from a publisher for whom I’d done some ghostwriting twelve years before. They were hoping I’d be interested in ghosting an “autobiography” for one of their almost-famous clients. We met, talked over numbers and deadlines, I researched and wrote a trial chapter, and we were in business. I felt lucky. It was a pleasant surprise, and it was recognition of my value as a writer. It made my own work go a lot easier because it restored my confidence in my perceived worth.

I had no sooner started on that job when a really major Hollywood film company got in touch with me. Somebody had recommended me, they couldn’t recall who, as a capable editor and translator to adapt a series of scripts in Spanish for the American screen. I accepted, got signed up with them, and within a month was working on the first script, and enjoying every minute of it.

While I was juggling those two jobs, I got a message from my friend and mentor of forty years, renowned journalist and editor, Robert Cox. Bob told me that the biggest newspaper in Patagonia was looking for an ombudsman and he’d thought of me.

A what?

An ombudsman, I was told, a sort of permanent editorial consultant to help the publishers improve what was already a well-established, century-old publication.

Rubén Blades--"La vida te da sorpresas"

I couldn’t have felt more honored by his confidence in me. It sounded like an interesting challenge, so I contacted the publishers. We met, talked over the parameters of the job, and I was hired, with the agreement between us being that we would work together until one or both of us decided my services were no longer needed.

So, as I stride swiftly toward my seventieth birthday, I find myself the busiest I’ve been since I was in my forties and, one week out of every month, back where I’ve never been more at home—in a newspaper newsroom, with stories all around me and the smell of printer’s ink in my nostrils.

As Latino actor and entertainer Rubén Blades sings, La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida , “Life can bring you surprises, surprises life can bring.”