Its Takes a Lifetime to Come to Life

When we are young we think we have alot of time. We don't understand the concept of the end of the line. Our friends die in car accidents, from overdoses, and from a rare form of cancer, but still we don't grasp the reality of not being real or present, overcome with thoughts and desires, contemplating images and dreams. Frankly I'm only just realizing it myself.

And why should we? How can we? When no one really understands it. My Italian grandmother is 99 years old and last time I walked her to her car- don't worry, she wasn't the one doing the driving- I had to hold her tight as she slowly took one feeble step at a time, hunched over so that her height was diminished by a third from that in her heyday. With full coherence, presence and sharpness of mind she said, 

"I can't walk anymore yet inside I feel like I'm still 16 years old. Ain't that a shame."

Why that's the wisest utterance I've heard in a long ass time.

It IS a shame. It's a DAMN shame. Life that is given, life that is taken away. Sometimes even life lived. My friend Danny says, "Life is long." And it is. It's been a long time since I took the SAT. If I'd have known how damn important it was maybe I would have prepared.

I have no regrets. About the things I've done. I regret the thngs I haven't done and that's why I now try to fit two or three lifetimes into one...day.

I'm an actor, a writer, a painter and a chef. I'm a yogi, a catholic, a buddhist and an atheist. I believe and I doubt. I hope and I despair. I'm a vegetarian and boy do I love steak. I'm a dog person, a cat person and I'm obsessed with cleanliness so I don't own a pet. I love children and I don't have children because like children, I thought I was going to live forever.

It's time to say farewell to Assisi. I've corralled my intentions, my projects and briefly my humanity. A glimpse of death and therefore life presented itself to me in the space between. Now we set off for wilder destinations, Naples and the Amalfi Coast, to sun and swim and eat and drink and forget again for a minute or two that the end is nigh. Or maybe we instinctively DO know which is why we desperately seek and simultaneously cover up this truth over and over again.

My friend Larry says, "Just think, we're going to be dead soon." Yes Larry, we are. I suppose I better get crackin' on this life.

photo: Tramonto di Assisi. (Assisi Sunset)