The moon through my aft window around 3 a.m.

I’ll be seventy next month if I make it. I figure I’ll make it. But anything could happen.

Shit. I could get hit by a truck. I could eat a poisoned Safeway donut. A heart attack in my sleep could get me. I’m not gonna kill myself, that’s for sure. But anything could happen. We’re all just sacks of chemicals. Maybe a few of us can quote Kierkegaard. Doesn’t matter. Culture Snobs lite up like dry wood on a scorcher, just like the rest of us. The Truth is we’re just Chemicals, man!

I could spontaneously combust.

It’s call the Wick Effect. People light up and burn like a candle.

Happens all the time.

Turning Seventy. That’s right. A month and a half to go. Will I make it?

I should shut-up about it.

Talking about not making it is bad luck. Why? I don’t know why. Maybe because I always figured I’d make it to seventy…and that’s a long-ass time for one’s luck to hold.

Willard Motley

My Old Man had a saying, “live fast, die young and have a good looking corpse.” He died at forty four and he looked…real bad. His luck ran out early.

As for the saying? It came from this man:

Willard Motley came up with one of the most famous lines in American literature for his popular debut novel—which was turned into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart—but has since faded into obscurity.

Knock On Any Door was about this kid, Nick Romano, a street punk, who commits a murder and dies in the Electric Chair. He’s defended by a sympathetic lawyer, played in the Movie by Humphrey Bogart, who sums up the jury by saying you’ll find a kid like Nick everywhere. Knock on any door and there’s a kid like Nick Romano. The Jury doesn’t buy it. They sentence Nick to death like it’s no big deal. He goes to the chair with a smile on his face. He figured it was in the cards all along.

Nick’s luck ran out the day he was born…

As for the Willard Motley:

Motley wrote of the city and its people with brutal honesty and with exquisite sympathy. There are sections of “Knock On Any Door” that might move you to tears and other parts that will move you to anger. It is an out-of-print book, much revered by those who first came to it as young people, and much neglected by the Chicago literary establishment. It can be purchased through secondhand booksellers. It is a book that deserves better by a true Chicago writer who deserves better.

Bill Granger, Chicago Tribune

Motley was a Black Writer who wrote about white people. All his books were about white people. I guess he figured his luck would hold as a writer if he ignored Black People. In response to critics who accused him of being indifferent to the issues of his race, he said, “My Race is the Human Race.”

Motley died in Mexico City in 1960. He is forgotten today. All his books are out of print.

He hit the jackpot with his first novel.

But his luck didn’t hold.

Truth

If I think about luck. Lean on it. Hope for it. The idea of it makes me nervous. Luck is always down the road. Truth is the bed you make. Or if you’re me you don’t make. Leave the blankets in a pile. Truth is the coffee with no half and half in the fridge. So you drink it black and think, hey, this aint bad. You kid yourself. You know you need the half and half. Truth. Well, Truth is hard to face if you’ve been living on luck. Ask any Gambler.

I often hide from the truth.

This hide and seek catches me when I come awake at three a.m..

Come awake with the moon shining through my aft window.

Moonlight from 238,900 miles across space.

It’s looking at me. It’s telling what I am. A month and a half shy of Seventy with not much to show and nothing accomplished. That’s one truth.

So I combat it with another Truth. At least I never killed nobody. That kid I buried alive when I was eleven, he didn’t die. What’s more, I didn’t drink myself to death and leave behind a wife and four kids wondering what the hell happened to Pop. I did okay with the cards I was tossed.

This is Speculative Truth.

I’m hedging my bets. The real truth, I could’ve been a better person. Do I have time to make up for it…go forward doing good?

Not a chance. I am what I am. I aint gonna change this late in the game. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Give me five is about all I can do….

I’m hugging a table at the office

Minding my own business. Thumbing through the pages of the book I wrote. Reading parts I like. It’s not a bad novel. This is the truth. But I’m a lazy old man. This is another truth. I have done nothing to promote this book. I’m not worthy of the effort I put into writing it.

The Lobotomy Dude slides into the other end of the big table. He never asks can he share my table. He assumes I don’t mind. Well…I guess I don’t mind.

“I see you’re reading a book,” he says.

“That’s right.”

“Is it worth reading?”

“I’d say.”

“You should read my book,” he says.

I look up from Log Of The Yardbird.

“You wrote a book?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a story about a man and a woman and the love they share….”

“Okay.”

“They love each other more than even Shakespeare could describe.”

“Okay, well…”

“Then the man and the woman die.”

“That’s…tough. How do they die?”

They get old. They die of old age. First the man dies. The woman is all alone for a time. Then she too dies. She dies and is buried beside the man she loved so much.”

“That’s a hell of a story. What’s it called?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your book. The book you wrote. What’s it called ?”

“It’s called THE TRUTH IS ALWAYS NAKED.”

“That’s…a hell of a title.”

Here’s looking at you, Kid

It’s another four a.m.. I come awake and lay there feeling like shit. Knowing I’m one day closer to seventy and nothing has changed. I need to make a move. Get my finances in order. Stop drinking. Hit the gym and get back in shape. Loose twenty pounds. I know I won’t do any of these things. And knowing it depresses the hell out of me.

This is the naked truth.

I get up to pee.

I’m looking at something curious. A light from my starboard side window.

It’s not the moon. It’s smaller. But bright as hell.

It’s Venus. Or Saturn. One of those. I’m blown away, looking at it.

Say it’s Saturn. That makes it 844 million miles away. I know this because I looked it up. So far away it’s beyond imagination. Yet there it is. The naked truth.

I’m feeling god damned silly all of a sudden. Fretting over my little problems.

I’m remembering a saying. Another saying from an old movie. Told by the same Humphrey Bogart.

“The Problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”

Good old Bogie.

I’m thinking the problems of one little person don’t amount to a hill of beans in this vast crazy universe!

It’s no big deal.

Good old Casablanca.