Monday, September 30, 2024. Overcast and rainy for the past couple of days in New York. With the day ending a little earlier on its way to nighttime. And a little cooler. And the leaves on the trees just barely beginning to shed.
The city is very busy and there is an enormous about of street and pipe repair — electric, water, waste, steam, gas, and otherwise — as well as re-viving/repaving the streets and avenues. This is not an overnight jobby, although in completion (putting in the fresh roadway), you can feel the improvement when you walk or drive.
Going through some of my “notes’ I recently found a Diary, which was never published. And was probably never meant to be. It was written originally (I’ve updated it some) in February 2020. I don’t remember doing it although my objective was to clarify some thoughts — an ordinary process for one who identifies as a “writer.” We are all present in much to clarify now in the world around us individually and as citizens and neighbors and friends and … relatives …
The Diary.
Saturday, February 29, 2020. Edited: September 28, 2024. Leap Year. Those born on the 28th get an extra day every few years. The current media obsession of the Corona Virus. It’s scary, but if you don’t think about it and you are not feeling unwell, nor is anyone around you, you can tend NOT think about it.
Thinking about writing the memoir all the time. Obsessive and yet weak, superficial. Lying in bed the other night, mulling this I’m reminded of Myself. The one and only I know; the one I live with. These past three decades, four even, maybe five, have been plentiful and rewarding for this writer in many ways that I rarely, if ever I take stock of, i.e. the pleasure of the task, which includes enhancing the brain and continuing to learn. Simple things but not really.
I’ve invested quite a bit in putting it together. But I’m also helped daily in turning out the NYSD with my co-founding partner JH. And, in writing a memoir one must “tell the truth.” Or sort of …
A memoir of the David I know would simply be a book about a self-centered, inner-directed although outwardly presenting boy who had to learn how to appear to be like a man, rather than the effeminate, six-year-old little boy who (secretly) wished he was a girl. Everything in my life has sprung from that emotional — and later sexual — dilemma. That, and my mother’s and my father’s childhood crises that directed their entire lives.
But I’m 83 now, heading for 84 next July. I’m an old man according to the books and what I always heard and learned growing up. The little David who was climbing out of his dilemma into manhood is still a powerful nudging voice, and my guide (no words, just instincts) If I’m paying attention.
Michael Goodwin in the Post at the time wrote a column about Bloomberg and his dilemma with the “stop-and-frisk” law that occurred during his mayoral administrations whereupon its “success” is now the reference considered “racist.” Goodwin wrote about him fairly and with insight.
I’m not impressed by Bloomberg as a public figure. I don’t know him socially at all so I can’t say how I’d feel if I did know him. However, whatever his faults and his naïve lack of charm, he was simply trying to make the city safer for everyone and especially the people who lived in the neighborhoods where the stopping and frisking was most prevalent.
That was then; this is now, a new “now” with actually millions of new “citizens” shipped in over the past few years who didn’t mean any harm it making it happen. And god knows what kind of s&f-ing will commence with similar sensibilities but new in town.
As much as there is infinite criticism for all of our current “leaders,” Bloomberg’s intentions were “the best” — good for everyone. It’s a tall order in our fractured state of being. But his intentions, were/are I must admit, we’re what we would ideally expect from our leaders (and which is sorely lacking on almost all levels of governance today).
I write this not as a vote for Bloomberg for President but because of all the publicity he had drummed up for himself with his over-saturation of image (ed.note: when he threw his hat into the Presidential race), the man’s idea of governing, any man or woman’s idea of governing, that is, was and is laudable. And clean.
That said, the problem with the rich is that wealth does not provide wisdom with its acquisition. In fact, it tends to provide self-delusions that believe the lie. That’s just what it’s like to be a human being.
Bloomberg is a tycoon. A man of his time in America at the beginning of the 21st century. He made his fortune on the back of a brand new industry, and like Henry Ford and his Model T, he popularized the new technology and made a great fortune from it. He probably even had a stroke or two along the way to that tippy-top. But he was a Jewish kid from Medford Mass or thereabouts, growing up in the 1950s where the emphasis for us boys was on “succeeding” at your goal/objective/dream. Michael Bloomberg did that, and aside from his good luck he had the brains to figure out how to do it. It was probably simpler than we would imagine, but life is like that.
