4. WAR COMES; THE LAST LEG: Where to Live

March 18.  Monday evening, back at the office.  Ready to get out of here and leave!  I'm sure life will not be that much different, but it will be as if we are making a new start.  In a way, I think we will.

March 19.   St. Joseph's feast.  Raining this morning.  Tragic story of a young soldier back from the Gulf, shot in the streets of Detroit for his car.  Doesn't this say it?  Talk about suspending arm sales to the Mideast -- what about the Midwest!

March 20.  The financial burden of the trip is making itself felt, the $750 for British Consulate, $500 for British Homes and several advance deposits ($120, $200, $65, $170).  I do not doubt that this will all pull together financially, but there are so many details and, on top of it all, April 15 is drawing nearer and I haven't done a thing.  I'm having to make some final decisions about a car (and of course not having the money).  We also had a letter from the British Consulate that the visa process cannot continue until the school issue is taken care of.  On top of this I worry about my billable hours at work and whether I am being fair to my partners, especially as I feel every day a bit more that I would rather be on the road and out of here.

I seem to be all tangled up in sticky webs.  I look into something and some other detail or worry comes to mind.  Yet how relaxed I felt this last weekend at Engaged Encounter, when there was nothing I could do about any of this!  One of most significant burdens is the decision making process itself.  The money is one thing, but before that there is the decision: Do we go to France or Ireland?  Do we live far out in the country?  Do we buy stuff here or do we wait until we get to England?  Do we go to the theater with all the children or try and find a babysitter?  Do I write a book of essays or a novel?  Do I work on my old poetry or something new?  Do we get a fax machine?  I want a word processor/computer: where will I get one, how much will it cost?  Will the house rent?  What should I do for that?  And on and on. Perhaps I am approaching this all wrong.  Perhaps we just need to set our minds on getting to London and worry about the rest when we get there.

When we really look forward to something, it's easy to be let down.  The "is that all there is" syndrome finds easy prey and we feel bored and depressed.  The better advice is to temper our excitement at the wonderful prospects ahead with a more realistic look ahead.  Worries should be able to be treated the same way, for what is a worry but the anticipation that something bad will happen.  The worries usually don't materialize, and even when they do the reality is almost never as bad as what we thought might happen.

Happy anticipation and fearful worry color our perception of the future, yet complete happiness and total disaster never are "all there is" so too the good or the bad never is "all there is."  The correct answer to the question, "Is that all there is?" is, "No," never was, never is; and, by the way, you missed all that time between when you started anticipating or worrying.  You missed days and days of life that will not come again.

So, as I look out on a cloudy day, in which I thought the clouds would lift (they have not, and they are not that high), I appreciate this last day of winter for what it is: another God given day to enjoy and make the most of!

I have often wanted to jump into a black and white picture, whether it was one of the beautiful landscape portraits of Ansel Adams, a 1940's movie or an old, faded picture of my grandmother's house, now bronzed with age.  It really didn't matter which; the point was to leave the reality of the present (color) and pass through the reality of the past (picture) into the history of what has gone before: the color of the past.  The captured reality in the picture is false, a distorted reality in which color has been turned into shades of grey, and the picture represents something of a mystery to be solved.  The real world is a dizzying array of colors which are themselves a bit of a mystery.  (How, for example, can a brown seed, planted in brown dirt, produce green leaves and red flowers?) 

March 24.  Kitchen.  Sunday morning, birds chirping.  Frost on the ground.

 Birds perform in the morning before our upstairs window.  The trees are still bare, though our robust sycamore is gathering the energy to bloom.  The birds perch on the branches, hop around, wrestle with their mates, etc.  A wonderful show.  We still occasionally get the large bird, perhaps a young falcon, which perches steadily for a long time, looking for a small bird to eat.

March 25.  Cold morning.  Fat, dark clouds near the mountains, sunny above us.  Breeze from southwest. 

I don't know if it is law school or a liberal education that makes me think there are no real answers, black or white, yes or no -- the kind of answers clients always want!

March 28.  Holy Thursday.  5:25 a.m.  Clear.  Cold but no frost.  The mountains are covered with snow right down to the valley.

I awoke early, got up before the birds this morning.  The first time I looked out there was a bright orange band at the horizon, and the birds were quiet.  A few moments later, 5:20 or so, the birds started.  When the birds started, the band had lost its intensity and the day itself had brightened.

Not sure why I woke up early.  Perhaps a lot on my mind.  Jacqueline Rolls Berardi faxed us info on a house yesterday and we are supposed to call at 11 today to get further details.  The house sounds very nice, in a place called Saffron Walden (combination Donovan and Thoreau).  It's listed in a few places as a charming village.  Also faxed a letter on an apartment in London for eight days (July 5th-13th).  Jacqueline says it wouldn't quite do for her clients at £585 per week (hers are over a £1000), but we'll see.  The alternative at this point is to try a budget hotel.  I don't think there are many of those, though I suppose I could make some calls.  The hard part is putting together a room/rooms for six that work on a reasonable price.

Also sent in the form on the VW van yesterday, and added a couple of days to our USA trip.  Tuesday sent out resignation letters to HELP and State Bar Business Committee.  Working on cars and house in the next few weeks, plus schools and visa.

I think this will be one of those periods when I will not remember much –there's too much going on!

6:25 p.m. at Jeffrey's karate class.  We have about ten weekends left.  We're down to brass tacks now: need about $5000 for rent deposit and $20,000 for car, $1000 for London apartment and about $3,000 for school!

Today is Holy Thursday.  A beautiful day.  Candy alerted me to a "Three fer": Doors and Byrds.  Sat and rocked out to "Soul Kitchen," "Eight Miles High," and "My Back Pages" with my earphones on.  I did not feel much like working today, waking up so early, I felt more and more tired as the day progressed.

Cathy and I spoke to Jacqueline today and it looks as though she has a nice house for us in Saffron Walden, 15 miles from Cambridge, 45 miles from London.  Sent money in for London apartment.

April 1.  High clouds, supposed to be windy today.  At least 77 yesterday, Easter.

It was a lovely day on Saturday, near 70 with some light breezes, the mountains still covered with snow on top, though the white curtain has risen considerably since Thursday morning after the storm on Wednesday.  The birds were singing, I half expected to hear the Good Humor Man coming down the street and to look out and see Malibu Colony.  Did I hear birds as a child?  As I look back, the sound of the ocean seems constant, so loud it seems to drown out everything else.  Perhaps that is what is so frightening about the desert: its silence.

The real thing that makes me think that I am a writer is that I write and cannot go too very long without having to put something down on paper.  Now that I have written my autobiography, I have a better understanding and a framework within which I and my characters can exist and come to life.  My idea for a writing project consists of a trilogy: first part is growing up, second part is marriage/family, third part is being a lawyer.  I can just picture the reviews: "We just received Michael Buckley's latest inquiry into his life and are once again thankful for those times he questions his life, they are such compelling reading."

Frank once accused me of not having any ambition, but I wonder if the problem, if it might be termed a problem, has been all along that I've never been in doubt of my success.  It's sort of a strange idea, but the thought is that I knew all along I would do all right.  Even when I was in the last years of college studying English literature and not worrying about my future, I just assumed I would do all right.  Is this the same thing as consciously trusting in God?  Perhaps, it was not really a feeling, but the absence of fear.  The thing is, as a matter of fact, I have done all right.  I suppose I have a similar attitude about this year abroad and about writing: everything will turn out all right.  As much as I have wanted to go to England in the past, leaving did not make sense before now, there were too many problems (or, did there just seem to be?).  Now it seems nothing can stand in the way (or do I mean, I will let nothing stand in my way?).  Have things really changed or is it just my attitude?

Many times I do feel as if there is a hand (the invisible hand) guiding me through my life.  Will this hand lead me to a new career or a new place to live?  The only way to find out for sure is to go into the future, and the only way to do that is each day at a time.

Looked at my thinning hair.  There is a small circle at the top of my head, the same place a monk would wear his cap.  My baldness follows the look of my grandfather Johansing and my maternal uncles, as I have long suspected it would.

April 3.  Wednesday morning.  The days are swiftly moving on.  By Robert's and my count we have 65 days left, 64 as of today.  I go to work on Monday and all of a sudden it seems that it's Wednesday. 

Packed two boxes of clothes last night that I will not see for over a year.  I had the feeling that I could get rid of those things and never notice their absence.  After two boxes I still have a lot.  I felt sentimentally sad as I packed away many presents given to me.  Sad on two accounts, one that I was possibly getting rid of a memento, but, more importantly, that a particular gift, to which I attached the goodwill and feelings of a friend or relative, seemed to be such a poor expression of our friendship and understanding.  I mostly stored gifts, not things I bought myself.

What I do now: get up, go to work, worry about taxes, money, work, etc.  Soon this will all disappear for awhile: there will be a big hole in my life.  At first that hole will be replaced by traveling and vacation, we will be busy.  But then we will move into our house and suddenly have nothing to do and no money.  How will we react?

The important thing will be to have an underlying structure.  I think that for Cathy that will be school related.  For me it will be liberal arts related.  It might be that I will take the kids to school if they end up going to Cambridge; that would be an interesting twist, as I spend the day in the library.

So my plan is to get up very early in the morning and fix the coffee and write for several hours.  I want to try and write (i.e., sit down to write) for at least 4 - 6 hours a day.  Other time will be for typing, revising, etc.  I will stop in the morning to say goodbye to the children, perhaps have breakfast with them.  Early in the morning or perhaps in the afternoon I will go for a long walk, sometimes with Cathy, sometimes alone.  That is the idea of the underlying structure, something I can work with.  It is not a guaranty that that will occur every day, and I do want to keep open days for London, Cambridge, etc.  There is also gardening.  It is important, however, to have some outlet for writing.  I can't continue to keep it all to myself, even if I get rejections, I think I must send it out, if only to say I tried.  Do I set a goal?  That is, should I say that by November 1 or October 15 or so I should have something ready to send?

Not a bad idea.  Otherwise November is lost in the rush of Christmas and all of a sudden it will be February and thinking of coming back to the US!  Perhaps I need to spend more like eight hours a day working on my book at the outset, until I have a product completed.

Once I get the idea started, I think I will be OK.  I will be able to work on it, get more ideas when I go for walks, etc., but the initial plan has to be a good one.

I will plan on many false starts.  (I have already indicated my inefficient use of time.)  But when does a start turn out to be a false one?

Am I ready for failure?  I do not think of failure, I tell people I will try and write a book and that: "Hopefully I'll think of something better to do while I'm gone, so that I don't have to come back.  I'm sure I won't, but you never know."  Perhaps my response contemplates failure.  Perhaps by thinking more specifically about my plans I can begin to let the ideas germinate.

I want to write a play.  I think it will be a family play.  I have already thought of focusing it on Thanksgiving in the not too distant past, but it might be more fun to go back a bit further.  Perhaps Bob and Bobbie sitting in the living room in Malibu by the picture window looking out to the Pacific, Bobby Darin is singing "Somewhere beyond the Sea" on the Motorola, few twinkling lights out at sea.  The plot can then get to the Cuban missile crisis or involve Myles Connolly as a character.  Perhaps "Watch on the Pacific."  Perhaps imagine a scene in London during the war or in New York afterwards.  Anyway, a play it is.

Besides a play I will write two books of poems, one of existing poems and one of my reaction to our new world.  So, two poetry collections.  The material for the first book already exists and I simply need to work on it, fine tune it, etc. etc.

Next I will do a collection of essays.  I will cull my notebooks and perhaps my autobiography and come up with ten or fifteen or twenty essays that I can work on, dealing with life in California, Las Vegas, law, family, etc.  That is the Tom Wolfe idea.  Perhaps this might evolve into a collection of journal entries, but I think I should avoid the journal parts because it can be too time consuming and because it focuses on the past simply because it is the past.  I would rather work on exploring in greater detail and writing more carefully about ideas I have only begun to explore in my journals.  This is an area where I may be called upon to work in the library.

Another project must be the novel.  I suspect there is a need for two projects here.  One no doubt would be the coming of age novel, but I need to explore something in novel form besides coming of age, perhaps through law or family to be sure, but something a bit more fanciful.  I want to think of a Catholic theme, I want to write for the glory of God.

There will, of course, be continual journal entries, however, I must try to keep perspective on these as I want to concentrate on other projects.

Of all these things, it is only the two novels which are candidates for commercial success.  The play would be a real long shot and depends on too many other factors.  The novels are an easier chance, and a slim one at best.

The point in all of this will be to make something by hand, and to try and promote it, and if I try my hardest I will be happy with my effort, regardless if I am a commercial success.  The point is to be able to have told a story or expressed a point of view that someone else can understand and enjoy.