Hippie Bum That I Am: My Lensography

I guess I haven't shown much of it on Squidoo, but I have always clowned a lot.

This picture was taken in a little coffee shop in Bergen, Norway. I was lowering my glasses to demonstrate that I dubious about whatever my wife was trying to tell me.

She doesn't always appreciate my smart ass side, but in Norway, she did.

I'm fairly intense and often preoccupied with ideas, but my books have very funny passages, especially my last novel Traveling Without A Passport: The Autobiography of X-Book Two.

My parents were both country people. My father grew up on a farm and my mother in a rural community, both in Pennsylvania.

Binghamton, which I tell people is my hometown, was the big city both of them moved to and where they met. Mom was only sixteen and an orphan when they married. She had five children by the time she was twenty-three. I was the fourth after three other boys. My sister was the last.

While this wedding photo does not strike me as cheery, Mom told me that Dad (couple on the left) swept her off her feet. Ten years later, another man swept her off her feet, and I didn't see her again until I hitched to California in my teens.

I loved my mother. She was a flake, and I got my wanderlust and persistent optimism from her.

She and Dad were mismatched.

My father was heroically responsible. Handicapped by a childhood bout with polio, he raised five children by himself. He was proud of us as adults, and I never recall his complaining about his fate, ever.

Maybe because I had three older brothers and had to try hard to get noticed or maybe just because I was born that way, I was one of those boys who ran into and occasionally fences regularly while growing up. I quit school four times and, finally, graduated when I was almost twenty, joined by kid who started three years after me.

In the process, I had a lot of adventure. I traveled to California twice, had three apartments, several full time jobs and lots of girlfriends. I had my heartbroken, and I learned independently from writers writers and philosophers like Nietzsche, Emerson, Poe, Miller, Cummings and Salinger. I dropped out after high school, refused to go to Viet Nam and burned a lot of bridges.

But hell, where would I be if I didn't stand up?

Since my early twenties, I remember noticing solo birds, Cranes like this one, watching me. The always seem sort of haunting until decades later when I realized they were telling me that, even alone, we are never really alone.

I started writing when I was thirteen and tried to make my way through a novel about interracial romance that didn't get far. I was influenced by two books, All Fall Down and a novelization of West Side Story. Both were written in a colloquial style that made them seem easier than they really were.

You learn.

I wrote a lot of poor, self-indulgent poetry, fortunately tossed by my sister during one of my California forays when she and my brothers concluded I'd never return and that it was more peaceful without me.

Then, I discovered Henry Miller and became addicted to his work for over a year. I couldn't read anything else until I burned through everything of his I could find.

Finally and somewhat oddly in my esoteric pursuit of knowing and writing about it, I merged my Miller passion with a desire to write fiction as well as Bob Dylan wrote lyrics. I never got that far but it was a worthy goal.

Here's Bob with a pair of chameleons.

I grew up in Binghamton, but I had to grow up again in Buffalo, pictured here as a snow squall storms off Lake Erie into downtown.

To make a long story short, my refusal to go to Viet Nam in 1968 led to my draft board's sending me to Buffalo, which I assume they thought to be a kind of exile. It wasn't. I loved Buffalo, first because of of it's weather. I loved the drama of it. Big snowstorms in the city are a blast. The second reason I loved Buffalo was that I felt more comfortable in a city somewhat radicalized by a University full of literary stars, from Carl Dennis to Leslie Fiedler.

The Albright-Knox, then free, was the first art gallery I visited. I visited many times. Seymour Knox had filled it with modern and contemporary artists, and it tended to loosen my thinking about creativity.

In Buffalo, I married twice. The second has lasted over thirty years and is full of highlights. The first got me a terrific son and, so far, five grandchildren.

Unexpected

I learned a lot in Buffalo.

Knowing the 1960s were never coming back after being crushed under Nixon's heal, I learned to live successfully in the middle class. I worked for ten years in vocational rehab, helping dozens of people with disabilities find and succeed in jobs at which they were decently paid.

A reluctant insight was my being recognized as a rainmaker and being asked to sit on executive committees and travel on consulting gigs, trying to teach others to do what I was doing profitably. Then, after a year in which it all came unglued, my first serious mentor, John Ross recruited me and brought me to New York.

Conveniently, my wife loved New York so much she used to cry when we had to leave after visits. Inconveniently, she pretty much hated after we moved.

After a couple of very rough years, we made two very wise decisions. First, we decided to get rid of our cars and move to Manhattan. Getting rid of the cars was the one thing that made it affordable. No more commuting.

This was huge, but the biggest thing that happened to us was that we brought George into our lives.

George blended in to such an astonishing degree that I started reading everything I could about cats to try and understand the inner workings of this complex, inspired little character. More than with me, George hooked up with my wife. It was at a time in her life more challenging than any before. Having George to hang with made all the difference for her.

George made us cat lovers. We've brought in only shelter cats and have always benefited, as they have, from all that George taught us.

A unique soul. A blessing for us.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Billy. A cat rescued with his sister from under a porch in Irondequoit, New York, Billy was taken from his mother when he was so young he didn't know how to use a litter box or even groom himself.

Fortunately, he had George on hand. George didn't mind being stared at by a kitten eager to learn, and they got to be good buddies, playing and sleeping together. I wasn't easy for us to acknowledge that, maybe, George preferred another cat.

Live and learn.

As a kitten, Billy used to climb from lap to lap, whenever we had company, to make sure everybody liked him. Even so, he has always been independent. Lovable, but independent. That's Billy. Gentle and headstrong.

For more on Billy, read my lens about him: Billy's Black Cat Bio.

Sammy was rescued by a terrific New York City group that specializes in saving cats near being euthanized in the city pound. He'd been abandoned by a family in the Bronx and was found, skinny and starving.

Some things you can tell about a cat will reveal their history in general. Sammy loves people, meaning he was born into a human family where he was shown affection and learned to be touched and played with. He has a great fear of being abandoned again. When we sees a cat carrier come out, he gets sad, thinking he is being taken again. He is depressed by suitcases

He's known love and had his heart broken by people. Cats are extremely emotional, dependent and easily hurt, yet independent in character. It's this paradox that makes them so fascinating. They balance independence and dependence like virtuosos.