How Lucky You Got In

At the end of one episode of my favorite television show, Taxicab Confessions on HBO, there is an old guy from Brooklyn playing the violin in the backseat while he talks to the driver. He’s playing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life”, a song made famous by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald back in 1935, in which the lyrics make the banal observation that the “mystery” is solved when one finds love. But while he scratches out the melody in a saccharine vibrato, he embellishes on the song’s meaning in a weary wise Brooklyn brogue. “It’s about the enigma of Life, the fact we are in existence which is a Big Number. You want to sit back sometimes and look at yourself, examine yourself and when they ponder the question, you know, its begging the question, ah sweet mystery, its the great sweet mystery of life. What a gift, heh? How lucky you got in.”

I’d been pondering my existence and wasn’t feeling my “Number” was too “Big”. After completing nearly five decades here on Earth, it felt like I hadn’t made much of that incredible gift I’d been given. In terms of my career, I wasn’t very successful. I was satisfied being a “poor people’s attorney” so I never made a lot of money or gained much renown. My job was never my passion, it never defined me. I enjoyed the respect I received, I enjoyed being my own boss and helping people with their problems but it was what I did in order to survive and do the things I really enjoyed doing like listening to live music or volunteering. When people refer to my “work”, I often say “If that is what you call what I do.”

Just surviving means that you don’t get to to taste the cornucopia of luxurious goodies that the world has to offer. I haven’t had the expensive toys, made the trips to foreign countries, experienced the gastronomic delights, the inspiring architecture, never saw a Broadway show. Of course the best things in life are free or nearly free but I haven’t cashed in on much of that either. Despite my love of words, I haven’t read a lot of books. I never became much of a musician. I remember thinking at age 18 that it was too late for me to learn to be a good bass player. I’ve dabbled in drawing and watercolor but its not much more than child’s play. My writing is quite amateurish, I know. I would conclude that I’m too lazy to make much out of what little artistic talent I may have but I know that I am capable of hard work and enjoy it. I guess I just haven’t pushed myself beyond my comfort zone.

As for the “Sweet Mystery of Life” that Nelson and Jeanette were singing so rapturously about, I’m not sure I’ve had that revelation. I believe I’ve been in love, experienced obsession and jealousy and the black hole of heartbreak, but I’ve often wondered if I have actually loved anyone beside myself. There have been people for whom I would do anything to help them or make them happy, people I cared for unconditionally, but did I love them in a way that transcended my own interests? Did I ever make the Copernican transformation from the center of the universe to a planet in an eternal adoring orbit? I tell myself I have but the answer to my personal mystery may be unknowable, eclipsed by my ego.

There may be much I’ve missed out on in my life, many wondrous and beautiful opportunities that I couldn’t or didn’t reach for. When I seek consolation in that existential emptiness, I picture myself, marching down the middle of the street in the Short North on the Fourth of July, surrounded by a motley crew of patriotic clowns wreaking an uncontrolled cacophony of musical silliness upon the assembled crowd, clad in a short, red, white and blue striped summer dress, red fishnets and black boots, my flailing wavy white gold locks topped by a red elfin beret, my face disguised with pointy black and silver sunglasses, my head tilted in the air as I raise my clarinet toward the sun, blowing with all possible enthusiasm a joyously crazed obligato paean to being alive. How lucky, indeed.