Wynton Marsalis and Raphael Mendez have asked me to join them in a rare trio for the trumpet while Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder sing a dulcet duet. Elizabeth and Bob Dole seem to enjoy the performance, although not nearly as much as I enjoy their company. Bob’s heroism in battle and Elizabeth’s tireless attention to the caregivers of wounded warriors have made America a better place. So has Tom Hanks’s support for Elizabeth’s foundation. Must explain why he’s beaming nearby. Oh, and did I mention that I can see all this? My eyesight has returned. (Talk about chutzpah!)
Robert Rauschenberg, who once spoke to me as “Berg to Berg,” has sidled over to complain that I offered a commission for a piece of sculpture to Frank Stella instead of to him. As Frank is standing right here, I should be a little embarrassed, but happily, he is locked in conversation with his fellow Princetonian Michelle Obama.
Speaking of embarrassing encounters, Dr. Sugar, the eye surgeon who thankfully resolved (if that’s the right word) my advanced glaucoma, showed up, but accompanied by Dr. Mortson, the maladroit Buffalo ophthalmologist who ruined my eyes—much being forgiven at a party like this one, or no longer being of true importance. Hermann von Helmholtz is waving at me, probably to say something about my vision problem. A termagant landlady from Oxford is here, and an unpleasant blind Oxford professor, arguing with the unpleasant blind rabbi from the hospital in Detroit. (Some people never change.)
All the folks who read to me in my schools after I became blind are in attendance as honored guests—after all, I would not have been able to swing the party without their help. Even the dean from the law school who told me that as a blind student I ought not to attempt the law right off the bat was invited, and of course has come, hitting the hors d’oeuvres trays pretty hard, I notice. Nobel prizewinners Robert Hofstadter, Leon Lederman, Dan Nathans, Robert Solow, and Torsten Wiesel have come up to invite me for a nightcap.
Lawgivers are thick on the ground at the party. I see Thomas Jefferson talking with Jerry Brown, as Clarence Darrow listens in. Aristotle is pacing back and forth nearby, in conversation about the rule of law with Thurgood Marshall, Amal Clooney, Robert Mueller, and John Lewis.
Edmund Burke is grasping his head in his hands as he listens to two Williams: Buckley and Kristol. Although they have been asked to keep it down, the Greek Chorus is back, now intoning about the error of arrogance and attempts to disavow the past, and the sure retribution of the gods. This time it is Mao Tse-tung who stomps out, beckoning to Chou En-lai, who however does not budge from his conversation with Sun Yat-sen and George Kennan.
Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking are poking their fingers in each other’s chest in some dispute. Sir Isaac is carrying some papers of his that he won’t let anyone see. Stan Lee is here, as are Charles Darwin, Jonas Salk, Ralph Bunche, Ellen DeGeneres, Jack Ma, and Mark Zuckerberg, sharing a laugh. Also a VC whose name I did not catch in all the hubbub (an early investor in Uber and Spotify, natch).
All Johns Hopkins trustees for the past century and a half are gathered around an antique-looking man in a starched collar. I veer closer for a look and discover that the object of their attention is none other than Johns Hopkins himself. Despite the general din, I can hear him saying how proud he is that his bequests to the school have mushroomed into such a wonderful university, with its world-class medical school, famous hospital, and the preeminent Wilmer Eye Institute. And then he adds, “I’m also so thankful to all of you for your stewardship.” More than a few eyes seem to be moistening up as I turn away.
Nearby—this must be the Mediterranean Wing—whom should I spot but Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar Sadat. Mazel tov to them all for the 1978 Camp David Accords. John Lennon must agree because somewhere far across the room he has begun to sing, a cappella, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” Unless I’m mistaken, Johns Hopkins—Quaker that he was—is humming along with fellow abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
I excuse myself to greet Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson—fellow members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and far more deserving of the honor than I. I could stand here all night long, absorbing knowledge out of the air around me, the way I did at Columbia. But the band is back from its break, and my Moroccan friends Ahmed and his mother, Ilham, want to show me how well Ahmed has done since the brain operation that American medical genius had provided them.
Now I see Jay-Z; Melinda Gates; Avicii; Mr. Clean; Mindy Kaling; Bill Hewlett; Dave Grohl; Henry Ford; Kate Spade; General Ulysses Grant; Leonardo da Vinci; Robin Williams; H. R. Haldeman, standing by himself, nervously searching the crowd, probably to avoid running into Judge Sirica (John Ehrlichman flatly refused to attend); Stephen Colbert (making silly jokes to try to make Grohl and Eddie Murphy laugh).
Homer is here. He, John Milton, Maya Angelou, and Jorge Luis Borges are discussing whether music preceded poetry or evolved from it, while Henry Thoreau is trying to sell them pencils. (We sent invitations to any and all of the ancient Greek Homers, on the advice of some scholarly authorities, but only the one responded and came, so it may be that the theories that there were two Homers, or no actual Homer at all, are off base.)
Another bard, this one of Avon, has just wandered gloomily by, muttering something about life being a tale “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying …,” but I miss the last word when Søren Kierkegaard shouts in my ear (in Danish no less), “Faith sees best in dark!” I know, believe me, but tonight I’m seeing everything!
Others I have run into so far, some of whom I knew already, most of whom I did not, are Alexander Fleming, José Orozco, Friedrich Nietzsche (who came with Arthur Schopenhauer, but they have begun quarreling), John Keats, a guillotine, Bill Gates, Chuck Yeager, Grandmother Pauline’s Singer sewing machine, Prince Peter Kropotkin, Frank Sinatra (Sue insisted that his invitation go out in the first batch), and Chuang-tzu. The Ramak—Moses Cordovero of Galilee—Yosef Caro, and the Ari, Isaac ben Solomon Luria, are debating about some complicated old book. Moses Maimonides cocks his head as he listens. Why, it’s just like old times.
Harvard’s Samuel P. Huntington and Columbia’s William T. R. Fox have come up to me, still trying to convince me to go into a career in academe—as they had around the time I was a graduate student in Cambridge. Oprah is here, devising plans for arts centers in every town in America; Andrew Carnegie is feeding her tips on how he did it for libraries, while J. K. Rowling is asking Toni Morrison if she knows a good editor.
Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, and Robert Downey Jr. wander by in a kind of moving rugby scrum. I hear either “prequel” or “sequel” as they shuffle by, but I am too transfixed by Paul Klee’s Vocal Fabric of the Singer Rosa Silber to inquire further. Now, my siblings—Joel, Ruth, and Brenda—are approaching with the four sons from the Passover seder. They are explaining the basis for trust to the simple, wicked, and immature sons (the wise son already knows).
Rembrandt van Rijn says he will teach me some techniques of portraiture later in the party. Meanwhile, Babe Ruth offers pitching tips, and Jackie Robinson is squaring off to show me how to bunt. Not to be outdone, Gene Kelly promises a quick lesson in some nifty dance steps. Well, this is my party, after all. Elvis Presley, in rapt attention watching all the Christian saints, is asking me to sing “When the Saints” with him. Sue, getting into the spirit of the occasion, is asking the Everly Brothers to sing “Wake Up Little Susie” for herself and me.
Why, there’s President Franklin Roosevelt sitting by the fire, deep in discussion with George Marshall, for whom my Oxford scholarship was named. Standing next to them is Eleanor Roosevelt, accompanied by the entire Upper West Side of Manhattan, including her understated statue at the southern end of Riverside Park. Honoré de Balzac and Margaret Atwood (attended by a bevy of adoring handmaidens) are offering writing advice to Gustave Flaubert, who can’t be bothered, focused as he is on pacing and speaking his own words aloud. Then there’s Hippocrates and Thornton Wilder and, standing next to him, President John F.
Kennedy.
I notice that President Johnson—who even in this crowd is hard to miss—is now speaking warmly with Bobby Kennedy. It seems that, after all, people of good will can and do leave their old differences at the door when they come to a party like this, although the practice is unfortunately not universal. I see tears on the face of Frederick Douglass. It may be that some of the people he sees at the party—such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Tojo Hideki, Attila, and Hernán Cortés in a little huddle over there—remind him of all the misery that has been launched on humankind by monomaniacal adventurers.
The women in my immediate family are dressed in the finest haute couture, the men in white tie and tails. The entire generation above me and the generations above them are here: my mother, Sarah, and my beloved grandmother Pauline; my fathers, Albert and Carl—Carl with his big hands. My in-laws, Helma and Marty. How did they get here? They don’t care; all they know is that they are dancing, and they do not have to work tomorrow. In fact, they do not have to work ever again. They are truly serene at last, able to rest in peace.
My children and their children Sacha, Lorelei, Eli, and Helena, standing near Sue, are watching all this. They do not quite recognize their ancestors twirling around them, but they do know that they are their ancestors. Having decked myself out in an Elvis outfit (including an outrageous Presleyan hairpiece), I am exhausted from having just done a turn on the dance floor with Kathryn. Her dogs Kady, Penny, and Hope, eyes agape, look on in amazement. My dear sisters Brenda and Ruth; their spouses, Jim Schmand and Richard Chaifetz; and my brother Joel and his wife, Marilyn, are here of course, along with their children—Josh and Whitney, Carly and Danny; Peshie, Rebekah, and Evan, Carl and Melissa; Cary and Stacy, Scott and Audrey, now with their own children as well. But, in fact, all the people and things mentioned in this book are here, and almost all from my life who are not mentioned have shown up as well.
The final cost for the party has not yet been determined. Fortunately, the party planner, my friend Art Linkletter, agrees with my principle: the more guests the merrier. I hope that Art will be fair, but as is usual in billing (and in life, too, for that matter), one never really knows until afterward.
I sense it is that time in the course of a party when I, as the host, ought to give a little speech, and perhaps propose a toast. I decide on both.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to say a few words,” I begin. “The few words that I feel need saying to you all to honor your presence at this party are about…the future. In life, the future is scary for some, exhilarating for others. What can we, or rather, what can I, make of it?
“Permit me first to speak about biological heritage—our genes. Genes spread by force or by persuasion (all too often force). What a mishmash it all is! Virtually unpredictable at the moment of conception, like a deck of cards being shuffled.
“The genetic mix is followed by a cultural mix. After all, someone raises us, right?
“I wonder, my honored friends and things, does our genetic cocktail and its cultural garnish, its heritage, somehow lie behind our own loudly trumpeted exceptionalism in the United States?
“While we are undeniably different, are we truly exceptional…yet? And perhaps a more basic question: Will the genes and cultures from the West and East—in a grand pincer movement of all sorts of peoples—meld to produce a new, distinctive, and homogeneous people sometime in the future? Might we develop a profoundly exceptional new way forward on the path of the progress of humanity? We hope so. And as I often say, with aspiration, hope has to be the first step.
“I have a great responsibility standing here before you. What can I say to you all that informs you, affirms you, makes you feel like laughing and crying both, something unique in which you all share, in spite of the dizzying size of the invitation list?
“Hard to think of things. All the words of the world, at least the ones I know, are sitting on my tongue like pins, waiting to be unleashed. One wants to inform, please, delight, and surprise one’s listeners, particularly if they have traveled forward or struggled against the arrow of time to arrive at this singular point.”
(By the way, dear reader, did I mention to you that this ballroom is in something like a houseboat? Outside, there is water—a river or lake, perhaps an ocean—dappled with sunlight. It is evidently spring, or early summer. As I glance at my notes, I see that the writing is becoming smaller and smaller. Reading a talk for an audience is something I have often done in the past, although I am told I am blind.)
“Well, it’s a helluva day—it sure is. The water is breaking yellow and blue and white. I notice that as the sun presses down on the dark blue water, for a moment it is as if the color from the sun, the color caught on the water, remains suspended, like ink or paint being spilled from a brush, and then the droplets separate and are dispersed. In much the same way, the color in the little crests of waves that rise up and break, which is white, seems to remain poised in slow motion, appearing as tiny bursts of light spreading briefly in the air, like starbursts. Light is so precious…”
(Pause for breath.)
At that, toward the end of this sunny day, the light begins to dim, almost imperceptibly at first. The guests sense it. So it is with every party like this: with the falling light, an ending, or rather endings, seem imminent. The party starts to wind down, and the water and the shore and the dozens of family members and ancient friends are beginning slowly to disperse like the spray from the water lapping the concrete pier and the sides of the boat. What remains undiminished, oddly, are the images of the young faces and unformed personalities of the babies—our children and their children, and one can even begin to see the faces, albeit vague at this point, of their children, and their children, and on and on, the smooth faces and little bodies of all babies. The youngsters are beginning to file out from the ballroom into the spring air out on the deck of the craft, which means that it is time for the rest of us to leave and go our separate ways.
“I could not have expected all of you to stay here at my party forever,” I conclude, “but we do remain, we know, in whatever etchings we have made in the character of those still living and yet to live, and on the earth that is home to all of us. So it is with great pride and comfort that we leave the children, clear-eyed and strong as we ever were and even more so, to raise anchor and move off into the waters on their own.”
Here I pause. I am choked up and cannot speak. How proud I am to see my children and their children leaving for…for what, I do not know. I can only have hopes for them, and for all children. Will my grandmother’s standards, which have so enriched my life, survive and bear fruit beyond me? Let it be so. In so many ways, do we not create the future we desire by honoring the past?
But then there is the cruel irony, the darker side of those admonitions and expectations: everything we old-timers at the party have achieved or hoped for seems about to be wrenched from us and vested in our young ones. That makes me feel a deeper sadness than I have ever before experienced, despite its being tempered by my pride in the children’s Possibles. Yes, there is my hope for them wherever they venture, but a hope tinged with a terrible concern. Oh, how I do want to go with them, to guide them, but also to participate with them along the surely immense journey. Yet I know I must be content with having left them with some shards of what passes for wisdom and guidance. Still, it is such a saddening realization. Loss has been a hallmark of my life. Will I now be losing my children? A foolish thought…something of me, of my soul, of my wife’s goodness and sense, and of my mother’s and grandmother’s strength and righteousness, will always be with them. That is not a loss for me, is it? No, I think you will agree that it is surely a gift.
The crowd is waiting for me to continue, but the children are showing some impatience, waiting to get the boat launch underway and move on to their own games and adventures. There’s Sue, with Arthur’s wife, Kim, and their sons, James and Beau, holding each other’s hands. From somewhere I summon up a modicum of focus
and clear my throat.
“Therefore, a toast, if you will: to those who continue…”
As I look out over the crowd, perhaps it is from exhaustion that I feel my heart fill almost to bursting. It is a moment of immeasurable, inexpressible wonder and joy. I am no longer myself. I feel as if my skin has opened and I am nowhere and everywhere, and everyone and everywhere and everything are part of me. Suddenly there are tears running down my cheeks. Why? Why the tears? Why the joy? I do not understand. All that comes to mind is the blessing that is life. Some may call it a mixed blessing, but for me—and you may well think of me as blind to reality—it is simply an uncountable succession of blessings. But how can there be such a thing as only blessings?
You know that my luck has come on an oscillating curve: bad, good, bad, good—on the verge of beginning the life I wanted, losing my eyesight and then becoming, as in my exuberant exaggeration, the luckiest man in the world. Yet this joy that I feel now is unadulterated by pain and suffering. I have no sense of a calculation of the bad measured against the good. I consider: That I have chosen life and embraced it. That I have a golden place in life, with family and friends.
And I see something else, a scene that is so mystical, so beautiful—but so implausible, really, even at a no-holds-barred party like this one—that I unthinkingly rub my eyes (which I am not supposed to do). I see my own soul joined with Arthur’s soul, just as it was written in 1 Samuel some three millennia ago: “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” How can we see souls, even here at this party? It may be my imagination; I am just about running on empty by now. Samuel goes on to say that “the Lord be between thee and me, and between my seed and thy seed, forever.”
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend Page 23
