You're A Whole Different Person...........................

I finished reading the Border trilogy by Cormac McCarthy this morning.

I was close to the end of the book on the day before we left for vacation so I left it behind. Strange, I know, but that's the way I think. I wanted to start something fresh on vacation. Ended up picking up a biography on Andy Kaufman at Old Orchard Beach and got deeply into it.

Finished the third in the trilogy this morning and tried to pick up Kaufman again.

Couldn't do it. I could not make the transition. Because those three books were so deep and so full of life observations.

Honest life observations.

This is what I crave. I have no need to run around pretending that life is all sweetness and light; it is not. It is more disappointment and compromise than transcendent beauty.

When I met with the surgeon who would eventually hack that nasty cancer shit out of my back, his very first words to me were "this is serious." And then he said "But we caught it early which is a very good thing."

He did not sugar coat anything and I love him for that. He explained the very excellent odds that I would have no problems down the road but also went on to say that since I have cancer on my nose as well as my back it could be a sign that I will have other problems down the road.

We actually laughed together; he made me laugh, I made him laugh, which is extraordinary in that situation.

Made me think about a song that Hunter Thompson co-wrote with Warren Zevon called "You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared."

I have so many hang ups and anxieties that I walk stooped over. But I was scared that day. That fear blasted through all my bullshit and allowed me to handle the situation exactly as I wanted to.

I want honesty in my literature. In my movies, in my music, in everything that touches my emotions.

There is so much depth to the Border trilogy that it often left me breathless.

Hard truths, honest conversation, crushing sadness, uplifting human interactions, disappointments and compromise.

I am really digging the Andy Kaufman biography. Extraordinary man, amazing life. But the end of "Cities of the Plains" left me so contemplative this morning that I read about two sentences of the Kaufman biography and had to put it down.

That is how I want to be moved.

Every day.