Weave the Web

I often describe that year in Chicago -- especially those hours in that bar -- as the time and place where I digested my Harvard education and came into "my own."  Yes, I'd had late night discussions in Cambridge but the conversations in Chicago -- 400 miles from Weld Hall and Lowell House -- were different somehow.   As time moved on,  they increasingly made me wonder if I'd chosen the right profession. 

    

 I had naively assumed that becoming a lawyer meant learning and applying a set of absolute rules and that there was always a clear right and wrong.  But the cases we labored to understand in class showed that the Law often cut different ways in the same situation.  What was judged legal or non-legal, right or wrong, or good or bad could depend on how well the lawyers argued or which arguments they advanced.  The Law was not a pure absolute world.  That was a sad uncomfortable realization, and I became more and more uneasy about becoming a lawyer.  At the same time, and just as importantly, the late night bar discussions made me realize I didn't know much about life.  Or about myself.  My years until then had been serious and directed.  I had gone to Law School because it was expected of me.  And I'd been going to school year after year for 20 years.

     

 It was time to take control of my life.

     

 It was time to fly.

    

 I quit Law School after that first year (despite getting the Law Review nod and winning the Moot Court competition) and the rest of my life has been an off-trail parade of sorts.   Wandered thru my 20s:  Mexico, Marine Corps, Europe, North Africa, a stint in the Merchant Marines.  Then in my 30s: marriage, two sons, a serious career (publishing).  In mid-life, divorce, relocation from Washington DC to San Francisco, where I continued my career and started a new life -- tap dancing, accordion, traveling, acting and singing lessons, bar-hopping, poker playing (lasted 12 hours in the 2006 World Series of Poker), motorcycling,  and, yes, more late-night discussions (which still occur if they're not too late for an 80 year old).  And I'm happily ensconced in a  25-year relationship with a fabulous, scrappy Connecticut woman who also moved to SF in mid life to "turn over a page."

    

I've collected friendships, memories, lovers, grandchildren, and adventures all along the way.  Among my treasured mementos:  two pieces of advice which are framed and hang on the dining room wall in our 1878 Victorian flat.  One comes word-for-word from the inscription on an elegant china dinner plate in the Cape Cod Room in Chicago' s Drake Hotel.  It graced my office walls for 30+ years and reads:

 

 

   

 

(if you translate this and think on it, you'll discover it has two different meanings, both of which are very useful in keeping one's cool in business).

  

The other was penned in his early 80s by a very good friend.  Dean was a full-out lover of life, a skirt chasing hard drinking guy, an occasional nudist, and a committed non-conformist peacenik until his end at 85.  After years of full-tilt living, he concluded living life well and happily boils down to just 13 words in 4 lines:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My life is rich.  Full.  Rewarding.  Hey, I love it.  If I hadn't dropped out of  Law School, I wouldn't be the person I am today.  Hooray.

 

P.S.   With a little imagination, Elaine May and Mike Nichols could have cooked up a sketch combining the Cape Cod Room inscription and Dean's advice .  It would have been a good one.  I'm sure.