For seventeen years, Mark Twain lived only 11 miles away from where I’m sitting at my desk right now.
It was definitely his creative peak, where he wrote his most famous works including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Unfortunately — like Einstein — he neither wrote nor said many of the best aphorisms attributed to him, including one of my favorite “faux Twain-isms”:
“Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?
It is because we are not the person involved.”
Quite frankly, that’s exactly how I feel about most weddings.
Vlad and my “mountaintop” view from the top of our daily hike.
For most of this year, after putting 90% of my belongings in storage, I’ve been deep into my hermetic writing / project launch phase in Connecticut.
(A few more days left to pre-order the new journal for an autographed copy HERE).
Last Saturday, I returned to the city for the first time in months for a dear friend’s surprise bachelor party.
His brother had arranged it all at a private club at the top of what is literally the world’s tallest residential building.
As counterpoint, Vlad and I take an almost daily hike that’s exactly seven minutes from home to what’s named on the map as a mountain.
It is, however, only 400 feet above our town, so it’s perhaps accurately described as a large hill or ridge.
In any case, it pales in comparison to this 100th floor event.
At over 1,000 feet in the air—the rough cutoff for how geographers describe a true mountain—we were clearly sky explorers.
This return was a kind of culture shock to say the least, particularly since my schedule made it necessary to arrive just before the party and duck out toward the end.
True to the spirit of this month’s theme — Awkward Beginnings, Meditation HERE — on the way to the train I encountered a traffic jam, then found that all the parking lots near the train station were full.
Walking briskly toward the station from a lot several minutes away, the strap on my vintage Coach backpack broke while I was crossing the street.
Nonetheless, although it required racing to reach the platform and buying my ticket on the train, I caught the last train that would get me there on time for the surprise moment.
After re-experiencing Grand Central’s eternal bustle and chaos, it was a mere ten-minute cab ride to the event, followed by an astonishing elevator ride.
According to the building’s website, the elevator travels 2,000 ft/min express.
That means it takes about 30 seconds for it to rise from ground level to these mountaintop cityscape views.
After multiple snags and delays, this Awkward Beginning ended with me being practically teleported skyward, dazzled by this spectacular new perspective.
Earlier that day, I was saddened—as were countless others—by the news of Diane Keaton’s death.
Although we shared a friend, I’d never met Diane in person, yet somehow this particular loss feels strangely personal.
I think this is largely due to her unique combination of authenticity and accessibility, a persona she radiated that was somehow self-aware, modest, a little unsure, but nonetheless very present.
So many stories echo these virtues, a favorite one being the tale told by Al Pacino at her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award.
Pacino recounted Keaton’s first meeting with Marlon Brando when filming The Godfather.
He simply said: “I’m Marlon Brando.”
Diane Keaton apparently replied:
“Yeah, alright, uh-huh, okay.”
Her reaction to Brando’s legendary presence says it all in that — rather than any dramatic fanfare — it’s simple, matter-of-fact, and above all else, gloriously awkward.
It’s probably not the reason my knapsack broke, but it’s worth noting that it was heavier than I had anticipated.
My plans to travel light for this urban day trip were slightly confounded because moments before I set off, a package arrived a day early.
Inside were the very first proofs — the publishing equivalent of a dress rehearsal — for the new book/journal.
I’ve shared several of the Awkward Beginnings with the project.
These include deciding whether to update some of the men-only pronouns and dated references.
(I opted to do both.)
Then came the rogue ISBN number that caused several days of delay, followed by the layout app’s proclamation of “insufficient gutter.”
All of that was now ancient history.
Holding an actual physical copy in my hand for the first time was beyond satisfying.
And it was all the more meaningful because the surprise bachelor party was for one of the first people thanked in the acknowledgments section.
Having supported me through so many false starts and detours, I couldn’t wait to show him this mini-milestone.
I love this passage from Diane Keaton’s autobiography, Then Again (2011).
She describes her high school production of the musical Little Mary Sunshine, where she played Nancy Twinkle, the second lead.
Her big scene ended with a grand finale where she slid down a rope into the orchestra pit.
“That was when I heard the explosion. It came from the audience. It was applause.
When Mom and Dad found me backstage, their faces were beaming. Dad had tears in his eyes. I’d never seen him so excited….
I could tell he was startled by his awkward daughter—the one who’d flunked algebra, smashed into his new Ford station wagon with the old Buick station wagon, and spent a half hour in the bathroom using up a whole can of Helene Curtis hairspray.
For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one. I was his heroine.”
Keaton’s genius is that she triumphed over her awkwardness not by overcoming it but by incorporating it fully into her persona.
Indeed, it’s a huge part of what made her so endearing, so utterly unforgettable.
As I explore Awkward Beginnings, I’m reminded again of what Anne Lamott wrote in Bird By Bird:
“Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop.
You can’t — and, in fact, you’re not supposed to — know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.”
You can plan a perfectly timed trip only to be stuck in traffic, unable to park, your overloaded knapsack collapsing mid-intersection.
Yet somehow you can still arrive at the surprise party, not only on time, but holding the manifestation of months of work in your hand.
Even at 100 floors above the ground, Oscar Wilde’s quote still rings true:
“We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oftentimes, that view is a thousand times sweeter when the journey starts with an Awkward Beginning.
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