Life Is Too Short

Although it didn’t feel that way to me, last Tuesday was the longest day of the year. And, it follows, the shortest night. I’ve had worse of both.

Still, it got me to thinking it was precisely those “longest” days for me that found me shortest on patience. It struck me that a new phrase had attached itself to my discourse: Life is too short.

If you use, or even think, a phrase as often as I have found myself doing with this one, you have to ask yourself a few questions, starting with, “Too short for what?”

The first answer came quickly—too short for some people. You know them, we all have them in our lives. Those “when I’m gloomy you simply gotta listen to me” individuals who drain you; whom your heart goes out to again and again. And again! Those who keep coming back for more—of you. Those who thrash wildly in your seemingly still waters to dodge drowning in their turbulent psyches.

Sound harsh? I’m not talking about family, loved ones or the dearest of friends. I mean the midnight callers, the gloomy Sunday drop-ins at your door. Ask yourself if they ever heed the counsel they seek from you. No point in asking them.

Your time is too dear. Life is too short.

Before we go any further, let me assure you I didn’t come to this quality-of-life conclusion as a result of any recent illness, but decidedly while I was of sound mind and sound body. I started eliminating several exasperating people-predators from my life several years ago, and found the cutting away liberating—so blissfully so, I share the revelation enthusiastically with you.

This is not an invitation to you to share your experiences with the clingers, imposers and sturm und drangers with me. While I’d be interested in your confirming similar incidents of exasperation and exhaustion [See: “Comments”], I’d prefer to skip your grueling particulars; I have my own, and imposing yours on me would render you a second-hand predator of sorts. Writing what I have thus far has made me feel lighter by the word: you’ll undoubtedly find your own way.

It strikes me that I’m likely to be on others’ life-is-too-short lists. Maybe yours, now. Fair enough!

For me, the “too short” yardstick, still novel to me, didn’t have to stop at people. I’d sat in too many theaters shaking my head from side to side in bewilderment over what Broadway and Hollywood can foist on the unsuspecting, undiscerning or simply unconscious as entertainment.

I started considering Broadway’s offerings in terms of shows I deemed I could live without. (Fortunately, I continue to see ones I wouldn’t have wanted to have missed.) I was amazed—you might be, too—by how good it felt to be off the hook, in just one season, for “Spiderman,” "Priscilla," “The Addams Family” and “Rain.”

As for films, a brief flashback. When the venerable producer-director-playwright George Abbott was in his late eighties, he told several riveted listeners he gave a film five minutes, and if it didn’t engage him, he walked out on it. “At my age,” he explained, “I don’t have two hours to waste.” He lived to the age of 108—and seven months… and six days—at work on a new show when he died. Imagine how much time he saved, and used better, over those last two decades! Proving? At any age, life is too short to trifle away.

I took Mr. Abbott (He was that to everyone who knew him.) to heart. I estimated that if he, with six decades on me, only gave a film five minutes, I had at least twenty, but no more than thirty, minutes to give a rudderless or pointless one.

More recently, fortified by my new prescription, I learned I didn’t have to see everything within three weeks, even three months, of its opening. At a Manhattan dinner party, I don’t mind saying, “I haven’t seen that yet,” adding, “I’m in no hurry.” Even if, blasphemous as it may be to other New Yorkers, it’s a Woody Allen film.

The “short” list is as long as you dare make it. Books, the news, politics. Television, radio. E-mail and social networks, and what have you. Separate the wheat from the chaff and, to paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, don’t go with the chaff. A friend told me she was reading a book she was growing increasingly impatient with. “Why don’t you spare yourself and stop reading it?” I asked. “I always finish everything I start,” was her answer.

If you weren’t finding this piece interesting, how could I expect you to finish it? Finding it less, it’s likely I wouldn’t.

Hold on! Please, before you click me away! What you won’t find on Twitter, in government or a Woody Allen film is: Life is too short for any of us to fail to get around to saying the things we should say to each other while there’s time. I rest my case.

The Sidewalks of New York, Part Two

Overheard—a dialogue between two street people as they walked:

First man: We’re all separate individuals.
Second man: I respect that.

My ears went up when I heard “separate individuals.” The sidewalks of New York are heating up again. Not thermally, not just yet, but intrinsically, by nature of the people who drum their rhythms of life from them.

In the initial “Sidewalks of New York,” I wrote, “Everybody has a story” and told a scant few of a New Yorker’s slew of them. “A Distant Admirer” commented, “You don't have to be a New Yorker to love these stories, or your special New York. More, please?”

I didn’t have to be asked more than once. But then, curious, I couldn’t resist asking for “more” from my readers as well. Captured audiences we wry New Yorkers are, time-tested troupers of the serendipitous and the screwy dutifully reporting from the trenches, here’s the scoop:

This one starts like “The Ancient Mariner” and ends like a Quentin Tarantino film. A bedraggled fellow with a cheerful expression on his face approached Stuart Bardin. As Stuart tried not to be distracted by the pirate hat plopped on the man’s head and the stuffed parrot perched on his shoulder, he politely asked if Stuart had a minute to hear his tale of woe. Ever the gentleman, Stuart couldn’t say no, at least not fast enough. The less-than-ancient mariner proceeded to tell him that his ship had run aground in Central Park Lake and he was trying to raise enough money to "buy his crew some rum." He was awarded $10 for his creative fabrications—or, as Stuart puts it, for “the best laugh I ever had on the Sidewalks of NY.”

Overheard outside a Broadway theater:

I don’t understand what happened to this show. They loved it in Boston.

Celebrity-sighting in New York is a celebrity slighting the natives do well. You can read it directly from their five-borough body language: Who does he think he is that I should notice him? So the art of the game is to spot the illustrious one and then deliberately ignore him or her. Bernard Fox (no relation) relates the exception to the rule where his children’s godmother was concerned:

“She had just parked at a meter. She dug into her purse for quarters and found she had only large bills. Thinking for a moment about rushing to a nearby store to get change and then rushing back before her car was ticketed or towed, she spotted Woody Allen walking down the street. He was walking with a fisherman-like hat pulled way down over his head, his collar up, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. She stood in his path and said, “I have no change for my meter, and unless you give me a quarter, I’m going to shout ‘THERE’S WOODY ALLEN!’" He gave her the quarter. And a smile.

Overheard:

Hey, lady, you got a hundred bucks? I wanna get out of the city.

The following happened to me. Almost twice:

On a sunny day on the cobblestone sidewalk along Central Park West, a neatly-dressed, light-skinned African-American man seemingly in his twenties approached from the opposite direction, greeting me with a happy-to-see-you smile and a warm hello. While I scrutinized his face quickly, trying to recognize him, he said, “You know my mother.” It’s not a line you can walk away from. As I stood trying to place him, trying to find the face of the woman “I knew” in his, he asked, “Who’s the black woman you know best?” My mind flashed on Blanche, a woman who helped my mother raise me when I was a child, a woman I dearly loved many years ago. Perhaps it was emotion, perhaps it was the incredibility of the situation: I barely uttered her name. It didn’t matter—he didn’t need to hear it. “I’m her son,” he said.” The incredibility of the situation predominated. “Is your mother still alive?” I inquired. He assured me she was—old, but fine, he indicated with a proud, confirming nod. I was in no position to do the math, but now I could walk away and was ready to. Careful not to repeat her name, I pointedly told him, “If she were still alive, she’d have to be over a hundred.” With another nod, he said, “Let’s step over here and discuss it.” Stepping back and saying we had nothing to discuss, I departed quickly, feeling a little foolish and a little sad—I hadn’t thought about Blanche for years, and if there were any chance she… no, impossible. My melancholy quickly turned to begrudging admiration for the young man—he was good! I wondered how many people he took in per day, per week, and how much he asked for, for money surely was his object. I thought of reporting the incident to the proper authorities, but I know New York detectives, and, in addition to the serious pursuit of more dangerous men, they have bigger fishy people to fry. Continuing on my way, I couldn’t help smiling.

I said, “almost twice.” Less than a month ago, a man coming toward me on Broadway smiled and greeted me. It was the same neatly-dressed man, and he looked none the worse for the years that had passed, five by my count. Before he could say, “You know…” I told him, “I’ve already heard your hustle.” He smiled and said, “Good to see you again,” and moved on without breaking stride.

Overheard:

Could you tell me how to get to Times Square, or should I just go f#!* myself?