A COOL TIMELINE

A cool timeline...

25 years ago: I had just turned 10. The horses at Glenhilly, our ancestral Estate, were bringing their Spring foals. Father had picked out the fastest one, Zanzibar, an Arabian Quarter Horse with fire his belly, to be my mount for the Fox Hunt that season. Oh, father! Why did you have to leave us for that Haitian stable boy?

20 years ago: I had just turned 15, the Superior Court of Appeals finally mandated that I could be tried as an adult. Why didn't I listen to Senator Halstead when he was giving advice? I would later find out what the juvenile system had in store for less fortunate defendants...

15 Years ago: I had just turned 20. Getting out of the military was one of my better decisions but the lessons learned in Viet Nam were still ringing in my head. How I ended up in that tower and where I got the rifle are questions that I guess I'll never have answers to. I just hope God lets those kids enter heaven so I won't have to face them again.

10 Years ago: I had just turned 25. Like a lot of Baccalaureates I couldn't decide on a post college career. MBA? Work for Uncle Winston at the Underwriter's Guild? Law school beckoned with promises of huge payouts in questionable tort cases. How I ended up touring South Africa in that Sondheim Revue remains a mystery. What I know is that's how I met Alison Leslie Potts and that's all that matters.

5 years ago: I had just turned 30. I was spending $40 a day just to get well, $80 a day if I wanted to get high. At $5 a trick in Griffith Park, well, you do the math. I had lost Jill, Silas, and Zanzibar. I had hit bottom. At one point I just looked at Clarence Frank and announced in my best Judd Nelson "I've been to Paradise but I've never been to me."

3 years ago: I was 32. My time in the Peace Corps had been productive, even rewarding, but my novel was stalled and things with Bree were, well, sketchy. She didn't want to share me with the world and I loathed her coffeehouse friends. How could I enjoy a double half-caff when things were disintegrating in the Sudan? It would prove too much for either of us. I think I lost all desire to write after that. My novel was our stillborn child. I can still hear chapter 24 crying out its sad denouement in the cradle of my cerebellum. Rage against the dying of the light, little chapter, do not go gently into that good night...

1 year ago: I was 34. The surgery was a success and I could finally throw away my toupee forever! The braces will be off next year and to think they said I would never walk again! I can't wait to hold Zanzibar and taste the salt air of coastal New Guinea again.

This year: I've just turned 35. I live in my condo and, for the first time in my life, make pretty decent money. I will have a full-time job for the spring semester, and hope that it will extend into a permanent one. I have amazing friends who I love very much, and a family which supports me unconditionally (even though my dad would like me to get married). I still surf, and I still direct shows. I'm leaving for NY in a few days for another adventure.

Yesterday: I golfed with Harvey and he thinks my software fix for the mass spectrometer aboard the Hubble will never fly with Jerry and the boys at JPL. I just told him they can come up with their own Finley algorithm to deal with the Bose-Einstein Condensate. He backed down and promised there won't be anymore "Russian" episodes again. I was just happy to be golfing.

Today: It's only 2:14pm, but so far I'm on my second cup of coffee and am trying to reply to e-mails. I plan to go to the gym (but I said that yesterday and blew it off...) and will clean my foul house. I also have an appointment with Kevin, my hairdresser for a cut-and-color. Tonight I'm going to dinner and then drinks with Edward and I think that is progressing nicely. Tonight may be the night! I am excited about what the New Year will bring.

Tomorrow: January 11, 2005. I'm guessing I'll call the Independent Counsel back and finally agree to testify before Congress. I just hope Azra and Muhammad can get out of Gitmo before the other shoe falls. When I left Riyadh in '98 I never would have thought it would go down like this. Sometimes the world (and especially the Middle East!) is a crazy place, you know?

And you?