My Plan for Today and April and May

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Today I am going to get organized and the first item of business is to establish a Home Plate in which I will put things such as billfold, keys, glasses, phone, pens, meds, nail clipper, checkbook, postage stamps, cufflinks, shoelaces, eyedrops, matches, grip tape, flashlight, magnifying glass, things that in the time I’ve spent looking for them in the past few years I could’ve translated The Iliad and made peace with China and unionized college athletes, both men and women.

On the other hand, do we really need a new Iliad? The poet hit a homer and the Odyssey is even better. Ulysses is tempted by the babes along the way but he makes it back to Penelope and is a happy man.

When I’ve organized my stuff, I plan to write one more novel and that’s absolutely the last, no matter how many six-figure advances publishers thrust at me over lunch at La Côte Basque, and then I’ll start writing Screwing Up Is a Good Start,which puts forward my philosophy that disaster draws us together and success isolates us. Look at me, I was a very good boy who gave my parents no worries, and as a result we were strangers to each other. Now I wish I’d gotten a girl pregnant in 12th grade, lived with her in their basement, got into the Scotch, sniffed the white powder, spent some time in the lockup, and my folks would’ve adored the child, coaxed me back to responsible adulthood, my wife would’ve written a brilliant first novel based on the crap I put her throughand we’d be sitting pretty today. Instead, I walked a straight line, followed the rules, ascended the slippery slope, and now I sit here alone, nobody calls, nobody texts.

No, sometimes doing wrong is exactly the right move. In all my adult years, I’ve avoided being a houseguest so as to be No Trouble To Anyone and now I’m an old man and I have no close friendships because people think I’m a misanthrope. Me, the amiable host of a prize-nominated radio show. I’m doing my show in Greenville, South Carolina, in a few days and my relatives in the area all know about it but has one of them said, “Come and stay with us, we have a guest room in the basement. You’d have to share it with a dog and a macaw, and the toilet is upstairs but we’ll give you a lantern.”? No, I haven’t heard a word. Story of my life: my independence alienates me; I should’ve joined a support group for the self-righteous and broken down and sobbed and repented of my hypocrisy and gone out for drinks afterward and formed fast friendships. I never did that.

I have a houseguest in New York as I write this, a realist photographer friend from way back who’s had many gallery shows, portraits of weary hoboes and drifters and winos, and he’s taken several pictures of me and they show an aging performer left friendless by the cruel passage of time.

I speak from experience. People love people who have good stories and there is no good story without trouble so get into trouble while you’re still young and have time to climb out of the ditch. Don’t do things that can really hurt you like drugs you buy from strangers on the street, just fall in with lowlifes, fall for an obvious scam, say crazy things you know aren’t true, and the simplest way to accomplish that is to endorse the Florida Orange. Now.

Starting in January 2025, there’s going to be a market for Republican confessionals — a yuge market — the lecture circuit will have room for upright people admitting that they were hornswoggled by the most obvious conman to come down the pike since the guy who sold the mimeograph that prints fifties. Even Scientologists can see through him. It’s too late for me to get on that gravy train, but you millennials and Gen Xers, don’t let Mitch McConnell and Mark Meadows grab it all. But you’ve got to act now when his hairdo still looks legit and the poll numbers lend a sense of drama. In June, the air goes out of the balloon, the rats take to the lifeboats.

If I could find my phone, you could call me and I’d say more, but I’ve torn the apartment apart, no luck.
We could go for coffee but I don’t have my glasses and can’t find my keys so I’m stuck at home.

Garrison Keillor © 03.17.24