I did a show Saturday night singing duets with a tall woman and was so fascinated by the perfect harmonies on the Everleys, Let It Be Me, that I forgot to take an intermission until almost two hours had passed.

And I saw elderly people my age dashing in panic up the aisle to empty their bladders,

a weird feeling to create something so wonderful that you wind up torturing people,

sort of like painting a mural so beautiful.

People gaze at it and don't notice the stairs and fall and break an arm.

I was a writer for years, but I dreamed of being a singer,

and now here I was, singing good tenor to a fabulous soprano.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people were hoping not to wet their pants.

An out-of-body experience for me, a physical reality for them.

It's a night I'll remember for the rest of my life, I'm 83.

Whereas vast acres of my middle and elder years are a complete

blank to me, which worries my beloved.

She says, you remember that September in Paris, the little cafe on the square with the fountain, the strolling gypsy guitarist?

But I don't.

She says, sure, the nymph in the fountain, the pigeons on her shoulders.

I'm sorry, I don't remember them either.

I remember when I was a kid, our family driving home from Sunday night gospel meeting and stopping at A&W for root beer floats,

how beautiful they were after an hour of contemplating eternal damnation.

I remember being sent to Aunt Joe's house when my mother was having babies, a house with a wood-burning

stove, an outhouse like in Little Home on the Prairie.

I remember my first time on skis skidding down a steep hill and thinking, I will never do this again,

a promise that I have kept all my life.

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