Vienna Waits

On Labor Day weekend, we take a moment to remember what matters, with a nod to the music and mother that first made me aware.

Atlanta, GA

September 1, 2024

Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return. 

– Laurence Sterne

Slow down, you crazy child, And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while

It’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or two. When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

– Billy Joel

On another Labor Day weekend, we recall that life’s too short to toil, and (we hope) too long not to. 

The elderly say youth is wasted on the young. Youth think wisdom is squandered on the old. Children hurry to be teens. Teens rush to be adults. Adults often act like kids, and pine for adolescence.

Both our children have moved away. The elder one recently completed college. His younger brother is three years from doing so. Time wastes too fast…. 

It seems like only yesterday that our sons’ father flew the coop.

Spontaneous Planning

He went to Georgia Tech two weeks after he finished high school. He enrolled every summer but one, and graduated three and a half years after he started. It was a blur.

He graduated, spent a week skiing in Colorado, then moved immediately to Sacramento (where his mother introduced him to Steven Tyler). He lived there a year, before settling in San Francisco. 

Like most twenty-one year-olds, he couldn’t keep still. It was as if he couldn’t finish what he started, couldn’t wait to be done with it, and was unsure why he was doing it.

He didn’t know where he was going, but knew he had to get there. Any planning was always spontaneous. He enjoyed himself, but missed a lot.

Music went unheard, places unseen, roses un-smelled. People weren’t met, experiences were missed. He was carried by the current, but rarely caused it.

After a few years, it pulled him to Philadelphia. There, thankfully, he met the woman who’d become his wife. He’d found his anchor. 

Not that he didn’t continue to drift. But he at least had a port, and knew where he belonged. He was finally certain of something, and of someone. 

He returned to San Francisco. He got married, and his wife joined him in California. They lived in several places, sampled countless restaurants, sipped lots of wine, made good friends, and were happy. 

But, for whatever reason, he needed to keep following his unmarked path to no place in particular. His wife patiently supported and followed him wherever he wandered. 

He started graduate school at the University of San Francisco, then decided to finish at Georgia Tech. When done, he suddenly decided he wanted to return to northern California. 

Only so much patience can be expected of any person, no matter how loving or tolerant. His wife was both.

But she was reluctant to sell a house they’d just bought, rent another U-Haul, lose another cat (that story requires another post), and return to San Francisco. Who would?

Atlanta was their home, whether her husband liked it or not. She hadn’t even chosen it. He did. She followed him, not the other way around. At some point, decisions have consequences. 

His wife was right, and they’ve been in Atlanta since. He always considered San Francisco his adopted home town, but can no longer imagine living there.

The Cool Kid

After what its political leaders have done to the City and its state, more and more are reaching the same conclusion.

Among American cities, San Francisco was always the favorite child. The cool kid the other towns wanted to be, and be around. Looks, style, charm, a quirky irreverence, and a misty mysteriousness attracted a crowd, and the envy of others.

The City could be stupid, blow all its money, sleep late and miss work, yet somehow land on its feet. Sycophantic friends would always be there with aspirin, coffee, and a cold shower when the sun rose. And it always seemed to.

But beneath the stylish persona and enigmatic glamour, irresponsibility and arrogance bred rot. The infection now looks lethal.

Years of over-indulgence, spending too much, and partying too hard left it a homeless, debt-riddled, drug-addled derelict. It seemed to be playing Russian Roulette with a bullet in every chamber…just to be sure.

Four years ago, it pulled the trigger in the name of battling a bug.

I recall images of the Financial District, and was as livid as I was heartbroken. Streets starved for pedestrians, storefronts boarded up, and underground wires sitting silent, abandoned by absent cable cars. 

In the distance, we found the missing traffic on lower deck of the Bay Bridge, headed east. Many of the vehicles were U-Hauls and moving trucks.

One of the world’s most enviable cities was being left behind, as one of America’s more deplorable. I never thought I’d say that. It hurt to then, and still does now.

Earthquakes, wars, depressions, and previous pandemics have plagued San Francisco. But no calamity could rival its modern politicians.

To invert Talleyrand, what they’ve done is worse than a blunder; it’s a crime. I’m glad I had an opportunity to know the City before they committed it.

Vienna Waits

Many of us never go places we long to go, do things we want to do, or see people we mean to see. Those of us who can should, as soon as possible.

As we’ve learned, the activities may suddenly be unavailable, the places may quickly lose their appeal, and the people won’t always be here. Neither will we.

When I was a child, my mother had a close friend with a lifelong desire. If memory serves (this was more than four decades ago, so it might not), Pat always wanted to go to Paris.

Years passed, but something always intervened. An obligation here, other plans there. She kept putting Paris off, knowing she’d eventually go. 

She never did. A tumor took her at a young age, probably no older…and likely younger…than I am now (I was a kid, so anyone my age would’ve seemed ancient). 

One night not long after Pat died, we were at home. My mother usually played music as she made dinner or unwound. Many nights, the needle fell upon a new Billy Joel album, The Stranger (still his best).

On it was a song that has always stuck with me. Vienna, as Joel himself described it, was an observation that you have your life, and you have it to live it.

To do so, there are professions we must pursue and work we must perform. As Robin Williams put it in Dead Poets Society, medicine, law, business, and engineering are all noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life.

But beauty, poetry, friendship, and romance: these are the things we stay alive for…if we’re wise and lucky enough to make time for them.

One evening not long after Pat died, Vienna was playing. It moved my mother to remember her friend, and to explain the song’s message.

I’ve always remembered what she said, even if I’ve not always acted on it. To her credit, my mother always did, and does.

The rest of us should do likewise, and mustn’t wait. We have one life. We should enjoy it. Savor it. Live it. 

Vienna waits. But it won’t wait forever.

JD