Merlin and Steve Jobs have arrived with Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, and Og Mandino in tow. Did they share a cab? Possibly with Jeff Bezos? There’s the man at the Giza Pyramids who wanted to buy my daughter! The city of Florence is here, too, I guess to apologize to Sue and me for its lack of hospitality to us, unintended or not.
Over there I see P. H. Viswanathan, the young man from Gujarat, India, who read an article about my blindness and wrote to offer the transplant of one of his eyes as a gift. (With deepest gratitude, I declined his offer.) Standing nearby is the man with whom I sat in meetings who subsequently jumped off the roof of a building. Just over his shoulder, far away in the smoking lounge, Albert Einstein is arranging three balls on a billiards table. An agitated Leo Tolstoy is waving a copy of his What Is Art? in Kazimir Malevich’s face. There are Ed and Jane Muskie with the Brennans, Michael Jordan, and Bill Bradley. Just to test me, Bill fakes left and goes right, but I’m onto him. Now Senator Muskie has gone to stand arm in arm with Yitzhak Rabin, who was Israeli ambassador to the United States, a reminder of a different time in the modern world. My father-in-law, Marty Roseno, is next to the senator, poking him with a golf club to get back to the game that the three of us were enjoying with Tiger Woods. My lifelong friend and business associate, Washington’s Abe Pollin, is playing night basketball with LeBron James and me on the court Abe built at my home; Thomas Edison is presenting his beta version of a light bulb for the blind. Marshall McLuhan, fascinated by the compressed-speech machine I invented, is here, trying (unsuccessfully, it would seem) to explain the principle to Johannes Gutenberg.
Mohandas Gandhi is standing nearby, all by himself, which I take to be a symbolic statement: how much more one man may be able to accomplish than entire armies and powerful empires. He won’t be alone for long, though. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is headed his way to talk about their common experiences. I wish I were closer.
As Pericles listens, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk recites his famous 1934 letter to the Australian people, who lost so many sons (ultimately pointlessly, as usual) battling his Turkish troops on his country’s Gallipoli Peninsula during the First World War: “Those Australian heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives—you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets; to us they lie side by side, here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far-away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
Other party guests nearby, among whom are Kaiser Wilhelm II, generals Douglas Haig and Curtis Lemay, and Robert McNamara, nod solemnly in agreement—unfortunately, agreement that comes too late. Winston Churchill is looking down at the floor, I suppose so that none of the Gallipoli dead might catch his eye. The Chorus now speaks of the unreasonableness of life—its unfathomable direction…the caprice that so delights the gods. Oh, yes…caprice.
I see that the Australopithecus afarensis “Lucy” is here, late of the Cradle of Mankind in South Africa, although that was not her name for it. She is really old—some three million years old and change—and there are much older creatures here from the broad human family. (In her day, by the way, she was addressed as Ma-ba within her circle; they tell me she finds the “Lucy” tag annoying—and unfortunately we did use it on the invitation.) Jack Benny is giving tips on the violin to Emperor Nero, while the Pony Express is represented by Ichabod Crane, attired in his finest green, who left the Van Tassel party to attend this one.
Wynton Marsalis and Raphael Mendez have asked me to join them in a rare trio for the trumpet while Andrea Bocelli and Stevie Wonder sing a dulcet duet. Elizabeth and Bob Dole seem to enjoy the performance, although not nearly as much as I enjoy their company. Bob’s heroism in battle and Elizabeth’s tireless attention to the caregivers of wounded warriors have made America a better place. So has Tom Hanks’s support for Elizabeth’s foundation. Must explain why he’s beaming nearby. Oh, and did I mention that I can see all this? My eyesight has returned. (Talk about chutzpah!)
Robert Rauschenberg, who once spoke to me as “Berg to Berg,” has sidled over to complain that I offered a commission for a piece of sculpture to Frank Stella instead of to him. As Frank is standing right here, I should be a little embarrassed, but happily, he is locked in conversation with his fellow Princetonian Michelle Obama.
Speaking of embarrassing encounters, Dr. Sugar, the eye surgeon who thankfully resolved (if that’s the right word) my advanced glaucoma, showed up, but accompanied by Dr. Mortson, the maladroit Buffalo ophthalmologist who ruined my eyes—much being forgiven at a party like this one, or no longer being of true importance. Hermann von Helmholtz is waving at me, probably to say something about my vision problem. A termagant landlady from Oxford is here, and an unpleasant blind Oxford professor, arguing with the unpleasant blind rabbi from the hospital in Detroit. (Some people never change.)
All the folks who read to me in my schools after I became blind are in attendance as
