I’ve been editing my footage of my visit with Tio Jose in Goa. He is my grandfather’s brother. He died not too long after I was with him. I was the last of the extended family to see him. And now his generation is gone, and someone else in the family bought the house.

And my mother is just turning 60 now and she is getting ready to accompany her mother (my grandmother) to Goa to be with family over there “for the last time”.

An older friend, Bobby, told me his image of each generation lined up in straight lines. Bobby said, “Each preceding generation takes that last step into oblivion or eternity, then all the other lines take one step forward to fill the space left behind: the emptiness where there was once being. And each steps off the edge of the world in turn, on and on into even the unimagined future, forever.”

I was thinking about having been at a symposium in Harlem organized by Stanley Nelson, and hearing Sidney Pollack talk about “Mentoring” and about “Legacy” and about being conscious of what we are able to pass on to following generations.

And Mom being 60 and Tio Jose gone, and me myself, now “Over 30″. I’ve learned my skills. But what will become my legacy? With MS I feel I’m living in fast forward. My body is already “70-80 years old”. With my type of Primary Progressive MS, my body will wear out long before my mind. Will I have a legacy?

I’ve still been dating while I’ve had MS. At first the women I’ve dated thought they were cool, liberated, non-judgmental, self-idealized “care-takers” … this image of themselves as being so nurturing and supportive. Now, I’m not saying that I’m not also a sometimes-immature man who can be difficult to live with, even without MS. But MS is a back-breaker. It can feel good to be nurturing and care-taking for awhile … like, until you realize there is NEVER a day off. That’s when the reality of MS sets in: when you realize its the same routine over and over and over again: line up the pills, stretch the spastic muscles, put on the clothes … and all of it, even the simplest things, done in this arduous slow-motion, as if every step was going uphill in a blizzard at 20 below zero and you don’t even dare think about stopping to rest.

Kind of takes the fun out of nurturing. ☺

And so I wonder if I will have a generation directly behind me, or if, when my brothers and cousins have kids, there will be a gap in the line behind where I was standing.

And will I have someone to go forward with? And do I have TIME to find that special someone?

The great independent filmmaker John Cassavettes said : “Men act out of confusion. They don’t want to appear vulnerable. They want everything to appear normal.”

Well, MS shoots those defenses all full of holes, doesn’t it! “Don’t want to appear vulnerable”? To use an appropriate cliche, I can’t even “stand on my own two feet”.

And what kind of “normal” appearance do I possess coming at you down the street?

As for “CONFUSION”, I’ve got that in spades!

Is this what my legacy looks like?

Cassavettes also said: “”Seems like anything is possible when you are younger, but its really important that you do things that are uncomfortable because when you are older there will come a day you have to do the same thing to yourself to prove yourself.”

I’m at that place in my film, now. I’ve done the shooting and basic organizing. I’ve been in my “comfort zone” and MS hasn’t interfered too badly. But now I’m at the door to that “uncomfortable” part in the process. I know I’ve been uncomfortable before, like that job I had loading trucks in Hebel, Australia – stick-picking with my friend, Davey.

I’m doing the introspective video daries now.

This place that Cassavettes is taking about isn’t physical on the outside.

Its a shaky place, inside, that you can feel but not see, that feels electric and unstable and misty and powerful and always on the edge of disappearing and you want to run away from it but at the same time you know that its the most strong and rich and real place you will ever be in. You have to keep going through what you have to go through.

There are times I wish this project wasn’t so personal!

And at the same time you don’t want to go in, you also recognize this fearful place for the name of creativity. It is up to you how you make it through and what you make of your chance, your opportunity to walk through it.