BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS TO NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2017-18) — Let’s kiss another year goodbye. Let the kiss be welcomed and enjoyed, without a trace presumption or perfunction.  THE PLANET saw, endured, and welcomed many changes this years — privately, personally, and professionally — and each was or will ultimately prove to be a good one, for we have learned that the more things stay the same, the more they change. It works the other way around, also.

Our late, great friend, novelist Hollis Hodges — like Brooklyn Dodger first baseman Gil Hodges, a native of Indiana — used to hold court as the resident wise man at Heaton Hall in Stockbridge. THE PLANET was a regular at his sessions, one on one, old age speaking to middle. As a man who had lived through and been to war, alcoholism, divorce, estrangement from family, and more, he had seen enough ups and downs of life to last 28 lifetimes — especially the downs. He nonetheless showed a resolution not to be defeated by circumstance or wallow in failure. He successfully wrote novels with major publishers, two of them bought by Hollywood and one making it to the big screen. It wasn’t all roses in June, however.

Hodges reminded THE PLANET of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist. In his 90th year, Tolstoy experienced a crises of faith. The man who had written War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and a number of other towering works that alone would have defined a stellar legacy, reflected on his life and concluded that he had done nothing. He thought he had failed. Hodges traveled down that same conceptual road, as, truly, we all must do when reckoning both with Life and with a life. The confrontation is never easy, for, along with triumphs and the oases of happiness, life contains too many mistakes, regrets, disappointments, and losses. How do we deal with them? Hodges followed Tolstoy. He wrestled with his demons.

When a person does that in resolution and determination, the demons ALWAYS lose. It makes the battle no less easy and many shy away, but it provides a large measure of lasting comfort and solace, those two twins of fulfillment and cousin of memory. Hodges emerged from the match victorious, irrespective of how he felt about it. Feelings as information are useful, but they are notoriously unreliable both as the basis of action in the present moment (which is all we ever have) or to resolve and come to terms with the past. THE PLANET must add that we never directly asked him if he had won, or if he felt he had won or lost. It didn’t matter. We knew. Hollis Hodges took up the task of living, and he lived it to the full. That’s victory.

THE PLANET shares this story with a secondary generosity in mind. We want to pass along one of Hodges’ favorite sayings, a personal mantra he would recite with the conviction of a man about to die for a cause. The gem consisted of three little words, ones we have made our own:

“It’s all okay.”

Even when it’s not okay, it is okay because time invariably proves it so. Think of the saying as a form of universal forgiveness of the kind associted with the words “God” and “mercy” and provides the basis for faith in universal and unconditional forgiveness for what we call sin. Afterlife or no, time sweeps us along and dissolves our earthly coil back into the atoms from which we derived. The recyling is certain and, at the risk of characterizing the ineffable to the point of caricature, benign. Only the form of it remains anyone’s guess.

Allow THE PLANET, then, to wish you all a Happy Christmas and the best of New Years. Friend or foe and everyone neither, both, or in between, we repeat the words that end every PLANET column: “Love to All.”

And remember, no matter what life throws at you, it’s all okay.

We shall reform here on THE PLANET after New Year’s Day. Enjoy the break but feel free to come here in the interim with your comments. Communication at this address is always a two-way affair.

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“God bless us all” — Timy Tim, from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.