Scott Joplin died in a mental institution

the year my father was born in Toronto,

the final card in his parents’ hand, almost

enough for a game of gin. King of ragtime,

Joplin suffered a breakdown when his

opus work, “Treemonisha,” met with no

success. Another genius depressive,

Rachmaninoff, felt stifled by being asked

to play “Prelude in C# Minor” at every

concert. He died in Los Angeles, after

a period of relative unproductivity and

slavic melancholy—a description of tone,

not a diagnosis—the year my parents

married in the rabbi’s study in Detroit

before they boarded trains to Edmonton,

Alberta, where my father served in the war,

flying cargo planes to Alaska. Abraham

Maslow, famed psychologist known best

for his Hierarchy of Needs, developed

the concept of self-actualization, leading

to the that of cognitive dissonance and

the study of motivation. What makes one

proceed in the face of suffering, misery?

Compared with these men, my parents

lived small lives that wove through great

moments of inspiration and creation,

but here I am, suturing them all together

with the sturdy twine of the twentieth century—

how time unifies the disparate, how time

loves us, and as Thackeray said, makes

fools of us all.