The first day of spring and a full moon appeared in the same week, creating optimum conditions. : The Moonbeam Factor

I was sitting on the back deck of my house the other day listening to an Ella Fitzgerald record on my new compact disc player and staring off at an afternoon haze on the Santa Monica Mountains when it occurred to me that I was smiling.

That struck me as peculiar, for there was in truth nothing to smile about. My back was sore, my cat was sick, my column was not written and I was locked in a struggle with the Bank of America again.

Sometimes, despite similar adversities, I can manage at least a small grin by filling my mind with an adventure fantasy in which the crew of the Boeing 747 I am in passes out and it is up to me to land the bird in the teeth of a violent thunderstorm.

I am on final approach to LAX with 250 nuns and crippled children aboard and the whole world is listening as I say into the radio what could be my final words, a message that speaks of love and truth and the indefinable spirit of Mary Lou Retton.

Tell my wife I was wrong about refusing to see “E. T.” and other sweet movies and tell my editor I regret trying to slip that premenstrual syndrome comment into my Thursday column and I hope the cat feels better after vomiting all over the house. Now clear the field while I bring this baby home.

I don’t know why it is up to me particularly to land the 747, but I do, and I am awarded the Nobel Prize for Courage and Quick Learning.

But that wasn’t it. There was absolutely nothing in my head as I lounged in the sun and therefore no logical reason to sit there wearing the vacant smile of a daytime game show host. I was beginning to suspect that something at last had worn through in my brain, when it suddenly occurred to me.

I was a victim of the Moonbeam Factor.

That is a name given to the condition by Sideways Sidney who used to drink with me in an Oakland bar called the Hollow Leg, back in the days when I was still able to drink a martini, rub my stomach and pat my head at the same time, without once rubbing my martini by mistake.

You might also know it as spring fever, but Sideways always felt the term lacked definition, so he changed it.

Sidney was one of the brightest, most imaginative people I have ever known, but he was also one of those with no outlet for his smoldering creative fires. So what he did for a living was repair roofs, and what he did after work was discuss James Joyce and debate Socratic truths while blurring the realities of his own life with Scotch on the rocks.

“You show me the occurrence of a vernal equinox at a time when the moon is full,” Sideways used to say with a slight lisp, “and I will show you days when the mirror of the mind reflects back only the air around it.”

It was exactly the way I was feeling at that very moment.

I managed to rise up from the chaise lounge long enough to find an almanac, and sure enough the first day of spring and the appearance of a full moon were within the same week, which are optimum conditions for the Moonbeam Factor.

There was nothing I could do about it. God knows I tried, even going so far as to begin a column that mocked human decency, Nancy Reagan and the Church of Latter-day Saints in the first few paragraphs.

But midway through a section attacking the peace march and Youth’s Hope for the Future, my energies drained away like water from a tub and I was out on the back deck again, staring at the hazy distance, riding the sweet sounds of Ella to another time and another place.

I did not move even when I heard the cat coughing, though I am aware, due to a urine stain on the keyboard, that the animal has a scatological obsession with my word processor.

I prayed as he coughed that my Tandy 1200 would be spared the outrage of his, you will forgive the expression, puke. I do not quarrel with a cat’s right to opinion, but the manner of expression leaves much to be desired.

Even my severest critics find tidier means to vent their displeasures.

But out there in the sunshine on a day brushed with pastels it didn’t matter what the fool cat did or that the Bank of America was insisting I was $210 overdrawn or that my back had gone out and I was going to have to visit a doctor who always wanted to know if I had found Jesus yet.

I do not even care that I am drifting slightly to starboard and the nose of the ‘ 47 is dropping and lightning has turned Runway 36-L into a nightmare of fire and madness and that all those nuns and crippled children aboard are praying for me to fly that baby to glory.

Curse the lethargy that is the primary syndrome of the Moonbeam Factor.

I just didn’t care about anything except lying in the sun on my back deck, the mirror of my mind reflecting the air around it, and the pale oval of a full moon drifting like a ghost through a day dreaming with spring.

I have no idea who is going to fly that baby in, but I am not going to give a damn about it today. Tomorrow will be soon enough.

And to hell with Mary Lou Retton.