Happenings

There are days, nay, periods in one's life that a certain sort of somnambulism is the predominant modality of one's supposedly conscious activities. Sleep deprivation, the galloping atmospherics of the Christmas season and the intrusions of repairmen and other necessary disturbances of the comfort of the routine of this old semi-grouch, can and did result in a couple of incidents, neither one earth shattering or cataclysmic to any truly appreciable degree, but jolting nonetheless and not without a bit of comic relief and release due to the consequences of panicky conclusion- jumping of an over-compensating race to re-establish alertness. In the first instance, a recent series of visits by a friend's unlicensed plumber to my home approached a kind of climax when I asserted (despite the bargain prices) that completion of the job (an increasingly leaky pipe underneath our kitchen sink) needed to be effected on this particular day. It's wearying to observe, after more than an hour or so, the earnest efforts of an improvising gent, even one who clearly knows far more than I ever will about the art and science of improving and securing the safe flow of water within the confines of the system of my house. While he is expending energy and making course corrections that surprise and even delight himself, my chief task is to be patient, to wait and to stifle a gnawing fear that he may not be up to the task or worse, that he may commit a disastrous, irrevocable act. My hospitality and good cheer mustn't waver and it's a tiring experience. Part of the package "deal" of this quasi-amateur's unspoken set of rules for his service is the requirement that I provide a basic tool, here or there when needed. A flashlight, a three-prong adaptor or some such common item represent no great demands of this customer, but the need to purchase other essential parts at my local Home Depot, in turn, necessitating the use of my chauffeuring skills due to the demanding parking conditions of my neighborhood (he could not likely re-park his truck without great difficulty) resulted in a brief but urgently experienced journey that found me pressured, rushed and overly eager to return home. We did and the task was finally completed. Soon after he left I searched for my car keys. They were not to be found.

My afore-mentioned condition, that of resembling one in a semi-comatose state, caused alarm as I wracked my brain to reconstruct my actions after leaving the car to enter my house again with my plumber in tow and several bags of parts carried by both of us. ….To Be Continued

The Last Americans

I saw Otto and his ways. The son of a Swiss immigrant who arrived in southern Alaska in 1930, he has lived like his father before him, completely on and off of the wild and beautiful land that yields only grudgingly to incisive intelligence and forethought with survival as really the only important watchword of these latter day pioneers. Yes, it's a "reality" television program, but the keen mental and physical skills of the cast versus the reality of the contending elements are not part of the teleplay's contrivances; they comprise rather, nearly all of the rock solid foundation of the show's compelling qualities of fine entertainment. The suspension of disbelief during seemingly life and death situations (cameramen, plausibly armed and at the ready with first aid kits, etc., are always there of course, for whatever and every scene we see) is hardly an issue to trouble our consciences. These are authentic people, members of a loving family and with a sense of truth about all their observations, whether hopes or fears. There is humor, kindness, as well as strong familial bonds and the daily drama of such lives of self-sufficiency makes for instant empathy for these folks who live lives extraordinarily different than most of our own, lives that helped make America the truly great land she was and can be again.

The Smallest Kindness

I carved a heart upon a tree's trunk.  There was nothing unusual about this.  Countless others have done so before and will again unless tree-huggers fail utterly with Brazilian loggers converting the world to their way of thinking and buzz-sawing.  My uniqueness in this endeavor, that I add with little shyness I'll admit, stems from the time and place of my knife wielding.  The defacing occurred upon an ancient maple several blocks from my urban home and the act was performed only days ago.  It's a crowded setting, a place where pedestrians and motor vehicles each year increasingly approach the density of Manhattan's bustling sidewalks and thoroughfares. This now best describes my once semi-rural neighborhood. The glistening blade of a jack knife risks catching the eyes of occupants of a squad car. But the usual state of affairs (with Murphy's Law fully operational) is not, in the event, what transpires. For once, nothing goes wrong, i.e. no men with "stinking badges" appear, a rare similarity to their seemingly dependable undependability when  a crime is committed or accident takes place.

Well, so I chance it and my claim to singularity is not only the fact that this is not a sylvan glen where secret thoughts and dreams are nurtured by nature's vast and beauteous emptiness that so easily encourages contemplative and intimate reveries. It is the fact that I am of such an age that my weapon should arguably have more typically been employed whittling a small branch of this maple in solidarity with my approaching senescence or used to slice myself an apple as I sauntered down to one of a nearby public park's benches to sit on my weary duff. No, this arthritic little fellow, clinging to the last vestiges of exceedingly late middle age is utilizing this bodkin in order to express reprisingly, a pining, ceremonious act, that is a salute to what Henry Clay Work called "spectral fancies" that "flit." This happens when an adolescent love of nearly fifty years ago is buried alive and yet does not die. It was not a well turned ankle, a winsome smile or curvature of form that concentrated my attention. The young woman was simply kind and in a way that simple observations revealed to be not calculated or discriminating. Kindness to me and to others as well: to see it in action caused me to shiver with excitement and ardor.

The yielding bark, the ancient trunk with still a certain moistness and finally, the hardness of the instrument's steel: all play their part in allowing two sets of initials to rest in close proximity, circumscribed by the symbol of tender feelings or maybe just that of biological and psychological forces at a confluence in time when the urgency to mate was such that our older and wiser selves now understand fully the world of Romeo and Juliet and not so much that of 20th century middle class concepts of appropriately timed behavior. Young love has a wounding incisiveness about it that its own private realm of ecstasies and agonies knowingly enshrouds and even protects. But to pay homage to it now with this memorializing act, well, the only thing perhaps to recommend or excuse it is the shadow's salute, or a waning life's attempt to hail the halcyon years and the extraordinary power of their will to express their compulsions. This curious effort to be alive again will, like Michael Chekhov's psychological gesture, jump start a certain juvenescence even if the glowing embers of what was are sure to return to curling, gray billows and soon enough to nothingness, once and for all.
     

Mendicant In Old Woodside

The ennui of waning years and related matters parches in many ways.  Another wake to attend, the telephone that does not ring (well, yes, excluding the incessant "robo"calls and the like that the National Do Not Call Registry seems helpless to thwart), the fading sounds and echoes of laughter, and rarer and rarer convivial gatherings, all these remind one that a cherished peacefulness may be part of the cautionary tale of Confucius to "be careful about what you wish for….you may get it."  But what is this dessication precisely?  Am not certain, but it may be the aging process whereby voluble chats and an expectancy, however not quite ebullient in nature, but able to combust at any moment into gales of laughter, good hearted teasing and good fellowship among pals, neighbors and familiars alike, are just no longer a part of the landscape.  Friends move away, key members of a clan die, neighborhoods change dramatically and ways of thinking, values, salubrious conditions, even remembrances and other assumed rocks of seeming permanence are shown to be quite mutable, made unrecognizable or are simply destroyed. A neighbor's house's demolition after standing for over one hundred and twenty years comes to mind.

There used to be a practice in the days that my father's father operated his fruit and produce/grocery stores here ending about seventy years ago. The folks at City Hall under the "Little Flower's" reign had apparently devised a level of regulation, however rudimentary, that included the registration of panhandlers. No doubt, the less derelict and disturbed among them, eager to latch onto at least a small corner of the world of respectability eagerly went through the process and gained a smidgen of pride with a card alongside their tin cup that proclaimed they were licensed mendicants. One of these gents would regularly visit my Nonno's store and would duly receive his nickel or perhaps it was a dime, maybe even two bits (like Dad, I imagine that grandfather was not parsimonious when those down on their luck expressed their need).  Well, how does this ancient social interaction relate to today's spiritual dryness? Am not sure, but this small societal recognition of the need to include weaker members of our national, or at least our city's family, and at least, to not get into the habit of becoming comfortable with perceiving them as invisible, seems to contrast with the coarseness of our treatment towards and scarcity of brotherly love for indigent strangers today. I could be wrong, no doubt.  Compassion is not an exclusive preserve of the past and my affinity and frankly, affection for nostalgia, could both be clouding my judgment about "then" versus "now." A recent experience observing nurses in a local hospital was heartening about the good will and and humanity of those serving the infirm, elderly and others. Projections are always possible and one's own state of mind deserve consideration as possibly skewering one's take on reality. The vision (or distortion of same) of the female protagonist in "The Days of Wine And Roses" is an example of that situation. She meets her estranged husband after a period of time in which he has striven mightily to confront his alcoholism while she has remained in the grip of the disease without seeking help. She describes the world outside as dirty and deathly. Doubtless, her inner landscape, barren of hope and beauty is darkly coloring her decision about what is true and real in the physical world surrounding her.

Still, I incline towards casting a vote for the America of mid-century, a place where Judeo-Christian values had not yet attenuated to a point where today certain questions on an imaginary course in Ethics seem to have multiple choice answers the majority of which will not cost the test taker the loss of any credit. Yes, it was also an America where the atrocities of a world war were not wallowed in or obsessed about. The music of the era persistently embraced sentimentality with no apologies and lyrics were intelligent , coherent and devoid of navel gazing or ambivalence about love, hate, life and death. The monstrous nature of the totalitarian war machines were not dismantled by unalloyed purity of minds and hearts, to be sure. But absolute determination with overwhelming force as well as loving hearts devoid of the cynicism of 21st century Western thought, is what made the difference between victory or enslavement. And a people who hold their fellow citizens in higher esteem based on the greater degree to which they protect and honor those among them who are most vulnerable are a people worthy of the name Americans.

Mass At Our Lady Of Fatima

Attended mass this past Sunday at Our Lady Of Fatima, R.C.C. in Jackson Heights, N.Y. The priest celebrating it gave a homily that included thoughts about the southern border crisis, the fighting in Gaza and also the conflict in the Ukraine. He neglected to mention anything at all about the systematic murder of Christians in Iraq and many other places in the Middle East as well as Africa. I remain utterly dumfounded by this silence.  What is going on?

Children And Other Living Beings

Small creatures, those that a child delights in, were no less attractive to me at a time when neither taxes nor even homework were a concern and the visual and tactile encounters with these animals were so stimulatingly new and yet they were like old friends that I thirsted to examine  and possess. Killies or saltwater minnows were riveting. So were tiny kittens that, unlike the small fishes, permitted an enclaspment so utterly attainable for little hands. Then too, their soft furriness was so delightful for one learning easily and quickly to love after being so thoroughly loved by gentle parents and grandparents alike. The warmth for these living things did not extend to insects. Whether instinctively or through the lessons planted by the angry swatting of a fly or an adult's alacrity in the process of squashing a crawling critter unwelcomingly appearing in a seemingly spotless world, a bug did not share in this world of happy, positive attention, if not affection, paid.

I recall too, a summer family vacation. It was 1956 and we were enroute to the homes of friends of each of my parents in eastern Massachusetts. I was so small that I was hardly aware of geography or state borders, but I knew that this was an adventure and again, those small critters, close to my line of vision,  literally within my grasp and so wonderfully alive (or startlingly dead), drew my attention unfailingly. The parenthetical reference first: this journey via the coastal route of Southern Connecticut brought us naturally, to many a seascape and piscatorial setting. Having dined in a clam house near several wharves we were outside preparing to leave when in the failing light I caught sight of a silvery fish floating and dead while being carried along by a swift current  under a nearby causeway. My young, inexperienced mind decoded this scene as something awesomely dramatic, exciting and even ominous. I was compelled to try and see the fish again when it passed under the bridge and would hopefully appear on the other side. It did and the thrill was unmistakable and yet to this day, still not entirely comprehensible.

Earlier, a motel, probably in rural eastern Connecticut, was our first stop in the late afternoon after a long car trip from New York.  The friendly proprietress offered us cool drinks and I remember lying down on a grassy hill adjacent to her office and under a big shade tree. A small girl about my age, along with a puppy, came toward me and the four legged youngster just jumped onto and off my stomach several times as its part of an enthusiastic kind of welcoming committee. The little lady clapped her hands in what seemed support of the canine's expression of unconditional love for this slight stranger with translucent, plastic pink eyeglasses and a usual dour look of precocity and angst. My mien was instantaneously transformed by the encounter to that of a giggling six year old without a care in the world. There was an unreserved delight in the uncomplicated fun that this pair offered and that I shared so unhesitatingly. The inclination toward introversion was at such an early stage then that I was easily relieved of it and I was taken for (and was) a normal kid who especially embraced the playfulness that so naturally possessed one of my tender years. I reveled in these tiny animals and my precocity included a pre-pubescent interest in the opposite sex. I was very much aware that this little human and probable mistress of this dog was a girl, and that somehow made the encounter that much more enchanting.

I don't remember if my family rented a motel room there. I only remember that wondrous moment in time when only the joyfulness of playing, loving and being loved was what mattered and that, looking back, we were consummate experts in this art of playing. In fact though, we were, all three of us, of course, utterly artless in our play on that hill in that minute sliver of time in that southern New England sunshine of oh, so long ago.

Alone At School

Today is the twenty third anniversary of my graduation from the City University of New York's Baccalaureate Program. At least, this is the date printed on my diploma, which in 1991 fell on a Sunday.  My actual Commencement Day ceremonies were held on a pleasant late weekday morning in early June on the quadrangle of Brooklyn College's campus in the Midwood section of the borough of Brooklyn. This school had been my "home" college for the entire period that I studied the core curiculum as well as my major area of focus: Theatre Arts. The day of graduation, that is, the experience for me, was unmistakably a bittersweet one.  After years of being painfully aware of what I had convinced myself was the societal dictum of securing a college degree, I had at last, achieved that goal at the age of forty one. This occurred nineteen years after most of my fellow classmates had attained theirs. It was not my age or any twinges about lost youth that disturbed me.  Rather, it was the realization that the actualization of this success did not match the imagined degree of satisfaction or certainly the elation that a 1972 Graduation Day would seem to have produced. I was like a middle aged man who had run a race, perhaps not a marathon, but a challenging, competitive run nonetheless that found him, not quite in the middle of the pack of runners, but with workman like skills and a plodding determination that had resulted in my crossing of the finish line with the afternoon waning and few souls on the sidelines along the route encouraging me or other such also-rans. In point of fact, there were no relatives or friends in attendance on that day as I donned blue robes and mortarboard with golden tassle and my sheepskin firmly grasped in one of my still then arthritic-free hands. The issuance of the class yearbook had been pleasantly awaited and it was distributed joyously that day by a Brooklyn College employee to each one of us who had ordered a copy. My surname adjacent to my headshot had been misspelled and I foolishly brought it to the attention of the employee who could of course, do nothing about it except to apologize profusely and abjectly. It called to mind Jason Robards in the film "A Thousand Clowns" when his character mused about what one could realistically expect from life. To his way of thinking "a sincere apology is the best one could hope for…for all the things in life that one will never get."  The breezy, whimsical way of this philosopher and idler was touching and serio-comical in a style that comforted and blotted away the tears of the overly sensitive and childishly expectant.

To the present time I occasionally continue to dream about my college days, both as a twenty something undergraduate on Rose Hill and in my much later period in Brooklyn. There is always, in each reverie, a longing and a searching, a wandering (often at night) on campus grounds and with doors sometimes bolted and pressing business causing me to strain or worry. Am reminded of the young Ebenezer Scrooge who in "A Christmas Carol" remains at his school, far from home during the Christmas holidays, in order to work ostensibly on, and to catch up with his studies. Unlike Dickens' character though, school was not a poor refuge from a broken home, but rather it proved to be a poor haven for growth and maturing as I failed to "click", not so much academically as socially and not without a strange stunting of what usually comes naturally: the "Coming of Age" phenomena and all the blossoming that entails. Another image comes into the view of my mind's eye. It's the painting by Anna Lea Merritt titled "Love Locked Out." The death of the artist's husband, only a few months after their wedding is represented by the naked form of a pre-pubescent boy uselessly seeking to enter the mausoleum of a loved one. "Oh, untimely death" said Oswald in Shakespeare's "King Lear." Some of that sorrow and despair touches all of us, no doubt.  A new door though, one that we are assured opens for us, and especially one that is not clearly ajar, depends on our readiness to see it and to turn its knob.

The Unpleasant

Tomorrow will mark the seventieth anniversary of The Longest Day.  Starting at 0530 hours on Tuesday, 6 June 1944, Anglo-American and Canadian forces invaded the beaches of Normandy, France to begin the achingly slow and sorrowfully sanguinary quest to expel and crush the demonic thuggery of Nazism from and on the continent of Europe.  It was accomplished with a cost measured in the deaths of tens of millions of humans, civilians and military personnel alike.  No mindless boast about a "war to end all wars" was heard at the conclusion of this particular global mayhem. Germany's surrender on 7 May1945 that was followed nearly four months later by the remaining member of the Axis, Japan's, brought relief and genuinely joyful celebrations.  But the dawn of the Atomic Age, the fragmentation of colonialism and the commencement of sullen bellicosity between Western democracies and the Soviet Union's Communist empire, together with so many other elements of social flux throughout the world, meant an undiminished pace of change, uncertainty and opportunities aplenty for new dark forces that adroitly picked up the baton of the newly fallen totalitarian giants. In short, peace was something that coiuld not be leisurely savored.  The struggles continued, kaleidoscopically and unrelentingly as the world lurched from one drama to another: the nuclear arms race, the triumph of Communism in China, the Korean conflict, the many upheavals in the British, Dutch and French empires, the ancient enmities in Palestine, the Indochinese civil wars and on and on.

The conflict with Communism, commonly known as the Cold War, proved finite but only after more than forty years of anxiety of a special kind: one that disturbed the waking as well as the dream lives of so many, with the menace of the mushroom cloud and the contemplation of mass annihilation both routine causes of psychic suffering for those whose threshold of pain for dealing with such possibilities was too low to focus healthily on life affirming endeavors.                                                                

However, the economic colossus that was the United States under a strong and great leader, Ronald Wilson Reagan, began to grind down the corrupt and inefficient Soviet system. First, detente in the 1970s led to the gradual wearing away of the Russian political structure. An arms race that the Soviets could not sustain and a restive populace, exhausted with the dearth of creature comforts and the consistently meager availability of all kinds of products and services capable of raising one's standard of living, all contributed to the relatively peaceful end of Marxism as developed by the Kremlin's bureaucrats and politicians. This "breather", briefly seen as true hope for world peace, was not just short lived. It had been overlapped at least ten years earlier by the Iranian revolution and other forces of Muslim fundamentalism that made it clear that a profound animus was being directed toward the West as well as toward what had been the Second World or the Soviet Empire.

Now, nearly thirteen years after the recognition that we were truly in a war with Islamo-Fascism, …T.B.C.

Learning

To love and to not hurt the loved one: these are powerful gifts, the consistent bestowal of both of which are forever challenging. The seemingly long time spent waiting for the splash of a rock tossed down the cavernous well of one's psyche is eventually rewarded and assures the patient one that compassion, in the form of these recessed yet deep (and still) waters responding to the loving stone (which is akin to an Apache tear of the beloved) is a life force that one, by definition, has shared. These bitter tears may never melt; no alchemy empowers my limited liquid refreshment.  But I know that I  have some capacity to alleviate pain and am heartened. There is little left but to love and to hope that the sorrow may be smothered with enough good cheer and the annihilation of each, single solitary selfish impulse. Failure is nearly inevitable unless one were to faithfully relive vividly that moment of abject misery when my beloved bewails the throb of her searing wound born from a horrifying mirage of uselessness.  It's not difficult to try to comfort such vulnerability and a fine line between pity and empathy wiggles and blurs while lacrimation as contagion shoves impotent reason aside. The Christian view slakes this special thirst and the crying is its fleshly manifestation and purging.

Sometimes when alone (and someday perhaps to be the usual state of affairs), the grieving is harder, with dry tears and a burning melancholia in the throat and stomach. The knowledge arrives that no gentle touch will ever come and that one's escapes and tricks to gain attention, comfort or approval is all for naught. The computer, the attractions of the pantry, the long telephone conversations with equally lonely souls, the favored musical genres (and the simple pleasure of controlling nearly anytime while at home the playing of soothing selections of them), the distraction of a pretty smile, or a wink from a coarser sensibility... all these anesthetize and bring symptomatic relief which is no small thing.

And yet, time and again and frankly not rarely, conflict is actively sought. The insult (real or imagined), the wounded pride, the itch to avenge a bully's taunt (whether oafish or subtly directed) and the bile produced by the bloodsport of politics and tribalism, all pollute the search for serenity and for a higher plane of being. The simple need for space ought not be overlooked. Ranting about urban blight, a mainstay of this blogger's litany of complaints, is a very ancient sore point for many a modern citizen since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Am among those who do not just rhapsodize about what some may dismissively term a silly sentimentality for a sylvan and tranquil world that is no more. No, we who long for quietude and room to expand a peaceful solitude are not crackpots or deluded dreamers. What is sought is the physical reflection of the inner bliss that one envisions and perhaps once had, even if only in an imagined previous existence.  The yearning has a purpose and the small voice should be listened to, heeded and trusted.

Out, Out, Damned Spot!

A billionaire named Mr. Sterling was fined 2.5 million dollars today for his voice having been revealed to be that of a man on an audio recording speaking disparagingly of black persons. The wealthy man in question is the owner of a professional basketball team of the National Basketball Association, the organization populated by the most talented basketball players in, arguably, the world. The great majority of these players are black men. The man will be further punished by being banned from the N.B.A. for the remainder of his life. Additionally, all possible pressure will be brought to bear to persuade him to sell the team. The man made the mistake of communicating his dislike for Negroes to his lady friend who he subsequently had a falling out with.  She soon afterward revealed the recording to the news media.

How soon before the ability to read minds will expose the undesirable thoughts of millions, with no need to rely on external "spying" devices? "Privacy", someone interviewed about the news said "is not to be presumed or taken as a haven by bigoted persons in this new day and age." There seemed to be a disturbing glee about the new or imminent ability to expose those with impure thoughts about some of their fellow creatures. What about unkind remarks and/or thoughts about homosexuals, folks with bad breath, alcoholics, criminals, poor white Appalachians, Mexicans, Republicans, Jews, Muslims, rich white ladies of the D.A.R., and endless other groups with whom one may have an ax to grind, rightly or wrongly? What happened to the America where one could tell another to "go to hell" and no litigation, federal case (as in "don't make a federal case out of it") or other firestorm ensued. Folks just eventually stopped getting steamed and there were enough laws on the books and good common sense for people to get on with their lives.

Now in the case of Mr. Sterling, the punishment is not so much measured and justified by the verbal transgression, but rather by the alleged culprit's position on the national scene, his wealth and his proximity to an organization of equally powerful men whose skin color, and as routine recipients of the sports world's encomia, place them in a politically advantageous position to combat Sterling. The fact remains, curiously, that hating is still not a crime in the United States, at least not yet. It would seem that some of those particularly incensed by Sterling would like to see that changed. Is hating the hater hateful? The ancient jest is called to mind: "support mental health or I'll kill you." Shunning, boycotting and other actions, already having begun, were seemingly quickly quelled by the announcement of the price of Sterling's comments by the N.B.A.'s commissioner, a Mr. Silver.  The response by Sterling to Silver's actions are unknown as of this writing though one report indicated that Sterling stated that his team was "not for sale."  This brings up the possibility of an entertaining legal brawl that could drag on for some time. If Sterling's motives had some ideological or philosophical basis, it might be an opportunity for stimulating public discourse on various issues besides race, namely those of privacy and freedom of association (or disassociation). If, on the other hand, Mr. Sterling's animus towards blacks reflects little more than a neanderthal mindset, aided and abetted by his enormous wealth and habituation to his whimsy and meanness being indulged by those around him, then little edification can result from the litigation. After all, sterling is but 92.5% pure silver, so the blatant symbolism may suggest that the edge belongs to the N.B.A. executive.

On the subject of indulgence, the apparent long delay in confronting Sterling's well known inclinations is grist for the mill of journalists and the public alike. For instance, why did the N.A.A.C.P. have no quarrel for years with Sterling? His financial support for many projects involving benefits for blacks and others that also helped fill the organization's coffers may be instructive here. Other groups, including the N.B.A. itself may find that imperfection, i.e. tardy complaints and actions against Sterling, suggest that some reflection is in order about one's own shortcomings. The yearning to erase racism, may be a noble impulse, much like eradicating polio or other scourges. But the "legislating of love" and the zeal to cleanse always has its pitfalls. Love's power comes from another place and the edicts of men always fall short of their goals because coercion of any kind, even those with the best of intentions are corrosive at their roots and are enemies of liberty.

She Wrote To Me

On March 30th, yesterday actually, someone, a total stranger, saw my profile on a social networking and dating site and decided to engage me with a brief but intelligent missive that surprised this aging bachelor. It's a bit like having a telephone ring and the party not being a salesman, a "robo" caller, a credit card company or a charity. This rarity was a bit of a shock. It would be wonderful to have conversation, even if only in cyberspace with someone who is coherent, listens and is neither devoid of humanity nor of good humor. Time will soon tell and the fates have already decreed what shall be.

Popsie

There are several snapshots in our family collection that, because of the number of unusual faces depicted (wedding guests and few familiar ones) have caused me to pause and to begin to dwell on one particular individual in them. Some of the images are still glossy after more than six decades and those of a matte finish are in equally fairly good shape as well. The person in mind was my maternal uncle's first wife's father. His name was Johann and he was a strapping, German born man with powerful arms, hands and a quiet way about him. I never knew what he did for a living but the jobs of stevedore, steamfitter and longshoreman all come to mind in connection with him. He was a member of the Freikorps I learned in recent years. They were bands of German war veterans who, after the shock of the surrender of Germany in World War I, groped for some meaning in their newly forced retirements since for many, their careers as soldiers were the only ones they knew or loved. The increasingly violent social upheavals at the time soon revived a sense of purpose and helped make them critical elements in the battles against and eventual defeat of Communist forces in 1919.                                                        

Born about sixty years before me, my interactions with him were brief and necessarily insubstantial, yet my young mind apprehended a certain sense of who he was and even his character. There was not just brawn or an  intimidating presence perceived by this grade schooler. I understood, despite my tender years, that here was a person, another adult who was not frightening, but accepting and clearly another member of that tribe of adults who nourished me in many ways with patience and forbearance for a child's ways.

When I had reached the age of reason, seven years and four months to be exact, Johan died of a massive heart attack. We were informed by his daughter and widow that he had witnessed a rather horrific automobile accident while driving. In an era long before the invention of cellular telephones he had dutifully driven to a nearby police station to report the incident. While relating the events he suddenly collapsed. It was one of the first times that I had encountered death, however indirectly. The same day, our neighbor diagonally across the street from our house was also a witness to an automobile accident directly in front of his doorstep. His pet dog had scampered into the street with wickedly precise timing and was struck forcefully and fatally. Fred, our neighbor, held the animal in his arms as it died. When I related this story to him at his father's wake nearly fifty years later, he was incredulous that anyone but a member of his family would remember such a long ago event. It's often that way. My long term memory is, at least up to the present, rather intact and when it involves a life or death incident my ability to recall the travails of others has remained on the whole, unfailing, as the facts remain somehow indelibly inscribed. I'd like to imagine that my good memory is somehow entwined with a compassionate nature, but the truth may simply be that remembrance, for me, has continued to be a fairly sharp tool in my "kit" of cognition with no special moral component. A life less than filled with numerous events, changes and tumult has probably helped me to retain memories of the milestones that most others delete or consign to forgetfulness over time. And yet, what  I continue to be convinced about is that there is something reverential about remembrance.

But returning to the subject of Popsie (this was Johann's other name, affectionately given, no doubt, by his wife and/or daughter), there is also something comforting about his memory. I knew him for only five of the first seven years of my life and so his life for me, is a quite circumscribed tale tied to my essentially happy childhood, immutable and very manageable (like a baseball card I have coincidentally owned since the year of his death encased in a sleeve of lucite: special, safe, historical and an inextricable part of me). The very few other stories about him were told to me by my parents. His exceptional physical strength was demonstrated routinely when he bowled near his Bronx apartment in the days before automatic pin machines were universal. Popsie's ball's velocity caused the pins to seem to explode and the pin boys on duty were ever vigilant when this large man menacingly approached the lane. The targets of Johann's competitive strivings that became flying missiles of wood were truly frightening, I was told. One of our photos however, tells of his humorous side while reinforcing the sense of the man's massiveness. He is relaxing in our kitchen on the occasion of my grandparents' golden wedding anniversary and three of the "dead soldiers", i.e. two champagne bottles and a can of Ballantine's beer are goofily tucked in his waistband, bracketed by his suspenders and resting on his ample belly. His gregarious and convivial ways were to be repeated in my later experences through the years with other German-American friends and neighbors and they call to mind a scene in a 1958 film "The Young Lions." The scene was that of the great Marlon Brando and Parley Baer, the well known character actor of the '50s and '60s. Their characters are Wehrmacht soldiers in France after D-Day and they are old friends who haven't seen each other since earlier in the war and during much better times. As Baer's character goes deeper into the evening as well as his cups, and after their French female companions have retired to another room, he begins to share some of what's in his heart with his equally psychically wounded companion. The conviviality, the humanity and the insights expressed in Baer's performance are as memorable as any of Brando's scenes. The weariness of war and its utter waste are encapsulated by Parley with his sleepy, drunken advice to Brando's girl when they prepare to leave: "Take good care of him because he is the best of the best." Baer says this while gently tousling Brando's hair with a special affection that only men who have shared the unspeakable horrors of their profession can understand or express.

Teutonic men of course, have no monopoly on camaraderie. Neither are they the sole perpetrators of the malevolence attributed to them by mass culture's portrayals since the first world war. But they are good examples of the lot that we all share: that of thoroughly human beings, alternately happy, sad, afraid, defiant, overweeningly proud, pathetically humble and terribly mortal. We do well to see that person under the uniform, the masks of power, artifice, indifference, hauteur, calculation or any of the other many poses we all struggle to present to the world that is not our home. Whether a Popsie, understanding the assimilation processes of his life, or any other pilgrim along the path of this journey, the road is long, hard and the temptation to dehumanize another is always there. Yet the choice to understand is there as well and Popsie's last decision in life was to try to help as best he could. It was a fine example for a small boy to learn from so very long ago.        

Meeting Leslie Gore (Part 2)

A second famous person who I met while driving a taxi was Miss Kitty Carlisle, the epitome of urbane sophistication, actress, singer, a fixture of New York's high society, native of New Orleans and widow of Moss Hart. It was about a decade after the Bacharach/Dickinson encounter and I was at that point driving as an independent subcontractor, i.e a lessee of passenger sedans in the Black Car Industry. Also radio dispatched, the call went out on a drizzly weekday evening to go to an address on East 62nd Street., if memory serves, near Park Avenue. The wait for her to come to the cab was rather brief and she was as remarkably pleasant as she was beautifully dressed in a black dress with pearls, a small beaded pocketbook and an umbrella that was slim, black and the handle of which sparkled in somehow, an understated way that called to mind the old line: "if you have to ask the price, you cannot afford it." Miss Carlisle did not engage in chit-chat, and yet her amiability was received unmistakably with the simplest exchanges related to our business: "Driver, do you think it will rain again later?" And then as we approached her destination a mere four blocks away, "Driver, shall I take my umbrella?" "I did not hear the weather forecast, I'm sorry, Miss Carlisle." Used to making a decision with or without sufficient data, she gently handed the umbrella to me and smiled with a "Well, I won't be especially long, driver." I sensed that she did nothing that was not purposeful or well considered. It was not raining at the moment and she apparently wanted to make an appearance unencumbered by this very special bumbershoot, its elegance not likely to mark her as cautious and mundane. Still, she chose a calculated risk and entrusted me with this nonpareil accessory with no further fuss, actually, no fuss at all. I appreciated her confidence in me. There was an atmosphere of excellence that her brief presence was responsible for constructing, and I was resultantly unafraid to have become the keeper for this inestimable, personal item of this iconic lady.                      

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Miss Carlisle returned to the cab in less than twenty minutes and she was as pleasant as before, but she seemed to be thinking intensely about whatever she had just experienced. I was glad to have remembered returning her umbrella to her before she had to ask for it  and she proffered the fare along with a gratuity that was of a stylishly, slightly more than average amount: I can only characterize it as tastefully generous. She bid me a good evening and it felt as if she meant it. The term "cloning" had not yet been invented, but the concept occurred to me that evening and I fondly imagined a world where those of Miss Carlisle's character could be reproduced instantly and voluminously.                                      

Next, if I may proceed and eventually, anachronistically, a relatively recently eight and a half years ago I read a newspaper ad announcing the appearance in a CD/record shop in a neighborhood in Brooklyn where I was formerly employed, of the former pop singer and teen sensation, Miss Leslie Gore. She was scheduled to sign her autograph on her then, newly issued copies of a CD of her latest songs. I had clearly crossed over to the waning years of middle age with its also waning exuberance, but the chance to meet her in person presented itself and the convenience of the leisure that that particular day's scheduling afforded helped me to overcome my ambivalence about the event. In fact, my courage was no doubt bolstered by inviting two equally long-in-the-tooth pals (who also remembered the thrill of this cute, diminutive warbler of love songs of our pubescence) to come along. Miss Gore was now approaching sixty. The ancient shock we had sustained when learning of her homosexuality had long since ceased to wound any of us who may have had a crush on her…at least of those buddies within my ken. And another factor was now in play for me who was only four years her junior. My shyness, traditionally amplified by the proximity to a celebrity, had developed alongside the aforementioned ambivalence, a conflicting emotion of some animosity towards such a person. Something along the lines of "why must I bow down, as it were, before you? You are not a god, you are not my king or my queen." There was not any scene of course. It was just a matter of body language and a diffidence that I imagine the star in question was sensitive to and so I remained correct though my adulation was clearly not streaming out of my pores and the celebrated one surely did not, in my presence anyway, "feel the love." I soon realized my purpose and it was rather a selfish one. I wanted a photograph of the two of us physically together to display on my refrigerator door and nothing more. This was accomplished as per the rules of the queue for seeing her and/or purchasing her CD. As a non-buying customer I was entitled to the snapshot but no autograph. With no malice for this lovely artist of my youth, I was perfectly content for what I had obtained and about what I had not. This is how one grows old, no doubt, or so I thought as I had watched a man perhaps older than myself earlier kneel down in front of Miss Gore and talk to her as if he were praying to the Virgin Mary Herself. Mine was an admixture of pity and yes, envy, that fandom could linger so insistently in one's heart.

Now skipping back in time, the following encounter marked perhaps the beginning of this aging process that I mentioned. My cousin, a wholeheartedly adoring aficionado of the classic '60s sci-fi television series "Star Trek" had arranged for dinner at a sushi restaurant in Murray Hill. She and her friends, all equally devoted "Trekkies" had spent much of that day at the show's convention in a nearby hotel. Knowing my proximity to Manhattan, I was invited to join them for the repast. A special guest (not me) was to be included as well and when told the name, my advanced knowledge of the show was proven to be not so advanced. Walter Koenig played the role of one of the junior officers of the starship Enterprise     …..To Be Continued

Meeting Leslie Gore

I have met very few celebrities in my life. Am not referring to the half dozen or so famous persons that most of us who live in or near New York's pulsating hub of world entertainment, Manhattan, inevitably over time (with the increased odds of the probability of such an encounter), come upon, glimpse and then pass by while we and/or they are in a crowd at a certain hailing distance. Some of the bolder among us may, with precise and proper timing, shout out a cry of friendly recognition and often the star will diffidently acknowledge your acknowledgement with a wan smile. That was similarly the case once when, while stopped for a red light in midtown, I espied the late Dom DeLuise strolling along, unmolested and minding his own business. My enthusiasm and courage were bolstered by the heady psychology of negotiating a couple of tons of sheet metal along a busy thoroughfare together with some percolative and youthful tendencies, despite a rather shy nature. But they were all almost immediately replaced by regret when the surprising timidity of the funny man was revealed. I had imagined he was always "on" in the role of his madcap, lovable buffoon persona. Instead, he politely nodded to me and seemed to wish that he had donned shades and perhaps a false beard that long ago morning.

No, the meetings that I am concerned with here are the especially infrequent ones that come from the happenstance of a certain degree of intimacy born of natural, social situations (like dinner plans), public and commercial events in circumscribed places and finally, the nature of the workplace for most of the jobs I have held through the years. To put it simply, and in reverse order of the above: driving a taxi or black car industry vehicle for hire, attending a celebrity's planned event in a small venue for publicity and sales purposes, as well as joining a small party of adoring fans and one of the objects of their affections at a restaurant after a convention of these aficionados of a classic television program, were the occasions for my encounters with these gliterati.                        

In 1973 I was an ectomorphic, spectacled young man of slight stature with a distinct physical resemblance to the late British pop rock star, Freddy Garrity of Freddy and The Dreamers. Unlike Freddy, an outgoing stage personality was most definitely not something I had in common with him, my brief episode with DeLuise in this period notwithstanding. It was my first week on the job with a N.Y.C. medallioned yellow cab company known as Scull's Angels and as luck would have it, my meter began malfunctioning after I had been driving for an hour or so. The radio dispatched call came in for a pick up on the east side on or near 57th Street and the party's name was Bacharach. I just wanted to drive as steadily, safely and as inconspicuously as possible until chance might bring me closer to the garage where I could request repairs or a replacement for the meter. Fact is, it was working, but was registering the increments of each fare far too slowly for the time and mileage logged. Again, business coming first, I concentrated on my customers/passengers and in this case, it was a tall, well dressed man who exited the glass doors of a tony building with a uniformed doorman at the ready and who smilingly and casually waved away the serviceman from the routine of escorting him to my cab, who was the focus of my attention. Several seconds later a radiant and very pretty blond woman approached, nearly petite but somehow big, accompanying a small girl who seemed lost in thought. The adults helped the little one into the rear compartment.  A furtive glance at them and I knew that my passengers were Burt Bacharach, his then wife Angie Dickinson and apparently their daughter. They gave the address and it was in Long Island City, a short trek over the 59th Street bridge and towards the vicinity of the Midtown tunnel's entrance via doubling back towards the East river's edge and then a left turn down Vernon Boulevard. House numbers soon disappeared as industrial buildings and overgrown weeds near an area of freight train tracks caused me, with my limited knowledge of the area, to ask for help. Miss Dickinson eagerly instructed me for the last several hundred yards until we arrived at an isolated, almost peaceful cul-de-sac with several boxcars at a railroad siding blocking any imagined exit without completely turning the taxi around. "You may stop right here, driver" said Mr. Bacharach. He exited the cab and went to a tiny office nearby to talk with an old man with a clipboard. Miss Dickinson was cooing to her daughter about a surprise and promising that "Dad will show you very soon." My professional air of circumspection was really just a cover for my anxiety about the meter and the fright of being in the presence of these gods of the entertainment world. I sensed that Miss Dickinson sensed my chary ways and while she respected my reticent demeanor, it was clear that the palpable charisma that beamed from her being could not let her ignore me nor be ignored. She simply leaned in closer near my opened partition window and naturally asked about the slow meter. I could barely speak, her perfume and pulchritude intensifying my self-consciousness. Somehow I managed to mumble about the defective meter and my plan to have it repaired, trying to sound off handed about it. She seemed about to ask another question, perhaps a personal, if innocent one, when Mr. Bacharach began walking towards us while waving his hand and cheerfully beckoning to his wife and child. They all met about halfway as the old man began to slide back one of the boxcar's doors. I was alone now and relieved to be so. A brief but high pitched shriek, the kind that only very young girls seem to be able to manage, was heard though the little one was obscured by her doting parents. Led down carefully from the car along a portable ramp was a shaggy dun pony dappled with white and looking a bit skittish. It was their daughter's birthday I learned and the day and its memories belonged to all of them as well as to me. It was only last year that I learned that this child grew up, was long suffering with physical and psychic ailments and died by her own hand in her forty first year, predeceasing this famous and seemingly invulnerable couple. It reminded me, as I have been reminded countless times since I first heard Paul Simon's tune on the subject, that I "don't know a dream that's not been shattered."  END OF PART 1  

To Soothe

Dialing "on" the warmth of my electric baseboard heater quickly gives relief, pure physical, "ah" producing relief, much like the gulping of a chilled, sweetened drink on a summer's day pushes aside, together with the happy sound of clinking cubes of ice against my tumbler, and at least for several unadulterated seconds, any discomfort, physical, psychic or even existential. To freeze reality, and nearly so, in the case of one's hot, parched gullet, is the imagined ideal. Similarly, a sustained, toasty balm in the form of a heating element enabled by the magic of electricity, and as serviceable as the ancient hearth, is embraced and hoped for as the agent of a bliss unending  A long winter is wished away along with its incessantly delivered, below freezing temperatures together with my habituation, through idleness teamed with weariness, of wearing indoors, cheap, damp Red Chinese- made footwear, long after their use during the shoveling of snow, ice and slush. Quiet cursing gives way to determined action as I slip out of these boots, their cracked, highly permeable and deteriorating soles having allowed the wrinkling of my toes to a repulsive degree only barely tolerable because of the season's temperatures' inhospitableness toward mold. Prayers follow curses (when I have donned an acceptable pair of old, DRY, U.S.A. made galoshes) and they're directed toward not only Old Man Winter's speedy demise but also his misery spreading tools of destruction: the tons of the gray, granular melange of urban snow/gunk that my ally, Old Sol helps me to send again, on its way to oblivion with halite, a big, strong push broom, sturdy snow shovel and a gravitationally well positioned sewer drain.

But what's the big deal? Am I a Finnish trooper in the winter of 1939-40? Must I keep moving, ever moving, mindful of the deadly cold and Soviet marauders? Am I a member of the Donner party, trudging and eventually staggering as hideously as if I were on Mars with my oxygen tank nearly exhausted and with unspeakable horror casting its shadow? Am I a homeless urchin seeking an even more vulnerable, missing sibling in the streets of New York during the White Hurricane of 1888? No, of course I am not. I am simply the extremely very late middle aged author of this blog entry and one who has permitted himself to be seduced by the powers that be that proclaim that every instance of inclement weather in North America is a calamity warranting one's undivided attention via their megaphones of uber urgency: televison, radio and the internet. Once upon a time, news and certainly weather were laconically communicated topics. This was when television was in its infancy, as was I, and technology and money were concentrated in our defense budget, the production of steel, oil,  agriculture, housing, rail, roads, automobiles and other essential industries and not on mass media and the marketing of fears and speculation: a kind of endless "Chicken Little, the sky is falling!" mantra of continuous melodrama and yes, hen clucking and hand wringing or a jazzed up yet Johnny-one-note narrative of only slightly sophisticated gossip, delight in phony drama and the creation of angst. Peace and quiet are the enemies of the gods of national, nay global communication. Dead air is abhorred and stories of problem solving Americans (our true national pastime) are always subordinated to those of mayhem or natural disasters or even, increasingly, natural phenomena like a snowier and colder than normal winter.

Well, yes...warm, dry feet and the wolf, meteorological or literal, that is persuaded or driven from my door is newsworthy to me. Yet, the soothing is best done by me and mine. Good friends and neighbors as well as family keep me most honestly and more lovingly informed about what is happening. That boob tube remains just that-- something that gives me more than a slight headache after repetitious broadcasts and predictable, unpleasant stories about stupid, criminally inclined and greedy people. The media folks' attempts in recent years to also exploit the weather for their interminable loop of tales designed to instill a kind of constant craving for their pronouncements, more than announcements, is having its effect. But like any addicting entity, the power of "no" is one we needn't be afraid to use. It's just snow. And when it's furiously falling, with news mongers galling, I'll keep patiently stalling 'til the sunshine is calling.

Passing Game

Bracing for the blow is useless. It will hurt no matter how often the intellect insists that it's in charge and that matters are well in hand. Might as well practice in a casket. Open the lid. Close it. Feel the confines around your shoulders. Maybe a giggle will break the spell. But it won't accomplish what can't be achieved, no more or less than play acting at non-existence or practicing grief could.

The pickle brine will eventually evaporate. So will the bath of bleach that I used to submerge long, wiry strands of poison ivy vines in my backyard. So too will my days and my memory in the minds of survivors when enough years have flown. Even immediately, attention cannot and will not be paid, despite the plea of the wife of Miller's Loman. Ones who remain must think of themselves and the business of life is life, to paraphrase liberally from the ever pithy President Coolidge.

The secret is to love and to understand. "Forgive everyone everything" said Morrie of "Tuesdays With Morrie."  He also spoke of this issue of attention. None of us ever got enough of it, he asserted: that loving nurturing touch, like no other, the enveloping and sweetly enfolding embrace of our mother. Well, try to return that …perhaps to that very mother who may be feeling like a child herself as her world contracts, more superannuated than perhaps you shall ever be.

Super Bowl Day approaches. The escapism is so palpable it's nearly laughable. Ritualized substitutes for warfare are very comforting and watching large grown men assault each other for sixty minutes on a mid-winter's Sunday lets us shout or pout with heavenly or hellish yo-yo-ing emotions that we imagine transport us to the rarefied realms of those who are truly alive. The memory of a bloodied, bald man kneeling on a football field of half a century ago, tells a different tale. Raw courage or dawning enlightenment of futility's sway and the enfeeblement by time: what wisdom exactly did Mr. Tittle harvest that day and how did he characterize his place in the football world at that moment?

Everyone dies and everyone loses. First and foremost, we lose our lives. But we lose most everything along the way. We lose money, we lose spouses, we lose sweethearts, we lose parents, we lose our home, our favorite automobile, our appetite, we lose friends, we lose touch, we lose our hair, our teeth, our memory and sometimes we lose our sense of humor, irretrievably. Another view tells of change being the only thing of permanence, this ironic dependability we are encouraged to welcome by the infuriatingly and supposedly well adjusted. This is a kind of mocking conceit, much like the saying "sincerity is the most important thing and once you learn how to fake that, you've got it made."

We are too flip, too eager to express how clever we are, whether it's a succinct comment on a Facebook thread, a tabloid headline or some well turned phrase on the lips of a late night television talk show host. True clowns make us uncomfortable; we are more inclined to mistake venomous taunts and cynical assaults for mirth. Self-deprecation is not cool. Opening the heart to share its blood with others is avoided like a plague.

So, what's a road to consider?  Prepare to be a fool without seeking pity. Know that you are one of the race of men and like those leaves that Homer described: brightly growing on the tree of life for a brief while and then tumbling, tossed, crunched underfoot and finally crumbling food for the earth. Live and love until you're called and know that neither the memory of your spiritual gifts nor the gifts themselves will ever die if you have truly touched your survivors and they in turn have been moved to teach and touch theirs.

Listening To No Sound

Making believe: what are the choices? Clarabell did not speak. A not so distant cousin of Harpo Marx, less libidinal and subversive, with no sinister, Semitic leer, the unheard clown made clear, across nearly thirteen years of television shows that he was a harmless mute and that his power resided somewhere other than in his vocal chords or in his verbal intelligence and that cerebral communications through the wonder of human language was not the path he could or would choose.

Silence. It is feared, cherished, misunderstood, compelling, disturbing, comforting, thought provoking and attractive. Spiritualists, others who meditate, psychics, thinkers, poets, scientists, the compassionate and the scheming, dreamers and builders, prayerful persons, despondent ones, patient ones, so many different souls: they all utilize silence and the best of them employ it not as a manipulation but embrace it as appropriate to the moment: an opportunity to think, to withhold what could be a thoughtless outburst or a needless filler of an uncomfortable interval of embarrassing imaginings that "chit-chat" might cover up and render neutered by a banal or yawn-inducing remark.  The pregnant pause never grows old. A heartbeat has no home without its partner, the interval of no thump, no reverberation. Lightness without the dark and beauty without that which is horrific: we somehow knew of black holes before our august scientists informed us of the stupefying concept of them and we somehow know that our pulses mimic something in the universe: a tension and a release that echoes down time's corridors to  unseen horizons.

But again, how do we hear what makes no sound?  Dreams seem to be an offer of a path to travel. It's a treasure hunt, but what are we seeking?  We do not want the noise of waking hours, the distractions of appetites, cares of maintenance, finances, the posturing for fame and displays of pride and self-adulation. We want a place of refreshment, the quiet yet rippling brook, the empathetic and yes, the empathic friend, the mildness of a loving father, the sleep undisturbed with hortatory alarm clocks tossed out of bedroom windows, as the ancient riddle for juveniles explained, by the moron who wanted to see time fly. Are we really so superior to this mental defective, or do we not so secretly envy his liberating antics much as we find a kinship with Clarabell's mischief with his seltzer bottle or his rubber bulbed horn. Ah, the horn…like the dog's bark, he does want to speak, but the words do not come. It's the inexpressible. We all come short of a certain eloquence, no matter how silver tongued we or the world imagines us to be. But we must try. This may be the beginning of prayer.