Death is a Stalker

I ran across this quote yesterday:

“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet I can’t remember it. (…) Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling…with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there’s only one direction and time is its only measure.” – Tom Stoppard #TomStoppard

My tattoo. Birth to death.

I knew about death a long time ago. The Catholic religion makes sure of that. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ashes on my forehead to remind me where I was going. The abundance of dead Jesuses on crucifixes everywhere in my life. Viewing dead relatives in caskets. It was never a shock. The Catholic religion has often been called the religion of death. We spend our whole lives – as Christians – preparing for an “afterlife”.

My maternal grandmother died when I was two. I don’t remember that, or her. But, I had a yellow stuffed bear that I was told she had given me. I always carried it with me. It was in my bed at night. I took it with me on car trips. I still had it when I left home at 18. It was special to me. One day I threw it away. I wanted no more reminders of my childhood. I was an adult, and looking forward.

But that came much later. As an infant, I had pneumonia – ended up in an oxygen tent in a hospital. Two years later, after being taken to a Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown Baltimore, I developed pneumonia again. No hospital that time. Doctors made house calls. I was given medication. Years later, I had another bout. I mostly remember how hard it was to breathe, and the green slime I would cough up from my lungs. My parents got a steamer for me. It was a light green glass thing, shaped like a cake – cylindrical, about six inches high. Filled with water, it was plugged in to generate a column of steam towards me. I was cautioned not to touch it. One time, as I was sleepily turning over, my hand fell on the steamer. I got a bad second-degree burn. I was so careful after that. Eventually, they put it away. I seemed to be better. Then I developed asthma and had breathing problems for years. Close to death, but never quite there.

In second grade my parents told me that one of my classmates had died – he had choked on a glass of water. I couldn’t imagine such a thing before that. Perhaps that was the moment I realized death could come at any time, for anyone, regardless of age. Then my cousin Lucky died of cancer – leukemia, I think. Perhaps a name like Lucky was tempting fate. My uncle still grieves, and my aunt died years ago.

I had my own brushes with death many times. I fell into the freshly dug cellar of a new house once. Me, my brother John, and our friend Eddie Knight were grabbing the largest stones we could find and dropping them down the hole in the floor where the steps would go. My idea. There was nothing down there then, just a pool of muddy water from a recent rain. What fun it was to watch the big splashes! We dropped our rocks and then went searching for more. At one point, Eddie pushed a large rock up onto the floor that was all that existed of the house then. It was about four feet above ground, so we had to climb up. We were about six years old at the time. I wanted to drop that big rock Eddie had, so while he was climbing up, I grabbed it and dropped it in.

The next thing I saw was Eddie running towards me, then nothing. I remembered being carried across the field behind our house – a fair distance from where we’d been. I opened my eyes briefly – my face was wet, but I passed out again. My mother said my face was covered with blood when they carried me in the back door. I had hit my head on something down there – probably the very rock I’d dropped. My brother found a way down somehow and found me unconscious in the pool of water, face down. He saved my life. Eddie had gone for his parents, who had carried me.

Just a bit over two years later, I developed appendicitis after the first day of 4th grade. I didn’t know what it was at the time, and neither did my mom. She put me to bed with aspirin for the pain, but it didn’t help. For a week, I was in intense pain, and getting weaker. She had no idea what was wrong with me. She called a doctor who said to bring me to the hospital. There was no way my parents could have afforded to call an ambulance – they found out what that cost when I’d fallen into the cellar – it had cut me above my right eye. With all that blood and my eye so close to it, they had to do it. My father now had the car at work, quite some distance away. This time, my mother borrowed a car from a neighbor and drove me to the emergency room. She parked on the street parallel to the hospital’s main entrance. There was still a wide sidewalk to negotiate. I couldn’t really walk. My left arm was around my mother’s neck, supporting me. I was too big to carry. She dragged me along until we got in. I can only remember snatches after that.

My stomach was x-rayed, and blood was drawn. The x-ray did not show anything. Appendicitis was suspected, but the appendix didn’t show in the x-ray. My blood, however, was full of poison. Sepsis. At the time I heard peritonitis – an inflammation of the stomach lining. I had to be rushed to an operating table for exploratory surgery. My appendix had ruptured. Later, they told my mom I’d had less than 24 hours to live. Appendix removed, I had a month-long stay in the hospital to drain the infection, during which time I turned eight years old. I was given penicillin every four hours. The incision was huge because of the exploratory surgery. There were a lot of stitches, and six tubes sewn along the incision to drain the poisons. I still have the scars.

Ah, death! Why were you always stalking me? Without penicillin, I’d have died quickly.

I continued to be lucky through high school. I only broke my arm falling from a tree once. It was not life-threatening.

After high school, I operated an X-ray machine used for physics research on silicon & germanium crystals at Johns Hopkins University – America’s first research university, located in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore was home to the Orioles baseball team, the Colts football team, and blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. The Colts skipped town one night to play for Indianapolis. After a few years working at the University, and taking the free classes employees were entitled to, I stopped working full-time to attend UMBC, the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. Oddly, the City of Baltimore is not in Baltimore County – it is its own independent entity.

Anyway, I left UMBC after two years. I learned a lot, but my grades suffered from all the breaks I took to protest the war in Vietnam, and the time I spent volunteering at the People’s Free Medical Clinic, an organization providing free medical care for the neighborhood I Iived in. I had also spent time taking classes offered by the Black Panther Party, who saw themselves as creating a revolution. They had a breakfast program for inner-city kids, and were primarily interested in self-defense and education. Inner-city cops were tough on black folk, and often unapologetically broke doors down on random houses while looking for people. The Baltimore City jail was vastly overcrowded, mostly with young black men. [see: https://wp.nyu.edu/gallatin-bpparchive2021/east-coast-chapters/baltimore-md/ ]

Additionally, I hung out with the Berrigan Brothers, two Jesuit priests who had dragged Selective Service (Draft Board) files out and saturated them with blood (pig’s blood). Then, after they got out of jail, they created homemade napalm to burn the draft files, as a symbolic gesture in memory of the innocents, like farmers and young children, indiscriminately burned with napalm in Vietnam. Most people ended up opposing that horrible war, which I opposed as much as the Berrigans did, inspired by their actions. When the war was finally over, the North Vietnamese re-unified their country, which the French had colonized, leading to war. The Viet Minh eventually defeated the French, but the country was divided into two by the Geneva Accords that both sides had agreed to in 1954. The fighting to remove the French continued, however, and the French dragged the United States into their fight, then abandoned the fight, leaving the USA to clean up their colonial mess.

The Berrigans I Met

And, I was still plagued by bad luck or devilry or something. I lived in downtown Baltimore at the time and rode my bicycle back and forth to the UMBC campus, a twenty-mile round-trip every day. One morning, I was racing down a steep hill on a busy street. I was hot riding in that Baltimore humidity, so I put my feet to the metal (pedals) and enjoyed the wind caressing me. Suddenly, to my left, a car appeared. It had been going in the opposite direction, but was going to turn left into a freight yard driveway to my right. I was in the right lane of two southbound lanes, and cars in the lane to my left had stopped to allow the car to cross. Traffic blocked my view of that, so I was as surprised as the driver when we collided. I went sailing up and forward a ways, due to my speed, which was fortunate, since the huge white Continental crushed my bicycle under its tires as it proceeded across the lane I’d been in. I had time to think: 1. that I’d surely die in that traffic, and 2. that I was going to be late for class. So much for the old story about having your whole life flash before your eyes. The bicycle frame was bent, and the left pedal arm had been bent backward into the spokes. My left foot was just badly sprained. Shortly after that, I decided to leave town.

I was exhausted, depressed, and aimless. Busy as I was, I couldn’t keep up with all my classes. UMBC put me on academic probation, so I split. I had little money, just $100 I got back from someone I had loaned $200 to, so I got on my bicycle and rode. When I attempted to cross the Canadian border, I was searched. They found a bayonet knife I’d picked up for camping, and a few marijuana seeds. Then I was strip searched too. Nothing in my butt. Facing seven years of jail for smuggling a deadly weapon and “narcotics” across the border, I was simply denied entry. A young couple took me in for the night and fed me. I had pulled into a cul-de-sac at the end of a nearby street on the US side of the border. I was stymied – I didn’t know what to do or which way to go. I was full of frustrated energy, so I was riding my bicycle around in little circles, which caught their attention. They invited me in. They were watching the Watergate hearings on TV and making dinner. I regaled them with my border story and a bit of my life. I think we smoked some weed, because it got late, and they told me I could sleep on the couch. One thing they told me surprised me: they thought, at 22, that I was an old man! Between my long red beard, the long days of riding, and the snafu at the border, I was stressed out. They directed me to the best way to get to the next crossing. Before the Canadians had expelled me, a friendly border guard said he would delay sending the paperwork banning me from entering. Before I reached the next crossing, however, I stopped at a gas station to change clothes, and lost $50! I had split the $100 I had into two places – I would have removed my money from my jeans pocket when I changed into shorts, and must have left it sitting on the bathroom sink. I went back to see if it was there, and asked if it had been turned in, but no. So, I almost wasn’t allowed to cross the border, again, because having only $50 made it look like I was a bum who’d end up on welfare. I called an old roommate who had moved to Toronto and he vouched for me to the border guards.

Finally in Canada, I visited my former roommate in Toronto, to thank him. When I left Toronto I traveled northwest to visit a woman I’d known in an anti-war group at UMBC. She was working as a counselor for a kid’s camp. She had a boyfriend who glowered at me the whole time, so I didn’t stay long. A week of pedaling later, after being followed one night by a very large animal on a dark lonely highway, I met a beautiful old Canadian couple who offered me food and a nice outdoor sauna to clean up in. I likely smelled pretty bad. A day later, I visited Sault Ste. Marie during my stay at the hostel outside of that city. I stopped at a very nice park on the banks of St. Mary’s River, but I proceeded to get arrested for public drunkenness, courtesy of a couple local drunks who befriended me. After a night in jail, I was fined. Promising to get the money from the youth hostel I had been staying at, I packed up and left the country. I couldn’t afford to pay the fine and eat too.

Passing through several states back in the US of A, I joined a carnival as an electrician’s helper while crossing North Dakota. I spent the season traveling with them. One time, I deliberately brushed my finger against a 440-volt terminal in a junction box hooked to the giant-sized Big Bertha, one of the gas-powered generators I serviced. I was curious what would happen. I froze in shock for a few moments, almost frying my nervous system, but I survived. It reminded me of the time, barely 5 or 6 years old, when I decided to fix my parent’s alarm clock. I had watched my father fix electric wires by twisting them together and covering them with black electrical tape. Unfortunately, I twisted both wires together – blew the main house fuse. I think Death had been standing over my shoulder, again. One time I got my arm caught in the big steel cables that held the heavy steel panels enclosing two of the other four generators, also mounted on big rig trailers. The cable had almost crushed my arm, but it was only sprained, not broken. When the season ended, my plan had been to travel to Texas to visit Geri, the woman I had shared our first sex with in Baltimore. She had left town suddenly, not long after we met, and checked herself into a psychiatric hospital in Texas. I’d had other lovers afterward, before I left Baltimore, and, later in the carnival, but I wanted to see Geri, not only to find out why she had done that, but if we could reunite. It was not to be.

With the carnival season ending, the Murphy Brothers Exposition I’d joined was about to shut down for the winter in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had already sent some of the big rides off to their home base while we finished up a small gig in Norman, Oklahoma. I met Cindy, a University student there, and with part of my season bonus money I’d rented a motel room – if you stayed the whole season you got a bonus. The “bonus” was actually money incrementally deducted from your pay every week. If you quit or got fired – no bonus. A common use of money as a carrot dangled in front of you to keep you going. I worked days at the small fair with what rides we still had, helping run the Tilt-a-Whirl. Old “Toothless” Lester ran that ride. Nights I spent with Cindy. It was glorious.

The day before the carnival was to move on, I checked out of the motel, saying goodbye to Cindy. We promised to stay in touch. I did visit her a couple years later, on my second bicycle trip west. She was staying in a motel in Oklahoma with a tennis player on tour. Nice guy. I was a bit disappointed, but Cindy asked him to leave us alone for a while, and he did. I was shocked, but the sex we had then was wonderful and sweet. I’d missed her. At one point she thanked me. I asked her, “What for?” She replied, “For all this,” waving her hand around the expensive suite. I assumed that included the tennis player, and a different lifestyle than she thought of before meeting me. She was enjoying her life. We stayed in touch, but at some point after that, she got married and had no more use for me. “I’m married,” she shouted in my ear when I got her on the phone.

But, after stashing my gear in the storage bay of the Tilt-a-Whirl I went back to work helping break everything down, which was how I’d hooked up with them in the first place. When I went back to the Tilt-a-Whirl, Lester was gone. So was my gear, and all of the money I had left. They went looking for him. He would often go on big drunks, they said, when he had money. He hadn’t gotten his season bonus yet, but finding mine, the booze called to him, and he disappeared. Now I was broke again, with only the clothes on my back (a sleeveless “muscle” shirt and jeans), and an old winter jacket Lester hadn’t taken. I asked the office if I could have the equivalent amount of money from his bonus that he had taken from me, but they just laughed. I was told I could continue working for a while, as some rides and joints would continue on to work small fairs. Bill, foreman of the Skydiver, one of the big rides, was going to Texas, and he needed people to set up and run that ride in Houston, and after that, Florida.

Houston offered new discoveries. Death was still watching me. I worked with two other guys on the Skydiver: Skeeter and Cherokee. Skeeter was an interesting tough guy. Well, carnies have to be to survive. He was heavily muscled and taciturn. Didn’t say much, except as it related to the work. Cherokee, thin and wiry, said he was indeed Cherokee, or partly, anyway. We got along. The Skydiver was about the size of a conventional Ferris Wheel but had cars enclosed with steel mesh. Once customers were in, we closed the mesh and locked it in place with a very large cotter key. A cotter pin is used to lock metal nuts in place on bolted items, threaded through a hole. The metal ends are twisted like twist-ties but with a pair of pliers. On the ‘Diver, the metal is shaped roughly like a lock key. It is a curved metal rod, bent in the middle and folded over. The top part is bent with ridges that help hold it in. It looks like a key but is made of steel, and not very flexible. We punched it in with the palm of our hands. To remove the “key” we would stick our middle finger in the opening that was created when the rod was bent, and yank hard. Our middle fingers developed strong muscles from doing that hundreds of frigging times a day.

So, one night, after we shut the ride down, and the townspeople had all left, we searched under the ride for coins. The cars people rode in could be spun using a small steering wheel, so not only were you going round and round, but spinning at a 90° angle to the ride’s rotation. People lost all kinds of things, like combs and pocket change. In fact, they lost so much, the three of us could buy dinner. One night, while walking back from a diner quite some distance away from the carnival, a car pulled up and offered us a ride. We were tired from the long work day, and sated with full bellies, so we jumped in. There were three guys in the one long front seat of those old wide-bodied Chevies. Once the car was moving, one of the guys pulled out a gun, a German luger, (PO4 9mm). They wanted our money and watches. None of us had a watch, and we had no money. We explained that we were carnies, and the guy pointing the luger at us smiled and lowered the gun. They were carnies too. Several carnivals would be set up sharing the same lot, as everyone had fewer rides on the road after the season-close. Then they offered each of us a watch. They had had a good day. I took one, a nice-looking Benrus. I wasn’t going to say no to a guy with a gun in his hand.

It wasn’t the only time I’d had a gun in my face. In the Skokie, IL. fairgrounds the cops had shown up one night after closing. A guy I knew who ran the Shoot-Out-The-Stars for a prize joint was riding his motorcycle around the race track alongside the fairgrounds. The cops had told him he couldn’t do that. He said, “OK,” and headed back to his trailer. However, the cops had meant, but hadn’t said, “Dismount Now!” So they were arresting him. It wasn’t long after closing, so a lot of us were still milling around. We slept under the rides or in trucks that hauled the rides and gear, but it was too early. Carnies protect their own, so everyone wandered over to see what was going on, including me. After all, that was a friend of mine. Well, the cops didn’t like that, so they ordered us to go home. This was our home, so we just stood there. I think they thought we were locals. Well, that freaked them out. Always afraid of the public they swear to protect, they pulled out their guns. The cop in front of me stuck his gun in my face. Damn, that was a big-bore gun! It must have been a 0.45. You don’t argue with a scared cop pointing a gun at you, because they get twitchy sometimes. The gun might go off, and you’re dead. If it’s investigated, they claim it was an accident, and they feared for their lives, so they were just doing what they were hired to do. Legal killing (murder) by the Blue gang.

I call them a gang because they play by gang rules, with a code of silence and closed ranks for anything a cop does. Sure, it’s a dangerous job, but maybe you shouldn’t be a cop if you’re that scared of the rest of the public. Driving is just as dangerous, and commercial fishermen die at a much higher rate than anyone else. So, I ducked behind one of the rides. The carnival protects their own too, so they bailed him out the next morning. No love between the carnies and the cops.

But, getting back to Houston, I will tell you how it went when we packed up the Sky Diver and headed to Florida. There were three semis loaded with gear: one with all the ‘diver cars, one with the hydraulically lowered ‘diver itself, and one with ponies. The foreman of the Sky Diver ride had bought himself a pony ride, one in which the ponies were hitched to a sort of large turnstile that they pushed around. It was a very popular ride with the tiny tots. Bill, the foreman, also had a station wagon that he used to pull the pieces of the brightly colored orange and yellow turnstile in a small trailer. Bill, Skeeter, and Cherokee each drove a truck. I knew how to drive and back up a big rig. But, I wasn’t licensed for that, so I got to drive Bill’s station wagon. I got lost on Houston’s big highway interchange and missed the turn for Interstate 10. By the time I went round and round to make my way east, I sped up to try and catch up to the others. I never did. Just outside of Jennings, Louisiana, a trailer wheel snapped off. The trailer body hit the road on that side. The effect was to spin me around. It also turned the trailer upside down in the process. I’d been doing 70 mph. I saw the pieces of the turnstile in the air all around me. The yellow and orange pieces floating in the air reminded me of fire. When everything stopped, I was facing the wrong way, towards traffic, blocking both eastbound lanes of I-10. I was arrested, again, this time for “Failure to maintain control of my vehicle,” a fineable offense. Since I didn’t have any money, I couldn’t pay the fine.

Long story short, the Carnival got me out the next day, after I’d spent a sleepless night reading a book I’d found in my solitary cell (autobiography of Joan Baez). Since I was in a corner cell, I talked with my neighboring cells. The guy to my left asked if I had any dope. I told him I did, just a few ounces of weed in a baggie I’d managed to smuggle in. While being searched, I had my hands hooked in my front pockets since the one-armed deputy booking me searched my back pockets first, one at a time. Then he told me to raise my arms. That had given me time to slip the baggie inside my fist, so I raised it high while he searched the front pockets, and then I slipped it into my back pocket when he told me to lower my arms. I had money wired to me from the carnival to fix the car. The cops had gathered every bit of that pony ride and put it back into the trailer. I spent the next night sleeping in the break room used by the trustees. I was told to take whatever I wanted from the refrigerator. Nice. On the way to Florida, however, the car broke down on that long section of bridge across Louisiana swamp. A radiator hose had been cracked in the accident. I spent hours letting the engine cool, then driving until the temperature gauge was pinned on high again, over and over, and over, and over. There was about three or four feet of space between the road and the guardrail, so the rigs swooshed by me the whole time, barely missing me.

One hell of a lot of loud truck horns blared at me, but what could I do? There is no exit on the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge for 18 miles. There’s only water left and right. Again, I survived. After a disappointing stay in Florida, in which, while Bill went back for his car and trailer, we set up the Sky Diver by ourselves. Scary thing that. It’s huge and full of heavy steel beams. As we raised the ride in sand, it almost tipped over, scaring the wits out of us. We hadn’t spread enough wood under the legs to stabilize them, so we got it right. But there was no money to be made there, so I finally headed on up the coast to visit a trio of young ladies I’d met in Canada. I spent one bitter cold mountain night outside in an empty car on a gas station lot while I waited to transfer to the morning bus. The ride foreman had given me busfare, and driven me to the station to make sure I got on. When the bus stopped to let me off, I was still mostly asleep. The bicycle was still on the bus, which had raced off as soon as I had stepped down. I spent the winter night awake, shivering violently in an old car at a gas station. In the morning the bus returned, with my bicycle. The girls were sure surprised to see me, and I stayed on a bit, chopping firewood and helping out. I finally overstayed my welcome but was being offered a job raising goats on a neighboring farm. I declined. I decided to take a train back to Baltimore, where I’d started. It was supposed to have been a round trip after all.

But, I had hours to kill while I waited for the train. “Desperado waiting for a train….” Really, I was no desperado, but I waited in a pool hall, shooting pool with an old codger who played like a shark. Bang, bang, bang went the shiny numbered balls into the pockets. I had nothing but pocket change, so we played for the table. I paid for several games. I finally got a chance to shoot. I lined up the cue ball and steadied my cue stick on it when bang, bang, bang – gunshots outside. Shocked, I looked up. Everyone in the place was running out the door. Damn, those cats were fast. I was the last one out. I walked out right next to the shooter. One man was down and out on the ground. The shooter didn’t notice me at first because he was busy pumping some more lead into the guy on the ground. The body jerked with each shot. Either the shooter was out of bullets, or he suddenly noticed me. He turned to me. I looked him in the eyes, not in a show of force or strength, but because I didn’t know what else to do. He must have thought I wanted to know why he was doing that, which I was. He said to me, “He deserved it.” Now I’d given that idea some thought in the past, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to decide who dies unless they are able to control who doesn’t have to die. The words scrolled across my brain, but I couldn’t get them to my mouth. He stared at me for I-don’t-know-how long. It was probably seconds, but it felt like time had stopped. Finally, he lowered the gun, did an about-face on one heel, and slowly walked off.

By this time, an ambulance was arriving, along with some cops in patrol cars behind it. I waited around. A gurney was produced from the ambulance. A blanket was placed over the quite young guy on the ground, but not covering his face, so maybe he was still alive? They loaded the gurney back into the ambulance, and they sped off, sirens wailing. I had been waiting for the cops to come over and ask for statements from witnesses, especially me, since I had been inadvertently eyewitness to some of it, but they got in their cars and drove away, following the ambulance. After some moment in time, I decided to return to the pool hall. Somehow, most of the pool players were already back. I asked my pool partner from the time before time had stopped if he wanted to continue. He said yes, so I went back to my shot, lined the balls up quickly, and shot. The cue ball flew off the table and rolled crazily away at high speed. My pool partner retrieved it. When he came back, he said, “Maybe we should call it a night.” I had to agree with him. I think my nerves were shot. The train ride to Baltimore was sobering. My thoughts were full of gunshots and daydreams. I didn’t know what to expect in Baltimore, but I wanted to rest.

I found a job fairly quickly. I sent money to the Sky-Diver foreman Bill, feeling like I owed him. He wrote back in a shaky hand, thanking me for that, using simple printed words. I used to write letters all the time while I was working on the carnival, so I had to assume Bill never had the schooling I had. A good man. I looked up Judy White, whom I’d been writing to, someone I’d briefly dated before, but there was no chemistry between us. I don’t think there ever had been. I dated some after that, but nothing clicked. I was never good at relationships, just enjoyed the comfort of sex and sharing a bed. When my job suddenly ended, there was no longer any reason to stay in the town of my birth. I gave away what possessions I’d accumulated, loaded my bicycle up with clothes, food, and tools, and headed westerly.

I stopped in Arizona, working for a bronze foundry for about nine or ten months, before heading out on another bicycle trip across the USA, but this time with a group of bicyclists heading slowly eastward towards Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. On the way, we stopped in many cities and towns, including Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I somehow stole the heart of a married woman. Her husband split, but I wasn’t finished with my travels yet. She divorced after I left and wrote to me often. I hadn’t found a good job in Pittsburg, so I went to New York City with my bicycle. I became a bicycle messenger. I had some friends there. They had an organization and a newspaper called, “Don’t Mourn, Organize,” a phrase used by the famous union organizer Joe Hill. Their mission was to organize tenant councils for the working poor and people on welfare, as had been done during the “Great Depression” in the 1930s. One of them let me stay at his apartment since he was rarely home. Riding a bicycle all day in the bitterly cold streets of NYC in winter is no fun, and dangerous. Drivers are insane there. The woman I’d met in Albuquerque wanted me to come live with her. I did. After a year and a half, that relationship suddenly ended one day, but I stayed. I like it here in Albuquerque.

In a flash forward, I am riding a motorcycle near my home in my newly adopted home state of New Mexico, when a Bernalillo County sheriff pulls me over, I don’t remember why. Sometimes they don’t provide a reason. He asked for my “registration and proof of insurance,” of course. I had a hinged seat, so I unlocked and popped it open because that’s where I kept them back then. As I reached for them, he went for his gun. I explained, but he kept his hand on the gun butt – the holster, unsnapped. Cops were quite leery of motorcyclists back then, but he didn’t shoot me. He allowed me to continue. I either have a devil on my ass or a guardian angel.

Speaking of which, I went sailing over a car that pulled in front of me twice, once on my bicycle, and once on my motorcycle. Bad sprain the first time, just bruised and sore the next time. Bicycle and motorcycle totaled. Once I missed the light change with the sun in my eyes at an intersection and plowed into a pickup. Motorcycle totaled. I’d been going about 40 to 45 mph and didn’t have time to brake. Just bruised, sore as hell, and had to wear my arm in a sling for a bit. The driver said I bent the frame of his truck. I didn’t buy that, and neither did my insurance company.

One night, a car ran into me while I was crossing a street on foot. I was three-quarters of the way across and under a streetlight, but she had raced around the corner, going south, steering wide into the northbound lane where I was. She pushed me down the street while I was still on my feet. I didn’t fall down until she suddenly braked hard. Now that threw me down hard, painfully. I was not badly hurt, but one edge of my left shoe was ground down and ruined. I didn’t visit the emergency room or call the cops. I was OK. No damage, just bruised and sore again. I figured out later, from things she said, that she had run out of the art show we’d both been at, looking to stop me. I had bought two small lithograph prints while I’d been there. I’d gone because it was opening night, and there is usually free food and drink at such things. The woman was one of the artists. I’d stopped to browse a small rack of prints by the exit before I left. Realizing how late and cold it was, I stopped browsing and hurried out. I had a short walk half a block away to the side road I’d parked my car on. As I stepped into the street, I noticed a car’s headlights to my left. It was turning into the street I was in, so I rushed into the far lane to get out of the way. She hit me softly, but then she sped up. I could feel the acceleration until she braked. When I got up, she was out of her car, asking if I was OK. I felt OK, and walked over to where I dropped the bag with the small prints. She said, “Oh! you bought something there.” That puzzled me, from the way she said it – something in her voice.

Years later, I read that the local technical vocational college was looking for stories about pedestrian-car accidents. I let them interview me and asked if they wanted to speak with the woman who had hit me. Since they did, I called her. In a high-pitched, shaky voice, she said, “No. I never want to think about that night again.” I explained that I was OK with what had happened, but she was adamantly opposed to meeting with the college people, or ever speaking of that “incident”, as she called it. Then I figured out that she had been after me, angry, hoping to recover whatever she thought I stole, and single-mindedly drove right into me. Having a car pushing me down the street was a surreal experience. The acceleration kept me pinned to the car’s bumper at a slight angle. If only she hadn’t panicked and slammed on the brakes, I wouldn’t have been in so much pain later. Adrenaline temporarily suppressed the pain of that. I had hit my right hip and shoulder hard on the asphalt. Hitting my shoulder aggravated an old motorcycle accident when I’d gone off the road on a sharp curve years before. That still bothers me some days.

I’ve lost two cars to bad drivers too. In Placitas, NM, a driver turned a corner and rammed me head-first. I was braked, about to turn right, west, and had turned my head to look for traffic to my left. I was as far to the right as I could possibly be, with no cars in sight when I stopped. She had been heading east in the far lane, and again, instead of turning into the far lane on the two-way street I was on, she turned into my lane. She blamed me – said I was too far forward. Although the front end of my car was about three feet past the stop sign, there was at least six feet between me and the highway. My brain was sore for weeks – it must have rattled around in my skull. My insurance company spoke with her, and she confirmed that the accident had occurred on the side street I was on. Since it was a front-end collision, there was no way I could have run into her, or I’d have damaged the side of her car. My insurance sided with me, but her insurance claimed it was my fault.

It happened again, of course. I pulled into a center turn bay on Albuquerque’s 4th Street, waiting for southbound traffic to stop, so I could get groceries. It took a while for traffic to clear. I had seen a pickup waiting to come out. When traffic cleared I began my turn, but just then he raced out. I completed my turn and sped up to get out of his way, but he hit me along the driver’s side, still accelerating – I could feel my car being pushed. The whole side was creased badly, and the rear door was crushed shut. Old guy, very old, and a sturdy pickup. He said it was his fault, and that he hadn’t seen me. The accident had occurred in the the southbound lane, and he had been turning north before he reached the opposite lanes, so, clearly his fault. If he had not turned until reaching the center, he wouldn’t have hit me. Later, while waiting for the cops, he stared at my car, then said, referring to my car’s color, “That’s what happened. I couldn’t see that light green.” I thought, “And you’re allowed to drive why?”

Hell, the same thing had happened back when I had first moved to Albuquerque. I was driving my new girlfriend’s car home from a union meeting too far away to have ridden my bicycle, my only ride. A seventeen-year-old with a learner’s permit had followed another vehicle into the intersection without stopping at the stop sign. That first vehicle was stopped in the middle of four-lane Central Avenue, waiting to join eastbound traffic, so the seventeen-year-old had no place to go. I steered that car hard right, but I was too close and hit the other car’s left fender. Same kind of thing. The boy’s mother was with him, and she claimed I was going too fast. The tire tracks I made when I braked proved that I was under the speed limit, not that it mattered. We went to court, but before we got called into the courtroom, they decided to settle. They agreed to pay for the front-end damage to my girlfriend’s car over time. It never got fixed. It just sat for a long time. I don’t know if she ever got the money because she left me for someone else not too long after that. The car actually belonged to her ex-husband, who had moved to France after she’d taken up with me. But, that’s part of another story. He was still angry, and he wanted that car back.

I’M AN ANACHRONISM, A DINOSAUR, SOCIALLY USELESS

Recently, my landlord decided to sell this house I rent. Since I need to move out, I have been searching for a new place to rent. Housing costs are outrageous! I have been lucky, insulated, and blind to the rising costs of houses and rents. I’ve lived here just a tiny bit under 16 years, having moved into this house on July 4, 2007. I was about to become divorced, legally. We’d gotten married ten years earlier, rather than just live together because she needed health insurance, dental insurance, and a vision plan. Her eyeglasses were eight years old, and they were not as useful to her as they had been. The divorce was not amicable. My wife had become incensed over a comment I made. She had taken two vacations to visit friends and family in the past year. And me? I was working on the house we lived in, a house we’d refinanced in order to buy out her ex-husband’s half-share. I was working on the house, from the time I got home every day until dark, and all weekends long. Her absence those two times didn’t bother me. I found the house so peaceful without having to listen to the TV blaring from the time she woke up until she went to bed. I could read in peace. I could finally close the curtains in the bedroom to block out the streetlamp just outside the bedroom window. She was funny about some things, like wearing socks and pajamas to bed, with a blanket or comforter covering her even in summer, and even after menopause set in. She would then wake up feeling too hot, and throw the blanket or comforter off. Once, I had woken in the middle of the night to find that it was very cold as the blanket was not covering us. I pulled it up and made sure to cover her as well. However, she woke up and yelled at me for covering her, and to never touch the covers. I slept better when she wasn’t there.

The work on the house was hard, so I slept very well every night during that time, even though she had not only given me a deadline to finish the work but had then shortened the timeline. With her out of town, I felt some lessening of the stress. She drank way too much and was often cranky, especially when hungover. I had gone along with it, drinking as much as she did, something I’d never done before. I did whatever she wanted to keep her happy. But I stopped drinking as much – I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was fun for her while she was drinking, but not when she wasn’t. Although she was shorter and smaller than I was, I couldn’t keep up with her ability to consume. Alcohol didn’t make me happy. I was only happy when she was happy, which was increasingly less and less often. My work performance was suffering. Between the stress at work and the unhappiness at home, I felt a deep sense of ennui.

Her ex-husband had owned half the house. He had been paying half of her rent, in addition to child support. After their divorce, she had become the primary custodial parent, sharing the two children with her ex-husband only on alternate weekends. Her ex paid tuition and bought the kids shoes, clothes, and books for the Catholic grade school they attended. In addition, since she was a “single mother with children,” she received state assistance which paid the majority of her half of the mortgage payment for her. That ended when I moved in. Her ex’s child support payments stopped when the youngest child reached 18 years old. We also had to refinance the house in order to pay off her husband’s half-interest in the house. We put it in both our names, and I paid for the entire mortgage as long as I lived there, along with extra money to pay it off quicker. With her reduced income, it seemed fair. We split the utility bills and household expenses other than the mortgage. She worked part-time as a substitute teacher, even though she was offered full-time positions which she declined. She could have gotten teacher accreditation while she worked, but then she would have had to make lesson plans herself, and grade papers. However, she had accumulated stocks through her job during her previous marriage, so she wanted to add a large room, 240 square feet, and re-roof the entire house in the process. She cashed in enough stock to pay for most of the materials. I did the work. Sometimes I ran out of roofing tiles, lumber, nails, and other supplies so I had to pick up extra from time to time. I also had equipment to rent and tools to buy.

The divorce rolled around in 2007, no matter how hard I tried to keep it together, through suggesting marriage counseling and telling her I loved her and I wanted to stay. But, I need to back up a bit.

WHAT DID I DO TO PRECIPITATE THE DIVORCE? After so many long hours of work on the house, after my regular job hours, I was exhausted every night. I was so tired, I usually just watched movies or fell asleep when trying to read. I didn’t call her. She was bothered by that, so she eventually called me one night. When she asked, I simply told her I was busy on the house remodel, and very tired, which was the absolute truth. She didn’t believe me. When she returned, and often, while she was drunk, she would ask me time and time again why I didn’t call her while she was away. I think that last trip was ten days or two weeks – not a very long time. But I didn’t want to tell her that I was enjoying the peace and quiet and rest. I just repeated that I was busy and went to bed early each night. However, the last time she asked me that, just after I’d had to stop the car, again, for her to puke after another bout of heavy drinking, I told her why I hadn’t called her: I said, “BECAUSE I DIDN’T MISS YOU.”

WRONG THING TO SAY, HOO BOY. Our marriage was over from that point on. Instead of talking to me, she was on the phone all the time, with sisters, her mother, and her best friend from childhood. She wouldn’t talk to me. When she finally got around to it, she just wanted to know when I was leaving. I told her I wasn’t. She asked me if I was unhappy. I told her I was. But, I wanted us to get marriage counseling. At first, she agreed, but with a caveat: I needed to sign a quit claim to the house. I didn’t want to do that, not after all the work and money I’d put into the house. I agreed to her demand that I yield a quitclaim if she would compensate me for the recent work on her house. She agreed. I signed. She asked me to give her a figure. I worked it out, based on the money and time I’d put into the remodel, and I was grossly underestimating the value of my labor. She was absolutely shocked at the amount. She walked away and I was on the do-not-talk-to list again. Then she got mad. She wanted me to leave. I said I wanted to stay. She told me, “If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police and tell them my life is in danger.” That was unexpected.

NOW, I HAD NOTHING ELSE TO SAY. She called me at work one day to ask if I had looked at places to move. I had wanted to shout, “What’s the hurry?” but I didn’t. Instead, I said that I had, although really I had only looked through rental listings in the paper. But that was what she was waiting for. She wanted me out. After that threat of calling the police, I contacted a lawyer who told me she could do that. It was common in divorces. If a woman claimed she was being abused, for example, she could have the police take her spouse or partner out physically. Or, she could claim her life was in danger, after which we would have to appear in court, but that could take up to a year for the case to come before a judge. And then, if the judge ruled in my favor, why the hell would I want to live with someone who had done that to me? We filled out and signed the divorce papers. After we had the divorce papers notarized, she offered to take them to a judge to approve the legal aspects of the divorce. It took her a very long time to do that. Perhaps she thought I would beg her to take me back?

I WASN’T ABUSING HER. She was a horrible drunk, yelling at me, and starting spurious arguments. Even when not drunk, she was always putting me down, dismissing things I said, dismissing me – claiming I knew nothing. She once screamed I had stashed money in a secret account like her ex-brother-in-law had. She controlled the TV. She turned off my radio or music albums without asking me. If I dared change the channel or turn the TV off when she fell asleep, she was irate that I’d touched it at all. Hell, I bought it for her before we married, because hers was so old, with a fuzzy picture and lots of static. She hated the way I made the bed. She found fault with my cooking. She was the abuser, in my mind. She had been making my life miserable since the kids had moved out. I put up with it, out of love, I thought. And because her sister had made me promise to be good to her. My wife had a vicious temper, which, once it went off like a time bomb, took a long time to settle down. And, she hated all men as a matter of principle. Her sister had asked me to ignore that. My stepdaughter thanked me for staying with her mom. I saw the way my ex had screamed at her kids about little things. It bothered me, but since her daughter and sister had asked, I accepted her as she was. Then she started screaming at me too.

SO, THAT WAS A LONG RAMBLING WAY TO GET TO THIS POINT: in the divorce agreement, and under New Mexico’s community property law, I was only entitled to ten years’ worth of the money I’d put into the mortgage (the time we’d been legally married), and my labor was community property without compensation. The good thing was that she was only entitled to a portion of my pension based on the length of time we were married. It about balanced out – she got the house, I got to keep 100% of my pension, and she owed me $2500. Of course, I never got it. She said she couldn’t even afford the utility bills on her own. That, from someone who ran the TV at all hours of the day, left lights on all over the house and left a door partially open during winter days while the house furnace was running. I didn’t feel sorry for her.

I moved into this place I rent in 2007. I was flat broke after paying double the monthly rent to move in and making one last mortgage payment after I moved out, for what turned out to be “her” house all along. (She said I didn’t lose money, because I would have been paying rent anyway.) And, I was now in debt, with overdrafts on my checking account, no savings, and using my credit cards to buy food and gas.

Under New Mexico law, the concept of community property only kicks in after ten years of marriage. Can you guess when this took place? Although we had dated with weekend sleepovers for four years, we had only been married for almost exactly ten years when she demanded that I leave. Was that her plan all along? That would be very wrong of me to say so, or even think so. Who knows? I have to believe it was a coincidence, or she hadn’t known about that until she consulted a lawyer, which would explain why she didn’t call the police to have me thrown out and didn’t have the judge sign the divorce papers until we had been officially married for ten years.

SO, it’s mostly my fault, for not having saved enough money as a down payment on another house, and for retiring two years after the divorce, so my pension barely covered rent, gas, food, and bills.

Try as I could, I couldn’t save enough to put 20% down on a house at current prices. Hell, even if I could, I didn’t expect to live long enough to pay it off. There was always some medical copayment above insurance coverage (like a heart attack), a car repair, or other unexpected expenses to be able to retain my savings. I realized I’d always rent, and accepted it. In fact, I rationalized it. I figured I could move anywhere in the world I wanted, at any time.

Until now. Rents are fantastically high. I didn’t expect that.

Moving is stressful, for me. I really don’t want to move again. In 1968, Jefferson Airplane sang, “Life is change; how it differs from the rocks,” in their Crown of Creation album, although that line and much of the song, including the title of the song and album were written by John Wyndham, and used with permission. I’ve always liked that philosophy. I played that album over and over. I still dig it out once in a while.

Change is good, I believe. Otherwise, we wither, calcify and harden. We become weathered, rounded, and dull (my words).

Still, change comes hard. Breakups and divorces drive me crazy. Changing jobs doesn’t attract me. When I was young I thought I’d finish high school, finish college, get a job, and marry. Nothing else. But life hasn’t been that ordered. Life is usually messy. Now I have to move again. I don’t like it. But, I am looking forward to it, except the packing-up and unpacking parts. If I could beam everything over to the next house, exactly where I want everything to be, I’d be ecstatically happy. But no. The problem is that I’ve accumulated so much clutter! I’ve kept most everything. I do sell an occasional book, record, CD, DVD, etc, but at this rate, it will take many years to dispose of all of those. So, like my much smarter former stepdaughter, I need to start disposing of things at Goodwill, maybe on Craig’s List as well. It’s all too much. I have over 400 vinyl albums, over 400 CDs, and some DVDs and VHS tapes. My player takes DVDs or VHS tapes, and I haven’t watched them all.

I also have four overstuffed bookcases, and four shelving racks full of tools, nuts, bolts, and fasteners from house repairs, replacing a roof, and remodeling that last house I thought I owned. I have way too many clothes because I’ve been using them to work on movie and TV sets as a background extra. My walls are so covered in so much cheap artwork that some had to be stored in a second bedroom. And I have so many tchotchkes. Aaaaaaa!

At one time, I knew better than to form attachments to things, and to disdain material goods. I traveled across the USA on a bicycle, with a handful of tools, and two changes of clothes. I packed brown rice, soybeans, and granola. Unlike the early pioneers, I was able to purchase a small carton of milk and a piece of fruit for breakfast each morning. I did fine! I stopped to work at times, but I managed to crisscross the country until I settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico with no possessions to my name – except the bicycle – and no money. If not for the woman I’d met here, who asked me to come back, I would not have been able to survive here. Jobs were scarce and near impossible to get. My new friend insisted I apply for food stamps until I found work. I was a day laborer for six months before I could obtain a full-time job at the University, because of the government office created by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). Really, I had nothing and no rich family to borrow from or sponge off of. I repaired broken sidewalks, ran a jackhammer, finished concrete, built block walks, installed metal doors in block walls, and installed benches. I really enjoyed demolishing walls for remodeling, especially right after my lover found another guy and moved out. I moved on to a job in cancer research, then worked in a metal foundry and an electronics plant. I took classes until I finished my bachelor’s degree. I worked for 25 years in medical research until I retired.

BUT, for all my years of work, I have nothing to show for it except a rented house full of useless material goods. There’s a small pension and social security, so I won’t starve. That is something, at least. And I won’t have to live on the street.

NOW I’M A DINOSAUR in this digital world – something I embraced once. I no longer fit in. I’m analog. My lifestyle is not sustainable. And, I’m of no value to society anymore. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Apparently, I whine a lot too, digitally. I make no sense. More days are good than bad. I will busy myself with decluttering. I will pack what’s left. I will move into a smaller place. I will unpack. I will likely still have things to get rid of. It will keep me busy for a bit. I won’t have to think much about loss and loneliness. Optimistically, I will get a paid acting gig. Optimistically, I may have a close friend again. Optimistically, I may have sex again. Optimistically I may find love, or something like it, again. I guess I’ll find out. The only thing I know is that life is change.

Haikus for Youse

FYI: haiku means: starting verse. It is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

PREFACE

Listen to me now
As I have haiku to tell
of insurrection.

A TIME CAPSULE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

One November day
a free election challenge
sixty days of doubt.

Recount all the votes
but only where it is close
or Mike Pence traitor.

Fake electors slate
I want you – to find more votes
make me a winner.

It’s all about me
votes for me can set you free
would I lie to you?

Elections are fake
suspend the Constitution
I do not concede.

If I lose – fake news
I love all you patriots
stop the count or die.

No matter what comes
news is what I say it is
remember this day.

Dreaming Again, and the Dreams are Strange, of Course

I dreamt on Monday. I don’t recall having any dreams in quite some time. Usually, if I dream in the morning, I forget it by the time I get out of bed, no matter how hard I try.

So, Monday I was waiting for a message to let me know my call time to be on a movie set.

[ I had driven to Santa Fe three days earlier to work as an extra, but we all call that “background” now. We say we are background actors, which is to say we are like moveable set decorations. However, that day, after getting stuck in highway maintenance that had Interstate 25 almost at a standstill – it took 20 minutes to go 4 miles – we were informed that production was behind schedule. They couldn’t use us yet, and couldn’t afford to pay us to stay. (It’s a low-budget pic). But, we were asked to come back the next day. They had only planned to use us for four hours, but if we would come back the next day, they would pay us for eight hours. Well, that took some of the frustration out of having to drive up and back for nothing. So, I went back, and got stuck in traffic again. We were on set, however, not for four or eight hours, but from 11:00 am to 11:30 pm (12.5 hours). I was excited about the overtime, but that didn’t happen. Just a flat $120. Still, money is money, and they needed us back the next day too. So Saturday, Oct. 15th, found me on set again. This time they only used some of us to complete a pivotal scene we’d been in the previous day. This time we were there from 6:00 pm to 1:30 am the next day. Pay: $90. Like I said, it’s a low-budget pic. On certain projects, we work at a rate of $100 for eight hours. ]

I got to sleep in on Sunday, and I had back-to-back acting classes to attend that afternoon. I was able to sleep for a reasonable time Sunday night. But, my system was still adjusting, so, while waiting for a new call time on Monday morning, I took a nap.

That’s when the dream hit me. In it, I had just picked up my mail and was walking up the stairs of a porch to my house. (It seemed like I lived there, but I don’t have a porch.) As I was standing on the porch, absorbed in opening my mail, I glanced left and saw my former stepdaughter there. She was wrapped in blankets, one of which was very colorful. She was in a bed or on a small sofa. There was a young woman sitting near her. Both of them were smiling. It was a shock to see her there. (Recently she moved away from here to California.) I sat down next to them and asked what was going on. She and the woman laughed, but she turned to me, and said, “I have to go.” The dream ended, but there was a red/yellow afterimage of her in my eyes and she seemed to wink before she disappeared, like Lewis Carroll’s disappearing Cheshire Cat. I messaged her, telling her about the dream, She replied: “Interesting dream and very vivid!” I was surprised to hear from her at all because sometimes she doesn’t reply.

The Cheshire Cat — with whom Alice had just had a conversation — fades away as it sits on a tree branch. Date first published: 1865

Anyway, I never got to set on Monday. There was a 3:00 pm call time, but then production cancelled shooting that day, and for Tuesday, because of the heavy rains we were having. I expected to be on set today, but production took another day off (“company day off”) so it’s Wednesday, and I’m waiting to hear about the call time for tomorrow,

Meanwhile, I had another dream about my former stepdaughter this morning when I woke up. In it, I was standing around with several people, like at a party, and she was there, speaking with her father. Someone came up and asked her about her brother, she reached into her cell phone/wallet case, pulled out a folded newspaper-like photo with her brother and others in it, and handed it to them. She went back to her conversation with her dad. The person she’d given the photo to tried to give it back to her, but she was still busy in her conversation so they handed it to me and walked away. I tried to give it to her, but she ignored me. I put it in her hand. She grabbed it and tore it up, without looking at it, tearing only about a third of it off. That was strange and rude, so after a few moments, I walked away.

I still miss my former stepdaughter. I say former, because, over a year ago, long before she left, in a Father’s Day message to me thanking me for all I had done for her, she referred to me as her ex-stepdad. I didn’t like the sound of that, so I use “former” instead. However, perhaps “ex” is appropriate after all. She posts updates and photos on Facebook, and I comment on them; sometimes she likes or comments on my FB posts, but that’s the extent of our relationship now – digital only – after she’s been gone for four and a half months. I wrote letters to her twice, hoping to revive that antique custom, but it hasn’t happened. In fact, it turned out that she took a trip back here, and went out to see the balloons during the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, but never let me know she was in town. I didn’t find out until she posted a photo. I messaged her why she hadn’t at least called while she was in town, but she never replied. Her house had been on the market since she left. Perhaps it sold, so she had a reason to come back for that, or just to visit her dad and her friends, and was just too busy to want to deal with me too. My status with her is vague.

I have to think she appears in my dreams because I’m still trying to accept that she’s gone, and the old days of sharing our birthdays and holidays together, or of blind wine tastings, or lunches on the patio I built for her, are gone. We had kept our relationship after her mother and I divorced, seeing each other for birthdays and holidays. For a year and a half, after she could no longer drive, I picked her up to take her to her job and back to her house. Her brain surgery for a tumor had ruined her peripheral vision on the left side, and after totaling four cars, she gave up driving before she hurt someone. Then I began working for a winery for ten years, and six months after that, she joined me in that endeavor on weekends, and on holidays from her jobs. I enjoyed driving her to the winery in the mountains east of here and working with her, picking fruit, filtering, bottling, labeling, and selling wine together at festivals and at the winery. She has ended her life here. She had put her house up for sale, and then sold, donated, or threw away nearly everything she owned before she left. It is a new start for her, a new job, a new place, a new time. I accept, realistically, that she must live her life on her terms, and try new things.

But, to never see her again after 30 years? That’s hard. Family is still important to her, but I am not family to her anymore, I think. I asked her what I am to her now, but she never replied, I mentioned coming to visit her, but I received no response, no welcome to do so. I had told her how much I missed her, but for her to come back and not even say hi – that’s rough. She hasn’t severed her connection with me totally (It’s just digital now) but it seems tenuous, like a rubber band stretched beyond its elasticity until it breaks. And now, I’ve made myself sad again. Any more of this and I will cry. I guess there’s a reason why I prefer to just post photos now. As much as I love her, I suppose I will stop dreaming about her someday.

She’s Almost Gone. Good-byes Suck.

My chest feels tight. I woke up around 4:00 am. There was no way I could sleep. I tried to hold it together yesterday, but parting from someone you love is always hard. Maya has been such a joy in my life for thirty years. I knew her first as the child of my lover, who I married after we’d known each other for four years, but we divorced 10 years after that. Maya was so full of life and spirited. I worked with her on her spelling while her mom worked one of her jobs. Her mom had been divorced from Maya’s dad for about as long as Maya had been alive. She and her brother spent time with their dad on Thursday nights and on alternate weekends., so at first I didn’t see much of them, but over time I spent more and more time at their house until I came to live with them after marrying their mom.

Maya and her brother Noah were always fun. While their mom was out, they’d entertain themselves as siblings do, running around the house, chasing each other, playing, and enjoying the absence of parental control. Maya’s spelling improved over time, and perhaps it created a bond between us. I saw her most often, as her brother was often at a neighbor’s house or at school playing basketball. practicing, practicing, practicing. He had also played soccer. He seemed to live for those games. Maya herself played basketball in grade school. I went to their official games. Noah was captain of his basketball team and played smart games, helping to drive his team to a state championship.

Maya, I could see, was more of a runner. As the point guard, she ran from one end of the court and back so fast that I was astounded by her speed and agility. When she reached high school she went out for track. I had never been interested in sports, but between those two, I watched years of soccer and basketball games. With my job, it was hard to get to Maya’s track events, but her mom took photos once in a while.

From that time on Maya ran, eventually running long distances. She ran marathons and traveled to different events around the country. It is still a passion of hers. She organizes her oldest friends to run relays in the Duke City Marathon in Albuquerque. It’s more than a sport for her; she uses it to relieve stress and for time to think.

It’s been thirty years since I’ve known Maya. She’s a tough woman. Cancer tried to take her down shortly after her 21st birthday, but she fought back. With the help of modern medical techniques and the support of friends and family, she won her battle with brain cancer.

It was a difficult time for her, and the rest of us. The day-long operation, the chemo, the radiation, the drugs that put her in a brain fog. And the scare later on when it appeared to have returned. It turned out it was simply scar tissue from the radiation treatments and was removed. She is cancer-free.

Maya was able to finish college. She’s had several jobs, and while working, continued her education, earning a Master’s Degree. But she’s reached a point in her life where she must move on. She’s cleaned out her house. It’s for sale. She disposed of almost everything she owned. She’s taking a couple suitcases, some bags of clothes, and not much else. She has a job waiting for her in California, but it’s not the main reason she’s going there. She needs a change. Although she has traveled to many countries, she is restless now. It’s always been her plan to live the rest of her life fully, but her jobs were unfulfilling, and sometimes spirit-crushing. She needs more. She’s not quite sure what, but first of all, she has to leave here. I had noticed this about her last year, as she seemed to be distancing herself, already moving on in her mind. I felt it was just me she was moving on from, and I took that hard, but it was more than that. She will soon be gone from here. I have never loved anyone more than Maya.

So, since the two of us had worked part-time for a winery for close to eight years, I took her to the New Mexico Wine Festival here in Albuquerque yesterday, and we tried to have fun. It was an extremely overcrowded event, with an hour and a half wait to get in, and long lines just to get a few quick tastes and a glass of wine each. Afterward, her dad and stepmother had a gettogether at their house, we ate a little and drank some champagne. I brought a bottle of liquor made from those tiny little grapes called black currants to blend with the champagne. The liquor is called Creme de Cassis. It is very sweet. Mixed with champagne, it is a French cocktail called Kir Royal. A tablespoon per glass of champagne is plenty. Tasty. I brought a bottle of dry French champagne, because, well, it’s a French drink.

It was very hard for me to leave her dad’s house. Maya and her dad had things to plan as he is driving her to California two days from now. Her stepmom prepared a bed for her, so it was time for me to go. Since Maya’s house is now empty, she stayed at her dad’s house last night and will be there tomorrow night as well. Everything Maya is taking will fit in her dad’s vehicle. I don’t know if I will ever see her again. I couldn’t say goodbye. We had one last shared look into each other’s eyes.

---

Under a Picnic Table. A Car in the Night. A Box.

Pedaling a bicycle all day, every day creates a nice rhythm, like meditation. I often rode from the slightest glimmer of light to very late at night, sometimes midnight. I had a supply of soybeans, brown rice, and granola in my bicycle panniers. I found places to create a fire to cook my meals, sometimes a picnic area with a barbecue grill in it, or a patch of dirt not far off lonely roads. In the morning I looked for gas stations that had groceries, and I bought a carton of milk for my granola and a piece of fruit: apple, orange, pear, whatever each state might offer me. For lunch and dinner, it was rice and beans. Sometimes I wished I had oil, butter, or cheese, but it was what it was. Bicycles don’t have interdimensional refrigerators that I could use for food storage. I had little enough money for milk and fruit, let alone restaurant meals or motels. So that was my day: pedaling, cooking, pedaling, cooking, pedaling.

Being in a state of mind where I wandered through old nursery rhymes, music, and campfire songs as I pedaled along, sometimes I got lost. I always stopped for free maps at gas stations when I crossed state lines. Remember free maps? But, not knowing the roads I wasn’t always clear on which to take. I was, at the time, heading due west across Michigan, after coming from Ohio, through Detroit at night, with a few brief stopovers in Toronto, and other places in Canada, and around the great lakes through Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. And yet, I was lost. Numbered backwoods roads on a map don’t come with road names. There had been few houses or service stations. So when I spotted a cute little house with a finely manicured lawn just off the road, I leaned my bicycle against their short white picket fence, opened the gate, walked to the door, and knocked.

And knocked, and knocked. I could hear a TV blaring, and I knocked louder. Nothing. A kitchen window was just to my right a few feet away, so I ambled over, saw an old woman in the kitchen with her back to me, and rapped on the window. It took me a little while to get her attention. The TV was really cranked full blast in the adjoining room. She turned around finally and saw me, and I pointed towards the front door. I stepped back to the door, expecting to see her as it opened, but instead, there was a shotgun pointed at my face. That was, of course, a little disconcerting, but I really needed directions. A wrong turn could take me anywhere at night. I opened my mouth to ask for directions, and all I could get out was “Hi. Could you…”, but the man holding the shotgun wasn’t having any of that. He ordered me off his property.

I turned slightly to go, but I kept trying to spit out, “I was just…”, “I’m looking for…”, but he thrust the shotgun at me and yelled for me to get off his property again and again. I hastened to do so, needless to say, but I stopped at the gate. I tried again to ask for directions, but he wasn’t even listening. He ordered me to close the gate. I did so. Then I yelled over that I just wanted directions – shotgun still pointed at me – and could he tell me if I was on such and such highway. After a tense minute or so, he lowered the shotgun away from his face, and told me, angrily, that it was. That was all I was going to ask, so I turned, threw my leg over my trusty Schwinn “Continental” and rode. I went slowly at first, but then I got back into my rhythm and rode for a long time till after it was pitch black, except for the tiny cone of light that my bicycle put out. I had attached a small friction generator that, when released against my tire, powered my light.

Eventually, I was really feeling exhausted after a pretty grueling day. I came across a small picnic area in the middle of nowhere.

I had lost my sleeping bag while I was in Canada. A couple of drunks I’d met in a park on the Canadian side of Sault Ste. Marie had plied me with sips of wine from a shared bottle while I waited to return to the youth hostel I could stay at only at night. They were nice guys, probably Anishinaabe, from that area. We had talked about Lake Superior. There was a lot of heavy industry on the U.S side. Factories and businesses and smoke covered the U.S. shoreline.

They told me that the U.S and Canada were always fighting over rights to the lake. The U.S. had been dumping waste into the lake for some time, but the Canadians did not do so and fought the U.S. to clean up its act. The guys had also had some beers and gave me one. I had not eaten that day as yet, so I had gotten drunk. We had gone for coffee. To make a long story short, I had gotten sick after a couple sips of coffee, made a mess of the toilet there, was too weak to clean it up, and the police had been called. They told me to clean it up or be arrested. I slurred out, “Go ahead.” I was nearly passing out by then. So, while I was in jail overnight waiting to see a judge in the morning, one of the guys had taken my sleeping bag to use as a pillow, as his friend told me the next day. I had tracked the other guy down to his apartment, but he wouldn’t give it back.

However, after the judge had ordered me to pay a fine for public drunkenness, I had gone back to the youth hostel to get my bicycle and money for the fine. He had allowed me to do that. Without my sleeping bag, however, I took a blanket with me from the hostel. And I rode across the border as fast as I could into Michigan. I really couldn’t afford to use my food money for a fine. So I had become a petty criminal, I supposed.

Meanwhile, on this middle-of-nowhere road, I pulled out that very blanket and spread it out on the ground under a picnic table. I wanted to be out of sight in case the homeowner with the shotgun had called the police. You never know. With my long hair and bushy beard, I resembled Charles Manson, who, with his followers, had been all over the news for a long time after killing five people including actress Sharon Tate a few years earlier. I figured out later that the homeowner had likely put me in the same category as Manson, and had been scared to death of me. He must have thought Manson was still the leader of a nationwide revolutionary group from the way the press had carried on back then, but Manson was in jail, his followers arrested or disbanded.

I slept for a short time, wrapped in the blanket, with an arm through a bicycle wheel. But I was indeed awoken by a car that pulled into the picnic area. I hoped they didn’t see me, so I stayed quiet. I heard the car door open, and footsteps on the gravel, then, the door slammed shut and the car zoomed out. I went back to sleep. I woke at first light as usual and saw a large cardboard box on the ground by the picnic table. “Did someone leave me food?” I idly wondered. It was instead a kindle of tiny kittens. The cats were too small to crawl out. When they saw me, they all started mewing and crawling over each other. Cute as they were, there was nothing I could do for them. I petted them but had nothing they could eat with me. I didn’t have much water left in my bike’s attached bottle, but I wetted my finger and put a few drops in each of their mouths. I picked the box up and put it on top of the table with a few large stones propped around it, hoping someone would stop to check it out. I couldn’t take them with me. When I pulled up my blanket I was shocked to find that I’d been sleeping on bits of broken glass, bottle tops, various sizes of stones, and god knows what else, but I hadn’t felt a thing – I had been that tired.

After some wonderful adventures and good, kind-hearted people in Canada, I was shocked to realize the differences between our two countries. I had met people who had welcomed me into their homes, to stay a night, or for fresh, hot blueberry pie, or for a home-cooked meal. A retired farmer had taken me out to his hand-built, wood-stove-heated sauna, probably because I smelled rank after weeks on the road, only taking sponge baths in gas station restrooms. And people had insisted I come visit again, anytime.

Back in the U.S. I had a shotgun in my face, things thrown out of cars at me, people honking, yelling at me to get off the road, and now I was worried about kittens that some asshole had just dumped next to me.

Well, I was alive, in good shape, with a working bicycle for transportation. It was better than hitchhiking. I hoped to reach the west coast before I ran out of food and money. I had started out with $100 from someone I’d loaned money to, but I’d lost $50 of it when I had taken one of those sponge baths in a restroom before I’d even entered Canada. I must have put it on the shelf by the mirror. I had been a short distance away when I realized it and went back. It hadn’t been there. I had also asked the guy working there if he’d seen it, but he said he hadn’t. Nevertheless, I had continued on my trip. I’d tucked half the money in my shoe. It wouldn’t get me far. but it had to do.

I continued on, across Michigan’s upper peninsula, across a bit of Wisconsin – damn cold there at night, across Minnesota, to North Dakota. By then I really didn’t have much money left at all, enough for a few more days of milk cartons and fruit. There was still some granola, rice, and beans left, out of the five pounds of each I’d started with. I stopped at yet another gas station. The Watergate hearings were on TV, but I didn’t much care about that anymore. I was certain Nixon would be impeached. I asked the guy behind the counter about work in the area. There was a carnival down the road a little bit, and it was their last night. The station attendant told me that the carnival always needed extra hands to take everything down on their last night, and I could make a few bucks there. I thanked him and rode away to spend a night working for a carnival, I hoped. It turned out, yes, they did need temporary workers.

I helped tear down a Ferris Wheel, then went to work for the electrician, disconnecting power cables from junction boxes that fed the rides, joints, and poppers, as they shut down. The other half of the terminals in each box were still live, connected to the biggest generator I’d ever seen. One cable I took off welded itself to the metal box as I was pulling it out a hole that had no insulation around it. There was a giant cascade of sparks, and as the breakers popped off, the entire carnival went dark. The electrician came over and yanked the terminal lug away from the box. I told him what had happened. He told me, straight-faced, “Don’t do that again.” After a very long tiring night – after everything was packed up and loaded on semis – he came back and asked me if I wanted to come work for them. But, that’s another story.

MY HEART IS NOT AWAKE

I have heard sleep. 
It is not noisy
not the deep nasal 
blasts of snoring.

It is not talking
into my pillow
or the random
bumps in the night
a heater clicking 
on & off
a coyote yip
or an invisible catfight.

It is not the raucous noise
of an illegal street race.
It is not the rapid tumult
of my erratic heart
that echoes in my head
until I hold my breath
to calm it down.

No, it is not those things. 
Those are normal.
Those are things
I can sleep through.

Long ago I heard sleep
the soft comfort of a 
colicky baby finally asleep
a nearby cat dreaming
the cool caress
of a summer breeze.

Sleep is also the 
soft breathing person
snuggled against me
a slow rhythmic heart 
creating a vibrating bond
between us
connecting me to life
to someone I love
to the earlier afterglow
of a passionate embrace
and heart-thumping
physical love.

That is the sleep I crave.
That is the sound 
my restless heart
longs to feel.

Listen here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5THupG8Q5D7FZLyuLPZ5tL

Tiny Screens, Tiny Buttons: Nothing New

I hated the icon-based Windows GUI when it came out. I felt like Windows had capitulated to Apple by doing that. I never liked the MAC graphic interface; it seemed like computing for dummies. I couldn’t access the hard drive directly. I was introduced to computers in high school in the late 1960s, but they were big with less power than a simple electronic calculator. One had to write a short program in order to have it plug variables into an equation. Of course that was all punch cards then. It took a lot to get anything done. Of course that experience helped me get a job in a research lab just before I graduated from high school.

The measuring equipment I ran there was interfaced with a teletype machine, so all the numbers I generated from microscope measurements were punched into a pink teletype data tape. At the end of every day, I walked the tape to the “computing center” and loaded the tape on a reel in a device that converted the punched holes in the tape to punch cards. There was a program already punched into a set of cards, and held together with a rubber band, so I banded that together with the cards from the data I’d collected, and then handed it to the folks at the counter. One did not get near the computers. The techs stacked the cards to run overnight with all the other jobs. I picked up the results the next day as a printout. It was all just a series of average measurements, with statistical info out to seven decimal places. The whole computing center building was greatly refrigerated due to the heat generated by the computers — in the same way computer chips need a cooling fan. Very expensive and energy consuming. And the computer people had to wear coats. Mind you, this was state-of-the-art computing at Johns Hopkins University at the time (late 60s & early 70s).

I operated an oscilloscope, a four-microscope interferometer, and a double-crystal X-ray spectrometer to, not only measure X-ray wavelengths, but to use X-ray wavelengths to map the internal structure of silicon and germanium crystals, which was really handy later for those computer chips made of silicone. Germanium was used more in transitors than chips.

That was my whole interaction with computers until another research job in the early ’80s had me using biomedical research equipment with built-in HP-85 computers; the interface was a small keypad with tiny buttons — really tiny screen, really tiny buttons. My boss also had a stand-alone HP-85, run off of a program cartridge that controlled research equipment for column chromatography, and it had a nicer keyboard. We upgraded that one with an external floppy disk, for storage, just one disk at first, and then with two drives for copying disk to disk — woo hoo! On this machine, I had a simple line-drawing ski game to play. Then – OMG – my boss got a desktop computer in 1985. A 10Mb hard drive! A full-sized keyboard interface. but all commands had to be typed in with DOS commands, using a blank screen.

It was years still before drop-down menus showed up, and the programs had their own screen backgrounds. Bigger screens. Still no mouse though. It was all drop-down menus, and I loved it. I had a modem and could connect to other computers via a BBS (Bulletin Board System) to download simple games and low-resolution pictures. I could chat and leave messages. You could also play games by taking turns, like the way people used snail mail to play chess in the old days with people in other states or countries. One move at a time until the other person logged in and took their turn. But, I could set up multiple games, take my turn on all of them and wait for people to log in and take their turns, so I was able to get some gaming in at work (Scrabble or Checkers). One day I finally had to bite the bullet and get Windows, which could still be used with keyboard commands and without the optional mouse, so I was happy about that. Then the drop-down program menus needed a mouse, or awkward combinations of multiple keys to select commands, so I got a mouse. Progress.

But all of that I had to do at work. The cost of home computers was prohibitive for most people, and hard to justify. There were Commodore PET home computers in the 1970s, and Commodore VIC-20s and Atari 400 home computers on the market in the early 1980s, but those cost two or three months’ rent. The Atari 800 cost about $1000, six months of rent or more. The cost of MACs was insane. By 1988, I was able to purchase a used DOS personal computer (Disk Operating System, aka desktop) for myself at home, using student loan money. Mostly I needed it to write papers, because, without it, I had to type. In my classes where I had been typing 25-page papers, I was graded on spelling and punctuation in addition to the subject matter. I went through a lot of typing paper and time trying to get my papers perfect.

8086

My trusty computer at that point had an 8086 Intel 16-bit microprocessor chip, which I was able to upgrade to an 8088. I had a 20MB “hard” drive, a built-in floppy drive, and a 300 bps modem (bits per second). There was no GUI (Graphic User Interface) and no mouse. I upgraded chips, software, drives, memory, and monitors constantly over the years, as computers and necessary upgrades became less and less expensive. The used Acer 64-bit system I purchased eight years ago has 6 GB of installed memory (RAM), and an Intel Core i3-2100 CPU running at 3.10 GHz. Total cost: $375. I purchased an ASUS 27″ monitor screen ($125) to use with it because I like to see what I’m doing, sometimes with multiple windows. It is more than enough processing power for all my needs unless it dies someday.

I don’t think many people even use home desktop systems anymore – now it’s all iPads, laptops, tablets, and phones. Mostly phones. Average cost: $600. With their tiny screens and tiny buttons. Progress?

Chatter Sunday Jan. 31, 2021

Although it’s no longer in person, Sunday Chatter in the old furniture store continues to be live-streamed, and then available for a short time afterwards online. I miss those walls and the old doors, the poetry and the coffee, the home-made pastries, and even the occasional cough from the audience that always packed the place every Sunday morning before Covid-19.

Musicians: David Felberg violin Joel Becktell cello Luke Gullickson guitar

Music Robert Ashley For Andie Springer, Showing the Form of a Melody, “Standing in the Shadows” by Robert Ashley  J.S. Bach Cello Suite no. 3 in C major

Poet Damien Flores was born & raised in Old Town, Albuquerque and is a graduate of the University of New Mexico. Flores is best known as a member of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. He organized the College Unions Poetry Slam in 2008, was a member of the two-time National Champion UNM Loboslam Teams, and is also a four-time ABQSlams City Champion. He was named Poet of the Year in 2007 & 2008 by the New Mexico Hispano Entertainer’s Association, and was recipient of the 2008 Lena Todd Award for creative non-fiction from the UNM English Department. His first book, Junkyard Dogs, was published by West End Press and his work has been featured in several anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. Flores is an educator in Albuquerque and hosts the Spoken Word Hour on 89.9 KUNM-FM.

60 Years Ago in My Life, a Catalyst

I woke up early this morning, shortly after 5 am. It’s a quiet time for me, before the world insists that I pay attention to it. For some reason, I found myself back in 1960.

Roland Tower

My parents had just moved us from Evans Chapel Road, slightly north of the Roland Water Tower, which my brother and I had passed every day on our way to and from the St. Thomas Aquinas School. I had attended that school from the first through fourth grades. Before that we had lived in Armistead Gardens in the northeast part of Baltimore, and before that, it gets hazy. I think we lived with my grandparents for a bit, but my birth certificate lists an address on Gay Street, near the 1782 “historic” Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore. My mom says she shopped there.

At St. Thomas, I had received my “First Holy Communion” sacrament, but I was entering a new phase of my life at this point. Now my church would be St. Anthony of Padua. I was enrolled in the altar boys, which meant serving mass early before school started. I liked the quiet of the sidewalks then, with very little street noise. I never saw any of my classmates going to school, because it was too early. The distance was a bit less than a mile, so it gave me plenty of time to be alone. I had two brothers and two sisters at the time, which would grow to three of each before long. As the oldest child, I was responsible for them and was told I was supposed to be a role model for them, which mostly kept me in line. I take responsibility seriously, but it was noisy and very hectic at home.

I attended St. Anthony of Padua school for four years, during which time I received my third sacrament, Confirmation. There was a test; I had to study to be eligible. It is a ritual rite of passage, dating to the earliest days of Christainity. During Confirmation, you accept the Holy Ghost into your life, and the priest says “Peace be with you,” as you get slapped on the cheek, a reminder to be brave in spreading and defending the faith. The slap was discontinued in 1971.

You might say I was heavily indoctrinated into the faith. In addition to my duties as an altar boy, like running the collection basket around, it included May Day processions, and other ceremonies, in which I got to light and carry the incense, a smell firmly rooted in my brain to this day. But my main job was serving mass, as I said, very early in the morning, in the downstairs church. There were two altars, one in the spacious upper church with the stained-glass windows and the inverted fishing boat shape. The lower altar was tucked away in the dark, low-ceilinged basement of the church, which is where I “served” on those early weekday mornings. My religious indoctrination didn’t end there, for I was also in the Church’s Boy Scout Troop, #178. As a Scout, moral purity was a key ingredient in being brave and trustworthy, so it didn’t take me long to get

my Ad Altare Dei award, a medal, instead of a merit badge. Those early morning masses, though — what a trip! There was a regular group that attended, a much smaller crowd than on Sundays. It seemed to consist of mostly old women, heads covered with a linen doily or some such, a practice dating to the third century, at which time it was no longer necessary for Christian women to be veiled to pray publically. Women, but not men, had to cover their heads, it was said, because of the presence of angels in holy places. So, the simple doily was an improvement over having to cover their entire heads. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) wrote about veiling, “It has also been commanded that the head should be veiled and the face covered, for it is a wicked thing for beauty to be a snare to men.” Until at least the 18th century, the wearing of a head covering, both in the public and while attending church, was regarded as customary for Christian women in Mediterranean, European, Middle Eastern, and African cultures. A woman who did not wear a head covering was interpreted to be “a prostitute or adulteress.” In Europe, law stipulated that a married woman who uncovered her hair in public gave evidence of her infidelity.

But I digress. I guess the reason why this altar boy stuff came to mind is due to an incident that occurred one morning as I knelt with another boy, flanking the priest during the sacramental rite of the consecration of bread and wine. The change of the substance of bread into the substance of the body of Christ and of the substance of wine into the substance of his blood is called transubstantiation. It was not a word I ever heard at that age. My job at this point was to ring the Sanctus bells. One reason for the use of the bells, it is said, is to create a joyful noise to the Lord to give thanks for the miracle taking place atop the altar. Another function of the bells is to focus the attention of those attending the Mass that a supernatural event is taking place on the altar. And, boy howdy, did I ever screw that up one time! (The first time I’d screwed up had been when the priest in charge of us altar boys caught me clowning around while we dutifully waited in line for him to arrive to practice a May Day precessional. In a firestorm of indignation, he had fired me and ordered me to leave the school auditorium. I hid the fact from my parents for a long time, but eventually they found out, and I was allowed to return).

In our church, low Mass was held on week days. A high Mass means a full ceremonial Mass, with music, choir, incense, and a deacon and subdeacon to serve the priest. Low Mass is a smaller affair that usually doesn’t have any music or incense. At low Mass (which, at the time, I stupidly confused with the fact that it was held in the basement), the bells were rung six times by the altar boys. ONE. The priest would genuflect (kneel briefly before the host). RING THAT BELL. This signaled that the host was to be consecrated, and all in the church should kneel briefly as one. TWO. The priest would rise. RING THAT BELL. He called down the Holy Spirit by reciting the epiclesis, a type of prayer for this purpose. The bells also signaled the congregation to rise as one. Then, the priest would genuflect again. RING THAT BELL. This was the signal for the congregation to also genuflect again, as one. Then the entire process was repeated for the consecration of the wine.

Somehow, you’d think that the congregation would have been conditioned enough to kneel and rise on their own, but noooo! I had fallen into a daydream (not uncommon for me) and did not ring that first bell. I could hear the confusion behind me. Some knelt and others hurried erratically to their knees. The Horror! I was embarrassed — hell — I was mortified. I hated to make mistakes, and this was the priest who had fired me and allowed me back. And it was a sacred moment to all. So, a small mistake, easily corrected. I was acutely aware of the next moment when I had to ring those bells – the priest rose – and I couldn’t move my hand! The congregation was in shambles. I could hear people mumbling and jumping up randomly. I was frozen in place (perhaps a precursor to a seizure I experienced in high school?). He glanced at me, I mentally slapped myself, and I got the third ring on time as the priest knelt. Order was restored to the congregation, and to my brain. For the second consecration, of the wine, I was ready, and the ringing of the sacred bells went as they were supposed to. ONE. TWO. THREE. I was glad of that, but apprehensive. I was scared, really. One does not screw up like that in church, especially at the holy altar.

However, I never heard a word about it, from the priest, or from anyone else. I never knew if my parents heard about it. There would have been punishment, but perhaps the priest forgave me? That’s one of his jobs, so perhaps he did. But I’ll bet the small congregation of early worshipers on weekday mornings never forgot it.

By the time I had left the grade school there to attend a public high school, I had been one of the altar boys, along with a cousin, to serve the funeral Masses for both of my grandfathers. Although I was no longer an altar boy, I continued my regular Sunday attendance, and was required to attend Monday night religious classes to further my spiritual education, and ask questions. The answers were not satisfactory to me. They defied all logic. Then, in 1967, I got to spend the entire summer break at Howard University in Washington D.C. attending special classes provided by the National Science Foundation. I studied basic electronics, chemistry, and mathematical logic (for computers), among other things. I was in my real element then. I’d been reading every book of science I could get my hands on from the time I learned to read, and there were plenty at the free libraries in Baltimore. On the first Sunday I spent in Washington D.C. my fellow students (from various high schools) were up and preparing to go to church.

I looked around me, and where I was, and the science I was immersed in, and saw my future. It was a split decision, borne of unanswered questions, bizarre Catholic minutiae, and the realization, I think, that I preferred logic to belief. I stayed in bed awhile, thinking, in that wonderful quiet, of where I was going, and not where I’d been. Over the years I gave a lot of thought to my youthful faith and service, but I never went to mass or prayed ever again. And I have never regretted it. I did not replace my beliefs with another belief system. I dedicated myself to learning and research. I do not equate science with religion. One can have both, but I do not. I prefer facts, logic, and the use of logical experimentation to confirm or dispute facts. And always, questioning everything, even facts. Asking more questions, seeking to know more, and more, and understand the processes of life from fundamental energies, to fundamental particles of matter, and to their interrelationship.

There is more to life than “the energy of a mass at rest is equal to the product of its mass and the square of the speed of light”, but it’s a start. For example, because of the momentum of a particle of mass, the equation is better written as E2 = (mc2)2 + (pc)2, or the square of the amount of energy in a mass is equal to the square of the product of a mass and the square of the speed of light squared, plus the square of the product of its momentum and the speed of light. It gets complicated from there, and you can see why scientists use symbols in place of words. Certainly, as human beings, we are driven often by emotions, and hormones, to do things which appear illogical, including having illogical beliefs in unproven things — religion and love being but two examples. But that’s also life. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I will resist any efforts to accept something as fact which cannot be shown to be a fact, as nearly as can be determined, for there is no way to advance our knowledge and culture through belief only.

I know that seems like a long ways off from altar boys and my failure to ring the conditioning bell at the right time, but perhaps that was the catalyst.

A Gorgeous Day Hiking in Jemez

Drove out through the Jemez Mountains Thursday (July 30, 2020). There are beautiful vistas and red hills and streams and deep woods and hot springs up there. Didn’t make it to any of the hot springs this time, nor stop at any of the funky bars in the village of Jemez Springs, but it was an extremely pleasant day, with lots of sunshine and a steady, cool breeze. It was calming, both physically and mentally. It’s a wonderful part of New Mexico that I have visited and camped at over the last forty-four years. I have really fine memories of the hiking, camping, and fun women I used to hang out with. Memories aside, the volcanic Jemez Mountains are my most favorite place to go in all of New Mexico.

Jemez Pueblo food stand (closed)

“Darth Vader”

Weather-sculpted nose

Butterflies all over

 

 

 

Never Look Away, Dresden and Baltimore

Last night, I was watching a fascinating German movie (Never Look Away, 2018), based loosely on the life of visual artist Gerhard Rickter, who experienced growing up under the Nazis. I was just past 45 minutes into it (a small part of it, considering that it is 3 hours, 9 minutes long), when what struck me suddenly was that the movie had just advanced to 1951, as the artist Kurt Barnert is on his way to work, walking past still ruined buildings, through streets still lined with rubble from the saturation bombing of Dresden. Between February 13–15 of 1945, with the war nearly over, the British and U.S. forces dropped some 2,700 tons of explosives and incendiaries and decimated Dresden. Before WWII, Dresden was called “the Florence of the Elbe” and was regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful cities for its architecture and museums. It had no strategic importance. The purpose of the raids was to terrorize Germany into surrendering, and to fulfill a promise to Joseph Stalin to prepare Germany for invasion by Soviet troops. 2,800 more tons of bombs were dropped on Dresden in three other attacks before Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945. Author Kurt Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the bombing, which he describes in Slaughterhouse-Five. 78,000 dwellings were completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged but repairable.

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Six years after Germany’s surrender, in 1951, I was one year old, having been born in the busy seaport and immigrant town of Baltimore, Maryland. My parents lived near the famous Lexington Market then, where you could find all kinds of fresh seafood, meats and international foods. Baltimore was not all that different from Dresden in Old World charm, but we had fresh food, not food lines. The streets were clean and open, some with trolley tracks and cobblestones. A few farmers still hawked their wares from horse-drawn wagons. There were plenty of cars, but no freeways bypassing the city. There was poverty then, but the row houses – like my paternal grandparents’,  next to a bar – had their marble front stairs. There were green parks, and jobs at Bethlehem Steel and the McCormick Spice Company. The inner city was old and beginning to decay, but there was no rubble then. The harbor was full of cargo ships and housed a submarine, the USS Torsk from WWII, and the 1854 USS Constellation, a sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy.

I did not know about Dresden, or Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, or the other places so devastated by weapons of mass destruction until I was much older. I did not know how lucky I was to have been born there and then. I have been back to Baltimore a few times, and much of the old inner city near where I was born is now ruined and decaying, with burnt-out buildings and people from a racist culture war, loss of manufacturing jobs, and urban flight. I found a few photos online of the ruined sections of Baltimore’s inner city. There are 46,800 vacant properties in Baltimore.

Watching this movie is indeed thought-provoking. I had to pause to write this because, over two hours later, I might have forgotten these feelings, even if I remembered the thoughts.

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So, I finished the movie. It was an amazing thing to experience. The blurb on the DVD pocket missed everything. It was about life, and connections, and pain, and happiness, and guilt, and also how art is influenced by those things and influences those things. Yeah, there are some Nazis early on, but they are not the focus, nor really important, nor is socialist realism, which wasn’t ever a realistic way of life or art.

There is an underlying intellectual curiosity throughout this movie, probing for answers, for what is true. Art is a symbol. Symbols can be art, but there’s more to life and how we perceive it and live it than that. I know this thing is over three hours long, but I’m saying, really saying, it’s worth it. Well, it was for me anyway. Really well done: story, direction, acting, cinematography, everything. It really engages heart and mind. Tom Schilling and Paula Beer are wonderful as the hard-working couple Kurt Barnert and Ellie Seebard struggling through life. Their joy in life, despite their setbacks and struggles, is palpable. That’s life for so many, and Schilling and Beer pull it off, plunging into painful memories, dealing with so much crap, from war to life in East Germany, to the Seeband patriarch, who is a seething caldron of the very mental diseases he condemned people to death for.

Sebastian Koch plays that Seeband patriarch, a man able to excel under Nazi rule and transition seamlessly into the perfect socialist under a rigid, joyless soviet-style totalitarianism. You expect him to be caught, punished, and destroyed, but he survives, on the surface. Underneath his professional veneer and perfect obedience is a haunted man, and Koch is brilliant in this role.

 

In My Vivid Dreams Shit Happens

Sometimes I use blogs like this one to talk about my dreams, which are often an outlet for emotional stress in my life, in the same manner blogging became an outlet for me to try to communicate things I couldn’t otherwise talk about, like unrequited love, in another blog.

I had a dream a little while ago that woke me up (as they tend to do). It wasn’t a nightmare, as such, but, as my dreams tend to be, it was weird.

In this dream, I’m driving down a wide road, a dirt road. It is daytime. I see a huge muddy puddle on the left, which is spilling over to my side of the road. I decide to avoid it, and pull more to the right. However, that gets me stuck in sand. Nevermind what kind of road this is, I am familiar with it, but not sure exactly where I am. Part of my semi-conscious brain says this is a certain road I know, but that road is paved, and always has been in my experience. At any rate, I back up immediately, and the car is free. I continue backing up and back into a driveway on my right (which is oddly paved). I pull out of the driveway and start to head in the opposite direction, since the road appears to be impassable.

But, I don’t get far. I couldn’t quite figure out what was happening, but I found myself stopped on that road, mostly on the opposite side of the street, pointing in the right direction, but not moving. In fact, I am lying on my side on the seat. Seems like I fell over. I try to pull myself up, but I don’t have the strength. It is only a matter of grabbing the door to haul myself back up to a sitting position, and I try repeatedly. I almost make it, and I know I will, but something is not letting me complete the motion. As I write this, I think: seatbelt? Anyway, the little movie in my head continues. I notice it is getting dark. I reach up with my left hand and pull on the headlights.  The switch is an old-fashioned knob like cars in the 50s and 60s would have had, not the modern buttons or levers. With the lights on, I feel safer, and just then a car with its lights on passes me, going in the direction I left. I tap on the horn. Was I signaling the car hello, warning, or help? It would only have taken a long honk to get their attention, but I feel like I don’t need help. But, I was hoping they would stop.

I try getting up again, knowing I can, but I am sluggish. I seem to move in slow motion; my body is not responding to commands as it should. Then, of course, I am awake. I remember dreams like this where I can’t move, and it is because I’m asleep. As I realize I’m awake, I start to sit up, and sure enough, I can move. Whew! OK. What the hell was that all about?

Was I thinking about strokes or heart attacks? Was my body trying to tell me something again? No, I feel fine. I used to hate those dreams that ended like that. It usually happened with a nightmare, like being chased. I had to run, or yell, but my body wouldn’t respond. I’d struggle, and struggle, and sometimes get a little squeaky sound out of my mouth.

One time, when I was a still quite young, I dreamed that the wolves that lived in the shadows of my room every night had come over to my small bed and were biting my hand, which was draped over the side. I couldn’t pull my hand away. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t. I knew I had to call for help, but my throat seemed paralyzed, just like my body. I kept trying, and finally made little sounds, and then slightly bigger sounds, and then, in some kind of paradigm shift, (if you’ll pardon the scientific reference), I was suddenly fully in control of my body and screamed. Screamed bloody murder, as people used to say.

My parents showed up quickly, and turned on the lights. I told them a wolf was biting me. Seems the dog that we’d had for a short while was licking my hand while I was dreaming. Possibly I’d been waving my hand around, and he tried to help. Or, maybe he thought I was being attacked? Anyway, my hand was fine, and there were no tooth marks that I recall. Unfortunately, my parents decided to get rid of the dog. Actually, I’m betting it was my overprotective mother who told my dad to get rid of it. It was gone for a few days, and I missed it. One day it suddenly showed up again, and that made me very happy. My parents were quite surprised to see it. I hugged it and petted it. It was happy to see me. I remember thinking about the incident years later, and, based on things I’d heard, decided my dad had simply driven the dog far away and left it somewhere, as people use to do, or perhaps he left it with someone, and the dog found his way back. Anyway, the dog was there, but I remember very little about it after that. It was gone, and I can’t remember when. I think my parents just got rid of it while I was at school, which is always a sad thought, but I can’t remember. In their defense, my mom was probably pregnant again, and they feared the dog might go after the baby.

I was talking about the dream I had this morning. Once I was fully awake, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Started up my little coffee maker. Fed the cats, even though it wasn’t light yet. I thought about the dream, thought about the times I’d dreamt of cars when I was young. For some reason, in the 1950s, people felt they could leave children in the car while they ran into a store or something for a “few minutes.” It always seemed to me to take forever. I’d sit in the car, and scare myself by wondering what would happen if the car suddenly started moving. I was too young to drive, and couldn’t yet reach the pedals easily. I knew about turning the key, and pressing the gas pedal, but the driving part was a mystery. One time I scooted over into the driver’s place (front seats were all one piece back then, and kids sat in the front with a parent if no one else was in the car). I played around with the steering wheel, pretending to be driving along, imaging myself on the road. The parking brake was easily accessible, and I accidentally released it; the car started to drift backwards, as it was on a hill. I managed to get my foot on the brake by scooching down, and I stayed like that for a long time, what really seemed like forever, until my mom returned. I told her the car had started rolling, and I stopped it. She thanked me. I asked her what would happen if the car had rolled into the street. She told me that was why people turned the wheels at an angle when parking, so the tires would hit the curb if the car should roll. I always remembered to do that many years after.

In my dreams, after that incident, the car would start rolling, and the wheels were turned the wrong way. The car would pick up speed as I coasted forward down the street, an exhilarating feeling, but scary, because I wasn’t big enough to hold the steering wheel and press down on the brake at the same time. In some dreams, I could reach the brake, but it didn’t work. I became better and better, in my dreams, at navigating the car through traffic, because the car always kept moving. One day, I asked my mom about that, asked her how would she stop the car if the brake didn’t work. She told me she could use the emergency brake. “What if it didn’t work?” I asked her. I was like that, so full of questions. She told me she’d always both throw the emergency brake on and put the car into reverse gear. It would mess up the engine, but the car would stop. I never had those dreams anymore. Thanks Mom! But I do wish you hadn’t ever left me alone like that in the car. Or ever left me alone ever.

Of course, this whole train of though awakened more. I remember, hell, I never forgot, the time my parents drove to a relative’s house to do something, maybe attend a funeral. I don’t recall doing anything bad while I was there, but my father took me into a room and told me to sit there (on a wooden chair) and keep quiet. So I did. He’d closed the door behind him. I stared at the wallpaper covered walls. I remember hearing some noises, but since my dad had told me to sit and be quiet, that’s what I did. It turned out that my parents, the relative, and the other kids at the time all loaded into the car and went. I just sat. It was excruciating. I stared at the fleur de lis wallpaper.                  I counted how many times the pattern on it repeated, up and down the walls. Double checked my counts.

The wall clock chimed. It did that a lot, on the hour every hour, and I think on the half hours too. Analog wall clocks used to do that. Every time the clock struck it increased my loneliness. I began to panic. It was hard to sit still. I liked to explore, to look around, to examine things. There was a boring church calendar on the wall. I kept counting images in the wallpaper around it. I felt like I was in some kind of limbo. I hated it.

It felt a lot like when I woke up one night at a young age, and couldn’t see. All the lights were out, and there seemed to be a haze in the air. There was some very faint light coming in the window from far away, but not enough that I could see anything clearly. It had scared me the first time I’d done that; I’d felt acutely alone, as if I was trapped by myself. Maybe that’s what makes infants cry at night? I had also wondered if I was going blind. I hadn’t gone for my parents because, well, I’d already cried wolf once (literally), and I didn’t want to wake them again. Years later, I’d had an even stranger experience while accidentally overdosed on paregoric, and after experiencing bizarre visions while awake, I woke them up. You betcha believe it.

Eventually, that day in the strange house, my parents came back. My dad was upset, but not, oddly, angry. He wanted to know why I hadn’t come with them. I reminded him that he’d told me to sit and be quiet, and he hadn’t come back for me. He’d always made it clear I was to do as he said until he said otherwise. I thought he would give me a new command when it was time to go. He hadn’t. He’d forgotten me. My fault somehow. One time, years later, in anger, he called me a literal-minded idiot.

So my brain just kept on going this morning. I went to the kitchen, pulled my coffee cup out of the mini espresso maker. I make Americanos by filling the machine with enough water to fill my cup. It keeps flowing through the grounds until my cup is full, but I have to then shut the machine off. I didn’t forget to do that this morning! I sugared and creamed my coffee, and went back to the computer to finish writing this. But before I did that I went back to the kitchen for something. Once there I had no idea what. As I walked back to my computer, I realised it was my coffee I’d wanted to get, but I’d already gotten it, and it was on my desk. I’d been typing before I’d started the coffee, and kept telling myself to stop and go get it, so it seems my brain doesn’t always turn the messages off that I send myself after I do what I was thinking about. That idea made me think about my brain, and forgetfulness, and strokes and heart attacks again. Had a heart attack once; got fixed up. Strokes are a possibility for anyone, at any time, but mostly due to blood clots getting to the brain, I believe. Haven’t had any injuries recently, or had any problems with clots, but you never know.

You noticed I had visions as a child on paregoric, didn’t you? I mentioned it above. It’s a fine story. I know this whole post is getting longer than most, but my brain is spinning this morning after that odd dream earlier. So, anyway, I was a sickly kid, with pneumonia, swollen sinuses, fevers, coughs, a ruptured appendix with blood poisoning, and later, asthma, followed by severe pollen and dust allergies. Kind of clumsy too. Fell into an unfinished basement of a new building once, and cracked my head on a rock. Fell out of a tree in the rain once when I was older, while trying to fix the roof of the treehouse my brother John and I had built, and broke my arm. Always something.

So oh, once upon a time, I had a cough, a bad one that wouldn’t let me or my mother sleep, so she’d put me to bed with a large spoonful or two of paregoric.  Now paregoric is a medicine consisting of opium or morphine, flavored with camphor, aniseed, and benzoic acid, formerly used to treat diarrhea and coughing in children. (To this day I love the smell and flavor of anise or licorice.) My mother used it on us often. I think she overdid it that night. I had been coughing long and hard, and she may have given me two spoonsful, or more. I woke up later, in that odd underlit time of night where I could only see a little. I was used to it by then. However, staring at the wall wasn’t very useful, because it was too dark to see anything clearly. I had played with toy soldiers, and even seen or played with toy civil war soldiers, and I must have seen a movie with knights in armor. Suddenly there were uniformed soldiers fighting on the wall, chasing each other with guns, up and down hills, and there were explosions too, but there was no sound. I was fascinated! I had sat up on the bed, and could make out the bedposts, pillow, and blanket. But then the soldiers morphed into men fighting with swords and guns, in blue or grey uniforms, but in the same place. Then the scene shifted again, and there were brightly colored knights in chain mail with huge swords and horses, charging each other, and having sword fights. I was enjoying it. I don’t know how long I watched. Well, technically, I guess I wasn’t really seeing anything, just imagining it, but it was so intensely vivid! It seemed to be playing within the wall, as what would later become known as three-dimensional imaging. The bedposts created a nice frame.

Again, the scene shifted, but became jumbled. An inverted cone appeared before my eyes. I was looking into it from the wide bottom, up to a point that seemed to be infinitely far away. It disturbed me, but I also felt the need to pee. Having peed in my bed in the past, I wasn’t going to repeat that experience, just because I might be dreaming. (I had once dreamed I’d gotten up, had gone into the bathroom, and had stood over the toilet trying to pee but couldn’t, until I’d finally let it all out, and suddenly my legs had been very warm, and I realized, very wet, and I’d woken all the way up, in bed. A terrible thing to have to wake your parents up for, or admit to anyone.) So, this time, I got up, before that could happen. I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not, but it seemed I was awake. Except, except there was still that inverted cone in front of my face, and it made walking difficult. When I looked down, it seemed like the cone was a hole in the floor. When I looked around, the cone was directly in front of me everywhere. But, I could see a little around the edges. I made it to the bathroom, and peed, hopefully into the toilet bowl, because when I looked down, there was still this cone that seemed to bore through the toilet and floor.

By this time, I knew had to tell my parents. I was at least ten years old at the time, but I was scared. “Mom! Dad!” I think I yelled. “Something’s wrong with me, with my eyes.” They turned the lights on. It got worse. Now the cone was still there, but its inner surface was coated with sawdust, or looked like sand, something like that. The weird thing was that I couldn’t see my parents’ faces; all I saw were arms, and legs, and hands, and an alarm clock, and the lamp, things like that. They kept popping into and out of the cone, which was rotating. It wouldn’t stop. My father was telling me to wake up. I kept telling him, “I am awake!” Once I thought I saw his face in the cone, another time, someone’s head. I could talk with them, hear them OK, but the vision wouldn’t stop, and it was scaring me. My mother called the doctor. He said to give me soup. She heated up some soup, hers or canned, I don’t recall, but she often gave me Campbell’s’ chicken noodle when I was sick. My father kept talking to me while she was gone. He could see I was awake. He stopped telling me to wake up. I could feel concern in his voice. It was comforting, but the cone kept spinning. “I just want it to stop,” I told him. Mom came back with the soup. I ate it while sitting on their bed. After a few large spoonsful the visions cleared, and I felt fine. The soup may have diluted the paregoric, or distracted my brain. I don’t know for sure what it did, but it worked. I was fine. I went back to bed. They never mentioned it again. And the spoonsful of paregoric stopped. End of story.