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.

Time for Photos

Hiking the Piedra Lisa Trail in one hour is a workout!

Motorcycle ride to Mountainair

A visit from my friendly, local, neighborhood … Roadrunner

Abby Max. Model, actor, fitness guru, grandmother: kind, irrepressible, funny, talented, & beautiful.

A New Poem (“new shit”, as slam poets say)

WHAT IS IN THE BOX?

Is it the answer to my hopes and dreams?

Is it love? Is it bacon?

Is it a Braunschweiger sandwich

with mayo

made lovingly by Mom?

Is it an extra sharp cheese omelet

with fresh, roasted green chile

made for me?

Is it black beans & hot Italian sausage

made with love for someone else?

Is it a cup of Yunnan black tea

stygian darkness cut with honey?

Is it being with someone you love

as you watch the sun set

and the sunlight is refracted

colors bouncing from cloud to cloud?

Is it poetry you write about someone you love?

Is it watermelon to share with your lover?

Is it a dream of love?

Is it a remembrance of love?

Is it knowing that there is always love

as long as you love someone

even if they no longer care about you?

The answer is love – it is always love.

The answer to all of life’s questions

comes down to love

even if

all you want to know

is

what’s in that mystery box?

The Mountain Calls and I Answer

I’ve hiked to the top of the Sandia Mountains on many trails. I’ve driven or ridden in cars up the Crest Road. I’ve bicycled up that road to the top (once was enough). But today was the first time I’d ridden a motorcycle up there – “up there” being 10,500 feet (3200 meters) above sea level. I’m adding some photos I took, and an image of me taken by another biker. My hair and eyebrows are all crazy from the ride up. While looking at a map, I zoomed in. The appearance of Crest Road surprised the crap out of me. It has to gain thousands of feet in elevation, and it does so in a most interesting pattern. I took a screenshot.

On a motorcycle, those squirrely curves are exhilarating, and I must confess – a little scary. It takes concentration. I accelerate to make it through the curves (to negotiate them as people used to say). My right foot is never more than one-quarter inch from the brake. A slight distraction could lead me to end up crossing a shallow ditch, moving towards the forest or a rock face. Leaving the mountain crest, coming down in the other lane, there are steep depths to plunge on my right. When I was on a bicycle, I found that very unnerving. On a powerful motorcycle, things happen quicker. It is best to simply concentrate on the road, my speed, and the traffic. People do this every day on this road, even in winter snow, with icy patches scattered along its length.

There are young motorcyclists who race down that higgledy-piggledy road at speeds that defy common sense. After all these years of mine, I am a bit more circumspect in my riding. But, the views coming up, on top, and coming down are worth it, even when it is only in the far corners of my eyes. The photos of the city show its humbling effect on me; it is so vast, yet so small compared to the grand vistas I can see from a mile above them. The mountain actually starts from the Rio Grande, slowly rising all through the city of Albuquerque, up into the foothills, and up, up, up to the top of this mountain of old seabed thrust two miles above sea level by tectonic activity. Albuquerque sits where a portion of that upthrust land sank far down, a mile down. The Rio Grande is the lowest point in the landscape; it runs from north to south to southeast after flowing into Texas, where it creates a border with Mexico.

In one photo, I am wearing my shirt from chase-crewing the Sponge Bob balloon in 2010. The balloon flew a few days, but a sudden downdraft as the balloon was being filled with hot air from the large propane flame caused a fire that destroyed some of the internal structure. The balloon had been brought from the manufacturing center in Brazil, and instead of being sold, was going back to Brazil for repairs. I never saw it again, and although I had not gotten the ride in it that I’d been promised for my work, I got this T-shirt. However, I did ride in other balloons. I wore the shirt today because the left sleeve is like a U.S. flag, and it is July 4. My hair and eyebrows are crazy windblown from the ride, and highlighted by the intense sunlight.

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.

STONES

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Dear Lao Tsu,

03/23/23

I AM NOT CONTENT

with what I have.
I do not rejoice
in the way things are.

Never!

Not until I am buried

with all my stuff

my swords and shields

and my slings and arrows

of outrageous fortune.

Bury me

with my prejudices and ego.

Bury me

with my stress and anger

with my desires for revenge

with my unkind words

with my thoughtlessness.

Bury me

with my sloth and gluttony.

Bury me with my pride.

Bury me

with my lust for who

and what I cannot have

and my lust instead for

possessions to surround me.

Bury me

most of all

with my sadness and loneliness.

Don’t forget to come back

and dig me up.

Leave all that other stuff

cover it with reinforced concrete.

Put up a sign that says:

Danger!

Radioactive!

Highly Poisonous!

Do Not Dig Here!

Do Not Disturb!

Then

I will belong to the world.

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.

Southwestern Sunburns and Aloe barbadensis Miller

Although I grew up on the east coast of the U.S.A., I remember being sunburned, a lot. Mostly I just remember the pain, and the peeling skin later. It happened so often, I don’t remember the specific occasions that led to burns. Sometimes it’s a beach, of course, exposing skin that didn’t usually get exposed, or being outside playing or working for whole days in the sun.

I can remember a few specific times, like when my mother covered us in Vaseline, the original petroleum jelly, which looks like snot from a bad cold, or even vomit, but smelled vaguely of motor oil. It was in preparation for a trip to Ocean City beach, a three-hour drive from Baltimore City. When I asked her about that years later, she said she knew that covering a bad burn with Vaseline was good, so it must be good at preventing burns too. It wasn’t. Bodybuilders, particularly the ones at “Muscle Beach” in California, slathered it on to increase the burn, i.e., to get a deeper tan. It helps a lot if you already have a base tan, but now we know that it also increases your risk of skin cancer.

So, of course, I got sunburned playing in the ocean, and walking around or napping on a sandy towel, wearing nothing but swimming trunks. The pain was horrible on the long drive home. My mother prepared a solution of vinegar and baking soda to cover my burns for me. It was freezing cold! But the relief was brief. I could keep reapplying the solution, but eventually, I had other things to do, including trying to sleep at night. Later on, I did find out about Solorcaine lotion. That stuff really worked. It would relieve the pain almost immediately upon applying it. It was good for the itching too. I always had a plastic bottle of that stuff with me wherever I lived. It was a permanent staple of my medicine cabinet. I found it handy living in New Mexico.

One time, I had used up every last drop of that magic lotion and went out to buy some more. I looked in grocery stores, supermarkets, and drugstores. There was not a connected worldwide web of information available then, so I asked a druggist about it. He said it was taken off the market. In fact, before it was removed, the druggists had to hide it behind the counter, and only sell one bottle, tube, or can of spray at a time to a customer. In fact, while it was still on the shelves, it was frequently stolen, at quite a loss for small stores. I asked him, “Why?” I still ask why about a lot of things; I have never stopped asking why.

So, he told me. It turns out, and it was no secret, that cocaine was the active ingredient. People would distill or chemically separate the cocaine from the lotion, and it was very profitable, not to mention illegal. Cocaine had already disappeared from Coca-Cola, and then the war on drugs took out my magic sunburn lotion. At the time, I couldn’t find anything else as effective.

Years ago, in the 1980s, on a trip through Mexico with my first wife, we spent time at a beach west of Hermosillo, in Bahía Kino (Kino Bay) on the Gulf of California. It was far south of the U.S. border, and a very long drive from New Mexico. We drove from Albuquerque down to I-10, and then to Tucson, Arizona, entering Mexico through Nogales. There’s really not much to see in the large expanses of desert, as the towns are few and far between. We spent a little time in Hermasillo. We would also visit Guaymas, a town full of colorful fishing boats, especially shrimper boats. The seafood there was incredible – fresh and flavorful beyond any supermarket offerings. On another trip, we had visited Ensenada in Baja California, a short drive south of Tijuana. It’s a beautiful place. But beaches on that whole stretch of coastline were all rocks. We were able to pitch our tent for free, but it hadn’t been fun on the rocks.

This time we wanted a sandy beach. In summer, there are few tourists in Bahía Kino besides the locals, a fact not lost on the entrepreneurs trying to sell us ironwood carvings and other knickknacks. They were very persistent. On our first day out, very early in the morning, after a brief swim, we decided, spontaneously, to walk along the beach that stretched out south along the bay. I think it was my idea. We walked a long time, too long, in retrospect. It was a cool, pleasant morning, and we enjoyed the walk. The end of the beach still looked a long way off, and the day was now becoming very hot.

Considering that, we decided to turn back. I also discovered I was getting sunburned on my feet. I had applied lotion to my body, but walking in the surf had cleaned it off. There were three problems: we hadn’t brought any clothes with us. I didn’t even have flip-flops or sandals on. I had no hat or sunglasses, so the sun continued to burn my arms, legs, and back, and my feet were already very hot. The sand on the beach was now too hot for me to walk on, so the bottoms of my feet weren’t feeling good either. There was no nearby road, no taxis, and no phone to use. There was no way back except to walk.

Usually, when sunburn attacks my pale skin after I’ve been in the sun too long, I go in, put clothes on, and stay out of the sun. We had miles to go. The beach is eight miles long. I didn’t know how far we’d gone, but it sure looked like a long walk back. The hotel near the beach looked very tiny. I spent a lot of the walk cooling my feet in the surf, but it was already far too late. Sunburns typically don’t show that intensely on me until some time after I quit the sun. The tops of my feet turned the color of lobsters before long.

When we made it back, we went immediately to the hotel, cleaned up, dressed, and went looking for a drugstore. I had taken some aspirin, but I needed help badly. The aisles were full of unfamiliar potions and lotions, so I asked the druggist what he had. First, he wanted to know why. I explained that my feet were very badly burned, so bad I was having trouble walking. I told him I could show him, but I had socks and shoes on, and they were painful to put on or take off, so he told me not to bother. He reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle of – would you believe it? – Solorcaine, with the information printed in Spanish. Glorious, wonderful Solorcaine. It was still legal in Mexico, but, from the way it was hidden, also subject to theft for cocaine extraction. I was so relieved. I thanked him profusely.

After that, we stayed off the beach, unless I kept my shoes on. I applied the lotion often, so we were able to continue our trip, and I could do my share of the driving. To this day, the tops of my feet turn bright red in a hot shower. I developed a mole on the top of one foot.

Eventually, my bottle of Mexican-bottled Solorcaine ran out. It’s hard to avoid the sun in New Mexico. There are few clouds and little moisture in the air most of the year. Albuquerque is a mile above sea level. That mile translates into about 20-25% more burning UV radiation, with little atmospheric shielding. I couldn’t wear long pants or shirt sleeves all summer. I had work to do outside, and I liked to walk, or hike in the mountains that are two miles high (50% more UV radiation). So, sure enough, I would get sunburned sometimes, even just walking around the large flea market on the State Fair property in town. I was always forgetting to wear a hat.

I found a solution, and it had always been so simple – aloe vera. Its botanical name is Aloe barbadensis Miller. It is sold as a thick gel combined with lanolin, and used in other cosmetics. However, all that is needed is the plant itself. All I have to do is break off a small piece and apply the viscous liquid. It dries quickly, forming a thin skin over the burned area, so it is also good for cuts and scrapes. My burned skin never peels after applying aloe copiously several times a day after sun exposure. I have two plants that thrive indoors near a window. I wear hats and sunglasses now and apply sunscreen lotion before hikes and motorcycle rides. I rarely need the aloe vera, but it’s a comfort to apply if I even think I’ve gotten too much sun.

Random Photos When I’m Bored, or Maybe Not

A New Mexico Sunrise

My Kitchen:

REALLY RANDOM THINGS:

Wine demijohn

VHS tapes from an auction

BEANS – found and returned to owner

George R.R. Martin’s Train

Myself

Scattered Light

YELLOW: Pears & Popcorn

Fire on a Cold Night

1512 Concert Security

President Garfield Memorial in New Mexico

Final Pic of my stolen Honda Magna

Reflection of my old Mercury Cougar in a rain puddle

Random Shots from a Photography Shoot:

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.

Parts of New Mexico Are Greener Than Memory Recalls

It has rained, and boy! has it rained. Right at the end of July, I went up in the mountains northwest of Grants, NM. My old friend Mark says it has been raining every day for a month, more than any time in his memory. He has been slowly building a Navajo hogan-inspired cabin out there for a long time. He took an eight-year break but has now returned to it. He says it’s 95% complete, pending some “fixes” to problems that arose. It may never be finished, not 100%. I help out occasionally, but I took the same eight-year period of time off to work for a winery. I took photos up there, as you might expect, only after each day’s work had finished. Mark is aging rapidly, with problems with the veins in his legs, and drives the short distance from his old airstream up the hill to the cabin. He is hiring people to finish the work now, as he is just not that strong anymore. Construction is hard work, and, with unusual problems, professionals are best.

He had built one wall of the structure into the hill, using local rock to create a vertical wall. However, it turns out that the rock is porous, and water seeped right in. Messy. But friends are working to waterproof the wall, and dig drainage channels along the wall, so water doesn’t run down the hill and build up against the wall. There are other finishing touches going on, but the roof is solid without leaks, so hopefully, the fixes will keep the rainwater that flows downhill outside away from the wall. Or perhaps this is a never-ending project. He already has a refrigerator and a wood cooking stove in the house, so habitation is near. Next time I will get some good shots of the interior, and the portal that was under construction then. Meanwhile, Mark invites people out and feeds everyone who comes. He pays the professionals. The food is always good. The scenery is spectacular. So, photos follow freely (click on the first one and scroll along to see them full scale as some of them are panoramic):

My Blood Was the Wrong Color

William Shakespeare wrote: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Yes, yes we do. There’s a song called, “We all bleed the same,” by Mandisa, featuring TobyMac and Kirk Franklin. It’s a great song, but I bring it up because it speaks to the idea that we’re all the same inside. Here’s the song, if you’re not familiar with it (but you should be):

Here’s another great song along the same lines, country, if you’re into that:

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. The internet can be so distracting! The only point I wanted to make is that I grew up believing this: that we all bleed the same color.

We can’t be that different from one another, if, underneath our skin, we’re all the same.

So, I donate blood platelets. There is a critical NEED for blood platelets right now, a shortage. There are not enough donors. If you can, please consider donating platelets. It takes between 1 1/2 to two hours, but please think about it. Cancer patients especially need it.

Today, I was all set to donate blood platelets. I had brought my sides for another audition I have in two days. I’ve had a lot of auditions lately. I made a tape of the lines, and had my script too, so I was going to spend the next two hours working on that. BUT, just as blood started flowing out of my my arm, the technician stared at it, and said: “It’s the wrong color!” Whaaaaat? I thought. The donation equipment (a bit more complicated than for the regular whole blood donation) shows a lot of information on a large computer screen. Color is one of the things monitored by this equipment. So, in addition to the much lighter, brighter color of red coming from my body, the computer was noisily flagging the problem. As it turns out – and I and the technicians had never seen it before – that color means they’ve hit an artery. It flows much faster, hence the lighter color red. I can’t describe the color exactly, but it’s bright, and somewhere on the large spectrum between dark red and pink.

So, that killed the whole donation process. If you can donate blood platelets today, please do so to replace what I wasn’t able to donate. Or soon anyway.

Once I was disconnected, Candice, the tech, put gauze on the puncture as usual, all the time saying she didn’t think she hit an artery, that she never had before. Candice was really appalled that she might have done that. She was hoping she hadn’t, but the computer had flagged the whole donation, so they had to disconnect me and throw everything away. Not much blood was lost, just what was in the long coil of tubing. So, Candice had me put pressure on the spot while she did other things. But, right away, I noticed blood seeping right through the thick gauze, a lot of blood. So, it looked like she had indeed gotten an artery. I felt bad for her. She kept apologizing, but hey, shit happens. I wasn’t worried about it, just regretted that I couldn’t donate platelets today, in fact not for several days. Again – donate platelets in my place if you can. (If you are in the Albuquerque area go to the main blood services center on University Blvd near Indian School Rd.) Tell ’em Terry sent you, or Robert. Legally, my first name is actually Robert, so that’s what’s in their system.

Candice got more gauze and put a lot of pressure on the tiny hole in my arm for 15 minutes. After that, the bleeding had stopped, but she put fresh gauze on, along with strapping a large cold pack over that. I will need to put cold packs on today for a while and be alert for my fingers turning black or blue. Maybe purple?

Anyway, Candice gave me extra cold packs, a couple of warm packs, and more gauze and tape. As I sit here, I have a cold pack taped to my arm, It’s great this way – I can walk around and do things with both arms. Of course, as with any blood donation, I need to keep it wrapped for four hours, and not do any heavy lifting, or use my arm for anything strenuous. I usually don’t need to apply cold or hot packs, but this time I do, mostly to prevent bruising, which is a given considering the large swollen bump on my arm. That happened because, when applying pressure to fast-bleeding wounds, the blood goes where it can, which is under the skin. If it is bruised tonight or tomorrow, I’ll use the hot packs.

So a little adventure today, from a commonplace procedure. A micro-adventure?

And it was nice to meet Candice.

Time to stop procrastinating, and work on the audition (if selected, I will be a character who gets punched in the face, killed, and stuffed in a trunk).

Sounds like fun.

————————————————————————————————————

UPDATES: Sept. 22, 2022

I did indeed develop a bruise from the artery puncture. Colorful, but not painful. There is, after a week, a small nodule under the skin, in the muscle where the needle stick was. Scar tissue, I think. It’s hard, but will push down into the muscle when I press on it. However, I went back Monday, the 19th, and completed a full platelet donation (in the other arm!).

I did not get a part in the small film I mentioned auditioning for. They did ask if I’d be willing to be an extra, But I do less background-extra work these days, and only for money, not for free.

Wine Festival Microburst in Albuquerque, with Photos

So, yesterday, I attended the Harvest Wine Festival at Balloon Fiesta Park in Albuquerque.

I had done a few tastings but decided to get something to eat. The only place I could find with decent prices was the one above, Jenn’s – and that’s the menu. All of the other places have simple fare at $12 (hotdog & fries), and rest were plates for 13, 14, and $15 or more. I chowed done on a Nathan’s chili dog, then sat chatting with a couple at my table who were newcomers to a wine festival. Then I felt a cool breeze, and had all of a few seconds to savor it before the wind went crazy. The trash from the meal I’d just eaten started to blow away, so I grabbed it, but the wind blew up all of a sudden, ripping the carton, paper, and plasticware right out of my hand like someone had grabbed it from me.

It was a microburst! a mini, mini tornado. I estimate it affected an area 50 feet wide all across the north end of the festival, and right where I was sitting. There was a whistling sound. Near me a trash can fell over and the wind just sucked trash right out of it. It was over quickly, but it was the oddest feeling, as if I had lost touch with the earth. Then there was complete stillness. No wind for a few moments. Looking around I could see the heavy metal pipes that hold the tents up bent and twisted like toothpicks. Most of the tent had collapsed except where I was sitting. Across the way, three winery tents and a couple booths were either completely blown away or partially collapsed. I hadn’t seen any injuries, but I heard later that a few people had been conked on the head, but nothing serious. The rest of the festival people went right on tasting, buying, and selling wine, but the festival staff shut it all down early about 3:30.

On a table in one of the photos, you can see my wine glass sitting right where I had left it, just as it was – upside down on my table. I forgot all about it. Here are some photos:

Afterward, I took a bottle of a 2018 Sauvage, a Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine from Gruet. A nice flavorful, fruit-forward dry champagne.

Some Minor Plumbing, A Party, & Indian Market

So, today, I was inspired to fix the steadily decreasing flow of hot water in my bathroom sink. There was a good flow in the bathtub, and in the kitchen. The connections underneath the sink had leaked years ago, leaving the brass fittings corroded green. It looked awful under there, so I took all of the plumbing for the hot water apart, including the flexible supply line to the faucet, which broke when I tried to remove it. It was a bitch getting the shut-off valve off from the fitting on the copper pipe coming from the wall. First I shut off the main hot water line, but, for safety, shut off the separate cold water feed line. Where I live we get hot water from a community boiler, which is used as both hot water and for heating. Both valves (common globe valves, which I drew in mechanical drawing classes in high school), were hard to close so I had to use a pipe wrench to turn them.

After I had removed all of the connections I biked down to the hardware store to figure out what I needed. For some reason, whoever had installed or replaced the connections had added extra parts from the faucet which only extended the length. Made no sense. I only needed a new faucet supply line and a new shut-off valve. ($18) It took hours to get it all done. When I turned the water back on, I found that the hot water still wasn’t flowing more than before – a very weak stream. So, back to the drawing board. I took the faucet apart to remove the valve stem. The stem looked clean, but I rinsed it out as best I could. It hadn’t looked clogged at all. I had been anticipating buying another one, but I put it back in. The hot water flowed freely after that. When I turned the cold water faucet on, a whole lot of crud came out, rust and dirt and such – very discolored water – but it all cleared up. The tap filter on the output of the tap suddenly filled with tiny bits of stones (probably calcium and other hard water minerals we have in our tap water).

So, hurrah! Problem solved, and I finally got rid of those old corroded connections underneath.

I had been ignoring the problem until I had a guest, and I had to explain that I had been putting off repairs because I suspected the work would not be simple, and I had been incredibly busy with things I found more important. My guest was fine with that and used the kitchen sink to wash up, but today was the first chance I’d had since she left this past Sunday. She is from Arizona, an old friend.

This past weekend we had traveled to Santa Fe on the lovely “Railrunner” train that runs from Los Lunes to Santa Fe. $3.50 round trip for the two of us the first day, but we missed it the next day and had to drive up. She had rented a car so she drove. It was nice to be in Santa Fe again. Indian Market is an annual event that had been postponed for the last two years. This year was the biggest I’d ever seen. The booths stretched from the plaza, north for half a mile at least, and up and down side streets.

George R.R. Martin’s Train

All of the galleries in and near the Plaza in Santa Fe were open, providing enticing food, drinks, and demos of art in progress to entice the thousands of visitors into their shops. I had already filled up on a Frito Pie from the original Five and Dime store on the Plaza, which is where Frito Pies were invented: beans, ground meat, red chile sauce, and Fritos, all served in the Frito’s bag itself. I never miss getting one when I’m in Santa Fe. The best thing is that the Häagen-Dazs shop is close by, so I cool off my mouth with a scoop of coffee ice cream after my Frito Pie. Frito Lay, of course, was initially upset that their name had been used without permission, and had sued the little drugstore for using their name, but it all got settled years ago. Hell, around here, you can get a Frito Pie almost everywhere, so that’s a lot of Frito’s Corn Chips that people need for those. Good business for Frito Lay.

Anyway, we walked and walked and gawked at all of the fancy sculptures, paintings, jewelry, and such that show up at Indian Market. There was a pottery sculpture of a dragon-like creature on display in a shop for $13,500. Other pottery goes for thousands as well, especially of the famous potter Maria Martinez, who died in 1980, but her pottery is always around. The artwork in Santa Fe is some of the most expensive that I have ever seen. Antique sculpture, pottery, and rugs fetch a pretty penny in Santa Fe. It is a popular destination for people around the world, so that stuff sells, as well as western clothing, hats, belts, and boots.

I have to admit I got in the buying spirit myself. I avoid buying anything in Santa Fe besides the Frito Pies and ice cream, but I had recently lost a good Panama straw hat to high winds on a movie set. Someone crushed it by stepping on it to stop it from rolling away! I managed to buy a Beaver Brand straw cowboy hat at an estate sale a month ago for $10, but it is a little big and cowboyish to wear around town. The Beaver Brand Hat company has gone out of business, so it seemed like a deal I couldn’t pass up at the time. Here’s what it looks like:

Beaver Brand hat

So, while in Santa Fe, I bought another hat. It is black and made of wool. My friend kept saying how good it looked, so the next day I went back to the store and bought it. I don’t usually care for style. I like hats that keep my head warm or keep the sun off of my face but got the hat anyway. In my defense, it is water resistant, and not too hot to wear during the change of seasons. I think it will do nicely through most of the winter here in the Southwest as well. And, IT’S ADJUSTABLE with a string inside. Here ’tis:

It looks better in person – my mirror is not very clean, and the shadows suck.

I often need to bring a choice of hats to movie sets.

So Indian Market over, I had things to do this week before I could get the sink fixed. Monday morning I was off to the public library downtown, where I was to meet a writer/moviemaker who is putting a radio program together for a podcast. We had already done this, with another actor, but I was too far from the microphone the whole time, so my voice needed to be redone. It’s a good role. I play a nasty villain, and I had to put myself in character for that. We got it done. For once, I didn’t need a hat! The sound is good. The other actor’s voices are recorded, and the writer/director has a truckload of sound effects, a good audio editing program, and a really good script. We’ll see how it goes. I certainly enjoyed the experience.

Yesterday I joined my motorcycle buddies for breakfast in Los Lunes, after which a few of us went for a longer ride. We rode through beautiful country, on side roads, through small towns, country roads, and lots of empty desert, under mostly blue sky with a bunch of fluffy white clouds in it. It had been raining every day, and parts of northern New Mexico that had been on fire got soaked, and there was some flooding along the burn scars. We were lucky and got treated to a glorious day and a great ride with a cool wind.

For the previous two weeks, I’d been memorizing audition roles. I had someone tape one in which I had to do two completely different takes of the same scene. I feel pretty good about my work on that one. No word yet, but that’s normal.

After that, I had to do a self-tape to audition for a healthcare commercial. It involved lines from multiple characters. It seemed like there was to be humor involved, from my interpretation of the scripted lines, so I improvised what I thought went along with the script and was funny. I even added some physical humor. I was really happy with the results. I hope to hear from them. Meanwhile, I have an audition upcoming that’s due in early September – I usually don’t get so much time in advance, but it gave me time to do other things, like a birthday party dinner with people I know in the movie business, a poetry slam competition, getting estimates for dental work, and all the other stuff I’ve already talked about.

Which reminds me – I’d better find that other script and get working on it. They are giving me time to be creative, so I’d better do some thinking about this and create a few different takes on it. The sooner I get that submitted, the better. Then there will be more to do.

Winner Take Nothing by Hemingway, A Review

I have always liked Hemingway’s short stories. The first book of his I ever read was Up In Michigan. Those stories captivated me in high school, and I endeavored to read more. I’ve read his novels, and only just found this collection of stories written between 1930 and 1933. It is his second book. The stories vary in subject and tone, ranging from Europe and the U.S.A. to forest and city. What sticks out of course are Hemingway’s dialogues. They are, I imagine, collected from hundreds of conversations he remembered during his travels to many and sundry places. They have the feel of actual conversations, neither profound nor trite, but words of the real people he met or observed. Beyond that, I sensed these stories were raw and unpolished, with Hemingway experimenting with style and literary devices. In the titular story, he repeats it three times, for example, showing us three versions he couldn’t choose between. In another story, his descriptions of the countryside, the colors of the fields, the types of crops, and the look of the people are very lush. I’d heard that he tended to use short powerful sentences, but that is not always the case with these stories. All of them are good, and some are exceptional, such as Fathers and Sons, which explodes with violent and sexual imagery set against the bucolic countryside story I mentioned above.

The top image is of the actual book I have, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. This image is of a dust jacket for that book. I’m convinced of that because the book is a 1933 edition and the dust jacket image is of a 1933 Scribner’s hardcover edition, according to the Goodreads website. The book pages have a uniform yellow tone, and the rough cut edges are continually shedding small slivers, so I’m convinced this is the case. I wish I had the dust jacket, but it did its job protecting the covers of my book.

Here’s a sample:

Jonathan Dove, Green Flame, and Dvořák

It’s still Sunday evening (06/26/22) as I write this, and it’s still raining. I made it to Chatter Sunday after all, despite my confusion at 01:47 am as to what day it is. After getting home from a movie set in Santa Fe at 5:15 am on Saturday morning, getting one hour of sleep before my 7:30 am dental appointment, and wasting the rest of the day catching up on messages, packaging a couple items to ship, taking naps, and watching a movie, I suddenly found myself thinking I’d missed the Sunday morning chamber music concert. It takes place 50 Sundays a year. And I’d already paid for my ticket since it often sells out.

I was writing after I’d finished the movie, and never imagined it was almost 2:00 in the morning. So, when I saw Sunday on the computer clock, I really thought I’d been doing all that stuff that same day, until I put 2 and 2 together, and realized I hadn’t missed the concert after all. I posted my previous ramblings around 2:00 am and slept. Woke up around 7:00 am, decided not to get up until 9:15 am, and headed out to the home of Chatter Sunday by 9:50 am. Even though I no longer have coffee every day, I got an Americano (two espresso shots in hot water), two tiny palmiers, and a small apricot muffin. I was ready.

Taking the stage were eleven musicians with two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three ancient French horns, a cello, and a double bass.

First up was Figures in the Garden by contemporary composer Jonathan Dove. It was superb! I enjoyed it very much. It was based on music from Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, but with a unique modern tempo and variations.

Next up was the poet Pamela Uschuk. (Spoken Word is always a feature of Chatter Sunday.) She surprised me with her poetry, her background, and her history of surviving cancer. She has a European heritage with family in Ukraine, so she spoke of that and support for the refugees from Ukraine. Sergei Vassiliev, on clarinet, from Ukraine himself, also spoke about the war, his relatives still in Ukraine, and his mother, who not only lives in the U.S. now but was in the audience. We gave her a heartfelt round of applause. Ah, I distracted myself again – I was talking about the poet Ms. Uschuk. She graced us with four poems, including her wonderful poem BULK, recently updated, about many things, including her brother, elephants, bullets, an Israeli humvee wracking Gaza streets, and the bulk of lotus blossoms a manatee hugs to her chest to eat. A fasinating look at things she considered important to tell us about, connected by the common concept of bulk.

My favorite poem of hers is GREEN FLAME. Here tis:

Slender as my ring finger, the female hummingbird crashed

into plate glass separating her and me

before we could ask each other’s name. Green Flame,

she launched from a dead eucalyptus limb.

Almost on impact, she was gone, her needle beak

opening twice to speak the abrupt language of her going,

taking in the day’s rising heat as I took

one more scalding breath, horrified by death’s velocity.

Too weak from chemo not to cry

for the passage of her emerald shine,

I lifted her weightlessness into my palm.

Mourning doves moaned, who, who,

oh who while her wings closed against the tiny body

sky would quick forget as soon as it would forget mine.

There followed Hymnus no. 2 by Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998).

After Chatter’s traditional two minutes of silence, we were treated to the 1878 Serenade for Winds in D minor op. 44, by Dvořák. It was rousing. It was rhythmic. Really, parts of this were based on Slavonic style. And, it was danceable! I happily tapped my right foot and slapped my left hand on my left thigh.

Life can be good, despite war, loss, and pain. And it is still raining! The state-wide fires are going out.

Ah, Rain, How I Love Thee

We’ve been having a lot of rain in New Mexico lately, after 70 days without any measurable rainfall. We’ve all been waiting for it. We love rain here because there’s so little of it. The state has been in drought conditions for years. the longest duration lasted 329 weeks beginning on May 1, 2001 and ending on August 14, 2007. The most intense period of drought occurred the week of January 19, 2021, affecting 54.27% of the state. After what seemed like an unending explosion of fires throughout the state, the rain is so very welcome. Of course, now the problem is monsoon rains that have brought flash floods and landslides. But that’s New Mexico. I love it here, although the fires have been getting worse with such extremely dry conditions, and now the fire areas (burn scars) don’t have the vegetation needed to prevent mudslides in such heavy rains.

But the rain, predicted to last through June 21, is still coming. It’s Sunday now, June 29. The rain has been falling for hours, off and on. I enjoy the light rain pattering on the roof, and I love the heavy pounding of rain during cloudbursts. It’s all good here. When I went for a short walk a while ago, after one of the little rainstorms, I found a large clump of snails on the sidewalk. There were all mostly out of their shells sliding all over each other. I saw a couple strays nearby, but it seemed that about six to eight snails were having an orgy. Imagine that – a snail orgy.

But I also noticed that the rain sounds so different while I paused under the huge Mulberry tree outside my front door. It had a strange resonance. Usually, people say, “The rained drummed on the roof,” but this sound was so unlike that. No drumming. Repetitive, yes. But also extremely pleasant, reminding me of an orchestra of wind instruments. Imagine that: strings played by the rain, for the pleasure of the snails.

Well, I put a movie on tonight while the rain played its tune. I had a copy of The Leisure Seeker on my shelf since last year, and finally popped it in the player tonight. I bought it because it stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, two consummate actors. And, you say? Yes, I liked it. Comedy and tragedy. So very well done. I say comedy, because, in the short interview with the actors after the movie ended, Sutherland called it a comedy with a tragic ending. But it’s not any kind of laugh-out-loud comedy. The comedy fell out more like British comedy, funny, as in strange, with unpredictable actions and words.

In actuality, Sutherland’s character has advanced Alzheimer’s, and Mirren’s character is gravely ill, but they spontaneously take a road trip in an old, oil-burning, well-used RV. The movie seemed more like a slice-of-life adventure, with it’s real-life ups and downs, just as life had been for this plucky couple. The denouement of their lives plays out throughout the movie until the movie itself reaches its climax.

Throughout, we experience the inexplicable devastation of someone’s mind as Alzheimer’s disease takes its slow toll on memory and quality of life. Yet, these two people have a chance to share their love and laughs, and even painful memories, as the unexpected surprises even them.

Through it all, I could see myself in the characters, as I often do when reading books or watching movies. I feel the deterioration of my body and brain all the time, and it is already far more than just being easily distracted, or having the body run down slowly. My heart is not well, and it was very noticeable in the aftermath of an extremely painful and traumatizing tooth extraction recently. As the pain continued, unabated for days and nights on end, my heart struggled. I felt it leaping and struggling to keep up. There was pain. And, the antibiotic I took caused severe stomach pain with constipation, and it added to the malaise generated by the pain in my entire jaw. My eyes are rapidly deteriorating now, as opposed to the barely perceptible changes over the last 40 years. My right hand and shoulder move randomly, sometimes spasmodically. My driving is becoming erratic. Working on a movie set for 13 hours is thoroughly exhausting, and much more difficult to recover from than it was just a few years ago. Driving home late, through the very dark section of interstate highway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque has become nerve-wracking and scary.

As I was writing this, I realized that today is Sunday, and I had purchased a ticket to Chatter Sunday, and forgotten to go again. I so enjoy the music and the poetry. Nothing kept me from going. I knew I was going as recently as last night, but it slipped my mind again. Well, c’est la vie, as the French say. Fuck it, I say. Except, it is simply late, in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I hadn’t noticed it was even past midnight. I will probably go to Chatter Sunday after all later on today. It’s still Sunday.

I will continue on, abandoned as I am in life. I have my motorcycle to ride, and buddies to ride with. I have my acting classes to memorize things for. I’m creating a storyboard for a class commercial project that I will add to my clips. I will also create both a sad and a funny monologue for the same reason. I will be part of a movie the whole class will create. It’s also for my clips and resume. I keep going. One day I will run down. I will be no more. But not yet.

A Play, An Old Haunt, & Restlessness

I am feeling better than I have for the last month or so. Too much about that to rehash it again. Today I got Covid tested because I’m working on a movie set tomorrow. Of course, they’re still shooting, so I don’t have a call time yet. At least it’s only an hour away. I’ll probably end up driving home in the dark from Santa Fe at the start of the weekend – not my favorite time to be on I-25. Long hills, up aaaand down, and curves that I can’t see coming. Anyway, I can use the extra bucks, even though New Mexico taxes those checks, I still owe a lot of money to the State come tax time. Perhaps it will be better next year now that New Mexico has decided not to tax Social Security income anymore. Regardless, I do enjoy being on sets.

Tonight I went to a play, yes, a play – plays have been shut down since Covid began here, but they’re coming back. A classmate from my movie acting class invited me to see it. It’s called Keely and Du. She is Du. It’s not the sort of thing I’d likely have gone to see if she wasn’t in it, because the topic is abortion, but the play is not about that so much. It is about the interaction between a woman who was raped and goes to a clinic to get a safe, legal abortion. On the way, however, she is kidnapped by a fanatical underground Right-To-Life group who plan to change her mind while they imprison her and feed her propaganda leaflets. It’s clear that the group puts the life and rights of the unborn above the rights of the mother, but they take care of her invalid father while she is imprisoned.

All that aside, the play is about the two women; Keely, who was violently raped by her ex-husband while he beat her head against the floor. She hates him, and cannot bear to have his child inside her. Du is her nurse, who stays with her in the cellar prison. Du, perhaps because she lost her infant daughter after three heart operations, is fanatically against abortion for any reason. She is not as insufferable as the Christian doctor who leads the group, but she never gives up on saving the baby, and comes to realize that Keely needs her help. The play is about their interaction. Both actors were incredible. I do not know the woman who played Keely, but Ramona, who played Du, is my classmate. She was incredible! Applause, applause, applause.

The play was written by Jane Martin (pseudonym) and published in 1993. No one knows the playwright’s real name. With the state of our country, divided as it is over this subject, I can understand why she keeps her real name secret. The play is very powerful, but it was made into a movie in 2018 in case you cannot see the play. It is worth seeing, no matter which camp you fall into. I think the play, based on what I saw tonight, is a better vehicle for this story.

So, afterward, I decided to stop on the way home. The Frontier Restaurant is an iconic place in Albuquerque.

The sweet, warm, iced cinnamon rolls there are amazing! Try with melted butter.

The place opened in 1971, right on Route 66. I first started going there in 1977 while I worked for the University of New Mexico, which sprawls across the street from Frontier. Forty-five years ago was the first time I went to this place! The food is always good, even though it’s a bit on the fast-food side. I can and did get a freshly prepared Carne Adovada burrito in minutes. The New Mexico food is great, and the chile is spicy, but there are lots of food options, They have those automated drink machines now, the ones that are popping up all over, and there are 200 choices. I got a regular ginger ale, although I could have added any of five flavors to it. I prefer ginger beer, but they didn’t have that.

I ate in because watching the people come and go there, especially at night, is always fascinating. There are lots of young college students, of course, but also street people, theater people, families, people literally covered in tattoos, and those with wild piercings, and/or almost fluorescent hair. You see every kind of person in there. Most of the time, everything is cool. But, sometimes there are crazy people out late at night, sometimes doped up, drunk, or looking for trouble, so now there is an armed security guard always present. That’s sad.

It was a joy to visit the Frontier again. I’m not often in the University area, but when I am I stop in. What’s sad is that I have been doing so for forty-five years. I think I need to get out of town. I need to just take off again, and see where I end up. That’s how I ended up in Albuquerque in the first place. Jobs, union, and family kept me here, stable and comfortable. Increasingly, I think it’s time to move on. I don’t have a destination in mind, but forty-five years in one place is an awfully long time. I’m retired, and I don’t own a house. I’ve no family here. There are people I know, mountains to climb, movies to audition for, and really, there is plenty to do here. I’ve no reason to leave, but conversely, no reason not to. When I crisscrossed the country those many years ago, I met plenty of people on the road. You form quick friendships if you’re open to it. You get to know people quickly. You don’t watch much TV, or see plays, or watch movies. You just live day to day. I had that once upon a time.

I could go somewhere, stay for a bit, and then move on, again, and again, and again until I die. Or perhaps, find something that really excites me, gives me purpose or an emotional connection. But, I think I’ve gone past working for carnivals or odd jobs, riding my bicycle around the country with just the clothes on my back, or having casual sex with strangers while we seek elusive connection. I’m not connected to anyone here, so I want more than that anyway.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT BY A WORDPRESS ARTIST/AUTHOR

I’m just rambling tonight. My mind is clear, I’ve no pain. I’ve given up coffee and booze. I like writing, but I’m not very consistent about it. I may not make it as an actor. I could write a screenplay. I’ve seen a lot and done a lot, but the exciting things were in my youth. I wish I could travel to other planets. It’s always been my dream to travel to space, to go out there. Explore. Star Trek echoed my dream, but it never came to pass. I should run for President.

This Moment in Time

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyám, Persian polymath: mathematician, astronomer, historian, philosopher, and poet.

A little while ago, I sent the quote above to my dearest Maya as she left town on the next adventure in her life. I sent it with mixed emotions. I was happy for her that she was taking charge of her life, not content to stay in bad jobs and lose her spirit. She truly is an amazing person: curious, full of life, energy, determination, and love for others. But, something was sadly missing from her life, and she’s off to find it, or at least search for it, because, sometimes, that is the best that we all can do.

Despite all that, it was miserably sad for me to feel her leave. It still causes my eyes to water just to say that. It was terrible at first: days of tears soaking into my beard, depression, heartache, and a sense of loss that I could not imagine ever recovering from. I am, of course, happy she was in my life, however peripherally at times, and gloriously when we worked together making and selling wine or going to wine tastings together, sometimes blind-tasting wines. It was fun to see how much we had learned, or still didn’t know about wines. It was fun to celebrate our birthdays and celebrate holidays together.

And that’s over. It hurts to realize that.

Then I found that intense physical pain could eclipse such mental and emotional anguish. The pain was so awful from the beating I took to my jaw and head to have an old molar tooth removed, through extensive pushing, pulling, and hammering away at the tooth, breaking it into little pieces. I had never experienced such pain after any medical procedure or accident. It was only days, but they were days of pain that I could not believe possible to endure. Moments when I felt I’d rather die than go on having pain that overwhelming consumed me, unrelentingly, pain not even dulled by opiates. And yet… And yet, here I am. I survived.

There is still pain in being physically separated from Maya. There is still soreness in my jaw.

One thing I learned from the tooth extraction, on top of Maya’s departure – besides being something of a wimp when it comes to constant, unforgiving pain – is that it does end. The screaming in pain, the despair, the crying – all of those things have ended, but are not forgotten.

It feels trite to say so, but really, it’s another day. I survived what seemed unsurvivable. I’m here now.

This moment is my life, not yesterdays and yesterdays. It appears I can survive anything. Like Maya, I don’t want to just go on living, just to exist. I want more, and I keep trying for a more fulfilling life, one with real joy in it. I haven’t given up. It appears to be that I must exist moment to moment, and take joy in that I can still look for joy, for something or someone in my life. If I can’t have Maya by my side while I search, at least I can take comfort that she is on a similar path, even though we may never cross paths again.

A Visit to My Dentist to Address Pain Goes Awry

Pain. There is nothing like physical pain to shock oneself out of emotional pain, such as the loss of someone you love, even if they’ve just moved far away.

This pain, though, I wouldn’t have asked for. There are worse things, but when you experience a pain that is unlike any other, pain that doesn’t respond to drugs, that continues unrelenting at the same unbearable level for days on end – you want it to end by any means necessary. Even death seems preferable.

It all started, in my youth, with a loose tooth. I had lost all of my primary teeth – the ones we all call baby teeth – except for one. I had never given it any thought. For all I could remember, all of those baby teeth were gone. But that one tooth felt loose one day. A dentist confirmed that it was indeed a primary tooth, which is what medical professionals call them. It wasn’t coming out, it was firmly in the gum. I had it capped on the advice of the dentist, in order to stabilize it. Years later, I had to repeat that process. Finally, on seeing a dentist for an unrelated problem, I mentioned the loose tooth. It was a molar, and one root had dissolved. She suggested that I have the tooth pulled, and replace it with a bridge. Big mistake.

I understood that the bridge would be anchored to the adjacent teeth, and would cover the gap, looking like a real tooth. I said OK. The removal of the baby tooth took a lot of work. The dentist repositioned herself several times trying to get it out. She pulled and pulled, but it was very firmly in there. Finally she pulled it out – all in one piece – and it had brought quite a bit of flesh with it. Painful, but not overwhelmingly so. Once it had healed, she started preparing me for the bridge. To do so, and I hadn’t understood this, she had to grind down the healthy tooth on either side as if for a crown. Because, well, because the teeth would be the supports for the bridge over the gap, and had to be one integral piece. So, it was two crowns connected together – creating a bridge over a gap.

What had worried me at the time was what would happen if even one of those two teeth were to be attacked by decay. So, recently – four days ago – I found out. The bridge had to be removed. Previously, the posterior molar had one root removed by a dentist – specialist – who convinced me that the root was interfering with the regeneration of a deep pocket in my gum adjacent to it. Why the pocket had formed, I have no idea, but it trapped a lot of food and took a lot of effort to clean out. So, in a bizarre procedure, he went into my gum horizontally, and slowly sawed the one root off. The pocket never leveled out, and it took persistent flossing to clean food particles out, but, it also didn’t get worse. I was very thorough.

Suddenly, last week, I had pain, a pain that appeared to come from that bridge. My current dentist removed the bridge, exposing decay in that same posterior tooth that had one root sawed off. I wanted him to do a root canal to save the tooth. I hate to lose any tooth. He said that he didn’t want to do that. If I wanted to recreate the bridge, it wouldn’t have sufficient strength with one root. However, it had lasted at least 35 years before. In a prior visit, he had recommended pulling the tooth. He also said that a tooth implant there would cost $2500. I would need two. I survive on a small pension, supplemented with social security. I don’t have an extra $5000 just laying around. I let him remove the tooth anyway, but I shouldn’t have.

It turned out, AGAIN, that the tooth wasn’t going to go anywhere. It was firmly rooted in the underlying bone or adjacent bone, and he spent over an hour getting it out. I thought he could just pull it out, but he couldn’t get a good grip on it, probably because of the mandibular tori I have alongside my teeth. These tori are bony growths. In me, they resemble a second interior row of teeth below the gumline, but alongside my normal teeth. It is difficult to clean the interior of my teeth because of this thing, which is all of one piece really, so it feels odd to use the plural form of a torus.

NOT my mouth, but similar

During the procedure to remove that poor abused tooth, he was not just pulling, he was pushing, pushing down so hard I had to tighten my jaw muscles to keep my head straight. He was using all of his strength, and I felt like I was in a tremendous fistfight. He kept pushing and pulling at the tooth until he broke it into many small pieces. It was exhausting and traumatic in a way that anesthesia doesn’t touch. He even stopped to give me more shots that felt like they went into my tongue and lip.

Even now, my lip is swollen and looks bruised, probably because he used it as a place to support his hand while digging away at the tooth. When I went home, due to all the anesthesia, I felt OK. Before I had gone to see the dentist I had been in intermittent pain that had finally become constant. I had used a mixture of ibuprofen and acetaminophen that a doctor had once recommended for persistent pain. It had become less effective until I was using more and more. I figured that the removal of the offending tooth would relieve some of the pain and pressure, so the ibuprofen/acetaminophen cocktail would be enough.

I wouldn’t be writing this if it had been enough, even enough to at least dull the edge of the pain. In fact, IT HAD NO EFFECT AT ALL. I was miserable all night. I slept only fitfully, waking up and taking even more pills that first night. The following morning I called to see about getting something for the pain. The dentist prescribed acetaminophen/codeine pills. OK, I thought, but I used plenty of codeine in cough syrups when I was younger, and I had my doubts it could mitigate pain like I was having. My pain was epic: continuous, intense beyond any injury I’d ever suffered – a broken bone, a ruptured appendix with sepsis, bad sprains, two hernia repairs, and a head injury – all rolled into one, and more.

I paced, I screamed, and I was moved to tears by this pain. I had never been so affected in my entire life. I felt like I’d be better off dead. I would have done anything to stop this pain. I tried the codeine. IT HAD NO EFFECT. The directions said to take one pill every six hours. I took one. Two hours later, as there was no lessening of the pain, I took another. Two hours later I took two pills and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. The pain was overwhelming. I was up all night taking pills two at a time. I slept in short bursts. At 4:30 am, racked by pain, I took four of the codeine pills at once. After some frantic pacing, yelling, and exhaustion, I felt a slight dulling of the pain.

I couldn’t sleep. The dentist’s office wouldn’t open until 7:30 am. I got through it because of the four codeine pills, but I knew I couldn’t do any more of that. Besides, I only had five of the fifteen pills left. At 7:00 am, I stretched out on the bed to rest. I slept for an hour, so then I rushed over to the dentist to present my case for a stronger medication. As a drop-in patient, I had to wait for scheduled patients, but I didn’t have to pace for long. Previously that morning, I had noticed that my jaw and lower lip were swollen. My dentist was not in that day, but I spoke with the dentist of the day, who ordered another x-ray. He saw nothing of concern. I asked for and got an antibiotic (amoxicillin) and a stronger drug (hydrocodone-acetaminophen). I took the antibiotic immediately. I held off on the new opioid since I still had plenty of the previous opioid in my system. Overdosing on opioids was not an option I wanted to experience. Later, as the codeine wore off, I took a hydrocodone pill. After some time had passed, as I was still in pain, I took a couple more ibuprofen liquid capsules. Less than half an hour later, the pain stopped. I was shocked, but I think it was the combination of the two opioids in my system and the antiinflammatory pills. I still had some soreness in my jaw, but that mind-numbing pain was gone.

Finally satisfied that I had something that worked on the pain. I dismissed the codeine as ineffective and just used the new opioid. My cheek and lip are still swollen, and there is a small painful nodule in my gum below the space where my tooth had been, so, as a precaution, I continue to take the antibiotic, even though I haven’t experienced any fever. I am scheduled to see my dentist again in a week. I think he dislocated my jaw because I felt something slip when I stretched my mouth. Part of me wants to punch HIM in the jaw.

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A RADIOGRAM TAKEN OF MY TEETH TWO YEARS AGO

You can see the former bridge (lower jaw) on the right side of this picture in bright white. The left tooth remains with the bridge cut clean there, but the underlying metal is now exposed on the posterior side. I’ll probably need a new crown on it at some point. I’m not removing any teeth ever again.

She’s Gone Now

MAYA self-portrait

She is out of state now, riding with her dad and her small pile of simple possessions. She is going to try driving a little on the straight sections of Interstate 40. I hope her dad lets her. She misses that bit of independence. The lack of peripheral vision in her left eye is due to the operation to remove a cancerous growth in her brain. It’s all that remains of her illness and treatments. Her doctor said she no longer needed testing, and she didn’t need to see him anymore. She says it’s the best breakup she’s ever had. That was years ago. She always runs a lot and stays healthy. Her body looks extremely fit at 38 years old, although she has found a few grey hairs.

Trying to avoid obsessing about her departure, I read a book called The Death House, by Sarah Pinborough, about a place in a dystopian future where the British take children with defective genes who are going to die horrible deaths. It is a great story of resilience in the face of tragedy and the power of the human spirit. I enjoyed it, but it is a tragedy, and the ending was a bit more than I could take today.

My thoughts just keep going to Maya. Sometimes that’s OK. She’s on her way to a new life and her future is unknown. I am happy for her. Her happiness has always meant a lot to me. I love her. But then this malaise (anxiety?) comes upon me, and I don’t know how I will survive. Really. That’s not hyperbole. Tears appear on my cheeks from time to time. I’m restless, pacing, and unable to eat right now, although I ate well yesterday. Emotions make my throat constrict. It’s so bad now that I can hardly get a bite of food down. It all comes and goes. Writing this is painful, but what else am I to do? I drank two beers talking with my neighbor last night, but it didn’t help. I wrote a poem a few days ago about Maya and her imminent departure. I sent it to a poet I know, but there’s been no reply yet. It’s painful to read now. It hurts so bad. All those years I’ve known her, 30 wonderful years of having Maya in my life. The joy I feel every day that she survived brain cancer, that she is alive and healthy, is overshadowed by my selfish despair at the lack of her presence in town, my inability to see her, have lunch with her, go to dinner with her, or enjoy a fine wine tasting at the Slate Street restaurant. It’s all just memories now. I find it hard to take. She kept me stable, alive, and happy. I have no family here, no close friends. I didn’t need anyone with Maya around.

Now I’m lost. More alone than I was when she was here and often unavailable. More alone than I’ve ever felt. The tears are rolling down my cheeks again. It’s happened in the past. It’s not the first time I’ve been through this: the first lover I lived with who left me suddenly for another after I’d moved here to start a life with her, the two marriages over a combined twenty-one years that ended in divorce, the death of my father, the dread that hit me when Maya was first diagnosed with a brain tumor, the fear that she would end her existence in this world.

It feels like all of that rolled into one terrible waking nightmare. I can’t wake up from this. I try reading. I signed up for a hiking trip to the Capulin Volcano National Monument. I lost my Shadow motorcycle a while back to a mechanical failure that I caused accidentally. I finally found one to replace it. Actually, I hadn’t liked it as much as my old Honda Magna with its four cylinders, four carburetors, and four exhaust pipes. That one was stolen from me two years ago. I replaced it with that Honda Shadow Phantom that I broke. I have not been able to ride with my biking buddies, and they have been riding a lot lately. I couldn’t find a bike here in town – one has been “on the way” since late April with no sign of it yet. Honda is having problems with inventory and is experiencing shipping delays, and their model offerings are slim. I can’t afford a Harley, even a used one, and the local dealership is corrupt with price gouging and high-pressure salesmen who kept saying: “But it’s a Harley,” while they try to get me to sign up for a used bike at new bike prices, said prices more than twice the MSRP, and at an 8.99% finance rate instead of the 3.99% that the Harley-Davison company itself has been offering on used bikes.

I looked around through Cycle Trader and similar places. Eventually, I found a bike I like, with good power, and good looks, and only a year old. Kawasaki – I never in my life thought I’d ride a Kawasaki. But almost new? A four-stroke? 903cc? Belt drive? High tension steel? 5 speed? With large, hard case, locking bags, a highway bar, and dual backrests with a luggage rack? It’s in Tucson, Arizona. I sent the money, and am hiring a man to haul it here. I don’t have a truck, and can’t hook a trailer to my car, and it’s a thirteen-hour round trip at best. I could have taken a bus there, maybe even a cheap flight, but then I’d have been renting a truck and trailer to haul it all that way (gas prices are too high for that to be economical), or riding a bike I don’t know 450 miles in the desert heat. Hell, I’d still need to have it registered and licensed in New Mexico and transfer my insurance over. Better to get it here first.

So, yeah, I’ve been looking forward to getting it. Now, however, that happiness is eclipsed by my sorrow at Maya’s departure. Nothing matters much. My life here feels suddenly empty without Maya here. Where’s here? Why am I here? What does it all matter anymore? It’s hard not to think about Maya. It’s hard when I do think of her. I’ve been stupid to have invested so much emotion around her. She means so much to me. Her happiness means more, so I can’t even tell her these things. It’s killing me.

I know the new bike will keep me entertained. I don’t care at the moment. I’d give it up in a heartbeat to have Maya back here. But, there is nothing I can do. Nothing. I will continue to love her. But I feel so empty, so drained of life, with no clear way forward. It’s much the way she feels herself, but she took action. She moved away. 940 miles away. Not insurmountable. But I’m part of the past she’s leaving behind. Her last message said to take care of myself. That’s it? Take care? How? Why? She knows I love her. She said she loves me too. It hurt so much for me to write those words. My throat tightened up. Tears in my eyes. I’ve been deluding myself for years. 30 years we’ve known each other. Now I’m just someone that she used to know. She always says “Cancer Sucks.” Well, this sucks too.

That’s all I can write now. Enough of this pity party. Enough wallowing in despair and regret.

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.

---

Ding, Dong, the Bike is Dead – an Update

I had just topped off the oil. After checking the level several times, I had finally reached the top level mark on the dipstick. On this bike, unlike with my previous bike I rode for nineteen years, the oil cap and dipstick are all in one on the Phantom (an all-black Honda Shadow). I still had the dipstick/cap in my hand as an old woman with a little curious dog stopped. The dog was on a leash but the old biddy had let it run right through my tools and the open oil container. I had then placed the still-dripping dipstick in the oil reservoir hole in order to grab the oil bottle. The old lady nattered on a bit, excusing her dog’s behavior as “He likes motorcycles for some reason,” and kept on about the precious little dog.

The title is a play on the similar lilting song from the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz. And I certainly wish I was a wizard. In my March 9, 2022 post, I wrote of the damage inflicted on my motorcycle by my own damn self. Not wrecked, and I didn’t drop it. No, I rendered my bike inoperative while topping off the oil! Sometimes I even amaze myself with my level of stupidity. I had already topped off the radiator (liquid-cooled motorcycle engines are common now – built of cast aluminum, the engines used to overheat while idling, damaging the engine block over time). Then I topped off the oil. (insert ominous music here).

When she left, I tried to go back to what I was doing. I’m easily distracted. I remembered that I was about to turn the bike on to warm up and circulate the oil before checking the level again. I forgot to screw the dipstick cap back in. Long story short, I ended up having to get the bike towed to a motorcycle repair shop I used before. The owner thought, based on the noise, that the dipstick had damaged teeth on the gears directly below it – a small piece was missing from the end of the dipstick. He guessed that it would be a fairly simple repair, although replacing the gears wasn’t going to be cheap. I gave him $300 as a down payment. When he was able to inspect it, he drained the oil, and found the missing piece from the dipstick. Not only that, but the gears were undamaged. I was optimistic for about five seconds. Then came the bad news: using a microphone, he tracked down the racket the engine was making, since the gears were OK. It was the rear cylinder. A very small piece of the dipstick got circulated with the oil right into the cylinder wall, I think. How it got past the oil pump and oil filter is a mystery to me.

So, again, to move this story along, the engine will require a near rebuild. The two-stroke motorcycle engine opens along a vertical seam, so the bike needs to be partially disassembled to remove the engine – it can’t be opened while in the bike. $2300, just to open and close the bike. Then, the repairs, parts and labor estimate jacked the repair over the insurance threshold for repair. IT IS TOTALED! Well, shit on a stick. Damn. Did you ever feel like taking a hammer to your head? I did.

A moment’s inattention. My easy distractibility. This is a 2014 bike I bought as a replacement for my stolen bike. It caught my attention because it had only 2662 miles on it when I bought it a year and a half ago. It now only has 5550 miles, and it’s essentially dead. I had been mad as hell at what I’d done, and didn’t initially even call my insurance company because I couldn’t imagine them fixing my stupid mistake. However, I finally had called them. A Progressive insurance agent went to the repair shop, examined the still new-looking bike, and got an estimate of the repairs. Insurance companies don’t authorize repair work on a vehicle if the amount is greater than around 65 to 75% of its value. They would rather give me a check for the value of the bike and the accessories I added to it. And that is what is going to happen. It’s a good amount. So, after gnashing my teeth, kicking myself in the ass, and considering hammer time, I will be OK. I won’t be out any of the money I spent on the bike, except for the $999 service warranty I bought, which, inexplicably, doesn’t apply to repairs such as this, and which I never even used, as I had only added 2900 miles to it.

Despite all the terrible tragedies in the world, war, shootings, pandemics, and such, I was devasted by this whole thing. Since I am retired, I don’t have a lot of extra money for expenses like this. I enjoy motorcycle riding. I’d rather go anywhere on a bike – a long ride or short errands – than drive a car. I thought I’d never be able to afford another bike. I even dusted off my old bicycle and pumped up the tires so I could use that. I’ll be riding that for a while until I find a decent motorcycle. I don’t think I’ll find another one with only 2600 miles on it, but I can’t complain. I’ll just have to look. Of course, I could just ride my bicycle. I used to commute 20 miles a day, then rode it around the country and parts of Canada when I was young, and still commuted after settling in Albuquerque, until I bought a used motorcycle. Since then, I commuted to and from work on the motorcycle every day of the year until I retired. It became a part of me. It had made commuting fun. On longer trips, at speed, I often felt like I was flying. The engine was not loud, neither on my old bike that was stolen, nor the newer one I just destroyed. I could only hear the wind flowing past my ears. I would certainly miss that if I never rode again.

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.

The Ticking Clock Said They Didn’t Miss Me

I sit on a chair in a strange kitchen. Time ticks by slowly, regularly, measured by a clock high on a kitchen wall. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick… The room is wallpapered. There is a regular pattern of a fleur–de–lis, each a perfect replica of the other, arranged in rows and columns. I count them. There are a lot of them. I count from floor to ceiling, then move my eyes over one column, and start again, ceiling to floor. Always curious, I wonder why they are called fleur-de-lis. They did sort of look like lilies. But then I lose count and have to start over.

After I’ve counted hundreds of them I feel even more bored than while I had been sitting quietly, unmoving, for I don’t know how long. The house feels oppressive, cavernous, and unknown. Not long after we had all arrived, my father took me here to the kitchen, to this chair, and told me not to move, to sit here and not move a muscle or say anything, until he came back and said I could. After some passage of empty time, I heard everyone’s voices, and the frenzied round-up of all my brothers and sisters to get in the car. No one called me. No one came for me. My father said he’d come back, but he hadn’t. I heard car doors slam, and the car drive away. I do what I am told. Sometimes it is difficult to know what I shouldn’t do unless I have been told not to. Often there is pain when I do something wrong, whether I knew it was wrong or not.

I get up anyway. It has been such a long time since I have been sitting. While counting fleurs-de-lis I noticed a church calendar on one wall. I have to count the fleurs-de-lis underneath. I have to be accurate. I feel a rush of fear-excitement as I stand. I walk to the calendar, flip the pages, month by month. The only interesting thing about it is that there are ads for cemetery plots, flower arrangements, and caskets at the bottom of each page. The rest is more of the same standard religious quotes, snippets of psalms, pictures of Jesus, Saints, and Churches that I see every day at school. It was so long ago that I don’t remember how old I was then, or what grade I was in. There is a clock. Plain. Large. It ticks relentlessly in the empty house. I hate it. The kitchen is very plain. There is nothing to do, nothing else to read. In a corner of my mind, I am still counting. I realize that I can remember how many fleurs-de-lis are in each column. I realize that I don’t have to count each one, that I can add the columns together. Maybe my parents will be proud of me if I can tell them exactly how many fleurs-de-lis are on the walls. If they come back.

I am here because someone in my extended family has died, an old woman, a great-aunt. There had been other funerals, always of these old wrinkled women that I didn’t know, but might have seen or been introduced to. We were taught to go to the coffin and say a prayer. I usually say a quick prayer, but mostly I stare at the pale wrinkled skin drawn tight. The lips held tightly together somehow. When I am older I find out that the lips are sewn together by morticians. The eyes are closed. The appearance is always of sleep, but I know they are not sleeping. I feel nothing but curiosity about a dead body – especially if I do not know or remember the person.

Alone in her house, I think. It looked vaguely familiar, but it may have belonged to another relative. I couldn’t recall being in it before. I had lots of time to think. I didn’t know why my parents left me there. Did I do something wrong? Was I too loud? Was I wandering through the house looking at things, touching things? I was always curious about everything. It was strange to be there. It felt otherworldly. Always there were siblings yelling, screaming, crying, running, or playing games. That quiet felt eerie, thick, and oppressive. I did not think those words then, but I felt all of those things. I wasn’t scared. I just felt lost. The clock had ticked on and on. Its sound filled the house, echoing in my head. I have never forgotten it. In my quiet house now, my kitchen clock is battery-powered, and it does not tick. I still hate that sound in an empty house or building of any kind.

I had my eighth birthday in a hospital. The nurses had brought me flat Coca-Cola syrup diluted in water. Maybe a cookie. So long ago now. But I remember being awake late at night, every night, for 30 days. Clocks ticked, along with other strange echoing sounds. When I slept I was woken up every four hours for penicillin: pills, or a shot, or a thick foul-smelling, foul-tasting liquid. My appendix had ruptured. Sepsis. Blood poisoning. After a week of illness and terrible pain in my stomach, my mom had borrowed a car and driven me to a hospital. People did not use ambulances then – they cost far too much money. I could no longer walk on my own by the time she pulled up along the curb in front of the hospital. I had wrapped an arm high up around my mother’s neck, and she dragged me, stumbling along, weak, dying. Someone had drawn blood. Something was definitely wrong with me. Suspecting appendicitis, they had x-rayed my stomach but the appendix couldn’t be seen. A doctor told my mother I had less than 24 hours to live. I was taken for exploratory surgery. I came out with six plastic tubes sewn along both sides of the stitched-up incision. The scar is huge to this day. If I look closely I can see where the drainage tubes were. It took my parents years to pay off the bill.

But that was another time – a year or two later.

Time had dragged in those quiet hours in that house. I had begun to wonder if they would ever come back for me. If I am in the dead woman’s house, perhaps they will go home after the funeral? I thought, and the house will stay empty until someone comes to clean it, to sell it, or to move into it? I ran through many possibilities, while the clock ticked and echoed through that house. That’s how my mind entertains me.

Finally, I heard a car drive up. The front door opened a room or two away from me. My father came into the kitchen. I sat still. He asked me why I hadn’t come with them. I reminded him that he had told me to be quiet, to sit there and not move from that chair. He looked at me in disbelief, I think. He shook his head and walked away. I followed him to the car. Nothing was ever said about it, and I wasn’t going to bring it up. I’d done something wrong, maybe not bad, but wrong. I hoped they would forget about it. I never did.

Years later, in my teenage years, my father called me a literal-minded idiot. Now I know why. At the time, he had been grilling me about something missing or broken in the house. My response to his questions had been silence. On my mind was his command, from the last time he had acted like this, to say nothing except that I had done the thing he was accusing me of. Sitting there again, I was confused. He was demanding an answer, but I had done nothing, knew nothing about it. He died in his mid-50s, but I still miss him, and I wish I had asked him about that time I sat in the empty house listening to a clock. I still hate ticking clocks in empty rooms. I’m not fond of hospital stays either. But for the last 14 ½ years, I’ve lived alone. It’s not so bad. I can do anything I want. My house is full of books, music, and movies. When I want, I leave. No one tells me what to do or not to do.

Excursions and Leftovers

Brunch

First off, before I talk about musical “excursions”, I’ll explain the photo above. When I got home from the Chatter Sunday weekly concert, I was hungry. It was about noon. I was about to make an omelet, but noticed the leftovers. I had some black beans, pinto beans, saffron rice, and a little bit of crabmeat. All that sounded good. I put them all in a bowl to heat up. Meanwhile, I fried an egg, over easy. I slipped the egg over the leftovers and punctured the slightly runny yolk to add some color and flavor. I also tore up a green chili pepper (much hotter than its green pepper cousin). The combo was delicious and certainly satisfied my hunger – hunger, in my case, not starvation, but simply wanting something flavorful. It could be said that I didn’t really NEED to eat. That was something like my friend Maya had said to me recently; she said, about my having spent eight years working for a winery without pay, that I didn’t really NEED the money. While it’s true that I could survive without pay for that work, I was really broke for three years after retirement, having only enough money to pay for rent, food, utilities, and some gasoline. I couldn’t afford long car trips (in fact, when by myself, I rode my motorcycle to and from the winery to save gas, even on the coldest winter days). I couldn’t afford to travel or go out to movies or nice restaurants. No excursions for me.

Maya doesn’t drive, due to a loss of peripheral vision after brain surgery, and subsequent car wrecks, so I drove her back and forth to the winery and winery tasting events, and for a short time also back and forth to her regular job, for which she insisted I take $100 a month. And really, the old car I had then drank gas like a wino drinks cheap wine. It was costing me over twice that monthly to drive that car for her benefit, and I otherwise only used it for grocery shopping. I didn’t mind chauffeuring Maya, she had been my step-daughter for 14 years and all through her cancer operation and subsequent treatments, and then later for eight years as a coworker. But, I was perpetually broke, until years later I began getting the Social Security money I’d accumulated over 45 years.

Maya and I had worked together at a winery in early 2010 until the end of 2017. She was paid to work selling wine on holidays and certain wine tasting events, occasionally having time to help pick fruit, bottle, or label on weekends, but I worked much more often, weeding, ditch cleaning, irrigating and pruning and picking our fruit trees and grapevines, and cleaning the fermentation tanks, pumping and filtering wines, and bottling, labeling, and inventorying and selling wine. It was hard physical labor for the most part. It wasn’t a full-time job, and the hours varied. The problem was that I wasn’t getting paid. I had agreed to work for shares in the winery. It was a small independent winery, and the (private) shares were counted as income by the I.R.S., for which I had to pay taxes. The idea was that when the winery was successful, and money had been made, that there would be a point at which the winery would be sold for a large amount of money, and I would get my wages based on my shares, and the other shareholder investors would get a return on their investment. It didn’t work out that way. The man who had created the winery, our vintner, died in mid-2017 while hiking around the Capulin Volcano Monument in Northern New Mexico.

2015 PARTIAL WINE LIST

We kept it open until the end of the year, only bottling some favorite wines, and selling off some of our stockpiled wines. The decision was made to close the winery after that. No one had the time for or wanted the vintner’s unpaid job. No one wanted to put any more money into the business. There was not enough money to order bottles, so all of the 6000 gallons of the bulk wine in tanks was destroyed, per state law. We had been selling bottled wine at half-price, but after we closed, all partners could take whatever bottled wine they wanted. Since many of them lived in Placitas, and I live 25 miles away, I didn’t get out there before most of the best wines – in short supply – like the Rojo Seco, Blanco Seco, Cranberry, La Luna, Wild Cherry, Chokecherry, and Synaesthesia were gone. I took what was left of a few of those, but mostly the less desirable wines, about six cases. I don’t have a cellar, so some of what didn’t fit in my refrigerator I put in my unused dishwasher – it’s well insulated and seals tightly. The rest went in a storage room (not temperature regulated), so I will likely end up throwing it out. I don’t drink by myself. I sold some cheaply and gave a lot away.

The point of this story is that I was losing money, not just from not getting paid, but having to pay taxes on the shares. It made me angry that Maya – to my mind – dismissed all my hard work and lost money as unimportant since I didn’t NEED the money I had been promised. I still find that hard to forgive. It wasn’t the only thing she said that I found disturbing, and I may have inadvertently insulted her, so I ended up feeling like she didn’t like me, had moved on, and we were no longer friends. That had never happened to us before. I love her very much, but suddenly I didn’t want her photos on my wall, didn’t want to see her posts or photos online or even think about her. I had been divorced twice in my life, including from her mom, and although it was bad, I never felt like I didn’t want to ever see them again. In fact, I missed them a lot, but I’ve gotten over that. I live alone. Despite having many interactions with fellow actors, with hikers, and with neighbors, I felt cut off. Hollow inside. Depressed and ready to leave the state forever.

Although I did end up missing Maya, we finally met for a wine tasting on neutral ground. It was a subdued get-together, and although we touched on a couple of sore points (for me), she didn’t understand why I took things the way I did, and I dropped it. Although I was happy to see her, I ended up rambling and boring her (I’m old). She was anxious to get back to her house. She didn’t want a ride home. In fact, she hadn’t wanted a ride to the wine tasting, hadn’t wanted me to come over for lunch as we had done fairly often last year, and she hadn’t wanted to have my signature black-bean chile con carne, paired with red wine at my house.

So, I haven’t moved away yet. In fact, I went to Sunday Chatter this morning. It was not the concert that had been planned – that was supposed to be Spektral Quartet, a string quartet based in Chicago. It is the ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago’s Department of Music. They had to cancel. But pianist Luke Gullickson played some amazing music to make up for it, like a six-part composition called Walk in Beauty by Peter Garland, the Night Psalm by Eva Beglarian, and the wonderful EXCURSIONS op.20 (1945) by Samual Barber. I do hope Spektral Quartet will be able to make some other time. They blend music from different centuries into eclectic concerts described as creative, collaborative, thrill rides, and magical.

There was poetry and spoken word by Nathan Brown, a favorite of mine and the Chatter crowds. He is an award-winning poet, an author, and a songwriter. He has 25 books to his credit.

Nathan Brown

We’re very lucky to have him from time to time. He taught at the University of Oklahoma for twenty years. He taught memoir, poetry, songwriting, and performance workshops from Tuscany and Ireland to the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, the Taos Poetry Festival, the Woody Guthrie Festival, Laity Lodge, the Everwood Farmstead Foundation in Wisconsin, as well as the Blue Rock Artist Ranch near Austin, Texas. He seriously made me laugh today numerous times.

And, there were free cookies and banana bread. And I have an acting class tonight.

Music, Sweet Music, Day Trippin’ on Music

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Yes. Another whole day of music. Chatter Sunday

and Chatter Caberet.

My Sunday started off with a cup of Americano, a small scone, and a double-chocolate red-chile cookie, while waiting for the music. I chatted with an old musician sitting next to me. Coffee makes me talkative. The music began with Giuseppe Verdi’s L’esule (1839), with tenor John Tiranno, Natasha Stojanovska on piano.

I don’t enjoy operatic singing. I like the orchestral music that comes with it, but I would be more interested in the story if it didn’t come with all the coloratura. Those trills drive me off the wall. At any rate, Mr. Tiranno sang with gusto, but kept to the words, rather than all the ornamentation introduced by Italian singers in the 17th century, and often highly elaborated and exaggerated by the vainglorious. It was OK. An exile longing for death in English would have been better, for me. Tiranno enjoyed it far too much for me to hear the pathos, but I like passion in people, even it it’s not in keeping with the story.

The musicians took the stage for a piano trio (no. 1, op 8, 1923) by Dmitri Shostakovish. It opened with some harshness, to my ears, but settled into some highly enjoyable and powerful playing. Mozart really rocks.

Damien Flores

After that, Damien Flores took the stage, but not to sing or play music. He’s a poet, and there is always poetry in the middle of the musical selctions. Damien is a poetry slam champion, educator, author, and radio broadcaster. He also hosts Poetry & Beer, which I often attend at Tractor Brewing. I enjoyed his collection of poems titled Junkyard Dogs, but he presented two poems today, one of which dealt with hospitals, family and death, while the other was well-written humor. I laughed throughout that one. And yes, out loud, with gusto.

The concert finished with Songs of a Wayfarer (1883) by Gustav Mahler. They are not happy songs. In fact they deal with the pain, depression, and suffering of someone dealing with unrequited love. Sad songs, but I understand them, all too well. John Tiranno sang those also, and he was fierce.

I had the chance then to go home and relax for a bit before heading to the Albuquerque Museum for Chatter Caberet. I made a small plate of three-tiered cheese enchiladas with corn tortillas, onions and both green and red chile.

I enjoyed Lullaby (1919) by George Gershwin, followed by Luke Gullickson on Piano performing Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de couperin (1914), during which I knocked over half of my glass of red wine. I was quite embarrased. I spent most of the piece trying to avoid the embarrasment by contemplating the wine spreading out, and being chromatographed throughout the linen tablecloth, as it continued to spread, seperating the wine into bands of red and pinkish colors until the water in the wine expressed itself around the edges. I was sharing the table with four other people, and was thoroughly embarassed. And I had been so enjoying pairing my glass of Merlot with some spicy meats on the charcuterie platter. Ah, well. I often play the klutz.

There followed a long piece for piano quartet by Peter Garland: Where Beautiful Feathers Abound. Nice, but did I mention that it was long? I was still contemplating the tablecloth, as the edges of the spill creeped ever closer.

Finally, some Mozart! A Piano Concerto (no. 12 in A major, K.414 – 1782). This was a wonderful piece to enjoy, full of fire, passionately played by pianist Luke, violinists Elizabeth Young and Donna Mulkern, violist Laura Chang, and cellist Ian Brody. This took my mind off of my wine faux pas.

The night was growing long as I arrived home again. I popped a movie in the DVD player to watch Chaos Walking, a Sci Fi epic that takes place on a planet where all the women have disappeared and the men are afflicted by “the noise” – a force that exposes all their thoughts both audibly and visually. Enter a lone woman arriving to settle on the planet, who crash lands, and does not know what had happened there, and is not herself affected by “the noise”. She was born on the ship during it’s long 65-year journey from Earth. She meets a young man living in a settlement of men, of which he is the only one having been born on the planet itself, and not originally from Earth. He has no experience with girls or women. She has no experience on a planet (and yet, she can ride a motorcycle through a forest). They end up running for their lives. Excitement and adventure. Just what I needed. Above are all of my exposed thoughts today. Such a busy day – perhaps I was avoiding something, or someone, someone whose birthday was today.

Chaos

Tomorrow (Monday) I have another Covid-19 test. I’m back to work on set Wednesday. It’ll probably be a long day. October promises to be very busy – I’ve applied to be on several sets of TV episodes and movies that are being shot all over New Mexico. Long days and nights. Driving to and from Santa Fe, and also around Albuquerque. Camping out in background holding. Staying awake when the day turns to night after 12 or 14 hours. Fun, fun, fun. No, really – I do enjoy it. And I seriously need to be active.

Rambling Man is Back

Monday, Sept 20, 2021

Although I have frozen fish in the freezer, refrigerated sqaush, and plenty of rice and noodles, I have decided to make macaroni and cheese tonight. Being a lazy cook, I am using a box of whole grain pasta noodles with a packet of finely ground dry cheese. Seven minutes to boil, drain, add butter and milk and the dry cheese. As always, I add a tablespoon or so of diced green chile, and some fresh grated extra sharp chedder. I also sprinkle a little pepper in there, as I like the flavor it adds, so that’s what I’m eating now as I sit here typing.

Today has been a slow day, but yesterday meant being on set for a small independent movie that a friend who introduced me to movie acting is making, to enter into film festivals. He is quite smart, and his previous movies, although short, always do very well, garnering top awards. I was joined in this endeavor by another friend, someone who has worked for six years as a stand-in/photo double for a major TV show shot in Albuquerque. I was once a stand-in/photo double for a TV show shot here in Albuquerque, but only for the week it takes to shoot one episode.

I’m catching up on my reading, as the last few months have been busy with background extra work, a lot of which I was able to snag, except while I had the covid. As brief as the outbreak was, I still had the virus in me for about two weeks, so, even though I felt great, I couldn’t work on set while testing positive. But that’s behind me now. So far, I’ve tested negative four times in a row. Last Thursday, the 16th, I worked a 14 1/2-hour day on a movie set. This month, so far, I’ve manged to visit an old farm that was turned into a museum, worked Sept. 3 on a totally different TV show, attended a wine festival in Albuquerque on Labor Day, met with my motrocycle-riding group for breakfast and a short ride on the 8th, worked on a 48-Hour Project short film all day Septermber 11, and donated blood platelets on the 13th.

I applied to work on an episode of a production being shot in New Mexico, and ended up with work on Thursday. However, that fell through – such is the movie biz – and I was hired to work Wednesday, with a Covid-19 test tomorow. Even that changed. I will still work Wednesday, but also tomorrow, so I have to get to set and test by 6:00am tomorrow instead of in a range between 7am and 11am. So, I am going to be busy the next couple of days, and make a little money. Background work doesn’t pay much, and you aren’t mentioned in the credits, but I enjoy being on set. I really enjoy it if I get a part in a independent or school-related production, as I at least have lines to go with my actions, and I get listed in the credits. However, they are not seen by many people. But it all goes on my résumé.

I went back for seconds on the mac ‘n’ cheese, so now I’ve lost my train of thought. As you might have guessed, this is one of my “just rambling” entries. No series of photos, no deep introspection, no politics, or storyline. Just me.

I watched a lot of epsiodes of The Prisoner over the weekend, as they were broadcast non-stop. It was such a fascinating show, but only 17 episodes were ever broadcast, between September 29, 1967 through February 1, 1968 in the United Kingdom. I would catch one every once in a while when it was rebroadcast in the U.S. in June of 1968. I could try to describe the show, but as I watched an episode about mind control one evening, a commercial interrupted the drama, as they do on commercial TV. It was such a typical commercial, offering some new product which I would certainly need, and which would improve my life so much. And it was almost the plot of the show, and the theme of the series itself. How happy and content I would be if I only went along, if I’d buy this wonderful crap!

LOGO USED IN THE PRISONER

In The Prisoner, played by Patrick McGoohan, a British agent is abducted just after he resigns his job, and taken to an island from which he can’t escape. McGoohan had previously played a secret agent in the British television series Danger Man, known in the U.S. as Secret Agent. He then co-created The Prisoner, as well as starring in it. (I wonder who his stand-in was?)

Currently I’m reading Mayordomo, by Stanley Crawford, a book written about the systems of irrigation ditches in New Mexico, often referred to as acequias, which are used to divert water from the Rio Grande to the farms along its wide path through the state. They are community run and have been the means by which farming is carried out in a dry climate whose rain and snow falls infrequently, and tends to collect underground. Wells provide drinking/bathing water, but not enough to water all the crops in the state.

• 

• 

• 

I was previously aware of the system before I began working for a winery in 2010. I was then put on ditch-cleaning duty once a year, since the winery needed to provide several workers as part of its responsibilty to maintain the life-giving ditch. It was damned hard work, just as Crawford describes in his book. You arrive, shovels in hand and begin the day-long trek along the ditches that provide water to the whole village, removing debris, leveling the ditch floor, and squaring the sides, so that it holds enough water and doesn’t slop over the sides when the water is released. There are short sections marked out by the Mayordomo, and then you jump into each section, shoveling away, cleaning, smoothing, and chopping, until it is time to move along to the next section. To get to the next section, you go around those still cleaning, up ahead to the next open section and begin again. All day. With a break for lunch. It is muscle-straining, back-building hard work. I did that for those years I worked at the winery, so that we had water to grow our fruit, fruit to pick, fruit to ferment, fruit wine to bottle and cork and label, and drink and sell. I miss those days. The winery shut down December of 2017 after our vintner, Jim Fish, the guy who started it all, died on a hike in the wilderness. A trifecta of sad: Jim’s death, closing the winery, and dumping 6000 gallons of bulk wine.

So now, I still do some hiking in the mountains myself. Perhaps I’ll die there some day. I read a lot. I ride my motorcycle. I blog. I work as background on movie sets. I’ve taken years of acting classes now, working with different teachers, and I get all the experience I can, working on non-paid gigs. It’s a life, and so far it’s been a pretty good one.

I’m done rambling now. There’s work to do: registering on a website to get paid for my background work. Going through my clothes to pick out appropriate clothing, and getting to bed early enough so that waking up at 4am to be on set by 6am doesn’t seem so early.

Cellars, Frostlines and Eddie Knight

I was six years old. My brother was five. I think Eddie was in my class at St. Thomas Aquinas then, or perhaps he was in my brother’s class. I can’t recall now after all these decades. I do remember going to his house, and playing pick-up sticks. It was an odd game, I thought. To play, someone dumped out a can of wooden sticks, about 10 inches long – these days they resemble the sticks used for shishkabob, except these were marketed by many different companies and came in rainbow colors. The object was to try and pick up each stick, one at a time, without disturbing any of the others. As soon a you disturbed the other sticks, your turn passed to the next person. Decades later Jenga took the game a step further, using wooden blocks. If we played any other games, I don’t remember. But I loved to challenge myself with that game.

Perhaps I liked challenging myself too much. We all did those normal things, riding bicycles down steep hills, hanging on long ropes or car tires dangling from tall trees swinging as far out as we could, sometimes over water and dropping in. Sometimes, and this is where the title comes from, we just dropped rocks into puddles to watch ’em splash. Skipping them was fun too, but without the splash.

My brother, me, and Eddie were wandering around one day and found a house under construction. I think it was part of a developement, but we’d never seen a house under construction before. The foundation had been laid, deep in the ground, and the walls came up about three feet above the ground. Some areas have deep frost lines (the depth at which ground water will freeze in winter). You dig below the frost line for your foundation. Otherwise the house will be on shaky ground, and structurely unstable. I believe building in this way is what created cellars. If your house extended below ground, you might as well use it for something. Indeed, some people used it to store food. Cellars used to be shallow, but builders eventually made them deep enough for people to use like any other room of a house where you can stand up and work. Then they were called basements. I think the terms get used interchangeably now. They were handy for placing coal or oil burning furnaces, and washing machines, as well as canned foods and preserves.

So, this particular house had a cellar (or basement) that was likely eight feet down, but the floor of the cellar, almost always concrete, and usually with embedded rebar, had not yet been poured. When we climbed up the sides of the wall above ground and looked down, we saw that, after the recent rain, there were large puddles of water in the mud. Puddles of water? We needed rocks!

There were rocks scattered all over the area near the house’s foundations, so we would look for the biggest ones, and then climb back up the stem wall to drop our rocks into the opening that had been left to add stairs. Apparently, the stairs would come after the cellar floor was poured, likley through that hole. We spent quite a bit of time collecting rocks and dropping them into that hole. The bigger the splash the better, of course. The more we did it, the bigger the splash we wanted.

I had just climbed up and dropped in a nice rock when I saw Eddie place the biggest rock I’d seen all day up onto the floor because he couldn’t get up onto the floor with it in his hands. We were probably only three-feet tall ourselves. Without really thinking about it at all, I ran over, grabbed Eddie’s rock and went back to the hole and plopped that sucker in. Big splash – yea! I was happy about that, but I seem to recall Eddie coming towards me, perhaps he was yelling. I have no memory of what happened then.

The next thing I remember is seeing sky. I was being carried by two people, Eddie’s parents, across the big empty field behind my house. I didn’t feel very good. There was something wet on my face, running into my eyes. I closed my eyes and woke up in my house on a couch. I had no idea what had happened or what was going on. After some time passed a screaming ambulance arrived. “For me?” is what I remember thinking. I was impressed. I’d never been in an ambulance before, or if I had, I couldn’t remember it. After several bouts of pneumomia, I only remember doctors that would come to our house to treat me. I’d had pneumonia as an infant, and was placed in an oxygen tent in a hospital, but I don’t know if that was shortly after my birth or later. Back then, people strived to own a car, because that was how you got to a hospital – ambulances were a very expensive way to travel!

I don’t know why my parents called an ambulance. There was blood all over my face, from a cut over my right eye, which left an obvious scar for many decades. I can’t see it now, probably because my eyebrows have gotten so bushy. I think they were worried about brain damage, or damage to my eye. But, all that I received was a small concussion, a black eye, and a bunch of stitches for such a small cut.

Me, on the sofa in the living room. It seems like I spent a lot of time there recovering.

Unfortunately, I never saw or heard from Eddie Knight again. So, either he did push me, and felt guilty, or his parents didn’t want him hanging out with dangerous kids like me and my brother. I don’t know. I don’t think he meant to push me, but I was right on the edge. I never had many friends in grade school, or high school for that matter. I had six brothers and sisters, and dozens of cousins. We saw each other all the time, and those were the people I cared about. And my parents, aunts, uncles, and my surviving grandmother. Both of my grandfathers died when I was in my early teens, and I’d had very few interactions with them. One was sickly from mustard-gas poisoning in WWII and was often in the VA hospital. The other I saw mostly at Sunday or holiday dinners, and he would disappear afterwards. There was a bar next door. My mother’s mother had died when I was two-years old. She had given me the yellow “Teddy” bear I grew up with, and it had always been special to me. Perhaps I was fond of her back then. I can’t remember her, but from the pictures I saw, she and my mom looked nearly identical in their wedding photos.

These are all four of my grandparents, on the occasion of my parents’ wedding.

Skirts were long, double-breated suits were still in style. The oddest thing about this photo is that the house behind is one half of a duplex unit. I know my parents moved about four times. The last house they moved into turned out to be the other half of that same duplex. My grandfather (you can see two of his fingers missing) had apparently moved out long before, and it was owned by an old woman and her grown son. We never interacted much. Rarely saw them. I doubt they liked all the noise seven kids made playing and the screaming at each other, and my parents screaming at us and each other.

CDX

Death comes for us all

even archbishops

shopkeepers and presidents

doctors and lawyers

mail carriers and drivers

writers and moviemakers

actors and singers

men women children

the bright and the dull

animals trees flowers

planets stars galaxies

The funny thing is

once we accept that

that we will die

that it’s where it is

where we’re going

that

then

nothing else matters.

It is freedom

to enjoy life

enjoy the journey.

It is no matter

no matter what

it doesn’t matter.

Life just is.

it rains- enjoy

Sun shines – enjoy

flowers grow – enjoy

raving mad lunatics – enjoy

tomorrow they’ll be gone

marching in the streets – enjoy

tomorrow there’ll be change.

Life is chaos

terrible

depressing

skulduggery

stressful

dangerous.

Life is joy

children music colors smells tastes feelings

stretching running hiking biking playing

living.

Life is change – enjoy

revolt

change things

make things

embrace all

love all

be all.

We’ll die

so?

isn’t it wonderful?

isn’t it freedom?

because

now

right now

we can do anything we want to

life

is random key presses

meaningless

life is life

meaningful

make it so.

————————————————————

‎Wednesday, ‎June ‎17, ‎2020, ‏‎11:32:40 AM

MADNESS IS A HOT-AIR BALLOON

Perhaps I need to let my madness free.
I worry about madness
People thought me dumb when I was young
So I kept quiet though I burned.

I think terrible thoughts sometimes
So I keep them to myself
Even though the hot pressure builds
Is it better to live crazy than not really live?

Madness restrained is not madness contained.
It leaks out here and there
Stray comments, a wild movement
Depression agitation combustion.

Yes combustion
For, madness restrained doesn’t only leak
It can explode
Violence rape grand theft murder.

How to portion out my madness?
Let enough out to be happy
Not enough to harm or hurt or die
Just enough to feel relief.

A hot-air balloon can fly even holed
Hundreds of tiny holes in the envelope
From a bad landing in a field of cacti
Yet it still fills rises floats and soars.

For a time.

As long as the propane lasts it rises
As long as wind blows it moves
As long as air is colder outside than in
It can soar through blue sky.

Would that my madness were a balloon
Free to fly
Not too far
Not too high.

Just enough just enough just enough.

Sandia Crest Hike 7/7/20

Just photos to post today, from a hike 7/7/20, 7 days ago. After that, I also went for a hike 7/12/20 with my stepdaughter but took no photos. However, we did have a great meal on 7/12 at Ten-3. That is Albuquerque’s mountaintop restaurant, closed due to Covid-19 shortly after it opened. It had just reopened for dining in, but Sunday 7/12 was the last day for that, for who knows how long. But we did each enjoy a great beer along with a sandwich of brisket braised for 10 hours, including red chile bbq, smoked gouda and apple slaw. We were able to take in a great view of the area east of the Sandias while polishing off our meals with spicy ginger sorbet.  But, after that, the Ten-3 restaurant has begun offering only cliffside takeout, and that’s OK. I’ll hike up there again, order some great food and let my feet dangle off a cliff while I eat. It’s a wonderful pleasure. Sun, a cool breeze, a hike with spectacular views, and good company. What more could I possibly ask for? Sometimes you don’t need photos. But here are the ones from 7/7 –>

(Unfortunately, the shots of distant landscapes are partially obscured by the smoke still drifting over New Mexico from local fires and from the fires in Arizona.)

A Walk Among Ponderosa and Alligator

I went for another hike Friday, July 26. The sky started out blue, but clouded over. There was a cool breeze all day, thankfully, because the weather has been in the 90s pretty steadily every day. Still, the sky was an odd color. I wondered if there was some of that dust from the Sahara dust plume in the atmosphere already. The storm was supposed to hit the Gulf Coast area on Saturday. Well, no matter; it was a great day. After the hike, I looked back to the area where we’d hiked, and saw Virga rain in the upper atmosphere. Virga is rain that evaporates, above the ground. In the southwestern USA, storms are easily visible a hundred miles away. One can see the rain falling from the clouds, but it often doesn’t extend all the way to the horizon. Hence, drought, even though there’s rain.

The trail we began hiking on is called Mahogany Loop (Forest Trail #05602), but we intersected with the Ponderosa Trail Loop, which meanders through a dense Ponderosa pine forest in the Cibola National Forest that hasn’t been logged in perhaps fifty years. I took a few photos of those, including a Ponderosa broken by high winds, and some bark beetle damage that killed many thousands of old-growth trees throughout New Mexico. There were also some Alligator Junipers, and I photographed the lower portion to show it’s texture and immense thickness. Very old tree. There are other tree species too, and tons of wildflowers. We met a couple with their dog. They said they had seen him twice in the area, and were unable to find his owner, before deciding to adopt him.

Adopted

Alligator Juniper

Another Alligator

Looking west at the Sandias

Ponderosa V

Bark Beetle damage

Bark Beetle holes

Timmmmberrrrrr!

Death on the trail

Life

Paintbrush

I have no idea why

and more paintbrush

Interestingly, this is the first time I’d been back to that area in an entire year. It is directly adjacent to the area where Angelina Jolie shot the movie “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” which wrapped July 1, 2019. The film was directed by Taylor Sheridan and produced by Film Rites and BRON Studios, based on a book by Michael Koryta. Ms. Jolie is quite friendly, and chatted with the background actors surrounding her during brief cuts in one scene that was shot many, many times. She is funny too. Her makeup included tangled hair, deep bloody gashes, and soot from a fire in a previous scene. Since it is OK to respond to an actor if they speak to you, I was curious about what had been happening to her character. “You look a little worse for wear,” I said. I regretted saying that afterward; it’s not the sort of thing one says to a woman. She pulled down her torn shirt to reveal a scar at that point, saying: “And I got hit by lightning too!” Whew. I hadn’t meant to insult her, just saying what was on my mind. I was a bit embarrassed and looked down when she did that. A bit later she told me that the movie is very well done, an intelligent, tense drama, and very much worth watching. I looked for it and found that the release date is October 23, 2020. I will watch it.

So, getting back to the hike. After we returned to our vehicles, we headed back down State Road 337, but stopped at a private cemetery just off the road. It was fenced, so I didn’t enter, but I took some photos, with respect. The details of the graves were very touching and sad, especially the ones for “Victor, Son of Manny and MaryLou,” and for 20-year-old Rosa, who may have died during childbirth, as it is inscribed: “Mother of Dorothy”.

Very sad. But they were, it seems, very much loved. And lived, for a time, in beauty.

Crest Spur Hike – Sandia Mountains

Took some photos on a hike along the crest of the Sandia Mountains. Social distancing, masks and all. Used a new trail called the Crest Spur to link up with La Luz. Hiked with a few people in a hiking meetup, organized and run by Frank Ernst, shown in the second photo. Flowers can live short lives in this desert heat, so I always photograph them. Didn’t see any wildlife that day (06/18/20), but there were quite a few people on top of the mountain, despite the Tram not being in operation, nor the new Ten-3 restaurant being open. I did see two workers inspecting the cables. If you enlarge the photo you can see them on top. Workers often ride on top of the tram car in the morning so they can do a quick visual of the cables, and also because the car is full of all the food and water the restaurant needs for the day. Twice a year they have to shut the Tramway down to do a detailed inspection and test.

The views are usually spectacular, but on this day, smoke from the fires in Arizona came in like fog, blanketing the city. In one of the photos here, you can see a thin blue line representing the brilliant blue we usually experience here. Below it is the blanket of smoke. As always, click on a thumbnail to enlarge it, use arrows to scroll.

Paintbrush

Western Wallflower

A thin blue line

Tree vs rock

a large chip off an old block

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Fossils

Ammonite fossil

Ten-3 (10,300 ft above sea level)

Tram tower with city below

Hanging out

Inspecting cables

1936 CCC cabin shelter

Ten-3

Ten-3

Ten-3

Cabin, north side

cabin, east side

Man, boy and Triumph

 

To My Brothers

 

 

John

Pat

Brian

 

I love my three brothers very much, and while we are not all on the same page politically, we can usually disagree, and still hang out. We are brothers and that means a lot. We shared a lot of good and bad things as children and we stick together through thick and thin.

However, recent events such as Black Lives Matter protests, and solidarity protests over George Lloyd’s death, the violence that bled out of peaceful protest, possibly by instigators — I mean, who trashes their own or their neighbors’ stores? — and the misunderstood calls for “defunding” the police following on the heels of disagreement over the need for masks and distancing are threatening to tear us apart.

There was a heated discussion that I was notified about, and I was saddened by the way the discussion was going, so I wrote a reply to all three, even though only two were involved. The third has let his views be known many times, and was referenced in the discussion.

So these were my thoughts on the subjects touched on:

I think cops tend to be part of a blue gang, and many have the idea that they ARE the law, but they are not. There is a lot of racism within police ranks, and it only comes to light once in a while, because the good cops say and do nothing about it. I don’t think bad (and illegal) cop behavior is all about racism though. I’ve seen them wielding long hardwood batons on peaceful white protestors, and tapping them on the shoulder as they walked away, squirting pepper spray directly into their eyes.

I was harassed by cops while bicycling across country, and I’ve been stopped on my motorcycle by a Sheriff who reached for his gun as soon as I reached for my license, which he had just asked for. I’ve been spread-eagled onto the hood of a patrol car for a traffic stop that (being overtired from overtime and not having eaten, and on my way to a nighttime class) I politely disputed. His insistence that I’d run a red light when I’d seen him next to me was ludicrous. I got pissed off and called him an asshole, so I was charged with assault on a police officer (a felony). Not my best move, but an over-the-top reaction from the cop.

Those are just a few examples, but the police, in general, have had the idea for some time that any hint that you’re not going to treat them like tin gods can lead to arrest or death. Even standing nearby outside my residence while I, silently and legally, observed some white teenager getting roughed up by the Baltimore cops brought a threat of arrest for me. These are realities, and it’s worse for poor people, especially blacks. I learned this in downtown Baltimore when I was younger, and from my recent trips, I’ve seen little change in the living conditions downtown since the 1970s. The “inner city” as we used to call it is actually deplorable. For the record, children who ask to wash your car windows in downtown Baltimore are polite, and not petty thieves. I do believe the pattern of racist redlining, denial of credit and racial profiling is the same there. There is deep distrust there now in people’s eyes, and it wasn’t always that way. It’s sad.

I do remember that my grandfather was a policeman, and (brother) Pat was military police. Violence against the police is not the answer. And, the “defunding” that people are calling for means shifting some police funding to other more appropriate organizations better prepared to deal with mental health issues, for example. We use armed police, trained to deal with violent criminals, for minor things, while there are huge cuts to the budgets of mental health institutions and drug treatment centers. The public is not the enemy, and any police who think it’s us versus them are no better than a gang. I applaud those cops who took a knee. I applaud the cops who work closely with their community, and put their lives on the line to help, but there needs to be an attitude adjustment if people are to trust the police again.

The adjustment starts now, because it’s past due.

I don’t know if this will help. It may not. But I felt I had to state my opinion honestly, right or wrong, or misinformed as I may be. But, I always want people to think beyond the talking points. And I want open discussion, not name-calling or attacks.

Me

WELCOME TO SPRING

        –  Mar 24, 2020   

What is Spring?
A time of rebirth
species renewal
rutting and fucking
flowers and scents
a riot of color
olfactory overload

Love
what is love
to an old man?
No renewal
no fucking
meaningless colors
meaningless smells

May-December
youthful May
deathly December
a gulf between
irreversible
relentless
widening

We race through Spring
jog through Summer
Slow in August
Pause in December
as if as if as if
as if as if as if
to forestall death

But death comes
to one and all
time is so short
between seasons
Spring, Spring, Spring
the herald of doom
extinction pending

Spring is but
a short walk
at the end of which
smiling and cheerful
casually patient
waits our friend
the Executioner

I greet you, friend
I know you’re there
can’t feel you yet
can’t smell you
can’t yet see you
I know you’re there
I extend my hand.

---

And further: In the Spring, a young man’s thoughts turn to fancy; an old man’s thoughts turn to stone. What is life? It is spring, summer, fall, winter, love, sex, and death.

The Lazy Days of Isolation

Feel so lazy. Days dissolve into one another. Sometimes there are things to do, but mostly not. I could work on getting a home studio set up so I can submit video auditions, but I don’t. Usually, when I want to audition, I have a monologue to record, using my DSLR camera, but I’m not getting actual monologues or dialogues to record. Some outfits located in other states have requested videos, but some want use of specific equipment I do not have, or are simply planning for some unspecified future date. So, for now, I’m simply replying to leads from Actor’s Access, but not hearing anything back. All shooting in New Mexico is still postponed. So, I go out and hike sometimes, but much less than when I hiked with a group. Although I live alone, I was always comforted by seeing people on set as a background actor, in auditions for local independent projects, or hiking with friends or bowling. Not much incentive lately to go out at all, or do anything.

It’s all so odd. But I keep fighting it.

I finally had to paint my gate. I bought the paint last year, but never had the time to do it. The weather was bad when I had time. Always something. I knew it would require more than just paint, so it was hard to justify the time. But time is what I have most of. Just spending my time writing the blog now, or doing poetry and acting classes on Zoom.

So finally, on the prodding of the homeowner’s association here, I decided to just do it myself. I don’t own my house — I rent. So the landlord did pay for the paint. Can’t expect her to buy a new gate, as we’re in the middle of trying to get the roof redone after recent leaks. It’s a weird roof, flat, covered in a hard foam. Always needs work. Got done a few times before, but is in bad shape now. Homeowner’s Association used to take care of all that, and the stucco maintenance, but decided to put that back on the owners. The owner hasn’t ever had to do it, and the roofers that have given estimates are demanding an arm and a leg. So, I wasn’t going to bother her about the gate.

I went out a few days ago. Looked at it. I went back in, got some tools. Took it off the hinges, and found out it had no screws, dowels, or nails holding it together. It had been built and assembled by hand, and, of course, in New Mexican low humidity weather, the wood had long since dried out, shrunk and cracked. After I took the hardware off, I realized that the hinges had actually been all that was holding the whole thing together. Nothing was glued in, and it was literally falling apart in my hands. Almost bagged the whole thing. But I got some large clamps to hold it together and reassembled it.

There were some loose, broken pieces that I had to glue a bit, and I screwed an old piece of 1×2 across them on both sides (after chamfering the edges). Then I kept going. Already had the paint, so I painted, and painted, and painted, getting all the paint across and deep inside the cracks. I spent the whole of a hot day on this project, drinking water, juice and milk, hardly eating, but I got it done. The damn gate looks almost new. Of course, then I had little desire to do anything else. But I keep looking at the gate and admiring it, feeling like I accomplished SOMEthing. Little victories.

   

MONDAY-FRIDAY

When Monday is just another day
a day like any other
not the first day of work
nor hump day –
is it still Monday?

And what is Monday
when you work at home?
Same time same place
same walls same ceilings
same food.

What if

What if
when this is over

we only
work weekends?

 

If You’re Sure, Well, Wash Your Hands

Not too long ago (2008-2009) there was a commercial for Sure Deodorant. The commercial played on the insecurities of a few people that people would notice sweat on their clothes, so, to avoid terrible embarrassment, we should all use deodorant, particularly the Sure Deodorant, because, of course theirs was better than any other at keeping us from sweating. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they had slowly convinced huge swaths of us that we didn’t dare leave the house without plastering our armpits with deodorant. And, of course, U.S. ingenuity had already conceived of deodorant soap, so we could lather deodorant all over our bodies as well, even in and on places that didn’t need it. And many women were convinced that they needed deodorant douches as well. Anyway the Sure commercial played their meme over and over: “Raise your hands, if you’re (Sure).” Because, of course, no one could lift their arms up if there was sweat in their armpits, or showing through their fancy clothes.

And, well, I don’t care, but this current mantra of wash your hands, wash your hands, don’t touch your face, just reminds me so much of that commercial. At least, since this SARS COV-2 virus is killed by ordinary hand soap, it is a useful thing to shout about. Or sing about, as people are being asked to put health-practice-advice lyrics into popular songs.

So, I did. Your may recognize the song this is based on.

WASH YOUR HANDS

You, you got a nasty virus thing
We’re in a sticky situation, it’s down to me and you
Well now that we’re together
Show me what you can do
You’re under the gun
Under the gun
And plannin’ to live
Wash your hands
When you want to let it go
Wash your hands
When you want to let a feeling show
Wash your hands
From New York to Chicago
Wash your hands
From New Jersey to Tokyo
Wash your hands.

(With apologies to Bon Jovi for modifying their song: Raise Your Hands)

[Their 2020 tour is cancelled, but Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Halsey and more united for a New Jersey concert to benefit the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund, yesterday, April 22.]

 

Trumbo, a Movie, a Little Bit of mid-20th Century Politics

Trumbo was released in U.S. theaters in 2015. At this point in time, it’s hard to say if movie theaters will survive the economic pandemic caused by a previously unseen virus that sneaks up on us and spreads like wildfire before we even know we have it. We will survive, but will theaters? our economy? our democracy? Hard to say. But, I do want to review this movie, because I just got around to watching it tonight.

I thought this might be a boring story. Writers. A blacklist. I know how it ends. But, I had no frickin’ idea!

Before I go any further, I have to recommend this movie, if for no other reason than the fine acting of Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, and Michael Stuhlbarg. These are not only good actors, but passionate actors, the ones we like to watch. A great story, not the whole story, but it was a sad, and, yes, good chapter in the history of this country. That said, I have a few other things to say about the content.

Sure there were a lot of people caught up in the whole Hollywood blacklist. Good people. Not perfect, but basically, good people. For some years now we’ve heard people like them called “liberals” with utter disdain, hatred and fear. And really it should remind us of a time when people, including the media, treated people as pariahs, as lepers, undesirables and even, yes, traitors, for their political views. It wasn’t just the Hollywood Ten, but hundreds of other actors, and teachers, students, tradesmen. Thousands lost jobs, homes, families and some, their lives.

Admittedly, it was the fear of the Soviet Union, and the Cold War against it and their political system which brought about Red Scares, and Blacklists, and persecution for what people thought. None ever sought to have any foreign nation invade and run the USA. They wanted a better life for everyone. Many believed the USSR was moving further along the road of civil rights, but they were idealists, and idealists of every political stripe tend to have blinders on, distancing themselves from real people, and a real, harsh world. Nevertheless, it is in all our interests to respect people who love this country and want to see it do better. There were “liberals” who wanted an end to segregation, to racism, to child abuse, to spousal abuse, and wanted everyone lifted up, everyone to have equal access to education, to jobs, and to participate in Democracy. This movie touches a little on that, but such was the case in the 50s and 60s, because I saw it. And it happened again to people who continued to carry the torch of equal rights for all, and who, following their consciences, opposed the war in Vietnam.

Much has been said about the people who did that then, and a lot of it is untrue. We see this now in “fake” news stories, fake emails, fake messages, fake tweets, and entirely made up scandals about political opponents, for political gain and power. This movie should remind us that not all we hear, not all we read, not all we see in 24-hour “news” shows is worth more than belly lint. There are hardworking journalists working every day to bring us the news of what is happening, in this country, and the world. They tell it like it is, usually in short articles and media bites. And it is REAL news. The rest is all talking heads crap, opinions about the news. It’s fine that people have opinions and want to share them, but that is not news.

Many want to tell us what to think, instead of showing us how to think. We need to form our own opinions, not based on what other people think, but on the basic news facts, which are often buried under opinions and advertising. With a world of information, literally at our fingertips, we should research news stories, find out more, what’s behind the stories. We should never, ever, listen solely to a set of opinions that all fit into one “camp” of thought. That is what we should hate. There are sometimes two sides to issues, and often more than two sides. That’s just my opinion. But movies like this are designed to give us food for thought. We should eat of this fine freedom we have to think whatever we want. But we should also defend that freedom both in actions and carefully thought-out conversations with others, and not simply use thoughtless opinions as ammunition against anyone who might have different opinions. Our history says we can be better than that.

I RELEASE WHAT I AM RECEIVING WHAT I NEED

4-13-2020

I release this viral blue funk
sometimes dark thing
in my soul.
It haunts me
from time to time.

Release this loneliness
that feeds my blues.
Not lonely all the time
sometimes it just appears
out of the blue.
Does it feed my blues?
Or
Does that blue funk
feed my loneliness?

I release this obsession
that comes upon me too
obsession
about
what I’ve said or done.

I release this obsession
that comes upon me I release
this obsession that comes
I release this obsession.

I sit too much
at the computer
watching movies
reading
or just
wasting time.
I release all that.

Often I want forgiveness
for things I’ve said or done
but
I must give forgiveness
without expectations
of return.

I receive friendship
though
sometimes
it is not easily
given away.
I receive smiles
and those
O
those
I can reciprocate
easily.

I try to understand
how other people feel
put myself in their shoes
feel their perspective
but
sometimes
I get pissed off that they
do not understand.

With all these things
I know
I must lead by example
be open-minded
without expectations.

It is springtime
despite the snow and rain
and today’s cold damp air
hovering around my soul.

Yet it is time for Spring
Spring delayed
Spring postponed
but not cancelled.

It will come.

 

04/13/2020

Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day 2020

Sunday, April 12, is Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day 2020, in the United States. You might just find yourself inside on this particular Sunday morning, and there might be a ham, or other traditional Ēostre, Easter or Passover foods for dinner, but maybe grilled cheese for brunch? instead of eggs?

[In case you’re wondering, according to a Northern European legend, the goddess Ēostre (or Ostara) is supposed to have turned a bird into a hare, a sacred animal from antiquity. Birds do lay eggs. But, actually, in Medieval times, a common practice in England was for Christian children to go door-to-door begging for eggs on the Saturday before Lent began. People handed out eggs (a symbol of rebirth) as special treats for children prior to their fast.] So those Easter egg hunts are supposed to be a week earlier.

Grilled cheese sandwiches date back to Roman times.

Now, there are a lot of ways that people make this sandwich. Personally, I see a grilled cheese sandwich as quick ‘n’ dirty. Throw some cheese between two pieces of mayonnaise-covered sliced bread, and fry it in a cast iron pan until it’s crispy brown on both sides and the cheese is gooey. That’s traditional. My mom had an old sandwich grill that could be used over an open flame.

I never understood why it was round, when the bread was square. I found out recently that what we called a sandwich grill, was actually known as a pie iron. That’s right, it was used to make small pies over an open flame, which of course is why it had a long handle. Nevertheless, I never saw my mom make a pie with it, and I thought it was a bit wasteful of bread because the corners would break off or she’d cut ’em off to make it fit inside fully. Nowadays there are square-cornered ones made for sandwiches. 

Of course, since I live in New Mexico, I add green chile to my sandwich before it goes in the frying pan. I love a little bit of spiciness in my cheesy foods.

And, there are hundreds of different ways that people make grilled cheese sandwiches. There is even a Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Championship every year. Some people add strawberries. Sometimes you’ll find Nutella® on a grilled cheese. Or sweet and sour red cabbage. Steven Raichlen, of TV grilling fame, makes a grilled cheese sandwich with portobello mushrooms served in blazing cognac. Fancy.

There are people who use blue cheese — sorry, not me. The only thing I ever found that makes blue cheese palatable to me is a very dry, and intense 100% peach or apricot wine. I used to make those at a winery that has since closed. I stay away from any kind of fermented or soft cheese for a grilled cheese, because I like harder cheeses anyway. Hard cheese is an excellent source of protein and calcium, with less lactose, since the whey is removed during processing. Soft cheeses such as brie and Camembert provide less calcium per serving.

I grew up with grilled cheese made from processed cheese that could be sliced from a rectangular block and melted very easily. Velveeta is the most famous of those. But it had little taste. So there’s a happy medium for me. Although the firmer the cheese, the better it is for you, some cheeses, like Romano or Parmesan, are a bit too hard to slice, or melt in a short time, but it’s easy to find the semi-hard extra sharp cheddar in most grocery stores, and that’s what I usually have in the house for sandwiches or to grate into omelets. Swiss cheese on rye is damn good too.

My sandwich falls into the competitive category of “Classic, plus one”.  While I cannot stand processed cheese anymore, I enjoy mayonnaise, so I layer some Mayo on one side of both pieces of whole wheat, sour dough or oat bread first. 

Then I slice enough cheese to cover one side of the bread, and smother it in roasted green chile pepper.

Now, in New Mexico, these are spicy and flavorful. Don’t ever eat a Texas “green chile” because they think a skinny modified bell pepper is green chile. It’s not. They’re flavorless and have no spice. Texans mostly think chile is dry red chile powder cooked with beans, and they spell it, chili, which is not the Spanish name for the peppers. The peppers themselves are native to South and Central America.

That said, I close up my sandwich and drop it into a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Mine usually has some leftover oil in it, but if it doesn’t I will borrow another tradition and spread Mayo on the outside on my bread as well. It is supposed to make the bread a bit crisper, but I have never seen any difference, whether I use vegetable oil, or bacon grease.

You can even use butter, good old-fashioned butter from free ranging, grass-fed cows, the kind that turns a nice golden color when it warms up, but it can overwhelm the flavor of the cheese, in my opinion. (I only use very flavorful Irish or French butter in my home.) Everybody has their own opinion about what makes a great grilled cheese, but I think it mostly depends on how your mom made it.

I fry mine on a medium heat that allows just enough time to evenly brown both sides of the bread — making it crispy without burning it — and to just melt the cheese enough to make it a little gooey.

Voilà:

Oh, Day Whatever

So, we’re all coping as best we can in the middle of this viral pandemic. Some peoples’ jobs are essential, and they’re still out and about every day. Those of us stuck at home or near home are a little envious, but really, the people working are at greater risk, and they aren’t seeing much more than deserted schools and shopping centers, and shuttered stores. It’s somewhat like the post-apocalyptic dramas, but, in this case, humanity hasn’t been wiped out, but is basically in hiding, from an unseen foe, a foe that preys on our very human sociality. Therefore, we must become the opposite. Not antisocial, because that implies an antagonism to social instincts, but asocial — isolated and generally not with other humans. For me, this isn’t a new thing, so I feel I’m doing OK.

However.

Yesterday I rode my motorcycle to shop at a Smith’s. Go there all the time. I walk down this one aisle they closed off. It’s weird. A dead-end aisle. Not the booze aisle. Baby food, lotions, similar things. Narrow opening into the aisle. Plexiglass covering the rest. Back part closed off with thick plexiglass. I don’t understand it. Anyway, I walk in looking for something, and I can’t find it. So there’s these two women near the exit, and the older one of them seems to have bronchial problems, breathing hard, and I hear liquid as she keeps trying to, I don’t know, bring something up? without coughing. And the sound is so disturbing – like someone breathing underwater – and I’m sure she’s got pneumonia, and possibly due to complications from Covid-19, and she’s not wearing a face mask. And I’m trapped there, because I don’t want to go near her, anywhere near the space she’s in, and it’s the only way out. Pissed me off. Isolation rage? Corona rage? They will actually deliver your groceries to you now, or you order and they will bring them to your car. I couldn’t understand why someone that sick decided it was better to just go to the store anyway, and without even a cloth or paper mask. I wanted to scream at her, “Why did you come here?” Covid-19 or not, if you’re that sick and people will deliver your groceries to you, why the hell are you out?

As I write, a neighborhood church is just now playing Amazing Grace with chimes. It’s usually how they call people to services. I thought large church services were banned? I know it has a large congregation from all the cars I see going in and out, especially on Sundays. It’s 8am here on a Friday. But Good Friday isn’t until next week. Maybe they’re doing a parking lot service. That’s a thing around here.

Pickups at restaurants. Grocery shopping, but no more than once a week. Not much else to do. They want us to stay out of parks now. Was no more than five people, but they’re saying just stay home unless it’s absolutely essential. I don’t know. Is cereal essential? Is pomegranate/cranberry juice essential? Is lotion for my painfully cracked heels essential? Cat food? If I don’t feed them they might eat me. Raspberry sorbet? If I don’t have something sweet, I will go stir crazier. In some states, liquor stores are closed, but in others gun stores are open. Here, we have alcohol, but the gun stores have been deemed non-essential businesses, for the interim. There doesn’t seem to be much consistency in the decisions about what is essential and what isn’t.

Life on hold. So strange. 11 years ago, I thought retirement was bad. No sense of who I was without my job. Had just gotten divorced two years before that, so no one to live with either. Peaceful at first, but aimless, empty, boring.

So, I got busy, I hiked every week, once, twice or occasionally three times. Up the mountain to the ridge with a hiking group. Hiking along the mountain ridge. Sometimes snowshoeing, sometimes hiking up to the restaurant on top, at 10,400 feet above sea level. Started working for a winery, which was not only hard physical labor, but kept me more social, having to deal with the other workers and the customers. Eventually started working as a background extra in movies. Much later, the winery closed, which was very sad, but I still had the movies. I managed to get a few speaking roles in unpaid local productions. Not ever having had actual training I took a lot of acting workshops at first, and then settled into regular acting classes every week. I’ve been doing that for several years now. Busy, busy, busy. My days were full.

Not so much now. Just before this all happened, I had a callback audition, one of the things every actor hopes for. I would have been interacting with the other person who already has a role in the production, so it’s called a chemistry audition, to see how we work together, but that was postponed, possibly now cancelled. That was quite a letdown. Movie production is halted altogether. Classes are postponed. Hikes are more limited, and, although I can still hike, going out at all is being discouraged. My acting teacher/coach is now having online classes, so I still have class, still have monologues and dialogues to memorize. Less dialogues now, since it’s not set up to be able to watch the other person when I’m speaking, so it’s much harder to interact, and play off of the other person’s emotions and reactions. It had been great to have that interaction, even if, like in actual productions, one has to do the same scene over, and over, and over, etc.

Nothing to do but memorize lines, wait for classes now. I write some, I read a lot. I play solitaire. I watch movies. Recently I decided to order a set of DVDs of the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I don’t watch much TV, and avoid TV shows that require me to watch every week. So, I was leery at first. Took me a few weeks to get around to it, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. The show is good. The acting is consistently wonderful. The dialogue is great. When Mrs. Maisel decides to use her talents to be a comedian, she manages to meet the best comedians in New York at the time, including Lenny Bruce.
Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein are brilliant actors. The series is worth watching for them alone. It’s nice to see Tony Shalhoub in there, playing something other than Monk. The writing is consistently good, show to show, and within each show. How wonderful to be able to watch this at my leisure.

So, there are benefits to this isolation. And really, I’m used to it. But part of me wants to be out, hiking up a mountain with a group of happy hikers. Part of me really likes being with other actors in class or on a set. We get to try out parts with each other. Weeks ago, the acting coach had an actor use me as the object of her monologue, and, to get more playful intensity out of her, had her flirt with me, since I was sitting close to her. It did change her monologue. Sounded better. But she was a bit embarrassed. Which is a good thing, because actors must rise out of their comfort zone. I actually liked it a lot. I found the flirting felt real to me. She is a good actor. I actually like her a lot, so I was a little embarrassed, because I think I showed my delight at such a prospect. I wouldn’t mind having her flirt with me. But, anyway, she’s happily married. Such is life. A little bit of excitement for me though.

Sure could use some excitement now. It’s not the same online. I don’t even like reading e-books, or watching videos on my computer. I like the feel of a book in my hand, and the practiced way my hands keep the pages moving so I can preview a little ahead all the time, and I hardly notice that I’m reading as a story unfolds. Lots of time for that now. Lots of time to binge watch a TV series, or DVD movies. But I wouldn’t mind having company while I watch. Wouldn’t mind company while I eat. Wouldn’t mind a soft warm body in bed with me at night. Not much substitute for that online. There are limits.

I find myself looking forward to the end of this extreme social isolation. I’m going to take advantage of all social interaction in person that I can get. Maybe I won’t be by myself if this happens again.

HUMANITY GOES VIRAL (a haiku)

A common focus
This is what real peace looks like
One world together.

A NOVEL VIRUS

New
terror inspiring
I keep wondering when this will be over.
Like endless wars and terrorism.
When do they end?
When will we be safe?
I want the world
to stop hating
to stop fighting
to come out
to rejoice
in our common humanity.
How novel.

The One and Only Terry, Not Complaining

I just finished a book, called THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN. It’s a children’s story, but I wanted to see what it was about. As I got near the end, my eyes began to feel funny, and as I finished the last line, and turned the page, a tear rolled down my cheek.

Sounds corny, and I know you might not believe me, but if you don’t I might just tear your head off. Ivan wouldn’t do that — he’s a silverback gorilla — but I might. My name’s Terry. I’m a human.

I have a cage too, like Ivan. I can leave it anytime I want, but often I don’t. There are other humans outside my cage. Sometimes, like Ivan, I long to be with others of my kind. Sometimes I do, mostly I don’t. Sometimes I think I’m not like the other humans, especially if I am in my cage too long, as Ivan was. Sometimes I really do enjoy being around other humans, and I act just like them. And I smile, even though I still feel lonely.

Sometimes, in my zoo-cage, I read a book like this one, or watch a movie that makes my eyes tear up, and sometimes tears drip off into my beard. It’s then that I remember what it’s like to be human.

And I remember what it was like to work every day, to live with someone every day, to wake up with them, to eat with them, to watch movies and plays with them, or drink with them, or dance, or travel, or sleep together.

Once in a great while, after two divorces, I found someone to have sex with, and I liked that a lot. And doing things to each other that made ourselves feel fantastic. And I liked the sleeping together the most, the warm body next to me, the feel of skin against skin. Me, making breakfast for us. Eating together. Watching TV, or going out to a movie, or eating in a restaurant together. Or sex in the big overstuffed chair, or in the kitchen, or in the car in a parking lot. But mostly I liked the touchings, the sittings next to each other, or the cuddlings in bed before the most restful sleeps I can have, luxuriating in the warmth and skin of another.

It seems all that is over now. Age creeps in. Habits overtake. The mind slips sometimes — it’s so much harder to write now. Misspelling things a lot, switching letters around, leaving letters out, forgetting words I used to know, having to use a machine to look up spellings and meanings, and not noticing my mistakes sometimes until the second or third read. But I majored in English, and I read every day. Sometimes, no matter how much I liked a book, I forget what it was about. I used to be able to remember whole paragraphs from a book, and where in the book to find a sentence or scene.

And the body is slipping away slowly too. The erratic peeing, sometimes strong and steady, sometimes painfully urgent, sometimes in fits and drips. The heart that almost failed me once. The pills I take. THE ANKLE. The ankle I turned sideways stepping off a curb in August! I hike in the mountains, climbing hills, and stepping on and over large rocks, and running downhill without falling on the loose scree. But for some reason I stretched out and twisted the fuck out of my ankle, months ago, stepping off a curb. It’s much better now, but not entirely healed, which makes me feel less whole. And weaker. And I don’t like that feeling. The pain of the fall was unlike anything I’d ever felt:

— worse then the time I rounded a curve too fast on my motorcycle, and fell in the gravel on the side of the road with my right arm out. That didn’t hurt till later, but it took a year to heal, and I was in my early thirties then.

— worse than the time a car ran into me while I was crossing a street at night, and it pushed me half a block down the street while I was still standing, until the driver noticed me and slammed on the brakes, which slammed me against the asphalt.

— worse than the time a car hit me on my bicycle, sending me flying and crumpling the bike frame under its wheels, or the time a car knocked me off my bicycle, tearing the left pedal completely off, and leaving me with a huge multicolored bruise on my hips and ass.

— worse than the two times I totaled my motorcycles running into vehicles, or the time a car rounded a corner directly into my car head on, and my brain bounced badly off my skull.

No, stepping off that curb did something to my ankle I’d never felt before, sent shooting pain up my leg directly to my brain, and my mouth opened as it went by, and I screamed out loud — something I’d never done before — and when I fell, I pulled on the same nerves, tendons, muscles and ligaments, and I screamed again. But that sharp pain went away immediately after each of those. But there was pain still. Five months ago. But even after wearing a stabilizing boot for two months, and then an ankle wrap, I still feel the changes in my ankle, the not rightness of it. X-rays show a tiny bone chip fracture, but can’t show soft tissue damage. Can’t have an MRI unless I see a physical therapist eight days from now. But I don’t know how much of that the insurance will cover.

See what I mean? Yeah, sure, I have all of my limbs and digits and both eyes and ears, but I don’t like this feeling of gradual decay. I really liked the bicycling, the running through streams over wet, slippery rocks, hiking up a mountain until my lungs felt empty, hiking twenty six miles along the crest of a mountain. I still hike, sure, but there’s a bit of insecurity creeping in. Can I jump off this rock? Can I leap across that sliver of a stream? Or step off that curb? Can I still bicycle a hundred miles?

NOW, DON’T GET ME WRONG – I’M NOT COMPLAINING. It’s good to feel pain, to know I’m alive. It’s good to be alive, to feel the sun, wind, rain and snow on my skin. It’s good to taste food, good coffee, or a glass of good wine. To listen to music, to hang out with people at a play or on a movie set. I still enjoy reading and writing.

It’s very, very good to feel real love for another person, and I do. Love is love.

There are friends I see. Pool games to play. Poetry to listen to or recite. People that I meet. People to talk with. But, sometimes, I still wish for sex, or for just that gentle touch of lips on mine, or the feeling of skin on my skin, or just a touch to my face or a hand in my hand.

But, it’s unlikely. I have a cage around me. Not just the house, but the one in my mind. I don’t trust people any more. I say odd things sometimes. I scare people. I’m leery of strangers I don’t love. But I know I have to spend lots of time with people to get to know them, or love them. And yet, I stay in my cages, and wish I wasn’t so alone in them.

Sometimes.

Isla in a Sea of Sand (part 2)

Part Two: Guilt, Consequences and Separation

Isla drove me back to the sag wagon later on. The rest of the bicycle group was off doing other things. Our fearless leader on this cross-country bicycle trip, Nancy, saw this trip’s purpose primarily as networking. She wanted to help connect with all sorts of active people around the country, trading information and distributing contact information. So any chance she had she was talking to people, interviewing them, picking up more books and literature. Peaceful change was her goal, and not far from what I had worked for myself. Beside my participation in antiwar marches, lobbying, and organizing, I had spent years volunteering with a free medical clinic in Baltimore, Maryland, the city of my birth. The Clinic had been started by anti-war activists, a local chapter of the Black Panthers, and free-school teachers, among others, including some doctors.

Nancy herself had not actually been involved in all those kind of activities in the late 60s and early 70s. She was an exchange student in Italy for a year (1961-62), graduated from Brown University in 1966, and then spent two years in the Peace Corps in Colombia, SA. Then she spent four years in Japan (1971-75). The trip was actually a way for her to find out what was going on in the U.S. in 1976. And she was writing a book about the trip. I never read it, but it was published, in Japan, and I don’t read Japanese. At any rate, at the time, we were nearing the end of our stay in Albuquerque, heading north to Los Alamos, and Taos, Cimarron, and Raton, before angling east towards Kansas. And there was Isla to consider. We were standing there, next to the MG, trying to say goodnight, when a pickup screeched to a halt just a few feet away. Isla had already made me promise not to say anything to Carl, to leave that up to her, when there he was. He jumped out of the truck, stepped right up to me and roared into my face, “Are you screwing my wife?” Well, how to answer that? Isla had just told me not to tell him anything, that she needed to have that conversation with him. I was torn between a guilty expectation that I was about to get a beating that I deserved, and doing as Isla had asked. I said, “I had wanted to,” meaning nothing, but hopefully implying that I’d only thought about it. He yelled back, “What the hell does that mean?” I had no answer. Isla intervened, took him aside, and they both drove away together. That left me free to help prepare a meal for the group and then get caught up on what everyone had been doing. Some had been getting clothes washed, and getting food for the road. We would be leaving next day. Nancy left me alone, which was good, because I didn’t want to try to explain what I’d gotten myself into.

In the morning, there was Isla again. She’d brought my bedroll with her. She told me she had told Carl what had happened, and he would be leaving. She took me with her. I thought we might be going back to that same house where we’d had our tryst, but we went somewhere else. Another friend of Isla’s had told her she could use it. He was the owner of the local art house movie theater. We looked through his record collection, and the only thing I remember listening to was Jerry Jeff Walker, something Isla liked a lot. I don’t remember if we sat on a chair or a sofa, but we were kissing, and taking clothes off, and, something was wrong. That urgency was gone, that overpowering desire had evaporated. Guilt. I felt bad about Carl. I didn’t want to come between a married couple again. Isla have been married to Carl for six years. They’d served in the Peace Corps together. We were ashamed. Our Catholic brainwashing had kicked in. It was as if we’d sinned, but neither of us was religious anymore. We talked for so long I lost track of time. We said goodbye there. I gave her our itinerary, and told her she could send me mail via General Delivery. I really never expected to see her again.

I rode over to the sag wagon, but it was gone. Holy crap! Well, I knew where they were going, so I hit the road. I knew I could catch up to them. On the way, I overtook Darla, a woman who had just joined our group in Socorro, NM two weeks earlier. We had stopped there for a couple days. She had also left late, so we rode together. She was very happy to see me, as she hadn’t really wanted to travel alone. We were desperate to reconnect with the group, although it wasn’t unusual for any of us to travel at our own pace. After a couple hours of riding, we were well away from Albuquerque, heading north, when it suddenly clouded up, and sure enough the sky opened up. We saw what looked like an old farm and ran for a low shed. It had probably been used for chickens at one point, but it was ours now. We were wet, and well, once we got our wet clothes off we put our bedrolls together. Huddling together for warmth seemed like a good idea, but it didn’t take us long to start fucking. In this little low-roofed shed, while the storm thundered above, lightning flashed, and the rain poured. We slept there till daybreak. The rain hadn’t lasted long, but we hadn’t really noticed. We had slept curled up around each other.

Caught up with the group later on and had dinner with them in Santa Fe. We’d be on our way to Los Alamos the next day. Slept with Darla that night. This was looking like it would work out great to have a bed partner in the group. We took the standard tour of the visitor center at Los Alamos, saw replicas of the atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man that the U.S. had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Listened to a talk given there, and watched a short film about the making of the bombs, and the testing at Trinity Site. Of course, Darla and I shared our bedrolls again. In the morning, we all headed to Taos to visit the New Buffalo Commune.

New Buffalo, one of the largest and well-known communes, was an interesting place. Farming, and self sufficiency were the norm there. There was music, and basic, plain food. We actually found ourselves criticized for not living a lifestyle like theirs. We had two writers with us, Nancy, and also Rick from San Francisco, which is where the bike group had left from. The folks at New Buffalo felt they were committed to a lifestyle that would change the world, whereas we were just tourists, getting paid to write. I thought that was a bit unfair, and personally, I felt that the people at New Buffalo were just dropouts, too far removed from society to change it. In the Easy Rider film, Peter Fonda’s character had said he thought they could make it. Dennis Hopper’s character didn’t think so. Hopper himself hung out in Taos. New Buffalo’s lifestyle was very laid back, but people had been leaving it for some time. The remainder were a bit fanatic. I wanted to see our culture change too, to see us go from a country that always seemed to be fighting somewhere around the globe, threatening to destroy the entire planet with our nuclear weapons, and polluting not only rivers and streams, but oceans and the very air we breathed. You couldn’t escape that by living out of the way and off the grid. Nice for them, but wouldn’t change a thing. It was strange to argue with people whom I’d thought were much like me, but they were too fanatical to think there was any other way but theirs. Although the commune had been founded 9 years earlier, we had to use corn cobs to wipe our butts in the outhouse. They weren’t just trying to reduce paper waste; they wanted to use the outhouse sludge on their crops. I was trying to survive too, but looking for actual ways to restructure society to benefit all. I had a more political bent, from my anti-war activities, and my experiences helping to provide community health care with the goal of universal health care. I didn’t enjoy my time at  New Buffalo, so I was happy to get on up the road the next day.

We didn’t have far to go. Only 17 miles north of Taos is the Lama Foundation, a spiritual community, oddly patterned very closely on the lifestyles outlined in the books and literature we carried with us. It was one of the most well known communes in the area at the time, and one of the few left now. New Buffalo is now a B&B. This was the first time I’d ever seen an outhouse designed for two people to use at the same time, but that wasn’t the oddest thing. The shit holes had been designed low to the ground with painted shoe prints on either side of the holes. Apparently it is considered better for people to shit crouched down like that. At the time, I had no idea this was common in other countries. I liked this place much better than New Buffalo. The people seemed almost beatifically happy. They had small cottage industries going, and reached out to people in Taos, Santa Fe, and native communities as well. Such a difference from the grungy drop-outs at New Buffalo! There was a lot to see around the Lama commune, and we were welcome guests. Nancy was in heaven, interviewing people. People there were not critical of others, and did their best to demonstrate a better way of life. The food was much better there too, but I didn’t stay long. A green MG drove up. It was Isla, from Albuquerque. She’d come to see me, but really she wanted me to go back to Albuquerque with her. She asked me to just come back for two weeks, so we could get to know each other. I agreed. I told Darla I was leaving for a couple weeks. She didn’t seem entirely happy about that, but we barely knew each other either. On the drive back to Albuquerque, with my bicycle strapped across the back of the little car, Isla told me she and Carl had never wanted to have children, or rather that she hadn’t wanted to have children. I think Carl was the type to want children. He really was a nice guy. Guilt. Guilt.

But then, Isla laid the bombshell on me. She said she wanted to have a child with me! I didn’t know what to say. I had read The Population Bomb in high school, and had resolved never to add any more kids to the world, especially in a country that used more resources per person than anywhere else on the planet. But, with Isla smiling at me, waiting for my response, I felt loved, wanted, and it made me happy. We would build a house together, maybe renovate an old adobe, and we would have a child. Actually we’d have to have two, because I could not see having a child grow up without a sibling. I’d grown up with six. We smiled all the way back to Albuquerque, happy as we could possibly be. Carl had left town. I stayed with Isla in their house. A curious neighbor asked me who I was. I said I was a friend of theirs. I wouldn’t find out who he was until much later. I was clueless.

It was a joyful time. We were in love. We cuddled all the time. She showed me how to make chile rellenos. We talked a lot, made plans for the future. But, although we would be together, I wanted to finish the bicycle tour. It was the adventure of a lifetime, and I knew I’d come back. Isla asked me to move to Albuquerque for a year. If I did that, she would go with me anywhere I wanted , if I didn’t want to stay.  I promised. She knew I’d come back. After two weeks, we said our good-byes, and she packed some food for me for the road. Burritos, sandwiches, and a few chile rellenos.

It was a good thing she did, because I had a long ride ahead of me and the group was already in Kansas.

LEARNING LESSONS, 50 Years Ago

May, 1969

After he burst into my room
Sue jumped up, split that scene
down the fire escape out back
– back to her car.

It was Thanksgiving, 1969.

Earlier
We’d gone to her parents’ home
rich suburban house
ate turkey on fine china
drank champagne from crystal.
Got asked about my career plans.

After pie, we left
Sue said, “We’re going to a play,”
but drove me home
in her Plymouth Valiant.

We sat on the bed in my room
Door closed.
We wanted privacy
never knew if the roommate
would
interrupt us.

Nashville Skyline, Bob Dylan
“To Be Alone With You”
on the portable stereo –
suitcase style record player.

Kissing, touching –
asking ourselves
“Should we?”
Sideways on the bed
bodies welded together
18-year-old virgins.

So cozy, so happy
hormones pumping
tickling tongues
warming each others’ bodies
in our own little world.

The door burst open
roommate says, “Hi guys.
“What’s happening?”
— Asshole.

Sue jumped up
buttoned her blouse
and she was gone –
She. was. gone!

I was pissed –
not at her
at him –
Mr. Annoying.

“What happened,” he said
melodrama leaking out of his face
inches from mine
“Did I scare cutie-pie away? I’m sorry.”
“You know you did, and you’re not.”
“She leave you all horny?
“I can fix that.”
I said, “Fuck you, asshole.”
“Ooh, I’d like that,” he said,
“I like assholes, don’t you?
“Does your little girl like it in the ass?”
“Huh, huh, huh?”

I said, “SHUT UP.
“Stay the hell out of my life,”
and
“ Don’t come in my room again.”

“No,” he said.
“This is my place.
“I found it, I paid the deposit.
“I invited you to share it.
“I’ll come in anytime I want
“In fact, I think I’ll come in now.”

He jumped towards me
grabbed me.
I pushed him off, hit him.
Violence is rarely the answer.
But, sometimes –

Like the day my dad hit me
one last time, years ago
slapping my head
back and forth
back and forth
back and forth.

I pushed Dad
with all my strength
knocked him down
wanted to kill him
fortunately,
he was stronger.

Dad smiled at me
he’d always told me
to stand up to my bullies
he never hit me again.

Lesson learned.

Instinctive reaction later
punching my roommate.
For a big man
he went down fast.

Crouched in a ball
whimpering:
“Mommy Mommy.”
I backed off, shocked.
I remembered then how

years earlier
he’d been raped in the shower
by high school bullies
rapists are cowards.

Lesson learned.

In the aftermath, he left.
Said he was going for the cops
– to charge me with assault.
Came back much later – no cops.
“Changed my mind,” he said.

Said he just drove around
picked somebody up,
“I like those young boys
“That long blond hair.
“We had a great time.”

“Where?” I said, a little shocked.
“In my car. Why do you think I have a big car?”
“Your parents bought it for you.” I said.
Grinning like a maniac, he said
“O, but I picked it out.”

He stuck his face in mine
“Why didn’t your parents give you one?”
“Because they don’t have any money.”
“You need money? I got money.” he said.
“I’ll give you what I gave him –
“More, if you want.”
Shocked again, I sputtered:
“You – you paid him?”
“Of course,” he said,
ugly leer on his round face
skinny mustache twitching.

I found my own place
Minimum-wage room: no kitchen.
Ate sandwiches
and fruit in jars.

Lesson learned.

The last time I saw Sue
her grandmother’s house
on the lawn
her drunken father
attacked me
grabbed my bushy hair
called me a hippie
dragged me to the ground
I wanted to hit him
but
he was Sue’s father
I couldn’t do that – to her.

Sue intervened
her father let me go
his mother pulled him away,
“Don’t make a scene.”
But, before he disappeared inside
he bellowed at me:
“Get off my property.”

Lesson learned.

Sue sent me a letter
Nude drawing of herself
in chains
”Look at me,” she wrote
“18, naive and vulnerable.”

There was a quote:
“All I want from living
is to have no chains on me.”
– lyrics, from Blood, Sweat & Tears,
My own vinyl, appropriately.

Lesson learned.

Sue’s words stuck in my head
“You are too serious,
“I don’t want to be tied down.
“It’s for the best.
and, “We are too different.”
No shit.
Me, working all day, school at night
Her, private school.

Lessons learned:
Live by yourself.
Avoid the bourgeoisie.
Stay celibate.
Trust no one.

 

Rental room 1970

On the road 1976

Albuquerque 1978

Dreams Excite Me

She said: “OK, but the nature of our relationship has to stay the same.” I asked her: “What is the nature of our relationship?” After a slight pause, she said: “Not a member of the public.” The slight pause meant she had not considered this before, but right now, she had. Her face was all smile, but with a hint of serious. That’s what happens when you begin a relationship with an intellectual. I liked her answer. I certainly wanted to be more than just a member of an adoring public with her. She meant that we could be closer, but at the same time private, and what we said or did would be: “not for publication”.

I was fine with that. She is an aphrodisiac, but more than that. She radiates self confidence, which is amatory in itself. As an educator, a writer, and a television host, she is clearly a woman of power, strong willed, and independent. She says what she thinks, even it is shocks people’s quaint notions of propriety. Her temperament is animated. With a radiant smile on her face, she can still confront, denounce, or impeach. With that same smile, she can also dynamize others, spur them into agreement with her, foment rebellion, and encourage.

She is all that. I am certainly enamored of her. Sometimes there is a hint of warmth in her voice when she speaks to me. That’s just the way she is, but I often imagined there could be more between us: an intimacy. Once, as we conversed in a public gathering, a friend of hers approached. She introduced her to me, but not me to her. So, her friend immediately asked, “And who is this?” meaning, perhaps, who is this man to you? I think she sensed that meaning, and she had to search her mind for a moment, before she told her friend my name, and added, “He’s a poet.” For after all, no one would question further why a poet would know another poet, so no more needed to be said.

But now, in this moment, as we touched, in fun, paused on the brink of some — thing, something else, something more? … Well — I was excited.

Isla in a Sea of Sand (part 1)

Part 1: Suddenly, Albuquerque

She came into my life accidentally, like a storm on a sunny day. I say accidentally, but I had been looking for someone like her for a long time. I’d been moving from place to place randomly, working odd jobs, making molds from wet sand/clay mixtures and filling them with molten bronze for windchimes,  or working as a carnival electrician, hooking up all the rides, joints and food stands. I was on the road a lot, bicycling my way back and forth across the United States when I met her.

Although I had initially traveled alone, after my last job I had joined a group of bicyclists touring the country in the year of the Bicentennial. We made many stops along the way, staying at community centers or in people’s homes. I’d met a lot of interesting people that way. When I first arrived in the city of Albuquerque, we’d been interviewed by a couple of radio stations, and I’d met Andrea, a pretty lawyer who worked for the ACLU. We talked about S.1, the Criminal Justice Reform Act being debated in Congress to reform federal rules of criminal codes. This had application to those of us who’d been arrested protesting the Vietnam war, and so many others who‘d been arrested for possession of marijuana, a crime created by the nearly defunct FBI in the 1930s to shift the agency from policing bootlegging to policing other drugs. She offered her place as a homestay, but only for one night. I had been hoping to share her bed, horny dog that I was, but she actually left for her boyfriend’s place. I slept in a real bed for the first time in months, and conked out the second my head hit the pillow.

In the morning I had breakfast with Frank and Gladys, a friendly couple who taught at the University. Then my bicycle group had literature tables to work, to set up on campus. We were more than bicyclists. Our library was full of information on alternative lifestyles like communes, composting toilets, solar energy devices, anti-war tracts, such as Give Me Water, a Japanese booklet on the after-effects of Hiroshima, as well as other books with advice for living off grid, and ideas for creating new, peaceful, environmentally friendly ways of living. There were workshops too. My job was showing films, about nutrition, the dangers of refined sugar, the pitfalls of nuclear energy, energy alternatives, and space exploration using stable points in Earth orbit. The movie on nuclear energy problems, like transportation, leakage and waste disposal drew a crowd from the American Nuclear Society, who were all too happy to let us know how clean and safe nuclear energy really was.

The next day is when I met Isla,  a former journalist, Peace Corps volunteer, and currently director of a public advocacy group, who had offered her home to any of us that needed a space to crash while we visited her city. I don’t know if she’d cleared that with her husband before making that offer. He was a nice guy, a jewelry maker, but she was her own woman. There had been a list of these prearranged homestays (crash houses, I called ‘em), and I picked her place, not yet knowing whose place it was. I had dialed a number. A woman’s voice had answered. She had seemed quite happy that someone had called, and told me to come by that evening. The bicycle group had a sag wagon, an old school bus, powered by propane, and painted white.   It sported a library, a folded-down wind generator, and a cook stove, but it had no bathroom or shower, and oh boy! did I need a shower. When I arrived, dinner was ready. This friendly couple welcomed me into their very small home near the zoo. I had been expecting an elderly couple, because in my experience staying in the homes of church people, years earlier, who had supported us anti-war protesters when we were far from home, they’d always been wrinkly old couples.

Isla surprised me. She was young and beautiful with dark eyes and dark hair, native to the city. Carl was tall, blond, and imposing, but very friendly. The hot meal was quite welcome, as well as the warm talk we’d shared. I’d be in town for a few more days, so this was a welcome surprise, and I felt extremely lucky, unless there was a hidden motive for having me there. It had happened before.

As it neared bedtime, Isla grabbed her stash, while Carl went off to bed. He started work in the early mornings. So Isla and I got stoned. The weed was excellent. Back then, marijuana was tamer, and simply relaxed you, putting you into a pleasant mood. These days I never touch the stuff. I lost interest, for one thing, needing every bit of my brain alert and active for work, and because the newer stuff has been hybridized, crossbred to maximize the yield of psychoactive cannabinoids. Way too potent and stupefying.

But, at the time, sitting there in Isla’s living room, talking about revolution, and politics – both sexual and liberation – I was hypnotized by this woman. Of course, I was horny; I was twenty five. But this woman had a college education, had traveled the world, worked in New York City for one of the big national news agencies, and had a laugh that warmed my soul. However, as she was married, I put those thoughts aside, and simply enjoyed her company. I was, after all, a guest of Isla and Carl, and they were openhearted and warm people, despite my having seen, while in the bathroom, a bumper sticker on the toilet, under the seat, that said “Castrate Rapists.” A bit unnerving when you’ve just lifted the seat to pee, but I understood the sentiment. Rape was a serious problem, and I’d come near to having it happen to me as well. Isla and I discussed her sticker. She was angry, incensed really, about the amount of rape in the world.

One morning, a Saturday, Carl had driven off to his shop. I found myself without any of the bicycle group events to attend, so Isla offered to take me around the city. That made me happy. I was surprised that she drove a sports car, a little green British MGB. Isla was a real joy, full of delightful conversation and a fountain of information about the city. She drove north through a valley full of large rich homes with huge lawns, surrounded by imposing trees – cottonwoods – which I had never seen before. I was so surprised to see such greenery in an area I’d thought of as a desert. This city seemed like an oasis. We stopped by Carl’s workplace, as there was a great local restaurant nearby where we could all have lunch together. Carl was pretty busy, and didn’t have time to join us. And it turned out the restaurant was in the middle of renovations anyway, so we drove off.

We found an old landmark restaurant not far away. It was my first introduction to enchiladas, refried beans, tortillas, and real chile. However, Isla was very disappointed by the quality of the food, especially the beans. She told me the food was too dry, and badly seasoned. She’d grown up with the real thing, and this touristy food was crap, she said. So, she suggested we leave without paying. Seeing as how I was a stranger in town, without much money, and allergic to jail, I was appalled at the very idea. I’d never even considered doing such a thing. However, Isla was a very forceful woman, with strong opinions, and very sure of herself, so we left. I felt guilty, but whenever I’d bring it up, she simply smiled, such a big warm, friendly smile, that I just had to let it go.

I didn’t see much of Isla most days, as she worked, and the bicycle group kept me busy. Besides the workshops and films, we visited a solar energy factory, met the owners, and spent hours learning about the work they did, passive versus active solar, heat sinks, and homes designed to take advantage of the sun’s position in the sky for maximum efficiency. There was plenty to do and see.

One night I invited Isla and Carl to a potluck dinner near campus, and they brought strawberry shortcake. I was loving all this: good food, friendly people, traveling with a group of supportive people, thinking we were making a difference in the world. After dinner, Isla and Carl invited me to a party. A party! All that time bicycling, pushing and pulling those pedals hour after hour, day after day, camping in the mountains, never staying more than a couple days in any one place. Of course I wanted to party.

The music was mostly reggae, extremely popular among people our age in 1976, especially after a movie called The Harder They Come had come out in 1973, featuring Jamaica and the music of Jimmy Cliff. Since I’d been mostly on the road since then, I’d not seen it. It was my first time dancing to that reggae beat, and I loved it. I didn’t know anyone there, and the women seemed to be all paired off already, so I danced with Isla. Carl was not interested in dancing, and he didn’t mind that Isla danced with me. I drank some wine, something else I rarely did. And Isla and I danced. We started flirting, or maybe continued to flirt; I don’t know, but it was fun to dance with her. Our late-night talks and pot smoking had conspired to make me feel close to her. After one long, energetic song had ended, we stepped away from the dancers. I don’t know why I did it – I’m not usually so bold – I kissed her. It was just a quick peck. I’d spent some time with her, and she’d been so nice to me. I really hadn’t expected anything more from her. She smiled so sweetly. I knew her husband was in the house somewhere, and I was thirsty after all that dancing. I thanked her for the dances, and turned to get something to drink.

She grabbed my hand, and pulled me. I followed her into the bathroom. She locked the door.

Déjà vu. Once, in high school, just after I’d gone to a couple of dances with my fourth-cousin Emily, I’d stopped to visit her one day on my way home. Her mother was busy with the other three kids, her father at work, and Emily and I had just decided it was already past time to be making out. She had motioned up stairs. I had innocently suggested the bedroom, thinking we wouldn’t be seen there, but Emily had immediately reacted with a look of horror, grabbed my hand and locked us in the bathroom. I was very nervous, worried that someone would try the door, find us there. Emily’s father was a strict no-nonsense guy. I tentatively put my arms around her, and kissed her lightly, but I couldn’t stop thinking about being caught. And, of course, I missed my chance. There was a knock on the door. It was one of her twin sisters. She yelled through the door: “Mom wants you!” Emily had the same kind of parents I did so she knew she had to go immediately. I heard her sister say she’d been waiting for the bathroom. I hid behind the shower curtain, not knowing what to do and not wanting to be seen. But the sister came in and I knew I couldn’t be in there then either, so I jumped out, said: “Boo,” and snuck down the stairs.

So, here I was again. This time, with Isla, I didn’t hesitate. We kissed, and kissed, and our hands were everywhere. I hadn’t any idea this could happen, but suddenly it was unstoppable. In the back of my mind was this complication, this image of her husband kicking the door in, big trouble, but I was too excited and happy to really care. She was so supple and warm and her lips so mmmm. Then, of course, there was the loud knock on the door, the doorknob being wiggled, and Carl asking, “Isla, are you in there?” Shit! Not again. No shower curtain, and really, that would not have helped. Isla turned off the light, which made no sense. The door was locked. The light was obvious spilling out from under the door, and through the old fashioned key hole. I turned the light back on, and opened the door, expecting hell. Carl was a big dude. He stared at me with a look of surprise, then incomprehension, which morphed into hurt, and finally anger, in the space of a second. He turned towards Isla, then spun on his heel and marched away, like a soldier ordered to about face. Isla turned to me, said, “I’ll go talk to him,” and ran after him. Not knowing what else to do, I wandered back into the living room and found someone to dance with. When the music ended, I simply leaned against a wall, wondering what I should do. I didn’t know where I was exactly, I had no money, no ride, no other place I could go to. I didn’t even know the people who owned the house.

Isla came back. She told me they were leaving, going home. It was obvious I couldn’t go with them, and she said I’d have to find a ride. I heard the car doors slam, and the car roar away. I asked around, finally found someone who would give me a ride to the University area where our support bus was. Found it, but when I got there, there was no one around. I slept on the bus floor. In the morning the trip organizer, and owner of the bus, wondered what I was doing there. I made some excuse about being at a party, having to suddenly find a place to sleep. She obviously had more questions, but she didn’t press me. The bus was parked in front of a house, and she told me I could shower in there. I put on some clean clothes after, and found something to eat on the bus. I was hanging out, quietly, thinking I should leave town early, when Isla drove up. She came right over and hugged me. She was so happy to see me. She said she wasn’t sure she’d find me. “What happened?” I blurted out. She said they’d argued all night, then decided to separate. She asked me to come with her. I went. She was driving me back to the house we’d partied at the night before. She said no one would be home, and her friends there told her we could use it. I almost said, “Use it. For…?” but the look in Isla’s eyes was enough. We’d sparked something, and a fire was smouldering.

She had a key, and opened the door. There was a small room opposite the bathroom where our spark had ignited the night before. We were kissing so much it was hard to get our clothes off. After a bit of fumbling, they were gone. O, she was so gorgeous, and she felt so good against my body. Kissing. Touching. Melting into each other. Did we fuck? Of course we fucked, the fucking where time slips away, and there is nothing else, no one, no husband, no bicyclists, nothing at all but purest pleasure.

Later, though….

A Place to Come Home To

     Divorce is never a good thing, at the time. It may have been necessary. It may have been your choice, or not. It may have been something you cannot accept. But it is a lonely time nevertheless. You will probably stare out the windows a lot. In winter, you will see the death-like trees swaying in the wind. It can be a time of despair, sitting alone in a still house, realizing just how much you miss the marriage, the warm body in your bed, the company, the other person there when you come home from work. It is never easy to accept what has happened, or where you find yourself.

    After marriage, divorce feels like death, barren, and desolate. Death is, of course, worse, but divorce hits you hard personally, like a punch in the gut, or running your head smack dab into a pole. That first night you sleep alone, when you know it’s over, and you’re on your own again – in an empty house – you notice the quiet alienness of the place where you are. Perhaps you live in the same place, and they are gone. Perhaps there are other people there, or children too, but it is just not the same. Your closest connection, your lover, your partner – gone.

There is a feeling of prison. The walls confine you. You want to get out, but outside is like winter, dark and cold, and you avoid it. Inside is not much better. You can distract yourself with family, friends, TV, music, books, food. There are poems to write, full of angst and despair and self pity. You write, hoping to find some acceptance, some understanding.

You can’t go to that special person any more. Maybe you’ll hear about them, or see them around, or have to exchange kids or other pleasantries. But that connection is gone. They are like a stranger you once knew, family you don’t get along with. You ask why? But, there is no answer to that question. It’s what it is, but you keep going round and round and asking: Why, why, why? You don’t come home anymore. Home is family, and that has changed. There’s a chill you can’t shake, even in summer. Sharing your life for years, maybe decades, and no more.

In summer, I felt that chill through the heat, sweating in the sun, or the night, keeping the cooler on until I fell asleep. But there was no comfort in an empty bed in an empty house that made me feel like I was barely alive. At times there was an overwhelming sense of despair. Yes, there are plenty of fish in the sea. Who cares? I went over all the events that led me here, analyzing everything said or done. I thought of prior relationships, what happened then, what happened now. Over and over, and over until I just wanted to stop those thoughts forever.

That first winter alone, certainly a winter of discontent, was an adjustment. Cats are nice, but a poor substitute for actual human touch, for conversation, for making plans, and going places together. I touched base with the few people I know well, but they have lives of their own, and my life did not feel like a life. Always, in my head, I was alone. A piece of myself had been cut out and discarded. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore. Christmas was coming. High suicide rate around holidays. Tempting, but not an option, just yet.

I decided I was going to get a tree, a nice aromatic evergreen. I decided to make a Christmas for myself, not one I could share, but just for myself anyway. I had no lights to decorate with, no ornaments for the tree. eBay. Problem solved. I found ornaments and lights, like my parents had for me, three bothers and three sisters. There are a few bad memories from back then, but so many joyful ones, like finding a bright and fragrant tree, twinkling and radiant, as we all came down the creaking stairs, holding on to the banister, so we didn’t have to worry about forgetting to take one stair at a time, or tripping over each other. Presents under the tree. Stockings full of fruit and nuts and candy hanging on the fake fireplace mantle, over fake electric logs.

On eBay, the old, thin, glass ornaments have indentations. They are known as indents, double indents, triple indents. There are glass ornaments in the shape of teardrops, small and large. There are miniature Santas, stars, pine cones, tiny little glass balls, or baseball-sized ones, and fragile, every last one. When I was young, sometimes I would press my thumb into an indent, testing it, and sure enough they broke easily. Once, my parents could forgive. But every year I was tempted all over again. Every time I broke one, I marveled at their fragility.

I couldn’t understand why things were made that could so easily be broken.

And I was terrified. But I discovered that I could drop the pieces on the floor, blame it on the dog, or cat. My parents seemed to accept that. Eventually I learned to appreciate the ornaments for what they were, for their fragility, and their beauty.

Done. After months of loneliness, despair, and longing for someone, or something, for peace, anything different from that bleak existence, walking the Bosque in winter, those lifeless trees so deathlike in their slumber, and then, months of shopping, I had dozens of ornaments from people on eBay who no longer wanted them. I wanted them. I even found some in antique shops and second-hand stores. I also found bubble lights, those fascinating multi-colored, liquid-filled tubes heated by small bulbs, bubbling away for hours on end. I bought a tall bushy green tree for them from a Christmas tree lot.

     I tapped into memories. Music filled the house – not that Christmas schmaltz, but jazz, blues and classic rock. All was bright and colorful. I built a real fire in the fireplace. The house felt warm, over and above the heat. I felt an acceptance of where I am. This lonely space with prison walls was not so quiet. The music made me smile, and the fire popped, spit and crackled. Home. This house feels like a home now, for one person, but less fragile.

Oh, Donald Boy, Karma, Karma is Calling

     A man on a beach. He appears to be sleeping. Could be dead. The wind blows his hair back from his forehead. He stirs. His eyes are closed, his face contorted. Perhaps he is dreaming.
______________________________________________________________________________

     I am damned uncomfortable. Damn, it’s hot! I’m stiff, sore in parts of my body. I must be asleep, but I can’t wake up. I want this dream to end. Still, I feel a breeze, a hot breeze, as though the air conditioning is off and someone has left a window open. Enough of this. Things aren’t right. Someone will pay for this. I open my eyes to blinding light. A spotlight? Is there a TV crew in my bedroom? I can’t see anything. “Turn that damn light off,” I yell. No one answers. Impossible.

     I close my eyes, then crack them open just a little. Squinting, I know something is wrong. I yell, scream at the top of my lungs, the sound coming from deep inside of me, maybe. No one answers, no one comes. Impossible.
     I am not in my bed. I don’t know where I am. Shapes moving, wind, far away sounds. I close my eyes again. Maybe I’m still dreaming. I relax. I’ll wait a bit. My hands. There’s something in my hands, or under them? It’s dirt, or maybe sand, I don’t know. Now I feel it under my back, the ground, hard and scratchy. There might be sticks, rocks under me.
I sit up. I raise my hand to my eyes, shielding them from the light. I open my eyes slowly. Yes. That’s the sun. I must be outside. I am sitting on the ground, on dirt.
     I’m awake. My eyes are adjusting to the hot, burning sunlight. The shapes I saw are big trees, big leaves moved by wind. The wind is very hot. This is not a park, not a golf course, not the West Lawn. Looks like some piece of undeveloped land, maybe some lazy ass’s property not taken care of. There are dead trees too, with no leaves. Dead leaves on the ground. Not cleaned up. Damn lazy people! I stand up. I am barefoot. I look down. I have no pants. I feel my magnificent chest. It’s bare. I have no shirt. No clothes. I scream obscenities. I yell, “Who has done this to me? Why me! Of all people, why me?”
     Where the hell is my wife? How could she let this happen to me? Where are my security people? I’ll call…. I don’t have a phone. That’s right. No pockets. I look around, there is no sign of my clothes or my phone. It’s a nightmare; a walking nightmare. Things like this don’t happen. Not to me. A hat. I really need a hat. My head is so hot. I wipe sweat off my forehead, and I feel my hair. It feels like straw, dry, stiff. Where is my assistant. I need a comb. I need a shower. O god o god o god! What has happened to me? This is impossible. Everyone loves me. God loves me. Then why? Why why why why why. I scream again for security, for my assistant, for my damn absent wife. No answers. How can this be? I scream and scream. Nothing.
     My throat is dry now, raw, almost hoarse. I need a drink. Water, Yes. No. A beer. “Someone bring me a beer,” I shout. “Now!” I’m just rambling. There really is no one. No one to answer me, no one to call, no tweets to send. This is torture. Thirst. So damned thirsty. I have to find water, at least. I walk. I pass endless trees, but there’s no fountain, no pool, no stream. Not anything but these damn swaying trees. Am I dead? Am I in heaven? In hell? What could this be? No people. Just me. Funny, sometimes I wished for that, a world free of people, my world just for me.
     Well, maybe a few people. Smart people like me. Like me. People like me. I need to see another person, a few people, a rally. Yeah, the feeling I get when people yell my name, when they worship me, tell me they pray for me, love me. But there’s no one. No one to talk at. No one to cheer me. No one to blame. It’s not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault. Of course it’s not. How could it be my fault?
     Enemies. They’ve kidnapped me! Dumped me some godforsaken place, in some shithole of a country. Democrats! Liberals! Even traitors in my own party! They think they can get rid of me this way? Just like them to do something this sneaky. No one points a finger at them. No one except me. How dare they? I know how to handle people. I’ll destroy them, humiliate them, destroy them all. They’ll pay! And pay and pay and pay.
     God! I am so thirsty. Water, water, waa-ter, waaa-ter, waaaa-ter. My tongue hurts. Someone bring me water, damn it! I’ll die! Look, I’ll pay anything. Anything! Name your price. That’s how it works. Yes. Name your price. I’ll dicker. We can haggle. Everyone has a price. Everyone wants money, even when they don’t deserve it.
     O god, what if it wasn’t the Liberals? What if it was terrorists? O, what’s the difference? What if I’m being held for ransom? No, no, I would have been rescued by now. I’ve been abandoned. I knew it! Everyone has turned on me.
     Water. So dry, so tired. My skin is burning. My head is so hot. I can’t take any more of this. It’s impossible. This can’t be happening. Not to me. To me, no, not never. No. Not to me, to me, not to me, to me, to me, me, me, meeeeeeee!

________________________________________________________________________________________

A beach. Several boats landing. Military personnel jump out, walk slowly up the beach. A body lies above the sloped sand, among the trees. They advance, cautiously. They from a circle around the body, half of them look outwards, continuing to scan the area. Half look at the body. Male. Bloated or obese; it’s hard to tell. Pale, sunburned skin. Could it be? Two marines roll the body over. It is! It is. Yes. It’s the President. He’s dead. They call it in. Someone is sent to the boats for a blanket. The rest fan out, searching the island’s golf course, for something, anything to explain this. Guns are cocked. Eyes peer though filtered lenses, looking for suspects, someone, someone to explain, someone to blame.

Later, talking heads discussed his death endlessly on every news channel. A mystery. No obvious cause of death. He had only gone missing, from his bed, four days ago. Dead for two of those. Toxicology tests showed no sign of poisons or other toxins. No fluid in his lungs; he hadn’t drowned. His heart had obviously stopped beating, but no reason was found. There was no evidence of stoke. No bruising. No fingerprints on the body. Why did he have no clothes?

Speculations. There were plenty of those. Expert opinions given and endlessly debated. Accusations made. Mystery. How was it that no one knew where he was? Was he dumped here, in this spot? How was he killed? Somebody did something to him. It had to be murder. Assassination. There would be hell to pay. Maybe war. He didn’t just die, of that everyone was perfectly sure. That couldn’t happen.

______________________________________________________________________________________

     A fiddle plays softly, mournfully at first, and then faster, louder, full of energy, becoming a jig, and feet are heard dancing. There is joyful singing.

69 at Ten-3

It became time to write again. Happy Birthday to me. I turned 69 on October 8th. Went to the reunion of my high school class of 1969 earlier this year. In my senior year, we all had orange and blue buttons that said simply: “69”. We loved it.

My stepdaughter Maya’s birthday is September 26. Ever since her mother and I divorced, Maya and I have continued to celebrate holidays and birthdays together, and sometimes just do some wine tasting.

Maya posing

What?

We really like blind wine tastings. I used to be pretty good at it while we were both working for a winery. Now I drink less wine, and not much grape wine, so I have a hard time identifying one dark complex red from another. But it doesn’t matter. We always have fun at those.

For some years now, we get together on a mutually agreed-upon date somewhere in between our birthdays, or perhaps after mine, to exchange small gifts and have a good dinner with some good wine. She was pretty busy around her birthday, and also picked up a nasty cold, so she actually stayed home on her birthday. Her dad sent her a video of himself and her nephew singing happy Birthday and blowing out some candles.

Finally, we got together. We rode the tram up the mountain to the new restaurant here. The tramway itself opened in 1966.

One of two new tram cars approaching Sandia Crest.

The restaurant is called Ten-3 because it’s situated on the crest of the mountain ridge at 10,300 feet above sea level. The highest point in the Sandia Mountains is nearby, at 10,678 feet above sea level.

Wonderful place. The original High Finance Restaurant had been there since 1979, and had to be replaced. It closed in 2016. It was completely demolished and a new foundation put in, but the weather up there is unpredictable. Forest fires, high winds, and snow hampered the work. At times workers could not even get there.  It took over two years to build the new one, and I’ve been not patiently waiting for it to open all that time. I used to hike up the mountain some early mornings and have lunch up there. A good cup of coffee, when it was chilly, or a nice beer after a long hike in the summer heat just could not be beat. Over the last two years, I watched the building slowly, slowly take shape.

Approaching the site

Frames for new windows!

Metal and Concrete

Concrete, rebar, more concrete

Construction

Construction

It opened in mid-September, instead of Spring, but hey, it’s open now! There are two sections: the bar area, and the fine dining area. Different menus for each, but the food is good no matter where you sit. We opted for dinner, so Maya and I split a smoked pork belly appetizer, and the New Mexican Paella entree. It was plenty of food for us. There are other menu items, and some are very pricey, so if you’re looking to splurge, this is the place. When you add in the cost of a bottle of wine, and taking the Tramway up, it costs quite a bit. I wanted to experience eating high above the city again, but it was really worth the cost to treat Maya. She has been my absolute joy since she recovered from four years of brain surgery, chemo, and radiation to treat the tumor they discovered in 2004.

I celebrate every day that she is alive. Her tumor is gone. She fully recovered, graduated from college, and even though she has a full-time job, a daily grind like most of us, she studied and received her Master’s Degree as well. She is doing well. Even while doing all that, she and I worked part-time for a winery for 7 1/2 years until it closed after the vintner’s death.

Since then we see each other less often, so it’s always a treat for me to see her smile and enjoy life. Although the experience of ascending the mountain, and experiencing those magnificent views east and west is exhilarating, there is nothing like spending time with Maya. She is intelligent but witty, hardworking but fun, runs to relieve stress, and enjoys her life and friends. She does not worry about a recurrence of cancer, or of dying. She lives life now and travels often. I am so incredibly lucky that she exists in my universe. There are times in my life when I am tired, lonely, and depressed, but just thinking about Maya always makes my life worth living. I’m glad she has time for me.

I have many interests in my life, and I am sometimes busy as fuck, but a little time with Maya here and there, and I am happy. I love her. Her happiness succors me, calms me, and makes life bearable.

1992-94

After treatments, 2005

Inn of the Mountain Gods

White Sands, 2005

Celebrating 2005-06

2006

2007

2009

2010

2013

2017

In desperation did I re-assemble my electric waffle maker

 
It is old and had never been properly cleaned. The latch broke years ago. The handle is falling apart. But, it works. The heating coils are built into the waffle plates. The waffle plates are screwed into the covers. The two halves are connected to each other, so even after I was able to remove the covers, I had to disconnect many of the power wires in order to separate the two and remove them. The main power lines run from inside one of the plates to a space on the outside where the power cord comes in, but that has a cover plate held in place by five screws. All of that was last week. I don’t make waffles every day, and I had to leave my house shortly after the disassembly.

Today, after I had coffee, I noticed I was hungry, and running through several options, I decided on waffles. I measured out and mixed all the ingredients from scratch, because only one restaurant in town makes buckwheat waffles, and they just don’t measure up. I like *buckwheat waffles made only from buckwheat flour, without having to add any wheat flour. If I’m lucky I find buckwheat honey for the batter: oil, vanilla, milk, honey, an egg, baking powder, and a little salt.  

I reached for the waffle maker from inside my stove and it wasn’t there. After a quick search, and questioning my intelligence, I remembered that I had placed it on the fireplace banco for reassembly “later”. So, what to do? The batter was ready. I was hungry. Could I reassemble it? How long would that take? I looked all the parts over, and decided yes, damn it, I want waffles now, and I’m putting this sucker back together. No wiring or parts diagram available.

I had to see if I could remember enough to reason my way through it. Got it done. 

It has no on/off switch; it powers on by plugging it in. So the acid test: plug it in. No pussyfooting around, I grabbed the power cord and inserted it into the socket. Nothing exploded, no fires broke out, no breaker blew. The heating and cooking lights came on. Unplugged it and greased up the plates. After letting it heat through a cook cycle, I was ready for batter. Poured the dark, speckled batter on the waffle plate and closed it up. The cook light went on.

Kept my eyes on it. I still didn’t trust my intuitive reassembly. The cook light went out. Yes. Perfectly cooked, with a nice toastiness and beautiful color. Success!

Irish butter. Check. Pure maple syrup. Check.

And damn these are good. Eat your heart out pancake houses and chain restaurants with your refined wheat flour library paste: stripped of fiber, nutrients and taste. These rock.

But maybe I should get an old-fashioned stove-top waffle iron, just in case.

 

My waffle recipe:

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla (more or less)
• 2 tbsp oil (or melted butter)
• 1 tbsp honey (or raw sugar or molasses)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cup *buckwheat flour

*Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is a plant cultivated for its grain-like seeds and as a cover crop. It is not a cereal grain. Despite the name, buckwheat is not related to wheat, as it is not a grass. Grown in North America, it is used to make Japanese soba noodles. In Canada, it’s used for pancakes, or made into groats (also known as kasha). A related and bitterer species, Fagopyrum tataricum, is a domesticated food plant raised in Asia.

  

Labor Day Pool Party

Here are my photos from a party full of fun people: models, actors, photographers, artists, and at least one musician. It was also a birthday party for three of the attendees.

Contemplating Death Again, With Photos

09/03/19
Well, six years ago I had a heart attack. Too much plaque in the heart artery that feeds the heart muscle itself. Problems for some time before that, something I attributed – as did my doctor – to a recurrence of my childhood asthma. Overtired on exertion, falling way behind on hikes up the mountain. Getting weaker instead of stronger. I’ve climbed up the Sandia-Manzano mountains. Sandia Crest is at 10,679 feet above sea level. Manzano Peak is at 10,098 feet. I’ve climbed in the San Mateo Mountains, specifically to the highest point, up Mt. Taylor, to 11,306 feet, and I’ve snowshoed Mt. Taylor several times. Also climbed to the nearby La Mosca lookout tower at 11,036 ft. I’ve climbed Mount Baldy, at 10,783 feet, in the Magdalena Mountains. I’ve hiked in the Jemez mountains, including snowshoeing in the Valles Caldera. At 11,253 feet in elevation,  the volcanic caldera is 13-miles wide. I’ve hiked and snowshoed often in New Mexico’s mountains.

Valles Caldera

Valles Caldera mound

After the heart attack, not as much. I still hike, usually once a week, sometimes two times a week. Sometimes I hike a fair distance, sometimes I hike really fast for just 70 to 90 minutes, a cardio hike. I figure I’m in good enough shape for my age. My knees never bother me. Since I had the angioplasty and stent placement 6 years ago, I’ve been good. No sign of any heart problems, but you never know.

Of late, I’ve noticed myself falling behind the others I hike with, and being very winded at times, more than usual. I’m sleepy often throughout the day. I used to catnap for 15 or 20 minutes, and be completely refreshed. Often I try that now, and sleep for an hour or two. I have no trouble sleeping through the night.

But, but, but. Today, after I’d taken another short nap, I awoke to a small sharp pain in the chest, just right of center. I researched it, and it’s likely not a heart attack, but it could be leading up to one. Possibly it’s angina, a symptom of heart disease. or it could have been a spasm. Either of those can occur during sleep, and generally last 5 to 15 minutes. This one lasted  two to three hours. Took some Advil and then some aspirin.

The more likely cause is a blood clot traveling to my lungs, as I had none of the heart attack symptoms I’d experienced before, nor any of the other classic symptoms. The reason for this could be that I badly sprained my right ankle a month ago. A lot of blood clotted around it, giving me bruises all around the ankle and even between my toes. I’ve been wearing a stabilizing boot since then. There is also a small (3mm) chip fracture on the talus bone of my ankle. I can walk fine with or without the boot, but the doc gave me two more weeks to keep wearing the boot. I hate it. But, it could be that the ankle injury is the source of a blood clot, if that’s what it was. Painful anyway. The pain is gone now, but it could come back. I don’t know what caused it.

I was supposed to have had a checkup with my cardiologist two weeks ago. Arrived 20 minutes early for a 3:45pm appointment. Checked in and waited. And waited. The few people there all got called in. I waited. More people showed up until there was quite a crowd. There are a lot of doctors there. At 3:45, a tall healthy-looking man checked in, saying he had a 4:00pm appointment with my doctor. He was called shortly. I waited. About 10 minutes later, I got called to the examining room, to have my vital signs read. I told the woman taking them about experiencing weakness, and sleepiness as before my heart attack six years ago. She left, said the doctor would be in shortly.

I sat there, unhappy. The reason I’d come early was hoping to get out by 4:15, as I had an important commitment at 5pm. As I sat, I could hear my doctor’s voice next door, with the man I’d seen come in 20 minutes after me. I waited. But, by 4:30, I had to leave, and I stopped at the reception desk to tell them I was leaving. Never heard back.

Now this sudden pain. I thought about making another appointment, but never got around to it. I could die any time, so I figured I’d get an online will started while I still could. Such a strange thing it is to contemplate a will!

I rent, so I have no property to leave behind. I have only the money in the bank that comes in and goes out every month. I save, but things always come up to spend it on, necessary things, like repairs to my aging car and much older motorcycle. Sometimes I have to travel to family events, and none of them live nearby. Anyway, I have little in the way of tangible assets. But, there are things I’d like to leave to family. I have way too many things, like music CDs and vinyl albums. Tons of books. Some paintings, but mostly prints. A few coins. Not really a whole lot, but I’ve been to enough estate sales to know what happens to all the stuff you think is worth something. It’s all junk, sold cheap. Some things can be worth a goodly amount, but no one knows, unless someone hires a professional appraiser. But few family ever do that, unless the deceased was extremely wealthy. As it happens, I am not. Wealthy. Or deceased, as yet.

But it sure got me thinking about who I could give my things away too. So much of it has little enough financial worth. I thought about who might enjoy this small sculpture, or that old painting, or the coins, or a keepsake from the winery I worked at for eight years before it closed. Some things I’d like to have go to family who would appreciate it. I have too much stuff, sure, and much of it can be sold off at an estate sale for whatever they can get; that’s fine. Sitting here for hours today while the pain subsided, deciding who should get what, and not wanting to slight anyone, but not having so much to give everyone something, even if they actually would want it. 1st world problems. And yet, I’d like family members I love to know I was thinking about them. I like to make people smile, especially those I love. My estate, what a joke. Cheap material goods.

What was my life? Flipping burgers. High school diploma. Working in a college physics lab, measuring x-ray wavelengths and spaces between atoms in silicon crystals, a useful thing to know later on for computer technology. But I left that lab before the computer chip revolution hit. Spent years traveling, working for a carnival, a bronze foundry. Settled down in another state 1,675 miles miles away as the crow flies, but I rode my bicycle there over countless miles. Poured concrete, laid concrete block, installed park benches and steel doors. Treasurer of my union local. Finally got a job back in the sciences, giving tumors to rats, and treating them with chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. I did continue in Cancer Research a bit, then worked Quality Control at a printed circuit board company for three years. Finally went back and got another job at a medical school working first with mice, and their immune system proteins, then with research machines.

I took night school classes for years until I finally got a Bachelors of Arts college degree, a dual major of English (Creative Writing) and Distributed Sciences. I had studied a lot of sciences over the years, but not enough in any one field to get a diploma in it, not even a Bachelors of Science. Never did much with the writing part of my education, but I ended up making synthetic proteins for medical research, and synthetic DNA and RNA as well later on. I could also sequence proteins, or DNA, or analyze the amino acid content of proteins, or purify proteins and DNA. I ran a lab, balanced my budget, kept database records, worked independently. Finally retired with a small pension. Then I made wine for eight years at a small winery until the vintner died, and we had to close the winery. Now I take acting lessons, hike in the mountains, work occasionally as a background actor on movies and TV shows. Still hoping to land a good speaking role, one that brings me recognition, something to show that my life had meaning.

Yeah, I had lovers as I traveled, and met someone I wanted to spend my life with, but all I got was a bit less than two years with her. Married sometime later to a great woman, but after seven years that was over too. Two stepkids I never got to spend time with again. Then I married again. Two more stepkids. That 14-year relationship was fun, but ran out of steam and died. However, I did realize that I loved my stepdaughter when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Fortunately we’ve been able to stay connected, even making wine together for those eight years at the winery. She survived after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and more chemo. How strange to find those chemicals and x-rays I used on rats used successfully on a human being I loved.

So perhaps I did accomplish something significant after all, Perhaps my work on x-rays in silicon and germanium crystals helped create the computers to run those fancy treatment machines. Perhaps the work I did on rats helped establish correct dosages of chemotherapy drugs and x-rays. Perhaps my work helping calibrate x-ray wavelengths helped doctors calculate just how much energy was necessary to kill a tumor and not the person. All the people that work in science, even those that just run the machines, and conduct the experimental protocols contribute, each in our own small way, to a much greater good.

And, goddamnit, my step daughter is alive and healthy. And I love her. I finally learned that love is when you truly care about someone, about their happiness, and not just your own. Love is not about having another person. It’s about loving, without expecting anything in return. That’s what I think. If I’m still alive tomorrow morning, I’m going to call the doctor’s office, get in there as soon as possible, and do what it takes to stay alive. Because I love someone, and I like that feeling.

Just realized I was writing my own obituary. Hmph. Got things to do yet.

(09/05/19 UPDATE: The cardiologist says the pain in my chest is likely muscular, because of the lingering pain, and like a blood clot or angina. Blood pressure, however is high, so I need to monitor it twice a day for two weeks, report back).

Breaking Down Carnivals, Ekphrastically

Ekphrastic Writing – created by the Greeks

(The goal of this literary form is to make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present. In many cases, however, the subject never actually existed, making the ekphrastic description a demonstration of both the creative imagination and the skill of the writer. For most readers of famous Greek and Latin texts, it did not matter whether the subject was actual or imagined.)

Oil & canvas by Kyn Thurman

In the Between

[Prompts: vibrance (in the air), blush (candy apple), circus (cacophony), swirly cones (vanilla & choc)]

Breaking Down Carnivals

Sometimes you immerse yourself in something and you may not understand what it is until you back up and look at it from a distant perspective. And, yes, that’s my lead-in to a story, a story about a carnival.

Now, first off, a carnival is not a circus. No live animals, no rings, no ringmaster or clowns. But, both a circus and a carnival have a vibrance in the air, a cacophony of sound, bright lights and garish colors. Both have children. Each child has a candy-apple blush on their cheeks and a dripping swirly cone. But a circus is a static experience. People tend to sit on their asses, watching, laughing and generally being entertained entirely stationary, just as one watches television. There are staged animals acts, professional acrobats, and clowns. Except for the smells, the experience is a lot like TV.
I joined a carnival when I was 23 years old. At first, I was only looking to make a few bucks by helping take everything down, in preparation for the move to the next town. I helped disassemble a Ferris wheel.

The first “Ferris” wheel, was actually called Ferris’ wheel, after George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., an engineer, part of a group charged with inspecting all the steel to be used in the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The Fair was officially called: The World’s Columbian Exposition, in honor of the 400th Anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Back then, that original Ferris wheel consisted of over 100,000 parts, including an 89,320-pound axle that had to be hoisted up 140 feet onto the two support towers. Launched on June 21, 1893, it was a success. Over the next 19 weeks, more than 1.4 million people paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride. 20 minutes! Can you imagine any carnival ride lasting twenty minutes today?

Three years later, Ferris was bankrupt and died of typhoid fever. His wheel was sold, and later dynamited for scrap metal. However, the Ferris wheel lives on, and not only because of George Ferris’ design. At the time, a carpenter named William Somers had been building 50-foot wooden wheels at Asbury Park, Atlantic City and Coney Island. He called them roundabouts, and his design was patented, long before Ferris’ wheel.
Ever since then, people have gotten used to giant spinning mechanical rides, climbing and falling, twirling, zipping, and bobbing up and down (are you getting nauseous yet?). People love the sensation of “…revolving through such a vast orbit in a bird cage,” as the reporter Robert Graves wrote in 1893.

In modern times, all those rides have pneumatic cylinders to raise the ride up off of the flatbed trucks that haul them all over the countryside. First the lights have to be disconnected, and some removed for transport. All of the “cars” people ride in have to be removed and transported in another huge trailer. More importantly though, is all of this pneumatic lifting and lowering, all those lights, and the motors driving the ride need power. Since the carnival is often set up on empty land outside of town, the carnivals provide their own electricity, in the form of generators the size of a truck trailer, or two half-sized ones per trailer. After I had finished with the Ferris wheel, I was put to work for the carnival’s electrician.

Spreading out from each generator is a vast network of power cables, connected every hundred feet to a junction box, from where another set of cables continues on from the opposite side, on to the next junction box, and so on. Each junction box has outlets for standard power outlets, for lights and small appliances. The rides, however, have to be hooked directly up to the tall terminal bolts that the power cables are already attached to via 1″ diameter crimped terminators (LUGS) held in place by a screw-on nut. In order to attach the wires from the rides, that nut must be removed from the upright bolts, the crimped ends of those wires must be placed over the power cable lugs, and the nut replaced, tightly.

My job, at the time, was to disconnect the power cables while the carnival was shutting down. Note that I said, while, not, after. For what the electrician needed were lights for everyone to see at night, which is when the carnival shuts down, as soon as the last towny leaves. There are bright towers on top of each generator truck, lighting the miniature city that is a carnival. So, I could not turn each generator off before starting to disconnect the power cables. As soon as all the rides, joints (game booths) and poppers (popcorn, corn dogs, cotton candy, etc) had been removed from the last junction box in the line, and then the next, and the next, all the way to the generator, those now useless lines had to be pulled off their terminals, hauled off and stored in yet another large truck trailer.

So, like I said, disconnect the powers cables, which, mind you, are still hot, through the metal sides of the junction box. There were holes in the sides for this purpose, each hole protected by a plastic over-ring, so that a hot cable lug would not touch the bare metal. In theory. However, as I was successfully performing this somewhat delicate operation, I unscrewed the locking nut on a terminal, removed the power cable lug, and stated pulling it slowly through the hole. It wasn’t until the lug approached the hole that I noticed the hole had no plastic ring protecting it. I tried to back the cable up before it could make contact, but it was too late. The power running through the cables was such that it could easily bridge a small gap, and that one did. Hoo boy, did it. BANG, a blinding flash, a shower of burning sparks, and the generator whined loudly before it shut down. Darkness. Pure darkness. Not only because the lights were off everywhere near me, but my eyes needed time to recover from that flash. Couldn’t see a thing.

Shortly, because something like that really attracts attention, the electrician showed up. He asked me if I was alright. I said I was, and explained that the plastic ring was missing and the cable had been torn right from my grip as it welded itself to the box, as my eyes slowly calmed down. Since there was no power yet, he reached down and yanked hard on the cable, breaking the impromptu weld. He said, “Don’t do that again,” and walked off. I got the other four cables out just before he restarted the generator. I had expected to be fired or something, but with power restored and everyone working, I just went back to work. It took me the rest of the night to remove all of the cables, and then carry them and the junction boxes to the electrical truck.

By daylight, I was exhausted, as were the carnies. I couldn’t think of myself as a carny yet. You had to spend a whole season wrapping yourself in your job, and then come back to do it all over again for another season. Would I? I didn’t know yet. I saw some people sprawled across car hoods, feet sticking out car windows, people propped against trailers. Many people had already pulled out. There were overflowing trash barrels, and scattered pieces of trash and junk everywhere. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Soon enough though, I had been paid for my work, and prepared to head off myself into the morning, happy that I had money for food. The electrician found me and asked me if I would stay on. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting that. Seeing as I had no other means of support, and no clear idea where I was going, I agreed. Much later, I found out that I had been recruited because I hadn’t died. Rumor was the last guy had. After that way-too-short rest, we were all on the road again. Sleep wouldn’t come for us until we arrived at the next location.

Once there, after a good long nap, we reversed everything we’d done the night before to get the carnival up and running again. I had to haul all of the heavy, insulated copper cables out of the truck, and get them hooked up to junction boxes. Rides, poppers and joints had to be plugged in. There was always some troubleshooting until everyone had power. All the rides had to be tested, run forwards and backwards while being inspected. Every nut and bolt had to be tightened, and every ride car checked. I still had lots to do. The generators needed oil and water. Since they were in open view, placed in the center of the midway, they also had to be cleaned, and occasionally painted as well. That was my job. Sometimes the cables needed new terminators. Sometimes the junction boxes needed new protecting rings over the access holes. Yes they did.

Once I finished all of that, after breaks for meals, it was time to shut everything down for the night. I had to wait until the townspeople were long gone, and everyone cleaned up and shuttered their equipment. Once all was done, I could shut the generators off. In the morning, I had to be up before everyone else to get the power back on. Ten days. Then we’d be off again, crisscrossing the country, selling dreams while the rides turned under bright rainbow lights, surrounded by the smells of cotton candy, corn dogs and popcorn. The marks would gamble, buying cheap toys for the price of many chances to spin a wheel, shoot out the stars, pop some balloons, or knock over some bottles.

At night there were circus-like tents full of illegal card games and crazy peep shows. Some real money changed hands there. There had to be a balance between cleaning out the marks for every dollar, and letting them win sometimes, or the cops and sheriffs could shut the whole carnival down, forcing us to move on sooner than expected. The vulgarity of the peep shows was extraordinary, and sometimes they could get raided, but most often not.

There are dreams and then there are other dreams.

Restlessness, Vanishing, and Sidney Hall

rest·less·ness

Dictionary result for restlessness

/ˈres(t)ləsnəs/

noun: restlessness

1. the inability to rest or relax as a result of anxiety or boredom.

Well, happening now, yes. A weird day. Spent 11 hours on a movie set in Santa Fe as a background actor, aka an “extra”, starting from 5:00pm yesterday evening until 4:00am today. Boring as all hell. Got home at 5:00am, fell into bed. The casting call had asked for people who had not been on the set as yet. I was interested in seeing what the movie was about. Love being on TV and movie sets. Waited all day to be used. Finally those of us still sitting around, about 15 people, were told they needed just five people for the next scene.
Question was who. I volunteered, as I had not been seen, which is what they had posted for. It was unclear if I would be one of the five, as five other people had volunteered. My “new” status might get me on set.

Nothing happened for a while. Finally it was time. My name was called. I was asked to bring my coat. I didn’t have one handy. The wardrobe people hadn’t had a coat to fit me, and took all of our production photos without one. When I found a coat, and actually I had one outside in my car I could have gotten, I was told that since they already had photographed me without a coat, I shouldn’t wear one. So, instead I had no coat with me, thus, they took another guy who had a coat, for a bar scene. Like it matters.

Anyway, that was the last scene they shot this morning, and we were all “wrapped” and sent home. Eleven hours. Santa Fe minimum wages: $92 for 8 hours, plus, 3 hours of overtime. All for sitting on my ass mostly. That’s the life of a background actor sometimes.

Finally dragged myself out of bed around 10:45. Fed the cats. Drank a cup of coffee. Played Microsoft’s solitaire Daily Challenges. Read email. Browsed Facebook for casting notices.  Checked my actor’s page. Ate a fried egg sandwich for brunch. Poured myself a glass of brandy (Calvados Morin Extra, from France); it’s something I picked up with an auction lot of “pantry items”, including: vegetable juice, reposado tequila, scotch whiskey, and other things like paper napkins, plastic bags, etc. The bottles had all been previously opened, but the whiskey was just less than full, so, at $5.00 for the lot, it was good deal.

Napped. Got up and made a cup of Earl Grey tea. Earl Grey is tasty black tea. It is interesting because it contains oil of bergamot, useful for kicking statin side effects. Statins, a widely used family of cholesterol-lowering drugs, can have side effects:

• Headache.
• Difficulty sleeping.
• Flushing of the skin.
• Muscle aches, tenderness, or weakness (myalgia)
• Drowsiness.
• Dizziness.
• Nausea or vomiting.
• Abdominal cramping or pain.

All of which I have experienced since I have been taking a statin drug after my heart attack 5 1/2 years ago. My bad cholesterol is half of what it used to be. So, I’m back to drinking Earl Grey again – something I had forgone for just daily coffee.

Anyway, I used two teabags for a 10-oz mug. It’s probably what has me restless. I had sat down to watch a movie I rented: The Vanishing of Sidney Hall.

It is a fascinating movie, and I’m really enjoying watching it. Sidney Hall becomes a writer after an odd childhood, but experiences angst, depression, and regret after people take his novel about life a bit too seriously. He goes on a walkabout basically, which is what I did at his age, but I used a bicycle to crisscross the USA, trying to find myself. (That’s a whole other story.) Anyway, partway through I began experiencing this restlessness. So, I wrote what you just read. I’m going to go finish watching the movie now.

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It is a good story, moving along, but now I’m taking another break. I think that’s a good way to watch this movie, in sections. Instead of an intermission, there should be two intermissions. I find that this is the way I watch most movies now, like reading a book. Sometimes you can read a good short novel in one sitting, if you don’t count bathroom breaks and getting food and water. But, long novels require a couple days or three, not due to boredom, but just to have a chance to digest it in parts. Although my general restlessness – perhaps generated by depression – makes it hard for me to sit still through a two-hour movie, I like to think it’s my way of really appreciating a good story.

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Finished it. WOW. That was so good. Intense. Complex. Sad. Fun. Well done. Holy, holy crap, it’s good.

I am going to watch it again. Not tonight. I’ve sleep to catch up on. But Wednesday night, my friend Ramona and I will watch it. I was planning to return the DVD to Netflix, and since I wouldn’t be able to get another one by Wednesday, we were going to watch something else on her Netflix stream. But, I am going to have her watch this. She’ll like it a lot. Her life is changing significantly right now. She has met the love of her life, just spent a lot of time with him in Germany, returned, but is now packing, getting rid of things, saying goodbyes, as she prepares to move to Germany permanently. She is so happy. I wonder if her reaction to this movie will be way different from mine? I’ll miss the little bit of time I’ve been able to spend watching movies with her. She’s just finished up graduate school now, and she’s off. It’s been a struggle for her. Strange boyfriends, cancer, and a bat-shit crazy mother (whom I knew 40 years ago).

From the way I built this blog entry, I suppose it won’t matter if I add some more to it next week. I’ll add Ramona’s reaction to the movie. It occurs to me that I could be adding new blog entries with updates from time to time on her new life in Germany, if I hear much from her. This last bit of time she spent in Germany was different. Previously she had sent lots of Facebook updates and photos. This time, a much longer time, she was quite busy, and having the time of her life, and I had to wait until she got back to hear about most of the trip. Instead of watching this movie as we’d planned, we had just talked. It was good to catch up on our lives. Catching up, but also, beginning to say good-bye. Cementing memories of who each other is, before the moment vanishes.

 

One thing to accomplish

Most of us would like to end our lives without regret. I think one way to do that is, of course, to accomplish something. To that end, I think I’d most want to have passed along some tidbit of knowledge, something that has made someone think. It’s not that I need to be remembered, because, as I’ve looked at that, I realize I’ll be gone, dead, without any way of knowing or caring about that.

Statues mean nothing to the dead. Moving tributes mean nothing to the dead. Our dead ancestors don’t hear us, except in our heads. We carry memories of people: how they lived, what they said to us, what we said to them, how we interacted, and all of who we think they were. We can interact with those memories; they can drive our behavior in the present. We may derive some satisfaction from following in someone’s footsteps, or following their advice, or perhaps doing something for ourselves that would have shocked that person, or disappointed them or even made them angry.

So, in a real sense, they are with us, not as a physical manifestation (a visible spirit), but as a memory, which is after all, the real ghost of that person. We all carry ghosts with us, and, perhaps not just of the dead, but the living we no longer see or interact with.

What I’m attempting to get at here, is that I thought of something, something I’d like to know someone I love would remember, something that changed them, or gave them something to pass on. But, in the time I spent preparing my breakfast until sitting down to write, I’ve forgotten what it was. I can come up with many things, but can’t recall what was on my mind an hour ago. Live a full, active life? Live for today? Love for today? All seem trite, but, then again, it may just be a very small thing, but small things can make a difference.

For instance, a carrot seed. (The Carrot Seed). I read and passed along Dihedral‘s interpretation of that short wonderful story. He noticed that other people interpreted it in wholly different ways than he thought possible. Is it a story about gardening? about carrots? about a young boy? or the pointlessness of planting one seed? It is none of those things. I agree with the author on this one. Read it (linked above) and see if you do too.

So, what is that little carrot seed I could plant in the head of someone I love? I wish I knew. I’d want them to know that love is real, and real love is not about sexual attraction. So many people confuse sex with love. Notwithstanding that one can love the object of one’s sexual couplings, sex is not love, love is not sex. Leaving aside the Freudians, we do not usually desire sex with one’s parents, siblings, coworkers and friends because we love them. We do not (generally) try to have sex with every person we love. Some people feel that we should love someone before we have sex with them, but that presupposes that love is the object of the relationship. Sometimes, and often when we’re young, it is not. Hormones, loneliness, and sexual objectification can overwhelm us and actually blind us to who a person actually is. Sex is great, but it is hardly the be-all, end-all goal of life, although procreation is certainly a driving force.

I once read that love is when you care about someone without ANY anticipation of reciprocation or reward; that is real love. Infatuation? – no, you want that person, or at least sex with that person. Unrequited love (limerence)? – no, same thing, but you hope that person will feel the same way about you, and sometimes you believe it to be true, and you are hoping for your dream of being together to come true. You want your own satisfaction, you need something, and without that, you are miserable.

No, love is given freely, as trite as that idea sounds. I believe, when you love someone, you want what is best for that person, you want them to be happy, to have a full and loving life. You want that person’s success and happiness, even if you can’t be with them. Their successes make you happy, their happiness makes you smile. Their joy alone satisfies you. That is love, even if you never see that person again for the rest of your life or theirs. Many parents feel that way. Yeah, they love us, but they aren’t really expecting anything in return, in general. Some can demand your time or shows of affection. Or use their love for you as a means of control. I don’t think that is really love. Sometimes it is loneliness, and you’re handy.

But, I don’t care. By which I mean, I have discovered that I can love someone with all I’ve got to love them. I desire their happiness, their success, their joy, their zest for life, and their resilience to setbacks and hardship. And while I certainly enjoy seeing them, I can see only a photo of them smiling at an event posted on Facebook, or hugging a friend, or being on vacation somewhere in the world, or sending out a broadside message to all and every, and that gladdens me. I need nothing from them. Even if I knew nothing of their life anymore, even if they wanted nothing more to do with me, unfriended me,  ignored me, disappeared entirely – I would still love them. I know who they are, and why I love them, and well, that is not going to go away.

Friendships can be fleeting. Sexual attraction fades over time if you never see that person again, and know you never will. There’s a plenitude of people to know, and love, or have sex with, or all three. But when you discover that you love someone truly, you realize you will always love that person and that it simply cannot fade. It is not a wish or a hope, or a desire, but a reality. Something you know. You know. I cannot convince people of that, I’m sure, but, if I could convince that special person I know that: that is all they need, to love someone else, unconditionally, I will have done that one thing, passed along that one tidbit, that one carrot seed. That person they love does not need to be me, and I do not need to know it.

It certainly took me long enough in this rant to get around to it, but yeah, I’m pretty sure what went though my mind earlier was this desire to accomplish that: to leave this world having convinced someone that I love: to love, just love, and realize how wonderful that is, alone and of itself. Maybe I’m just full of myself, but I believe it.

Anger Mining

So, as part of my acting class, I need to have emotions on speed dial. One of those is anger. I’ve been going into myself, mining deep, to touch those feelings, tag them with a keyword that I can use to retrieve them. There is, after all, a range of anger, from annoyance to rage. A lot of that is buried within us, and many of us actively work on remembering pleasant memories, creating, sometimes, a “happy place” to go to, or just trying to keep destructive emotions from boiling up and spilling over in situations that don’t call for that. Anger management is all the rage these days.

But, as an actor, I need those emotions. If I fake them, pretend to be angry, or pretend any other emotion, it’s going to look like that: pretense. I need emotion to come from within and express itself in my face and body language. So I have memories I can mine for that: my father, especially, and the irrational demands he’d make on me when he got pissed. I was married twice. My first seven-year marriage dissolved suddenly in anger, but the anger was short-lived. She said she wanted us to separate. Since I’d never heard of anyone who “separated” getting back together, I said we should just get divorced. We decided not to stay married, and eventually went back to being friends after the divorce. The second marriage had a long run, fourteen years, but the last few were full of intolerance, recrimination, and angry blow-ups that were ignored, passed over and buried. Great fuel for an actor.

I often tap these feelings in class, and have done so just before I do a monologue. The monologue becomes much more powerful, and real.

However, I had a dream early this morning. My father was raging at me for something. The dream had a lot of details, I could see him quite clearly. We were in the basement of the last house we had lived in as a family. I saw the concrete walls. Oddly, there was a shelf on the wall nearest us, and there was a stack of dinner plates on it. There hadn’t been any such shelf or stack of upside-down stacked plates, but the brain does what it wants sometimes. I was listening to my father, and getting angry. I was also tired of hearing all this crap from him. I grabbed a plate and threw it on the floor, shouting at my father to cut the crap as I did so.

The plate didn’t break on the concrete floor; it just landed there with a dull thud. That was not very satisfying. We both looked at it. I needed to get his attention back on me, on my anger. So I looked at that stack of plates and made him look at them. “You know,” I said, “I can start breaking all of these on your head.” My anger rose. I said something to the effect that I wasn’t going to take this anymore. I felt we could just go at it here right now, beat the crap out of each other, and have it all out. I could feel my chest tighten, I could feel the adrenaline in my body. I was pumped up and ready to fight, and the emotion was taking over my body. It felt overwhelming, like a terrible rage.

THAT woke me up. My heart was racing. My chest ached. I was shocked to be feeling such anger. My dad could do that to me. He did it one last time in real life. He was slapping my teenage head back and forth, and back and forth, and I snapped. Knocked him on his ass to the floor and tried with all my strength to stomp his head into bloody pulp; really wanted to see his head explode. Fortunately he was stronger them me, even in that state, and he was able to leverage his arms against my leg so I couldn’t bring it down. His anger had dissipated. In fact, I remember him smiling. He had always wanted to toughen me up, make me fight, not take crap from anyone. Guess what, Dad, it worked! And you were the one I wanted to take on the most.

I did love my father, but he died many years ago, in his fifties. I had moved away long before that, and never heard from him. He and my mother had divorced not too long after I’d left home at 18. After I got the early-morning call that he’d died, I was numb at first, and then sad, but by evening I was overcome by emotion and tears. I remembered all the good things, and regretted that I’d never see him again, never spend some time talking, never be able to ask him any questions. Still have those regrets sometimes.

But, I’ll say this: Thanks Dad. I think I’m going to find all that very useful.

Slam Poets and Charles Ives

Albuquerque’s slam team came to Chatter Sunday this morning. Gabe Reyes, Sophia Nuanez, Rene Mullens, and Bianca Sanchez added some spunk to the Sunday concert, material they are taking to Chicago, to the 2018 National Poetry Slam, Aug 13-18. The week-long festival is part championship tournament, part poetry summer camp, and part traveling exhibition. It is the largest team performance poetry event in the world.

Of course, U.S. composer Charles Ives needs no spunk. His music always takes one in different directions. We listened to his Concord Sonata from 1920. The sonata was divided into four parts: Emerson, Hawthorne, The Alcotts, and Thoreau. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though his music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Sources of Ives’ tonal imagery are hymn tunes and traditional songs, the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster. Charles Ives was among the first composers to engage in a systematic program of experimental music, with musical techniques including polytonality, polyrhythm, tone clusters, aleatory elements, and quarter tones, foreshadowing many musical innovations of the 20th century.

The music was performed by a brilliant pianist, Emanuele Arciuli. His repertoire ranges from Bach to contemporary music, leaning towards U.S. music.

   

He was joined a few times by Jesse Tatum on flute, startling us from the darkness behind the audience. It was a great concert. Mr. Arciuli has a passion for Ives’s music you’d have to hear to believe.

And of course, there was a woman in the audience I noticed. I saw her as she entered the building while I was getting my Americano from the espresso baristas. She has a gorgeous smile, and it was a pleasure just to admire her and her beautiful black hair and luscious form.

Here she is on the far left, applauding the flutist, pianist, and slam team.

I love Sunday mornings.

Slowly I ….

Listening to Isao Tomita’s electronic version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as I write.  It is far stranger than Mussorgsky ever imagined, of that I am sure. I like some of Tomita’s works very much. This one not so much. Lately I have acquired many CDs of his work. I love his live concert, done in 1984: The Mind Of The Universe,  and have enjoyed his version of Maurice Ravel‘s Bolero, as well as Tomita’s 1974 studio release: Snowflakes are Dancing,  Debussy’s tone paintings. However, I disliked his version of Gustav Holst‘s The Planets so much that I posted it on the CD trading website SwapaCD immediately after listening to it. Someone had already requested it automatically, so I packaged it and bought postage to ship it out tomorrow. I’m a fan of electronic music, but not all of it.

Lazy, lazy day. I was up last night on a movie set until 3am this morning, crawling into bed as soon as I got home. I woke this morning early, but just turned over and went back to sleep until 8:30am. The movie is a local production here in Albuquerque. Seems like movies are being made here every day. I was not a character in this movie, but a background actor, sometimes punching a bag, sometimes watching and cheering a fight, sometimes doing my version of sit ups (touching my toes from a flat position). The movie scenes are for Caged, taking place in a gym.  “It is the story of TJ, a young man from a privileged family, who drops out of law school against his mother’s wishes to pursue his dream of becoming an MMA fighter.” I was fascinated by it, and the gym, as this was the first time I’d ever been in one.

I made coffee this morning and fed the two cats. Drank my coffee while playing Microsoft’s daily solitare challenges. Made breakfast. Decided to go back to bed. Slept until 4:30pm. Now, that’s a lazy day! Got up and read for a short while. I’ve been reading Khaled Hosseini’s And The Mountains Echoed.  I’ve really enjoyed the first half, but could not get back into it today; perhaps I will later this evening. Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner,  but, although I thoroughly enjoyed the movie: , I did not read the book. Hosseini is a good writer, and writes real stories of real people caught up in circumstances of violence and social change beyond their control, sometimes beyond all comprehension.

I’ve switched my music to Tomita’s compilation called Different Dimensions, a CD subtitled “The Ultimate Collection of Future Sounds.”  Hopefully it is not, but it is a good introduction to Tomita’s work. Some are very good, some are fascinating, and some are just odd, which is pretty much how I feel today.

I have also thought about my dad today, on Father’s Day, and changed my Facebook profile photo to his photo, from the 1940s.  He and my mom roller skated a lot growing up, and were partnered by their coach for competitions, which they won a lot of, being Tri-State champions at it. I’m told they did not like each other at first, but they appear to have gotten over that. My dad died of lung cancer many years ago. I wish he was around. I’d love to pick his brain. Oddly, when I posted that photo of him, all my mom could think of to comment on was the fact that his skates had wooden wheels, as they all did back then. When she commented, I noticed that she had changed her profile picture to a photo of her in 1978. I was living in Albuquerque at the time, and had no money for plane tickets, so I never knew she had changed her hairstyle so dramatically – – 1970s big hair. My brother said it’s her Liz Taylor look. I swear I’d never have recognized her on the street in that hairdo. She and my father were divorced by then, and I probably didn’t see her for many years after I left town permanently in 1975. She must have added the flag banner via Facebook, perhaps for Memorial Day. She’s 87 years old now.

No word from my step-daughter Maya today. She has always given me step-dad cards on Father’s Day, but perhaps we’re growing apart now that we no longer make and sell wine together after the winery closed. I had hoped for a call, or a text, or a Facebook message perhaps. She posted photos of her and her dad, and her brother with his young son Zen.

I always enjoy any time I get to spend with her. She’s the one person in my lifetime that I have really loved with all my heart, and I wish I saw her more often. Her smile warms my heart.

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.

The Nap

THE NAP

My head rolls back
against the chair
it tilts to the left.
Usually when I stand
it tilts eerily right,
but I pushed it left.

For some reason
this restricts blood
to my brain.
I awake
suddenly
with a snort.

My brain is light
not full of it
but lightheaded
not enough oxygen
I feel close to death
and I realize
how easy death is.

I see a bare foot
in front of my face
it is my foot
as in a dream
because
in reality
my foot is clothed.

I remember a joke
drawn as a Larson cartoon
in which there are
two undertakers
in a morgue
one says:
This guy has the winning lottery ticket
in his pocket
and the other says:
Lucky stiff.

The humor is that
a ticket is a ticket
and it still has value
when one is dead
one cannot use it
but someone else can
We cannot take
anything with us
we no longer
own
anything.

But I wonder
because
there are bare feet
sticking out
from under the sheets
no pockets
all the corpses are naked
so where was the ticket?

Smiling Irishman

I had that appellation applied to me in high school when one of my German teachers would ask me how to say most anything in German, because I’d just grin awkwardly if I didn’t know the answer. Truth is I’ve always had a hard time with languages, but that’s neither here nor there, because that’s not what I came here to talk about today.

I suppose what I’m here to talk about is death, not that I’m that emo, or into dark gothic role playing, or angst, but it’s something that rolled across my consciousness after hearing a song by Johnny Cash called, Smiling Bill McCall, with these lyrics:

“I don’t want to be layin’ in bed
When they pronounce me dead.”

Well, that’s true enough for me. I’d rather die trying to do something, or just doing something I enjoy. Hiking up a mountain, or acting, or fucking – those are things I’d prefer to die, well, not doing, but immediately after. I do like to complete things.

Now, I probably came close to that dying-while-fucking part once. Met a woman about 35 years younger than me, and, somehow, it didn’t take us long to get into it. We were in the kitchen when she suddenly grabbed my belt and undid my pants and glommed right onto my penis, which leapt into action. I had never met a woman that aggressive about sex before, and it was amazing! So goddamned turned on! I wanted to fuck real bad, so we moved to the bedroom.

Well, she dropped herself backwards into my bed, and I helped her shuck her jeans, and I just dived into that gorgeous muff of hers, and she squealed in delight. I worked on that cunt of hers with lips and tongue, while she squirmed and wiggled. By the time I got around to putting on a condom and fucking, my penis had lost some of its stiffness, and it wasn’t doing its job. That, of course, is supremely frustrating, especially when you’re hot for a woman who’s hot for you to fuck her. Now, since I’d been divorced about five years, I also hadn’t had sex, with another person, for that long,  so I wasn’t expecting that.

I went to the doctor and got some of the blue pills, and he said I’d probably only need half a dose, and he was right. I was afraid I couldn’t entice that young woman back into bed with me, but I called her and she was still eager. I’ll never know if I really needed ’em or not, but I had an erection that just kept keepin’ on, and not long after we’d stop for air, we’d go back at it again. Well, that was fine, and we kept at it for two years like that. I kept popping the blue pills because I was afraid to disappoint her or myself, and we could fuck and drink for days at a time.

Now one fine time, after we’d gotten started early on a Saturday night and spent most of Sunday morning fucking as well, I had to take her home, so I could go run the winery I worked at part time. The next day, Monday morning, I picked up my stepdaughter to get her to work, and then donated a pint of whole blood, and, since they tell you to follow that up with a big meal, I stopped at a buffet, for a breakfast of chorizo and bacon and eggs to replenish my iron-depleted blood, and a syrup-laden waffle, and half a plate of fruit. Went home, played around on my computer, dug through tons of spam to read my emails, and read part of a book. I began feeling strange, and there was a strange pressure in my chest, and to make a long story, that I’ve already talked about, short, I proceeded to get myself to a hospital and had my obligatory American-style old-man heart attack while surrounded by doctors and nurses and technicians in an operating room.

One of the questions they’d asked was if I’d had sex recently. I told them I had. Later on I found out that those oblong blue pills were implemented in some heart attacks, but that didn’t stop me from using ’em again as soon as I saw that lover of mine. We got right back into our routine, since I felt great, better than I had for years, and the blue pills weren’t necessary any more. However, the whole heart-attack thing had bothered her, and since she had never planned for us to be a regular item, it didn’t surprise me that one day she said goodbye, and then left town not long after that. Maybe she just didn’t want to kill me, but I’d have gladly died fucking her.

So, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah, death. Fucking is one way to go, or falling off a mountain – things like that. But I suppose I might have another heart attack some day, and I suppose I might be riding my iron horse, the one with two wheels, 750cc engine, four carburetors, and four tailpipes. I do like riding that thing, and I like getting it up to speed. It’s old too, but the engine purrs when it feels like starting up.

So, where I’d been going with the whole random line of thought was this: if I’m riding along on my motorcycle some day, and I feel a bad, painful, I’m-probably-not-going-to-survive-this heart attack coming on, I’m not going to pull over and die on the side of the road, or in an ambulance cruising to a hospital, or in a hospital bed. I say this because, just in case it happens that I die blowing on down the highway, and they say I was doing 250mph, it wasn’t suicide, or stupidity. I was just going out, and having fun while I was doing it. But I’m pretty sure I’d rather have been fucking.   

More About Jim Fish From Beyond

A little while back I wrote about Renaissance man Jim Fish, who died a few days after his 68th birthday, while hiking back down a mountain he had just climbed in the New Mexico wilderness. He was a poet, among other things.

Recently on the grounds of the winery he started, I met several other people, two of whom had a nice long truck, and a trenching machine known around here as a ditch witch. It was handy. We had to tear down a solidly built shed, one that had been built to last. I took a few swings at it with a sledge hammer, and only removed a few wooden shelf braces and some upper storage shelving. To take this thing down would have taken all of us working hard all day, and we still had to load it all on the truck. But, the ditch witch made much shorter work of that shed.

You see, after Jim’s death, we had to clean up around there. This shed had held many of Jim’s personal items: old papers, maps, camping gear, antlers, pieces of wood for carving, etc. and etc. Unfortunately, our local desert rats, or pack rats, had moved in. They pissed and shit everywhere. The mixture has the consistency of hardened epoxy. Really. You have to chip it away. It was all over everything, along with all the bits and pieces they drag into their nests. One idea was to just torch the building, but we decided it was better, and more in keeping with local fire ordinances, to just tear it down. It still took roughly 6 hours of hard work, but we got it down, and hauled away.

During the process, I found some old cards Jim had printed up, and sent out to friends many years ago. He was already into the poetry, so each had a poem, and a photo of Jim’s of New Mexico, where he lived. I had read several of Jim’s poetry books, but not all of them, so I’d never seen these poems, and I don’t even know if they were published in book form.  I scanned and cleaned the four cards up a bit digitally, and I’m posting them here, because they are good, and to give others an idea of what he was like. Those are his horses in the second photo image; they are off in the high New Mexico countryside now, just grazing and keeping an eye out for cougars. Jim took a lot of photos of bears over the years, but, as you can see, not this particular one (fourth photo image). He probably made a card each year, but the only ones I found were from 1982, 1983, 1987, and 1988.

A Dream About Art?

So this morning I had a dream in which I was at an art gallery. I found a sculpture I liked and bought it, for $750. Oddly specific there, that price. Of course price is very important. I couldn’t afford to buy a piece of art for $750 right now.

There was something familiar about the piece. It was a piece of carved wood, shaped like a distorted ellipse, with one part narrower than the other, as though it was what was left of an ovoid after cutting out the center and leaving just a two-dimensional outline of the ovoid. The smaller end was pointed down. There was a piece of wood hanging in the center of the piece also. As I was admiring it, the recently deceased winemaker/sculptor/writer/poet/skier Jim Fish appeared next to it. He looked at me, as if to say, that looks familiar. And indeed, it really did resemble the wood sculptures he used to make; it was even mounted on a stone base, just as he used to do. In fact, I couldn’t tell the difference, but I felt I hadn’t bought it from Jimmie the Fish.

 

In the meantime, he had reassembled the sculpture I had just bought, and even added pieces from a disassembled sculpture of his. It now resembled a three-dimensional rectangle, and it was ugly. I tried to restore it to its original appearance, but I found it difficult to do so. Suddenly, within the dream, I had the epiphany that it really did matter how such sculptures were oriented in space, and how they were mounted. Jim Fish’s sculptures always seemed random to me, and I had often joked about using them for firewood on frigid winter mornings at the winery when we had nothing else to put into the fireplace. I would have mentioned that epiphany to Jim, but he was no longer there. I wanted him to put my newly acquired sculpture back together, but he had left his smaller sculpture there as well. For some reason I tried putting a small piece of his sculpture in place of the small piece in mine, but I couldn’t make it work.

And then, of course, I was fully awake. Would I spend money on a sculpture? Possibly, but I already know I have no space for it here. There are photos and paintings and posters all over my walls, and one wall is all overstuffed bookcases. Another wall has my vinyl records, music CDs, old cassettes, TV, and my stereo system. With my regular furniture: a stuffed chair, a faux-leather chair, my small wooden kitchen table and chairs, my desk, and my bed and bureau,  I’ve used up all the corners and the rest of the space.

Nevertheless, it occurs to me that I wish I did have one of Jim’s sculptures.

 

All of his sculptures have been removed from the winery. They are temporarily stored in the studio of a painter friend of Jim’s. The plan, from what I heard, is to put Jim’s sculptures into a gallery. I remember wondering how whoever reassembles them will know how to do so, like what wood piece goes on what base, and how each piece is mounted. After a little time goes by, it may be difficult to remember how everything goes. Hell, it may be impossible to know what wood each piece is carved from. There’s apricot, acacia, piñon and cherry, for example, and damned if I know which is which without Jim’s little titles and descriptions. His small, plastic-coated cards were always blowing off the sculptures, and I was forever picking them up off the winery’s floor when I was cleaning. Only Jim really knew what was what for certain.

 

So, I see my dream was not so much about art in general, but really about Jim Fish and his sculptures. I will have to help with those sculptures if they ever make it into galleries. After 17 years of looking at each new one Jim added, and seven years of putting the little cards back on each one, I should have some idea what each one is.

This one    was always “Not For Sale”. However, so many people pestered Jim to buy it, insisting that everything has a price, that he finally put a price on it: $10,000. After that, he got no more offers. I like it a lot.

Some more views:

 

Monster

I watched a movie last night. It is titled: A Monster Calls.  It is an adaptation of a children’s tale. It is also very intense and far too real to be just a tale. A boy’s mother is dying of cancer. He wants to believe she will recover but knows she will not. The movie is pretty much about him, those expectations, and how he deals with them. The story has elements of fantasy, and some beautiful animation of the brilliant watercolor illustrations I expect are from the book. I enjoyed it, and, yes my eyes teared, my throat constricted and tears did indeed run down my cheek. Highly recommend, for all ages.

It got me thinking about many things, death among them, and the love I have for my stepdaughter Maya. Her struggle with cancer made me realize that I loved her, and that I didn’t want her to die. Is that selfish? I imagined it would be impossible to live without her. I imagined I would die if she died. Unlike the aforementioned movie, however, my hopes were realized and she did not die. It was the most wonderful thing I ever experienced. I felt real joy, for the first time ever. As time went on, I realized I loved her fiercely, more than anyone I’ve ever known. At first, I wondered if I felt that way chiefly because she almost died. But, I came to understand that it was the possibility that she might die that opened my eyes to my love for her. I believe I really love her, because I want the best for her. I want her to be happy. I want her to live a full life, for her, not for me. I want her to live many, many years after I’m gone. I think that is really what love is, when you care about someone you love, and wish for their happiness, regardless of your relationship, or if you live together, or even if you never see them again.

She was still quite young when I met her. I dated her mom Linda for four years, then married Linda and lived with her, and Maya, and her brother Noah. I was part of a family. It was the second time for me, and I wanted to make sure it worked out better than the first time I had tried that. I never became close with Noah, but I liked him a lot. Maya and I seemed to become friends. We only ever had one argument as I recall. It was my fault and mostly a misunderstanding, and we talked about it right away, and resolved it and I apologized for what she thought was anger on my part. When she started college, which was the same place I worked, we often met for lunch.

After both of Linda’s children, Maya and Noah had moved out, Linda and I had the place to ourselves. She had big plans for the house, including an addition, a new roof, and many other things. I accomplished most of it before I had to leave. Fortunately, Maya and I remained on good terms after that divorce. We work together at times, bottling and labeling or selling wines. We’ve been to many wine festivals, and have helped keep a unique winery running. It is always a joy for me to see Maya, and work together, or go to dinner for holidays and birthdays. It makes me happy too when she travels or has good times with her friends. I love her very much.

Maya’s death would have crushed me entirely. The interesting thing, to me, is that a lot of people died when I was young, and I felt no loss. There were some great-aunts that I didn’t know, so that was understandable. In second grade a classmate died, choked on a glass of water. I was shocked to hear of it, but I didn’t know him personally. A cousin died very young after that, and I felt sad for my aunt and uncle, but my cousin’s death did not touch me. One by one, my grandfathers died. I was an altar boy at both of their funerals. I never knew my paternal grandfather well. I believe I only ever had one conversation with him, one that I remember well, but I felt no grief. My mother’s father came to live with us for a short time before he died. I enjoyed having him there, but again, I don’t recall any grief when he died. I remember thinking how odd it was that he had spent so much time in a veterans’ hospital, which is often where my parents would go to visit him when I was very young. Then he seemed so healthy when he stayed with us that I was quite surprised when he died. I did not feel grief; was I a monster?

The one person I missed greatly, and loved was my father. My parents had divorced while still raising the four youngest. As an adult, his death left me confused. I didn’t know what to feel when I got the phone call. We had not stayed in touch since I left home. Our relationship had gone downhill before I left. I had gone to see him before he’d died, but we did not speak of anything substantial, and that seemed bittersweet in retrospect because there is much I’d have liked to talk with him about. I wasn’t going to attend his funeral, because I had just been to see him, and I felt that was better than seeing him dead. And, as well, I really couldn’t afford to fly that far again. However, when I sat down to write a letter to my brothers and sisters, explaining why I wasn’t coming, I broke into tears, and sobbed. I felt awful. I was overcome with grief, and decided to travel anyway, just to be with family. I missed the funeral itself, but arrived in time for the wake, and I felt much better among my relatives, even laughed with cousins I had not seen in decades.

Then my godfather Fred, a close cousin of my mother, died. The two of them had grown up together. Fred, aka Fritz, would visit us three nights a week after he left the bar he worked at. He usually brought us kids a treat, chocolate, or even packets of clay, leftovers from when he was a typesetter. Loved playing with the clay. Loved the chocolate. Fred helped my mother out, painting, lending her money for groceries, or especially putting up the Christmas garden, with the trains and houses, and the paper mountains tacked up on the wall around the raised wooden platform that held the little village. As a GI, he had fought in Germany against the Nazis, and brought back a toy-soldier marching band from the basement of a burned-out house in Germany.  It always marched across our village, despite the swastikas on the band’s uniforms and flag, and the little guy in front with the small mustache and raised arm salute. I remember thinking, despite Fred’s racial prejudices and those other eccentricities, that the world had lost a good man. I did not feel grief, but he had been and is still on my mind quite often.

Then again, I was reminded of my father’s death when the heart and soul of our winery, Jim Fish, died suddenly. I did feel that same grief again. He was like a father in some ways, a mentor, and a friend. I learned a lot from him and worked with him making wine for seven years. His death was a great painful loss to me. I loved him.

What has always kept me going is that I still have three sisters and three brothers. We’re getting old, but still hanging in there. Even my mother, at 86, is still alive and kicking. I’ve always felt I loved my brothers and sisters more than anyone in the world, but I have to add Maya to that mix now. She is family and more than that to me.

My love for her is unlike that I’ve felt for anyone ever in my life. To keep her alive I would gladly give my last ounce of blood. It seems strange sometimes, to realize that I care about someone so much. I thought I had loved others before, but never have I had this depth of feeling for someone. I admire her too. I admire her strength in coping with brain cancer. I admire her intelligence, and her continuing efforts to learn and advance herself in the world. I admire the way she cares about her friends. I admire the way she cuts off and donates her hair to Locks of Love. She wore a wig herself after losing her hair twice to chemotherapy and radiation treatments, so she continues to give back. I admire her for starting an organization to help people get back into school after having had to drop out due to cancer or other medical reasons. I admire her independence and fighting spirit. But mostly, I think, I just love her.

Sometimes, imperfect as I am, I think perhaps I’m not as bad a monster as I thought I was.

Another Month Begins; Not Bored Yet!

Last month wasn’t very busy. I was paid to work as a background actor on the TV series Graves, just once, and I worked a few hours on a local independent film for no pay. I only hiked three times. I took a weekend acting class. I had an audition – no word on that. There was a shareholder’s meeting, at the 21-year-old winery I have been working at for the last seven years, to try to figure out what to do next after the death of our founder. I had a CT SCAN/angiogram on my heart with a fancy new machine that looked like a giant metal donut. I left a bit woozy from the drug and the scan. I saw my new heart doctor for the results, and I had a pre-exam for my upcoming annual health checkup. The culmination of July was an acting gig for a 48-Hour Movie project, which is part of an international competition among people who make a short movie in 48 hours from start to finish, including all editing, and that led to two events in August.

That’s me (in hat, sunglasses, scarf) as a fake director for the movie within the movie

So August started rolling right away on the 1st, with a day at the winery netting grapes to keep the birds from eating them. We’re keeping the winery going for now. Anyone want to buy a winery? I think that’ll happen soon. I got the see the 48-Hour movie we made on Thursday August 3rd, along with 13 other shorts, out of 41 total. I decided to celebrate with my fellow Group A participants at local brewery Sidetrack, getting a shrimp po’ boy to eat from Crazy Daves’ food truck outside (to balance the two pints of heavy beer). Since the second group of short movies (Group B) finished while we were there, a few of us wandered over to Boese Brothers Brewery nearby for their after party, and I had another beer. A late night, and it cost quite a few bucks, but it was fun.

The Casting Coffee Group who made the movie

Saturday the 5th, there was a meeting of group I’m part of that made the 48-Hour movie. We’re certain we’ve won several awards, but we won’t know until August 18.

After that, I went to the 11th Annual Gala of the Guerrilla Photo Group, a wonderful collection of photographers, models and makeup people, who not only improved my photography skills, but introduced me to the local movie-making scene. There were lots of friends there, a dozen sexy models, lots of photos to view and to vote on as a favorite. My favorite was of a wonderfully sexy teacher/poet with a book centered firmly between her thighs, but it was already sold.

Had another beer at the Albuquerque Press Club’s bar, so I also visited the Pink Ladies’ food truck for a fantastic carne adovada burrito.

Today it was back to Sunday Chatter, the weekly Sunday morning music concert. This one was not as wildly fantastic as the last one I wrote about, but it was nice. A husband and wife duo played music for cello and guitar that they had rearranged from traditional presentations. An orchestral piece by Gabriel Fauré still sounded damn good for just cello and guitar. Four of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for harpsichord were recreated by having the guitar play the notes for one hand, and the cello play the notes for the other hand. (No. 8 in F Major, No. 10 in G Major, No. 6 in E Major, and No. 13 in A Minor). Fun!

There followed a piece from Oliver Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time”, but of course, only performed on two instruments. And there was “Allegretto Comodo” by Radames Gnattali, and “Reflexoes No. 6” by Jaime Zenamon. The duo is called Boyd Meets Girl, and they’ve just released a CD of their arrangements.

Laura Metcalf and Rupert Boyd

There was some great cornbread too: blue corn meal, corn, cheese, and chile,  two pieces of which I scarfed down with my freshly espressed caffè americano. 

25 days still to go in the month of August!

Doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning, and a movie audition in the afternoon. More netting of grapes at the winery on Tuesday, and another shareholder’s meeting next Sunday. Hopefully I’ll have news of our 7-minute movie being wildly successful on the 18th. But, for now, the rest of the calendar for August is empty.

 

 

Another Extrordinary Sunday

 

My favorite Sunday morning activity is “Chatter” at Las Puertas in Albuquerque, formerly known as Church of Beethoven. The music is always different, but along the lines of chamber, symphonic, and other orchestral works; they are sometimes from centuries past or they could be more recent. It is always fascinating and enjoyable. And, being able to enjoy freshly espressed coffee is an integral part of the fascination.

My mind sometimes drifts along during the concert, and today was no exception. After hearing the poet in mid-concert, and during the two minutes of silence before the next musical performance, I was thinking about writing, probably a poem, but at least writing down a (time wise) back and forth monologue, hitting memories that bounce around in my head, a place where time is fluid. Such was briefly my plan for when I would arrive home.

Howsoever, as much as I had enjoyed the music from the first performance, which was a beautiful sextet by Richard Straus (Opus 85), played with passion and virtuosity, I was astounded by the second half of the program: string sextet No. 1 in B-flat major (Opus 18) by Johannes Brahms. Notwithstanding that there were no horns 😀, only six stringed instruments, I was blown away.

Our local trio of musicians (David Felberg on violin, Shanti Randall on viola, & James Holland on cello) were paired up with three members of the Sybarite-5 group out of New York: Sarah Whitney, a tall, dark, passionate violinist, Angela Pickett, tightly focused on viola, and Laura Metcalf, colorfully dressed, exhibiting high intensity on cello. I noticed, or seemed to, that the women showed more emotion while playing. Whitney, although tightly focused on her music, seemed ready to cry at times, as though a sad memory kept threatening to burst though, but sometimes a smile would appear. Pickett was less expressive, but she did smile at the end of each piece. Metcalf was so intense it was entirely palpable from where I sat; I did not see as much emotion on her face as Whitney, but she was clearly enjoying herself, and satisfied with what she was playing.

Whitney, Metcalf, and Pickett

The men, well, the men were just as focused, expert, and intense, but I never saw a sign of any emotion cross their faces. An odd thing to notice. It was curious, but not important to the concert. I briefly wondered if female musicians are able to multitask memories, emotions and intense playing of music, more so than male musicians who are focused on getting ‘er done right?

At any rate, the Chatter/Sybarite Mash-up was intense and electrifying.  I was nearly jerked around in my seat by the changes in intensity. The music would swell and fade, and change and pop, and reverberate in my head while the musicians gave us their all. The symbiosis of these six expertly played instruments was intensely pleasurable. I’ve heard amazing things at Chatter Sunday before, but this, this just blew me away. Nor was I alone: applause is usually reserved for the end of a particular piece, no matter the stops between movements, but the four parts of the Brahms string sextet each received applause from those who could not hold back until the end. When the concert was concluded, people jumped to their feet with thunderous applause. It was not the usual sort of slow rising by a few, then more, then all; everyone jumped to their feet as the last note fell away.

I like many types of music, as long as it is played with passion. The Chatter musicians and members of Sybarite did not disappoint. They played their hearts out, and gave all of us there assembled an uplifting start to what would have to be a great day.

Jim Fish, Renaissance Man

Jim Fish waiting for customers

Found out that Jim Fish died last evening. Collapsed up on a mountain where he’d been hiking, but I’m sure glad he was able to have that experience as one of his last.  His nephew was also with him, and they were good buddies.

Jim Fish was originally from a ranch in Texas, and loved his horses, and the outdoors.  He was also a retired chemical engineer, had once worked for the Sandia National Laboratories on nuclear safety. He was concerned about the destruction possible with a core meltdown, and came up a way to reinforce nuclear plants so they wouldn’t melt into the ground, but his superiors didn’t want to implement the solution, due to cost concerns. Jim took an early retirement from the labs.

He lived in Placitas, New Mexico on Camino de los Pueblitos. After retirement, not knowing exactly what he was going to do, he one day looked around the village, and lamented the waste of fruit, like apricots, plums, and peaches, that grow in profusion all over Placitas and don’t get used.

He decided to try making wine from those fruits. Over the years he made wine from all the fruits that grow in this part of the country, including a few grapes, and he even made wine from cranberries he had to buy from the Ocean Spray company, because they sure as hell don’t grow around here.  It was, as he often said, “A hobby that got out of control.” He eventually built a structure and opened a winery to share these wines with people. He never got rich. In fact, the early retirement from Sandia labs meant his retirement pay was delayed until just a few years back. Jim turned 68 a few days ago.

Jim loved to ski, and in fact, had skied this past winter, despite a bad knee resulting from an injury a little while back. He got a brace for his knee, and skied, he said, the best days he ever had in his life with that brace on. Besides writing books on hiking and the local geology, he recently self-published a book on skiing, titled Dancing The Snow, (A Guide to Skiing for Old Men). It is full of detailed descriptions of trails, techniques, tips, photos and anecdotes. He also wrote poetry all the time, and published a number of poetry books. Poetry occurred often at the winery. There were poets who came from all over as part of the Duende Poetry series, and poetry continued after that series ended. Jim also carved and polished old pieces of “found” wood into fantastic sculptures mounted on large stones and rocks. His sculptures appeared all over the winery, and live in quite a few homes.

While the wines are numerous and often fantastic, like the Wild Cherry wine, and Chokecherry wine, and Synaesthesia – a three-grape wine fermented in three stages – the winery hosted many events besides poetry. Belly dancing is a regular event. Food-wine-pairing dinners is another, as well as wildlife presentations, and community meetings, and political events. Placitas is a very old village, yet still very small. There is one very old church and one newer one, and one school. There are no stores or gas stations in the old village. The closest store or restaurant is about 3.5 miles down NM Highway 165. The Spanish moved in centuries ago, but Native Americans lived there for thousands of years, growing corn, and hunting, as is evidenced by the petroglyphs: designs etched into rocks found all over Placitas, featuring corn stalks, and animals of all types, like cougars, snakes, and turkeys. In the Southwestern USA, the original inhabitants are known to their modern-day descendents as the Anasazi, or “the ones who went before,” so Jim called his winery: Anasazi Fields Winery.

Jim was a friend to all he met. He encouraged young people to work at the winery, and hoped one day to turn it over to a younger group. Then he would just sit and watch and drink old wines. Jim loved his wines, growing the grapes and other fruits without fertilizers or pesticides. He found ways to improve them using old European techniques of slow, cool, sugar-starved fermentation, without chemicals or preservatives. In fact, using the whole fruit as part of the fermentation, he found that the fruits’ natural preservatives and antioxidants kept the wines good for three weeks or longer after a bottle was opened! (Longer if kept in a dark and cool place).

Some of the wines that have survived from the early days, in 1995, 1996, etc. have cellared very well, and it’s always a treat to open one of those. It is difficult to keep wines around there long, as they sell very well, even when Jim had to raise prices to keep the winery in operation. He has a special wine, that one I mentioned called Synaesthesia, that ended up selling for $125/bottle, and no matter what the price, it always sold out. Fortunately, most of the fruit wines are priced far lower than that! Sounds like Jim would have gotten rich, but there are few grapes growing here, and late frosts, birds, wasps, and even bears took their share of those. He always said that he made a grape wine just to prove to his fellow vintners that he could. In fact, using grapes from other vintners, and his own techniques, Jim was able to make those wines taste even better. He liked that a lot.

There’s so much I could tell you about Jim Fish. He was an amazing man. Much of the wine sold was sold through his personal attention to customers, and through the stories he’d tell. He loved to talk about the wines, and skiing, and trails and mountains. He loved to introduce people to the fruit wines, and see their reactions when they paired something like an old tawny-colored and intense apricot wine with venison, or salmon, or blackened tuna. I was amazed to see how much fruitier the wine seemed, and how much better meat or cheese tastes with a complementary wine.

I don’t know what will happen to the winery now. We’ve all learned a lot about winemaking, and we have a lot of stock, so I’d imagine we’ll stay in business, for now. There are around four-dozen partners who have invested time or money into the winery; perhaps they’ll want to sell it. That was always the long-range goal. It won’t be the same without Jim Fish, without that boundless enthusiasm of his, his optimism, and his stories. Perhaps, in his memory, we’ll be able to keep it going.

I met my step-daughter Maya and her friend Jennifer today near the village, at the Placitas Cafe down the road towards I-25.  They both had worked at the winery, helping to bottle, label, and sell the wines. When they found out about Jim’s death, they were thrown for a loop, so they drove out there from Albuquerque. We sat for hours talking about Jim, with tears in our eyes, and sadness in our hearts. We tried to focus on Jim’s friendliness and great heart, and not be sad, but it is too soon. I can barely write about him without an overarching melancholia. I have too few friends and family that I care about so much, and losing someone like Jim is gut wrenching. You never know how much you care about someone until they’re near death or gone.

So, I keep trying to say good bye to Jim in this post, but I can hardly type. I know I’ll feel better in a while. After all, Jim Fish made me smile, and I always enjoyed making wine with him. He was passionate about his life, whether it was winemaking, hiking, camping, hunting, wood-carving, or poetry. When I found myself retired, divorced, and aimless, Mr. Fish added some hard work to my life, giving me a new-found appreciation for wine-making, farming, a caring kind of entrepreneurship, and friendship.

https://www.afterlife.co/us/obituary-placitas-jim-fish-3630872

Reading Piñón, Valentine’s Day

Damn! I wish I could find my fucking reading glasses. But it’s a nice day, and I head out to buy a battery for this pinche little clock/timer I use. The little silver oxide battery is going for $5.99, which seems a little steep for just one, so I buy the three-pack for $10.99. What the hell. Save a few bucks when I need another one. And I buy a package of Walgreens’ faux-Oreos while I’m there.  No high fructose corn syrup in these, they taste exactly like the real thing, and at $2.29, they’re a great deal. For some reason a pack of real Nabisco Oreos with the cheap-ass chemical hybrid syrup from taxpayer-subsidized corn cost twice as much.

But then things get real good, because there’s a piñón coffeeshop a few blocks away. Now, this section of 4th Street features nothing but shops and restaurants. There’s a KFC and a McDonald’s, of course, but also Bob’s Burgers,  Powdrells BBQ, Tacos Mex Y Mariscos, Burritos Y Gorditias, a Church’s Chicken, and a Teriyaki Chicken Bowl, among others. There are money-lenders, the Laundromat, and a car wash, donuts and ice cream.  It’s a busy street, so it’s not the greatest place to hang out, but I brought a book with me, and I love piñón coffee. Piñón coffee is always smooth. The cafe uses dark-roasted beans.  My large café americano has four shots of espresso, which will make me hyperactive later on. I buy a bear claw too, and sit in a stuffed chair in a sunbeam. The bearclaw is gooey, and so messy that it’s hard to eat it and drink coffee one-handed, while trying to turns pages and hold a book one-handed, so I ignore the really hot coffee for a bit and finish off the bear claw first. Then I have to wash my hands. Finally, I get all settled with the book in one hand, and my coffee can be set on a little table next to me when I need my other hand to turn a page.

The book is excellent! Luis Alberto Urrea is not only one damn fine observer of people, but he can write about it with fine attention to detail, and also be funny. Well, some of it seems funny to me anyway, because it sounds like barrios in California, the South Side of Chicago, and here in Albuquerque have a lot in common, and I’ve heard a lot of it before in my forty years in the southwest. The book is a real treat, but I do wish I had my glasses, because reading without ’em is usually tiring, and it sometimes gives me a headache. Can’t get new ones until I see the optometrist in a week. But the book is so good that I don’t mind, and the sunlight makes it easier to read.

It’s not a real busy coffeeshop, having only opened recently. One old guy, like me, sits reading when I come in. A couple comes in after I sit down, while I’m still strugging with the bear claw. The woman is young, smiling and very attractive. When I try to ogle her, she looks back, but blankly, twice. Her companion, with his back to me, is a young man with extremely short buzz-cut hair. A young woman comes in with a guide dog, orders coffee and something to eat, and sits down six feet from me. She speaks low to the dog from time to time. She is dressed in very plain clothes in muted colors and without any kind of style. Her hair is cropped short and she looks more like a young man.

I read three stories in Urrea’s The Water Museum, and prepare to go.  My coffee is not quite finished, so I sit quietly for a few minutes without reading. The man reading a book has left. Another single woman comes in and hits the restroom. The young woman with the guide dog prepares to leave, taking her trash to the receptacle across the room first, which seems to confuse the dog when she returns to her chair for her coat. She chides him, humorously, for sitting as she turns to leave, and I chuckle with her. Moments later, after the woman in the restroom leaves it and walks to the counter, I finish my coffee and head out.

I think about my glasses. I thought they were in the house somewhere, but I’ve turned the place over several times and I can’t find ’em. I was on a movie set near Santa Fe, on Zia Pueblo land, a few weeks ago, and may have had them with me. I vaguely remember that, since I intended to read, I could have taken them with me and stashed them in my green fleece jacket with Applied Biosystems embroided into it. They are a biotech firm I used to order supplies from before I retired. I’ve had it for many years. I remember hanging it on a tree limb at one point, as we rushed to set, and left it behind when we wrapped after dark. No one in the crew had found it when I went back later. The set had moved, and they clean up really carefully, but I suspect my reading glasses were in that jacket, and it’s still hanging in that tree somewhere in the hills south of Santa Fe among the stunted piñón trees. 

(FOLLOW UP: I finally finished Urrea’s book in the evening, and it is mind-blowing. The stories bounce around from barrio to rez to border towns and midwestern towns, and the people come in all races and types, and the love and hatred and ennui and dialogue and descriptions and emotions and sharp shots of drama just knock the breath out of your chest. And then I read the title story, about the water museum, and yeah, it’s a museum, because large parts of the country have had drought so long that children don’t know what rain is or what it sounds like, and fear humidity. And, although it hasn’t happened yet, you know, you just know, it will happen just as he described it. And I’d recommend this book to everone.)

(MORE FOLLOW UP: I found my glasses in my house, sitting on top of a carved wooden statue of a wolf-like lounge singer that sits in a corner near my bathroom; until I saw them, I’d forgotten that I’d put them there, or why. The green fleece thing is long gone by now, battered by rain, snow, hail, and broiling sun, and probably fallen on the ground and used by packrats for nesting material).

Racism, White Privilege, Han Privilege, British Royal Privilege, and Trump

I think the word racism is used far too often. If the photo at top is real, then, yes, in the classic definition of the word, they are racist: (the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.) People should probably be more specific about the behavior they wish to condemn. In many Western countries, we see power concentrated in white male hands, with white females slowly becoming part of that elite, so people talk about “white privilege”. In China, racism is expressed as “Han privilege”, in that members of the Han race are the dominant group among the races that they assimilated.

 

Many people have strong prejudices, both positive and negative about other people, and tend to associate with only certain people. It is difficult to condemn people for doing that, as it is common around the world. People also condemn others for being redneck, rich, dumb, intellectual, lazy, workaholics, etc, and we all do this to some extent. What is that behavior? and how is it different if the people are of a different race? Racism and/or prejudice only become important when used by those in power, to keep themselves in power, by virtue of their superior race. Once upon a time, royalty did the same thing to maintain their power, basing that power solely on their “divine nature” as if their blood-lines were superior. That was not racism per se, although it didn’t stop the British from using racism to dominate the countries they took over, such as India, Ireland, Scotland, and all but 22 countries in the world.

 

Prejudices have always existed, but the origins of racism appear to be rooted in power. Those who have the power can use racism to maintain their power. Average working people rarely have the power to isolate and take advantage of an entire race of people, but we can be used to help do so. Trump is a good example of someone with power using people’s ethnicity as a way to inflame hatred and achive greater power by uniting people of the dominant power structure, and convincing them that he is on their side, so giving him more power will also be of great benefit to them. He lies.

Loquacious after Two Beers

So yesterday I helped filter 300 gallons of cranberry wine, but I fucked up, because, of the three square filters we use to pump wine through, I managed to turn the 3rd one 90° so the holes didn’t line up, so even though it seemed like everything was fine, only about 2/3 of the wine got really filtered, and we only discovered that when we tried to filter a small batch of wine with lots of sediment, and the higher pressure punched a hole in the filter and so today I had to refilter that whole 300 gallons of wine into one tank and then pump it out into the two tanks eight of us will use to bottle that wine and three other batches of wine on Saturday. And Sunday my step daughter and I will label some of that wine.

So when I got home there was a message from the background casting company. Because of a bad weather prediction for Friday, the shoot for the episode of the TV show I was to be in the background for was moved up to Thursday, and if that was OK, “…could I come in right away for a costume fitting?” And of course I said, “yes,” but before I went to the studio I stopped by Ramona’s house to pick up my hiking cap that I’d left there, because we usually watch movies together on Wednesday nights, but not tonight, so then I dropped off a book I had borrowed from a photographer who sponsers a teaching/learning photography group on Wednesdays called Guerrilla Photo Group, and then I went to the movie studio, and found out that the shoot was postponed until Friday anyway, but I had already told the vintner at the winery that I couldn’t work Friday, and then emailed him that I could work Friday because the shooting had changed to Thursday.

So I usually hike in the mountains on Thursdays, but I decided to go to Tractor Brewing Company’s tap room for Poetry and Beer night, and I had two strong beers: an oatmeal stout and a Farmer’s Tan Red, and an “asian style” chicken sandwich with sriracha mayo from the food truck outside. So now I don’t have acting work for tomorrow, and I could hike, but I really just want to sleep. I don’t want to set an alarm for early in the morning again. I don’t want to think about anything tomorrow. I don’t want to go anywhere or do anything.

But, of course, I have a part in a horror film and I have about nine pages of dialogue and rambling monologue to commit to memory by April 24, and I’m not quite there yet, and I probably shouldn’t be doing so many things, but I’m “retired” so what else should I be doing? I don’t want to just sit on my ass. Sometimes it seems like all I do is sit on my ass, but this week reminds me that I really don’t.

Imperfect as I am

I am a very imperfect man, with many flaws. That said, I’m going to tell you some things about the concert I went to this morning. There is a classical concert 50 Sunday mornings of the year here. I do not go every Sunday. For one thing, it costs $15, and since there are espresso baristas who provide great free coffee, tipping is a nice thing to do. There are people who bring fresh home-baked sweets as well, and there is another tip jar there, so it’s easy to spend $17 or more, and I’m not going to do that every Sunday. Besides, sometimes the music is choral, or operatic, and I’m not going to those. I like my classical music, old or modern, to be instrumental only. Perhaps that’s a flaw, but I do not care to change it.

This was Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, to be exact. Born 1685, died 1750. It was a sold out concert accommodating 150 ticket purchasers, and the volunteers who make it possible. The first part of the program was performed by a fantastic cellist who was solo cellist of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in Norway, among other positions in the U.S. She played Suite No. 4 for solo cello in E-flat major. It is a complicated piece, and a very busy one, with seven parts. I remember thinking how thickly populated with notes it was. The notes seemed mostly brisk and sharp without long duration. Since I am not a musician, I cannot speak technically about the music, but it rocked!

It’s Winter in the desert, but there’s snow

I live in Albuquerque, at the base of a mountain range called the Sandias. The mountains often block rain and snow storms from hitting the city very hard, so many winters there is just no snow in Albuquerque at all. However, the long drought has ended for most of the state, and this past year we had more rain and snow for any year since 1986.  Technically, according to geography studies, based on the average amount of rain that falls here, New Mexico is more accurately classified as a steppe. (In physical geography, a steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes.) Locally, people say we live in a high desert.

Long story short: we’ve got snow! Not much hit the city. In areas closest to the mountain range, there were several inches. In other places, like outside my house:

I hiked up the Pino Trail on December 17 looking for snow:

I went for a hike on Dec. 24. There was still snow in the mountains.

In fact, we got snowed  on as we hiked. Things were looking up!

(photos by Robin Tackett)

So, I hiked up the Piedra Lisa Trail on the first day of the New Year:

Good snow, but I knew there was more on the crest of the mountain range itself.

Hike leader Robin Tackett set up a hike for Jan. 7, where we would ride the aerial tram up to the crest and hike along the ridge:

Someone mentioned this reminded them of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining

As you can see, the tram station was nicely iced over. In fact, the workers there had to carefully inspect the cables, as well as clean under the docking area for one of the trams, chipping away ice and frozen snow.

The cross-country skiers took off ahead of us on virgin powder.

I could hike on the narrow trail itself, but step off and I sank, sometimes to my waist.

 

This is living!  However, not only did I not bring snowshoes, but I forgot my camera this day, so none of the photos are mine. Photos by Robin Tackett and Khondeh M.

One more trip up the mountain, up the Pino Trail again on Monday the 11th of January:

Modern Art

Dancer

It was a (relatively) warm day, (the sun was out) and there was no wind! Damn! Life can just be so good to me sometimes. (Even though some people aren’t).

Such a glorious start to winter. I hope this means the upcoming fire season will be quenched by the rain to come. Moisture! Snow! Come On Rain! Here’s hoping there’s enough rain to discourage the bark beetles and moth larvae that have been destroying so many acres of trees, and they won’t be so easy to burn. Yea snow!

 

Cats and Statuary Do Not Mix; One of Them Has to Go

These two!

I try to have nice things, but with cats or children, it’s not easy.

I acquired two cats some years ago.  One was part of a litter dropped by a feral cat in my back yard. I watched the mother feed them, and then teach them to hunt. I was fond of the little group, but my wife at the time didn’t care for animals, and didn’t like having them in her back yard. I had to get rid of them, and once she decided they had to go, they had to go immediately. I had no time to look for homes for them, and wild cats with no shots and not neutered are pretty hard to unload on anyone. I had to trap them and take them to the animal control center. It saddened me, but it had to be done. I set out a trap, and got all but one. Interestingly, the only one not to go into the trap was the one I’d had to rescue from inside a two-sided picket fence I’d put up. It had dropped in from on top and couldn’t get out. I’d had to remove a plank to get it out, and had taken him back to his mother.

I decided to keep him, and not just because of the circumstances. He was a near-perfect duplicate of an orange-striped cat that had died in my lap earlier that year. That particular cat had been half of a pair of cats belonging to my dad when he died, and my mother had maneuvered me into taking both cats. Both were also now dead.

So, not only did I keep this tiny twin of my old cat, but I gave him the same name: Charlie. About one year later, a female cat showed up in the yard, and she and Charlie II were close friends before I knew it. So, I kept her too. She had the same black and white colors as my dad’s female cat Krissy who died a couple of years earlier, although not in the same pattern.  I called her Girl, until I could think of a name. I still have her; she’s about 12 years old. Charlie II, unfortunately, is gone. He disappeared one night. Eight months later, a neighbor told another neighbor, who relayed it to me, that he’d seen a dead cat in the garden area of this compound I live in. He said it had looked like the one in the photos I’d put up all over the place. I wish I’d known.

So, it had been nine months since Charlie II had died, and I had mentioned his death to a hiker who leads meetup hikes. She knew of a cat that lived on a golf course, and she badly needed a home; would I take her?  Well, I’d been thinking of getting a cat to replace Charlie II, since the female was obviously lonely. I had finally given her a name: Kilala, which is the name of a Japanese cat demon. She’s never became totally tame, and cannot stand to be picked up; she’s not a lap cat either. But, she and Charlie II had been inseparable.  I really wanted to get her a male companion. Charlie II had been quite the lover. I agreed to meet a couple who had taken responsibility for getting the cat adopted. I had to be vetted first, so they could be sure I’d take care of the cat.

The cat was well-loved at the golf course, and had been given bedding in a little wooden cat house. The golf course’s clubhouse personnel had been feeding it for two years. The couple approved of me, and I ended up with the cat, the cat house, cat treats, food bowls, a little round cat bed, and a huge bag of dry cat food. And, of course, I ended up with Snowflake. The couple had named her that because of her almost all-white fur. They even took her to a mobile veterinarian for shots. However, among the couple I’d met, the vet, and all the people at the golf course who doted on the cat, no one had noticed, until just before I went to pick it up, that it was male after all.

Snowflake has settled in here. He had been called Snowflake so long that that is the only name he’ll respond to. Even with a cat door, and freedom to roam, he stays close by, and usually in the house. However, he and Kilala do not get along. It’s been over three months, but they still fight. They’ve sniffed at each other, and tolerate each other’s presence in the house, but my older cat won’t accept him. I think she tried one time, but he had been neutered very young, and doesn’t know what to do with a female cat. The fighting tapered off for a while, so I thought things would be fine, but the hissing, growling and chasing go on.

Sunday night, they had come barreling in the back door through the bedroom – not unusual. But this time they rounded the corner out of the bedroom door and I heard a  crash. It was a Chinese plaster figurine, unglazed, 19 inches tall, that I’d acquired the previous year. It was beautiful. I have a set of three. I bought one from the Monkey King,  an eBay store with a physical storefront in California. Shortly after that, the store announced a huge going-out-of-business sale, so I purchased another figure cheaply. They are replicas of old Chinese female musicians that reside in museums. However, even though Monkey King wrapped the crap out of the figure, it arrived with the base broken, very smashed up.

Monkey King had sold the figure to me at a bargain price, but they agreed to replace it. It hadn’t been their fault, but they were in their last days, so I agreed to pay shipping. Meanwhile I decided to try repairing the figure. I worked with glue and rubber bands over several days, and got it mostly together. Some smaller pieces had been crushed, so it’s not perfect, but I have it:

The one the cats knocked over was the first one I’d bought, a musician playing a pipa, a four-stringed lute, behind her head! Her head, unfortunately, had been knocked off. Both arms were broken off at the elbows. The beautiful flowing scarf had been broken off in several pieces. The pipa was broken at the neck. I was pissed. Damn cats!

The cats had run off immediately, fight forgotten as soon as they knocked the figure over. Kilala had run outside; she was the one who was instigating these fights, so I slammed the door behind her and locked it for the evening. Damn, I was pissed. I cannot replace the statues. The Monkey King store is long gone, and I have no idea where they bought their merchandise. In fact, I think they bought the raw plaster figures, painted them, and then rubbed ashes on them to make them resemble the old figures in the museum. I had cleaned most of the ashes off.

I feared Kilala might run off, but by morning she was back in the house, through the cat door in the house’s front entrance. I ignored her. Later on, however, as I looked at the broken statue again, I decided I’d try to fix it. I got out my glue and went to work. It would take a while, but the action of working on it calmed me down. I fed Kilala, and later on petted her.

I decided it was silly to blame cats for something like that. And, really, what do some statue replicas really matter anyway? The world is full of violence and injustice. Material possessions are of no real importance.

I always find it odd that the loss of some object bothers me so much. Part of that is that I object to changes in my life: divorce, retirement, loss of a lover or friend. I seem to have a hard time accepting change, although I know that change is not only inevitable, but change is life; life is change. Hard for me to accept emotionally. But, emotions about physical things make no sense.

Be that all as it may be, philosophy aside, I fixed the damned statue. I may lose things from time to time, but part of me really likes keeping things as they are, inane as that is.

Not Exactly Proof of Death, but Pretty Damn Likely

   

Charlie

I wasn’t sure at first where to post this. It doesn’t really fit on my Ennui blog. It is kind of random. I just found out today that my missing cat is dead. I was speaking with a neighbor who makes beer, and he promised to bring one by. He asked what my house number is, and I told him, asking him if he remembered the poster I had up for months asking if anyone had seen my cat, since it had my house number and phone number. He remarked that another neighbor said he had seen a cat just like that at the same time (June), dead in our community garden. Well, thanks a lot for telling me neighbor! I’ve wanted some closure since then. It makes me mad and sad at the same time.

I’ve missed that cat so much. He was a cat who waited for me to get home. Even though he had and used the cat door, he’d wait for me to unlock and open the main door. He loved attention, and sleeping on my lap, and bed. At eleven years old, he still loved to play. Sometimes I think I hear him. I’ve posted posters of him, and walked the surrounding neighborhood nearly every day, calling him and whistling for him. He used to come running when I whistled. Two neighbors left me a phone message that they’d seen a friendly cat just like him in the next neighborhood down the road, and I walked there nearly every day for three months calling and whistling for him.

I had always imagined he might show up one day, that someone had taken him in, or he wandered so far away that he’d become confused and lost. Of course, the worst scenario was that he’d been eaten by coyotes. He was such a lean, healthy, strong, and fast animal. It’s hard for me to imagine him not being able to climb a tree or building to get away, and he could run really fast. Aside from the occasional coyotes, it is a safe neighborhood for cats. We are far from the major street, and the speed humps in our cul-de-sac road keep my neighbors driving below 15 mph. Traffic through the compound is very light, and he often slept or played on the large flat roof that results from having six houses connected. He is microchipped, but animal control here had no record of him being picked up injured or dead, so I had some hope I’d see him again.

It’s strange, after all this time, but now I am grieving for him. I missed him before, and couldn’t quite believe he was gone. Now, I have to accept it, and I don’t even know what happened. Was he hit by a car and left in the garden? Did he choke, or was he poisoned by something he ate? Why did no one tell me? That poster was up right by our mailboxes for a long time, and everyone saw it. You’d think the person that saw a dead cat in the garden would have told me. The bad ugly thing is that this happened right after there was an email broadcast to all the residents here from another neighbor that cats were shitting on her roof, and left a turd on her patio, that a roadrunner had been mauled, and that cats can decimate all wildlife in an area. I fired back that, from my experience, cats eat what they kill, and would not have left an injured bird. The email misrepresented the study on cats. The point of that study was the effect of un-neutered cats, proliferating unchecked. Mine have always been neutered. The neighborhood is full of wild birds, doves, pigeons, and all manner of small mammals, and in the seven years I’ve lived here, there has not been any noticeable decrease in the wildlife. Sure my cat ate some birds and rodents, but the roadrunner is a fierce predator itself, even eating rattlesnakes, rodents and other birds. It is not in danger from cats. (Coyotes are faster, but roadrunners can fly.)

My cat went missing right after I sent that email. That’s why I’ve been angry. The thought that some idiot may have killed my cat on purpose really infuriated me.

But that’s over now. I know it’s hard for people to accept that a dead pet can cause such sadness. I know he wasn’t my child or a person, but he sure was a friend, affectionate and loyal, and since he was initially born outdoors, of a feral mother, he never accepted anyone but me, retaining a wildness that I liked, and yet being very trusting and affectionate with me, and the other feral cat that showed up a year later.

The main reason I had moved into this compound was for the safety of my cats, and the fact that there were many trees to climb, and grass to frolic in. Now, I’m not certain that I’ll stay. In my mind, animals need space, room to run and play and hunt. Of course, I recognise that the freedom my cat had probably led directly to his death, and I should accept that. It just makes me so fucking sad.

I Am Not Happy Very Often, So?

Today was another day. It was a day like many others. I woke too early, in that it was very dark. That was to be expected, inasmuch as I had drunk a pint of beer the night before. What was unexpected is that, after I fell back asleep, I woke again, before dawn. I knew that I had to be up fairly early, as I had work to do, and 24 miles to travel before 9:00 am. However, because I had also run 3 miles the evening before, I wanted as much rest as I could, so I stayed in bed. Before long, after a period of daydreams, I noticed it was light, which, this time of year, meant it was later than I should have gotten up, so up I got. For the third time that morning, I peed.

I made a double Americano, and sipped it while browsing the land of the internet. I ate a banana, and showered, and brushed and flossed my teeth. I was running late, but I rarely care about that. I am retired, after all. The sky was dark with rain clouds, but it is never safe to bet on rain in Albuquerque, so I mounted my old motorcycle anywa and rode to Placitas. There was work to do at the winery. I am a partner in the winery. The work involved “buttoning up” a storage shed, to quote the vintner. The vintner showed myself and Michael what needed to be done, and began working with us, but was soon called away. We cut wood strips, and screwed and nailed pieces along the upper east side of the shed to close the openings there. First, we had to move all the old pipes, wood, metal, and other junk that accumulates in farms and ranches everywhere, and remove a small fence along the side of the shed, so the project took many hours. We took a lunch break because the vintner always makes lunch (venison stew today) for whomever is working. After lunch we worked for 30 to 40 minutes, but the rain came and chased us off, since we were using power saws to cut the lumber and pressed plywood.

We went inside. I was still hungry, and I wanted something sweet. Since there is never anything sweet to eat at the winery, I persuaded Michael to drive the four miles down to the closest shopping. He bought coffee for us and the vintner, and I bought a wonderful peach and apple cake baked right there in the local grocery store. It was heavy in its pan, full of peach and apples slices, spiced with cinnamon in a sugar syrup, and covered with a simple cake. It was incredibly delicious, and not only did the vintner partake, but our newest partner, who is upgrading our computer books and website, also had some cake.

Michael and I finished the work on the shed and stowed the tools inside it. It still doesn’t have a door, but, there is still a lot of work to do: sealing all the cracks inside, and then we will power wash the entire inside, because of the activity and shit of pack rats in there. Then it will become a functional place to store things safely.

But, as it was after 4:30 already, I headed home. I hoped to make it home without being caught in the rain, but I did not get far before it caught me. I’m used to that. On my way home on Wednesday night (my 64th  birthday), I had also gotten caught by rain and soaked. If I had thought to have brought my chaps, and worn my boots, I’d have stayed mostly dry. Fortunately, today, I had at least worn my boots. I arrived home with only my pants wet, from the top of my boots to my knees. I threw them in the washer as soon as I got inside the house. They are clean and dry now.

There was an interesting book reading by the coauthors of  More Than Two,  and a discussion about polyamory across the street at the bookstore at seven, so I had time to walk over there, dressed in my leather hat and leather jacket, as it was still raining. The talk was interesting, and the questions even more so, as: “What is the effect on children in polyamorous groupings?” and “What about legal problems, mortgages? What was their experience with couples introducing a third person into the relationship? I thought the book, and the discussion rather dry and boring, or I was just very tired, so as soon as there was a break, I grabbed an unrelated book by Neil Gaiman that had been on the shelf in front of me, browsed it, bought it and left. 

I went into the restaurant next door and had a vanilla bean milkshake. It was good. I was still a bit warm and red in the face from being outside most of the day, and I had a thirst I couldn’t quite quench with water.

I walked home, not a long distance, but perhaps a city block away in length near the back of the compound I live in.

Suddenly, I found myself humming loudly, and enjoying it. I was even voicing some da, da, da da, dadadadas, along with the hums. I was unaccountably happy. I couldn’t even stop doing it. It was just spontaneous, and I enjoyed it. It doesn’t happen very often, and it didn’t last long, but today had become a day unlike many others.

Tomorrow I will run 8 miles. The next day I will hike 12 miles in the mountains. I will do some more running and working next week. In one week I will run a half marathon.

I’ll likely take a week off everything after that. Read, watch some movies.

Such is my life.

I look forward to feeling happy again some day.

Dreaming of Random Acts of Sex and Situations Intolerable

 Woke up this morning early, dreaming. I had stayed up until 1:00 am, but I was wide awake at 5:30am. I ran a lot last evening, in the rain, with lightning just a few miles away. It was the first time I’d run in the rain. I liked it; I was able to keep my body temp down while running. Cool, in reality.

The doves are cooing and I have my coffee now. I decided to post because my dream fascinated me. In my dream, I had decided to live on the street. I know, I know, one does not just “decide” to do such a thing, but hey, it was a dream. I had some sort of small tent or structure over me, and I was under a large blanket, peering out at life on the street. Part of me wondered what I’d done with all my stuff. That part of my brain decided that I still had a car and had my stuff in that.

As I peered out, I saw a couple I knew. I knew the male better than his partner, but they came over and looked in at me. Suddenly the woman was getting into my tent, box or whatever it was I was in, and she was naked. So was I. She climbed under my blanket and lay on top of me. Her skin was warm and smooth. I was in heaven. Then, of course, this guy also came in. He seemed a bit hesitant at first, but he came in and lay down next to the woman. I had no idea what was going on.

In fact, I quickly realised that the two people didn’t know who I was, that I was out of context, and in the poor light available, they hadn’t recognised me, as I had thought. That raised interesting questions to me. Did they do this sort of thing all the time? Did they seek out homeless men to sleep with? Should I tell them I know them? As I pondered ways to shock them with my knowledge of their identity and introduce myself, I realized I’d forgotten their names, which killed my element of surprise, so I said nothing about myself.

Realizing that they were probably expecting sex, especially since the woman had her hand on my erection, but I wasn’t into either this ménage à trois stuff, or sex with men, I wasn’t sure what to say or do. The male asked me if it was alright. I said I wasn’t into men sexually. He asked me why. I told him that men just didn’t turn me on, and he, of course, wanted to know why I wasn’t curious. I told him, I had been curious, but I had gotten over that. I went into a reverie, and could no longer tell if I was just in my head or speaking out loud.

I remembered my roommate from when I’d first left home. He was into young boys, his words. I accepted that about him, but came to realize he was also interested in me. In fact, he was four years older than me. I’d thought of him as a friend, but he had other ideas. Nothing ever came of that, not for lack of trying on his part, but I’d had to punch him a bit to finally dissuade him.

Shortly after that experience, my best friend had been a lesbian. That doesn’t mean that I learned anything from the experience, but years later, on a trip to Canada, where my old roommate had become an expatriate, I had needed his help getting across the border, after a run in with the border cops, and I was staying in his apartment. He made it clear I couldn’t stay long, as he couldn’t afford to feed me. It was clear that he wanted me to feel grateful for his help, and he told me to go ahead and make myself breakfast while he went off to work. I had very little money at that point, having lost $50, half of all the money I’d had a few days earlier, and I was feeling a bit desperate.

When he came home later, it seemed clear from a number of things he said, that, if I were to be open to sex, he could possibly put me up longer. That was consistent with his previous attempts, and I figured I should consider that. However, the sight of him naked didn’t excite me, in fact, I was totally flaccid, and couldn’t get it up anyway. That seemed to settle the issue for him. Somehow, people always seem to assume one can get into something they have no interest in, if only they try. It often doesn’t work for heterosexual relationships; so there wasn’t any reason to expect it would work for a homosexual relationship either, except that young men seem to always be ready for sex at any time.

I really do think that there has to be some physical attraction, and some hormonal signaling, for this whole sexual attraction thing to work. I don’t think one should ever have sex with someone one is not attracted to. Random sex with strangers is just not a good idea, in my opinion.

So, that is what I told the couple. The woman still wanted to have sex with me, and, as had happened before, the man said he would just watch. I had turned down that offer as a young man, but I was very much interested in this woman, so I was considering it when I woke up.

Ah well, it would have been a much more interesting dream, I think.

Once, while I was young, tanned and muscular, I met a couple who invited me to their home for a party, and since I didn’t have a car, they drove me there. However, there was no party, except for the three of us, and the man had made that offer: I could have sex with his wife, if he could watch. It was the first I’d ever heard of such a thing. I considered it for a nanosecond, but at 25 years of age, I turned them down. I felt vulnerable, and a bit worried about what would happen. Rape came to mind. Being bound and tortured came to mind. But, most of all, I knew damn well I couldn’t have enjoyed myself with the woman with anyone else watching, much less her husband.

Once I told them I wasn’t interested, we had a few drinks, talked some, and slept, since it was very late at night. I slept on the couch and they didn’t bother me. In the morning they drove me back to where I lived. I never heard from them again, but it was fascinating to learn that there where people who did such things.

I don’t know why all this bubbled out of memory last night.

Perhaps I was curious about what my stepdaughter was up to. She had texted me to pick her up from work, but hadn’t said where she was going, Her evening class was over, and I thought she might want to have me take her food shopping, since she doesn’t drive. However, she had wanted me to take her to a certain bar, a favorite of hers, one not far from where I live. I was going to be running with my running group, and would have to turn around as soon as I dropped her off, and go right back to near where I’d picked her up. I remarked on that, since I thought it was kind of funny. She was apologetic, as she thought it would be easy for me, since I’d be so close to my home.

I asked her if she was meeting someone, and she said, “Yes.” I asked her if she was having dinner or just drinks. She said, “Dinner.” And she said, “Bye, See you next time.” I was curious who she was meeting, but she didn’t seem to want to say, or give me any information; I was curious why.

I love that woman a lot. She inspired me to run. She runs a lot, always has, except during her cancer treatment. It took a lot of work on her part to get back into running, but she runs marathons these days. I ran a half-marathon last year for the first time ever, four months after my heart attack, and will run one this year. She will run a full marathon at the same time, probably in little more time as it takes me to do a half.

When I got back from my run last night, I thought about stopping into the bar where she was, but I know she likes her privacy. I remember thinking that I’d have joined her if she’d asked, but three can be a crowd, and anyway, we don’t hang out much anymore.

When I say I love this woman, I mean it. I love her with all my heart, and always want her to have a great life. I’d love her even if I never saw her again, but I hope that doesn’t happen.

Some day, she’ll be married, with a kid perhaps. Maybe we’ll drift further apart. I used to drive her to and from work, but she doesn’t need me for that anymore, just an occasional lift here and there. I’m divorced from her mother these last seven years, and her mother avoids me like I have bubonic plague. No communication or rapprochement with that one. She’d kill me if she believed I had any designs on her daughter. Hell, my stepdaughter would quickly terminate all ties with me too, if she thought I’d ever thought of such things, even in a vague association with a dream.

I don’t know why I even brought it up. It is nice to have someone to love like her, even in a non-sexual, platonic way. In fact, I’d find life a whole lot less tolerable without her. It’s bad enough my cat got eaten by coyotes. “Situations tolerable” the Traveling Wilburys sang, and really, my life could be worse, but it could be better.

Coyote, owl, eagle, or death by car?

 Charlie, my feline friend for the past 11 years, went missing two weeks ago. While he often strays for a day or two, this is unusual for him. I have always followed the practice of letting him come and go as he wished. If he wanted to hang out, he would do so. Perhaps the time came. He is a very affectionate cat, born in my yard of a feral mother. I fed his mother and the other kittens, until my wife (ex-wife now) insisted I get rid of them. There are so many feral cats around here that Animal Control has to euthanize them all, so I put it off as long as I could. When I finally got a trap, all the cats except Charlie went in for the food. I felt like I’d betrayed them. But, I kept Charlie. He had been one who found his way inside a new double-sided picket fence I’d put up, and I’d had to take a plank out to remove him. Perhaps it changed him subtly. He was a bit freaked out at first to find himself alone, but I continued to put food out for him. Eventually, he allowed me to pet him while he was eating, an action that became imprinted on the little orphan. Even as an adult, he’d usually wait for me to pet him before he’d start eating, but not always. When he’s hungry, he wouldn’t stand on ceremony.

A year after he became attached to me, another cat showed, a female as was obvious soon enough by her swollen belly in a skinny body. The two cats hit it off right away. The new feral cat I called Girl until I read about a Japanese demon cat named Kilala. I tried it out on her, and she actually responded immediately, so she became Kilala. Both cats were neutered, and they have been constant companions ever since, sleeping together, screwing, fighting, or running across the flat roofs of the houses here.  Even though I’d had to move seven years ago when I found myself divorced from my wife of 14 years, the cats stuck by me, acclimatizing themselves to their new home and environment.  This area is largely farmland, full of water-filled ditches, and wildlife of all kinds. My attached house sits far back from the main street, so I feel the cats are safe here, safe to run and play and hunt. There is no danger of them eliminating the prolific wildlife, being just north of a wildlife preserve, and smack dab in the middle of hundreds of quail, rabbits, mice, gophers, and all manner of other critters.

Of course, the wildlife includes coyotes.

and roadrunners, which can lead to: .

Coyotes are actually faster runners than Roadrunners. However, Roadrunners can fly, and coyotes can’t, so it balances out. Roadrunners are fierce predators themselves, competing with cats for small birds, mice, and the eggs of other birds. They even kill and eat snakes.

So, the very real possibility is that the local coyotes got my cat. As strong, healthy and fierce as he can be, one never knows. I’d about given up on Charlie, assuming he’d likely been eaten, when neighbors saw my poster for Charlie and left me a message. They’d seen a cat like him in the neighborhood just slightly north of me. It’s far enough that I believe Charlie may not have heard me whistling for him. This is a cat that comes when I whistle, if he’s anywhere in the vicinity. Anyway, not only had this neighboring couple seen a similar cat, but picked it up after it came over to them. That would be unusual behavior for Charlie. Neither cat has ever warmed up to strangers, even close friends or family. They disappear whenever anyone visits. But, I reasoned, perhaps Charlie was lonely? He is a very affectionate cat, with me and Kilala.

So.

I have started walking through that neighborhood every day now. I still whistle for Charlie, but have not seen any sign of any cats at all. It appears bad, but I still haven’t totally given up hope. Perhaps he didn’t get eaten. Perhaps he’s wandering. Perhaps someone took him in, in his desperation? I may never know, and that’s the thing that bothers me. It’s hard to say goodbye when you don’t know what has happened.

I had to say goodbye to my wife. That was hard. The parting was sudden and not amiable at all. We’ve never talked since. The cats were a real comfort in my sudden isolation and loneliness. Since then, I’ve stayed busy, and know a lot of people. I met a woman who warmed me up physically and emotionally, but she moved away, dropping off the face of the earth, as far as I’m concerned, having no further interest in me. It’s hard to deal with these losses. Now I’m sad, and nearly cry during movies, and not even sad movies – anything with emotion in it. So strange.

This will pass, but, damn! I hate it. The cat was such a strong part of my life, like my ex. Even my “friends-with-benefits” relationship with that other woman, who was really warm, affectionate, and sexy, ended as suddenly as it began. The cat was a better friend than that.

An Explosion of Blackberry Wine

I feel like this is my last night on Earth. Almost one year ago I had a heart attack – on that day, I felt doom, oddly like the end of the world, or at least my world. I honestly felt like my life was finished, like I was going to die. If I hadn’t gotten myself to the heart hospital, I’d have been dead – so they say. At the hospital, I was shown an echocardiogram of my heart. The main right artery was nearly completely blocked. Only a trickle of blood was making it past the clot. The doctor convinced me that I needed balloon angioplasty, where they would break up the blockage with the balloon-tipped catheter and leave a stent in place. I asked about options. He said I could undergo drug therapy, but he didn’t recommend it. He seemed amused that I was unconvinced that angioplasty was my best option. I said to go ahead. They decided to insert the catheter via my arm, instead of my groin, after they shaved both areas. My groin may not have been the best choice since I hadn’t showered since the morning of the day before. They asked my if I’d taken Viagra. I had, on Saturday night – it had been a nice night of sex with a woman I knew at the time. It was then Monday. They probably thought I’d not showered since then. In actuality, I’d showered on Sunday morning, but masturbated Monday, that very morning, and washed up, but had not had time to take a full shower. I had had to rush off to pick my stepdaughter up and get her to work on time.
I felt fine that morning, and, in fact, donated a pint of blood after I’d dropped my stepdaughter off. My blood pressure was OK, and my pulse steady, and all seemed fine; my cholesterol levels have always been good. They told me to go eat a big breakfast. Taking them up on that, I stopped at a breakfast buffet. I had a pile of bacon, a little bit of scrambled eggs, some carne adovada, a small waffle, some fruit and coffee. I felt great. I went home and relaxed, played around on my computer: checking the status of things I had for sale on eBay, reading email, looking at my blogs on WordPress. I picked up a book and read for a while. It was then that I felt the weird pressure in my chest that wouldn’t go away and kept getting worse. Nothing I did helped. The feeling of doom crept in. Death. An ending. It’s over. All that went through my mind. No pain. No numbness. No nausea. Nothing but the most unusual sense of impending doom, and the pressure in my chest. I survived.
No heart attack now. I’m off most of the medications. I’m supposed to keep taking aspirin every day for the rest of my life. I’m still taking a statin drug to keep my cholesterol down. It’s lower than it’s ever been in my life. I also take a drug to fight off acid reflux. It helps. However, I don’t feel like taking any more drugs. I checked my blood pressure the other day, and it was higher than it’s ever been in my entire life! Way higher. I never had a problem with hypertension before. I started training for a half-marathon shortly after the heart attack, and ran it in October: 13.1 miles in three hours. Slow, but I made it. I had never run before. I’ve been running since, but not lately – I’ve had too many conflicts, what with work at a winery, and being on a movie set, and hiking sometimes in the mountain. Somehow I am busy, even five years after I retired from my day job. All is well.
Psychologically? I don’t know. I came back from visiting a friend who just had cancer surgery a few days ago. She had her thyroid removed, and her parathyroid relocated. We visited a bit, and she said she was tired, and wanted to nap. I left, but later saw that she was on Facebook, and at dinner with friends. She hadn’t mentioned that. I’d offered to take her out, or pick something up, but she’d said no. Well, that felt odd.
Watched a movie tonight: The Secret LIfe of Walter Mitty. Great movie. Easy to identify with the main character. Just before it ended I heard a muffled explosion from my kitchen. I was engrossed in the movie and didn’t want to get up. But then, I heard the sound of water running, and dripping, and I had no idea what it could be. I paused to see what the hell it was, and discovered my kitchen cabinet leaking. A bottle of Blackberry wine that came from the winery I work at, but had been opened by my stepdaughter, and recorked, had exploded and was pouring out over the countertop. She hadn’t liked it, and had given it to me. I grabbed some towels to mop it up, left them in place and watched the rest of the movie. Since then I’ve cleaned up a little, taken most everything out of two shelves and wiped up all the wine. I still need to wash it out. My whole house smells like wine now. It’s past time I should be in bed. I need to get up in 5 hours to drive to Santa Fé to work with the film crew. It’s the last day, day 13 of filming. It is a Sci Fi TV pilot. Whether or not it will ever be seen by anyone but ourselves, I can’t say. It’s an excellent concept, and everyone has worked hard. Very low-budget. Most of us worked for free. As extras and crew we’re not paid (except coffee, donuts, fruit, cheese, water and pizza). The actors are paid, although not much.
It feels like the end to me. Running through my head is the idea I can’t shake: that this is my last night ever, that tomorrow is my last day, ever. I don’t know why. I’m being melodramatic. I’m foolish. I know better, but not much inspires me to write anymore. This does. What if this is my last night?

Dream a little dream of…, what?

I have the most bizarre dreams sometimes, but I forget them quickly. This one stuck with me. I’ve a friend I see occasionally. We used to travel a bit with a group that visited state monuments, went rafting, saw the sights, etc. She is the daughter of an old lover, from many, many years ago. She is 30 years old. Lately she has returned to school to work on a graduate degree, so she doesn’t get out much. However, she does like to catch movies from time to time, and set up a regular trip to the dollar theater for anyone who wanted to share. I was part of that group, but, eventually, it dwindled down to me and her. She is a lovely woman, bright and funny, and good-looking. I enjoy her company. We don’t date, as she considers me a family friend. Even after her mom had dumped me for another guy, I was still invited to family gatherings, especially after that guy dumped her mom, and she has since remarried and divorced two more times.

Anyhoo. This dream was about Mona  (name altered to protect the innocent). Mona is attractive to me, but off-limits. And, after all, she is quite a bit younger. In this weird dream, Mona decided one day that we could be lovers after all. I was really excited about that, and, oddly, in this dream, we were going to move in together, before we even had sex. We went to a house that belonged to neither of us, perhaps the new one we’d be living in and ended up in bed quickly. Now, that was a scenario I was really happy about. I would love to see her naked. I would love to fuck her, perverted old man that I am. In bed, Mona was next to me, naked. I swung her over on top of me, and in the process spread her legs wide. Instantly, this tremendous fart escaped from her, and I could feel it on my toes! I could even smell it, but it was not so terrible. Mona was really embarrassed, but I told her it was no big deal, and it didn’t matter to me; in fact, I laughed. She laughed with me, but then, of course, I woke up. Damn. I would have enjoyed the sex part. Well, fantasies are fantasies, and sometime they must remain so.  Sigh.

I treasure Mona’s friendship. I do not want to alienate her. However, the last time we saw a movie, the weather was still warm. Mona wore a short-sleeved shirt, and as we got up to leave out seats, our arms brushed together. The sensation was electric! (No, it wasn’t static electricity). The sensation was one of extreme pleasure. I know from that what the effect of climbing into bed with her would be. Be all that as it may be, however, Mona is a masseuse. We had arranged a massage session for after the movie. Mona has a massage table, and oils, and incense at her house. The massage took an hour. Mona took the pain out of my neck, and rubbed all of my body from my neck to my toes, except for my penis, of course. She’s not that kind of masseuse! It was a wonderful massage. There was no sexual element to it at all. I was extremely relaxed, and did not experience an erection, which I was afraid I would, given how sexy Mona is. It was the best massage I’d ever had, without any element of sex involved, although I was indeed naked. Mona rubbed my arms and legs and kneaded my back. She worked my neck good. It was heaven.

I’m not sure I should relate this dream to Mona, but I’d sure like to share it with her. She has a good sense of humor, but I’d hate to have her think I’m dreaming about sex with her. That might make future movies or massages difficult. I always seem to find ways to alienate women.

 

Sometimes it takes a good swift kick in the heart

There have been many times over the last five or six years when I thought I was ready for death. My life didn’t have much meaning, but it didn’t have to, I thought, since I had lived a good, and a long life already. I mean, what’s the point of just living? Life needs to be lived, and I mean lived, enjoyed, relished, savored. It doesn’t matter what the mix of good and bad is. A really good week makes up for a bad day anytime. An exceptional day makes up for a bad week.  However, since my days were one long string of bad, mediocre, or really crappy times, I couldn’t figure out why I was still alive.

Sometimes, I felt like I was dying. It seemed to me, day by day, that my life was winding down. Sometimes I had trouble hiking, and I could feel my lungs struggling to bring air in. Sometimes I felt pain in my chest. In my mind, I suspected I might have a heart attack anytime, or simply stop breathing. I was old enough. The idea didn’t bother me. We all have our time, and it seemed mine had passed. A few times, after I’d fallen asleep in my recliner, I’d awakened to find myself half dead, my brain fuzzy, my thoughts chaotic. It was as if I hadn’t been breathing for a few minutes. I would get up and walk around, but even though my lungs were moving, there was no oxygen in my brain. My brain felt dim, and dark, as though I was trapped underground. I mean, what is more symbolic of death than that?  I asked my doctor about it, and she said those were panic attacks. Well, you’d panic too if there was no oxygen going to your brain. I believe I actually did stop breathing each time, probably not for long, but long enough to trigger my body’s desperate attempt to reboot. I envisioned a time when I would be found dead at home, probably days or weeks after the fact. Who would check?

When my step-daughter had experienced her brain tumor, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and more radiation and chemo, that had been really troubling. I didn’t want her to die. She survived, and the joy I’d felt then had been true joy, unbelievable happiness.  However, my marriage ended shortly after that. There was no further contact, no hope of reconciliation. I had a friend I’d known for years, and asked her out. She was horrified at the idea, and gradually pulled away too. I retired from my job of twenty-five years. I lived alone. It all seemed pointless right then. Was I depressed? Sure. But, eventually that passed, but I could see that I wasn’t really living, I was just marking time. It was as though I was in a waiting room, killing time, only I was just waiting for death to tap me on the shoulder, even though I was occasionally having good moments.

Stent

So, a week ago, I did have a heart attack. I suspected it might be a heart attack before it had hardly begun. I had felt something odd in my chest, a tightening, or pressure, on and off for months. It never lasted long, and I could simply sit down and rest a bit and I was fine. I don’t exercise enough, so I attributed it to my less-than-perfect stamina. Hiking in the mountains here, once a week, even for 5 to 9 miles, is not really enough to stay in good shape when you’re old. When the day came and the pressure wouldn’t ease off, and I felt anxious, was sweating like a pig, and foggy in my head, I thought, yeah, maybe this is it. For years, I’d believed that I would welcome it. I debated going to see my doctor, the newer one who had diagnosed exercised-induced asthma. I was breathing OK. I had no pain. However, something was wrong. At first I thought I would get over it. I took two aspirin. I tried to relax. Increasingly, I felt worse. Suddenly, I had to make a decision: do or don’t. I decided to act. Got help. Heart attack verified. Angioplasty performed. Clot destroyed. Stent placed in right coronary artery.

For someone prone to hypochondria, this was actually vindication. I knew I was sick, and I was. More importantly, I made the decision to live. If I had just sat down, or gone to bed, I would have reached the point by myself, as I did in the cardiac lab, where my heart went into arrhythmia. I would have died, painfully, all by myself.

So, I had decided to live on. I took steps to get help. I survived. I am on drugs for a while to help get my body through this experience. I signed up to train for a half-marathon. It feels good.

Hiking the pāhoehoe and ‘a’a in New Mexico

For many years, I’ve traveled by the lava flows around Grants, New Mexico. I’ve stopped to smell the lava occasionally, and even picked the tunas, the fruits of the prickly pear, as they are known around here, which grow near the lava by the highway. I’d never hiked through the lava fields before, so when a hike came up to do so, I jumped at it. Now, hiking through cold lava is not as easy as it sounds. The smooth flow, pāhoehoe, is not bad to walk on: mostly flat, good traction. The ‘a’a is not so easy. Much of the later half of the hike was on ‘a’a, the sharp, strewn rocks blown out of the volcanoes, including loose gravel-like stones.

 El Malpais is a national park.

There is a trail, (a very loose term), through the badlands. It is 7.5 miles long. Seems easy, right? Well, people do get lost and die in there. In fact, human bones found scattered on a lava flow in El Malpais National Monument have been identified, just last year, as those of James Chatman and Crystal Tuggle, father and daughter, who never came back from an afternoon walk there nine years ago. See? It is so easy to get lost in there. The trail, such as it is, is marked with cairns throughout. Sometimes the cairns are no more than ten feet apart, sometimes, 20 to 30 feet apart, when the trail is obvious. Usually, it is not, so the cairns are placed liberally along the trail, showing the way through every twist and turn.

There’s one there, in the upper right corner, next to one of my hiking companions. Now, this one is fairly easy to spot, but do you see a problem? The cairns are simply piles of lava rocks. On a rise like this, fairly easy to spot, silhouetted against the sky. Imagine that you are walking through a field of lava and all of the cairns are about two to three feet tall (max), composed of rocks the exact same color of the background. Here are two cairns in a row; can you spot them?

The advice the park service gives is to always have the next cairn in sight before you leave the one you’re at, and I wholeheartedly endorse that. Occasionally, this takes a bit of reconnoitering, but there is always a cairn alongside the trail in the direction one needs to travel. Looking at the photo above, you might be tempted to say that one needs only follow the other hikers, right? Wrong. Suppose you’re a slower hiker, or you stop to pee or take a photo. The other hikers are gone, around a bend, down a hill, or behind a pile of lava somewhere. You then have to navigate on your own until you see them again. Sometimes you walk right past a cairn, if you glance up at the wrong moment, so you have to backtrack a bit and try again. Imagine doing this right after a snowstorm. It had snowed the night before, but fortunately, it was light, and tended to melt as the day wore on.

 

Helpfully, the park service has provided wooden posts for some cairns, sticking straight up through the center of the cairn, but even these have a tendency to fall down, due to the really intense winds blowing through there.    This one was near one end of the trail.

There were piles of these poles here and there, so I assume it’s an ongoing project for the few rangers that have kept their jobs. It’s unfortunate that the National Park Service has felt the brunt of the many cuts in government over the years.  I guess we need to keep raising our Congress people’s salaries, and keep paying them for life, and make sure they have top-of-the-line free medical care.  Well, at least they think it’s more important, for them, even if they don’t think it’s important for the rest of us.

Anyway, you came here for pictures, yes?

Here ya go – (click on one to view larger, then use your keyboard’s arrow keys to scroll through):

As I told the hike leader, it was one hell of a hike. Although I was tired and aching by the time we finished, (just under five hours including two 15-minute breaks), I really enjoyed this hike. The views were always outstanding, and the experience, on the whole, was fantastic! It’s one of the best hikes I’ve ever done. On the way home, we stopped at the ‘WOW’ diner in Milan, near Grants. Their menu is just as unique and varied as the lava fields are. With three pages of dinner entrées, I may never experience everything on their menu, but I intend to try. (There are still lots of hikes in the area.)  It is the perfect end to a perfect hike.

Flying Again

The last time I was preparing to fly, I felt a feeling of impending doom, although I did not associate that with the flight itself. Now, I wonder. Here I am about to board another plane within a month’s time, and I again feel apprehensive.  Could it be that I have developed a fear of flying? It seems odd, although not so much considering the use to which some planes have been put in this country. However, I’ve always loved flying, even though I don’t get to do it much.  I have been excited the last few days about going to my brother’s wedding on  the east coast. Celebratory gatherings are so much more fun than wakes.

Why, then, does my mind dwell on scenarios of fighting with terrorists, surviving a plane crash, losing my luggage, and even ending up homeless, wandering the world? Too much violence in the world, I suppose. Hard to feel safe anymore. Of course, that was the intention of the terrorists, and the huge expenditure of money from a government in deficit has helped their cause by wasting our tax money on overblown security precautions, and a new bloated government agency. No amount of expenditure is going to make us safe ever again, but we keep on spending money, throwing money away, building new screening machines, hiring more clueless, uneducated screening personnel, making every U.S. citizen a terror suspect. We keep looking over our shoulders, backwards, instead of looking ahead.

    

Can we really keep spending money like this, just to create a false sense of security? It doesn’t even work, if I am any indication. I don’t believe all this removing my shoes, emptying my pockets, being x-rayed and hassled, and having to suspect all my fellow passengers is making me any safer. Paranoia inevitably leads to fear, and to an inability to function. Look, people: flying has always been dangerous. Planes crash on a regular basis. More people die in car crashes, to be sure, but there is no way to guarantee passenger safety just by hoping that our laughingly inadequate security measures are really going to keep some nutjob from finding a way to sabotage a plane. It’s unlikely that the whole flying a plane into a major U.S. landmark thing is really what every terrorist in the world is planning next. Our security measures are predicated on stopping that from happening. Someone can still plant a bomb in luggage, or fire a rocket grenade at a plane landing or taking off.  Hell, to really inspire more terror, someone is not going to do the same thing that was done before.

The next time, there’s going to be a nuke, or at least a dirty bomb. Forget the planes, for crying out loud. We need to ensure that those nuclear plants are secure, that transportation of fissionable materials, and even nuclear waste is secure. We know this, and yet we permit our government to spend the bulk of our security money on securing our air travel? Jeez, enough already. Let’s monitor terrorists, investigate possible security lapses in protecting our power grids and oil and gas facilities. Let’s go back to working with every nation in the world to seek out and destroy terror cells, and cut off their funding. No funding, no travel. If the nutjobs want to blow each other up, let ’em. But if they can’t afford large bombs, intercontinental missiles, and even plane fare, then we’d be a lot safer.

Every day, people die in this country. Sometimes it’s from car crashes, bus crashes, plane crashes, gas line explosions, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, or accidents and homicides. Do we really think a few terrorists can do worse? I don’t. This is one huge MF-ing country. It can’t be taken down with a few explosions here and there. But we can fail, if we let fear dominate our everyday lives. We can fail if we use fear to win elections. We can fail if we keep seeing each other as the enemy. Some day, we need to stop fighting each other and work together to make this, again, a country that other nations envy, that everyone would like to imitate, not attack. People don’t hate us because of our freedom. They hate us because we threaten their way of life. Sure, some of them are just nuts, they strike out at power, because they are powerless. But, when we violate the sovereignty of other countries, when we exploit their resources, and attempt to impose, often simply economically, our way of life on other cultures, we create resentment. I think, maybe, we need to stop doing that.

Even the most powerful country on the face of the planet can fall under its own weight. Look at the Roman empire; look at the British empire. Look at the Third Reich. And those were just the most recent empires to fail. Throughout history nations and empires have risen and then fallen. If we want to remain a great nation, we have to represent more than a nation of powerful weapons and large armies. Spending all of our money and effort on weapons and security will not save us.

Are we with the rest of the world, or against it?

Dreaming of a Woman Again

Haven’t had many dreams that I remember in some time. Maybe it’s because I sleep poorly. At any rate, my ex-wife was in my dream this morning. I hadn’t seen her in four years until just recently, when I spotted her dancing at a Salsa event one night. That was something we always did, mostly every week for fourteen years, so it upset me to see her dancing, knowing we could never dance again. She was on my mind for weeks after that, almost all the time. Spending time recently with my siblings and cousins, and laughing with them, broke the spell, and I hadn’t thought about her as much.

Suddenly, I’m dreaming about her this morning. In my dream, I run into her at a party at a friend’s house in the mountains. She asks me to go home with her, so we are driving up this steep mountain road to her place, somewhere deeper up in the mountains. She was always a drinker, so she has concocted a way to drink while driving. She is wearing one of those camelback water bags that hikers use, except that it is filled with wine. She attempts to take a drink from the tube but is having a hard time getting it to stay in her mouth. She is driving, and I realize she is drunk when she swerves across the road into the opposite lane of traffic. It is very late at night, so there is no other traffic, but there is some light snow on the highway, left over from an earlier storm. I am not concerned, as she has slowed way down, aware she is in the other lane. When she gets the wine tube in her mouth and takes a long swallow, she attempts to move back into the right lane when we see headlights behind us. So, she stops the car, on the left side of the road on the shoulder.  When the car passes, I look at her, realizing that she never used to drive when drunk. It was always my job to drive her home. I am wondering why I am not driving. I am wondering why I am with her at all, except I know I am still sexually attracted to her. Jokingly, I tell her that drinking WHILE driving will make them throw the book at her. She tells me to get out. It is cold, the wind is blowing powdery snow around the highway. I can’t believe she is serious. I tell her I was only joking. I want, after all, to go home with her.

All this thinking wakes me up: wrong part of the brain for dreaming, I guess.

I am left wondering why I would have a dream like that! Of course, the car ride could have been a metaphor for our marriage, but I don’t know why I would invent such an elaborate story. Perhaps I am correct, and it was a metaphor.

In a car = in the marriage

Worried about car ride = worried about marriage

Not in control of the car = not in control of marriage

Unwilling to get out of car = unwilling to get out of marriage

Warning her in car = telling her I was unhappy, wanted counseling

Cold, snow, mountain = there be monsters outside marriage

Pissed her off; she says get out = pissed her off; she said I had to go

I guess I never resolved that whole thing. I need to let go; thought I had.

Photographer

She came into the room wearing only frilly pink panties. Her nipples were covered with black crosses of electrical tape. My heart jerked. My eyes felt like they popped out of my head. My hands were shaking; my legs were weak. I could barely speak.
I wanted to wrap my arms around her, pull that tape off with my teeth, taste her, lick her, feel her, fuck her. I wanted to give into my wild impulse and have sex on the spot, sex like no other: wild, uninhibited, hard.
Instead, I clicked the shutter shakily, again and again, over two hundred times. I am a photographer.

12/20/2010

THE JOY OF BRAIN TUMORS

I didn’t know I could find joy in
a brain tumor
I never really felt love before
the brain tumor
I never felt such fear
a brain tumor!?

We joke about it
It’s not like you have a brain tumor
We compare headaches to
brain tumors.

It’s my step-daughter that had
the brain tumor
I never knew such fear
– the all-day brain surgery
– the chemotherapy
– the radiation.

I never knew I felt such love
this young woman I’d known
thirteen years from girl to woman
I never knew such joy
– after the operation she survived
– still needed chemo she survived
– still needed radiation
gamma knife
– a high-tech magic bullet.

Damn brain tumor
fuckin’ damn brain tumor
dead brain tumor.

She survived
She’s alive
She’s healthy
She’s whole.

My chest loosened
I can breathe
My heart
is beating.

I never knew such joy before
the brain tumor.

What IS depression anyway?

Just what the fuck is depression anyway?  I tried researching it, after experiencing it for a few years.  Got medication simultaneously with counseling. I was definitely depressed.

Depression, which doctors call major depressive disorder, isn’t something you can just “snap out of.”

Symptoms

• Agitation, restlessness, and irritability
• Dramatic change in appetite, often with weight gain or loss
• Extreme difficulty concentrating
• Fatigue and lack of energy
• Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness
• Feelings of worthlessness, self-hate, and inappropriate guilt
• Inactivity and withdrawal from usual activities, a loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed (such as sex)
• Thoughts of death or suicide
• Trouble sleeping or excessive sleeping

Major depression disorder, according to the Mayo Clinic, is when a person has five or more symptoms of depression for at least 2 weeks. In addition, people with major depression often have behavior changes, such as new eating and sleeping patterns.

Depression can appear as anger and discouragement, rather than as feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. If depression is very severe, there may also be psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions. These symptoms may focus on themes of guilt, inadequacy, or disease.  It is thought to be caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals and other factors.

However.  Hmmph.  However, none of this says what depression is, or where it comes from. Obviously, trauma can bring it on: the loss of a loved one, a pet, a friend, or the end of a marriage, love affair, or even a job. Many things can trigger depression.  If it is caused solely by a chemical imbalance, then it would be entirely random, in my opinion.  People in all walks of life would be depressed for absolutely no discernible reason, whereas most of us can attribute those feelings to something that happened. Everyone deals with these things in different ways, and, in fact, it is common for everyone to be depressed at some time.  So, to follow the medical opinions, I should talk about major depressive disorder, that thing that just doesn’t go away for some people sometimes.

I think I know what it is, and where it comes from.  I’m not a doctor, neither an M.D., a psychologist nor a psychiatrist.

Now, Wikipedia says: “The biopsychosocial model proposes that biological, psychological, and social factors all play a role in causing depression. The diathesis–stress model specifies that depression results when a preexisting vulnerability, or diathesis, is activated by stressful life events. The preexisting vulnerability can be either genetic, implying an interaction between nature and nurture, or schematic, resulting from views of the world learned in childhood.”

Blah, blah, blah.

I think it is nothing more than our reaction to pain.  Pain, as many of us know, decreases in intensity after we suffer it for a time.  Runners, torture victims, accident victims, and victims of disease know what I’m talking about. There may be a variety of things involved, but we all commonly think about endorphins kicking in, numbing us to pain after awhile.

Endorphins (“endogenous morphine”) are endogenous opioid peptides that function as neurotransmitters. They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during exercise, excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food, love and orgasm, and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being.

Well-being after sex, yeah, I know that one pretty well. I also like chile, red or green, and sure enough, a blast of really hot spicy food brings about a lessening of the hotness after a short time. I can then eat hotter chile, but I pay for it later.  So, one thing to notice is that this morphine-like substance we produce in our bodies doesn’t last very long. But, we can produce it over and over again, in response to various stimuli, including stress.  Some of us experience stress daily, so we must also be producing endorphins daily.

Here’s what I think: depression is our bodies’ response to psychological pain.  Depression is our psychological morphine, producing analgesia.  We go numb in response to psychological pain.  We cry, or grieve deeply, sometimes feeling an overwhelming crushing weight.  We can’t function that way.  We have to go to work, or continue our normal routines, so we have to push those feelings aside just enough to function.  Depression is the result.  If it was a relatively minor pain, we may work it out through continuing our normal routines.  Sometimes, however, the pain was severe, or was perceived as severe, and continues to recur. We may keep brushing it aside.  I think this is a normal mental defense, allowing us to continue our life until we can deal with the cause of the pain, similar to the production of adrenalin or endorphins, which give us temporary options for survival.

But, it has to be dealt with sooner or later.  Just as an injury can be ignored while adrenalin or endorphin pumps through our bodies, eventually the injury must be treated.  Depression is our temporary defense against psychological pain, but at some point, we have to deal with the “injury” that produced the depression in the first place.  How we deal with the injury is what our mental health industry is all about.  Alcohol and other central nervous system depressants slow normal brain function. In higher doses, some CNS depressants can become general anesthetics.  Temporary.  These measures are temporary, and can actually worsen depression.

An interesting tidbit I gleaned from the research literature is that endorphins attach themselves to areas of the brain associated with emotions (limbic and prefrontal areas).  Perhaps endorphins are involved in the onset of depression? I do not know, nor care.

Do I know how to “cure” depression? No.  Various treatments, combinations of certain drugs with counseling, are said to allow our minds and bodies to slip out of depression long enough to allow us to reprogram ourselves out of it.  The length of treatment, types of drugs and types of counseling vary widely. The results vary widely.

Having just come out of a three-year long depression (at minimum), I have some observations:

1.) Depression is temporary.

2.) It does not occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

3.) In all likelihood, we prolong our depressive state ourselves.

4.) Whatever caused the initial depressive response must be overcome.

Yeah, I hear you: Overcome? How? Beats me.  Drugs and counseling will help in some cases.

My best guess?

Here ’tis.

1.) Recognise that one is depressed.

2.) Trace the cause. This may take medical and psychological help.

3.) Eliminate the cause. This one is tricky.

I know that there are techniques often applied, common sense approaches, that may or not be accepted by all.  For example, I have read that grief cannot be overcome unless one goes through various stages, like denial, and anger, leading to acceptance.  I’ve found this to be true for depression.  One cannot wish depression away – that is simply denial. Accept that one is depressed. And then get angry.  Avoid violent solutions, because the depression will worsen, and be prolonged, but anger? Anger is good.  Get really fucking angry. Maybe one thinks it was all their own fault. Let me tell you, getting angry with oneself doesn’t do a whole lot.  What hurt you badly? What was the thing that drove you over the edge? Was it your boss, your spouse, your ex, your lover, your sibling, your parent?  Hate them. Your injury? Hate it.  Give it all you’ve got.  Hate your boss, your spouse, your ex, the negligent driver, the government regulation, the politician?  Hate them.  Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.  Give into it.  Feel the vindication, the release, the shifting of the pain from yourself somewhere else.  When you’ve gotten the focus off of you and onto the cause, let it go.  Forget? No.  We can never forget.  But we can let the anger go, and the pain goes with it.  Then focus on change.  Get away from the source of the pain if you can, or confront it. Attempt to change the situation that caused the pain in the first place.  We all know what we have to do.  If we don’t, the pain will hit us again, and we will be depressed again.

In my opinion.

QUE PASO?

When I was a very young man
I asked my father to please tell me
Will I get lucky Will I get laid
Here’s what he said to me

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

When I grew up and fell in love
I asked each lover what lies ahead
Will there be love and sex every day
Here’s what my lovers said

Que sera, sera
What will be will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

When I was just an old man
I asked my shrink what should I try
Could I fall in love again or fucking give up
This was his wise reply

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be

What will be, will be
Que sera, sera.

TUMBLEBUNNIES

Dust bunnies blow across my floors
like tumbleweeds through my yard
Some blow away, keep tumbling
some get stuck.

Tumbleweeds in the ditch
tumbleweeds in the fence
dust bunnies in the corner
dust bunnies underneath

Memories are like that.

My Birthday Was Plural

Birthdays were never an egocentric event for me. My brother and I, although a year apart, shared the same birthday month, so my parents always combined the two into one party, one song. You know how people sing it, Happy Birthday to so-and-so? Ours were always together, Happy Birthday John and Terry. As a result, I think, I never thought of a birthday as a focus on me alone.  This is a little odd, since some psychologists believe children under the age of 7 reason egocentrically, believing that their view of the world is the same as anyone else’s view.  However, I at least saw that the world didn’t center around just me, but included my brother.
I remember much of my childhood, but not all.  However, I can interpolate some things.  I have no idea what my first birthday was like, although my mother was about to give birth to my brother, so I’m certain that weighed heavily on my parent’s minds.  Knowing them, I assume they used the occasion to have family over for cake.  What was my second birthday like? Well, I don’t know, but with John one year old, they might not have wanted people over so things stayed a little quieter.  At that age, I wouldn’t have cared.  I know we were a handful.  By my third birthday, I’m sure the tradition got started to have both our birthdays on the same day.  There were no other children as yet, and mom would have wanted to light candles and teach us to blow them out.  The difficulty would have been in trying to teach us our numbers, because John needed two, and I needed three.  She baked two cakes!  By the age of four, John and I knew the drill.  When October came around, and my mom started baking, we knew what to expect.  We knew there would be a cake with four candles for me, and a cake with three candles for him.  At the time, I remembered that previous birthday, my third, but that memory is long gone now.
You may well ask how I remember my fourth birthday at all, but I think it was the trauma of moving.  I can’t remember the place we moved from anymore, but it had a long stairway outside the building.  I remember being forced into a car, and driving a long way to the new place.  The car was green, the rear sloped in a continuous curve from roof to fender. The inside had a cloth-covered ceiling.  I remember that cloth, because in later years, it was loose, ripped, and always falling down.  At the time, I didn’t pay it much attention, because I was more excited about where we had arrived.  It was a small house, but it had a grass-covered front lawn.  We had not had one of those before.  My parents seemed happy about that, but, compared to the other lawns in the neighborhood, ours looked different.  It hadn’t been mowed in a long time. It was wild and tall.  I liked it, but, of course, no lawn is ever allowed to be like that for long.  I suspect that is when my dad bought his first lawn mower, because by the time I was ten, we had moved twice again, my bother and I had the job of mowing, and that thing seemed ancient.
Those old push mowers were something else.  I delighted in the spinning blades, each one of which curved in a broad sweep, much like present-day wind turbines.  To my ten-year-old brain, the blades should have been straight, but somewhere along the line, people had figured out how to cut grass more efficiently.  Often the blades would be near-dull, and pushing that thing through the grass was not my idea of fun.  It was however, not something I had to do, but something John and I had to do.
We were sidekicks.  From birthdays to work, we did everything together.  Hell, we even got punished together. My father, discovering something broken or missing, would confront us. If neither one of us owned up to it, he said we would both be punished.  Punishments ran a wide gamut then, from standing in a corner, to no dinner, to slaps on our butts, or the dreaded leather strap, which hurt like hell.  One time, John owned up to something neither of us had done, just to get the interrogation and slapping over, and so we wouldn’t both be punished.  Odd to think that our parents thought we’d ever do anything deliberately bad, knowing the consequences, but I guess they thought we wouldn’t ever do anything bad again if they punished us hard enough. Boy, were they wrong.
Running through the yard, we accidentally trampled mom’s azalea bush.  You’d have thought we went outside just to destroy that bush from the way my dad carried on.  We took our clothes off one time, and went out on the porch roof, climbing out the second story window.  A neighbor saw us, so that didn’t go over very well.   We also thought it was fun to throw small stones out that same window at passing cars, since the porch roof kept us from being seen from the street.  We thought we were pretty clever about it, trying to determine the exact time to throw a stone, so that it would hit a car while we ducked down.  We could hear the thunk on a car roof or door, and one time a car squealed to a sudden stop, and backed up to our house.  That we had to see.  Of course, that meant we were seen. Well, it was not fun anymore, as the driver got out and walked up to our house.
Then there was the time John and I built a small fire in an empty lot behind our house.  We tried to build it up with stones all around it, but we were too young then to know to clear the entire area of combustibles.  It spread, and we couldn’t put it out.  We got on our bicycles and rode for our lives, afraid we’d get caught, and we were. A neighbor had seen us, called the fire department, and called our mother.  She made us march out to the firemen and apologize.  They were incredibly nice to us.  They smiled at us.  I didn’t know what to make of that, because we had been scared to death to go out there and tell them it was our fault.  Our parents made sure we knew the danger of fire, and read us the riot act over that one.  I doubt we could sit down without wincing for days after that.
John and I were a class act though.  One time, investigating a construction site nearby, my brother and I and Eddie, a friend, were dropping rocks into a pool of muddy water in the incomplete basement of a new house.  There was a hole in the first floor where the stairs would eventually be. We didn’t question why the basement walls and the floor of the first floor were built, yet the concrete for the basement floor hadn’t been poured yet.  It was just fun to have a huge puddle far enough below us to makes big splashes.  Three boys, a hole, a long way to fall; what could go wrong?  I fell in, but Eddie went for his parents, and John found his way down to me.  I was laying face down, out cold, in the water.  He turned me over, saving my life.
Years later, we had ridden our bikes miles away from our house, and were investigating a sewer drain outlet.  All the storm water from the street above flowed out into a small creek, and beavers had built a dam on it.  It was just too damn fascinating to leave alone.  However, the concrete around the storm drain outlet was green and slimy.  John fell in.  The slime was everywhere.  He couldn’t grab hold of the edge to pull himself back up; he kept slipping back into the water.  It was deep there, over our heads.  We didn’t know how to swim yet, and the water was dark and filthy.  In retrospect, I think he was panicking, because he thrashed around like crazy.  I got on my stomach.  I reached out my hands and yelled at him to grab them.  He did. I was able to pull him far enough so he could climb out.  We rode over to a nearby house and knocked, explaining what had happened.  John was socking wet, and reeked.   My dad drove home from work and took us home.  He was, shall we say, upset, but also happy that we were OK.
So it continued over the years, through accident after accident.  We even shoplifted together; that was a mess of trouble.   Always we survived, and both of us have all our parts.  We even fought each other.  Sometimes only one of us got into trouble at a time.  We balanced everything out by being Altar boys and Boy Scouts. We served mass and camped together.  We were a team.
High school changed everything.  I went first, leaving John behind.  John developed new friends.  Rather than follow me to the same high school, he went to a religious school in another state for a year.  It was the sort of pre-seminary school you go to if you plan to be a priest, but before you go to an actual seminary.  It was strange not having him around.  Stranger still, he changed his mind and came back after that first year.  Instead of hanging out with me however, he had other friends.  He told me about discovering masturbation.  I had discovered that on my own.  He also knew girls. He did end up going to the same high school as me, but we never saw each other.   He was one of the popular kids.  He found a part-time job after school working on an assembly line for printed circuit boards.  I rarely saw him, and he never told me how to get a job like that or what he did.   He had money, bought himself a leather jacket, and combed his hair out and down and over his face, unlike my greasy pompadour.  He was as different as he could be.  I stayed after school myself, joining various clubs: Science, Computer, Drama.  When I was home, I had to study, usually two to three hours, just to keep up.
John and I didn’t have free time anymore; no time to waste riding our bicycles randomly, exploring, getting into trouble.  I stayed to myself. He thought I was weird.  I didn’t have friends, I didn’t date.  Well, I took my cousin out a couple times, but that didn’t go anywhere.   By the time I graduated high school, John and I were like strangers.  There were no more joint birthdays.  I got a job and left home.  He graduated the next year and got married.  I went to his wedding, dressed in a funky double-breasted suit I’d picked up for myself. It reminded me of my grandfather’s suit.  I looked and felt out-of-place around the family.  I tried to look and act mature. I had even bought a packet of Tiparillos, small plastic-tipped cigars.  I thought they’d make me look sophisticated, but when I tried inhaling one at the wedding reception, I thought I’d choke my lungs out. Clueless.
John invited me over one time after his daughter was born , a year later.  He’d always been the skinny one, but he’d put on a lot of weight. His wife cooked a lot.  They had certain meals on certain nights, same thing every week.  I asked him about sex, and he whispered to me, “Tonight’s the night.”  I thought, “What, once a week? Are you kidding?” Clueless.
I however, was very involved with anti-war activities.  I’d been arrested.  John thought it was a joke, that I’d gotten arrested for the hell of it.  Neither of us had been drafted, but I was caught up in a counter-culture, one that distrusted the family unit, authority, the draft, wars, and law itself.  I liked marijuana and tried LSD a few times.  Dropped out of school, lost my job.  I moved away.  I had many lovers.  Sex was my favorite drug.  I was a drifter and a carny.  I settled on the other side of the country, poured bronze, worked as a hod carrier, then found work in a cancer research laboratory at a University.  I took free classes there, got a degree.   I got married and divorced twice.  I retired.
I still miss my brother.  His 40th wedding anniversary is coming up soon.  I think I’ll go see him.   We’re so much alike.

Where would I go now?

I watch so many, many movies these days.  The TV is useless for much of anything else.  I don’t know what I see in the movies.  I like to escape, of course, but that is less appealing than it used to be.  There are so many stories to see, ideas to hear, intrigues, and mysteries, and wonder. Still, I find it hard to sit still for movies anymore.  I wander off and read, or check my email or auctions or Word Press stats, or play solitaire, and watch some more.  It’s not so much the movies themselves, but that I am restless again, as restless as I was in 1973 and 1975 when I rode away from jobs and family and stability.  I rode away the first time, but came back and tried again.  In 1975 I rode away for good.

Movies seem to have relevance sometimes, but I am tired of extrapolating them into the myriad ways that they reflect my own life, or comment on it, or condemn it.  They’re not as much fun as they used to be for me.  Neither is my job, and my life, which once had purpose.  It’s time to return to the carnival.  We, most of us, speak of running away to join the circus, and that’s what I did so many years ago, although it turned out to be a carnival: no animals, well, live ones anyway.  There were always the two-headed goats and five-legged cows, but they were actually in jars of formaldehyde, which you would only find out after you paid your money to see ’em.  The marks always lined up to see those kind of things, and the painted signs outside always made it seem like the animals were real, and just inside.  But, a carnival doesn’t put on animal shows, just people shows.  Mostly it’s all “punk” kiddie rides and ferris wheels, and all  the other mechanized thrill rides, with music blaring from giant speakers.  No big top, no tents really.  Lots of trucks, motor homes, and trailers.  And electrical generators, of course. Need power for all that stuff.  All those lights.  All those popcorn “poppers” and games-of-chance “joints”.  Try your luck, but you’re really buying cheap fluff.  Hotdogs and ice cream and sodas. Eat and spend. Eat and spend.  The real American dream.  Carnies epitomize our values – buy low, sell high. Maximize profits. The ideal is to get the most for the absolute least you must provide in return.  Provide thrills and escapism; promote gluttony for empty calories.  Cheap thrills.

When I left the carnival, I realized that much of the world around me was the same, even Universities.  It’s all sleight of hand, and manipulation, and cheap thrills.  Education, sure, it’s important, but secondary to research grants that pay the bills.  Stationary carnivals.  My brain is tired from trying to keep it straight.

I went back to work, and finished college.  I pay my bills, I eat a lot.  I watch movies. I marry and divorce and marry and divorce again, and buy and spend and work and buy and spend.  Cheap thrills.  I am viewed as more respectable than a carny, but the differences are slight.  Some towns only sit in one place, some move around, but we stay the same either way.

I can’t imagine I’d really want to work a carnival again.  But, traveling is always good.  Hiking? Bicycling? The physical activity is liberating.   As you put distance behind you, it feels like a new world, a new beginning, and you can’t go back.  All that walking or biking would be a waste if you went back.  But, one doesn’t have to travel in the opposite direction to go back.  I’ve been back to visit, but I live 1675 miles away.   Where would I go away to now?

Trippin’ Through the ’70s – Chapter Nine

For all the 1970s media-hype about free love, guiltless sex, and non-nuclear families, and the ubiquitous peer pressure, the closest Sean had come to sex was a dry hump in the front seat of a borrowed car, and Sharon had only been trying to make her boyfriend jealous. He’d met her at a party with some of Kathleen’s friends in Frederick. They’d exchanged phone numbers. He’d called her, and arranged to meet her up there. He still didn’t have a car, so he took a Greyhound. The bus ride was pretty long from Baltimore to Frederick, but this woman seemed interested in Sean, and Sean was becoming increasingly frustrated by fate’s teasing. He found her house, but she had him wait outside. She said she didn’t want her father to know. She was borrowing his car. Sean drove and Sharon navigated. They drove around Frederick, Sharon had brought sodas with her. She also brought champagne glasses. She directed Sean to a closed storefront and had him park right in front, facing the street. Sean thought it strange, but here was this beautiful woman, dark-haired, brown-eyed, with a ready smile and, well, something in mind. She poured the soda into the glasses, but after a couple sips, she asked Sean if he wanted to make out. He put his glass on the dash; she did the same. They kissed. Sharon’s tongue was suddenly in Sean’s mouth and he tickled the base of it with the tip of his own. Kissing was something Sean liked. After a few minutes, his hand began roaming Sharon’s back and arms and neck. Sharon leaned into Sean, until he felt her weight on him and he leaned back against the door. He asked her if she wanted to get in the back seat, but she just pushed him all the way down and kissed him some more. Sean ran his hands under her blouse, and had both hands on her bra hooks when a flashlight beam knifed through the darkness, and the voice behind it wanted to know what they were doing. An odd question, considering that there was no mistaking what they were doing. The deputy shone his light in both faces, one at a time. Sean said, “We were just parking for a little bit, officer.” The deputy played the light around the car, taking in the glasses on the dash, but he didn’t even ask if they were drinking, or how old they were. He simply said, “Well, you’ll have to move on. You can’t park here.” So they drove away down the main street.
“What now?’ Sean asked. “I know a place we can go,” Sharon said. They drove out of town up into the hills. She had Sean stop the car in a clearing off the road in the woods. It looked like a make-out spot. “You’ve been here before?” he asked her. “Yes,” she told him, “With my boyfriend.” “You have a boyfriend? Sean asked, surprised. “Yes”, she said. “In fact,” she said, “that was him back there.” “The cop?!” he squeaked. “Well, he was my boyfriend,” she said. Sean’s mind woke up: Now I get it. The whole thing had been a plan to get caught. To make her boyfriend see her with someone else, to make him jealous. The champagne glasses, parking in plain sight of the highway. She must have known he’d be along.
They sat in silence for awhile. Sean pulled her over and kissed her some more. He opened her blouse. He kissed her shoulders and neck. This bra has to go, he thought. He popped her bra open, and pulled it down, exposing the pale flesh in the weak moonlight. He reveled in the sight and kissed her nipples. They were strangely, to Sean, stiff and hard. He ran his hand along her back into her jeans. Just then a car engine roared up the steep hill, and headlights lit up the underside of the trees around them. They froze for a moment. Sean felt anxious, but Sharon sat up, clutching her chest, then pulled her bra up and closed her blouse. Sean was thinking about being arrested for public indecency or something. He had no idea what Sharon could be up to. Was this her ex-boyfriend? Was she expecting him to fight me or something? The other car turned in a small circle and left, and they sat there like that for a few moments. They drifted back down onto the seat. Sharon rubbed her crotch against Sean’s. Sean’s penis was erect alright, and Sharon pushed against it. Sean could feel her slit through his pants. He kept trying to get her blouse off, but she pushed his hands away. Sean popped the button on her jeans and started to open them, but Sharon had had enough by then. “Let’s just go home, OK? She said. She drove Sean back to the bus station in silence. Sean didn’t know what to say. He kissed her, but her lips were closed, and taut. He took the long ride home in the dark night, back to Baltimore, watching the houses slip by, with lights in the windows. Lots of activity in some of those houses, he thought, and the lonliness he lived felt more miserable than ever.

After two and a half years of taking night school classes, Sean decided that he would never finish that way. He had only now finished his freshman year. He had been saving money, but it wouldn’t be enough to live on. He applied to the Univeristy of Maryland,  and hoped he could find a way to attend full time. When he told his boss, Dr. Bearden, he had said, “Don’t you worry about it, Sean. I know how important school is to a young man like you. But tell me, do you think that you could continue working on a part-time basis here?”
“I don’t know,” Sean answered, “How many hours?”
“Well now, I think that’s up to you. Would you want to work after school, or on the weekends?”
“On the weekends, mostly.”
“Fine. If I really needed you, could you come in on a weeknight too once in a while?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes, I think I could.”
“Good, that’s fine. Let’s see – what are you making now?”
“Four dollars an hour.”
“I think six dollars an hour would be a good rate. That’s like time-and-a-half. That’s what you’re really doing when you work during non-regular hours.”
“Great,” Sean said, beaming, “Six dollars is fine,” and he knew that he could make it now. Six dollars an hour was a lot of money to a twenty-one year old in 1971. He was admitted to the University of Maryland, transferring in as a sophomore. He was elated.
The campus, however, was not close to his apartment, or his job. He commuted by bus, but he was unhappy with that. The trip took from between fifty and seventy minutes to cover a ten mile distance, and it was time wasted, he decided. I’m not getting anything done. I can’t study on the bus, and I can’t stand sitting down anymore. I need to get off my butt.
Sean had just spent two and a half years planted in a big wooden chair in the Physics lab, and studying would now mean that he’d spend all his time sitting. One day he walked to school, but that took way too long, and besides, he was exhausted by the time he got home. Then he decided to get a bicycle. It had been a long time since he’d ridden one. His previous bicycle had been stolen when he was thirteen. He took a bus to a store five miles away – bicycles were not all that popular at the time – and rode a brand new Schwinn Suburban ten-speed home to his apartment.
He wished he hadn’t. Halfway home his legs felt so weak, he had to get off and rest on the City High School lawn. He was wheezing, and his heart was pumping a little too hard, or so he thought. Before long, however, that bicycle was his constant companion. He felt more alive, using his own leg-power, and not adding to the polluted air he was breathing.
He started pedaling to the theater, to movies, or to local demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He didn’t have much of a love life, but he sure as hell had transportation.
I can go anywhere, he thought. Just how far could I go? To California? Canada? Shit! I might still need to do that if I’m drafted. I should travel, see the country, other cities. Man! To swim in clean rivers, camp in the mountains, see the canyons and forests, that would be my version of real happiness.
However, he usually had to fight his way through herds of buses, semi’s, Fords, Chevies, beetles, caddies, Mustangs, and ‘vettes on his way to and from school – in a cloud of fumes, greasy air and soot. He was not happy about that, but he had other things to worry about over the next couple of years.
The war was not over yet. He could still be drafted. People were still being killed wholesale. He wanted to do more than walk in demonstrations and yell at the President. In the previous decade, Universities had been the scene of violent protests and strikes against the military and war profiteers. He’d only read about it, and seen it on the news. He wanted to do something before people forgot that the war wasn’t over yet, even though the President kept repeating his four-year-old promises to end it soon.
He talked to other students about the war. Some of them felt the way he did. He decided to organize a teach-in. He’d been to plenty of them at the University where he worked, and he thought it was still a good idea.
He wrote a short article for the school paper calling for a meeting to make plans, but only six people showed up. It’s enough, he decided. “Let’s do something,” he told them.
The others were new to this kind of activity, having just left high school. But, they all wanted to get in on the protests they’d missed in the Sixties. “I think we should call for a boycott of classes,” Lynn suggested.
“We need leaflets,” Michael said.
“And movies, and speakers,” Sean suggested.
Sean went to teachers he knew would be sympathetic and asked them to print up the leaflets. He called the American Friends Service Committee and asked them for movies about the war. The others posted the leaflets and talked to their friends. Mike arranged space to show the movies, and Lynn got approval to use the central mall for speeches. An English teacher brought a lectern and a microphone – Sean knew she would help, she didn’t use The Prison Letters of George Jackson in her classes for nothing.
Sean went to class as usual on the morning of the teach-in. The activities wouldn’t start until noon, and he had a Genetics lab to do first.
The lab assistant, a Biology grad student, came over to Sean while he was finishing up. He knew what was being planned, and he knew who had started the whole thing. “So, are you still going on with it?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “Of course.”
“Do you really think it will do any good?”
“I don’t know, I certainly hope so. I have to do something.”
“You know, you really should decide what’s important.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, are you going to run around yelling and screaming about something you can’t do anything about, or are you going to study Genetics?”

Sean looked at him for a minute. What is he telling me? he wondered. And why? “I have to do both,” he finally said, and he left to go join the students already gathered on the mall.
“Nixon said he had a secret plan to end this war,” the first speaker said, “and he was elected twice now. The war is not over. He says he’ll bring the troops home, but every time he does, he sends over another warship with twice as many men. His “secret plan” was the carpet bombing of Hanoi, and the mining of Haiphong harbor. He used his end-the-war promise just to get elected, and then he used it again. He’s a liar.” The small crowd cheered. Sean went inside to check on the movies.
“Hey Sean,” Michael asked, “Can you run the projector for awhile? This movie’s about over, and I’ve got some other things to do.”
Few people stayed for the next movie. By the time Sean rewound the first one, and got another one loaded in the projector, only four people were left.
He stopped one of the people as he was walking out the door. “How come you’re leaving?” he asked him.
“Aw, hell, we’ve seen all this before.”
“But,” Sean insisted, “that’s the whole point. It’s still going on.
“Well, I’m not going to have to go there.”
“Our tax money is being used to keep a corrupt dictatorship in power. We’re paying for the weapons, the tanks, the helicopters, the napalm. Don’t you think that’s important?” Sean asked, but the guy just turned and walked away.
The crowd thinned out at the rally by the time Sean shut the projector down. An Anthropology professor was calmly discussing the effects of war on society when Sean went outside. Most people weren’t listening. I thought he would be great, Sean thought, He sounded so enthusiastic in class. Thank God it’s almost time for this to be over.
Sean gathered his books, and started his long ride home through traffic. Maybe that guy was right. Maybe it was all a waste of time, a waste of energy. He brooded about the teach-in for a few minutes, but the effort of pushing the pedals and straining his thighs to keep his speed up with traffic brought his mind back to the joy of physical exertion. There was clear road ahead of him.  Cool air caressed his sweaty forehead as he leaned into his bike, becoming one with it, pushing it harder, faster.

Trippin’ through the ’70s – Chapter Five

Sean was in love – not, however, with Lenny, but with Lenny’s friends, especially Kathleen. He knew now that Lenny was gay, and that he wanted to share more than an apartment, yet he didn’t feel threatened by that. Life had suddenly become an adventure, a big party-cum-camping trip for Sean. Never having had friends who weren’t brothers or sisters or cousins, Sean was having the time of his life. There were parties and trips to the beach with Lenny’s college buddies, who seemed to accept Sean right away. The beach was suddenly a lot more fun. There were Frisbees to catch, and balls to bounce back and forth over nets and rock ‘n roll: funky, loud, and full of sexual rhythm. Sean loved it all.
There was Scott, who played the best Scrabble games Sean had ever seen. He missed the games he had played for so many years with his brother John. Scott, a grad student in economics, took the game seriously, plunking down seven-letter words several times a game, and teaching Sean how to go for the big scores.
Bill and Lucy were married, but they threw the best damn parties Sean had ever been to. Bill, a phone company engineer, played Alice’s Restaurant on his guitar, and everybody sang. Sean didn’t go home for Christmas that year, he went to Bill and Lucy’s, learned how to string popcorn and cranberries, and helped un-trim the tree of miniature bottles of Chianti, Seagrams-7, or Jack Daniels.
Jim was the strangest of the group. He was in the Air force, and had flown helicopters in Nam. The stories he told convinced Sean never to go there. Jim would show up at most parties with a supply of Jimi Hendricks’ albums – ‘Scuse me while I curse the sky – get as stoned as possible, and just sit in a corner playing air guitar. Sean wanted to know about Vietnam.
“You know how they interrogate prisoners?” Jim would start off with, “We would take suspected VC…”
“What’s a VC?”
“Vietcong. The communists, ya’ know? Well, the Lieutenant would have us take villagers up, and hang ’em out the door until they talked. You should have seen ’em squirm, and beg, and pee themselves.”
“And what if they didn’t talk?” Sean asked.
“Then he would kick ’em off anyway. Some of the guys just loved to watch the gooks go splat.”
“But what,” Sean asked, “if he or she weren’t VC? or if they didn’t know anything?”
“Then they got dropped anyway. The next guy we took up would usually talk.”
Jim said he’d never go back there again, and he wanted to get out, but “the Air Force still has my ass for a while.”
There was no escaping the war those days, and Sean knew he could still be drafted. He was going to have to decide what to do pretty damn soon.
But right now, what Sean really loved to do was go to Kathleen’s parties. She was brash and beautiful, with long brown hair flowing over a lean sensual body. Sean loved to watch her dance. She was a librarian. She wrote poetry. Her favorite musical groups were the Doors, and Simon and Garfunkel, so Sean bought their music and became a fan. She was a reader too, and he read the books she read. At a party one night, she exhaled a lungful of smoke from the joint passing around and told Sean: “Hey man, I’ve got a book you should read.” It was Atlas Shrugged, and he immediately became a fan of Ayn Rand: champion of absolute individual freedom. He visited Kathy, discussing individualism, and Capitalism, and the war in Vietnam, but she didn’t take Sean’s attentions very seriously. She considered him “still wet behind the ears,” and besides, she was in love with Brian. Brain, a teacher, was engaged to be married to Margaret. Kathy didn’t like that much, but she lived in a fantasy world where she was Scarlett O’Hara, and Brian was Ashley, who really loved her, not the woman he was marrying.
Sean was part of this family now.
“What’s wrong with you Sean? Don’t you know Kathy’s in love with Brian?” Lenny was fond of reminding Sean.
“Yeah, but I think she’s great.”
“Why?”
“Um, well, maybe because she’s a beautiful, long-legged, college-educated, beer-drinking poet.”
“You’re a hopeless case.”
“Maybe. Are you any better?”
“Oooh, you’re a nasty one, aren’t you?”
“You’re strange, Lenny.”
“I’m strange? And just who are you? You don’t even know what your future is, much less care.”
“I’m know I’m not going to Vietnam.”
“Why don’t you get out of it? Couldn’t you get a letter from your doctor or something?”
“Maybe. But I don’t think that’s the way to do it.”
“Then what is?”
“I don’t know. Revolution maybe.”
“Revolution? You shouldn’t talk that way, the walls have ears. You want to overthrow the government?”
“Why not? It sucks. The air’s polluted, rivers and lakes are dying – hell, the Patapsco River is dead – and the land is being sterilized by chemical fertilizers. Our food is not even safe to eat anymore.”
“That’s no reason to overthrow the government.”
“It’s not? You want more? Look at all the people dying in Vietnam. What about racism, and poverty? Our own government’s part of the problem.”
“Jesus Christ! You’re a nihilist!” Lenny’s face was turning red.
“What’s that?” Sean asked.
“What?” Lenny was pacing the room, but he turned to Sean and said: “You mean you haven’t read Nietzsche?”
“No, I haven’t. Who’s that? Somebody you read about in college? And I’m supposed to be all impressed?”
Lenny pointed a finger at Sean, “He’s one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived, and you never heard of him?” He started waving his hands in the air and shouting. “You don’t know anything about the world. You don’t know who runs things, or the power they have. You’re going to change the world, and you can’t even get laid.” He started pounding his fists on the table for emphasis. “You’re so incredibly naïve.”
“And you’re psychotic.”
Lenny reached over and grabbed Sean, and they rolled onto the floor and wrestled for a few minutes. They started laughing, but Sean suddenly realized that Lenny wasn’t just playing around. He was using the wrestling as an excuse to get his hands on Sean, and Sean pushed him off.
Sure I’m a virgin, Sean thought, but I’m not desperate. He was getting nervous living with Lenny. He wasn’t sure if he could trust him any more.
Sean finally met someone at a mixer. His job, in a research lab, was at a rich private university, Johns Hopkins University, and the mixer was for its freshman students and the students of an exclusive women’s college, Goucher. Sean took a bus out to the dance, which was at the women’s school. He was anxious to meet someone by now, and he was hoping that he could overcome his shyness. When he arrived, however, he saw that people had formed into cliques, and none of the women wanted to dance or talk with him. He was about to despair, feeling out-of-place and stupid amongst these rich-kid elites, when he noticed the girl playing the records. She kept changing the music, and urging people to dance. Sean watched her ponytail bobbing as she bounced around the room. She didn’t appear to be with anyone.
He forced his legs into action, and went over to her. “I like the music you’re playing,” was all he could think to say.
“Let’s dance,” she urged, smiling. Her name was Sue Plaskowitz, and she wore a Russian peasant blouse over faded blue jeans. “Call me Plask,” she said, “Everyone does.”
Sean was fascinated. She played great rock and roll, and she danced with a fervor that exited Sean as much as her erect nipples showing through her blouse. After awhile someone else took over as DJ, so he and Plask took a break for air. They walked along the grounds and Sean tried to think of something to say. Nice moon, he thought of saying, and, I like the way it shines on your face. But he didn’t say it. Too corny, he told himself.
Plask helped him out: “Hey, have you ever seen Hair?”
“No, I never did. I wanted to, but it’s kind of hard to get away to New York just to see a play.”
“Well, you know what? I’ve got the ‘pink’ album.”
“Pink?”
“Everybody calls it the pink album. It’s the original cast recording.”
“Do you have it here?”
“No, but I have it in my room.”
“Well, let’s go listen to it.”
“Oh, no, we’re not allowed to take men to our rooms,” she whispered conspiratorially, “Why don’t we go to your place?”
Sean was surprised, more like shocked. He never would have thought to even ask her. He had, after all, come on a bus. “Sure,” he said, “But you know, I took the bus out here.”
“That’s OK, I have a car.”
Again, Sean was taken aback. She’s beautiful, sexy, and she has a car! I would have been happy if she’d just agreed to date. I hope Lenny stays out late like he usually does.
They put the record on as soon as they got to the apartment, and sat down on opposite ends of the couch.
“I like the songs,” Sean said, “They’re not the same as the one’s I’ve heard.”
“That’s because it’s the original cast, before it went on Broadway. The songs changed after that.”

Exanaplanatooch…

“I never heard this one,” Sean began.
“Shush!”

…a planet where the air is pure, the river water’s crystal bright…

“Doesn’t sound like this planet.”
“Wait, Sean.”

…total beauty, total health. No government, no police, no wars, no crime, no hate.

“Sounds nice,” Sean said, “I wish it could be true.”
“Why?”
“Well, there’s all this pollution, racism, and this damn war the government keeps throwing money and bodies away on.”
“Will you be drafted, Sean?”
“Of corpse,” Sean said, but Plask didn’t laugh. “They’ve got me down as 1-A: grade A US-prime cannon fodder.”
“Can’t you get a deferment?”
“How? I only take a couple night classes, I can’t afford to go full-time. Even if I could, I hear the government’s going to start drafting students.”
“Will you go if they draft you?” Plask looked concerned. Sean felt like he was getting somewhere, she had moved a little closer.
“No way. I don’t think the government has the right to be fighting this war, or even drafting me.”
“Couldn’t you be a conscientious objector?”
“Nah, that’s only for religious people. You’ve got to be Quaker, or something like that. Seems like most religions support the war anyway, you know, ‘God is on our side’, and all that crap.”
“Sean, what will you do?”
“God, I don’t know.” Sean moved closer to Plask. She was leaning closer, and Sean’s arm was on the couch behind her. The record finished, and the stereo clicked off. Sean put his arm around her and pulled her close, but she pulled away and sat up.
“Uh, not so fast, Sean.”
“I’ll put another record on, OK?” Sean asked.
“I have to go soon.”
“This is a record I like a lot. Surrealistic Pillow.”
“Jefferson Airplane?”
“Yeah. It’s great. I’m gonna turn the sound up.” He turned the lights way down and sat as close to Plask as he could. He put his arm around her, and leaned back. She relaxed as well, and the Airplane sang: Don’t you want Somebody to love?
“So what if they draft you?”
Sean put his head back. “Do you think I should go to Canada?”
“What choice would you have?”
“I could go to jail.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I wouldn’t, believe me. Did you hear about those priests?”
“Yeah. The ones that poured blood on draft files?”
“More than that. They made napalm from a recipe in a government handbook, and then they burned draft files with it. I liked that, it was real symbolic, you know, it’s the same stuff our troops are burning people with.”
“Well, it does seem like a better use for it.”

“Sure does. Anyway, I think if they could be prepared to go to jail for their beliefs, then so could I.”

“I hope they never call you to go,” Plask said, and she leaned against Sean. The album got softer and slower, as the Airplane played a love ballad.

Today, I feel like pleasing you, more than before.
Today, I know what I want to do, but I don’t know what for.
To be living for you, is all I want to do.
To be loving you, it’ll all be there when my dreams come true.

Sean brought his hand close to Plask’s face. Her hair seemed erotic between his fingers. He stroked her cheek and felt heat on his hand. Plask felt her face flush. Sean kissed her.
“Oh, hi!” Lenny said, as he flipped on the lights. He took in the scene on the couch and grinned. “Well, who’s this?” Plask pulled away and sat up as if she’d had an ice-cube down her blouse.
“This is, uh,  Susan,” Sean said, “Sue, my roommate, Lenny.”
“Nice to meet you,” Plask said, “Sean, I really have to go now.” She grabbed her album and headed for the door.
“Wait. I’ll walk down with you. Let’s go this way.” They walked down the back stairs, which was really just the fire escape. “Private entrance,” Sean said, and, “Do you have to go right away?”
“Well, no, I suppose I could stay a few minutes.” They got in her white Dodge Valiant. Sean noticed a peace symbol in her rear window. He reached over and kissed her again. This time they didn’t stop until they had to breathe. Sean pulled Plask over onto his lap.
“Why do boys always want girls to sit on them?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Doesn’t it feel good?”
“Well, it’s alright.” She put her arms around him. They kissed again, and again. Sean closed his eyes, and felt his body warming. Plask’s body felt so good against him. He felt comforted and loved, and alive. But Plask did have to go home, and they kissed one more time, and once again and said good night. Sean got out of the car and came around to the driver’s side. He said good night and kissed Plask again.
As he climbed the stairs, Sean found the answer to Plask’s question. My pants are wet. Jesus Christ! I creamed in my jeans! Lenny was waiting for him in the kitchen.
“What happened, Sean? Did I scare cutie-pie away?”
“Jesus! What did you have to turn the lights on for?”
“Did I interrupt something, Sean? I’m so sorry.”
“You know you did, and you’re not.”
“Aw, that’s too bad, Sean. Did your little girl leave you all horny? I can take care of that.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“Ooh, I’d like that. I like assholes, don’t you? Does your little girl like it in the ass?”
“Shut up, damn you!” Sean shouted, and went to bed. It wasn’t the last time they would fight.
Sean and Plask continued to see each other. She invited him to have Thanksgiving dinner with her family, and drove him to her parent’s suburban home.
“How come you aren’t having dinner with your parents, Sean?”
“Shit. Why would I do that? I’m glad to be out of there.”
“I don’t understand that. I’d always want to be with my family on holidays. The only reason I moved in with my grandma is because it’s closer to school.”
Sean was impressed by dinner. He’d never had champagne before, and he was surprised that everyone drank, even Plask’s younger brother. As he expected, Plask’s father asked him about his job, and his studies.
“I’m interested in chemistry. It may take a while,” he told Mr. Plaskowitz, “but I intend to go to night school until I can afford to go full-time.”
“But you do intend to get your degree?”
“Of course,” Sean said, and something about the way Plask’s dad asked questions suddenly made him aware that he was being sized up as a potential son-in-law. I haven’t even known Plask that long. I wonder what she’s said about me?”
Plask drove Sean home after a couple helpings of pumpkin pie. She told her parents that they were going to see a play. They went to Sean’s apartment, to his room. He shut the door, and put a Bob Dylan/Johnny Cash record on:

Lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay lady stay, stay with your man awhile
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he’s standing in front of you.

They were sitting on the bed, and it didn’t take long for them to ease down into horizontal hold. They’d never had so much time alone before, and the champagne was helping to overcome their nervousness. Sean’s hands roamed over Plask’s supple body and she pressed herself closer to him. Their lips were squeezed together, and they tickled each other’s tongues, slowly probing and searching and experimenting with sensations.
“Hi guys! What’s happening?” It was Lenny, who knew exactly what was happening, since he’d been standing outside the door, and had thrown it open, pretending nonchalance. Plask stiffened in Sean’s arms and pulled away. Again! Sean thought. Lenny stood in the doorway. “Did you guys have a nice dinner?” he asked, and he kept on talking, as if everyone were just having a friendly little chat. Plask made her excuses and left. Sean was pissed.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what? I was just trying to be polite. Didn’t you want me to talk to your honey?”
“Look, you stay the hell out of my life. Don’t you ever come into my room like that again.”
“No. This is my place. I found it, I paid the damage deposit, and I invited you here. I’ll come into this room anytime I want, in fact, I think I’ll come in now.” Lenny reached for Sean, and tried to put his arms around him. He was feeling horny now, after having eavesdropped on Sean and Plask. Sean pushed him off and punched him. Lenny put his arm up and Sean hit him again, and again, and even as Lenny backed off into his own room, Sean hit him, and was about to hit him again when he noticed that Lenny wasn’t even trying to defend himself. Lenny’s arms were over his face. He was whimpering, mumbling something that sounded like “mommy” to Sean, so he stopped and looked down at this huge bulk of a man huddled into a corner. He pitied him, and dropped his arms, gradually unclenching his fists.
“You just stay the hell away from me,” Sean yelled back at him as he turned away. He slammed the door to his room and locked it.
“I’m going for the police,” Lenny said a few minutes later, and he slammed the front door of the apartment on his way out. Some time later he came back in. He knocked on Sean’s open door.
“Sean. Sean. Hey, I’m sorry. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
Sean decided not to answer that one, so he asked: “So where’d you go to anyway?” Lenny looked at Sean and smiled.
“Oh, I just drove around. And I met somebody. Ooh, he was so nice. I like those young boys with their long blonde hair.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“Just cruising.”
“You picked him up off the street?”
“Sure. I always do. We had a great time.”
“Where? In your car?”
“Why do you think I have such a big car? Eh, little one?”
“I thought your parents gave it to you?”
“Yeah, but they drove me down to the lot, and I got to pick out the one I liked.” Lenny turned and looked out the window, pointing out the car.
“Nice,” Sean said.  The car was big, but hideous.
“Why didn’t your parents give you one, huh? Huh?”
“Because they have six other kids and hardly enough money as it is. That’s why.”
Lenny left the window, and walked over to Sean. “You need money? I’ve got money. I’ll give you the same I gave him, more, if you want.”
Sean stared. “You paid him?”
“Of course.”
“You’re strange,” Sean said, “But to each his own, huh?”
I’m looking for another place, tomorrow, he thought.