Watch it, DVR it, Whatever

I apologize for not writing. I will get back to it soon. However Life on Mars returns to ABC tonight. This is good TV. Gretchen Mol, the original bad lieutenant and the guy who plays Sam all give solid performances. Give it a try.

And Now More from the Experts at Duh (A Think Tank for the Obvious)

The Wall Street Journal noticed today that there might be something flawed in using 401 K plans to fund employee retirements. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137714796462913.html Duh! 401K plans were never a real benefit for employees except as an adjunct to retirement savings. When in an effort to cheap out employers made these plans "the retirement" for their employees it was once again the case of greed getting Washington's ear. Once again the wealthy and powerful acted to gut the middle class and got away with it. So nice of the WSJ to notice now.

Random Thoughts

Waking was late in coming to me this morning. Reasons existed, as they always do, for my missing most of the pre-noon hours of this Sunday. Primus and my wife arrived home late having been to a college hockey game. Boo, hiss the opponents vanquished our local heroes. Still I was not sleepy when they got home so I looked for some entertainment on the television. Primus headed off to be and my wife and I watched a cooking/travel program set in Spain. One hour of food pornography is the best way to describe this program.

Watching beautiful people eat food is a very guilty pleasure of mine. Part of me is repulsed by the money that had to be expended on the creation of this series. Clearly the monies spent would have been far more wisely used in delivering social welfare to the needy. Two movies stars, two TV/print personalities, a pop star, a Bentley and several Mercedes Benz vehicles all traveling for several months throughout the whole of Spain eating at top restaurants and staying in sumptuous lodgings could not have been anything other than expensive. On the other hand there was the food and the scenery. Did I mention the tapas? OMG!

Small plates have in the past decade or so be a favorite of mine. In Toronto there are several good spots for this kind of food. The nearest tapas place to where I live is an hour away in Grand Rapids. It is fine but not worth the expense of the trip for us. I may get there once this year if we have a hockey game at the right time and if there is no snow storm.

Last night one of the couples went to a tapas place in Barcelona that apparently is one of the best restaurants in Spain. The food, even the anchovies looked wonderful. While this clearly kept my attention the part of the program that really had me was the seafood portion. There came a point where the food critic writer and the young nubile actress were ferried out to a restaurant on stilts in the middle of a bay. Once disembarked in this veritable floating world the food critic chowed down on oysters. Me, I was drooling. When the critic responded to a question as to how many oysters he had ever eaten in a sitting with the number 48 I thought to myself, you wimp. I know I have probably tossed back more but on the raw oyster count/steamed oyster count I never kept track. I know I have eaten that many fried oysters at one time as my maximum of that variant of the delicacy. Lacking a gallbladder the consumption of 48 fried oysters is probably never going to be on my horizon again.

Here in the Midwest because of the obvious distance to the nearest ocean, 48-50 oysters would cost easily $150-200 dollars for good ones. Clearly I opted to move here and thus made my choice on locale vs. lunch options. Still, it doesn’t mean I cannot mourn my lack of access to oysters. Food porn, it is the stuff that memories and dreams are made of.

Well after the Spanish food interlude I headed off for bed. Between bad dreams and Francie’s restlessness quality sleep did not arrive until late. When I last looked at the clock it was about 4 a.m. Having only fallen into the dark dreamless world just before the sunrise I stayed in bed until about 11 a.m.

Due to the late hour of my rising I missed listening to the radio news programs. This was probably a good thing. When I dialed up some music I heard the announcer indicating that the fighting in Gaza was continuing. Could the news be anything else? I am fifty two years old and the earliest snippets of news I remember concerned the 67 Arab-Israeli conflict. Has anything really changed? Has anything in this battle really changed in the last half millennium?

Until there is a fundamental shift in both party’s perceptions as to their rights and entitlements in the sand that compromises the Middle East nothing will ever be resolved. It is not a question of who goes first. Both the Arabs and the Jews must realize they are people first and live in this world and do not have claims as God’s anointed to anything including land and power other than their humanity or the bodies will continue to pile up. With the weapons at play in the Middle East the body count could increase exponentially. As I said it is not a question of who must act first in good faith, they both must.

Sorry for that rant, I am tired.

Today I made the bass go first. The French horn followed. Later, much later, will come the piano practice. How do you communicate to children the value in both learning an instrument and learning the discipline to practice and instrument? My parents did not push me and I gave the clarinet up pretty early. To this day I regret I did not master any musical instrument.

Late Night Writing Tutorial

So last night as I was heading to bed I sat down to check my e-mail. The version of browser I use is Firefox 3.x something. In recent days I have added Stumbleon as a component. Thinking “what the hay” I hit the button to stumble. What I came to was a site called 1, 2, 5ver. Here is the link http://www.onetwofiver.com/ This is a creative writing site that uses a very simple strategy to get your creative juices flowing. This is what I created in about an hour, both the original typing and some editing this morning.

I would challenge you all to go out to this site and give it a try. Post some of what you create. Me I enjoyed the test of trying to do something within the strictures of the site. I have decided upon names for the characters now. He is Max Garst. She is Alana (Ali) Lindon. I will replace the *s soon.



Radiance, filled with light from within. Cold and crisp indigo blue was the color of the smooth soft fluted vase that stood upon this mantle, in an otherwise sterile still gray room.

Entry to this dour parlor was implied. After gaining his way in by being buzzed in at the immense but well worn old wooden entrance no door but the one to the left of the entryway was open. Locks were either jammed or set on all the others.

Coming alone this late at night was at best an odd idea, the kind of irrational action sometimes induced by a fever. Walking in the cool damp dark of this forgotten section of the old town set his nerves on edge but charged his senses with energy he had not felt in years. Common sense would have dictated he stay at his flat and wait until morning. When the morning came the question would remain, do what?

Darkness, anxious, unnerving was a key part of what this place was, of what this evening was. Darkness as he made his way through the worn and ill kempt streets left him with his neck hairs raised. The half light of this room while less unnerving was not in any way comforting.

Looking into the empty storefronts he remembered the clerks’ faces. Most of these working class people were aged and worn from years of repetitive motions; muscle and tone were gained and then lost from placing boxes and cans into sacks. After the years had passed, shoulders and faces sagged. Complexions were colorless and dispositions were for the large part humorless. Of course there were exceptions but on the whole he had no warm memories of this place and it denizens.

Fifteen or maybe twenty years the economy turned sour here. First the stores on tight margins closed. Then the stores that had survived past downturns on savings and the owners' personalities became victims of money's rapid flight. Finally only a few convenience stores with marginal staff and questionable practices remained. In hard times like these such places thrived.

He had left before things got dark. He had not been here on these streets at the start of the bad times through a combination of luck and drive. She had remained for the whole gut wrenching downward spiral. He had not really left her so much as she had let him drift on without her presence in his life. One morning he woke up and realized she was no longer an active part in his life. While a picture of her with long tresses and a smile remained in his bedroom, it was on that day he knew she would never again take up the hours and days and weeks that had been their shared world. On that day as he drank morning’s first coffee he felt he had an inarticulate sense of the why of her absence. Still through the years he had never been able to speak it aloud.

Richard Thompson sings a song that described her partially, “She was a rare thing, fine as a bee’s wing". Indeed a rare thing, but not fragile in the classic storybook sense she lived directly and connected to the world she inhabited. Of all the women he had ever known she had a moral center that was the most sound. Politics did not matter to her, but justice did. Love was valued but ethical behavior was more important in her heart.

In the days before this place saw money fold up its tent and move away she had been the rare young clerk at a green grocer. The owners a couple in their sixties could sense right from their first meeting her honesty and passion. She knew the store’s clientele well having lived on these streets all of her life. She could read the spark in the eye of a good child with impish tendencies, in such a case there would be offered a bit of penny candy as a bribe for calm inside the store while the youth's mum shopped. Just as easily she could read the darkness that is in some children from the day they are born. These were the ones she steered to the front of the store, to the east side near the plate glass window where she could keep her eye on their hands and pockets. Filled with bulk produce it was a place in which little of value could go missing. It was always an agony for her to know children like this existed as a seeming matter of course in nature.

Calls are proper up until the late news begins. A phone ringing once the announcer has begun to drone about today’s crisis in a country that even he is struggling to name without mispronunciation means one of three things. If the hand set is flipped open there will invariably be a drunken dialer (known or unknown), or a quiet voice with unwanted news or what had become the usual for him in recent years a period of silence that after his. No voice being heard despite a quick query of ‘who is this’ third kind of call turned into a dial tone. Tonight’s caller was not drunk and a voice was heard and acknowledged.

Some many questions swirled about in his head as he entered the still room. Sparely furnished and cold it was a space that seemed decorated by a dowager or a committee of a Luddite sect. Why did he feel the need to be here now? His presence would not change a thing. How had she come to be among these people? Such dour settings were not her preference.

He knew of the people that ran this place. Following a credo of simplicity and care they worked several tiers down in the charity/social welfare hierarchy. It seemed to him that they must shun publicity and that they must also be sincere. Scanning the papers you never saw the group’s name tied to sex scandals or to hot button issues of the day. Only if you had lived in this part of the city, or in similar parts of other old industrial cities would you ever heard of their common sense acts of compassion.

Looking toward the mantel he wondered where had he seen the vase before? It had a familiarity about it that called him to come in closer for a careful inspection, but he dared not. The vase might be a clue (or not) but its softly curved shapes held his eye in a way that suggested this art piece had connection with the two of them and the circumstances now in play. Crisp and elegant the vase had no right to be in this room, God's truth be told.

A tall man in a well worn dark suit entered the room from what had been a closed door to the right of the mantel and some distance down the wall. "I thank you for coming at this late hour. Honestly, morning would have been fine, but perhaps something will come of your prompt response."

What are the rules to be followed at this hour of night when you answer a call that simply cries out this is an urgent situation that must be addressed by its mere existence? There are no Emily Post or Ms. Manners' drafted conventions on how you respond. What exists that will direct all your movements and actions is the stuff that you are made of. All the small and large incidents in your life that have taught you the obligations, perils and ultimate consequences of acting honorably create the framework of your response. The books that you have read, the sermons that you have listened to week after week, the proverbs and homilies that you heard while at your parents’ side create the framework of morality but it is your accumulated experience that makes your decision as whether to act or not.

Hearing the quiet but deep concern in the speaker's voice and knowing only the most rudimentary details he set off at once. With a quick glance around the room he quickly grabbed the essentials, his wallet, credit cards, thank God he had a decent bit of cash about and his smart phone with names, addresses and the power of the internet should his human connections fail him. On his way out he looked the door with his key, he might not be back for awhile and it would not be good to allow too many people easy access to his place not with issues this might raise on the horizon
He never wrote the address down, but he knew would not forget it. The building number was 36 and the street was Old Queen's Way. Not having travelled in that part of town in decades he was sure to a certainty he could still find his way about the place to the address even if his phone’s GPS were to fail him. Twenty five years ago he was as well known in the streets there as anyone was. Twenty five years ago? How had the time slipped away so quickly?

Thinking back he was not completely sure when he had last seen her. It could have been in that little trendy restaurant when he was just sitting down to dinner. He had been surrounded that night by a different set of people than those they knew in common. Was he serious with someone then? Was there a serious someone with him that night? He didn't remember.

What he remembered was that it clearly had been a chance meeting for the now long gone restaurant was not her kind of place. It had too many pretentions for her to even have deigned to enter it. She was clearly there to humor another. Seeing him sitting there surrounded by his new friends, her eyes flashed. For the life of him he could not remember if that flash meant anger or simply warm surprise. She was different then; the years of living unfettered had left a mark but it was not damage he saw in her. Looking at him with clarity of vision he rarely saw used by another human being he sensed she had a world weary awareness of all the pretense and artifice that he had allowed to seep in and strangle his life.

Why had he not stopped her then to talk? Why hadn't he gone over and bought her a drink? Why?

Calm, and it was both forced and necessary arising under pressure but with purpose. His thought, rational and matched with value driven actions were going to be a clear necessity tonight. Twenty five years without meaningful contact, maybe two or three chance meetings and now he was here, he was doing this.

Brought into the room where her prone form was stretched out on what for all the world looked like a psychiatrist’s coach, only quite old, it was clear she was not dead. Few signs of physical trauma were apparent; a purple bruise somewhat matching the pattern of a hand gripped tightly was on her left arm half way between her wrist and elbow. Looking at her clothes it was clear she had not been wearing particular garments long. Clean and pressed but well worn they hung loosely about her frame.
Looking for guidance he searched the face of the man in the suit for any sign of emotion or concern. Nothing stood out. After several minutes in the room, a time marked and measured by her shallow but steady breathing, the inscrutable man began to speak without looking up. His eyes seemed focused on a point well below the wooden floorboards of this room.

"In most likelihood you are wondering why we called you. Such a thing would be of utmost concern to most people given the harsh nature of this particular situation. In reality the reason we called you has very little to do with whom or what you are now. What prompted us to act was our memory of who you were then when you knew her of course.

Coughing to clear his throat but still not looking up the man continued. "You do not remember me, but I remember you. Every day when you would swing by the green grocers to pick up * it was clear that she loved you in a deeper way that most men will ever get to experience from anyone. About fifteen minutes before her shift would end sprightliness would come over *. Oh understand she was always upbeat and usually happier that circumstances would warrant. But as her shift came to a point where it was almost ended and when she saw the clocks hands at 5:45 her soul would just seem to be set aglow. When she went outside to roll up the awning her head would swing to and fro as she scanned the street for your approach."

"Every day I watched this transformation occur and it was wonderful. Now mind you she was always kind to me. Her apron always had an extra bit of candy for me, candy that my parents would have disapproved of. What matter should it have been to them, it was one piece of candy? It was not as if the store would live or die on the cost of that one piece of hard butterscotch."

He knew now who this man was, but he did not know him, *'s memory was blank for a youthful image of this now drab figure. It was clear that the man was the son of the shopkeepers who had run the store where * had worked. He was seven or eight years younger than * and their paths never crossed in school. Having no younger brothers (or sisters for that matter) the age difference would have insured no contact between the two of them socially. * may have seen the man as a child any number of times when he stopped in for the short moment or two to pick * up, but their contact was nothing that would have mattered to him and would quickly have been discarded from memory. Perspective is what determines the strength of memory isn't it?

The man continued his speaking in the low unchanging voice he had been using from the start. "As I was saying she changed in a wonderful way when you can about the store. I envied you because she was a magical person and it was clear that she was deeply in love with you."

"She worked at my parents store for as long as they could pay her. * was such a part of the place that she was the last to go before the place closed. The place was gone an empty façade with broken glass and debris a mere six months after she was let go. The economy did the store in as it finished off every other real place of business in these parts. The fair work/fair wage and food riots finished the neighborhood off, but can you blame them. What else were people without hope to do with their pent up rage?"

"In those years right before the store folded it was clear to me that you had left her life. She remained kind and compassionate and she never gave my parents other than a full day of solid effort. However the electricity that she would seem to have in that last part of the day in the earlier years was gone. Those of us around * still received the same wonderful treatment from her but it was clear that she was not feeling the same way she had in the past toward herself."

The man stopped for a moment. When he began to speak again his voice was softer or maybe just lower. "Nobody blamed you for anything. We all knew that this life is simply a river of endless change. Clearly those are not the terms we used but we had the innate knowledge of that sentiment. In the quiet times of my day just before I extinguish the light I read. I try to read things that are not tied to my work. Over the years I have read much about the life of the Buddha and most likely my phrasing has come from that. We were sad for her but there was very little we could do, now was there I mean I ask you?"

"As the years past I kept track of you both. *, well I watched out for her on the streets and in local haunts because she was the wonderful person I have tried to describe to you. As for you, it was part of my job you see to know what you were up to. Shortly after my parents store folded I came to work here. In my role as sort of a business affairs liaison it was incumbent upon me to know who we could trust outside of these streets and also to keep abreast of those whom upon their departure from these blocks of empty buildings had been met with the smiling face of good fortune. In modern charities and the like I would be known as an informal development officer. You were a clear success story."

I Wanted To Grow Up and Be a Cowboy, Just like Neal.

What is being posted I put up first about a year ago. This is a story originally told to me by a friend of dubious character. As such I neither endorse anything in it nor adopt the world view of the narrator. However the tale was a bit of a hoot and so I acted as the scrivener because the details had to be captured in print. The details are a tad bit off center and it seemed necessary to write in down in his first person voice. While resting around the house I decided I needed to get some new content up on the blog. Because of the period of inactivity my surgery has caused it seemed right to revisit this and several other pieces.

The reason the earlier draft did not stay up is the reason the current one will not stay up long. The tale has a number of components that are problematic when looking at the world I live in to leave lying around anywhere, especially in cyberspace.



Among those of my generation that chose to read both popular and classic, certain writers seemed to be touchstones. Vonnegut, Didion, Thompson, Pirsig and Wolfe stand out as key parts of the then modern cannon. Whether right or wrong, emulation of the realties reflected out of the pages penned by these new apostles of hip and cool was oft attempted by my peers. It didn’t matter that these writers were chroniclers of iconoclasts who would have had no use for their books. It seems that imitation is an easier choice than forging a strong personal style based on true individualism.

Tom Wolfe in his appreciation of the Merry Pranksters, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, went on at length about a number of parties staged at Ken Kesey’s La Honda ranch. One of the wildest of these modern bacchanalias involved Kesey’s Pranksters hanging a huge banner out on the edge of highway that said WELCOME HELLS ANGELS not knowing if the wild bunch would show. But they did fully clad in their leathers and just oozing the insanity. Make no mistake the Hell’s Angels were not nice people, not then and not now. However in Tom Wolfe’s recounting that night was serendipity to the maximum. Terrible and frightening monsters interacted with the generation of love, peace and astral projection and it ended all right.

I had read the Acid Test when I was enjoying the summer between 7th and 8th grades. It probably wasn’t the best choice of reading for such an impressionable mind as mine. The image of Neal Cassidy flipping his hammer again and again and trying to go further, to go beyond and break the barrier that exists between true now and perception was electrifying.

As I remember and it has been years since I have read the book Cassidy was always trying to live in the now. He believed that the time it took our neural networks to convey optical and aural information to our brain separated us from true now.

The implication that I drew from Wolfe was positive one, not a cautionary one. Seemed the right route to me when Cowboy Neal was eating every drug he could find to break the barrier down and move him as close to the now as was possible. Maybe he got there before the end. Four days short of his 42nd birthday, Cassidy was found dead next to a railroad track outside San Miguel D'Allende, Mexico. He wandered out there in an altered state and died of exposure in the cold high desert night.

With what I had read in the Acid test (and the mantra of the Grateful Dead’s The Other One playing nonstop in the background) it was about a year late as a freshman in high school the first time I took LSD.

There had been a plan to make the experience as positive as possible. I was supposed to spend the weekend with some friends who were all ready to dip their toes in that swirling cosmic water for the first time together. One of these friends had just returned from Berkley with a belt filled with about a thousand hits of orange sunshine. Sunshine was good clean shit and about the best that could be found anywhere at the time. I paid my money down and waited for the appointed weekend.

Ain’t it how it goes that the best laid plans of adventurers get way laid? Due to my parents’ intervention I was not going to get to experience tripping in the Leary way. Set and setting, friends, music and a controlled environment has been all planned out. Well, it turned out that I had been signed up to go instead on a Baptist youth retreat with a hip young minister. My friends we not willing to wait an additional week to share their getting “experienced” with me so they gave me my hit to take with me and to do with as I pleased. In retrospect my choices made at this juncture were probably more in line with Kesey’s tactics than what was opted for by my friends.

This particular church retreat ran Friday and Saturday night at the beach home of one of the scions of our church. A big old early 20th century cedar shake covered place it had a large porch and faced the Ocean which was about ½ block away. At night after the traffic died down and the rowdies went to sleep you could hear the ocean’ waves from the house’s open windows

My memory is not strong but I think there were about twenty people on the trip excluding the hip young minister and some chaperons. The agenda was to spend some time on the beach, have a snack, hear a sermon and then go to the boardwalk for good clean Christian fun. This was Ocean City NJ mind you and there were no bars and no open intoxicants visible from the street were permitted.

What to do, what to do? I had the power of the universe wrapped up in a small pill inside my pocket just waiting like an E ticket to be used at Disney. On the other hand fire and damnation wrapped up in a fringe leather jacket was awaiting me in the speech of the relevant young minister. This would be followed by a quasi altar call; acid or salvation, the lady or the tiger? About mid-evening on Friday night as our speaker was telling us about the evil of heroin, (he took it once and puked), I dropped the tab. Quality control in the manufacture of LSD has always been a spotty affair. What I was about to discover was that I had taken enough acid for four people.

As I listened to exhortations for a submission to God’s will, the walls of that old beach house began to breathe. The breathing was slow at first but quickly picked up in pace. Then the textures of everything in the room seemed to take on an odd blurry but patterned quality. My tactile sense began to become confused. The carpet was beginning to feel like a gritty and sand filled soft butter. Raising his hands high the forceful zealot began to shout “Are you ready to commit your life to the love and care of Jesus Christ our savior?” About this time my brain in its own special way began to scream MAJOR MALFUNCTION. I needed to get out of that room and into the night air RIGHT THEN. There wasn’t a straight line or a right angle in that room anymore. The air wasn’t really air any more it was more it was more of a velvety liquid. It didn’t frighten me but it was way beyond what I thought was possible.

Clenching my rubbery knuckles I made it through the rap. Despite the waves of existence that were beginning to crest over me I did not give in to the altar call and thus did not have to do one on one prayer and counseling with anybody. Being this was a beach town the reward for enduring the impassioned sermon was that trip to the rides up on the boardwalk. We all gathered outside to get assigned rides, at least I think it was outside. As if fate were truly just trying to fuck with me, I drew a ride up to the boardwalk with the impassioned twenty something one time heroin using seminarian in his Triumph Spitfire.

A Spitfire is a two seater and sits real low to the ground. As a result it seemed to travel like a rocket even at low speeds. With buildings melting around me we flew down the road and the minister and I rapped. Listening to his tale about the smack again I confessed I had taken acid at some unspecific time in the past. He told me that the thought of dropping acid scarred him to death. As I watched the road in front of us that road turned into a snake, writhing and twisting and curling back to look me directly in my eyes. I remember muttering that LSD was scary stuff and that I would never take it again. The snake at this point in our conversation was looking at me with a bemused attitude. As we approached the boardwalk the car slowed and the snake evaporated.

Walking, well most likely shuffling up to the elevated boardwalk I took one look at the rides and knew I could not get anywhere near them, let alone on them. There was this gyroscope thing that had nine carts all twisting in circles. Three groups of seats would spin in a small circle and the bigger machine would spin the three sets of these seats in an even bigger circle. As I stood watching this machine lurch into faster and faster motions traces and lightning bolts were firing out everywhere. Surely all aboard that hell forged contraption would die and most likely I would be going with them when it crashed to the ground if I remained where I then stood.. I staggered out onto the center section of the boardwalk. Sweating and cold at the same time I tried to put one foot in front of the other.

It was at this point reality came completely unhinged for me. Suddenly and without warning I was floating seven stories above my body. I could see for miles out over the ocean. I could look down and see my body making forward progress along the boardwalk. It suddenly became apparent to me that I had to control my body much a puppeteer manipulates a marionette and boy that sucked. I wanted to watch the seagulls circling so close that I could touch them. Suddenly I was everywhere and everything all at one and it made total sense.

On the other had as a puppeteer I was failure for I stubbed my toe and the moment of “all being” was over. Back in my body and barely avoiding a face plant on those creosote soaked planks I realized that if I were to have any chance of surviving the evening I had to get back to the house. “Hey chaperon I have a stomachache so can I go back to the house?” At least that is what I think I said. Given what was going on in and out of my brain it could have been anything.

The rest of the evening had its moments. I tried to take a bath back at the house thinking cool water might help me hold my mental focus. As I sat in the bathtub for the life of me I could not figure out how to use the stopper. Once out of the tub I decided to read but I kept falling into the cover of the book I had opted to read. What I mean by this is that my consciousness was merging with the patterns on the book’s cover. And somehow before the night ended I wound up biting somebody on the ass. We were fully clothed and there was no sexuality involved but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The acid while of a high dose was clean. I think I fell asleep. Who knows I may have just gone into a restive semi-catatonic state.. All I remember of this period was that I was mentally watching the witches from Macbeth stir phosphorescent orange cauldrons. When I came to (or reengaged in linear thought) sometime in the morning I went to the beach and watched the sun move across the sky. Inanimate objects were no longer breathing but I was pretty sure the sun was what was left of a nuclear explosion. And I was still alive.

Fuck Tom Wolfe that was some pretty scary shit.

The bottom line was that I didn’t feel enlightened. Hell, I didn’t feel like I had become one with the universe, but I was different and probably always would be from that moment on. To this day I wonder if there is a remnant of what my conscious self from the night before I took that dose is left in my body. I am not sure but hey I am not unhappy with what I have become. But I may not have needed acid to get here. And you know what else; I don’t believe everything that I read anymore. And one last thing I am pretty sure if you are going to be a real individual it doesn’t come from trying to imitate someone else.

Give me my Blanket Damn It!

Okay, here is the deal. I haven’t written anything in a couple of weeks. I am going under the knife on Monday for gallbladder surgery. If I don’t post now I won’t be posting for another long period. Thus I will post a rough draft of a story I started a couple of years ago. Enjoy.

The island community of Ocean City New Jersey has a sign that proclaims itself “America’s Family Resort” The sign is clearly visible as you roll across the 34th Street bridge, across what was once salt marsh and brackish water. The crisp white and blue sign harkens back to the time when the legacy of the Methodists ministers, who in 1879 laid out the city as a retreat for the rejuvenation of the Christian soul and body, remained strong. When I was a boy spending my summers catching rays and body surfing Ocean City was closed for business on Sundays. The rides, the shops, everything but restaurants and newspaper stands were locked up tight on the Sabbath. Then as now, no liquor was sold on the island.

In the summers of the early 1970s the concept of family in America was feeling stress. The behaviors manifested by the younger members of our nation’s nuclear families were clearly not those that would have been endorsed by those 19th century Methodists. The disintegration of the traditional multi-generation clan style of family, the social rebellion of the 1960s and the pervasive influence of television had created a group of 14 to 20 year olds that were out of control, that were traveling the fringe. We were pushing the boundaries and entering into the borderlands that lay beyond the social mores of the time. Summer and suntan lotion just made it worse.

My family’s home was about 60 miles away from Ocean City. It was a farm town that in the summer was hot and dusty. There was nothing for a kid to do there except to work at the packing houses, packing, unloading, sorting produce and to get into trouble with the cash earned at those tough backbreaking jobs. In 1970 beer was cheap and pot was available. My father decided that after the summer of 1970 we should flee our hometown and go to the beach. Two specific things led to this. First was the gun incident. Second was the fact that my Mom found my pipe (commonly referred to in the then current lexicon as my bowl) in the bottom of my dresser. She didn’t know what pot smelled like or she would have been sure I was going to hell. But she did know there was not a right reason on God’s green earth that a 14 year old should have a pipe with a wire screen in it stashed in the bottom of his dresser under his shirts. The gun story was a bit more complicated I will set that out in a different post.

As a result of the incursion of violence and drugs into our family life my father decided we should spend our entire summers at the beach. I didn’t know how I was going to handle that. I knew nobody at the beach. My relatives spent all their summer down there, but I had hung out with them for any time with them since that had moved away from our home town when I was six years old. Up to then we had been thick as thieves.

My mother was a teacher. In the lat 1950s she was in her forties. In what must have been a great surprise to her, she got pregnant for a fourth time in 1955. In April 1956 I came along. Her sisters were in tune with this and five cousins on my mother’s side were all born within six months of each other. Mom took a couple of years off to make sure my initial rearing went okay. She then went back to teaching and I was dropped off at my aunt’s house with my cousin, Billy. Well no sooner did I get there then Jimmy was born, and then Dottie Mae. We played together. We ran about. We did all the things kids did and we were almost an inseparable living organism. Then they moved away. My Uncle bought his own funeral home about 45 miles away. But in the crowded east coast megalopolis they might as well have moved to the moon, they were gone. Twelve years later we would reawaken that friendship.

[Okay so this is an old draft of a story that I never finished. I should be honest and fill in the three paragraphs that would explain how when I got to the beach I fell in with my cousins and we were tied on so many levels it was hard to believe we had seen each other every day of our lives. I would also have to explain how we all worked at the same card store/gift shop/newspaper stand together and it was sort of like the Taxi sitcom, all nuts, all the time. Also I would have to work in how I developed a somewhat as they say now complicated relationship with a woman named Nan. Just go with it. My cousins and I were tight and their names were Bill and Jim. My complicated kind of love interest was Nan and she was far too hot for the likes of me. The final thing I would have to add is that we spent every single freakin’ day on the beach working on our tans. The rest of the story picks up when my cousins, Nan and I went to the beach. Oh my cousins lived half a block away from me and none of us lived more than 1 1/2 blocks from the water.]

So there we were ready to head to the beach. I was happy that Nan had deigned acceptable to spend some time with me on the strand of sand. Billy had Aunt Sugar’s big orange blanket. Well, we used it as a blanket. What it had been in its earlier incarnation was the bedspread for a full sized bed. It was an orange of the kind that it could have been used as an emergency signal. The edges had a fringe that was a series of white strings that were about two and a half inches long. It was unmistakably Aunt Sugars because there would be anyone else who would have something like this. Jimmy was going to join us at the water.

Towels, check, jug of water, check, beach tags, check. Off we went. The day was perfect and the beach was crowded. Once you worked your way through the suntanned bodies down to where the water was retreating you had a space, even this late in the day to lay out your towel. As you lay on your stomach your torso separated from the beach itself by the coarse orange material reading the tome of the season, perhaps it was Looking for Mr. Goodbar that year, or Jaws, for each had a year where they were everywhere, you would develop a little bit of perspiration. This body generated moisture would arise after about half and hour and would glisten and be uncomfortable. It was like nature’s own timer telling you to go swim, body surf, frolic and then return to reapply the sensually scenting tanning lotion and to lie on the other side of your body.

And idle on a beach towel is something when you are 16. It is forever and is filled with the promise of nothing and everything. On a beach towel on a warm day you can nap. You can talk about the world, politics, pussy, dope, whatever. You can take a slug of ice water from a thermos. You can watch the sun tanned girls go walking by. You can see a two year old run to the water and run back again. Or you can try and figure out what to do about your doofus-assed cousin who seems intent on getting everyone sent to prison.

As Billy, Nan and I lay there experiencing warm eternity on a summer afternoon, Jimmy finally found his way to the beach. Jimmy was different now and it wasn’t clear what had happened. When we used to spend time together in the little ranch house as kids Jimmy was smart, and he was apt to follow the normative behaviors expected of us all. But in the years since I had spent time with him something in the boy’s personality had dramatically changed. It was subtle and hard to discern at first but as time went on it became very clear. Somewhere along the way, albeit the result of one tab of Orange Sunshine too many, or maybe because of enzymes that didn’t coalesce correctly in his cranium, Jimmy had lost the ability to see the lines of normal behavior and color within them.

Jimmy no sooner had sat down on the towel than it became apparent he was in his non-conformance mode. As my cousin sat on the towel cross legged he proceeded to pull an ounce of marijuana, you basic bulging bagging of green leafy vegetation, from his swimsuit. None of the three of us noticed at first as we were engaged in number of polyphasic activities, conversation, people watching and being generally lost in sunny day bliss. Jimmy however was on a mission. Joint by joint he winnowed down the pot he had in the bag. One joint, two joints, five joints, ten joints; slowly but surely the little outcropping of Mt. Cannabis was arising from orange island of my aunt’s blanket.

Glancing down the beach I noticed that the beach wardens, the tag patrol was doing its rounds. Ocean City like most of the other lily white towns had instituted beach tag fees in the year before this incident. The fees were ostensibly designed to provide funds for beach clean up and maintenance. The real purpose was a bit more sinister. In essence the real purpose of beach fees was to keep the riff raff out. And let’s be specific hear, riff raff meant people of color, whatever color it might be other than white. The tags were effective to this end. The tags also provided a basis to have deputized folks walking down the beach keeping an eye out for the evil John Barleycorn. As I noted this was “America’s Family Resort,” and allowing the use of alcohol on the beach just wouldn’t be right. If the demon rum was a problem, how would you think that take a bunch of stoner teenagers openly flaunting the drug laws of our country. Remember Spiro Agnew was still the Vice President. Remember also that it had only been a year earlier that Casey Jones and White Rabbit had been banned from the airwaves by the FCC.

Noticing the impending arrival of terry cloth short wearing justice, I in hurried consultation with Nan and Billy made the executive decision to wad up my aunt’s beach towel with the joints inside and go. In my mind the safer course seemed to be, given the number of eyes around that might mention my cousin’s behavior to the beach patrol, getting the dope off the beach. Nan and I decided/ended up being the blanket bearers. The plan hastily formulated was that we would take the blanket back to my parent’s beach apartment and hide the pot back behind the house, possibly in the outdoor shower.

For those of you that have never had a beach apartment, they invariably have an outdoor shower of some kind. These can range from a coldwater affair with a watering can type of nozzle or they can be quite elaborate. The one behind my parent’s apartment was in between. It was basically a small shed with a bench and some storage, with the hottest water and a shower head that gave off needle fine spray. I used to luxuriate after a day on the beach taking a 20 minute long shower until my skin was lobster like red. The simple pleasures they are what count most in life, aren’t they?

Walking quickly Nan and I covered the distance between the beach and the house, it was a relief to turn into the side path that led to the back of the house. Not having been busted by the police, the beach patrol or any other authority we simply needed to get to the shower shed, stash the joints for Jimmy to pick up later and we would be in the clear. Walking quickly Nan and I would simply need to avoid any prolonged contact with my mother as we passed the screen door to the kitchen/dining room. These apartments were stacked four in a building and were long and thin. The living room was in front, followed by a bedroom, then the bath, then the kitchen then a second bedroom. The living room had a pull out couch and the place could accommodate up to six or seven people if they were appropriately stacked. The outdoor shower was appended behind the second bedroom

As we passed the kitchen, our luck tanked. Trying not to stop I heard my aunt, my beloved aunt’s voice, call out. The aunt talking to me was Billy and Jimmy mom and I had her dayglo orange beach blanket/towel wadded up in my hands. “Jay bird, where are you going and what are you doing with my towel?” Trying to be nonchalant I said hi and tried to pass by without engaging in conversation. My aunt called again and I could hear her chair shifting as if she might get up and open the door blocking our passage. “Jaybird, give me my towel.” “Aunt Sugar” I managed to choke out, “Billy and Jimmy are going for a long walk on the beach and they asked me to bring this up to the house. It is full of sand, let me shake it out in the back by the shower.” Silence and it seemed luckily no discernable movement by my aunt followed. This was a false reading of the reality of the situation and the moment’s respite did not last long.

I don’t remember what she said next but it became clear she was going to come after the towel if it wasn’t in her possession in the next fifteen seconds. There was no time to take it into the shower shed. Lacking a better plan I just shook the towel vigorously toward the house. Nan was slacked jawed. The joints went flying. Tapping against the back of the house the reefer sticks bounced gently toward the ground. About 18 joints lay within a foot or two of the back wall of the shed and the apartment. My plan was that I would now walk the towel into my aunt and pick up the joints later.

This heart attack on a plate would just not end. As I took my first step toward the side door I noticed the landlord descending the steps that came down from the second floor apartment. These steps ran just above the shower. Mr. Dee, the landlord seemed to be in a talkative mood. As I remember the situation now it seemed he wanted to be introduced to the bikini clad Nan. No mystery there. Nan’s young tanned, firm and vibrant body was about as easy on the eyes as any nubile beauty could be. Dee, letch or not, would have had a hard time ignoring such pulchritude. In a stroke of good fortune for us the old man driven by the small brain never took his eyes off Nan’s chest. Luckily this meant that he did not notice the 18 joints (or two years of jail and probation if you looked at it another way) lying about the back of his building. Having feasted his eyes, and a period of time having passed that was moving into the awkward realm of socially unacceptable staring, Mr. Dee turned and headed out back to where his car was parked.

I sprinted to the side door to give my aunt, the Sherlock Holmes of teen bad behavior her towel. I say that because she had busted me by finding my gallon of wine hidden among the garbage cans behind her beach house one time. I say that because she routinely checked the nooks and crannies of her garage and found my Mary Gin, on loan to my cousins, stashed in the rafters. A Mary Gin removed seeds and stems from pot to allow crackle free smoking. Handing her the clumped up but shaken out towel seemed to defuse the situation. Nan in the meantime gathered up the joints. She hid them out of sight in her now lumpy bathing suit bra top. With nary another word we headed out. I don’t remember where we went but anywhere but there was the destination.

Another near disaster narrowly avoided. Once again it was not my fault, and once again I was simply trying to avoid things from spiraling out of control at the hands of someone else. Yup, there in the heart of “America’s Family Resort” I had dodged another bullet.

Fallen Angel and the Fabric of Life

Are you out there?
Can you hear me?
Can you see me in the dark?

I don't believe it's all for nothing.
It's not just written in the sand.
Sometimes I thought you felt too much,
And you crossed into the shadowland.

And the river was overflowing,
And the sky was fiery red,
You gotta play the hand that's dealt ya,
That's what the old man always said.

Fallen Angel
Casts a shadow up against the sun
If my eyes could see
The spirit of the chosen one.

Fallen Angel by J.R.Robertson

I was 28 years old and living in a dive of a house. White clapboard, the quarters were something out of most American student’s college days and by that I mean the place was big, cold and cheap. I had become an attorney but not much was happening for me professionally. When I was 28 the last really big recession was on and there were no jobs anywhere. Seems I really didn’t have the work ethic thing down either my choice of housemates kind of gives that away. At that time I was actually living with a punk rock band named Free Cheese. This moniker was derived from how Regan was dealing with the surplus of dairy goods then prevalent in our great nation with gifts to charity of butter and Wisconsin cheddar. As a side note the band members were all bi-sexual and they routinely took group showers. It was awkward/interesting on those mornings I decided I had to shave so as to be presentable for legal endeavors.

At the same time I was living in this odd Bohemian milieu, I was trying to climb the ranks of the Michigan Young Republicans. I was quasi living with a woman named Nancy. Her dream it seems to me in retrospect was to groom me to be a good GOP soldier and to live the June and Ward Cleaver lifestyle. Ms. Nancy’s aim was to move me up the political rungs and then she could stay at home and manage my career. She actually got me as far as being named a counsel to the Young Republicans for this state.

I know it is hard to believe, me, a young Republican. The best way to describe it is probably in the terms my dear beloved wife Francie it. This particularly odd chapter in my life can be ascribed to the politics of pussy. I was a Republican because it was getting me laid on a regular basis. Also Republican hospitality suites and fundraisers are much, much more decadent that Democratic ones. In this very odd time I even ended up a delegate to the state Republican convention. It took a long time but the branding iron marks on my flanks have faded.

Surely you wonder what has this got to do with the above piece of lyric well, it is like this. At the time I was in this ardor (lust)-induced lapse of political reason I was spending a great deal of time at Nancy’s farm house. It was a horse farm a distance away from the commune/band practice zone/law office. Well, while I was out there at her home one afternoon the telephone rang and it was one of my housemates telling me that my brother had called me.

For no particular reason, except maybe because the call had come midday, and this was in the days before unlimited minutes, I assumed something drastic had happened. My sole and unquestioned assumption was that my father had died. It took me forever to try and track my brother down because the nimrod I lived with hadn’t got the number right. All this time my eyes were tearing up and I was choking up because I knew my Dad was dead. Finally, not ever getting my brother on the line I broke down and called home, something I didn’t want to do.

When my father answered the phone I tried to put my best face on the call. We talked for a while about this and that. The conversation was on mostly nonsense kind of things. He had just come back from a trip to visit his mother. Understand my Dad was seventy-two then and his mother still lived alone in rural South Carolina and she still carried a rifle when she went out walking. She was a tough old broad at her 96 year old age.

Finally my father asked me why I had called. Remember this is midday and talk wasn’t cheap at the time. I laughed and said that this is going to seem kind of silly but I thought you had died. He got a good chuckle out of that. Eventually he gave me my brother’s phone number. Before I got off the phone I told him that I loved him and he told me he loved me back. Really, that is about the only time I remember him saying that to me. I am sure he must have said it before, but I don’t have any real memory of it.

Called my brother and it was some nonsense that he wanted. I don’t even remember any of the gist of it but it was really trivial. We talked a little while and hung up.

The next day I got another call at about the same time at the same place telling me to call my brother. Got a hold of him real easy this time. This time the call was much, much different. He was in tears and was losing it. As I am sure you have guessed long ago he called to tell me my father had died that morning.

Do I believe there is something that occurs after we die or near the time we die that is different from the fabric of everyday life? Yes. The above incident does not stand alone for me in this regard as to my reaching a yes on that question, but it sure went a long way toward it. Yes I believe there is something more, something mystical going on when we pass and thereafter. Like in the old Mike and Mechanics song, In the Living Years, or a that Larkin poem about the coal mine disaster, there is some rent in the fabric of time and if we are at the right place or in the right mental space something happens. Maybe we sense something has changed. Maybe well feel compelled to make a phone call out of the ordinary. Maybe at that moment we see somebody now dead carrying the eggs they found on their way into the mine.

Do I have deeply held religious beliefs, absolutely. Do I proselytize, not really. Only by living do I communicate my belief structure. My mother has also died. Her death was different and not the sudden unexpected death of my father. Hers was a long, lingering decline. I am an orphan now but I am connected with a much broader universe than I ever thought possible.

Oh, why I am posting this, my father would have been 97 tomorrow.