E.J. Eisman's Blog, page 4

Ugly Christmas Tree?

Reading, PA, a town from whence my mail arrives, hit the national headlines regarding an “ugly Christmas tree” placed at the town square at 5th and Penn Streets. Immediately the local press dubbed it a “Charley Brown” Christmas tree because of it sparseness. It’s been called all sorts of names from pathetic to wimpy. Almost immediately, businesses collected $1000 dollars to get a “real” Christmas tree to display down the street, so Reading wouldn’t have to deal with this “shame.” They got another tree and placed at 2nd and Penn Streets.

There was a knock at my parent’s door, last week, in the midst of dealing the death of my aunt. It was my brother’s ex-wife, and my nephew, who I haven’t seen probably since he was two (did I mention that he’s 18 now?) The divorce was ugly, and despite my mother sending Christmas and birthday cards to my nephew, and a reciprocated occasional picture, there was no other contact. They drove down from the Poconos to see the living Charley Brown Christmas tree, and decided to stop by.

A Charley Brown Christmas is just one of those things that I just have to see, or it doesn’t feel like Christmas to me, along with It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version), A Christmas Story (on for 24 hrs), and Scrooge (1951, with Alastair Sim). Does it really matter? It doesn’t to me. If I don’t see any of them my world is not going to crumble into dust. My question is, does it really matter to Reading what their tree is? The tree is just a symbol, just like the menorah that stands next to it. Will Christmas stop because of this shitty tree that the local government has put up? No. Will faith be influenced by this sparsely populated piece of wood? No. So why? We are told the gift doesn’t matter. We are told to “remember the reason for the season.” How does getting another tree promote that?

It was thought, way before Christianity, that pine, spruce and fir trees would ward of evil spirits and illness, so people would decorate their homes with boughs over their doors and windows. Their belief were driven by the fact that these trees made it through the winters, and that reminded them that green plants would return in the spring.

It wasn’t until the 1600, when Germans started the “Christmas” tree tradition. In the 1830’s German settlers brought the tradition to Pennsylvania. Because they were considered pagan symbols by many, Puritans outlaws them. It wasn’t until 1846 when Queen Victoria and her family was illustrated in the London News standing around a Christmas tree, making it fashionable to have one. By the 1890’s Christmas trees and ornaments were becoming an American tradition. So what does this do to the ugly Christmas tree? Nothing. It makes me wonder where we’ve come when our symbols have more priority then the message it is supposed to be sending; peace, love, charity, and kindness.

http://www.history.com/topics/christm...

It’s that time

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

Time Passes On

I am no stone. I don’t have my head buried in the sand thinking that I or my relatives will live forever. There is never a good time for death, but the beginning of the holiday season is particularly unpleasant. First, the holidays are supposed to be bringing family together, not separating them forever. Many of my relatives died around the holidays, but thanks to selective memory, I try not to remember them when they died but as they lived.   The time ticks down from the time you are born. It is our destiny to die. We all try to cheat death for as long as we can, despite our vices, but eventually the clock rings.

This weekend my Aunt Betty died.

This was the second Aunt that died in my life time, both younger than my dad.  I didn’t think I would affect me as I heard the news from my mother. Aunt Betty had been ill for a long time. I won’t go into the details, but after a long struggle she succumbed, with her husband, John, of 47 years, at her side, her daughter, and her nephews. She was a matriarch to her two nephews after her younger sister died. She had a big heart that way.   John and Betty used to carry on the tradition of having parties, just like her parents, and invite the entire block. There were easily 75 people there at their parties, usually around St Patrick ’s Day. There was an abundance of food, music, singing, dancing, and there was always a keg. Those are the times I will always remember about her; her laugh, her humor, her generosity, and her dancing. You didn’t have to be anybody except yourself, and there was a must that you enjoy.

I rummaged through my pictures to find one of her for Facebook, and I found one of her and my dad. I cropped to just her. I posted it, and then it hit me. Tears. Not that I knew anything of Aunt at all, but I was sad. Sad that I didn’t have or take the time to know her better and sad that the world would not know of her. Perhaps her deeds will be forgotten, but I will always remember how she made me feel:

welcome

 

Reset in peace, Auntie.

What Have I Been Doing?

If you’ve been keeping up with my Twitter feed, you know I’ve been working on a new novel, Girl, Friend for NaNoWriMo.   The story is Thriller/Suspense about a down and out musician hiding out in the Keys, befriends a local woman, who turns out to be more than he bargained for.

Here is a little taste of what I’ve been working on.  As you might know that in 2011 I started Mariline  for NaNoWriMo.

This is the first draft and I’ve not done any editing.  ENJOY!

CHAPTER ONE

It was a fine autumn day, the day my family lost their fortune. I wondered around the island that day, wondering what I was going to do, being already three weeks behind in the rent. I watched the sun setting on the Gulf of Mexico; the reds, yellows and blues all mixing together into a deep purple. The street bands would play on the pier and there would be celebrations until late in the evening as the sun disappeared on the horizon. The ocean smelled like urine as the wind blew in from west. When it had died down, the sand became more palatable to my worn pitted feet.

I had come to Key West to run away from everything, and did. I was not an angel; there were years of alcohol and drugs, and fathering kids around the world. Back in the day I was on top of the world, but after years of touring with my band, we had hit a stumbling block, the tour went bankrupt in Stockholm. We left our equipment there, and flew back to the states with the little money we had left. We scattered, being sick of being around each other for thirty years, and only having one, top hot 100 one-hit wonder song. I’m sure you’ve heard our song, it’s called “Mix Tape”, and we even had MTV do a “Where are they now?” on us. Now I’m stuck singing it in karaoke to a poor backup tape, and people looking at me like I have five arms coming out of my head. “Isn’t that?” No. I tell them. I don’t want them to remember me as a shrinking, fifty year old, gray haired old man, with fifty-cents in his pocket, and his sole possessions can be held in a duffel bag.

On the beach, the lapping water lulled me into a drowsy state, and I lied back and looked up at the stars, some stagnate, others seemed to float across the sky in a criss cross pattern. The moon was only half in the violet, and partially lit up the water, and sand. Occasionally, a runner would pass by, and wave to me in the darkness. They had gotten to know me, and I them. We looked out for each other, and it was comforting to see them out there. “Off the beach, Mr. Akins.” Jack was on night patrol, in his black shorts and polo; his badge flickered against the moon’s reflection in the ocean. He was twenty-six, about five-foot, six, and wore white sneakers. He looked down at me.

“Do you see the stars?” I looked past his big head. He glanced up quickly and then back down at me.

“Don’t have the time.”

“That is what is wrong with this world, Jack.”

“Maybe so, but you can’t stay here, Mr Akins.” His face frowned into his skull. I reached up to him.

“Give an old man a hand.” Jack pulled me to my feet.

“Thanks. You are not my son, are you?” He smiled.

“You ask that every night. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, I remember, but things change so fast. Anything is possible.”

“I don’t have a musical bone in my body.”

“Oh, you don’t have to be musical. It’s has to be your mother that had a musical bone in hers.” Jack smirked and grabbed my arm.

“We should leave.”

“That’s what I thought.” He walked me to the Duval Street, said goodbye, and let me go. There was a lull in the tourists visiting, and just before winter traffic set in. Duval Street was getting back to the normal; I could almost see my friends without having to bust through a chorus line of drunken out-of-towners singing the Margaretville song. There was honesty in the air; the smell of food, sex, alcohol, pot, and tobacco. As the people passed me they was no judgment. I fit in with everyone, and they were all excepting of me. I didn’t always feel that way out on the road. Early on the paparazzi would follow us around the world and report on everything from bowel movements to zit outbreaks. As the band got older, it was pictures of arrests, and the drug and alcohol abuse. Here I felt insulated. They were all my friends, and they smiled, drunk or not, and the all knew. Some call it paradise, I began to call it home, up until the point all the money was gone. Now, I didn’t know what to call it.

My costume for Halloween

Damn!  Forgot the rings!!

Avast me hearties!

Audrey

For those of you that know me, I have an eight year old gray, longhair cat named Audrey. I’ve had her since I separated from my then wife six years ago.  My friend, DeAnne, was looking to unload it, and she knew that I’ve always wanted one.  It was Kismet.  Audrey took a while to get used to me, but I didn’t push her, and I think that we’d become close, and only a boy and his cat could ever be, which really means that over the last six years we’ve tolerated each other.  She likes to stand on my chest when I try to sleep, or lay on my side when I’m sleeping.  She has other moments of snuggling, but then she takes off to who knows where, and comes out when she needs food, water, or some more petting.  Otherwise she’s marching around the living room like we are in her domain, and silly humans should get out of her way.  I really don’t know why I like being shit on like this.  Maybe it’s my own personality?   I really like Audrey, and in the time she’s been with me, up until last week, she’s gotten out one other time, early on.  Last week she snuck out, past me and my girlfriend, and we didn’t even notice.

At first we thought she was just hiding when we got home that night. As I said, she isn’t around a lot, and she gets held up, like some junkie in a crack house, sniffing on cat nip she’s pillaged from unsuspecting cat toy.  Just an aside, I had a remote control mouse that disappeared.  I don’t know where it went.  I’m sure she has some secret hiding spot.  So back to the story.  In the morning she didn’t respond when I shook her morning treats, which she never,  Never, NEVER misses.  My girlfriend and I tear apart the house.  Not finding her, my girlfriend Kim starts to me about her cat that had cancer and hid away from everyone because the cat knew it was going to die, and didn’t want anyone to watch.  Just what I wanted to hear.  Remember we didn’t see her leave, so my imagination ran rampant.  Catnappers?   A careless apartment employee came in and Audrey ran out?  Aliens?  Someone of another parallel universe found a wormhole and came in an took her?  Did she learn how to use the toilet and flush herself to freedom?  Did she breakthrough the screens on the windows?  So many possibilities, but at about 10 AM we still weren’t sure she wasn’t still there (hiding in the going to die scenario).   Kim tells me to make up flyers.  Reluctantly, I did, and plastered them on the apartment complexes’ mailboxes.  I notified the apartment office as well.  Then there was nothing but to wait.   Kim thought a drive around the neighborhood might help.   I didn’t want to know that my cat was lying on the side of a road after being flattened by a bulldozer.  We were planning to go out for dinner that night, but we decided to hang at home over much deciding.  At  7 pm we got a call from a neighbor that saw my flyer; Audrey was on his patio.  I went over, picked her up and took her home.  And so I thought it was over.  She got out, but now she’s back.  Wrong.   A day later, she got past me, Kim, and Kim’s twenty-four old daughter, Sarah. It was quick!  I saw her at the door, and then she was gone.  There was no stopping her.

I ran after her into the darkness. I stumbled around the building looking for her and calling out.  Nothing.   Sarah brought me some treats, and I went around the building shaking her favorite treats.  Nothing.  WTF!  Here is a cat, someone I love, as my friends would attest to, and the cat has no response.  At that point, I was done.  If she wants to die outside, I was done.  I went back inside, angry, bitter, and feeling like I just been on a date that went well, but then the woman didn’t respond back to my phone calls.  In my defeatist mood, I opened the door, to Audrey, taken in by Sarah.  “Take that!” The cat is saying,  “I thumb my nose at your love and caring!”  How could I not take it personal? I feel like a fool.  How much more does this cat want from me?  What do I need to do to make this cat love me?  For her to run to me when I speak her name?

Well, I brooded. Yes, I brooded.   I didn’t pet her the next morning.  I didn’t even give her, her morning treat.  “HA!  I laugh in your general direction!   El gato!  Pussy cat! Fishy! (an ironic name I call her, even though she really doesn’t like fish)   Furball!”  I went to work and buried my feelings, into activity.  I asked myself all the questions I could.  “Did I treat her badly?”  “What did I do?”  “Why would she run?”  No answers, only more questions. I came home and she was there.  She didn’t try to escape and I came in and changed out of my tie and khakis, and slipped into sweats and tee-shirt.   I had a seat on the couch.  Audrey sized me up, both of us staring at each other, with the look of anger, frustration, etc., our whiskers saying all that needed to say.  She wander up to my leg and brushed against me.  I didn’t want to reciprocate, but when she jumped into my lap, it was impossible. Oh, she’s too awesome to be mad at.  She makes me smile when she purrs or when she jumps on me when I sleep.  And so what if I could build a whole new cat from all the hair from vacuuming my apartment.  She’s mine, and I still love her.

Pumpkin Everything!

I know it’s coming; the anguish, the frustration, and the anger.  And when I talk about it, of course you know I’m talking about the end of the pumpkin spice lattes.   Every year, Starbucks likes to taunt us, like the Mc Donald’s McRib, with the presence of something so spectacular, it can only be described as an experience unlike any other.  Weeks and sometimes months this scalding beverage makes its appearance like a magician with flash paper, and then we are left with our mouths wanting more.  But while it’s here, the taste of pumpkin appears in everything: pie, coffee, Oreos, martinis, beer, and even edible underwear.  There are candles, bath freshener, air sprays, pumpkin car fresheners, pumpkin stands on the side of the road, pumpkins on billboards, pictures of pumpkins on calendars, and even tons of pumpkins stacked on trucks speeding down the highway.   Like a junkie needing his fix, I move from place to place, unsure of what I will get, but still wanting it and  angered at the outlets who have run out too quick for me to have one last taste fall on my wanting  tongue and lips.   I am unabashedly ashamed of this addiction.

Weeks before the season, I patrol the spice aisles looking for the cans of the stuff; the big cans, not those puny ones.  I’m even starting to stock up on evaporated milk, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar in preparation.   You can never have enough…NEVER!  I take them home, open the jars and sniff with revel, for soon the canned gourd will make its appearance on my shelf, and quickly, methodically, pie will be mine.  Yes! MINE!  Every day, I get on my hands and knees and thank the pilgrims for picking this orange sphere to try.  I’m sure it was some Native Americans that first tried it, handed it the pilgrims, and fell in love with the creamy concoctions that they could come up with.  Today, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all pumpkin preparations are not created equal.  Yes, there are bad ones, but for me, they satisfy some primal pumpkin need.

Others look at me strange.  I’m used to it.  I’m even wearing a pumpkin colored shirt, and pumpkin tie.    My obsession could be for something else, but I say it stemmed from holding on to the last colors of fall, before the blankets of white cover the grass, the roads, and thoughts of standing next to my car scraping off  ice, snow, and everything in between.   Let us embrace pumpkin.  Let us stand up to the winter.  And let us keep our pumpkin lattes, with much reverence.

Fall

As I get older I’ve noticed that time seems to go by way too quick.  I’m sure there are a lot of factors to this, other than my hair turning gray, but it seems strange.  It seems only like yesterday that we were celebrating the New Year.  Well, maybe not yesterday, but something close, not like we’d be seeing the first hours of fall today.  I saw some leaves on the wet roads this morning on the way to work, thus propagating that theory that fall is here.  On my trip to NJ, over the weekend, I was thinking that maybe I’d see some red, yellow, or orange foliage, but there was nothing but highways.    Apparently there is no foliage in NJ, just asphalt, black asphalt, and lots of it.  There were, however, multi-colored cars out there; most in an electric blue.   I’m not sure where that falls in the NJ scheme of fall, but in Pennsylvania, I don’t think we have any blue leaves.

When I was I kid in NJ, I looked forward to fall.  I looked forward to Halloween.  My parents, didn’t look forward to anything.  My mother, was born in October, and was sick of getting the ubiquitous pumpkin colored cake at her birthday, so she rebelled as an adult.  She hates orange, black, brown or any of those autumn colors, because of that fact.  Maybe that’s why she always got clothes in those colors for me and my brother as some subliminal mind fuck.  But I digress.   I was out only a few times Trick or Treating as a child, the rest of the time I pretended not to be excited about getting wads of candy from neighbors whose kids picked on and beat up my brother and I the other eleven months of the year.   By the time I became an adult, I’d gotten over the trauma, and I smile gleefully when someone comes to my door looking for a candy fix.   Halloween should be for kids.  When you see some seventeen year old kid, with a ripped tee-shirt and covered in blood, I do have to cringe and ask myself, is that real?

In grade school, there were those Halloween parties.  I don’t think they do that anymore.    I don’t know how they even allowed such things.  Kids are naturally high on energy, adding a shit load of candy to the mix any teacher would have to a masochist.  Kids would finish their candy before going home, because they knew their parents wouldn’t allow them to eat it all once they got home.  Their happy scary, amped up faces, covered in chocolate, and drool from the corners of their mouth, arriving at their home, bursting through the front door, and then bouncing off the walls.  Parents having to pry them off the ceilings, before they crash and burn.  Why wouldn’t parents like Halloween?

Although fall technically is here I will keep an outlook for the trees turning color.   We’ve had a few cool mornings.  The daylight has become less.  I go to work in the dark, and soon be coming back home in the dark.  Eventually, the artic chill will be on us again, I’ll be bitching about the ice, and then we’ll be talking fireworks for Fourth of July.  Time flies.   I need to pay better attention, or I’ll be looking at the calendar and it will be 2068.  2068?  Gees!  Wasn’t I supposed to be dead already?

Rain!

Sunday I was lying in bed hearing the pitter-patter of rain on the roof, feeling like blah, and wondering how anyone could be excited about that.  I find it all depressing, rain, humidity, black clouds in the sky blocking the sun from getting through.  I’ve had friends that were excited about clouds and rain.  It really has to make you think about them, doesn’t it?  Maybe it’s because of the way my parents raised me?  “No playing in puddles, keep out of the mud, don’t get wet, stay inside, keep away from windows because lightning might hit you.  Stay off the phones, because lightning travels through the telephone lines.   Stay out of the shower because it’s a target for lightning.  Turn off the air conditioner because, if the power goes off, you don’t want the air conditioner to come back on line in mid-cycle.”  I’ve been programed to be afraid of the rain.  It’s build in to my psyche.    I have no choice to be unhappy.  It’s my parent’s fault!   There is nothing as sad the sad face of a child pressed against a window when it’s raining.  Hopes dashed.  Anyway it used to be that way when I was a child.  Now, it’s just more time to watch TV and play video games.

What is rain for anyway; for those greedy little plants, trees, and flowers!  They have their time in the spring to get the water they need.  Summer is for humans, for the beach, for sun, and those little buddings just have to suck it up.  I deal with two months of rain in the spring; can’t I just get some sun?  How dare they spoil my summer, particularly, for the “last weekend” for summer!  They say the week is going to be hot and sticky this week, oh great!  I love me some hot and sticky weeks.    Maybe I should make a blanket statement here?  Yes, it’s been a moderate summer this year, and I shouldn’t be bitching, since the winter here was so harsh, but we did have hail.  In Pennsylvania!   I lived in NJ for sixteen years, and I saw hail once.  Just once!   I didn’t expect to see hail for the rest of my life, and it’s here.  WTF!  OK.  Twice in a life time is too much.  I don’t know how others deal with it on a yearly basis.  I guess they deal with it the same way we deal with mounds of snow and blankets of ice in the winter.  Weather is not fair, but it’s balanced or should be balanced; warm and sunny in the west, the northwest has rain, the south is dry and warm, and the east is temperate.  Yes, temperate; we see the sun, the rain, the snow, the heat, the cold, the wind.  We get it all, so there is no reason to have extremes in weather.   No hail!  I don’t want to see it.

I could live in the northwest where it’s raining all the time.  I suppose I should be glad.  I remember a neighbor telling me, she previously lived in Minnesota, that when the sun came out, it was party time and they dragged out the bar-bar-q, since it happened so frequently.   I need sun.  I count on sun.  I need the vitamin D it produces in my body.   Give me sun, or give me partly cloudy!  Weather has no excuses!

Taking the Plunge!

I took a long walk off a short pier.  Can you tell?  I am all wet.  People, when they find out that I haven’t been to college, look at me like I just grew another head.  I’m well read.  My mind is thirsty for knowledge, and I know a lot more that anyone in my position should know.  Some things come to me very easily; others are like fitting a square peg into an electric socket.  I’m sure there is some genetic component involved, but let’s not talk about my parents, also not college educated.

In Junior High, I was already being called a “scholar” even though I wasn’t even sure what that meant.  I was quiet so I think I people got the impression that I was always thinking of a way to murder them.  They were right.  Being a fiction writing it’s easy.  It’s your world, and you make it.  I was making a thoughtful slasher film for Career Day! (I wanted to be a great directory, like Alfred Hitchcock, without all the weirdness)  It was great!  No one had a clue!  I loved the freedom.  I started writing parodies of films, for the fun of it.  I planned out my classmates, wrote specifically for their characteristics, and even imagined producing the film.   There was no doubt in their minds that I was going to put them in my movies, but having only an 8mm camera, there was going to be some issues.  Enablers all!

In High School, I moved on to writing plays.  None of them were ever produced, but they sit in the proverbial trunk.   Maybe someday I’ll pull them out, dust them off, and throw them into the fireplace. It’s something high school Ed would have wanted, after a proper burial.  Some of those stories have passed their prime, they were funny then, but now I can see an audience staring at the stage, drool dripping from the corners of their mouths, as they say, “HUH?”  I have enough of my readers doing that; I don’t need a whole audience of people to tell me that.  Besides, who knows what was going through my mind back then.  HECK!  I don’t understand most of the things I wrote back then, but it does make me laugh.

So on to the point that I’m making here, if you might say, the long way around the mountain.  I’ve started a college class on Sitcom Writing.  I know, if you’ve read any of my books, you would know that they are so serious.   There is some humor, but the topics are so dark.  What am I doing starting a Sitcom class?  First of all, how dare you!  I say that to my conscience, and not to the reader of this prose.   I can be a funny individual, as can all of us, at the right moment; coming up with a quip or one liner that makes everyone laugh.  What’s that line?  “Comedy is hard, drama is easy.”  Well, I’ve been working on the drama part and I want to expand my horizons.  I’ve had a mind for humor, and though I might be putting my head in a noose now, I think I can do it. It’s just a class.  I think of it as learning.  I’m sure I can use it in my writing.  It’s a win-win situation, and all that other winky-dink encouragement things that they say in the biz.

I’ve stepped off the pier.   I feel the water rising up to my neck, and I wonder if I’ll need to clean behind my ears today.