Patrick Egan's Blog, page 7

I Will Learn to Speak Camel

[Source: Google search.]

The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body.

~~Anon

On September 23, 2024, give or take a day or three, I will say “Bayokav” to a camel. The odd-shaped creature will stand from a kneeling position. I will be sitting, hopefully in comfort, on the gentle beast.

Only then I will say “Arrrrrr”. And off we go, Mariam, myself, our guide and perhaps other travelers will head into the Saraha Desert for a night under black skies and stars too numerous to count. When we arrive at our camp, I will say, with authority: “Shhhhhhh”. We will stop, I will say, “Jmell Bayokve”, and we will dismount and go off to dine on a Bedouin meal. That’s the plan.

It will be trite to many world explorers, but to me, it’s the fulfillment of a dream I’ve held within for much of my life.

The desert. The Empty Quarter. The great void. The birthplace of the major religions of the world. It will be an experience unlike most others that I’ve had. I’ve stood in Red Square, on The Great Wall, on the Acropolis and even inside a glacier in Alaska. I looked into the sad eyes of the Pope as he passed in front of Mariam and me in St. Peter’s Square. Likewise, I looked at the closed eyes of Lenin and Chairman Mao. We love to travel, and I have taken advantage of opportunities to do so.

But, while those experiences were exciting and important to me, the dunes of the Sahara will be an adventure that will be difficult to match.

Our flight from Paris will land in Tangier, Morocco on September 16. From there we will be driven to Fez and on to Marrakech. The trip will take 11 days. After the Bazaar in Marrakech, at the end of the trip, we fly to London. Clouds, likely rain and light pollution. I love England, but the ebony sky of the desert is something I want so very much to experience.

If there is wind, the quartz sand will sting my flesh. I will cover myself against the chill after sunset. My lips will crack in arid air. My sunglasses will protect me from the blinding glare of the sun on sand. I want to fully experience what it’s like to stand among the endless dunes. I want to feel real thirst (but I will drink a gallon of water a day if needed).

While reading about the desert, learning the poetry and listening to the music of the Bedouin culture, I am excited and full of apprehension. Here in Manhattan, I struggle to walk three blocks. But, I wonder…is this my swan song? Are my roaming days coming to an end?

I don’t pray anymore, for personal reasons, but I wonder. When I sit and contemplate my place in the world, in America, in Europe, and in the sand, what else is there to think about?

[Source: Google search.]

Cyclones, Sideshows & Mermaids: A Hot Day on Coney Island

[The Luna Park Face. Source: Google search.]

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything.

~~John Lennon

My wife was with a man with a mission. We exited the D Train into 87° F heat and enough humidity to drown a fish. It was the last stop on the line, Stillwell Avenue/Surf Avenue. The man? Me, of course. And the mission was to get to Maimonides Stadium in time for the first pitch. The Brooklyn Cyclones were up against the Jersey Shore Bluepoints. The Cyclones are a minor league team for the New York Mets. Full disclosure: I’m a Yankee fan. A serious one. But I found the Cyclones ballpark a very enjoyable place. Intimate and smelling of dirt and grass, the way all ballparks should. The ticket prices for Yankee Stadium were a little beyond our means this past Saturday, June 22. More importantly, the game was the last event on our schedule that day.

I had other hot dogs to grill.

As we left the train station on Surf Avenue, the crowds were thick, like the damp air. What’s more, nearly everyone was in a costume that spoke of the sea (which was in my line of vision just beyond the Boardwalk). We had stumbled into the tail end of the wondrously extravagent Mermaid Parade. A pleasant surprise indeed. But it was really icing on the cake (such a clever cliché). On Mariam’s iPhone were tickets to the Circus Sideshow. We had twenty minutes to cross the Avenue and go into the show’s venue.

A guy: “There is no 3:15 show.”

Us: “It’s right here on our phone, see?”

Guy: “Doesn’t matter. It’s the Parade. Not our usual schedule.”

Us: “So what do we do?”

Guy: “Come back at 3:35.”

At 4:15 we finally found our seats in the small theater. For the next forty minutes or so we watched the usual fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, and ladies in a box that had blades sent through. The usual. I loved it. But I must say that it wasn’t as exciting as the time a decade ago when I was called to the stage to stand on a woman’s abdomen…while she was lying on a bed of nails. Or last year when I went on stage to pull an 8-inch nail out of a guy’s nose. Now that was really exciting.

[A pretty non-Mermaid waits for the sideshow. Photo is mine.]

[Waiting for the sideshow to begin. Photo is mine.]

[A ticket seller at the Sideshow Museum gift shop. Inked, pierced and happy. Photo is mind.]

One fact about me, gentle reader, is that I simply love Carnivals, circuses, sideshows and pretty trapeze artists. I went to a small one-ring European-style circus in Bruges many years ago. The woman on the swing, so high above the sawdust floor, went on to another town and then another. She took a tiny bit of my heart with her…she never saw me looking up, getting dizzy and silently blowing her kisses. In fact, she never knew of my existence.

I guess that’s the way things go when you’re young, carefree and always misplacing your heart.

After the final act, after a barefoot woman walked up a ladder of swords and somehow didn’t bleed to death in front of us (we were in the first row), we were back on Surf Avenue and checking the time. I wasn’t going to miss the first pitch, so we headed to the Stadium. I took a few photos of the dispersing paraders:

[Happy Mermaids on a hot day. Photo is mine.]

There were simply too many interesting people along the Avenue to photograph them all. But I did my best to isolate the more creative individuals.

[I didn’t know the names of these two creatures of the sea. But they smiled which made me smile. Photo is mine.]

As we stood at the end of the ticket holders line, I could see that the parade ambience extended to the outdoor restaurant.

[A guy drinking a beer…with a plastic conch shell hat. How about that? Photo is mine.]

We made it to our seats in plenty of time to see a few ceremonial first pitches. I was very impressed by a 10-year-old boy who threw a perfect strike to the catcher. Mariam brought back our dinner from the concession stand. My cheese burgher was one massive and uninterrupted unit of meat, cheese and bread that dripped all over my already soggy napkin.

Sometimes life is sweet.

The game started off badly for the Cyclones. A leadoff hit. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what the final score was. We left before the 7th Inning Stretch. I doubt the home team was able to dig themselves out of the early hole they had fallen into so quickly.

[Section 10. Behind the home dugout. It was Free Shirt Day. The seats filled up quickly. Luna Park and the rides are in the distance. Photo is mine.]

A part of me wanted to take off my shoes and walk the beach, but the sand would be nearly hot enough to melt the quartz crystals. I have tender feet.

But, at the end of the day, a baseball game, a parade of sexy mermaids, a side show, countless tats, a free shirt and a sea breeze that actually dried my sweaty brow better than the temperature in Manhattan, was a grand way to spend a Saturday…in June.

What more could a boy and his girl ask for?

yes I said yes I will Yes.

[James Joyce. Source: Google Search.]

Yes, I’m perfectly aware that the title I’ve chosen for this blog is the final sentence in the wondrous novel, Ulysses. Written by James Joyce (shown above) and considered one of the most seminal books of the 20th century. I am also aware that the quote is from Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy. And it relates to making nice nice, if you get my drift. (It’s probably one of the reasons the book was banned for a time.)

How does this tie in with Father’s Day, you may very well ask. I will offer this: Joyce had two children, Lucia (a dancer) and Giorgio. Both, it seems, suffered from emotional issues, which would have been a concern, as a father, to deal with. Back in those years, Ireland (and most other countries) lacked the modern sensibility and knowledge to provide the care and attention that is available today. But, I’m going to assume that a man of such gentle poetry and powerful prose, could be anything other than a great dad. Maybe I’m wrong.

I hope not.

The narrative of the novel takes place on one day, June 16, 1904. Leopold Bloom wanders the streets of Dublin. His descriptions are detailed, full of insight and imagery.

Here is a part of Dublin that he wandered:

[Dublin City. Map source: Google Search.]

I won’t give away spoilers. I won’t ruin the ending. Furthermore, I will say that every year on June 16, people all over the world, and especially Dublin, make the day with celebrations, readings and simply sharing their love for the author and the book that made history, of sorts.

Leopold Bloom did stop in to a pub for a glass of Burgundy and a sandwich.

[Davy Byrne’s Pub, Dublin. Leopold Bloom stopped here for a glass of wine and a sandwich. Source: Google Search.]

So, all this talk about Ireland brings me back to my father. I went to an International Egan Clan Reunion with my dad in late 1984. It was held at the ancestral castle (Castle Redwood). He took me to a few pubs, we walked the streets of Galway, and we met hundreds of relatives whose names I have totally forgotten. But I scrolled through my photo roll and found this:

[My father, Paul on the right. A distant cousin, Tom Egan, on the left. They talked for hours standing at the low wall of Tom’s house. Photo is mine.]

I will wrap things up with these thoughts: I have no reason to believe that James Joyce was a good father. My father was an awesome father.

It’s a day of reflection and thoughts of love. Joyce loved his country. My dad loved the twenty-eight shades of green that you see in Ireland…on just the right day. I love Joyce, my father, Ireland and my children. It’s a giant pyramid of emotion, love and memories.

And I hope I’m a father that has made some kind of positive difference in the lives of my children.

Love is all around

Dark Odds Indeed

[The Nobel Laureate. Robert Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan. Source: Google Search.]

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

~~Henry David Thoreau

Bob Dylan, American singer and songwriter, will be eighty-three years old on May 24. As I write this I realize that that’s old. True, not old to many people who are going strong at ninety-four. But I’m thinking of Actuarial Tables and Life Insurance statistics. By those yardsticks, Bob is nearly ten years beyond his predicted time.

And he rarely deviates from his schedule of The Never Ending Tour. Say what you wish about his vocal capabilities, he endures.

He admitted to Ed Bradley once that he knows he can no longer write such lyrics as found in Blowin in the Wind. (Which, according to the authorities in Dylanology, he wrote in twenty minutes when he was twenty-one.)

“Does that bother you?” Ed asks.

“Not really. There are other things I can do,” Bob replied.

I wonder if, when I reach his age, I will be doing something somewhat creative. Can I still write a novel? A good short story? A letter to a loved one?

Time will tell.

Years ago, I wrote a blog titled: The Day Bob Dylan Dies. I dread the day when the actual event occurs because Bob has been an important part of my life for around sixty years. That’s a great deal of emotional investment. That’s a boat load of memories. A thousand quotes I can use in a thousand ways.

Here’s what I have done for many years:

When one of my two children (both adults, actually) had a birthday, I would write the following lyric inside their birthday cards:

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung.

And may you stay forever young.

I hope they did. I hope I do.

Happy Birthday, Bob !! Stay forever young…for me and for a billion people who love you for your art, poetry and being true to yourself.

How Do I Love Thee?

[Love me do. Source: Google Search. dreamstime.]

But there is love that makes a cup of tea

Love that loves both who you are and who you want to be

Love that waits for you when you fall behind

That’s the kind of love I hope you find.

~~Gretchen Peters

Like all well-behaved bloggers, I am attuned to the seasons, the quickly changing weather and the hopping about of a true Robin, red breast included. I saw the solitary avian plundering a small portion of the massive lawn leading up to the Library of the New York Botanical Gardens. The bird was feasting with impunity. Yes, he or she had food and nearby water. But once the little tummy is filled, there are other challenges ahead. I’m assuming it was a male, and being male his every fiber, right now, should be trying to find a mate. I hate to say it, but that’s what it’s all about, this time of year. The tidal hormones are raging all around us… Procreate! Build a nest and live happily ever! You’re a bird, you know what to do…(or does he?).

And therein lies another tiny problem. How does he get a date, much less a mate? I taught science, so I would say to the Robin: Use color. Lots of it. Sing. Loudly and seductively. Two out of five senses isn’t much of an arsenal, but one has to use what one has.

Just now, I looked up the scientific name for a Robin. It’s Turdus migratorious. With a first name like that, this bird already has a few strikes against it. I had a fairly normal name, Pat, and I had plenty of trouble finding a mate. Good luck, Turdus. You’ll need it.

So where am I going with this? I should be sitting in the warmth of the sun, on our patio, reading Ulysses. Something light and easy on the eyes. Instead, I tried to find some examples of how someone, in a relationship, expresses their love for their partner. Specifically, some little action, pose, remark, touch or kiss that is often unexpected. But endearing in a major way.

[Here he is. Turdus migratorious. Source: Google Search]

I was propped up in bed, comfortable against the four pillows that kept my back from hitting the solid wood of our headboard. The weather prediction was for clear and sunny conditions, but I found myself pulling another blanket to my chin and stifling a shaking chill. In five minutes, the rain would begin to fall. My iPad sat against my knees. I checked the progress of the book I was reading. There it was: I was reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I had to chuckle to myself, I was making serious progress. I had been reading for about three hours, and I was 2% further along than I was when I picked up the book.

I needed a break from reading, so I went to the Amazon App. I was just about to make a final decision on our window treatments when I felt the need to close my eyes for a little Ocular R & R. My mind drifted back to something I read on Reddit about three months ago. It was a question: What are some endearing actions that your partner does that are quirky and are meant only for you.

Some of the responses were thoughtful and interesting… [These comments are reconstructed from my memory. One of them is my own contribution.]

-My wife came up to me from behind. She put her hand on the nape of my neck and then kissed me. I haven’t come back down to earth yet.

-She had long black hair. Straight. It came down over her face, obscuring her cheeks. She rested her chin on her hands and stared intently at me. Her eyes were large and deep green. She listened to me.

-The way she used to gather her hair to make a pony-tail. She was holding the small band in her lips and she had to look at me from an angle. It was such an adorable gesture (she didn’t have any idea how her eyes affected me. I can’t get that little glance out of my head.

-No one ever gave me a surprise party. When I was a young boy, I asked for permission to give a party. Someone said: Smarty gave a party and nobody came. I lived in terror of that happening for decades. Until my wife gave me a true surprise party. It was for my 50th birthday. I will be forever grateful for this gesture for years. Never really forgetting.

(My Favorite)…

-My wife is normally quite introverted. She never likes to be the center of attention. But at home, she is a different person. She can’t sing, but that doesn’t stop her from walking around the house singing, at the top of her voice, how much she loves me. She makes up the words as she sings. I am dumbfounded about how much her heartfelt and simple songs have enriched and enlivened my life.

Yes, it all seems so very delightful. But things were about to change for me. In a very big-time kind of way. I’m sitting, propped against the headboard with my five pillows, and staring out at the patio. I was trying to calculate the sun’s position in the sky and how it lined up with the angle of the solar panel atop our umbrella over our picnic table. It was all looking good. My list of daily complaints was down by one. I was smiling over the fact that I correctly aligned the solar panel so that when and if warmer weather ever arrives, we would have an array of LED lights to brighten our dinners. That, along with my Wonder Boom playing Johnny Cash or Old Crow Medicine Show. Nothing like a quiet evening. As I was reaching for my adult coloring book with the Magenta pencil attached with Velcro (I decided everything in the drawing should be Magenta), Mariam came into the bedroom.

She said: “How would you like to have that Mexican dinner you’ve been begging for?”

I said: “What tonight?”

She said: “Yes. And I have another suggestion. Shall I get tickets to Amateur Night at the Apollo?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

I said: “Why?”

She said: “It’s our 31st Wedding Anniversary.”

“I know,” I said.

A few hours later, we were sitting in a cozy restaurant on Broadway & 125th Street. We looked at the menu. Something was wrong. This wasn’t the menu we viewed online back home. It wasn’t the menu because we were in the wrong restaurant. We went next door, and I was soon in Taco Heaven. The show at the Apollo was great fun. I think I had a tiny crush on the tap dancer. Her name was Liberty Stiles. Her style was energetic and soulful. And she had a great name.

So where does all this leave me? One priority is for me to make that final decision on whether I want to improve my jawline definition. I think I’ll hold off a bit on this. It involves Botox, and that has something to do with cattle (I think. If it isn’t cattle, it’s something just as strange).

Amidst all my personal turmoil, the state of the country, the horrible killing in the Middle East…I was a happy guy on that first day of May 2024.

The only thing left is to get through my birthday at the end of the month.

Maybe I should redefine my jawline?

Is My Enchiridion Indulgentiarum Account Balanced?

[Purgatory. Credit: Shown Above]

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

~~Patrick Egan Fantastical Essays v. 1 (2024)

In Saranac Lake, New York, on a warm and humid day in 2017, an elderly woman crossed Church Street safely because of something Sister John James said to me in 1957. This was no small feat because the tourist traffic was thick and heavy that day. The potential for disaster was present at every intersection. But I was behind the wheel of my Honda CRV and I had the words of the gentle nun in my ears, for the last sixty years.

She was safe. I was happy. And I scratched off about 10,000 years of my time in Purgatory (give or take a century or two).

You need to be aware of the backstory for all this to make any sense at all.

I was raised a Roman Catholic. Growing up in Owego, New York, and being Catholic, I attended St. Patrick’s School. During those formative years, I learned the basics of the Vatican’s teachings, which included the concept of eternity. Well, that whole idea of something going on forever and ever, without end, was a hard pill for this little guy to swallow. But swallow it I did. And that’s where the problems started.

There are three places I needed to concern myself with. Heaven. Hell. Purgatory. (I won’t bring up Limbo here. Too touchy).

Heaven–Unattainable.

Hell–Too Scary.

Purgatory–Negotiable.

Forever! Never ending! Too much for a ten-year-old’s brain to appreciate. I mean, I did understand what never-ending meant–to a point. I need to mention that the full realization of what death meant was another of those hard-to-swallow pills. Furthermore, I remember sitting in the last pew of St. Patrick’s Church one afternoon thinking about the fact that I had no choice but to walk the inevitable path to…what? Sunny meadows? Gardens? Heaven? But, wait. I could only go to heaven if I died without sin. Early on, I realized that everyone had a stained soul. It’s common knowledge that only a very few people lived on earth without sin. The Virgin Mary, Jesus and Derek Jeter and perhaps Marjorie Taylor Greene were the only ones that came to mind. I could never go to heaven with a stained soul. And there’s the dilemma. Where would I go? The Church had the answer, and it was Pope Urban II, in 1095, who proclaimed, I could go directly to the right hand of God if I took part in a Crusade. That’s called a Plenary Indulgence. In other words, a wet eraser on a dirty chalkboard. Clean slate.

Crusades are hard to come by these days. They still exist, in many forms, but riding off to Jerusalem on a large horse, with a cross painted on my shield, was not an option in 1957. Perhaps the KKK? Or any people bent on destroying another people because of a religion? Maybe. But, in the end, not my thing.

I had to find another means to save my immortal soul, and I found it in the back pages of my Little Missal. I remember leafing through my prayer book and finding short and not so short prayers that would grant me a Partial Indulgence. A short paragraph might wipe clean fifty days. A longer meditation might earn me a year off (for good behavior). Small change, I thought. I’ll never get anywhere this way.

What was I trying to escape from? A cursory survey of Dante (The Divine Comedy) was enough to raise the tiny hairs on my forearm. If this is Purgatory, what the hell was Hell going to be like?

[Purgatory. Source: Google Search.]

The above illustration looks interesting, at first. Naked women? I can deal with that. But upon closer scrutiny–the objects growing out the foreheads of the beasts gave a whole new meaning to the term horny. I got the point. This wasn’t Studio 54. Or Fort Lauderdale in April. Or Vegas on any given weekend. This was unsettling. I needed a way out. Maybe I could make a hefty donation to the restoration bill of St. So and So’s Church in Iowa. Wait! An indulgence for money? Unthinkable. Besides, that was taken care of during the Reformation. Too late again.

What was a poor, more-or-less-innocent kid from Owego to do?

There I was, driving into Saranac Lake on that warm day in 2017. I turned right on Church Street. An elderly woman was waiting to cross. The traffic was heavy. I saw her, she seemed to be in a hurry. She took a step. An SUV the size of Long Island was approaching. I’m not saying she was about to purchase the ranch, but I couldn’t take any chances. So I slowed and waved at her. Go on, Miss, I said to myself. She did, and I continued on to Radio Shack to purchase an indoor/outdoor thermometer (its AA’s were to last about nine years, but that’s another blog).

Here’s my reasoning: A good deed will earn me a Purgatory Point. How many years or centuries would be erased? I have no idea. But it had to be done without me thinking about what was in it for me. That’s hard to do when you’re driving among the tourists. To get the thought from polluting my mind, I began singing, loudly, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow by Fleetwood Mac. It worked.

Or did it?

I have no way of knowing until I take my last breath. Will the Voice say: Good job with old Beatrice, Patrick, you can skip Purgatory? Or will I hear: Nice try?

Only time will tell.

[One final look at Purgatory. Source: Google Search.]

Anemonia Keeps Me Awake

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.

~~Richter

[The Berlew Family Reunion. Orange, PA. September 6, 1926. Photo: Egan Family Archives.]

I don’t think it rained that day. There are no clouds in the sky. I should know. I’ve crawled inside this photo more than once over the years.

One afternoon, in early September 1926, a photographer from Wilkes-Barre, set up his tripod and secured his camera (equipped with a panoramic lens) on a lawn in Orange, PA. I can imagine all the cajoling, yelling and flaring tempers that filled the air that day. To get all those people to line up and be still. The children want to run and push each other. An uncle wants to finish a mug of beer. An aunt needs to check her hair. A young woman needs to straighten out her dress. A twelve-year old boy needs to find a place to sit.

Somewhere in my apartment is a rolled up photograph. It is cracked with age. Yesterday I decided I needed to look at the photo again. I couldn’t find it. I looked in corners and alcoves. No luck. But I recall seeing it once in another format. Yes. It was on a CD that my brother, Dan, put together.

And there was the photo. The Berlew Family Reunion.

Berlew was my grandmother’s maiden name. She married Michael Egan on June 18, 1908. My cousin Elaine informed me that it was an evening ceremony.

Ever since my father showed the photograph to me, strange things began to happen. I returned to the photo time and again. I was drawn into the scene. I found myself on that lawn, tweaking the daisies as I attempted to sit beside my father. I looked at the faces, faces of those with whom I shared a bit of DNA. But, those were days, years ago, that I saw these relations as old people (and they were). As I look at this photo now, as someone approaching his 77th year, I see things in this scene that I missed as a young man.

There are approximately sixty-two people on the lawn that day in September. I look closely at the faces. Very few of them are smiling. Very few. They are a hard-working crowd. You can see that in their faces. A boy sitting on the ground, thinking about something, was smiling. I don’t know who he is, but I will guarantee that he is now buried in a rural cemetery, somewhere to the west of Scranton, somewhere in the rolling hills of the northern flanks of the Poconos. A smirk on my father’s face, a sly grin on the face of an older man. I look at my grandparents. My grandfather, Michael, looks stern and grim. My grandmother’s face, her bobbed hair falling over her forehead, is full of mystery and hidden charm.

[A detail of the lead photo. My grandparents are in the last row at far right. Photo: Egan Family Archives.]

I find my father. He’s seated on the grass at the left end of the gathering. He is twelve years old. There is an attractive young woman sitting at the far left end of the photograph. Is that her mother holding her child? She looks enigmatic and sad.

[Detail of the lead photo. My father is seated, third from the left. He’s wearing a vest and dark tie. He is twelve years old. Photo: Egan Family Archives.]

Sometimes I would imagine that if I could enter this photograph, I would sit down next to my father. I would talk to him. Maybe we would play catch. Maybe he wouldn’t see me. I don’t know how things like that work. But I wouldn’t interfere with him in any way. He has to be allowed to go on his way and eventually, twenty-one years from that afternoon in Orange, PA, he will become a father to his fourth son. That would be me. Nothing has to harm him. He must make that date to ensure my being born.

This overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a time and a place that one has never been to is called Anemonia. You won’t find it in most dictionaries. It’s one of those forgotten words.

I can’t turn away from the faces. These folks are now destined to remain trapped in a black and white emulsion. The paper photograph is cracked. But these people were surrounded by color and music, love and life. They hear the birds sing and the dogs bark. The child laugh and a radio is playing Paul Whiteman’s Birth of the Blues. They are not just images, they live. They live because I’m looking at them. Perceiving them. Talking about them.

I wish I had my father draw a chart of whom these people were. I knew a few of those in the photo, taken so many years ago. I can name these–Aunt Reen, Uncle Ford–but that’s about all. So many I do not know, but who are joined to me by genetics. It’s been written that reveling in the past is a waste of time. We should stay in the present. Anticipate the future. But, it is not wasted time to try and recapture a moment, a century ago, when people met, families gathered, to enjoy each other.

A suggestion, dear readers: Go into that old trunk. The shelf in the closet. The drawer. Find an old photo. Try to insert yourself into the scene. Listen. Smell the air. Feel the grass.

Is there an image of a couple who will become your father or mother? Pay attention to them. They will create you…

Gallery 636

[The Woman. Photo is mine.]

We sometimes encounter people, even strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight. Somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.

~~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I’d seen the El Greco, the Tiepolo and the Manet. But, what I really needed was a bench, so hard to find sometimes in certain rooms of a certain Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was three weeks and a few days since I came home from the hospital following a spinal fusion. I was taking a risk by wanting to walk through a few galleries of the newly reopened European Paintings 1300–1800. Mariam and I strolled through the rooms, I’d stand for as long as I could, then I would scout the terrain for the much-needed bench. And that’s what brought me to Gallery 636. I positioned myself opposite a large canvas. I soaked up the art. Furthermore, I did what I usually do when I’m viewing a pastoral landscape–I put myself in the scene. I would walk the leas, sit beneath the Lombardy Poplars and listen to the brooks and the birds and the laughter of distant souls. I leaned slightly (my back, remember) to look beyond a woman who has stepped in front of the painting.

Then it happened.

She turned to me, her red hat breaking the monotony of the white walls, and smiled. Not a “sorry, am I in your way?” kind of smile. It was something different. A knowing smile.

Whoa. At this point, I need to interject something in this narrative. I am seventy-six years old and walking oddly, even funny. Grey hair. Scruffy beard. I could be her grandfather. Let’s go back… There was a time, in my mind, not so long ago, when I was datable. (I’m happily married, so this is a memory of a life I lived prior to 1990).

All those years ago… I would have followed her, stood next to her, talked to her, bought her a wine, sat beside her on the steps of the MET, gone somewhere with her. In my present life, I rarely, and I stress, rarely get a compliment from a woman, a stranger.

Crossing Amsterdam Avenue sometime in the 1990s. I stood on the curb. Light changed. I walked out. A woman turned to me and said: “Excuse me, but you have beautiful hair”.

I happened to look to my left, toward the exit. She turned and smiled. Mariam saw the whole thing. “She certainly noticed you,” she said. “Guess so,” I said.

Which brings me to my whole point. Why did she smile at me? Did she recognize me? I have taught hundreds of New York City kids in my twenty years of being an educator. A former student? Perhaps. Someone I once dated? No, she was too young.

Rested. A gallery away. The El Greco. Storm Over Toledo. One of my favorites. There she was. And, and she smiled again. Again, the knowing smile. The faintest hint. The tiniest hint…of what? She saw Mariam. Maybe her smile was for her too. She saw Mariam, so it wasn’t a flirty smile. It wasn’t a come hither kind of thing. So, what was it? Why was this young, attractive woman smiling at me through several galleries of the MET, on a bustling Friday evening. I noticed that she didn’t smile at anyone else.

Only me. Or maybe that’s what I let myself believe. That a woman saw something in me that made her comfortable enough to acknowledge my existence. Many men live for that sort of attention, especially men at my age. Our faded charms are now erased by wrinkles and furrows and a stooped posture. Once we were heroes, knights, mountaineers, doctors, lawyers, walkers, poets and writers. Now, we are old men who sit and think.

Just before the final door that would be our exit, our way back to the real world of a chilly February evening and taxis, buses, and people. But, did I want to lose this moment? I snapped a quick photo of her contemplating a Vermeer-like woman, in oil, on a 20″ x 30″ canvas.

I turned and walked to the Grand Staircase. The steps that would return us to the evening.

I knew I would never see this woman again. That’s a strange thought when you look closely. You see another human. A connection of sorts is made. Then back into nothingness.

As I made my way down the stairs, I tried to find something in the encounter. Is there such a thing as meaningful coincidences, serendipity and chance encounters that aren’t really chance? Why did our paths cross? What did she have to say to me that was left unsaid?

We settled into the taxi and I braced myself for a bumpy ride through Central Park and up Broadway to our apartment. I thought about the woman, and I wanted to keep this memory (it was becoming a memory as soon as I walked down the granite steps to Fifth Avenue) fresh and in my mind. I thought about the woman.

I thought about a red hat.

The Last Quarter Moon Gives A Pale Wintry Light/Late Night Thoughts Following Spinal Surgery

{Author’s Note: This blog post contains a photograph of an x-ray of my lower back taken six days after my spinal fusion. If the image of hardware screwing together two of my vertebra is irksome to you, my gentle readers, then feel free to search for another fine read. I have 645 in the bank. Find a good one and enjoy, just…please don’t check out A Brief History of Chains and Chain-making. It’s good, but there are other good ones out there, and far, far too many people have checked that one out. I have put this graphic at the end of the post for obvious reasons. The lead image is a generic photo taken from Google. Be warned. Enjoy.}

[A surgical room. Place: unknown. My room was more densely packed with instruments that went “Ping”. Source: Google search.]

An idea that fixed him to one spot was that life was a death dance, and that he had quickly passed through the spring and summer of his life and was halfway through the fall. He had better do a better job on the fall because everyone on earth knew what winter was like.

–Jim Harrison “Farmer”.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

–Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”.

I removed my Bluetooth earphones and shifted my body up against the pillows that were packed hard against the headboard of our bed. No relief. The pain was white-hot. Intense. Bitter. Sharp. I reached for the small plastic amber bottle of painkillers. I shook it. Not a lot left. I put the bottle back and stared out at the patio. The half disk of the moon lit the patio with a soft light. Enough to see the BBQ, the umbrella, the covered table and the sturdy English Ivy, hanging out, wanting to grow, waiting for the spring warmth.

I had been listening to a podcast called A Voice From Darkness. The narrator, a young man on a road trip, described driving through New Mexico and suddenly finding himself in a city that appeared out of nowhere. He told of becoming hopelessly lost in a labyrinth of passages, streets, tunnels, sidewalks and dark lanes. He was filled with panic. Where did the city come from? It wasn’t Santa Fe. No indeed. And it wasn’t Albuquerque, either.

I looked out at the pale light and the patio.

I pondered what I had heard.

What the guy in the podcast (Category: Fantasy/Horror) was describing was uncannily familiar. I had the exact same experience, in many dreams, of being lost and confused in an endless series of false paths and empty halls and deserted passages. Often, it was set in New York City. I began having these dreams after moving to northern New York State in 2011. Sometimes the landscape was post-apocalyptic in nature. Sometimes it was a version of my hometown of Owego, NY. It was all too close to me. Too close to my own experiences. How did this storyline emerge from me and find its way into a podcast?

Recently, I have found myself having an abundance of reemerging thoughts and memories that I have not felt in decades. Tiny memories of tiny events–if any events in life can be thought of as tiny. In some weird Proustian way, I can smell a little bit of food and find myself back in 1954. I can hear music of a sort that takes me back to the sweet smell of a fifteen-year-old girl in high school. She’s in my arms, and I’m dancing with her in the gym after the big game. It’s 1964. A woman on Amsterdam Avenue is wearing retro bell-bottoms. It’s 1977.

Was I being set up for something? Why was a trickle of long-buried experiences flowing through the levee in my mind that separates the past from the present? Is this what happens to all people as they age? As they see less of the light and more of the twilight?

I reflected on my memories.

Wait! Do I want, really want to expose my inner fears and seemingly morbid thoughts and force them into the minds of my loving readers? They have their own problems. I can’t add to anyone else’s anxiety. That’s not what I do these posts for. I’m here to entertain and amuse, not deflate and depress.

I mulled over my thoughts.

The solution is likely in the extent of my pain. Pain can do odd things to one’s psyche. It can energize and it can terrify. It can lay you low, and it can cattle-prod you to attention. Make you laugh while you cry out. Run when you want to stop running, and get up when you’d rather sit. And sleep in quiet repose instead of writhing in a pool of nerve endings.

And it can remind you of your mortality. Slap you upside the head and say: You’re not twenty-one anymore. “You’re not thirty-three or forty-seven. You’re seventy-six, soon to be…well, do the math”.

Walt Whitman wrote something…

I paraphrase.

Grass. The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

One of my avocations is being a volunteer for Find-a-Grave.com. I get a request to photograph the headstone of someone. The request may come from a relative who lives somewhere on the map but west of New Jersey, who will never plan to make the trip to New York State to visit Aunt Polly’s grave. So, I do the deed. And, more often than not, I get a thank-you email. They are grateful. I am happy. Their family tree fills out, and I had a chance to walk through the uncut hair.

The uncut hair. As I searched for the requested headstone, I often thought of grass as a shroud. But not hair. I get the analogy now. The earth is so very old that perhaps there are only a few places where we do not tread on a forgotten grave.

I mused over these thoughts.

The patio is still bathed in that pale light. I’m tired, but I have a plan. I will listen to one more song by Nanci Griffith: Late Night Grande Hotel.

“I’m just learning to fly away again.”

I will take my headset off and play one game of solitaire on my iPad.

Then I will go on Reddit and read an article I saw earlier:

A Cool Guide To Escaping Killer Bees

Only then will I pull the covers to my chin. Sip ice water and fluff my squishy pillow. Close my eyes and look out at the pale light on the patio.

And as I fall into sleep, fall hopefully into a sweet sleep… I find myself thinking of my hometown. Owego.

It’s that old blue line that you can never go back home…

I don’t know why I always come here in my dreams…

I only come here to remember my dreams.

–Sarah Jarosz

[R-Before. See the offset? L-After. See the Titanium screws? Photo is mine.]

The Gravity of Manhattan: Three Worlds

[Upper East Side Buildings. Photo is mine.]

Do you know what the sounds of this city are? Screams. All those buildings are gray with sadness.

~~ Soji Shimada

As I walked down the street from Broadway, I paused to listen…

When I secured a teaching position in New York City in the very early 1990s, I was working as a temp at IBM in Endicott, NY. I did not like the job testing circuit boards very much, so I was quite pleased to be moving to the City. I shared my news with a fellow temp, expecting a “good luck” or “good for you”, but instead I saw him scowl and heard him say: “Do you know how many people were murdered in that cesspool last year?”

I walked away from him and his rude remark. But I took solace in the fact that in a few months, I would be living in the Big Apple. And, months later, I was looking south toward the WTC and the Empire State Building from my 26th floor studio. I was lucky.

I never did find out how many people were killed.

Yes, I paused to listen. The truth is that I didn’t hear any screams. But the buildings are gray and there is a certain sadness inherent in this city. It’s not new. It’s been here since the Dutch had a colony. (Some people I’ve talked to over the years held a firm belief that the WTC, Ground Zero, the Freedom Tower seemed to have a certain negative energy. Cold, malevolent. I’ve felt it myself.)

The city exerts a certain gravity that is more profound than many of the world’s densely populated centers. I’ve heard a woman crying in the building where I first lived. I’ve seen angry people on the streets, in the subways and in the parks.

Furthermore, I’ve listened. There are three different (maybe more) levels of life buried in the city’s quiet roar.

Dawn. The sun, rising over Queens, sometimes reflects off windows and makes it appear like multiple sunrises. It’s quiet. A few Uber’s picking up couples, head east to JFK or LGA. Students are heading to the nearby schools, are not loud yet. They sip lattes and gently jostle one another. It’s quiet.

In the brightness of the day, the taxis roar up and down Broadway. The school kids, loud and rough with each other (boys) or reaching a high C with their exuberance (girls). The smell of cannabis drifts along the avenues. The rap music blares too loud for my seventy-six-year-old ears.

On chilly nights in January, when the mists hang over the Hudson River and the sun sets too early, a special melancholy pervades the air. Sometimes I fear it. Sometimes I enjoy and absorb the quiet world of the dark streets and empty alleys. Cats screech. Distant dogs bark. A siren.

But what else does one expect in mid-winter? Scarves of wool, coats of down, can not hold back the river winds. The survival mechanism is to be found in the heart and the belief that spring is not far away and a new cycle of hope and joy. Love, forgiveness, warmth, laughter and a kiss or two can do wonders to hold back the shadows.

There are no screams, unless you really, really listen. But they are voices from a history that began so many yesterdays ago and extend back in time. The sounds, the voices, the humanity can, if you put your ear to the pavement, can take us back to the forests and farms of a pre-colonial Manhattan. Keep listening, and you will find yourself back to the primordial sea, from which we all were born.

I’ve heard the surf at Coney Island. I wonder how intense the quiet was on the shores of that ancient sea.

{A postscript: A few hours ago, I walked out of the 5th Avenue door of Mount Sinai Hospital after a routine endoscopy (I’m okay, thanks). We hailed a Yellow. The ‘hired’ light on the roof was not lit. He pulled up and asked Mariam where we were going. I thought he was going to pull to the corner and let the woman out. She was sitting in the backseat. Then he would take us to the west side. Mariam opened the back door. I stood back for the woman to get out. I was not a little shocked to find the seat empty! But I saw her through the window. Inside, I told Mariam about the woman as we crossed Central Park. I anticipated her comment. It was not a reflection of you, I said. You have a red parka. She didn’t show any red. Besides, I said, you were at the wrong angle for a reflection to be possible (I was a science teacher for years).

So, who was this woman? I did see her. I have an idea about this, but that’s another blog for another day.}

[Nighttime cityscape. Photo is mine.]