autumn

The autumn sun has made its first real appearance here since I returned from the East Coast. It’s briskly cool…and, of course, that’s fair, it’s autumn even here in South California after all…but at least the grayness that has hung over my community has gone away for the nonce.

(I’m trying to finish my novel before Thanksgiving…I like the odds of achieving that goal…but I can’t find the muse assigned to that project today so it lingers in the background while I attend to other matters.

I keep myself busy by finishing a review of Santana’s new CD (posted here) , making beef stew and cornbread for supper, and listening to Fiona Apple’s aptly-entitled Extraordinary Machine.)

When I was young (so very long ago), spring was my favorite season but now, fittingly perhaps as amble towards my dotage, I find more to savor with the coming of autumn. The days are shorter and the air is bracing (even here where we have a better chance of getting stricken by lightning than of experiencing a snowfall)…the leaves from the trees in the front yard change color and drift in brittle blankets upon my lawn and walkways…change (subtle and inevitable and inexorable) is all around and it’s all good.

Autumn brings football and rainstorms…and children wandering one magical evening as ghosts and princesses and whatnot (I’m too old for Halloween but not too old for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and I don’t sweat the irony of that); golden harvest moons and lazy, looming hunter’s moons and a time to slow down (just a bit at least) and reflect…Thanksgiving just in the distance and beyond that the heralds of Christmas and a bright new year…

Autumn…the transition between bright summer and dour winter, the beginning of an end and the end of a beginning…it is, when I allow my practiced cynicism to slip, indeed a magical time.

She Would Not Be Moved

Rosa Parks
February 1913 - October 2005

a brief political aside

Ah, politics…and especially political ads…you gotta love ‘em (or at least you gotta try to find the humor in them because otherwise you might start to seriously wonder if this is really the way we want to choose our “leaders”.)

I thought the war of words and slick televised character assassinations going on between our Governor Arnold and his most vehement adversaries, the unions for public workers (teachers, firefighters, police officers, etc.) had gotten nasty but 10 days in Virginia showed me that both sides in that little fracas are just lobbing puffballs at each other compared to the hell-raisin’ broadsides being hurled over the airwaves in the Old Dominion State.

The typical ad (no matter the office being contested: governor, lt. governor, delegate, dog catcher, whatever) went something like this: “My opponent is THE SPAWN OF SATAN! And if you elect that rascal, life as you know it will come to a cataclysmic end! They’ll be dogs and cats living together! Anarchy in the streets! Save your very souls and vote for me! I’m the reincarnation of any great leader you ever liked and I approved this totally factual ad. ” (Okay, I may be paraphrasing a little but that seemed to be the gist of it…)

And then 30 seconds or so later would come this: “I am not the spawn of Satan but I’m not surprised that my opponent is telling you that because he is EVIL INCARNATE! I love God and puppies and lowering your taxes and if you elect me I will use my mighty powers to make traffic disappear, stop hurricanes, and make life in our great state paradise on Earth! So remember: I’m the good guy, he’s EVIL INCARNATE…the choice is clear. I’m not the spawn of Satan and I approved this ad.” (Again, these may not be the exact words but that was the general flavor of the thing.)

Ah, politics…you gotta...

39,000 Feet

The world seems utterly at peace at 39,000 feet. The clouds drift aimlessly, no time to bother about where they're going or when they'll get there.

The mountains and plains and fields...the rivers and lakes and oceans...and even the cities and towns and villages...free, or at least so it seems from that lofty vantage point, from the maddening, thrilling, unpredictable, totally mundane affairs of humankind.

At 39,000 feet the world makes placid sense and it's laid out with wondrous precision and grace.

I'm not a big fan of traveling...I don't mind being elsewhere I'm just not enamored of the process of getting there...but, that said, I really don't mind at all the different perspective you get when you're high above the world.

I flew out of California yesterday morning...making my way to Virginia by way of Georgia...and I dashed off these thoughts somewhere over Texas (the in-flight movie...the insipid movie version of "Bewitched"...having absolutely no appeal to me and thus presenting me with too much time on my idle hands and my feverish imagination.) Next week I'll make the return trip and gain a bit more perspective...at 39,000 feet.

embracing chaos

It's hot. Not oppressively hot...but uncomfortable enough for we South Californians who are slaves to our usually temperate climate (the Santa Ana winds...blowing dry off the desert...are no friends to us.)

But we soldier on (being the troopers we foolishly imagine ourselves to be.)

My less frequent updating of this site is not at all connected to the weather. It is, instead, completely related to the progress of a novel...an extremely intimate work that waited for years (after several abortive starts) to come to flower now (I wasn't ready...or able...to write it before but, for whatever reason, I am now.) The eventful greater part of a year in a boy's life...it's not autobiographical (except for the parts that are.)

I eschew continuity in the writing this time...capturing scenes and chapters as they come to me and then placing them into the narrative as they fit (some entire scenes may end up not fitting at all and they will be sacrificed for the greater good of the finished work)...a modular novel of sorts.

More than two dozen characters have claimed speaking parts thus far. The prologue and first four chapters are set...the final chapter is almost completely finished...the longest, most emotionally taxing chapter (the heart of the piece) is done...other scenes and chapters are in various states of completion...the epilogue is sketched out in my head...

It's chaos. And it makes perfect sense. And, thus far, it's working (knock on wood.)

I love writing.

The War on Poverty

I'm told that I grew up poor. My mother, raising my brother and I on her own, told me that we were poor a lot while I was growing up. But, frankly, I never really believed it (and neither did my late brother...we had too much faith in and love for our mother to believe that she would lead us into real poverty no matter what she said.)

I always had a roof over my head. I always had food in my belly. I always had shoes on the feet that would grow to size 12 by the time I was in high school. I always had clothes to wear to school. I always had toys under the Christmas tree and cake on my birthday. More often than not, I had money to buy comic books (granted they only cost 12 cents back in the day) and go to the movies. I may not have had access to every whim that occurred to me...but, thanks mostly to my mother's selfless efforts and seemingly boundless strength, I never, ever felt poor.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has thrown an unblinking, sobering spotlight on the poor in this unimaginably wealthy country of ours. The sight of poor people wading through the remnants of their lives in the Gulf Coast brought home to everyone what those people already knew. A lot of us have been left behind...for reasons so varied that pointing a finger at one root cause is a study in hubris that I shall not indulge in here...when comes to achieving the so-called American Dream.

(Last week my mother told me that had Katrina hit way back when we were living in New Orleans we would have probably been among those wading through the abandoned dead and the putrid muck...I don't doubt her but I wouldn't dare presume to put myself in the shoes of those who actually did suffer through that particular hell.)

Once upon a time, President Johnson enlisted the citizens of this country in a "war on poverty". It was a noble gesture but that "war"...like President Reagan's "war on drugs" and President Bush's "war on terror"...is not one that can be won with noble gestures and windy rhetoric (in my more cynical moments I reluctantly concede that none of these "wars" may come to any kind of satisfying conclusion in my lifetime...or for a good long while after that.)

I'm told that I grew up poor. I accept that without really believing it (the child in me still naive enough to believe what I believe despite any evidence to the contrary.)

I Wish

I remember the boy. He wanted to be a super-hero. He wanted to be a rock 'n' roll star. He wanted to be the most trusted lover and the best friend. He wanted to be content enough to smile most of the time and he wanted to be wealthy enough to not to have to worry about a blessed thing.

Yeah, I remember that boy.

I wish I could hug the boy...as he's flying in the backyard (towel trailing behind him as he went) or playing air guitar with the Stones (basking in the acclaim of the adoring crowds.) I wish I could hug the boy when he's crying bitter tears over silly crushes who never knew he was even alive. I wish I could hug the boy and tell him, "it's not always gonna be okay...sometime it'll be so wonderful you won't believe it could be true...and sometimes it'll be so painful that you won't believe you can survive it... but you'll get through it."

I wish I could tell him, "your Mama loves you sure...but your brother loves you, too...and yeah even your Daddy loves you the best way he knows how...and you'll get through it."

"People will break your heart...and you'll foolishly break your own heart...you'll be the hero and the bastard...the lover and the confidant...and you'll get through it."

I wish I could hug the boy...make him learn to savor all of the laughter and all of the tears...all of the dreams and all of the realities; make him see that, in one way or another, he's going to be a super-hero...and a rock star...and a lover and a friend...a fool, a mirror, a dreamer, a slave and a freedman, a light in somebody's eye and a knife in someone's heart...a boy and a man utterly ordinary and utterly unique at once.

I wish I could reach back across the years and hug the boy..."you'll get through it"...I wish...

We Rise (refrain for September 11th)

From the smoldering rubble, we rise,

From the well of bitter tears, we rise,

From the night that seemed without end,

From the day blackened with blood and fire,

We rise…

We give thanks for the light,

prayers for the souls gone abruptly to God;

We give thanks for the magic and majesty

that shines even in the face of madness.

From the storied cities, we rise,

From the bountiful fields, we rise,

From the crucible of peace and justice,

From the land of the free and the freedmen,

We rise…

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who took the time to leave a message on Delurking Day, I really appreciate it.

I just came away from the American Red Cross site after the making the promised donation for every comment (plus a bit more for each of my fellow other Delurking Day participants and a bit more to make it a round number :-) It was much easier to get onto the site than it was a few days back...I hope that is more indicative of increased capacity (or, more likely, the fact that so many have already given) than of anything else.

Special thanks to Ella (yay you! :-) and all of the others who participated in the event.

there's a blood red circle
on the cold dark ground
and the rain is falling down
the church door's thrown open
I can hear the organ's song
but the congregation's gone...
my city of ruins...my city of ruins...

now the sweet bells of mercy
drift through the evening trees
young men on the corner like scattered leaves
the boarded up windows
the empty streets
while my brother's down on his knees...
my city of ruins...my city of ruins...

now with these hands, with these hands,
I pray Lord...
I pray for the strength, Lord...
I pray for the faith, Lord...
I pray for your love, Lord...
I pray for the strength, Lord...

come on, rise up! come on, rise up!
come on, rise UP...

"My City of Ruins"
words and music by Bruce Springsteen
(c) 2002 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

Delurk for Hurricane Relief

The amount of relief needed to help the people on the Gulf Coast survive in the short term and return to some semblance of normalcy in the long term is going to be staggering. Ella of the delightful blog Occasionally Glamourous of a Misused Youth has organized a blog community fund raiser and even though I've already made a contribution to the relief effort, I accepted the invitation to participate.

In a nutshell, for every unique comment left here on "Delurking Day"...Saturday September 3, 2005...I will donate $1.00 to the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief fund.

Say "hi"...send a prayer or a wish to the victims of the hurricane and its aftermath...read the "New Orleans" post just below this one (or any others here)...just make yourself known. It'll only take a couple of minutes. It's a small thing, of course, but every little bit can quickly add up as the blog community reaches out to one of the other communities that we all belong to (and anything that keeps attention focused on the crisis is, to my mind, all good.)

Namaste.

The Official De Lurking Day Participant List

Ella M. at The Occasionally Glamourous Results Of A Misused Youth
Kay-Dee at The Life Of A Dreamer
Jon at metempsychosis rhetoric
Woodstock at Thoughts That Come Unbidden Department
Jim Carson
J. at Tastes Like Burning
Barbara

New Orleans

I haven’t set foot in New Orleans since I was 7 years old. My family and I packed into a car…it’s been a while so I don’t remember what make of car…in June of ’63 and we made the cross country trek from the Crescent City to the City of Angels (there was a breakdown...intriguing for me, harrowing for my elders…somewhere in the expansive wilds of Texas but otherwise the trip went well.)

I lived in New Orleans…my mother grew up there…for only a few years and my memories are sporadic but some of them are still powerful.

I remember the pungently sweet aroma of my grandfather’s cigars and his easygoing smile…I remember seeing JFK in a motorcade…I remember being the valedictorian of my preschool class but refusing to give the little speech they wanted me to give…I remember the bats that sometimes hung out at night in the park down the street from our apartment…I remember catching a rubber frog from a pretty lady riding on a Mardi Gras float on the street I could see from the balcony of our apartment…I remember wanting to be a fireman…or the conductor on the streetcar that went down Napoleon Avenue.

Most of my mother’s family moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles when I was child. My grandfather died when I was child. I never had occasion to return to the city.

And still watching New Orleans battered by Hurricane Katrina and submerged by the rising waters and broken levees left in her wake leaves me with a strange melancholy…seeing streets I barely remember walking clogged with brackish water, the rubble of people’s lives, and the desperate living and the forlorn dead inspiring an illogical sense of personal loss.

Both the best and worst angels of human behavior have been on display during the first few days of the catastrophe…from New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama…people rise to their glory or choose less noble roads and actions depending on their own personal spirits, demons, desperations, needs, and impulses. I have no right to sit in judgment of any of them…I’m not there…so I won’t.

New Orleans is not my hometown…I grew up in Los Angeles and my mother still lives there and so that’s what I think of as my childhood hometown, the place that sheltered and sustained me as I grew from child to man…but I still feel a profound and personal sadness witnessing her current travails. I’d imagine that a lot of other people in this country feel much the same even if they’ve never set foot in the “Big Easy”.

* * * * *

If you want to help:

American Red Cross

Second Harvest

Operation Blessing

Father's Day (Part 3)

Some months later, Kristin made good on her promises: she delivered a healthy, caramel-colored baby boy and she went from the hospital to an airliner that carried her all the way to the other side of the country. Jason tried to convince her to stay…first by pleading and then by trying to shame her. He succeeded only in making her cry. When she left Jason felt a petulant anger, a palpable feeling of loss, and a growing sense that he was perhaps in over his head.

He pushed his fear and doubt aside…there was no time for it. With the advice and initially reluctant support of his mother and his sister, Jason learned how to be a single father as best he could.

* * * * *

With the evening wearing on, Jason Robinson takes Christopher to his crib to lay him down for the night. The child stirs as his father fussed with him. "Don't you wake up, little poop bear," Jason whispers. "It's Father's Day and your present to me is gonna be a whole night's sleep..."

Jason smiles at his optimistic hubris. "Well, maybe that's too much to ask..."

Christopher Robinson snuggles into his blanket and drifts back into the deeper, carefree sleep of the innocent.

Jason, his heart full, his eyes stinging with warm tears, looks down on his slumbering son. My boy...my boy is gonna be something, he thinks. And as he gingerly closes the door, Jason was sure that he could feel his father smiling down on both himself and on his son. As hard as the past months had been Jason feels, despite occasional times when he wanted to be shed of the responsibility he took on so willingly, like it was all worthwhile as he watches the baby slumber.

Jason eases into his favorite chair and made sure the baby monitor was working. Then he relaxes and gets lost in a familiar web of thoughts...thoughts of Christopher...of his father, who worked himself into an early grave...of his mother, who hadn't been the same since (but who had come more alive than she had been in years since Christopher was born)...and of Kristin.

Despite the fact that he hadn't heard from her in months...even when he sent her photographs of Christopher...she was still never far from his thoughts. Sometimes he resented her almost to the point of hatred…but mostly he wanted her to come back to see their son, to be with the both of them.

Almost as if on cue, there was a soft rapping at the front door. Jason starts, visitors at night being extremely rare, and then rises and walks warily over to the door.

The soft knocking is repeated once more just before Jason opens the door. He is only partially surprised at the identity of the visitor. She holds out a single red rose to him and, tears streaming down her cheek, she smiles and says, "Happy Father's Day, Jason."

Jason frowns and studies her for a long anxious moment, not sure how to deal with having exactly what he wanted. Jason shrugs and swings open the screen door. He gathers her into his arms and hugs her tight. She tenses at first but then sighs ever so softly and melts into his hug.

"Happy Father's Day, Kris," Jason says softly.

"Jason, I'm..." Kristin begins.

He puts a finger to her lips. "Hush...please don't say that you're sorry...we both had to do what we had to do…"

He bends down and kisses her, ever so gently, and she relaxes once more into his powerful embrace. Jason takes her hand and leads her into the house. "Come on, Mom," he says with a happy, hopeful smile, "it's time that you were reacquainted with...our son..."

Just before he closes the door, Jason glances up at the starry sky and nods knowingly and smiles warmly. "Maybe…just maybe…I’m two out for three now, Dad..."

soldiers on the playground

Forty years ago today the Watts Riots exploded in Los Angeles. A spark was stricken during a traffic stop on a hot summer day and the tense relationship between the community and the police department flared into a conflagration that, I would learn years later, was at once both startling and all-but- inevitable.

I was in the third grade at the time.

I lived outside of the Watts section of the city…more towards the center of town in a neighborhood that included both the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the University of Southern California…and, for the most part, the businesses and homes in our neighborhood were not being looted or put to the torch (there were a couple of exceptions but they were just that.) But we were close enough that we were under curfew…under, for all intents and purposes, martial law…for the duration of the conflict.

Two blocks from the house where I lived was a high school…Manual Arts…that I passed every day on my way to my school…Menlo Avenue Elementary. Manual Arts was one of the staging grounds for the National Guard during the Riots.

At the time, I didn’t understand why the Riots had started…I didn’t understand why people were burning down parts of the neighborhoods were they lived…I didn’t understand why we had to be off the streets by 7 PM…I didn’t understand why armed soldiers were patrolling my neighborhood not so much to protect us as to contain us…and I certainly didn’t understand why I passed tanks and soldiers mustering for war on the athletic fields and parking lots of the high school I could see from my front lawn.

I remember one morning walking past the Manual Arts parking lot and catching the eye of a young Guardsman apparently patrolling the perimeter of the chain link fence. He looked at me…I remember him seeming being both unusually pale (it was years before I realized he might have been afraid of what was to come when they marched into the heart of the riots in Watts) and unusually young for a soldier…and smiled tentatively. I waved back shyly…both fascinated and frightened by his rifle and his uniform…and went on my way to school.

In time, it was over and the fires went out and the soldiers left the high school. It was years before I understood why the Riots started at all.

Father's Day (Part 2)

Jason Robinson hated waiting rooms. There was, he thought angrily, no way to be comfortable in waiting rooms...the chairs were always too hard, the magazines too old, and the waits...the waits were always too goddamn long.

Jason had spent a great deal of time in this particular waiting room of late, pointedly ignoring the inquisitive, occasionally disapproving, glances of some of the other patients and their helpmeets. He should have been used to all of it after all of the long weeks of coming to the office.

He wasn't.

Jason yawned and rubbed his eyes with his great, brown hands. Silently, petulantly, he cursed the woman for, yet again, not allowing him to join her in the examination room. A little late, he groused with passing rancor, to worry about modesty.

Such dark thoughts quickly gave way to rosier dreams of the future...his future...their future...a sunny future filled with new life and rekindled love. Jason, ever willing to actively search out silver linings, smiled contentedly. He knew it was stupid…she had made herself perfectly clear…but he liked to think about the possibilities just the same.

And then, in turn, he thought back...back to the days when he and Kristin were fast and faithful friends despite their apparent differences. Their easy intimacy made them the butt of endless office gossip and, occasionally, lewd speculation but they pretty much ignored all that as they teetered perilously on the thin line separating friendship from romance.

However, romance seemed to have very little chance because while "everything"...their emotional compatibility, their mutual trust and burgeoning affection for each other...seemed so right, "everything"...the fact that they grew up on different coasts in very different circumstances, the fact that Kristin was almost a decade older than Jason, the fact that they were of different races...also seemed so wrong.

Their friendship had kept at a status quo until one fateful night when longing and loneliness and a shared bottle of wine combined to lead them into a wildly-passionate night of blissful lovemaking.

The uneasy admixture of relief and regret that they woke with the following morning had subtly colored the memory ever since. And when, almost as a matter of course, Kristin found that their night of indulged passion had created a child, the regret was magnified.

Kristin James smiled perfunctorily at her doctor when he patted her distended abdomen as they were re-entering the waiting room. The doctor murmured something to the receptionist and then disappeared back into the examination rooms.

She casually double-checked her upcoming appointments while Jason waited by the exit.

Once they finally got back into Jason's car, Kristin gently rubbed her belly. "He's okay," she said, casually breaking the icy silence between them, "the baby's healthy as a horse."

Jason noted a hint of bitterness in her voice but, not wanting to get into yet another argument, he let it pass without comment. The baby...his baby...was okay. He started the car and pulled out. He took a deep breath and said, "Kris, I'm..."

Kristin interrupted him with an irritated sigh. "Oh, sweet Jesus, please don't say that you're sorry again, Jason!" she said, the edge in her voice somehow being blunted by her New England accent. "You know that you're not sorry! You talked me out of...ending this..."

"You wouldn't have had an abortion no matter what," he replied resolutely though he really wasn’t sure that he was correct; at one point that was the avenue she was leaning towards.

"Maybe not," she said wistfully. "But we'll never know for sure, will we?" The sarcasm in her voice was aimed equally at Jason and at herself.

They fell silent. Kristin gazed absently out the window, lost in her own thoughts. The thought of presenting her father with a...mulatto grandchild...filled her with a dread the like of which she thought she had left in childhood. He simply would not understand. Or approve. Or accept. He simply wouldn't.

That said, the idea of aborting Jason's baby...her baby...had been almost equally abhorrent. Almost.

After turning down, with more than a little reluctance, all of Jason's dutiful proposals of marriage...her father wouldn't understand a black husband any better than a half-black grandchild...Kristin agreed to carry the child to term and give him to Jason to raise as Jason had pleaded with her to do.

She would quit California and, just as her father had predicted when she left, return home to New England to regroup...and, hopefully, to forget the pieces of herself that she would surely be leaving behind.

"Kris?" Jason said softly, disrupting her reverie.

Kristin glanced around; they had arrived at her apartment building.

Jason got out of the car and came around and opened the passenger door. He took one of her delicately pale hands into his leathery brown ones and helped her out of the car. "I'm really sorry that you have to go through so much discomfort," he said. "I know you're only going through with this because of me...because I twisted your arm..."

"...not completely..." she replied enigmatically.

Their eyes met for the first time that day and they both smiled self-consciously.

"Need any help getting to your place?" Jason asked.

"Don't fret so much, Jason," she replied with a dismissing wave. "I'm not an invalid," she continued, "I'm only pregnant..."

She patted her stomach and then rose up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "Happy Father's Day, Jason," she said with an earnest tenderness that surprised both of them.

She turned on her heels and disappeared into the building before he could react or reply.

Jason touched his cheek at the place where Kristin's kiss still burned sweetly and he frowned pensively. For the umpteenth time, Jason wondered what it was he was getting himself into. Who the hell was he to think that he was ready to be somebody’s father? He sighed. Ready or not, that was exactly was he was about to be. “Happy Father’s Day,” he murmured with equal measures of wonder, fear, and rancor in his voice.

Sleep Writing

Last night I slept fitfully for some reason. Not sure why...it was humid but it's been humid, off and on, for a little while now. At some point...round about 3 AM (and yes I remember thinking about the Matchbox 20 song "3 AM", I very often associate music with things going on in my life...including and especially the seemingly insignificant moments)...new pages for my novel in progress flooded into my head.

Or at least I thought they did.

At this point, the separation between the dreaming world and the waking world was quite blurry and so the scene of me tumbling out of bed, powering up the computer, and, after my eyes had adjusted to the intense glare of the computer screen (did you know these things shine like the sun in the 3 AM darkness? Yeah, me neither...), adding 3 new pages to the manuscript could have been either a vivid dream or an unawake reality.

Stumbling out of bed (again?) at 7:30 after continuing the fitful slumbering for a few more hours, I had my first cup of tea and made my way here...to the computer. Microsoft Word was open as was Soul Deep. But there weren't 3 new pages...there were 5 new pages.

Wow. Sleep writing. Unbridled creative impulse or troubling sign of an unchecked id? You decide...me, I'm just going to go with the flow (hey the pages flow nicely into the ongoing narrative and that's all good with me :-)

* * *

After reading over the pages, I checked the e-mail and found a copy of press release announcing that I was one of three inaugural winners of a biannual writing contest. New pages written into my novel while half sleep and now $400 worth of swag for another story...this writing stuff is pretty cool sometimes :-)

Father's Day (Part 1)

Christopher Robinson soars up into the gathering twilight, afloat on angel's wings and without an earthly care. And, when gravity exercises its inexorable domain and he begins to descend, Christopher feels even less afraid...he knows his father's strong hands will catch him before any harm comes to him.

Christopher Robinson gurgles happily in the soft leathery expanse of his father's hands. Jason Robinson, for his part, holds back warm, soothing, laughing tears that always come unbidden when his baby smiles.

As the sun slides down beyond the burnt orange horizon and the night sky cools from blue to black, Jason Robinson looks up at the gathering stars and back down into the open, trusting eyes of his son.

Jason lifts his son up to the endless expanse of the night. "Behold," he says feeling just a bit self-conscious but imagining that his voice carries the authority of James Earl Jones, "the only thing greater than yourself..."

Jason smiles at his own hubris and brings Christopher back down into a protective hug. The baby gurgles happily again, sharing feelings in a language that we all come into the world knowing but which is forever lost once the words and concepts of humankind are forced upon us.

Jason walks up the stairs of his little house and sits in the rocking chair on the porch.

As they rock, Christopher snuggles against his father...listens to the comforting rhythm of Jason's heart...and drifts into a dream world beyond adult imagining.

As they rock, Jason smiles and thinks about his father.

"My boy is gonna be something," Eli Robinson always said to anyone who would listen. "Not a goddamn truck driver like his old man, but something important!"

Jason never knew what to say when his father said things like that...he hadn't even been sure what it meant...but it always stayed with him.

"You're gonna have a good life, boy," Eli had told him often. "Find yourself a good woman like your Mama...make some babies...be somebody important...a good life, you hear me?"

Well, Dad, Jason thought wistfully, I'm one for three so far. He continues to rock his slumbering son and smiles contentedly. Maybe...just maybe...that was all that was important.

He looks up to the night sky once more. "Happy Father's Day, Dad."

...and they're off!

I am not now...and nor shall I ever be...a serious gambler. But for a few short weeks in the summer I do love the ponies :-)

The thoroughbred horseracing season at Del Mar...where, as Bing Crosby croons in the track's theme song, "the turf meets the surf"...opened this past week and today was the first of several Sundays where I take time out to enjoy the ambiance...the excitement...the relaxation...of the "sport of kings".

The week's humidity had calmed down but the short trip north (it's just a 15 minute drive from where I live) to the soft shores of quaint Del Mar led to even more comfortable air to breathe.

I love the feel of this racetrack...the cool sea breezes wafting in from literally just yards away, the majesty of the glorious animals running with controlled abandon, the cheery camaraderie of the people (the serious gamblers and the casual fans alike...for two minutes at a time, all of us are focused in one gloriously thrilling wave of energy on the huge animals being guided by tiny people in gaudy garb.)

I lost more than I won this week...but the victories were more sweet than the defeats were sour...and I had a grand time. And next Sunday, my partner-in-crime Miguel and I will go back and do it again. It's a gentler madness.

And now, having used my Sunday thusly, I return to work...work to be completed, chapters to be written, bills to be paid...ready to take it all on with a lighter heart.

Blame it on Harry Potter

I just realized that it's been over a week since I last posted here.

I blame boys in novels...mine and J.K. Rowling's...for the absence.

I've been working on my own novel...a very personal story based loosely (very loosely...it is not autobiographical...except for the parts that are) on a specific series of events from my childhood...and have spent the last two days reading the latest Harry Potter tome (about which more here) and have had scant time to linger in the blogosphere as a result.

It's a strange and wonderful thing when words...the ones flowing from you and the magical ones woven by others...take greedy chunks of time with nary a care for whatever else you might want to do :-)

I come up for air...the city, wrapped today in sheaths of debilitating humidity and in seemingly endless waves of political turmoil, conspires to shake my concentration...and immediately look forward to (done with Mr. Potter for the nonce) to diving back into the sea of words trying to turn into Soul Deep (the working title of my novel.)

Perseverance furthers.

and above all...

The sudden deaths in London...like those in Iraq and Israel and any and every place that death comes on sudden, violent wing...could sap our will, make us surrender to fear. But they will not...they cannot...

Above all...in this brave, wondrous, occasionally terrifying world...we need to hold on with all of our puny mortal might to something which keeps us striving forward.

And above all...when the echoes of yesterday and the storms of today and the portents of tomorrow conspire to assault the gates of our emotional fortresses...when they seek to raze the fields of our flinty courage and sow bitter weeds of fear and discontent...we need something that will stand firm in the most daunting of circumstances.

And above all...when the night is cold and the children within us scream silently into the darkness...when the children within us cry plaintively against the numbing fear that reason cannot allay...we need something to shine a light, a light to fix on and... dance with...until the next golden dawn.

And above all...even as the years weigh us down with cynicism and grief, heartbreak and too much (or too little) knowledge of God, Man, and the expansive, all-encompassing Universe, we need something beyond truth...something greater than wisdom...some even more wondrous than love...or faith...or charity...to keep our spirits high and our passions in perspective.

And above all...when the world seems to be spinning out of control...when "right" and "wrong" are concepts seemingly beyond our reckoning...when the spark of life seems to be just outside of our grasp....we need something to stoke life's flame and lead us further down the road toward a bright forever.

And above all...we need hope.

Happy Anniversary

One year ago...on Monday July 5, 2004....I started blogging with a short, innocuous post (see here) which was quickly followed with a recap of a visit to the local County Fair (see here.) Time really does fly when...well, you know...

I'm not exactly sure how many posts have been presented on this site since that beginning (Blogger's stat-thing stopped counting at 196 some months ago) but there's been a bunch of them...short stories, sprawling serials, vignettes, the occasional photo, meme, or poem, tributes, personal asides, experiences, and observations, some navel gazing (including answering one of the Proust Questionnaires and later writing "roughly 950 words" about myself), even some political stuff early on (I stopped because there are plenty of others doing that more passionately than I could or would want to)...some more interesting than others but all having some merit (at least to me) when they were published.

I doubt that many people were reading this blog for the first few months (I didn't join any services like Blog Explosion until January of this year) but I wrote for it regularly just the same. It was, as I said in the first post, a way of keeping focused on my writing (Bread and Roses had an earlier incarnation as a self-published literary journal which had a small but loyal subscription base.)

Looking back through the archives, it's been an intriguing, often engaging experience. I've discovered interesting blogs (all of the wonderful sites on the blogroll on the left and many, many more as well), been cheered, charmed, and challenged by comments, and have basically had a grand year.

Onward to year two...who knows what I/we will discover in the space in the days and weeks and months to come. As a wise man once said: perseverance furthers.

Namaste, y'all (and thank you very much for your kind attention.)

This Land...

I've roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
through the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
and all around me a voice was calling
this land was made for you and me...

On its birthday, we consider then America. America the beautiful. America the bold and the brave. America the brash, the ugly, the glorious, the foolish. America. Your America (for in a pervasive...some might say perverse...way, there is a measure, however small, of America in each of us regardless of nation of origin or allegiance.)

My America.

Forged in a crucible of blood and sweat and tears. Blood and sweat and tears spilled in the name of peace and freedom and justice...in the name of love and hate and progress...in the name of glory...in the name of faith and adventure and Manifest Destiny.

Blood and sweat and tears spilled in the name of divine right and divine retribution...in the name of the almighty dollar...in the name of an almighty God.

Blood and sweat and tears spilled from sea to shining sea and many, many points beyond...from the hallowed shadow of Plymouth Rock to the venerated depths of Pearl Harbor...from the desperate chill of Valley Forge to the unspeakable fire of Ground Zero...from the bloody fields of Gettysburg to the battered streets of Baghdad...

...from California to the New York Island
from the Redwood forest to the Gulf stream waters
this land was made for you and me...

We consider then America. A boisterous, preposterous, amazing, tumultuous, undeniable child-state (229 years being a brief season on the sprawling timeline of great nations) loudly playing out its bright hour upon the stage.

I embrace and treasure America...unabashedly but not blind to its shortcomings...for all that it is and all that I hope and pray it can and will be. For it is...in all of its glories as well as all of its foibles...it is mine. And yours. And ours.

And for my part, all that it is in deed and in spirit...all that it has been (in moments both glorious and infamous)...all that it can and should be in the unknowable future...is as much a part of me as I am a part of it.

...well the sun came shining and I was strolling
through wheat fields and dust clouds rolling
and voice was sounding as the fog was lifting
saying this land was made for you and me...

From a cynical optimist (and a patriotic cynic) to all of my fellow Americans: Happy Birthday, y'all :-)

"This Land is Your Land"
words and music by Woody Guthrie
(c)1956 Ludlow Music, Inc. (BMI)

Bobby

Every June I think about Bobby. (He comes to mind at other times during the year, of course, but during June especially because it was on a sunny L.A. day in June when I last saw him.)

Bobby and I were polar opposites in a lot of ways...and not just because I was black and he was white. Bobby short and waif-like; I was tall and bear-like. Bobby was effusive and gregarious (due to a bubbly nature that he chose not to try to restrain); I was reticent and aloof (due to shyness more than arrogance.) Bobby loved rhythm and blues to exclusion of any other kind of music; I liked r&b but I was also an unabashed rock and roll guy. Polar opposites...and, for too brief a season, the best of friends.

Bobby and I attended Louis Pasteur Junior High and during our 9th grade year...1970-1971...we came together. Honestly I really don't remember exactly how or when...it just seems like he was always there during that year. We laughed at things that other people didn't get at all...we shared things (dreams and the like) with each other that teenaged boys didn't often easily share with others...sometimes we fought like brothers (and made up without anyone saying "I'm sorry" out loud.)

Bobby and I were indeed best friends.

The last day we spent together was sunny day in June...the day we "graduated" Junior High. The school auditorium was too small to allow the class to graduate altogether while accommodating friends and family who wanted to be there so the class was split...half attending a ceremony in the morning, the rest having their "graduation" in the early afternoon. My ceremony was in the morning; Bobby's, almost as a matter of course, was in the afternoon.

I went through my ceremony, then got congratulated by family and friends and then I waited alone outside the auditorium while Bobby went through his. I waited for him to be congratulated by his family and then we, still resplendent in our new suits, went off to celebrate the day together. We went to McDonald's for lunch, chatting up some girls we knew from school who happened to be there too. We walked the neighborhood, talking about what we were going to do during the summer, ending up at an amusement arcade (playing pinball and miniature golf.) We went to a local department store to buy 45's...r&b for him...rock for me.

We lingered on the corner where our paths home diverged for the longest time, talking about everything and nothing. And then we went our separate ways.

The next day I was on a plane heading for a summer in Pennsylvania (where my grandmother and the rest of my father's side of the family lived.) When I got back, Bobby had moved (his mother moved them a lot...I was never sure why) and I never knew where he had gone.

I've always wondered what happened to Bobby (I've searched online occasionally but have found nothing...maybe it's for the best, maybe the fondest memories are intended to be just that...memories.)

I've imagined that he found a great love, someone who embraced his wonderfully weird sense of humor and his open heart and his r&b soul, and has lived happily ever after being who he wanted to be and doing what he wanted to do. Yeah, that would be cool...and I pray that it is just so (after all, that's what best friends do for each other, right? :-)

One Last Drink Before Good Night

“You were a bit of a bastard to me near the end.” She said it with unshakeable belief in the truth of her pronouncement.

He nodded, vaguely and thoughtfully, and stared back at her. “You had your moments, too.”

She winced. And then she smiled…a bit guiltily, a bit shyly, a bit angrily, a bit coquettishly…and nodded. “We were quite the pair,” she agreed.

“Breaking up will do that to you,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too cavalier.

She smiled again, more ruefully this time. “I try to remember all of the lies, all of the cruel things you said the last time we spoke…I try to keep hating you…but mostly I remember the times we were happy. Isn’t that funny?”

It wasn’t funny…despite the acrimonious way we parted ways, he mostly remembered the times when they were happy, too. “I never lied to you,” he said, trying not to sound overly defensive. “At least I don’t think I did.”

Her smile slid away. “You let me believe things between us were going someplace they never were going to go,” she said, just a bit testily. “Isn’t that a lie?”

He curbed a tart retort. He took a shallow breath and said, “I said what I said…you heard what you wanted to hear…maybe we were both guilty of lying…to ourselves and to each other…”

She started to say something but thought better of it. “Maybe…” she replied warily, as if the implications of that were something she’d rather not deal with just then.

His mind wandered, remembering the way she sighed ever so sweetly when they used to kiss…the way she softly arched her body when he ran his finger down the small of her back…the way soft electricity surged through his body every time she tasted that one spot on the nape of his neck…and then he drew himself back. It was nostalgia…sweet nostalgia to be sure…but mere nostalgia just the same.

“Think we could ever be friends again? She asked, quite unsure of the true answer herself.

“I dunno,” he said, though he had a sobering inkling that they probably could not.

“Me either,” she said, just a tad wistfully.

They tabled that discussion. They smiled at each other…full of things that would not, could not, probably should not be spoken…and then they ordered one last drink before “good night”.

(not) a whole lotta shakin' goin' on

So I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas this morning...sipping tea, enjoying an interesting reports about Toulouse Lautrec, Mark Twain's house, and the celebrity/paparazzi wars on Sunday Morning, basically just easing into a cool, grey, quiet weekend morning...when the Earth moves. Just a bit. Just a distinct rolling motion. Just for a scant few seconds. (It radiated, according to news reports, out of the desert...5.5 on the Richter Scale there, considerably less potent by the time it reached us here on the coast.)

I've lived in Southern California for most of my life so earthquakes have to be of relatively substantial strength for me to really notice them (we get itty-bitty quakes all the time...the vast majority of them meriting neither notice nor comment from jaded Californians.)

The dog, sleeping on the floor next to the couch, didn't stir. The cats, claiming slumber space in various parts of the house, shrugged it off. I waited for a minute or two to see if there would be an aftershock (more out of curiosity than concern) and then shrugged myself and slipped back into my lazy morning...hey, Sunday Morning was doing a story about wiener dog races in Texas by then, now that was interesting! :-)

My Love is with You

The twilight is cold and still…and so too is Richard Fairbanks, Sr. In the next room, the others talk amongst themselves reverently…sorrowfully…bravely. In his sitting room, Richard Fairbanks, Sr. stares into the darkness, the half bottle of 20-year-old scotch he’d drunk during the past couple of hours not making the slightest dent in his anger and his pain. A small envelope, distended out of shape by the cassette tape inside, sits accusingly on the small table next to his plush chair. Richard Fairbanks, Sr. gives that no thought either. It doesn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Earlier in the day, he had buried his only son.

Richard Fairbanks, Jr. had grown up as the proverbial apple of his father’s eye…a reflection and a tribute, one man’s life echoed and amplified in the flowering of another. They were the best of friends with a bond so intimate and strong that Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks, doting wife and mother, had always felt vaguely excluded in the house in which she was the emotional foundation that made it a home.

And so it was for 19 years until the blackest day (before this one) in the life of Richard Fairbanks, Sr. On a day that Richard Fairbanks, Sr. remembers as being gray and stormy (though in fact it was quite balmy and blue), his only child…the son of his soul…broke his father’s unsuspecting heart with a simple declarative statement: “Dad, I’m gay.”

The air had rushed out of the room with a thunderous howl and Richard Fairbanks, Sr. had found himself tumbling through a chaotic haze (he doesn’t remember the acid tears and cruel invective…but they were there just the same) and when the air returned, the front door was slamming in the wake of his only son and his wife’s eyes were regarding him with the daunting mixture of volcanic rage and icy accusation.

Six years passed. Letters and Father’s Day cards were returned unopened. Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks hovered in more distant orbits around her husband’s increasingly bitter and unforgiving life. Richard Fairbanks, Sr. thought of his only son constantly but spoke of him to no one. In whispers and echoes and eavesdropping on his wife’s end of phone conversations he gathered information about his son’s life…tales of love won and lost, activism proudly indulged, a bright, blossoming path that Richard Fairbanks, Sr. could barely comprehend.

And then, three prior to his blackest day, an unusually late evening phone call…tears and anguish from behind Marilyn Boyd-Fairbanks’ locked bedroom door…the words of vapid newscaster blandly telling the tale after the second commercial break: “gay activist…Rich Fairbanks…arriving home after talk show appearance…bullet from speeding pickup…died en route to hospital…”

And now, Richard Fairbanks, Sr. reaches for the scotch only to accidentally brush the envelope onto the floor. A tall young man with liquid, sad and unforgiving, eyes…Scott something or other…had pressed into Richard Fairbanks, Sr.’s hands…”Rich wanted you to have this.”

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. puts aside his glass and retrieves the envelope and opens it. The cassette tumbles out along with a folded sheet of paper. He unfolds the paper, instantly recognizing his son’s handwriting, and he reads it barely comprehending the words. He takes the tape and crosses the room. He places the tape into the stereo and plays it.

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. gives a start as propulsive music begins to play. He crosses back to his chair and takes up the letter again. He listens as the singer…identified at the top of the letter as Stevie Wonder…begins to sing:

…I was just walking down the street,
looking forward to seeing the friends
I was to meet…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr., a dyed-in-the-wool Sinatra fan, wonders why his son chose this song. He reads the letter: “Dear Dad, If you are reading this then I am gone…probably murdered. I’ve tried to get in touch with you for years but you rebuffed me every time. I hope that we can finally make our peace…”

Stevie sings:
….I started to turn to go back
and they up and blew me away…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. murmurs inaudibly. …listen to the song, Dad. Listen and remember me always…

…though my life they’ve taken,
they can’t take what we’ve shared.
spread the love I’ve given and I’ll be there…
my love is with you, wherever you are,
my love is with you…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. glances up into the gathering darkness as his foolish heart sheds some of the ice he had willfully placed around it for years. He barely notices the tears falling like winter rain on the paper making blue-black pools in the words written there.

….when you’re joyful, when you’re lonely,
when you’re happy, when tears are streamin’
right down your face….
my love is with you, my father,
I’m with you…

Richard Fairbanks, Sr. looks at the letter, his tired, shattered heart full of love, regret, aching sadness, and boundless loss…Despite it all, I always loved you, Dad. Never forget that. My love is with you. As always, Richie…he rises from the chair as the song ends and walks towards the door, towards the company of the other people who loved Richard Fairbanks, Jr….towards the company of the other people who loved his only son.

“My Love is With You”
words and music by Stevie Wonder
©1995 Stevland Morris Music (ASCAP)

a sublimely obvious truth

We built castles out of sawdust and imagination on a gray June day (it’s often gray in San Diego in early June; the weathercasters gave it a name…”June gloom”…and we have long since made our peace with it.)

We marveled at hummingbirds and brown doves that came to dance in the fountain in the garden or partake of some of the seeds set out to fill their avian bellies.

We took the time to literally stop and smell the roses (the yellow ones, the red ones, the white ones, and, especially, the pink ones…my companion loves pink.)

We walked “far, far away” and back again in almost less time than it took to tell the tale.

And on a train and a swing and an expressway between the land of snakes and the castles of princesses…all of which being embodied in the form of a rope secured between two trees in the front yard…my companion dangled from on high with the gleeful abandon and almost unlimited energy that is part and parcel of the experience of almost all four-year-olds.

“Whoa,” said I holding my companion securely as she reached for the ground with a soft symphony of giggles echoing through her small frame, “that’s a long way down! Aren’t you afraid?”

My companion frowned for an instant and then shook her head. “I’m not going to fall,” she said with calm assurance, “not while you’re holding me, Papa.”

Yeah. How silly of me to even raise such a foolish question.

Blogs of Note: Waking Ambrose

Undaunted by the passage of time and the shifting of social norms, Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary remains a wondrous treasure trove for word lovers and for observers of the human condition. Its acerbic wit, biting social commentary, and sly whimsy are...sometimes lost or arcane words and phrases notwithstanding...as potent, provocative, and illuminating today as they were in Bierce's day (he was born in 1842.)

I hadn't read much of Bierce's work after leaving college (so very many years ago) but, much to my delight, this site re-introduced me to the Dictionary (as the work is in public domain, it is available online but, ever the book lover, I preferred to get a copy from my friendly neighborhood bookseller.)

With Waking Ambrose, Doug Pascover deftly updates entries from the Dictionary (juxtaposing the original Bierce entries alongside clever new offerings on various words) with appealing wit and thought-provoking aplomb. It's a delightful, compelling site that, agree or disagree with individual entries, is consistently worthy of time and attention. I invite you to go there and be amused...to be challenged...to be given food for thought...to be outraged (if you must)...to be enthralled (I know I am.)

The Dance

Part of me was sure that she wouldn’t come.

She and I had tried to become “us” at the wrong time…in the wrong place. That almost never works.

We danced and shadowboxed, flirting and kissing and then running back to our respective corners, knowing it would never be want we thought we wanted it to be. But we were lonely…we were young…we were just foolish enough to believe that nothing could stop us if we put our minds to it and put our naïve hearts together.

Yeah…that almost never works either.

We drifted, looking for a graceful way to embrace the inevitable, wanting absolution once we accepted that what we thought we wanted was never to be. It’s not about your daddy, said I. It’s not about your mother, said she. It’s not about the gulfs of race and experiences and lives mapped out before we had a chance to figure out who we were, said we…as if lying to ourselves…as if lying to each other…would somehow make it all better. That almost…

We moved on, flowing with time and heartache to different, distant shores. I ignored the invitation to her wedding; she (and her husband) accepted the invitation to mine. We laughed about “old times”…now colored in bittersweet shades of amber and rust…and vowed to keep in touch. That…

We met in the place we used to go to…a small bar several put upon years beyond charming…on the anniversary of the first night our hearts quickened almost beyond comprehension because my dark hand was resting on her pale breast. I sat alone for a few moments and just as I was on the verge on cursing myself for a fool, she appeared.

We smiled…slowly, awkwardly, guiltily, shyly, lovingly…and shared a drink. She went over to the jukebox and played the song…she held out her hand and I drew her close…my arm slipping easily, comfortably around her slender waist. I delighted in her familiar aroma…honeysuckle and cigarette smoke…that had long ago seared itself sweetly into my consciousness. We closed our eyes and danced…slowly, awkwardly, guiltily, shyly, lovingly…until the music stopped.

She touched my face…I kissed her forehead….we giggled like children and walked out of that place gingerly holding hands. In the street we made no promises…told no lies…embracing the moment for what it was we nodded knowingly and then, fighting the urge to look back just one more time, we went home to our different, distant shores.

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance...

“The Dance” words and music by Tony Arata

- for LDC -