Crazy

He sat in the oppressive, welcoming solitude of his room staring at the wall and holding back acid tears. Maybe I’m going crazy, he thought, finding some solace in the contentment he imagined that being mad might bring; maybe I’m already crazy and just am the last one to know.

He woke with light flowing through his being…full of energy and purpose…but, seemingly out of the blue, the light faded and the grayness consumed him before the morning was done. He was tired. He was achy. And he was sad…profoundly, unfathomably sad…and he couldn’t put his finger on why. Or, more likely, he didn’t want to put his finger on the many reasons why. Didn’t matter, it was what it was…and it had no outlet.

There was no one to talk to…no one who would really listen…only those who would hear just a little and then turn the conversation back to their own concerns. That was okay most of the time…his life was filled with attentive listening, it was the one thing people both loved and resented him for…but in that moment he just couldn’t bear it.

So he sat…in the oppressive, welcoming, bitter solitude of his room staring at the ceiling and holding back self-pitying tears. Maybe it would be more peaceful being mad…being freed from the shackles of his life, blissfully unaware of nothing more portentous than the passing of days and the songs of windborne birds…maybe crazy people had no communion with sadness…with isolation…with self-doubt and self-pity.

Maybe.

But I’m not crazy, he thought ruefully, and I guess I don’t really wish I were. But sometimes…sometimes…

He sat in the oppressive, welcoming, bitter, safe solitude of his room staring out the window and holding back un-manful tears…maybe he needed to hit something…maybe he needed to kiss someone with passionate abandon…maybe he needed to let slip the tears and let the sadness wash out of him…maybe he needed to go a little bit crazy so he could return to being a little bit sane.

Maybe…

He shrugged and chuckled at his hubris. With a sigh he closed his eyes and sat back. This too, he knew from experience, would pass. This too would pass.

America

America doesn’t always live up to its promise. But its promise is still something worth striving for…worth dreaming of…worth fighting and dying for if need be. I am a cynical patriot but I am indeed a patriot and no one can gainsay that fact.

Blind, unthinking loyalty to anything or anyone is a fool’s path; knee-jerk disavowal of everything this country thinks it is...everything this country wants to be…is also a fool’s path. As with most things in this world, the truth lies somewhere in between strident, inflexible extremes…this is certainly true here in America…our generous, arrogant, naïve, myopic, our hard-hearted and inflexible, open-minded and open-hearted America… our complex , often marvelously and infuriatingly so, America.

Here in the 21^st Century, America is looking for its way…we’re fighting wars on distant soils and building walls on our borders…we’re reeling still from the knowledge that our shores are not immune from terror and chaos and sudden brutal deaths by the score; we are a nation united by history, hubris, and hope…we are a nation fractured along ever-fluid lines of politics, race, religion, pride, and culture.

We are America…for better and for worse…in times of peace and in times of war…in times of joy and pride and in times of sorrow and shame…in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) celebrates us and in times when the rest of the world (rightly or wrongly) reviles us.

We are America…the sons and daughters of many distant lands…the sons and daughters of adventurers and outcasts…the sons and daughters of slaves and freedmen…the sons and daughters of visionaries and madmen, of pirates and craftsmen, of warriors and peacemakers, of saints and scoundrels, of builders and destroyers, of emancipators and bigots, of heroes and villains…the sons and daughters of uncommon wizards and countless everyday folk…

We are America…we don’t always live up to our promise…maybe we never will completely…but it’s our birthday and attention must be paid just the same.

150 Words: Hungry Heart

The old man listened intently. The boy was babbling but the old man knew he needed to babble so he listened intently and patiently.

The boy…the younger man really…went on about his anger, his disappointments, his heartaches, his fruitless search to find someone who will love him the way he wants and needs to be loved. The boy admitted some hubris and even some foolishness; he admitted some fantasy and some darkness of which he was reluctant to speak of in greater detail.

The old man nodded, puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, and listened intently, patiently.

And when the boy ran out of words he looked into the old man’s face. “So what do you think?”

The old man let slip a fragrant cloud of smoke and looked into the boy’s eyes. “Everybody’s got a hungry heart.” The old man stood up, patted the boy’s shoulder and walked away humming.

Pop Culture blogging: Neverending Rainbow
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All of My Children

All of my daughters…all of my sons…all of my children…live in a place of light and shadow, memory and hope without bounds, and they dance with me and laugh with me and keep me forever in their forever hearts.

And so it is…and so it is…

All of my sons…and all of my daughters…live in the world extant, a place of magic and heartache, passion and pain, light and shadow…memory and hope…they share no blood with me and they dance with me for brief seasons as they need and want to…and they make me smile from my heart and sing soft songs of praise to the universe in thanks for them just being.

And so it is…and so it is…

All of my children…hold fast in love and dreams…in that which was and that which never was to be…in places of light and shadow, in places of memory and hope without bound, in the world extant and the universe eternal.

And so it is…and so it is…

- for A, P, M, S, and the four J’s -

I dreamed about my friend Lori last night...

I dreamed about my friend Lori last night. I still think of us as friends even though it’s far too many years since I last heard from her.

Dreams are strange things…we all know that…and I’m always intrigued when people I haven’t actively thought about in a while show up in my dreams and make such a powerful impression that they linger with me into the waking hours.

I wonder how the world is treating her…she was a girl of radiant, fragile beauty and quiet, wounding melancholy and for a brief season I wanted nothing more than to give her safe harbor from the unforgiving seas of disappointment and pain that buffeted her far too often.

I hope that she’s safe.

I hope that she’s happy.

I hope that she’s in the company of somebody who sincerely loves and appreciates her.

And I hope that she thinks about me every once in a while and that the memory makes her smile the shy, secret smile she used to share with me when she let her guard down and relaxed into my safe harbor.

(Me and Lori in the administrative offices of Max Factor & Co. in Hollywood, CA circa 1979)

Father's Day

I picked out the names of my first son and my first daughter when I was 12. It was apropos of nothing but it felt right and I went with it. I wrote them down in a diary I was I keeping at the time and carried them in my heart from that moment on.

I always wondered if the little humans I helped to create would fit those names or if they would come into the bright world with other names the universe gave to them. I was cool either way…the names weren’t remarkably original or anything, they just felt “right”…but I carried them just the same.

I never got to use them. Because I never got to actually co-create a child.

But I did get to be a father just the same. And I think I had some good moments.

I would be lying if I said there wasn’t some sense of loss in not being a biological father but I only dwell upon that, quite fleetingly, in extremely rare moments…life is what it is…things happen in this life as they are supposed to and not as we might want them to… and I have nothing complain about in this area.

(My life has always been blessed by the joy and magic of children…babies and toddlers have always seemed to like me…felt safe with me…for some reason…maybe they recognize someone close to their emotional age…maybe that’s not really a good thing after all… :-)

Father’s Day always makes me think about the men who became fathers. The good ones (like so many I know and have known) delight and amaze me. The not-so-good ones (like mine) are still worthy of acknowledgement for having brought new life to the great pool of human energy and experience.

And so…to all the Dads, Papas, Daddies, Poppies, Padres…to all the Fathers…thanks.

And Happy Father’s Day.

6/13/81

We played tag with the languid surf on a Santa Monica night

and then laughed like children as frigid water

washed over our naked feet

making us long for our shoes;

We raced back to the van and its lazy heater,

We snuggled together sharing body warmth…

Don’t fall in love with me, you said,

I won’t, I said, only half-lying,

and then we kissed anyway.

your kiss

you would laugh, perhaps just a bit unkindly,

if I told you…if I tried to make you remember…

if I tried to get you to do that dance again;

I shrug, perhaps just a bit ruefully,

I hold my jaded tongue

and acknowledge the obvious…

the memory of your kiss still makes me smile.

The Ghost of Maude

The ghost of Maude doesn’t visit me often. But I’m always blessed when she does and last night, in the middle of a particularly active and vaguely unsettling dreamtime, she visited me once more.

My grandmother…Maude (everyone called her Mom)…was 96 years old when she died. I didn’t know her as well as I wanted to but the times we did have together…sitting at the little table by the window in her always delightfully fragrant kitchen as she cleaned green beans and told me wonderful, beguiling, bittersweet stories of her rich life…will linger with me until I pass on back into the light.

“What’s botherin’ you, Buddy?”…my father is no fan of his given name and early on adopted the nickname “Bud”, my grandmother took to calling me, his first born son, “Buddy” almost as a matter of course…she was the only one I allowed to call me that into adulthood.

Mom rarely smiled but her eyes were always bright with savvy and patience and unspoken, but unmistakable mischief…she had proud, angular reddish brown features…she looked like she was as much Native American as she was Black…and she wasn’t smiling as she appeared out of a shadow in my dream.

“Don’t know, Mom,” I lied…I was so pleased to see her that I wasn’t going to waste her time with my navel-gazing even in dreamtime.

“No need to lie to me, child,” she said, drifting close and touching my face, “you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied hanging my head.

Mom put her thin, delicate, red-brown hand on my cheek and lifted my face up to look at hers…with her smiling eyes and unsmiling mouth…and winked. “Gon’ be okay.”

I smiled. The shadows swirled around us. And the ghost of Maude was gone. And I fell…into deeper, unremembered… or dreamless…sleep.

150 Words: Citadel

He stood on top of the citadel wall and looked down. The world…the whole wide blue green gold gray black and white world…spread out as far at the eye could see. There were a few people making half-hearted attempts to breach the wall but they couldn’t find it in themselves to care enough to put much effort into it and so they left leaving their expectations and disappointments nailed to the citadel door and went off to find more interesting pastimes to pursue.

Somewhere someone was playing Bach…and someone else was playing Skynyrd…someone was chanting with Coltrane (…a love supreme…a love supreme…)…and someone was mocking him with rueful Paul Simon songs. He shrugged…he’d heard it all before… and slipped back into the citadel where shadows danced for him…and memory played tricks for him…and yesterdays swirled into tomorrows and his heart, mayhap too long dormant, played none of it much heed.

150 Words: Community

We are community. The community of the boundless ebon heavens…the community of brave and fragile Gaea…the community of borders and city-states and neighborhoods and all the other mortal constructs we pledge fealty to…we are of our fathers’ sweat and our mothers’ tears…we are of our kinfolk’s memories and the collective legacy of beloved strangers who went before….we are of fertile seed and bountiful starlight…we are community.

We are community. The community of the multitude…the community of the chosen few…the community of abiding love and faithful familiarity…and, ultimately, the community of the one…we are joined and ever separate…we are of the same blood and utterly unique…we are heartbeats connected and light years apart…we are many…we are few…we are one…we are community.

We are hope and joy, love and lust, passion and peace and hate and love…children of mercy, parents of reason…we are many…we are few…we are, ultimately, gloriously, one…we are community.

This is My Life (the pyschobabble remix)

I am filled with hubris and false modesty, with feints and evasions and subversive rage simmering just beneath the surface and erupting in a sudden, cathartic bursts that have as their only audience a cold computer screen, framed snapshots, and slightly bemused cats.

I am filled with dark cynicism that is soothed by loud music, other people’s words in books, other people’s visions in moving pictures, guiltless gothic fantasies, and joyless sex with strangers who think they know me. I am a master and a victim, a fool and a hero,

This is my life.

I am full of dreams and inertia, I am wary and detached and always waiting for the other shoe to fall; I am full of acid bravado in absentia and hollow smiles that go unrecognized by those who are supposedly close to me. I am a disappointment to more than I care to think about and I don’t really care that I am because everybody is a disappointment to me as well.

I am a well-regarded afterthought and I am well used to that.

I am alone and not lonely. I am a would-be romantic who doesn’t believe in love anymore. I am aging and never as old as I feel. I am consumed by a youth that never happened and comforted by phantom love, rock and roll, and comic book super-heroes.

I am consumed by futures that probably won’t happen and sheltered by mazes of words and false laughter and becoming people that I will never reveal to anyone else.

I offer safe harbor and I long ago stopped looking to find the same for myself. I wallow in self-pity and self-regard in oddly equal measure and I find nothing untoward about that. I wallow in imagination and despair in equal measure and I find nothing untoward about that either.

And this is all absolutely true. And this is all absolute nonsense.

This is my life.

150 Words: She Was Like That (Amanda)

Amanda made me smile and then she blew me a kiss and disappeared in a flash (she was quite agile for a big girl)…I shrugged…she was like that…and chuckled.

Even Amanda didn’t know when her whimsy would bring her back to visit me so I didn’t waste time fretting about it. She would turn up…taking a bath at 3 AM or speaking nothing but French and smoking pungent cigarettes or pouting after a year’s absence because someone else was sharing my bed…and I would give her safe harbor until her wanderlust gave her wing once more.

She made me smile…she was like that…she made me laugh…she made my body sing when she kissed me, when we made love and she sighed my name without it seeming like a tease or a practiced ploy. Amanda always made me smile…and she always left…for days, weeks, months…yeah, she was like that.

The Blue Train

The engine purred languidly as the train…azure as the early evening sky…came surely around the bend. My heart sank and rose almost in the same instant as I clutched my bag and fought back acid tears.

“I don’t think I want to go,” I said to the man whose massive, calloused, calming hand was on my shoulder; he was the only person in the world I felt small beside…the only person in the world I truly didn’t mind feeling small beside.

He smiled patiently and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You have to go,” he said, his voice all honey and resonating bass, “you’ll hate yourself if you don’t.”

“Don’t care,” I pouted. But I knew he was right…he was almost always right…and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you still be here when I get back?” I asked more plaintively than I had wanted to.

He nodded and bent down and kissed my forehead. “Yep,” he said simply. He straightened my tie as the blue train stopped and its door slid open with a world-weary sigh.

The conductor’s face was impassive but her eyes were kind. “I’ll take your bag, sir,” she said, not waiting for my reply before she gently tugged it out of my hands.

I turned and looked up at the man, memorizing the twinkle in his eyes…the texture of his graying beard…the proud, sun-kissed crags on his forehead. “I’ll miss you.”

He smiled…as much as he smiled…patiently and warmly and stroked my face. “You won’t have to,” he said tapping one of his thick fingers against my chest, “I’ll be right here wherever you go. You understand?”

My face flushed. “Yes, sir,” I said in a small voice.

“There’s a good boy.”

I started to stay a million more things but the train whistle blew and the conductor appeared holding her hand out to me. “All aboard, sir,” she said.

I took her hand and climbed up the stairs as the door sighed shut behind me. Through the glass I saw the man standing, his massive shoulders squared as always, nodding proudly. I waved and he nodded and the blue train pulled out of the station.

I watched as the station…and the man…faded out of sight as we rounded the next curve and then I followed the conductor to my seat. It was, I realized, neither an ending nor a beginning…it was a continuation.

Feliz Navidad

The homes on the Circle were bright and welcoming with festive lights dancing along their eaves and fragrant smoke wafting lazily from their chimneys. The night was cool and crisp with golden stars twinkling in time with a cosmic Christmas carol.

It was the night before Christmas and I was sitting on the bench under the big tree in my yard sipping hot cider…sipping hot cider and waiting.

I didn’t see him arrive; he was just…softly and suddenly…there next to me. “I was wondering when you were going to show up,” I said, not turning towards him, before taking another sip of cider.

He chuckled warmly. “Not surprised to see me, huh?”

I shook my head. “I’ve read my Dickens,” I said with a grin.

“Well there’s just me this time…there are cutbacks all over.”

“Bah, humbug,” I said with a wink.

For a few moments, we sat silently side by side looking up into the endless night sky.

“Are you doing okay?” he asked.

A soft torrent of conflicting reactions and emotions surged through me and I sighed softly. “Yeah…most of the time…sometimes I…”

“I know,” he said.

“I’m sorry I never said…”

“You didn’t have say anything,” he said gently, “I was a clever fellow and you, despite your feints, aren’t nearly as inscrutable as you think you are. Well at least not when you know what to look for and care enough to look for it…and I did.”

“Yeah,” I smiled even as tears formed in the corners of my eyes. “I miss you.”

“Estoy con usted siempre, mi amigo querido.”

I nodded, still fighting back the willful tears. “I know. It’s kept me sane through some of the dark times this year…”

“Good.” He started to say something else but then thought better of it. “I have to go.”

I turned to look at him for the first time. I knew him by heart though he looked more serene than I could ever remember seeing him before. “Will I see you again?”

He winked and smiled. “Yes…it’s a bright circle of life and we’ll all see you again in due course.”

I didn’t need to ask who “we all” were, I just knew. And the knowing warmed me to my soul.

“Feliz Navidad, mi hermano. Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo.”

“Merry Christmas, my friend,” I said to the cool Christmas Eve night. He was gone…and yet he wasn’t gone at all.

- for MZ -

Autumn Road

country road, autumn road,
carry me to love, carry me to life,
carry me to the arms of passion,
carry me home to the one I love...
country road, autumn road,
carry me, carry me all the way home.

All You Need is...

“Is it because I’m white?”

The question caught me a bit off-guard, as indeed it was supposed to. “No,” I said, a little bit insulted, “you know better than that.”

She frowned…her mouth unconsciously forming the little girl pout on her woman’s mouth that I found so incredibly fetching that I had to look away…as she marshaled her next argument. There was no way I was going to get out this conversation unscathed.

“If you don’t love me, just say so,” she said finally, her dark brown eyes focused so powerfully on mine that I couldn’t turn away again if I tried.

I took a soft breath, sighing almost inaudibly, as I measured my own words. “I do love you, baby,” I replied truthfully. “How could I not love you? You’re smart…you’re funny…you’re giving and warm and caring…you’re so beautiful it takes my breath away…I’d have to be dead not to love you…”

“Then why…”

“Because,” I said, cutting off the question she’d asked me a dozen times before, “I have a strict rule that I don’t get involved with anyone who doesn’t have a favorite Beatles song…and you, pretty girl, weren’t even born until years after the Beatles broke up…”

That was a new one and she sighed with exasperation and frowned. “I don’t care about that…I love you and you love me, what else matters?”

She was so magnificent in her anger that I wanted to pull her into my arms and hold her for the rest of our lives. “It matters that you’re 23 years old…and I’m not of a mind to steal your youth to get through my golden years…I’m not that guy.”

“But…”

“It matters that you have so much living to do…to finish school…to find a job that excites and engages you…to find someone your own age to love and make babies with…so much to do…”

Tears began to pool in her dark eyes but she defiantly refused to let them fall. “I can do all those things with you…I want to do all those things with you!”

“Baby, I’m more than twice your age…I’ve lived a good portion of my life…I’m old and set in my ways and there’s no way in hell that I’m going let you tie yourself down to me…”

She shook her head and sighed. “I know why you call me “baby”…you’re trying to remind me that I’m “too young” for you…”

I smiled and reached out and stroked her cheek. “Partially,” I admitted, “but also because you are my baby…and because you like it when I call you that…”

She grinned and nuzzled against my hand. “You’re not getting rid of me this easily, old man,” she said resolutely. She surged into my arms and buried her head on my shoulder. “When you’re old and gray, I’ll push your wheelchair and make you oatmeal and love you still with all my heart.”

I closed my eyes and held her tight.

“’All You Need is Love’,” she whispered.

“What?”

“My favorite Beatles song….’All You Need is Love’…wise words, don’t you think?”

I chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “There’s my girl.”

“Damn right,” she said, closing her eyes and relaxing unabashedly in our embrace.

Moments

Troy knew that the kiss was a risky proposition but he didn’t care. If she were to run away into the night never to return he would have this moment. And sometimes moments are all you get.

Sara folded into the kiss, letting down her studied defenses long enough to let the rest of the world mind its own business and let them be, and she felt, fleetingly anyway, safe and…loved…

“That’s all I wanted to say,” he said, hoping to bring some levity to the longing and the awkwardness of the stolen moment.

She looked into his eyes and then, feeling incredibly exposed and vulnerable, she buried her head against the comforting broadness of his chest. “You said it very nicely,” she said with more coyness than a woman of her age should be comfortable with. “I’m so glad that you’re my friend.”

He nodded and smiled, just a bit ruefully. “We aim to please,” he said kissing the top of her head. That moment was done and this moment…the “you know we’re just friends” moment…had taken its place.

They held each other…together and so far apart…and let the moment speak for itself.

Sometimes moments are all you get.

Sometimes...

Sometimes I get so selfish and self-pitying that I find myself getting so angry at you…angry and abandoned and alone…but those moments are few and far between and they pass like the wispy tendrils of a lazy morning mist…

Sometimes I still hear your laugh…sometimes I still look to share some bit of nonsense with you….sometimes I forget that you’ve been gone since a cold spring…you’ve been gone through a hard and heart-wounding summer…sometimes I forget…but those moments are few and far between…

Sometimes I smile wistfully…imagining what you would say…imagining what would make smile…imagining what cock your head to the side and say everything you needed to in a withering, knowing look…

Sometimes I rage against the heavens…sometimes I rage against the injustice…sometimes I rage, crying acid tears, because my friend is gone…sometimes…

Sometimes I remember all that was and not all that there should have been…sometimes I smile for having known you rather than cry for having lost you…

Sometimes I wish I had told you everything you meant to me…and sometimes I know that you already knew that…

Sometimes the gray envelops me…threatens to smother me…but sometimes…most times…the light breaks through and I move forward, healed and whole and so much better for having known you…

Sometimes I still hear your life…and sometimes it makes me cry…and sometimes…most times…it makes me smile.

- for M on what would have been his 62^nd birthday -

Eight Years Gone

Memory dims…time heals…life waxes and wanes...

life moves on like it has to do…

And we are here…eight years gone…and moving on with life like we have to do…

Yes I remember where I was…

Yes I remember how scared I felt…

Yes I remember how angry I felt…

Yes I remember how helpless I felt…

Yes I remember finding solace in the smile of a baby girl…

Yes I remember.

Eight years gone…so many yesterdays ago…

And we are here…remembering with comforting buffer of time and tide…

Eight years gone…and moving forward and looking back…moving on with life like we have to…

Flags flying…tear stains long dry…I remember…we all remember…

Eight years gone…so many lifetimes gone….so many lifetimes to go.