Beachside Bar

Lazy late afternoon off A1A, fish dancing on top of the water like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and floppin’ and flippin’ and tippin’ and tappin’ about, fishermen and wannabe fishermen throwing out lines into the water, tourists from Wisconsin and all points north in awe, boiled lobsters eating their expensive fish dinners with two hush puppies and some cole slaw, fish jumping out of the water again and again craning their necks to see if any of their relatives or friends are on those plates...golden rays of sunlight playing on her hair and she plays with the strings on her bikini and tosses her hair, eyes looking up once in a while to see if anyone is looking at her, music jumpin’ bumpin’ and thumpin’, margaritas flowing freely but not free, beer cold in frosted glasses handed out by cute young girls in short skirts and guys making passes at the lasses and giving fake names...thatched huts acting as beachside cantinas with cute names and torchlights blazing, surrounding them, 2 for 1 cocktails, pina coladas and fruity exotic names, the nimble try the limbo, and later a lone guitar strumming and playing covers and people talking and laughing and dreaming and scheming and quietly getting slammed...sun going down now behind lemon and tangerine clouds with midnight blue curtains closing behind them and the souvenir shops are closing with big gates locking, the big hats that block the sun are put away, the keychains, the shell necklaces, the t-shirts, the flip flops, the beach towels, all going to a sound sleep...the sponges, the shell art, the gator heads... pirate ships that marauded during the day have docked for the night and will plunder again tomorrow with kiddies and parents aboard...drifting down the beach, the happy calypso and the trop rock battle each other in melodic strains that cascade through the humid summer night and over the ocean at low tide and the moon being ever so coy...the colorful lights twinkling and the glasses clinking and the band playing a little louder than they should...the audience yells out requests but the band doesn’t seem to hear them...barefoot couples dancing, and the boat engines are quiet except for a distant little roar a little ways off shore...one boat with little green and red lights going north to south...sailboats wait ready for tomorrow morning’s winds...on the sand, the children run and play, lovers try to steal away and re-enact a scene from ‘Here to Eternity’...steel drums now beating out rhythmatic pulsations, people no longer caring if anyone is looking, other people aimlessly walking by on the sand...shells being picked up and put down, the bigger ones are supposed to sound like the ocean, waves that look nothing like diamonds but sparkle as they shimmy and shake under a sliver of moonlight, Bahamas and the Virgin Islands beckon, far off islands seem so close now, ocean breezes whispering.

Comrade In Black Stockings

It was a dreary Saturday morning which led to an equally dreary Saturday afternoon...the day was chocked full of ennui, and so was I...it was overcast and chilly and there was absolutely nothing going on to disrupt the inescapable skull-crushing boredom of it all...after looking out the window at the dead tree in the front yard for the better part of an hour, and thinking of when I should hold services for it, I puttered around in the garage for a bit thinking I was doing something useful, but I wasn’t...I could have cleaned the garage but my heart wasn’t in it...so I listened to the occasional raindrops scattering on the roof and a few blowing onto the garage window...then the phone rang and it was my friend Georgy and he said a few friends were getting together that night to go out and have dinner and a few drinks...that sounded good to me and all of a sudden the nothingness of the day had taken a turn for the better...so on a chilly Saturday night that December, windy with a mournful cold blowing about, he picked me up and we drove over and huddled inside a wannabe Greek restaurant for a good, inexpensive steak and some watered down drinks...we’d been going there for years, but tonight was different...our waitress, who none of us had seen before, had a short skirt and some incredibly long legs wrapped in some black silky stockings...her blonde hair falling halfway down her back...she spoke with some kind of accent and we all tried to guess what it was...one guy said Swedish, another guy said Polish, someone else said she was from Greece, and I think he was only half-joking or more probably half-drunk...being half-Russian myself, I guessed Russian but I wasn’t sure...it might have been the vodka doing the thinking and talking...and it wouldn’t be the first time or the last...when she returned with our orders, we asked her where she was from...she said with a blank expression that she was from Russia...“Really” I said, “I thought so”...she probably thought I was lying or she really didn’t care if I was or not...she stared ahead with eyes as cold as a Siberian winter and a look on her face as distant as Vladivostok... unmoved by our curiosity, real or otherwise, and obviously unhappy in her work.. she looked out of place to be working at that job...it’s more the kind of job that middle-aged women who are a little too friendly and wearing too much makeup and perfume perform...it probably wasn’t the first time a bunch of guys who had drank too many drinks had tried to get warm with this female comrade...so we ate and drank and the conversation turned as we waited for four Miss Universe’s to come in, but surprisingly they didn’t...I was going to ask our friend, the Russian waitress if she wanted to go out some time, but I decided she was a nyet waiting to happen...after hanging out in the restaurant’s bar for a while watching some football game on the little tv, we went over to another bar that wasn’t far away and not much was going on there either...I don’t know where the four Miss Universes were, but it didn’t look like they were in town tonight...so we drank too much and talked too much and called it a night, and I was back at my gulag before long...we’ve went back to that restaurant many times since, but we never saw that stone cold Russian beauty again.

Romantic Image

Many of us writers who don’t have any sense aspire to be like a Hemingway type or at least like the popular notion of him...tapping away at a typewriter in some tropical port like Key West or in Cuba with the sound of the big palm trees swaying and swishing in the soft summer breeze...nursing some old glass of cheap whiskey or gin and smoking a good Cuban cigar...with a dim bulb that sits on the corner of an old wooden desk found in some second hand store that you begged the owner to come down in price because you just had to have it...it looked and felt so right when you sat at it...you were sure you could come up with something brilliant...and now there you are...old ramshackled room with an ocean view, a floor that creaks and speaks to you of those who have been there before with maybe the same dream you have...maybe they made it, maybe they didn’t...their stories are lost to the pages of history that have turned...personal treasure maps that have disappeared or that have gotten so old, that the paper they’ve been written on is so brittle that it just falls apart in your hands...if you could find it...you’re trying to come up with something but keep hearing some vague strains of calypso music that’s playing somewhere off in the distance, and every once in a while you hear laughter...the laughter of some old salts in town for a few days before they board their boats and head to Barbados or Jamaica or wherever their next charted course takes them...talking about how if they had any sense, they’d stay on land...and you’re secretly wishing you could join them on the next adventure because you always wanted to be a seafaring man...with a girl in every port...they’re washing down some fresh catch with some cold beer or warm rum...and a honey sitting next to them with deep blue eyes like the sea...well, I’ve got the drinking thing down, and the cigar part I’m still working on sir, and the ramshackled room...check...it’s all such a romantic image...and romantic images are enough to sustain you for a long time if you love it all enough...you live for nights like these and if nothing comes of it, so be it...you’ve made your peace with it...you can hear the far off sound of the water rushing up on the beach and then rushing back out...like it’s done for eons and will do long after we’re gone...it’s a restful place for the boats that are tied up next to the docks to slumber for the night and get a good night’s sleep and before that, talk with each other too...exchanging stories about the men who’ve rode them, the captains they’ve sailed for, the exotic places like Aruba and Martinique and wherever else they’ve been to and where they’re going next, and the storms they’ve gone through wondering if they’d ever get to port again...the sea can be like that, full of rage or glory...and they talk about missing some friends who got smashed up on the rocks...or sometimes just drifted on the ocean with no one to guide them...the whereabouts of their crew unknown...meantime, the water keeps doing its thing like it’s done for eons and will do long after we’re gone...it’s getting late, the music is still playing but you turn off the dim light and crash into the bed dreaming ridiculous dreams...and then maybe in the morning, you’re getting up early and going out and doing some fishing...maybe for marlin...just being out on the boat all day underneath the glorious sun or just going below deck and laying down on the bed and just relaxing with the waves...then coming back to your room to a 49 key lover who is waiting for you to caress it...and as the sun goes down, you make love to it and hope that in the morning you want to wake up next to it.

Charlie Chan Movies

Mad at myself, went to bed too late, got up too early and now I got a long day to kill and a case of fuzzy headed grogginess that don’t go away easily...Saturday morning-afternoon and I was going to have to go out and mow the yard but I’ve gotten a reprieve from the governor...it’s raining...beautiful...rain pounding on the tin roof on my back porch and I can tell you it’s a deafening sound when it’s raining hard but it puts you right to sleep...can’t go to library, card suspended for a $ .50 late fee and that is questionable...not paying, making a point but I don’t know to who...boredom is is so boring...if this was forty or fifty years ago, I could find a Charlie Chan movie on the television and kill a couple of hours and just enjoy the show...get a bag of chips and some beer and some donuts left over...I liked old Charlie Chan...some of my favorite old memories was watching him on a winter Sunday morning/afternoon as my mother cooked pot roast and potatoes...some people prefer Warner Oland as Chan, but I like Sidney Toler better...he was more sarcastic and I could definitely identify with that...Oland was good too though and was an interesting guy in that he virtually became Charlie Chan in his personal life...or at least acted like him in the last few years of his life...you know what I mean...he became the character so to speak...even when he did personal interviews, he did it with the Charlie Chan persona...I don’t know what a psychologist would say about that, but who gives a damn about their thoughts anyway?...there’s too many goddamn doctors who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about...for every doctor that graduated in the top half of his class, there’s one that graduated in the bottom half...besides, this world could use some more Charlie Chan types...Charlie had wisdom and honor...anyway, eventually Oland got sick and died, and Toler took over...well anyway, they don’t play those movies with Oland or Toler much anymore because they’re politically incorrect or one person is offended so they have to stop showing them...or some other kind of bullshit, and the only thing on television is nothing...I got something like 500 channels and I can’t find a thing to watch...so I say the hell with it and I turn off the TV and walk over to the front window spotted with raindrops and pull up a chair to watch the rain, and watch the front yard get flooded and the runoff water flowing in the curb become like the mighty Mississippi rolling down the street...I keep waiting for one of those 1800’s paddle wheel steamers to go by with a bunch of elegant ladies in long satin dresses with fancy hats and gentlemen gamblers in their fine suits with their thin mustaches and even thinner integrity...all enjoying the beautiful wood trim of the parlors, the plush velvet of the drapes and the soft luxurious chairs and sofas that they rested on...the gilt edging and all the other exquisite features of the bedrooms...thinking of that,  I go in the kitchen and grab a bottle of rum...across the street, my neighbor who evidently doesn’t have nothing else to do either is sitting in his enclosed front porch smoking a pack of cigarettes and killing a bottle of what looks like scotch...I’d go over and help him but we haven’t talked in the twenty years since I moved in.

Marlon Brando Voice

I went down to that old white shack of a restaurant more times than I can remember or care to remember...it was next to some railroad tracks that disappeared around a bend and then stretched its legs out...it had a big screen porch; tables were covered with tablecloths it looked like Pizza Hut had used for 20 years and then thrown out...sometimes the trains would rumble by blasting their horn as they approached the crossing (which didn’t have any warning lights)...the food was so-so, liquor was a no-no...I usually ordered the chicken and they say you are what you eat, and that was never more appropriate than in my case...I went there...I went there to look at her...she was sixteen or so...I was never found out or was my ulterior motive ever found out...my loss...I was seventeen going on twelve when I was around her and had fallen hopelessly in love...she was so young and innocent looking, although I don’t know how innocent she actually was...but she seemed sweet...maybe she could save me from whatever it was that I needed saving from...I think she could have, or at least I like to think so...she waited tables and when she came over to mine, I tried to be cool but I was a tongue tied fool and never could get the words out...at least not the words I wanted to get out...no matter how much I rehearsed my ad-libs, it just didn’t happen...I might be kidding myself, but I think she was waiting for me to make my move, but my move never came...I thought about having a couple of drinks to loosen up, but then thought the better of it...nobody’s interested in a fourth-rate teenage Romeo who slurs his words...what I wanted to say just didn't get said...I spent the summer thinking about that failure to communicate and about her...I think they call them crushes because you usually get crushed in the end, like a piece of ice...like when the other person’s enthusiasm doesn’t match yours, or for whatever reason...June turned into July which turned into August which turned into a dreary rainy autumn when it felt like everything in the world was dying...at the start of football season September, I went a few more times to that restaurant absolutely confident that this time I would succeed, but for some reason she wasn’t there...I left knowing that this would have been the time I’d ask her out...of course, it’s easy to be confident about something you would have done when you didn’t have the opportunity to do it...maybe her parents didn’t come down to their cabin after summer...or maybe she quit...or maybe something...oh well, maybe next spring I’d see her again...but I didn’t and forgot about her and the crushed ice melted away into a puddle and dried up...old chapters ended and new ones began and about ten years later, I went back to the town to visit an old friend...he’d just gotten out of the hospital and needed some cheering up and selfishly it sounded like a good idea to get out of the Florida heat for a while...we wound up at a spoon greasier than most in this little tiny town that wasn’t far away from the old restaurant and damn if the girl (now a woman) at the cash register didn’t look like her...a little older maybe and she had put on a little weight, but I did think it was her...after we finished sopping up the country gravy with our buttermilk biscuits on carnival colored plates, it was time to go so I got up and went over to the register and I still wasn’t sure but when I paid my bill but she looked at me and smiled and said “You look familiar”...I didn’t want to admit to being the doofus from all those years ago, so I just muttered something like “Oh really?” in my best unintelligible Marlon Brando grunt/voice, put my head down, paid my bill and left.

Sara Sota (Big Old Dog)

It was a cool gray morning and the rain was tap, tap, tapping on my window pane...it was the kind of day for sleep and taking long naps afterwards, for being lazy, or at least more lazy than usual, or at least just closing your eyes and shutting out the world...some days, that’s all you want to do, just shut out the crazy world and find a place all to yourself...the morning was passing sleepily and dreamily and peacefully when I heard a knock, knock, knocking on my front door...I’m not a religious man but I pray as hard as I can that whoever it was would go away, just go away and stay away and leave me alone to rest in peace...however, it was an insistent knock and an annoying knock and a knock that wouldn’t go away...I threw on an old robe and went to see who was bothering me and ruining my me time...I peeked out the window and it was Sara Sota...she’s a nice girl, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see her right now...I hid the whiskey bottle from last night behind the sofa and opened the old glass louvered door...“What took you so long” she asked cheerfully and so full of energy, but I didn’t have the honesty or cheerfulness or energy in me to answer...She had big old dog with her and he invited himself right in and tracked muddy paw prints on my already dirty carpet...she said she was going over to the park to take big old dog for a walk...she asked me to come along...lying, I said “Yeah, that’d be great.”...at least it was still sprinkling and overcast and the salty fresh air might do me some good...it was just the kind of day I love, maybe because it’s the kind of day most people hate...I excused myself and I went to my bedroom and changed into my best worst clothes and threw on some sandals and off we went with big old dog...in a short time we were at the park...also at the park is a marina with some real nice boats and I’ve often thought about commandeering one of them and sailing for Mexico even though I don’t know the first thing about sailing...we walked big old dog some and he smelled and all that other stuff dogs do, and then we sat down on a hard wooden bench that didn’t give my aching back any comfort...there were only a few people around...we watched the boats rocking back and forth in the bay and talked about life...it brought us up and brought us down as brought us all the way around where we were and nothing had changed...we just sat there in silence a while and the rain started tap, tap, tapping on my head harder and harder...I said we’d better go but Sara wanted to stay and enjoy the rain...she’s kind of hippy-dippy so that didn’t surprise me none...so we sat in the steady rain under the gray skies and just stared out at the blue water and the boats, boats, and more boats, getting soaked...finally, she looked over and big old dog who was looking like he wanted to leave so Sara decided we should go...on the way back home the rain stopped and we stopped at a coffee shop with works by local artists, a couple by her but none by me, and then we had to sit outside on wet chairs because we had big old dog with us...but we were wet already so it didn’t make a difference...I had an espresso, Sara had a decaf, and big old dog had a frappe with whipped cream and a chocolate chip cookie...naturally, he forgot his wallet so I got stuck with his tab.

Me and Grigori

Grigori Rasputin…correctly pronounced Ra-sputin was born around 1869 to a peasant family...I should know, we grew up as friends...this was in one of my previous lives that I don’t like to talk about often for I still fear their might be some Bolsheviks running around...one day he told me he decided to become a monk which we both laughed about as we both knew he didn’t have the self-control to abstain from heavy drinking, and sex...and who could blame him?...at least I wasn’t a hypocrite about it...the church soon realized the sham of it all and Rasputin was banished...I had no prospects in Pokrovskoye either so we gathered up a couple of rucksacks and we wandered the countryside of Russia together... dreaming of better days and we eventually drifted towards the western part of Russia...past golden fields of wheat that had a heavenly glow in the midday sun and too many farms to count...we even met a few farmer’s daughters...even those who despised Rasputin admitted that he had enormous charisma, and through that charisma, he could gain control over a countless number of people...but not me...I saw through him and his tricks...maybe that’s why he liked me...he couldn’t put it over on me...his eyes were said to be captivating, something like those of Dracula...he could sure cast a spell on people...I found it funny…Father Grigori...Rasputin...’our friend’ as he was called by the Tsarina...at least in his early days was known by some as a ‘man of God’...at least some people considered him that...others...well, they knew better...even in recent times, certain ‘men of God’ have been proven to be nothing but frauds, hucksters, and charlatans...all while posing as ‘men of God’...and what’s worse is that the good and holy church has stood by sometimes and hushed up allegations, covered up transgressions...sending the offenders to other sites once rumors had started up about them...a.k.a. hiding them from the press, the public, the accusers, the police...Rasputin didn’t try to hide things, I’ll say that for him...he said something like you have to sin for God to forgive your sins...or something like that to justify his sinning of course...so of course, he did...anyway, through some shady connections, we met the family of Czar Nicholas II who had the backbone of an invertebrate...he became a favorite of Nicholas’s wife, Alexandra...he knew he was being watched with suspicious eyes...the Okhrana (secret police) made various reports about him which were forwarded to the Tsar...stories about his drinking, going with women, other outrageous behavior were all documented by the little men with their little black notebooks...but the Tsarina was one to dismiss all these accounts...she was under the spell that Rasputin was indeed a ‘man of God’...she firmly believed that Father Grigori kept the young Alexei alive through his powers and relationship with God...of course Father Grigori was always humble and well behaved when he met with the Tsarina or anyone in their ‘court’...I think the Okhrana followed me for a while, but got tired of hanging around the bars of St. Petersburg and moved on...for all the condemnation of Rasputin throughout the course of history, were his acts really any worse than what the modern day tricksters have done?...but, there is no denying that he correctly predicted the future several times...when the Tsarevich Alexei was deeply ill and the doctors had all but given up, it was Rasputin who said that “the little one will not die”, and what the hell...he miraculously recovered...hypnosis some say...he also warned that if a Romanov relative was involved in his killing, no member of the inner Romanov circle would survive...they would all be killed by the Russian people...and that’s the way it went down...were these visions from God or another source?...who knows...he never told me, but there’s no arguing that a lot of the things he predicted came true...the real story has been repeated again and again with an exaggeration here, there, or almost everywhere that it’s difficult to know what the truth is...some say he had incredible healing powers but I’ll just say his ‘powers’ were questionable...I kept my distance...I didn’t like the Czar or his wife but we thought a couple of the princesses were really cute, but we didn’t dare...Grand Duke Nikolasha was a good guy, but a friend of mine who was a Cossack told me the Czar was going to get overthrown...and he was right...it has been widely circulated that Rasputin was able to exert some political influence over the Czar through Alexandra, but Rasputin was always stretching the truth...but who knows, maybe he did...as with most of us Russians, he became swept up in the events of the Russian Revolution...it was a time of great upheaval and some people changed sides frequently depending on who they thought might win...my friend the Cossack later wound up as a personal bodyguard of Lenin...I stayed out of it...I met Lenin once and I never cared for him either...Rasputin by all accounts was an uncouth and obnoxious man, and I would argue those were his good points ...however, at least when I went to his house, there was always plenty of liquor and women so what was not to like?...his time at the top however was short lived...he met a gruesome death at the hands of assassins in 1916...contempt for Rasputin had grown among the political rivals of Czar Nicholas, and Rasputin and his ways had made him his fair share of enemies...december 29, 1916 was a fateful day for my friend Grigori...that’s the day when a group of conspirators, including some guy named Prince Yusupov, invited Rasputin to his palace for a supposed feast...I had a funny feeling about that and told Grigori, but he laughed it off...once there, Rasputin was fed wine and cakes that had been laced with cyanide...but the poison seemed to have no effect on the ‘holy’ man...as time passed, the conspirators grew desperate and resorted to repeatedly beating and then finally shooting him several times...he was wrapped in a carpet and thrown into the beautiful Neva River...his body was not discovered until three days later...an autopsy on the body showed that there was water in his lungs at the time of his death...thus, it was concluded that the hard to kill Rasputin was miraculously still alive when thrown in the river, and that he had died by not by arsenic poisoning, or by stabbing, or even by shooting...he always was a stubborn SOB. He had died by drowning...at last, the enemies of Rasputin had gotten rid of him...I quietly drifted away and slipped over the border like a late winter sunset and lived a quiet life, but I thought of my friend often and even missed him, imperfections and all.

Rust In Peace

I got a couple of old friends resting in peace or I should say rusting in peace in the backyard...one of them is an old ‘69 MG midget...at least I think it’s a ‘69...that’s what I was told when I bought it...I don’t know much about cars...I thought it looked cool though and so I really didn’t care what year it was...the other is a ‘67 VW bus...neither one runs or has much of an interior left and they didn’t run when I bought them...I just thought it would be cool to own them...didn’t cost me much...I borrowed a friend’s trailer and brought them over to my place...I rolled them off the trailer into the backyard and they’ve sat there ever since...I don’t have any plans of trying to fix the vehicles up and get them working...hell, I have no idea of what I’m doing when it comes to that stuff...I just let them sit and chill on my backyard grass and look up at the sky and daydream like I do sometimes...some days, I just like to sit and look out the window at them and wonder about them...I wish they could talk and tell me where they’ve been, what road trip adventures they’d been on...sometimes I even pretend I used to drive them...I make up stories like the times when I used to take the bus out on the road when I was young and carefree...picking up women along the way and giving them a ride...spending a couple of weeks out in California...maybe heading over to Arizona...the Grand Canyon...or if I didn’t feel like driving that far, I’d just go to one of the local campgrounds for the weekend...park the bus and make a fire out of some big logs...we used to call them ‘all day smokers’...people would walk buy and I’d say, “Hey, you want a beer”...and they’d come over and sit down for awhile...you get to meet some interesting people that way...the VW bus was a cool thing for a while...then people got older and started buying those big, silver Airstreams and trying to outdo each other...it stopped being fun, so I just parked it in the backyard and let it go...foreign parts are a wallet’s arch enemy...the little MG, god I loved that car...zipping around the country roads with the top down...in spring, summer, in fall...I used to pretend I was in England motoring around...people would always look when I went by...they were like those cars that you saw on that old British TV show ‘The Avengers’...motoring around those English rural lanes...I thought about getting one of those British hats...I don’t know what they’re called...and a pair of those driving gloves...and then cruising down Carnaby Street in London...then the company that made MG’s went under I think...it was too hard to get parts for anymore, so after I had some engine trouble, I just parked it in the back next to the VW bus and let ‘em sit...that’s what I like to think anyway...now back to reality, I don’t know why they got an attraction for me...I mow around them....sometimes I get inside and just sit there for hours...the MG’s windshield has got a crack in it now...I don’t know what from...old age I guess...I keep waiting for one of the hurricanes to come buy and tip the big tree over next to them and smash them...if that happens, I’ll probably take them to the crusher and buy a couple of more rollers...then on rainy Saturday afternoons, I can make up some more stories about them to pass the time away...if you don’t have such good memories of the old days, you can always make some up to make you feel good.

The Power Of Imagination

Inspiration can come from imagination or it can come from the most innocuous things and at other times it can come from the bottom of a bottle or glass late into the night in a dark bar full of people with checkered pasts and soon to be checkered futures...or sometimes it’s the imagination that gives birth to the baby that becomes your story or at least becomes a welcome distraction...sometimes, it can be your best friend...there’s no limit as to what you can come up with...I’m sitting outside and what was a sweltering day has now become cooler and overcast and it’s starting to rain and I just moved my chair so I can feel the rain because I was under a tree...the rain and me are good friends and it’s hugging me now with every friendly drop...I love the rain...maybe because most people don’t like it...always the contrarian am I...I’m looking over the top part of my wooden fence at my neighbors metal pool enclosure which has seen better days and those days were a long time ago... the screen is torn in places and is hanging down with a sad neglected droop, some screenage is missing altogether, the metal frame is tarnished and looking ancient...if I peered over the fence, I would see that the pool water is greener than the weeds in the lawn...it’s really kind of an eyesore and a shame...but if I use my imagination, I can pretend I’m looking at the frame of a temple built long ago, yes...somewhere in southeast Asia...Buddhist maybe...yes, Buddhist I decide...this temple is one that is crumbling and falling victim to time...yes, it is one that has been abandoned for ages and is forgotten, of course no one knows why, it all adds to the mystery of it all...it’s a relic belonging to another age...that’s what I like to think it is anyway...a place where monks meditated and chanted 100,000 moons ago...I walk on the other side of the yard and I see my replica of Stonehenge that I made after we had a tree chopped up after a hurricane pushed it over crushing part of my fence, which I haven’t fixed yet...Stonehenge...I don’t know why I made it...I think Stonehenge is a mystical sort of place although I never was interested enough to actually do any research on it and find out who built it or what it was for...I’m not sure anybody knows anyway...my imagination tells me that is was some kind of powerful spiritual place where the paranormal was normal...that’s more interesting probably than the real story…located near Stonehenge are the three pyramids of Giza, which in reality are some pieces of broken concrete I once picked up at a friends’ house...my pyramids went up in about five minutes...an engineering marvel...the house across the street from me has sat empty for a while...slow real estate market?...no, the house is haunted...there was a suicide by the previous owner and his troubled spirit haunts the premises and scares off any would be tenants...strange noises at night...unexplainable events...maybe there’s some kind of poltergeist behind it...I’m looking at it now while I write this and it looks foreboding...and sometimes imagination is your best friend and it puts an arm around you and gives you a warm embrace and tells you that things are going to be better...it got you through many a day after school when you were growing up playing alone in the backyard and like the times when you were in high school and you listened to music in the basement on Saturday nights and pretended that you were popular.

Looking For You

I am looking for you...I’ve always looked for you and I’m still looking...in every bar I’ve ever been in between downing some 110 proof...or in a million other places...the problem is life don’t come with no treasure map to show you where to get the good stuff...no X marks the spot...but maybe you will walk in out of the rain one dreary afternoon shaking the drops off of your raincoat...maybe you’ll just come in and take a seat at the far end of the bar and we’ll just know as soon as we see each other?...can I buy you a drink?...sit down and let’s talk for awhile...we can sit in the booth in the corner, or even better, go somewhere that isn’t so damn depressing...I know a couple of nice places...I’m really not so bad, a little worn around the edges maybe...maybe you’ve got a little baggage you’re carrying around but that’s alright...we might be down but we’re not out...could it be you’re that one coming around the corner of the cracked and broken sidewalk...our eyes will meet and shake hands and go to the local coffee joint to get to know each other...we can talk about Monet and impressionism, or Chopin or Rachmaninov, or whatever you want...no rush, we got all night...I’m in no hurry...or are you the one that’s squeezing those tomatoes at the all night market...some nights I pretend you’re picking them out to take home and make some spaghetti for the two of us in your cozy apartment that rattles when the train rumbles by...shall I pick out the wine?...I don’t know much about wine but I’ll give it a try...or maybe I’ll make one of my special homemade pizzas or that delicious chicken parmigiana I can whip up in no time...can you be the lonely looking one riding the train back from downtown after a long day...staring out the window and looking at nothing...faceless people getting off into faceless towns...maybe you’re lonely too just like me...waiting for your stop and then the long walk into the biting wind to the parking lot and the silent forlorn drive home past the crumbling neighborhoods with the little, dirty faced kids playing in the streets and the bigger kids throwing an old basketball at a hoop with no net...the whole scene decked out and painted a grim shade of grime...that’s the only good thing about the snow in winter...it cover up all the ugly, and least for a little while and everything is a virginal sort of white...or maybe you’re the one I see at the movies all the time...sitting by yourself and maybe like so many other lost souls, sitting in the darkness and cool of the theatre...disappearing into the screen...losing yourself in the film and running away from all the crap in real life at least for a couple of hours...lost and lonesome among a supporting cast of millions...unsure of your cue, unsure of your lines...always out of the spotlight and the audience unable to hear your desperate words...maybe you’ve got that deep ache in your heart or your soul...that nagging hurt that just won’t go away no matter how much booze you drink and keeps elbowing you in the side when you’re trying to sleep...or how many times you wanna scream “Fuck everybody” to nobody in particular...are you my angel?...will you watch over me...watch out for me...cook for me once in awhile...hold me when I’ve got the shakes...tell me it’s gonna be alright when I’m ready to crumble?... I’ll be there for you too when it’s raining too hard or snowing too much, or when the winds of this wonderful life feel like a butchers knife trying to slice right through you...we can be there for each other, united we stand...maybe someday, maybe never.

We're Not Who They Thought We Were

The other night I went to the dimly lit, uneven floored, smelly old grocery store by my place in search of something to eat while watching some favorite old movies...The Third Man, Sunset Boulevard, and Dr. Zhivago...all classics...at least half of the fluorescent lights were burned out like some of the customers were or flickering like they were transmitting Morse code to ships at sea, and the uneven broken heaving tile floor invited twisted ankles and face plants...anyway when I got to the checkout line, I noticed that tonight, my cashier is Jennifer...except she isn’t a cashier...she’s an actress who is as they say in the business, is currently between parts...all her life, she had dreamed of making it to the big screen and being a big star, but now she tells me she would be happy with a walk-on role, or she’d even settle for some kind of TV commercial...she keeps going to auditions and they tell her they’ll call her, but they don’t...yet, she’s always got a smile on her face...I guess she’s one of those people who takes rejection well or something...I know I’m not...she knows I’m a writer and asks me to write some part for her, and I smile and say nothing...I’m not a screenwriter but I tell her I’ll put in a good word for her if I meet a famous director...I know a few directors, but they ain’t famous...I turn around and I look behind me and hey it’s the lovely Misty...Misty with the long golden blonde hair that works as a waitress at a restaurant down by my apartment, but she really isn’t a waitress, she says she’s a model; that is when she isn’t holding down a full time job waiting tables...I don’t know the last modeling shoot she was on, but she’s always running around the city, in search of a modeling gig...I first met her at a local pizza place and my first thought was not of the pizza I was picking up, but that she was much too beautiful to be working behind the counter at a fast food pizza joint...yet somehow she has not hit it big yet...I keep thinking it must only be a matter of time before she finds success but then again maybe I got a broken watch...the other day I saw Angel...she’s a wonderful artist, a little eccentric but that goes with the territory...I should know...she also happens to work at the check cashing place and the convenience store...she holds down two jobs so she can buy paint and canvases...at the check cashing place, she’s a little loose with the rules and that’s alright by me...sometimes you’re in a tight spot and you need a friend like that...her apartment is one giant studio...you have to be careful where you sit or you might sit on a tube of paint and wind up with a cobalt blue ass...Angel has an artistic vision but she is the only one who can appreciate it now...she laughs that when she’s dead, her paintings will be worth a lot of money...I playfully ask her if I can push her out the window of her ‘cozy’ studio/apartment and find out...then there’s me, a poet and writer who just had happens to spend a lot of time at some old, dirty, hot warehouse with the big metal fan blades spinning like category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean displacing hot air with more hot air...eight hours a day of lifting boxes and plastic totes that don’t even say thank you, and an aching back that can verify my story...but of course that’s never been my real job, I’m a writer/poet or so I tell everyone so they don’t think I might be something else...it’s funny sad how most of us aren’t what we really are...the job ‘experts’ tell you to do what you love...that’s fine, but what you often love doesn’t pay the bills, so you have to take a job doing something you don’t love...in the battle between doing what you love, and doing what you have to, the job you have to do usually eventually squeezes out the one you love like the cinnamon toothpaste you use every day...when you realize that, you sadly put your dreams in a scratched and dented rusty old file cabinet that sits in the basement with a top drawer that doesn’t quite close all the way.

All Aboard Were Lost (MS Hans Hedtoft)

The sea is beautiful when you’re standing on the shore, but seamen know it can be perilous and deadly...the MS Hans Hedtoft was an ill-fated ship that sailed the treacherous Greenland Sea between Denmark and Greenland...at least it did once...but unfortunately, it sank on its maiden voyage...the date long ago, January 30, 1959...as of now, it remains the last known ship to be sunk by an iceberg and as a result, had a tremendous loss of life...for some reason, much like a certain other ship that was built in Ireland that is famous for being sunk by an iceberg in 1912 with a great loss of life, the Hans Hedtoft was fashioned with a riveted hull, instead of a stronger welded hull...the design of the ship was even criticized by a concerned ship owner for its construction...the ship was built in Denmark and it was to provide year round service hauling goods and passengers...it featured a double bottom and was equipped with seven watertight compartments...the ship had left port in Copenhagen on January the 7th of 1959 and successfully made the voyage to Greenland, it did so in record time in fact...so all seemed well and everyone was pleased...but it was on the return trip, that the tragedy ensued...it collided with an iceberg and immediately began taking on water...how it failed to avoid the berg is unknown...the collision occurred about 35 miles south of Cape Farewell which is the southernmost point of the desolate, frosty expanse known as Greenland...the ships communications officer sent out an emergency distress call...we don’t know exactly what happened and probably never will, but we can only guess that the rivets let go upon impact with the iceberg and permitted water to breach the hull...it could be that the iceberg tore a gash in the side of the ship, like what happened with the Titanic...the officer wired that he had water coming in and the engine room was flooded and that any ship should come immediately to assist...the damage had caused an inevitable sinking and the ship sank below the icy death inducing waters...the S.O.S was one that was heard by at least three other ships that were in the area...unfavorable weather conditions prevented any aircraft from searching for the doomed ship...a United States Coast Guard Cutter and other ships began a search for the ill-fated vessel...by the time the ships arrived to the location of the accident, no trace could be found of the Hans Hedtoft...ship or passengers…the search was suspended on February 7th...one of the vessels that searched reported that the weather was the worst they had even seen in that area with high winds and wild seas...the only item to ever be recovered to this date from the sinking was a lifebelt...this item from the disaster washed up onshore nine months after the sinking...95 people went down with the ship...it has never been determined if any lifeboats were ever launched...or if not, why not...perhaps it was the nasty weather with the whipping winds and angry seas that might have made any attempts impossible...and what about the wreckage of the Hans Hedtoft?... I mean they even found the wreckage of the unsinkable Titanic...but even though the coordinates given by the desperate crew were 59°30′N 43°00′W...the exact final resting place of the ship is unknown to this day...On January 30th, 2005, the Queen of Denmark dedicated a landmark at North Atlantic Wharf in Copenhagen to the memory of the 95 lives that were lost in the accident.

The Black Bear As Himself

He was a black bear from New Hampshire, the state with the saying of ‘Live, Freeze, and Die’...or something like that. He hailed from the cold and remote north country where it’s always cold even when it’s warm. He claimed to be from Mt. Washington. He was a bear but not without a care. He felt he had a calling he thought but it wasn’t your standard moose call. He always saw himself as a thespian and he had done some summer stock in Nashua in the past and now he was looking to jumpstart his acting career and he figured moving to New York City would do it.

So he set off down the road to NYC, on the highway of dreams where a lot of these ill-fated dreams wind up breaking down on the side of the road and putting their hoods up and looking like giant metal alligators. He went from the deep deep forests and into the sprawling suburbs as he did some hitchhiking. He couldn’t rent a car because he wasn’t old enough to meet their requirements, but he mostly walked where like a lot of bad drivers, he caused a lot of accidents but he never got caught up in them. Before long he could see the zigzag skyline of New York City and there he was...strolling into the Big Apple. 

That’s where I met him, we were listening to some bebop jazz or razmatazz jazz or jazz jazz or some kind of jazz at some club. Some nights we’d play too much pool and drink too much schnapps..I taught him to play guitar and he still owes me for all the strings he broke...damned clumsy bear. He got a room with a few other aspiring actors; I went over there a couple of times and there was a girl who was practicing her Academy Award acceptance speech, the guy who thought he looked like Johnny Depp when he really looked and acted like Johnny Dipp, and a couple of other comers and goers, but they were all from hardscrabble backgrounds like him...scratching and clawing to hang on to a dream In his case, the bear actually had claws. He learned to like pastrami and he even had a favorite deli, and he got used to the crowds, but for some reason he always had trouble getting a cab. Black bears often have a hard time getting picked up, whereas I’ve heard polar bears have it much easier. He scanned the trade papers and he went to a lot of auditions and got a few parts here and there; usually in comedies. That was OK with him for awhile, it paid the bills, but he longed to do drama, maybe like Othello. He definitely felt he was a bear with some acting chops and he didn’t want to waste his time on frivolity. 

I’m pretty sure he told me he was a Method actor and he took classes regularly to keep his craft sharp. I’d help him with his readings when I wasn’t too hungover or writing feverishly to make a deadline. He even sang a little in a musical that was off off off-Broadway...oh, and he sang the National Anthem once at a Yankees game. He waited tables to pay the bills when he was between jobs which started happening more and more. He tended to be argumentative with the customers and growled, so he usually didn’t last long...not to mention that he occasionally snatched the meat off the customers plates before he brought it to the table, old habits die hard I guess. Well, the bear gave it a go for a while but he started getting homesick. He missed his old cave and he complained that all the good roles went to other actors not as good as him. He felt he was getting typecast as ‘the misunderstood bear’...and he was missing the snow covered forests that he used to roam around in back home too. He said he was getting tired of the NYC, and he was going to go back home.

I figured him to just be a little depressed and tried to talk him into giving it some more time, but his mind was made up, so he sold his few possessions and started the journey back. Now I figured him to head back to the forests since that’s what he told me he was going to do and just live anonymously. I lost touch with him and then one day I was in the bookstore at the mall. I grabbed a couple of magazines and sat down on a comfortable hard wooden bench that they put there to make sure you don’t sit there too long. I was thumbing through the pages trying to kill an afternoon when I ran across his picture in one of those tech magazines hardly anybody reads. There was my old friend the black bear. He’d found some fame running his own tech start-up company in the Silicon Valley, and was now living in a bay view penthouse in San Francisco, and he must of been doing real well to live there and pay those rents. As for me, I was still scratching and clawing with my antique laptop and beat up guitar that was missing strings, and I started sharing an apartment with Johnny Dipp.

A Passing Train That Has Now Passed

My aunt and uncle had a cottage that I used to go to, mostly in the summer...it had two stories and probably a lot more than that if it could talk...it had a big back porch with a lot of windows that overlooked a lake, a big iron frame bed that I used when I was there...in the morning the sunbeams would shine through the windows and into my eyes and say “c’mon, wake up, let’s go”...it would be around 6:30 or so and I’d rub the sleep out of my still young, clear, and unjaded eyes and set off on another adventure...sometimes I used to take a long walk out in the country by myself back with the birds singing loudly, this was back when the world was a safer place or at least in my cocoon of innocence I thought it was...I tried getting up and going fishing sometimes because that’s what the older boys did, but I just never fell for it hook, line, or sinker...I never liked eating fish so I wasn’t too enthused about catching one, although I did catch a nice sized catfish once that my father cleaned and later ate for his dinner that evening...now, if you could have thrown a line in the water and caught a pepperoni pizza or a rib-eye steak, that would have been a different story and so too would have been this one...it had country roads where I spent much time riding my little motorcycle my parents had bought me and I made sure it came with me...I would be in the backyard throwing a football and pretending I was an All-Star, avoiding poison ivy that was reaching out for me with its itchy fingers and then I would hear the sound of it...a train was coming...it’s loud horn splitting the country air...ERRRRRRRRRRRRRN...that was my queue...it was probably about a half of a mile I guess, and I would hop on my little Honda motorbike and go as fast as I could to the crossing on the little road full that sneaked into the community of cottages with patches and cracks and buckles from the past winter...I would get there quick so I could be up close when the train passed...they were always freight trains, long dirty, hurdy gurdy, creaky, squeaky freight trains headed to destinations unknown...at least to me...I always looked for a ‘hobo’, someone riding the train for free, but I never saw any...I often thought about hopping into one of the boxcars and going for an adventure, but what little common sense I had always won out...sometimes common sense takes all the fun out of life...the trains always had a special smell as they went by...better to me surely than the French perfume worn by the ladies of the evening in downtown Paris no doubt...they would pass five or six times a day and without fail, I would be there to greet it...there was a small restaurant next to the side of the tracks...I always found it funny that if you were dining there and a train passed, the salt and pepper shakers on the table would begin dancing like they were at the Apollo Club from the vibration of the iron horse...the train’s horn would blast at the last moment before it passed over the crossing and as it came through ERRRRRRRRRRRN! and it would scare the hell out of those who were train horn virgins, virgins at least at an intimate distance...everyone would sit and look out the window at the train, and after it passed, the conversation would pick up where it left off, as if nothing had ever occurred...but eventually, my aunt and uncle moved to some a-dult or a-dolt community in Arizona...but that is how things are...life goes on whether you like it or not...there were no more chances to race to the train tracks, no more lazy days for empty country back road sojourns on my motorcycle anymore...I had since moved out of state and many years later, my wanderings took me back to that area... the train tracks were gone...the trains no longer passed by...that’s happening all over the country and maybe that’s why we’re in such sad shape...I stopped by the old crossing and got out of the car...all that was left was a few small piles of stones leftover...I walked a little bit and saw an old railroad tie laying in the weeds, forgotten and no longer needed just like some empty candy wrapper discarded after it outlived its usefulness...the restaurant had been shuttered and judging by its appearance, for quite a while...damn.

Burning Man

First held 32 years ago in 1986 on Baker Beach in San Francisco, Burning Man is an annual event that is held in the western United States...far away from the maddening crowd and far away from the far away at a place where you need a map to know that you’re lost...at a place called Black Rock City...it’s a temporary city that’s erected in the Black Rock Desert of northwest Nevada...sounds like the kind of place where if you’re unlucky, you might run into Nevada Smith or Nick Adams so you better be packing a piece...if you know where Reno is at (the biggest little city in the world...so they say), it’s approximately 100 miles north-northeast of there out in some anonymous god forsaken desert...the event which is usually held in the late summer has been described by its promoters as an ‘experiment in community and art’ and it attracts many a free spirit...the kind that just seem to drift around the country in their fixed up vans...selling incense, or candles, or homemade jewelry and trinkets...with no home to call home...their home is no home...there are 10 principles set forth which are the guidelines of the whole idea...they are radical inclusion, which means anyone is invited to Burning Man (well, anybody who can afford it--more about that later)...gifting, where attendees are encouraged to give gifts to other attendees...self-reliance, which is pretty self-explanatory, decommodification, which basically means using cash as little as possible although I don’t know if credit cards count..., communal effort... meaning helping each other out, self-expression which is usually the easiest one to follow, which is found mostly in the art where creativity takes center stage, many original artworks are taken to the festival and displayed, and there is music, performances, and ‘street theatre’, civic responsibility, meaning being a good citizen while at the event, participation... not just observing, immediacy, which means making a real connection with other people there; a soul to soul embrace of all that is beautiful man... and leaving no trace which basically means cleaning up after yourself and even trying to make things better than when you found them...ideals that are ideally ideal...the event takes its name from its climax which is the symbolic ritual burning of a large wooden effigy...known as "the Man" that traditionally occurs on the Saturday evening of the event...I believe last year one person got so caught up in the spirit, he threw himself into the fire...the effigy launches into wild flames, orange and red that leap into the dark night and rip the sky apart with a fury and the flames can be seen in other universes...recently, the rich have taken a liking to this festival and that’s a sure kiss of death to the real vibe...most of them who are content to hang out with the ‘real people, the bohemians’ or at least the ones that can afford to go now...it’s no different than when rich people would hang out in the cafes of Paris so they could be around the artists that they admired so much...and maybe for just a little bit while they sipped their cafe au laits and munched on their croissants and talked art, they could feel like they were part of the scene...and the artists put up with them because sometimes the rich guy would buy a painting or two from them...well, these modern day wannabes often engage in ‘glamping’ which for the uninitiated, is a made up word that means ‘glamourous camping’ which annoys many of the ‘regulars’...what started off as a free event that drew less than 100 people has now grown into a monster that plunders and roams the countryside like a crazed Frankenstein and attracts up to 70,000 people and a one day ticket now can cost over $420...kinda prices out a lot of the the real free spirits who were probably behind its success and its true spirit in the first place...you’ve got to sell a lot of incense to pay for that...like with most things, it sounds to me like it started out as a fun event with good intentions but has morphed into something else altogether.

Talking With Mt. Everest

This morning I woke up in Nepal and with many hours until I could get back to where I belonged, I went to talk to Mt. Everest itself...a lot of people have interviewed a lot of people who climbed to the summit of Mt. Everest or at least tried until they turned back...and basically they tell the same one of three or four stories all the time...interesting, but done before...I decided it might be interesting to talk to the mountain instead...you know, get his point of view on things...so I caught a local bus and then hiked over to his base, and after getting it cleared through his stern looking publicist, the interview began...he seemed suspicious, but after I assured him I had no intention of trying to scale him myself, he agreed...I sure as hell wasn’t going any higher than I was already…he was a little cold as first, but during our talk, he warmed up and his guard melted away and he seemed to be a pretty good guy...er, mountain... “Yes, what can I tell you” he said in a God-like bellow... I asked him what it feels like to be the most famous mountain in the world…he responded “It hasn’t done me much good. It’s not like I’m in the mountain hall of fame or something”...ah yes, I replied, “but you are famous”... “Yeah, I suppose so, but it’s a curse and a blessing you know” he replied. ..“I got all these people trying to climb on top of me...some of them are ok, but some of them are just plain idiots...plus, I get all this fan mail asking for pictures and autographs...I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be bothered with that”...I contemplated his answer and then asked him about the number of people that have died trying to get to his top... “Well, it’s not always my fault you know...I don’t control the weather, people freezing to death and all...I can’t keep them from being stupid...let’s face it, some of them have no clue what they’re doing and they shouldn’t be here”...I asked him about the 2014 avalanche that killed 16 people. “I couldn’t help it...I had to sneeze” he said matter of factly..he went on to mention he was worried about global warming and pollution and then out of nowhere asked how the Colorado Rockies were doing in baseball this year...“I used to keep up with them, but I don’t know, I just don’t have the time to follow it anymore...I’m more worried about global warming and all that...how’s that going to affect me?...” I inquired whether he considered himself to be Nepalese or Chinese or both since he straddles the border... “Neither...you humans came up with that nonsense...I’ve been here for ions just minding my own business when all that came up...I don’t care...I don’t belong to anybody...I’m just here minding my own business...a citizen of the world you could say”...I excused myself to drink some more Johnny Walker Red Label that I’d bought in town strictly in an attempt to stay warm of course...I said that well, a lot of people have wanted to climb you ‘because you’re there’ I stammered...he rolled his eyes and said “That’s a stupid reason to do anything...there’s a lot of stuff in this world that’s ‘there’ and it don’t mean you should mess around with it...I think somebody came up with that when a writer like yourself asked them why they did it...they couldn’t figure out a real reason, so they thought they were being funny when they said that”...I pointed out that there are groups that charge enormous sums of money to take people up the mountain... “Yeah, I know...you think that does me any good?...I haven’t seen the first dollar from any of those leeches...I oughta be getting a cut of that, you know a commission...in fact, I wish people would leave me the hell alone...go find something else to climb on and bang stakes into...frankly, I’m sick of it”...I saw his point but I’m not sure what he’d actually do with the money.