I remember: recollection from 1966

December 15, 1982

I remember:

            Walking with two cents in my pocket and scared to go back, scared of school, the glitter of spring popping up inside me and out, green buds nosing their way out of dull brown earth and among the trees.

I remember:

            Losing my way along the tracks, the rusted steel and rotting wood, the pebbles and stink of oil, the chopped down trees and red brick, and the smoke-stained backs of crumbling buildings

 I remember:

            The dread I felt, not from that one football player that always wanted to beat in my face because I mocked him, but all those faceless people who wandered around the school and halls, unaware that their faces had been taken.

I remember:

            Sitting on the great lawn in front of Lambert Castle, my hands and pants cold, the feel of the yellow grass like tongues on my fingers, the senses that this was the first step towards a great journey West.

I remember:

            Thinking of California, dreams of palm trees, warm days, Disneyland, and the ocean, pictures of each floating around in my head, and losing them as I rose. There is something sad about having memories of things you never had.

I remember:

            Crossing over that molehill of a mountain as if it was the Rockies, my good shoes stained with mud, my new pants torn on the gravel and thorns, my shirt open trying to let in the sun.

I remember

            Climbing down, seeing the name West Paterson on the signs, being amazed that I had already gotten so far, Dylan had only made it to East Orange.

I remember:

            The streets that tumbled down like asphalt falls, finding the edge of the twisting, crawling, snake-skin Passaic river at the bottom: a foreign part of a familiar waterway, I had never seen.

I remember:

            Wandering the streets with factories on it, later called McBride Avenue, the war materials were made here, I thought, seeing the name Keirfoot.

I remember:

            The police car slowing, and the face of the cop glaring at me, and my lying, telling him that I only had a half day at school that day, and he saying, “But it’s still the morning,” and how I tried to convince him that I had the first half off not the second half, and then lied again by giving him my best friend’s name as mine. Somehow, I still don’t know how, he knew that me was me and called my uncle.

I remember:

The shame. The silence. The defeat of being driving back over ground I had fought so hard to gain, each mile fading into a memory of pain, and my uncle’s enraged face at the end, waiting for me with a leather belt he vowed to use, lying to me when he said “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it will hurt you.”

Los Angeles: November 1969

“The buss leaves for Denver in an hour,” a puffed face bus station man says, his collar so tight it makes his eyes bulge and his face look like a balloon.

The waiting room is a quiet racket of air-brakes and murmurs, Continental Trailways burning under my seat like a rash.

The bums, fresh from their Sunday brunch at the mission, gather to see us off, yolk still clinging to their unshaven faces like yellow blood, bleeding down their cheeks to their chins which they can’t or won’t wipe away.

I sit on the bench with them, a conspirator with my how chinning chattering, my teeth ache, my brain steams, soft boiled from too much thought, my want and desires imprinted on my imagination like a bad tattoo.

It is almost December, always that winter’s day the song from the stereo warns of, and I am the rock and the island, the soul for whom the bells toll.

A click of heals sounds across the scuffed bus station tiled floor, accompanied by the swish of nylon, and I glance up, stunned by the impact of lipstick-stained teeth.

The night’s ladies linger there until they get chased out by the cops, corporal saints committed to a curing crime.

The chink in their armor is a person like me, a great eastern sinner invading LA, waiting for love in a room too well air-conditioned by lust.

The driver opens the bus door. The balloon-faced man in his too tight collar waves for us to board.

I climb the steps, wearing the smile and the stain of a kiss I never got, a stiff serpent point the way up the narrow stairs, my mind caught stark edges of the platform and wondering if Denver will be any less start.

What is Denver anyway, but a sticky stone, a hard place, full of pounding stones, a place where my uncles wait, perhaps also the police, guarding the pass through which I must go to reach the other side/

Why am I doing this?

I touch the edges of the shredded letter in my pocket, a letter with barely legible writing, read into memory.

The bus smells of sweat and old wine, as cigarette smoke hovers over the tops of the seats.

The driver is a big man with brutal lips and a savage smile, his face pounded flat by harsh reality from which he had to rebuild with a blueprint.

I find a seat and sit, silent, waiting with money in my pocket like a parishioner in a church, with only the open sky above the terminal as a steeple, riddled with stars, and carbon monoxide for incense.

The bus burps and bumps and backs out, air brakes hissing and squealing, lights above my seat flickering on, and I am finally gone, to the heart of the mountains, to the waiting mystery of Denver.

April, 1971: First time in Scranton

The only reason we headed to Scranton that spring day in 1971 was because we knew half way up into the Ponoco’s along Route 80, we would never make it to Portland in our home made camper.

It we could not get this big wooden box over the sloped edge of these low mountains in the east, how could we expect to get it over the steep Rockies out west?

Even on these smooth roads rising out of the Delaware Water Gap the wind blew us from lane to lane. So we pulled over onto the side of the highway, unfolded a map, and looked for large swatches of yellow that indicated large population areas.

We did not want to get stuck out in a rural area after what we had encountered in similar landscape of Northern California. Even this late, some people in this part of the world still hated hippies.

Even then, we drove north warily, remembering a from a week earlier the New York State cop that had rousted us at a rest stop for our sleeping there over night on our way back from the Canadian border. And that was allegedly more hippie friendly New York.

Pennsylvania, we figured, was bound to be worse.

But it didn’t feel bad as we rolled up and down the rolling hills that led into the east side of Scranton. It felt refreshing after having lived in the cluttered Lower East Side for the last six months, even though I was stuck in the back of the box for most of the trip, peeping out the back door at the road we’d already traversed.

We barely made the trip up the hill to the final drop into Scranton, stopping at the look out to ponder our chances and to debate whether we should heed the warning signs that claimed no trucks should try and make the descent.

Just to get there, we had to get out and walk beside the truck as it struggled up to that last peak. Riding down would be more like rolling a stone, and we were not sure the brakes would hold and we could stop once we started rolling.

But they held, and when we reached less steep landscape, I saw two and three family houses along either side.

Mike, Marie, Louise and the baby road in the cab of our strange pick up and camper, and so got to see the whole journey I only saw in reverse.

Mike, who did nearly all the driving at this point, pulled over several times to talk to freaks he spotted on the street. At one point, Louise came into the back with the baby and so leaving us both to lean out to listen to what was said, debating if we should be involved in the discussion. But it had been a rough trip on the baby already, and she was finally asleep, and so we waited until Mike’s face appeared at the door.

He was a shy man really, despite making the FBI’s most wanted list for a week or so (and later would get that distinction again when the feds ran out of killers and rapists, and had to settle for non-political rebels to hunt,) and angry rebel who had already lived his life in frustration and hadn’t yet reached the unbearable and untrustworthy age of 30 (he must have been 25 then.)

He grinned at us, and told us that he had found someone who might be willing to trade an old car for our box on wheels, a vehicle that might manage the next 2,900 miles to Portland, when the box clearly could not. He said these people would also allow us to spend a few days at their place if we wanted to rest after the grueling first hundred miles of our trip west.

Louise, being concerned about the baby, said we should. She looked so much like the Madonna with Christ Child at that moment, I could not decline, even though I had some doubts.

I did not know that this town, this amazing haven in the hills of northern Pennsylvania would loom so largely in the future, and that it would become a place of refuge later, and a place to which I would come often, sometimes in extreme joy, sometimes in utter misery, but always leaving me changed.

Wicker baseket

May 10, 1978

Wicker basket, its old weaved rites

Warms the winter stews

Helps the flame keep burning bright

And paint its shallow hue

Shades the glare of cool spring light

As you drink its brew

Until August suns fade from sight

And bring on something new

The right (rite) of Spring

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

Blue Jays and cardinals battle for bird seed in my back yard – both chasing the sparrows away.

With winter over and the budding started, the sparrows come in packs like cockroaches, wiping out each bird feeder filling with their outrageous antics.

But they fear the blue jays, and cardinals, and so stand back to let these royal beasts feed – first one, then the other, never the two at the same time.

All these rituals acted out in good faith, as if they had rules of order that we humans can barely perceive.

This is the weekend when this part of the world made its final turn from the chill of late winter to spring, this winter ignoring the calendar so as to stretch out over us with a constant threat of snow, and with a chill that still resides in my bones even with the temperature finally rising.

I’m always anticipating change before it happens, and so took a trip to Manhattan aboard one of the roach-like shuttle buses so I could catch a strange but wonderful movie about a strange but wonderful hotel in a time period leading up to the first World War.
Rain poured down the whole day and since we arrived early, we had to walk about trying to find shelter from the storm – first at the Starbucks to buy coffee, and then inside the cavernous halls of the Port Authority.

This was not the place I recalled from when I was a kid, but something more like a shopping mall, and it depressed me a little to think that time alters all things and paints them in shades of some new generation.

The movie said it best in its story within a story. The hotel had been past its prime even in the deepest level of story, and so it is true of this part of New York in which malls replace places I once considered a refuge, and which had helped me escape my fate when I was young, the starting point for my great migration west, and the destination point when years later I returned to suffer the consequences of what I had done.

The place and the people had shown me kindness, a forgiving nature I’m sure the world today lacks, except for rare corners, where a person can still find forgiveness.

Eventually, we wandered back into the rain, avoiding walking up 42nd Street and its flood of open umbrellas for 43rd or 44th, so as to enter Times Square with less of a rush of people, although people still bumped into us the way they did that one New Years when Frank and I mistakenly thought to come here to celebrate.

I’m lost in crowds, even when they are less furious. As so I clung to the side of the sidewalk where the walls of the store provided one side of me with protection, and gradually made my way back to 42nd Street and the walk back to the movie theater – taking refuge in this historic place with its historic dome, and seeing all of the people here the way I saw sparrows at home, flocking together, struggling to make their way through this maze to some source of soul-food they might find on the silver screen.

But there were so many screens and dreams to choose from, and ours proved to be on the top floor, giving us a choice of multiple escalators or a single ride in an elevator. We took the latter choice. We had no choice on return since the elevator ceased working, and like sparrows, we crowded onto this moving stairs for the long journey into the depths, the silver visions of dreams from the screens still flashing in our eyes, even when we finally reached the street and the rain, and the stream of open umbrellas making their way in the direction of the Port Authority.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I noticed the first flowers, rising up from the bed of leaves, or the half empty bird food container, and the hundreds of sparrows in the branches of the trees, all waiting for the escalator to bring them down to feed.

Ocean breeze

Aug. 3, 1980

A cool ocean breeze whips into the shore, its brisk slap hinting of Autumn <197> still a good month and a half away. An alley glows in the early morning light, full of bottles and trash, and perhaps a few bodies hidden beneath, a cool moon still lingering in the sky while gently yellow light creeps in from the rising sun. I turn down one alley, the round top of a temple floating ahead like one huge sea shell waiting to be drawn out with the tide. It's shell of tan and green painted metal bears the faded red message of ``Jesus Saves.'' They even have that here, I laugh, but the salt air robs ieven that of its freshness, making the message seem like a 1930s languishing emblem like the Cocca Cola sign or the Coppertone naked bottom.
 The ocean roars loudly with the early morning sun, a infuriated noturnal lion enraged by the end of his reign, its breath vaccuming up cups and sandwich wraps and loose gull feathers. There is little lack of these as the wobbling, clumpsy creatures stumble into unhurried flight, leaving a trail of feathers as they squabble over scraps.
 A terrrible loneliness reigns here in the morning -- though any place can be lonely, even with the crowds. I have walked many sand bars feeling this way while around me millions burried themselves in sand, or struggled to catch wildly tossed frizbees in their grab for happiness.
 Yet this loneliness has a differnt touch, resounding in my footsteps as they stride over the concrete onto the wooden planks of boardwalk, their thud echoing hollow in my head as I walk. It is emphasized and underlined by the laugh of irreverent gulls and the watery giggle of the pigeons, bobbing at my feet. The tanned faces of the few wake strangers offer no relief, their hard eyes struggle to stay open after a night at the clubs. They whinse and crawl by me like snails whose shells have grown too heavy over night. Each refuses to even look at me as if each had pennies over his eyes.
 Even the lovers do not look, cuddled onto benches with limbs entwined, cooing like excited pigeons as I pass. I envy them. Years ago, I spent a week lost on beaches such as these, looking to coo like that, looking to make some poor girl's eyes as sore as my eyes felt. Sore as a gull's cry. Sore as a stone locked into a beach and beaten by the repeated ways. Sore as the pull of my pants and throb in my chest. Even that had a hollow sound as I think back. The pain has not completely vanished over time, it has simply faded like the Coca Cola sign into a scar that only bothers me now and then, when I hearing the ocean calling.

Midnight meeting

Thursday, March 27, 2014

After a while, the faces blur and what the voices say falls into a murmur of repeated phrases that don’t always make sense.

To be diligent, you have to stay, and listen, even when you struggle to stay awake.

But when the clock ticks towards the bewitching hour, this gets difficult.

What they say is important, if only to them, and it is a duty to remain with them through the ordeal as a show of faith in this Democratic process we lost faith in after so many headlines of corruption, each a soldier in a war against complacency.

And tonight, of all nights, what they saw matters more as groups line up behind nervous unelected leaders, who come to raise Cain over this issue or that, over a questionable developer or the closing of a school, or even something as simple as a big brother traffic light.

This is a war of attrition as each little group takes a stand against the group many elected to make decisions, sometimes winning their point, only to lose the battle, sometimes – as is the case tonight – forcing the contestants to abandon the battlefield for another day, another night, another round of speeches we each must endure if only to save Democracy.

Everything is personal in this world, and we are all struggling with inner and exterior demons, those spirits that have somehow dedicated their soul interest to save or doom or souls, a democracy that debates in the chamber inside our heads, usually after our eyes have closed and we think we get our rest. And though we sometimes claim victory, we must admit the struggle that we undergo at those times after the clock has clicked passed midnight, when we are left to our own devices and must come to a consensus inside ourselves, having heard all of the pronouncements and judgments, we ourselves have made, and find that in the end, when we are most pressed to take a final vote, we generally win the day.

So that the morning after – whether it be a real morning such as the one I wake to this morning – or after some change of season when spring springs upon us finally, we realize we have survived the tempest and can still get on with our lives, and we realize that all of this, the struggle before and after midnight is what life is all about – decisions made and lived with, only to be re-decided again after the clock strikes twelve.