The best New Year’s resolution

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Another year passes, but not with great anticipation for improvement as I have mostly hoped for before.

Some years are more hopeful than others, but many are simply an education on the futility of the world, and our inability to learn from our mistakes.

Madness, according to Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

We are a mad race, and one quick to abandon rules we cannot live up to, and so therefore believe should not exist.

I live in a bubble in some ways because our world is marching towards an apocalypse of our own making, and we are too stupid to even see it coming, let alone stop it, or pretend that we do enough – such as becoming paperless in favor of renewable energy, when in truth paper is renewable, and the devices most of us walk around with as if we are the walking dead come from resources in places we need to spill blood to get, and which cannot be regenerated, and behind us, we leave a landscape of electronic ruin so poisonous that our grandchildren will likely be born with three heads.

We have in some ways reverted to the misconceptions of the 1950s in which bigger is better, and I live in a city where I will eventually be driven out by this passion for hugeness I cannot possibly afford or would enjoy, although generations after me will see as normal.

This is the year when anti-racism became fashionable again – after decades of privileged whites hunkered down in suburbia with police to keep their borders safe. The righteous new breed of liberal found nothing wrong with invading a basketball team owners home to undercover his racism – aka any NSA or CIA operation – but then switched sides after cops killed black men in several high profile cases and found the cops under attack. For the generation of kids returning to the city streets bad laws and racist police practices helped make safe, picking a side was difficult.

Of course, that jerk Patrick Lynch screamed bloody murder when a New York City mayor pointed out how unsafe it is for people of color to walk the streets, while Lynch and his ilk protected bad cops who did the killings in the first place.

The so-called feminist movement managed finally to bring down Bill Cosby, adding yet more confusion over the race issue. This feeding frenzy is part of a larger anti-male backlash by largely hypocritical women who played with fire when they were younger in a strange daredevil game, in which they got their cheap thrills by hooking up with bad boys and then came to realize bad boys really are bad boys, and then started hating all men, good or bad. And in the process of liberation, morality and common sense have been abandoned for privilege.

Cosby, whose alleged sins clearly crossed all lines of morality, became a symbol of feminine power to strike back in a war as old as humanity itself and which will never end – partly because modern feminists buy into the media idea of beauty and attraction, and do not understand the basic wisdom that comes with not waving a red flag in front of a raging bull.

This is also the year when gender itself because a muddled mess, and going to a public toilet leads to some very confusing chamber mates. Gay liberation has been trying to mainstream gay life ever since Stonewall, but success is fraught with peril, and what transpires from here on end will be an endless confusion of political correctness, even the most politically correct will find as a minefield.

An old professor once told me that it is unwise to tear down an establishment – no matter how imperfect – before you know what you will replace it with.

We have no idea. We just tear down walls as if they are all like the one that once stood in Berlin – and sooner or later, we’re going to go too far and tear down the wall of a dam and have everything come crashing down on our heads.

New Years each year is always one step closer to that to me and so the best New Year’s resolution for me is to hope that someone somewhere knows what they are doing, when in fact, I know they don’t.

Seashore Christmas

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Our Christmas will be down the shore as we make plans to head there tomorrow.

I guess I’ve ached for this for some time, even though it is not the same shore town that I was used to traveling to each Christmas until my grandmother died, and the world as I knew it changed again.

This is a tough time of year for me, partly because time has stripped away all of the usual traditions I knew, and unlike with the past when such things occurred, no new traditions have replaced them.

When I split from my grandfather’s house in the late 1960s, I was able to find a new family among my friends, establishing a Christmas Eve tradition that filled in the gaps that often occurred with my regular family – especially during the upheaval of family life that took place during the 1970s.

But from about 1977 on, I made a regular trip to Toms River where two of my uncles, an aunt, my grandmother, and mother had settled.

So fixed a routine, I came to associate the beach and ocean with Santa Claus, and often spent Christmas Day strolling the board walk of Seaside, chill or no chill, feeling some empathy for the seagulls and their lonely cries.

Even my best friend wound up down there for the first few years of that routine, so that we not only got together for his birthday on Christmas Eve up north, but often met again on Christmas Day when he went to see his girlfriend in Toms River.

All this ended in 1991 with the death of my grandmother, and my mother’s move north a short time later. I thought perhaps I could revert to the ritual of fiends, who still gathered on Christmas Eve, but this came to an end in 1995 when my best friend died, and the group of friends scattered for the most part, and though we tried to get together again, it just didn’t feel right without him.

I made a few trips to Toms River during the 1990s to see in particular my ailing uncle, and once I even brought my mother south with me so that it almost felt like Christmases of old – it was the last time brother and sister would meet before that uncle died, and within a year, so did my mother.

The oughts as the early 2000s are called were largely devoid of tradition, a wasteland that lacked the spirit I had clung to for so long.

Discovering Asbury Park again, seems to have brought back a sense of this, and with the weather predicted to be bearable, we will go south again, hoping to pick up Santa’s trail, and like three kings far wiser than I’ll ever be, follow some star to some sense of rebirth somewhere we can hear the roar of the sea.

Slipping and sliding

December 18, 1980

Who is left but the color guard when the band ceases playing?

Crowds still clutter the sidewalk, a meandering mass that flows from one glittering holiday display to the next, like moths attracted to flame, seeking last minute shopping deals.

Meanwhile, a single drummer marks time for the last of Passaic’s parade with little left for the participants except to wait for next year’s performance.

Passaic is cold and the only paraders left are the pigeons waddling down the streets pecking at crumbs left by kids and other onlookers, who have moved on to do what is most necessary this last week before Christmas: shopping.

Thick clouds decorate the sky like a cotton roof stuck up there with glue and prayer, destined to fall a bit at a time and cover over streets already laden with ice and chunks of previously fallen snow.

It is still three days until the official start of winter, but the season stomps over this city with heavy boots.

It is my first winter in Passaic without Pauly and Garrick, who have moved on to better digs elsewhere in Jersey.

I feel alone – although their ugly faces keep popping into my head as I expect to see them around each corner, each saying “hello,” or “good bye” or “go to hell.”

I am completely isolated again, a condition I thought I had escaped by leaving the Montclair rooming house, only to discovered that I had packed my loneliness in my bags and brought it with me, only to unpack it now,

I carry it with me even as I stroll these sidewalks and hear the ring of the church bells.

Perhaps they are some sign of hope, something to cling to that will allow me to drag myself out of my current malaise.

Last night my girlfriend came stinking of Christmas cheer, and we cried.

I am so worried about her leaving for Colorado next August that I forget that I still have today.

I also forget how easy it is to lean on her for support and how heavy a burden I must be, knowing in the end I cannot depend upon her or anyone, but have to stand on my own two feet as I have always done – and doing so means being lonely.

It is perpetually winter and the ground always slippery, leaving us to grab hold of something or someone at intervals to keep from falling. But such things are always a temporary relief, something we cannot depend on to last, like an ice covered rail that appears at most need, but soon gives way and leaves us to stumble ahead without support or guidance.

There is the practical stuff such as getting another job now that the Christmas gig at Toys R Us winds down.

But after more than a decade working steady jobs, I understand that labor of any kind is just a trap, something I must do to survive, but should not expect to prosper.

The experiment of college has only incited me to riot, making me ache for things that are only remotely possible, dangling the hope of success when in reality offering only the key to a larger and more elaborate jail cell.

There is hope in it, but not for the mass of people who move through these like cattle to feed the job machine.

And yet, attending school was enough of a distraction for me to keep on. Now with the winter break, I’m lost again. My friends, who had until recently, shared my misery, gone to find new plantations, while I trudge along here in Passaic, slipping and sliding through life’s winters, fearing to tread, and yet equally scared to stay put.

Joe's Diner (a Christmas story)

Joe's Diner (Hank's tale) -- link

This is a story Hank told me about Christmas Eve 1971, his 22nd birthday. He would be He would be 65 today had he lived. Hank passed away in 1995.

We three Kings (autobiographical Christmas story)

We Three Kings (link)

A blue Christmas at Toys R Us

November 29, 1980

“It must be the heat,” one of the customers said as I rang them up and they moved on.

The heat?

My bones ached from the chill even inside the store where I was working for the Christmas rush.

Something had made my pen explode in my uniform shirt pocket, leaving a rink of ink like a bullet hole just over my heart, spreading like a disease to my fingers and then my arm. I even left stains on the cash register keys and left my fingerprints on a number of boxes. I claimed when customers complained that it came off poorly printed labels until some smart assed lady accompanied by a crude dude noticed the stain on my chest and asked if I was bleeding.

“Sure, I’m of royal blood,” I thought, but kept this to myself, bearing the brunt of their abuse with a grin.

I tried hard not to blush, but by then the blue had blotched my skin here and there, and I couldn’t get the manager to give me a break long enough so that I could go to the restroom to wash it off.

He passed my station several times with a strange twinkle in his eyes as if he thought all of this too funny to have it stopped so soon.

This steamed me. And each time I looked back down at myself, I found another patch of blue, and that the circle on my chest left its imprint on my inner arm as if I was Gutenberg and had just invented the printing press, using myself as both press and paper.

I did my best to hide these blue abrasions, bending my wrist in unnatural ways, slumping my shoulders until I looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

A lot of people looked at mere queerly. Most thought my whole act as amazingly funny. Some customers refused to move on immediately and would stand and stare and ask, “How come you have all that blue all over you?”

These were mostly kids so the concept of justifiable homicide would not have held up in a court of law.

Eventually, I gave up and started to boast about the pen that had exploded in my pocket, treating as if I had done it more or less intentionally.

Some of the people then came up with theories as to why it had occurred.

But not everybody was pleased.

One lady complained about the blue marks on the ears of the teddy bear she’d just purchased, and didn’t buy my claim that some of the bears came from the factory that way.

“It’s the humidity,” I said, trying not to look down at the poor stuffed creature and how I had marred it.

She pointed to my breast and its spreading circle and told me I was full of shit.

At that point, I told her I had to go to the men’s room, and flagged down the manager who was suddenly concerned about the hold up in the line, standing behind me to listen to my string of excuses.

Finally, he closed down my register and told me to go wash up.

“It’s the heat,” one of the customers said as I made my way away from my station.

But my ears and face were red with a blush that only made the blue marks look darker.

“Yeah, it’s the heat,” I thought.

That Christmas in the projects

December 24, 1980

My mother has always loved Christmas.

Even when we were down and out and living in the roughest housing projects in Paterson, she refused to give up on the tradition.

Unemployed after suffering intense eye strain sorting through electronic parts at a parts warehouse in West Paterson, my mother’s money dwindled, and yet, at nine, I still pestered her for presents that I generally got in the more plush times when we still lived in my grandfather’s house in Clifton.

We were dirt poor, and took refuge in the heart of the ghetto where my mother ran often in her effort to escape a family she feared and resented.

I still don’t completely comprehend all the issues, only it evolved out of her mental illness, and has she regressed, we often fled into places like the projects or drug-laden places like Carroll Street in Paterson.

I should have felt guilty wanting so much when we had so little, but I was too young to fully understand the depth of our poverty or the extent of my mother’s madness.

I knew enough to not spend too much time in the apartment with her and the voices she claimed she heard, instead seeking refuge in the ruined neighborhood that surrounded the projects. But I had to come back to the apartment to sleep or to fix up my face after being in some fight or another with neighborhood gangs – not a race thing so much although my white face stood out too much in a neighborhood that was mostly one of color – but a conflict over importance and how little any of us had in that part of time.

We had a tiny Christmas fake tree set up in one corner of a very large and largely barren living room. For the most part, the Christmas tree was the only thing in that room because we lacked money or desire to purchase furniture. We didn’t even have rugs to cover the titled floors and so the reflection of tiny tree’s lights and the over abundance of tinsel glittered on the scuffed tiles creating an amazing, if also disturbing effect whenever I came into that room.

Sometimes, I would stand on our balcony and stare out at the other balconies encircled with blinking, colored Christmas lights, realizing that this was indeed Christmas, and I watched the first snow flakes fall while standing there as well, transforming the world beyond the projects into mounds of what might have otherwise seemed like sand, these, too, taking on aspects of the seasonal lights in the buildings beyond. Even the flash of passing police and fire vehicles seemed festive.

But I felt lonely and isolated a remote being that had no place in my mother’s mad imagination or even the violence of the streets. In those moments, I felt like I was the only person alive in the world, or that had I barely existed.

Sometimes it was difficult for me to tell what was mad, and whether there was more sanity in my mother’s voices than in the screams and gunfire I sometimes heard, or the violence I saw, or the fights I barely survived.

But during that moment when the snow first came, when the scars of the half demolished buildings got smoothed over in shrouds of white, everything seemed perfect, yards filled with this magical stuff that had arrived just ahead of Christmas as if a perfect present for me.

In the morning, of course, all this would change as the white surface became marred with thousands of footprints. But even then, when I made my way down into the muck, and left my own mark, it felt good for the moment. Perhaps I didn’t think much about how soon that mark would fade.
All such markers do over time or lose significance.

I don’t think I actually believed in the existence of Santa Claus at that point, something that had last only for the few precious years when I lived at my grandfather’s house while my mother resided at Graystone.

Even if I had, we had no chimney in the projects for Santa to climb down, and the doors upstairs and downstairs were always locked.

But I do remember my mother calling me back inside that evening, her voice wavering not with madness but with love of me she would never lose.

I would not sleep well over Christmas Eve. I slept fitfully every night while living in that place, but on that night in particular, as if I hoped for some special present that would transform all the strange feelings I felt, all the madness inside me, inside my mother and outside in the world we had to live in.

I remember not turning back inside at first when my mother called, but staying there, shivering in my PJs on our 13th floor balcony and staring out at the other buildings, as snow swept across the face of them, obscuring them like smoke.

Later, one of my uncles would come and tell me that Santa had left presents for me at my grandfather’s house.

I missed the place – even though later I would run away from it often and eventually succeed. But at that moment, when the world expected Santa to arrive at any time, and my mother pleaded for me to get inside and sleep before he came, I wanted only to return to the sober if not quite sane existence of my grandfather’s house, where I had a yard to play in, and had snow ball fights with neighbors not fist fights with street gangs.

Maybe I knew I would eventually have to return there, that my mother’s madness would drive us back. Maybe I just hoped too much for a Santa to come who I already knew did not exist. But when I drifted off the night, I could almost hear the sleigh bells ringing, and perhaps I imagined him landing on our balcony, and so on Christmas morning searched the landing for signs of reindeer prints, finding only my own.