Category: Real Personal History
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After The Party
I wasn’t that hungry to begin with. Blame it on the oppressive heat and humidity in the city that evening. Blame it on the seven block walk to our favorite Ramen place on 28th Street. Or, best of all, blame it on the viral bronchial whatever I pick up in late June. I just didn’t…
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Bryant Park On A July Afternoon
I remember a time, back in the 1970’s and ’80’s when Bryant Park was a certain kind of place for a certain kind of person. I was not one of those people. There was a public restroom…a small stone building on 42nd Street. If you entered to use the urinal, in the day, in the…
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My Dreams Are Made Of Iron And Steel
I don’t dream the way I did in past years. I miss that because those nighttime adventures were something to behold. The visions of H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and Steven Spielberg were mere cartoons when compared to the places I would go in the hours beyond midnight…when REM sleep was most active. Very rarely…
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The Empty Bedroom
This was once my bedroom. There was a time when this room was packed full of the stuff of life… From a crib made in the mid-1940’s, I would look out at the flowered wallpaper. Maybe a mobile hung just out of my reach, and moved about when a breeze caught it from a partly…
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Finding Peter
[Lenny is on the left. Peter is happy to be in Pennsylvania] It was here in the Adirondack Mountains that I walked up to the wall of a ranger cabin. It was a far off December night, when my heart and body were young. I had a flashlight in my shaking hand, and read by…
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Unexpected Memories
Seventeen years ago today, my older brother Denny, passed away. It was not a sudden unexpected death but a slow decline with cancer. His family misses him terribly. My brother, Dan and I miss him. I think about him a great deal. We were a family of four boys. Denny was the second oldest, born…
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A Most Pecular Tree
I stood just outside the mossy rock wall of the churchyard. We were in a tiny English village with a name I would have to look up in my notebook. I was making it a point to stop and look inside these old Saxon and Norman churches whenever we passed one (and where there was…
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Reflections in a Sad Eye
The last bus stopped running an hour ago. The publican has rung the bell in the nearby pub, calling out “Time gentlemen, please.” The night‘s action is most definitely over out here in the ‘burbs of London. The streets may be quiet and the locals are at home…but it’s still light out! It’s only a…
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Slán
THE CLIFFS OF DOONEEN You may travel far far from your own native home Far away oer the mountains far away oer the foam But of all the fine places that I’ve ever seen, There’s none to compare with The Cliffs of Dooneen Take a view oer the water fine sights you’ll see there You’ll…
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The Silent Songs of the Burrens and the Rebel Songs of Galway
I stood at the edge of the famous Cliffs of Moher. Just a short drive from Shannon Airport, this site is one of the first stops for tourists. The last time I stood at this edge of Ireland where the Atlantic Ocean pounds silently far below us, at the base of rock faces that can…
patrickjegan 