Category Archives: Time

The Last Quarter Moon Gives A Pale Wintry Light/Late Night Thoughts Following Spinal Surgery

{Author’s Note: This blog post contains a photograph of an x-ray of my lower back taken six days after my spinal fusion. If the image of hardware screwing together two of my vertebra is irksome to you, my gentle readers, then feel free to search for another fine read. I have 645 in the bank. Find a good one and enjoy, just…please don’t check out A Brief History of Chains and Chain-making. It’s good, but there are other good ones out there, and far, far too many people have checked that one out. I have put this graphic at the end of the post for obvious reasons. The lead image is a generic photo taken from Google. Be warned. Enjoy.}

[A surgical room. Place: unknown. My room was more densely packed with instruments that went “Ping”. Source: Google search.]

An idea that fixed him to one spot was that life was a death dance, and that he had quickly passed through the spring and summer of his life and was halfway through the fall. He had better do a better job on the fall because everyone on earth knew what winter was like.

–Jim Harrison “Farmer”.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

–Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”.

I removed my Bluetooth earphones and shifted my body up against the pillows that were packed hard against the headboard of our bed. No relief. The pain was white-hot. Intense. Bitter. Sharp. I reached for the small plastic amber bottle of painkillers. I shook it. Not a lot left. I put the bottle back and stared out at the patio. The half disk of the moon lit the patio with a soft light. Enough to see the BBQ, the umbrella, the covered table and the sturdy English Ivy, hanging out, wanting to grow, waiting for the spring warmth.

I had been listening to a podcast called A Voice From Darkness. The narrator, a young man on a road trip, described driving through New Mexico and suddenly finding himself in a city that appeared out of nowhere. He told of becoming hopelessly lost in a labyrinth of passages, streets, tunnels, sidewalks and dark lanes. He was filled with panic. Where did the city come from? It wasn’t Santa Fe. No indeed. And it wasn’t Albuquerque, either.

I looked out at the pale light and the patio.

I pondered what I had heard.

What the guy in the podcast (Category: Fantasy/Horror) was describing was uncannily familiar. I had the exact same experience, in many dreams, of being lost and confused in an endless series of false paths and empty halls and deserted passages. Often, it was set in New York City. I began having these dreams after moving to northern New York State in 2011. Sometimes the landscape was post-apocalyptic in nature. Sometimes it was a version of my hometown of Owego, NY. It was all too close to me. Too close to my own experiences. How did this storyline emerge from me and find its way into a podcast?

Recently, I have found myself having an abundance of reemerging thoughts and memories that I have not felt in decades. Tiny memories of tiny events–if any events in life can be thought of as tiny. In some weird Proustian way, I can smell a little bit of food and find myself back in 1954. I can hear music of a sort that takes me back to the sweet smell of a fifteen-year-old girl in high school. She’s in my arms, and I’m dancing with her in the gym after the big game. It’s 1964. A woman on Amsterdam Avenue is wearing retro bell-bottoms. It’s 1977.

Was I being set up for something? Why was a trickle of long-buried experiences flowing through the levee in my mind that separates the past from the present? Is this what happens to all people as they age? As they see less of the light and more of the twilight?

I reflected on my memories.

Wait! Do I want, really want to expose my inner fears and seemingly morbid thoughts and force them into the minds of my loving readers? They have their own problems. I can’t add to anyone else’s anxiety. That’s not what I do these posts for. I’m here to entertain and amuse, not deflate and depress.

I mulled over my thoughts.

The solution is likely in the extent of my pain. Pain can do odd things to one’s psyche. It can energize and it can terrify. It can lay you low, and it can cattle-prod you to attention. Make you laugh while you cry out. Run when you want to stop running, and get up when you’d rather sit. And sleep in quiet repose instead of writhing in a pool of nerve endings.

And it can remind you of your mortality. Slap you upside the head and say: You’re not twenty-one anymore. “You’re not thirty-three or forty-seven. You’re seventy-six, soon to be…well, do the math”.

Walt Whitman wrote something…

I paraphrase.

Grass. The beautiful uncut hair of graves.

One of my avocations is being a volunteer for Find-a-Grave.com. I get a request to photograph the headstone of someone. The request may come from a relative who lives somewhere on the map but west of New Jersey, who will never plan to make the trip to New York State to visit Aunt Polly’s grave. So, I do the deed. And, more often than not, I get a thank-you email. They are grateful. I am happy. Their family tree fills out, and I had a chance to walk through the uncut hair.

The uncut hair. As I searched for the requested headstone, I often thought of grass as a shroud. But not hair. I get the analogy now. The earth is so very old that perhaps there are only a few places where we do not tread on a forgotten grave.

I mused over these thoughts.

The patio is still bathed in that pale light. I’m tired, but I have a plan. I will listen to one more song by Nanci Griffith: Late Night Grande Hotel.

“I’m just learning to fly away again.”

I will take my headset off and play one game of solitaire on my iPad.

Then I will go on Reddit and read an article I saw earlier:

A Cool Guide To Escaping Killer Bees

Only then will I pull the covers to my chin. Sip ice water and fluff my squishy pillow. Close my eyes and look out at the pale light on the patio.

And as I fall into sleep, fall hopefully into a sweet sleep… I find myself thinking of my hometown. Owego.

It’s that old blue line that you can never go back home…

I don’t know why I always come here in my dreams…

I only come here to remember my dreams.

–Sarah Jarosz

[R-Before. See the offset? L-After. See the Titanium screws? Photo is mine.]

Heart of Glass

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

~~Anton Chekhov

[Our glass horse from Murano, Italy. Photo is mine.]

Sometime in the ancient distant foggy and shadowy history of human existence, someone discovered how to make glass. This is thought to have occurred around 4,000 years ago. I don’t have the month or day, but I’ll check on that and get back to you later. This happened, of course in Mesopotamia, in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. (Interestingly, the fabled location of the Garden of Eden, but that’s for another story.) It was here that the earliest evidence of proper glass making is found. I’ve often wondered how these things happen. How did a civilization have individuals that found out that by melting sand one can make a substance as fascinating as glass? It truly boggles the mind. At least my mind.

When I was a child, my parents drove from Owego to Corning, NY. This was the home of the Corning Glass Works. I sat with eyes wide from amazement while the glassblowers performed for the crowd. Their cheeks would inflate like Louis Armstrong as they blew through the Blowpipe into a glob of molten silica, soda ash and lime to produce astounding pieces of art. It awed me then and it amazes me now, still.

On a recent trip to Europe, I finally got to visit Italy. We stayed several days in Venice, a city I could probably write a book about. It is an awesome place by any standards. One of Mariam’s goals was to visit an island about forty-five minutes from St. Mark’s Piazza. We were going to Murano. I confess I didn’t know the significance that this tiny island has in the world of art glass. Stepping off the small boat we were escorted into a hall about the size of a high school gym, maybe a bit smaller. There I sat, again transfixed like my old child self, and watched something almost miraculous occur. A glob of melted sand was being heated to about 3,000℉ (when the furnace was open, I could feel the heat from thirty feet away) and slowly transformed into a horse, on its hind legs, rearing up like Trigger. I saw it all with my own two eyes. How did this craftsman do this? I looked at his hands for burn scars. Nothing. We bought one or two pieces in the gift shop. It sits in our apartment, on a sturdy bookcase. I can see it as I write this. I wanted to name him (I assume its a him but it really doesn’t matter) Lucifer. Not for any religious reason except for the fact that he was born and formed in the hottest furnace I’ve ever been near. Born of fire. Please don’t bring up The Game of Thrones…”A Song of Fire and Ice”…it’s not a reference I care to pursue.

[A recently completed bowl in the glassblowers shop. Murano. Photo is mine.]

[The glass maker’s very pure silica sand. Photo is mine.]

On the boat ride back to Venice, I found myself thinking of glass and my interest in its nature. As a long-time Earth Science teacher, I knew that glass can occur in nature. But, you may well ask, can nature achieve the necessary high temperatures? Volcanoes? No way. Molten lava has a temperature range of 700℉ to 1,200℉, almost cold enough to handle. That was a joke. Don’t try that without an adult nearby!

So where in nature can silica (sand) melt? Well, on a beach. On a beach when lightening strikes. The heat will fuse the quartz sand into globules called fulgurite. That is a bit oversimplified but for this blogs purpose, let’s go with it. This is not to be confused with “Beach Glass”. That is merely a product of some ya-hoo’s discarded broken bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon that has been tumbled by the sand and surf for awhile.

I also recall visiting The Old Manse in Concord, MA near the North Bridge. It was the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, built by his grandfather, Rev. William Emerson. Hawthorn and other Transcendentalists often gathered there to hold lofty discussions about philosophy and religion. You know, like a dated version of Starbucks. When newlyweds Nathanial Hawthorn and his wife, Sophia lived there, they would etch poems onto a window or two. These are still visible today.

[A Hawthorn poem on a window in the Old Manse. Photo is copyrighted by Alamy.]

One of the poems:

Man’s accidents are God’s purposes.

The smallest twig leans clear against the sky.

~~Sophia Hawthorn, 1843

All very lovely and poignant, I must say. I stood in the room with the window shown in the photo. I studied the etchings. I felt the glass (when the guard wasn’t looking). I was seeking the ripples at the bottom. I had read or heard somewhere that glass is not really a solid, rather a very slowly moving liquid. Sorry, but that, I found out, is an Urban Legend.

I’ll end here with another short quote. It’s an oblique reference to glass:

Just tonight I stood before the tavern

Nothing seemed the way it used to be

In the glass I saw a strange reflection

Was that lonely person really me?

~~”Those Were The Days” by Gene Raskin

A reflection? A mirror. Now I have something more to think about…

{Note: Most of the facts presented here are from a Goggle search.}

Last Thoughts From The Cathedral Crypt

[One of the many small chapels in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. Photo is mine]

I’m sitting with Mariam in a small chapel in the crypt of this amazing Cathedral. There are several reasons why I’m sitting here on a small very hard wooden chair. One is that the temperature is probably close to 65º F. Outside, it’s in the low 80’s. So it’s cool. The crowds are above me listening to the organ practice. So it’s quiet. And I’m trying to act like an artist. I have my sketch book and drawing pencil. I am not really an artist by any stretch of anyone’s imagination. But I’m trying. I’m trying to draw a column that was carved and set in place over 1,000 years ago.

Everywhere I turn I am steeped in history. And the thought weighs heavily on me. The worn limestone steps that lead this way and then that way in the Cathedral are places to contemplate. How many monks, abbots, priests and saints have used these very stones? What undiscovered cleric lies beneath my feet, waiting to be discovered when the stones are taken up to replace a water pipe or repair an already replaced electrical cable that had been installed in 1952?

These thoughts ground me to where I stand. They ground me to a solid stability in a time of turbulence and change.

But, enough about the crypt. Let’s go back several days ago when Mariam and I decided to take a walk. I had to justify bringing my hiking boots, didn’t I? We (I) had big plans to hike the North Downs Way, but the usual lower back issues and leg problems kept our walks to a minimum. So instead we took our chances to hike along the Great Stour Way. It’s a fifty-one mile trip, accessible only a few blocks away from our hotel. And I was curious about what I was capable of.

The day was unusually warm for this part of England. The local fields had just been cut and the pollen was as thick as a January blizzard in Yellowknife, or the smoke from the Canadian wildfires blanketing New York State.

The first part of the walk was through a garden-like park at the northwestern edge of town. People were laying on the lawns reading, small groups were sipping wine, and old men and old women sat on the shady benches thinking about the past.

We came to a bridge. Passing through the short tunnel I noticed three poems written on the brick walls. I photographed all of them. Here is my favorite:

Canterbury

The patchwork houses bend their great heads

Down to greet me as I pass

Walking the cobbled path

Saturated in history

Of those who had gone before me

~ ~

I hear them now

The many remembered and forgotten

Their voices live upon the wind

Their hearts wedded to the horizon

~ ~

Raindrops like goblets patter on the street

Marking the places that their feet once trod

I stand in the footprint already imprinted for me

— Lauren J. (?)

The poem seems to have been written for me, as all great poems are supposed to make you feel.

We finished out trip in a little over an hour. We didn’t get very far, but that wasn’t the point. I know now that I am still capable of some trail walking, no matter how little.

The day after tomorrow, we will be boarding a British Airways flight to JFK. We’ve seen a great deal. The trip was a success beyond my expectations. But what am I going home with? What am I taking with me? How have I changed?

After the exuberance of life in Venice, the riotous traffic of Rome, the art of the Vatican, the pubs and the people of England, the trials and sweat of the Canal boat, seeing old friends…there is a renewed spirit within me that I had begun to lose during the Pandemic.

My experiences have redirected and affirmed aspects of why I choose to get out of my comfort zone. Observing sculpture, buildings and frescoes that were created for the sake of beauty alone and not for utilitarian use has put my mind back on course.

I will choose beauty over the mundane, love over hatred, hope over despair, peace over violence and tenderness over brutality.

And, I will try to remain grounded in the present with deep roots to humanities collective history.

[Along the Great Stour Way. Photo is mine]

[A tree for lovers for sure. Photo is mine]

[Wildflowers along the Great Stour River. Photo is mine]

[NOTE: It is Monday morning in England. 10:45 am to be precise. I have just finished reading “The Case Against Travel” by Agnes Callard in The New Yorker. (June 24, 2023). I have been a faithful reader of that magazine for many decades. I value it’s quality fiction, insightful and timely news articles and, of course, the legendary cartoons.

I found this article a misdirected attack on the whole idea of travel as a broadening experience. Callard clearly does not like to travel so she invokes classic overused quotes from G. K. Chesterton, Ralph Waldo Emerson and even Socrates to support her view. (What can Socrates know about the modern world?). I understand that a fair number of people, famous and otherwise, regard travel as a waste of time. Using that mindset, so is mowing one’s lawn or planting a garden. How do these things change and enrich our thinking about the world as a whole?

I will not write a screed to tear apart her argument. I’ll simply say that I think she misses the bigger picture and that I disagree with her premise. It’s clear to anyone who reads my posts that I love to travel and I feel I am a more rounded and thoughtful individual because of it.]

A Dialectical Critique of “Teenager in Love”

[Dion. Photo probably taken in the 1960’s. Source: Mancrushes.com]

If you ask me, far too many words have been written about the hidden meanings and subtleties of Bertolt Brecht’s Mack the Knife or Pirate Jenny. Granted the Weimar Era in Germany (1918-1933) were pretty wacky times. But lyrics like: “You gentlemen can watch while I’m scrubbin’ the floors…”, are not all that existential. I love Puccini and I think Nessun Dorma is the aria for the ages, but does it rate being a theme song for the World Cup? It’s a song about sleeping which triggers the yawn reaction. Right?

One could write an interesting article about the sub-text of Fly Me to the Moon by Old Blue Eyes, but it probably doesn’t rate a tome or even a Master’s Thesis from Ball State University.

Some of you will say that the Nobel Laureate, Bob Dylan penned some interesting songs. I’ll give you a point or two for bringing him up, but really, can you stay forever young? No. You’re born, you age and then you die. Nice sentiment, though. And, you must admit, Lay Lady Lay borders on the pornographic. While I’m on this individual, there’s Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35. What is that all about? What kind of title is that? It reminds me of foul weather and a questionable number of females. My readers will surely bring up the fact that I mention Mr. Dylan in not a few blog posts. That’s only because someone gifted me a fifty-seven pound book of his lyrics. I use it as a paper weight on the desk where I write these stories. But, speaking of a master of songwriting, we must include Meatloaf (please don’t email me about the fact he had a wonderful songwriter who gave him the gems that made musical history. Yes, I’m thinking of Bat Out of Hell and the deeply felt and tender ballad I’ll Do Anything For Love But I Won’t Do That. The words are positively sublime bordering on the sacred and just beside the transcendence of pure art. I won’t even mention the song that did more for teenage sexual education than a semester of Health & Hygiene taught by the school nurse. I’m talking, of course, about Paradise By The Dashboard Light. (It’s really a song about baseball disguised as a teen lust ballad. Some claim there are deeper meaning in this song, but I only write G-rated blogs.

I know there are a few of my readers who will be asking: What about the Beatles? Well, what about them? The team of John Lennon and Paul McCarney did, I admit, write a few interesting ditties like A Day In The Life (but we all knew Paul was dead anyway) and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a true tune about friendship among the post-adolescent crowd.

But I digress.

I really intend to breakdown a song that…well…a song that is for the ages. I’m referring, of course to Dion’s Teenager In Love.

Unlike Pavarotti, who was born in Modena, Italy on October 12, 1935, where so few singers have originated. Dion (born Dion Francis DiMucci) was born only four years later in The Bronx, where all the doo-wop singers hailed from.

I’ll skip over his early life and his later life (when he became very religious) and concentrate on his middle years which probably should include some of his later younger years when he became something of a “Pop Star”.

When I was a teenager I went to the Touring Dick Clark Show at the EJ Rec Center in Johnson City, New York. He wasn’t there that night. Neither was Fabian or Frankie Avalon (but that’s a different blog for a different time).

I think I saw Jimmy Clanton sing Venus In Bluejeans and Johnny Maestro may have sung Sixteen Candles, but I don’t remember. (Another vague and maybe false teen memory was that my brother, Dan, stood at a urinal next to Bo Diddley in the Rec Center’s Mens Room).

~ ~ ~

I will keep you waiting no longer. Here is my analysis, line by line, of Dion’s monumental hit Teenager In Love:

Each time we have a quarrel [precurser to a failed marriage?], it almost breaks my heart [note ‘almost’]

‘Cause I’m so afraid that we will have to part [Co-dependency?]

Each night I ask the stars up above [suggestive of psycho-active drugs]

Why must I be a teenager in love? [the ultimate philosophical question]

One day, I feel so happy, the next day, I feel so sad [clearly a bi-polar disorder (manic-depressive)

I guess I’ll learn to take the good with the bad [passive/aggressive sado-masochism]

Repeat second verse

Repeat third verse

I cried a tear for nobody but you

I’ll be a lonely one if you should say we’re through [common threat used by abusive partners]

Well, if you want to make me cry that won’t be so hard to do [Hmmm. S-M again?]

If you should say goodbye, I’ll still go on loving you [not realistic because he hasn’t yet met the blonde named Taffy in the apartment down the hall]

Repeat second verse

Repeat fifth verse

Repeat sixth verse

~ ~ ~

Well, there you have it. I hope I’m leaving you with some food for thought and something to chew over in your mind. And to think that dozens of volumes have been penned on the analysis of Bob Dylan’s work. There once was a guy who would go through Dylan’s trash (when the singer lived in Greenwich Village, New York. I wouldn’t even know where Dion’s trash can is so it’s not like I’m a crazed fan or something.

For next time, I’m taking notes on Melanie. I will be dissecting her seminal song, I’ve Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates And You Have A Brand New Key.

Have a great month of May and remember it’s my birthday. I’m one year younger than Melanie and eight years younger than Dion.

The Most Terrifying Ghost Blog Ever Written

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”

–Madeline L’Engle

[Reading by the light of a single candle. Source: Google Search]

For reasons unknown to me, I’ve always been attracted to things that are dark and gloomy. When the wind blows against the thin glass of my window and the moon appears and reappears behind the darkest of clouds making shadows black and sounds in the woods (or wherever) make a dreadful moaning, then I’m happy. Well, sort of.

But first I need to tell you that as far as ‘ghosts’ in the common meaning are concerned, I’m pretty much of a skeptic. I don’t necessarily believe in the dead returning, but I do love a good ghost story. And, make no mistake, I’ve read more than my share. My favorites are M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Poe, of course. But Poe didn’t really write a classic ‘ghost story’…he was just plain creepy and morose.

Instead of telling you a ghost story, I thought I’d like to share just a small sample of my favorite Spirit Photographs. Many of the most famous photos have been debunked. Some have not and they defy explanation.

–Here is perhaps the most famous (if you exclude Mary Todd Lincoln sitting in a chair with Abe hovering just behind her) is the Grey Lady of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England. A Captain (sorry the name escapes me) took this photo in 1936. I’ve read many possible explanations but the photo remains an enigma.

What do you think?

[The Grey Lady descends the staircase. Source: Google Search.]

The woman has even been identified. She is the sister of British statesman, Horace Walpole. Apparently she was having an affair. Someone didn’t like that and had her locked in a room for quite a few years.

–I find the next one very interesting. Perhaps because it involves children (often the haunters). The back story is that the little girl’s sister died in a fire I believe. The photo was taken in 1925:

[At the poolside in a cemetery. Source: Google Search.]

I’m not a professional debunker, but this one has me puzzled as to how it was done…assuming it’s a fake. If it isn’t, well then.

–The next one has very little information regarding it. It looks like Ireland. And we all know Ireland is quite haunted:

[I’ll say this. The composition is too classically “ghosty”. A sheet? Your call.]

–The Bachelors Grove Cemetery in Illinois is reputed to be a very haunted place. When Paranormal Investigators set up their equipment, all manner of odd readings came up. I’ve seen many photos from that cemetery, but I find this one heartbreakingly sad:

[She sits. She is thinking about something profound. Who is she? Why is she there? Source: Google Search.]

I read that all the researchers present claimed there was no-one in that location when the photographers went to work. I would like to know more about her. Alas, I fear I’ll never know any answers.

That’s not all the photos I have, but I wanted to share a small sample.

I’ll end this frightful post with this:

It’s plain to see that this is an illustration and not a photograph. That’s okay. It still sets the mood for a memorable Halloween.

The Pump: I Can’t Handle It

[The Pump. Located at the village green in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.]

“How does it feel?”

–Bob Dylan Like A Rolling Stone

For many years Bob Dylan has provided a plethora of quotes for me for use in most social situations. Armed with these literary bites, I have made something of a name for myself as a Dylanologist. Yes, I’ve read many books about Bob and I can often be seen leafing through the big volume of Lyrics, looking for just the right wording, the satisfying cadence, the rhyme, the syntax and the deep theology found within his five hundred + songs. If you’re a follower of mine, you know that I often find appropriate places to insert a quote or two into a Blog (like I’m doing here) or a Facebook post.

Dylan was not awarded the Nobel Prize for scratching girl’s phone numbers on phone booths or public bathroom walls.

Just the other day I asked an attractive woman:

“My warehouse has my Arabian drums, should I put them at your gate?”

She stared at me with a blank expression. “Watch it, buster. My husband lifts weights.” I closed my trench coat and retreated back into the alley. I didn’t want to hear that her husband was kicked out of the Soviet Secret Police for being too rough on snitches.

Years ago I walked over to the Typing Teacher at the school where I taught. “Time is an ocean and it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow.”

“What? Are you taking a sick day?”

Another time I was struggling to recall the name of a somewhat obscure song by Dylan. My head was lowered in concentration. A woman standing near me apparently thought I said something. She asked: “What did you say?”

At that very moment I recalled the song.

“Wiggle. Wiggle,” I said. I can still feel the stinging of my cheek. It was a left hand swipe and I can tell you that she was sporting a ring on her finger the size of an oxen yoke.

You can see that I’ve had varying degrees of success with these quotes. And I have the scars to prove it. But there is one line, buried deep inside Subterranean Homesick Blues. In fact, there are several keepers from that song. I once asked a woman who was sitting next to me in a bar: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” She glared at me with big brown cow eyes which quickly narrowed to evil slits. She seemed to breath fire, and not the good kind.

‘Hey grandpa,” she said, “I don’t need a weatherman. I have an App.” She shook her iPhone with a barely hidden malevolence that would frighten any witch in MacBeth.

But I digress.

The real story I intended to tell you about is how a long-time search on my part led me to a quaint upstate college campus on a day just like today. Actually, it was yesterday, in the afternoon. After several Google searches I finally located the famous pump that does not have a handle.

“The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handle.”

You may have seen the music video of the song. Dylan is standing in an alley near the Savoy Hotel in London. He’s holding large cards which has bits of the song written on them. He drops each one as the words are sung.

[The Pump. A Closer Look]

I read somewhere that there is a picture of a street in London supposedly showing the Beatles crossing the intersection. Maybe there’s a song about that. Maybe there are some lyrics that I can adapt for a supply of pick-up lines.

I heard a song from those days once. Now I remember. I was riding an uptown M104 bus in New York. I was sitting next to a ravishing redhead with green eyes and a provocative plaid flannel shirt from L. L. Bean. I turned to her and, pointing to the Chrysler Building, I said in my best Ringo nasal voice: “You know that in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

It took three doctors and four nurses, using industrial strength Saline Solution to wash the Mace from my eyes.

I waited for everyone to leave except the younger blonde RN. I quietly said to her: “Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it.”

I woke up in the ER twenty minutes later.

My jaw was wired shut. No more quotes from me for a while.

[The video.]

[All photos are mine with the exception of the Dylan picture with the sign Government. Credit: Tony Frank/Sygma/Corbis.]

Farewell Marcel

[Volumn #1]

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

–Marcel Proust

As I strolled through the Parisian gardens of Luxembourg I paused and watched the people absorbing the sun’s warmth which was peeking, like a cat burglar, through the sweet gate in the sky made possible by the slowly drifting clouds that often looked dark and menacing at times and light, dazzling and adamantine at others. I opened a package of Madelines I was never without and dipped one in a small cup of tea I had purchased from a portly gentleman with a bushy mustache and a pocket that sagged with the spare francs he had earned that day. The scent of the tea on the little cookie entered into my every senses. I began to think of my youth, the girls I loved who had by now become stately women. I touched my beard, newly trimmed, and could feel the grayness of my hair. I was old. What happened to all those Lost Years, the years of my older youth, my early middle age and now my late middle age? I had yet to taste of the fruits of old age with its wrinkles, gray hair and painful legs. I had yet failed in my attempts to rediscover the Lost Time of my life. My memories were fading and I must learn ways to regain the imagery and sensations of the questionable choices I had made in the heat of my youth when my blood ran hot in my veins and laughter came easy. But along with the cheers and smiles I am beginning to recall how hard and fast my heart breaks. I have loved but my love was too dear for the women I most desired.

I brought the Madeline to my nose again. I drew in an olfactory sensation that brought back my most elusive memories. I closed my eyes and somewhere, behind my eyes and between my ears were the smells of burning leaves along Front Street of Owego in the state of New York, the town where my childhood was played out like a Shakespearian play, sometimes a tragedy sometimes a comedy. The leaves gave way to the sweet fragrance of a newly mown lawn along Main Street. The old river town has changed over the years, I am told, into a boutique village of cafes and antique shops selling the latest of the old town’s ephemera. One can sit in the sun and watch the slowly drifting Susquehanna River as it winds its way to the Chesapeake Bay. Up on Cemetery Hill, the moss grows over the lettering of the graves of young men and women I played with in sandy baseball fields and snowy hills that seem to exist only to provide gravity to an eight-year-old boy on a sled. How many languid afternoons has seen me at The Fair Grounds, eating sloppy cheesesteak sandwiches and watching the horses race the oval track. On the back row of seats in the grandstand is where I may have tasted my first Madeline.

I shall set a goal for myself. Some people are driven by their need for achieving certain goals. Driven to do such picaresque actions these goals are sometimes achievable and sometimes not. Some people have the ability to set recording devices in order to never miss an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians or the Hoarders. Some set themselves on arduous journeys to summit Everest or Denali or the Matterhorn. Others will bike their way across Iowa. Many jump out of airplanes (on purpose) to feel the rush of the wind as they free fall a thousand feet. I set my goal several years ago (I’m not saying when) to read what is arguably the longest novel ever written (not counting the Game of Thrones books). I was going to read Proust’s magnum opus: A La Recherche du Temps Perdu or otherwise referred to in English as In Search of Lost Time. It will be a daunting task. The book (depending on the edition) runs from 3,000 to 4,000 pages. My eyes must look at and understand 1,267,069 words. The books are six in number. I must search for and find the longest sentence ever written. That sentence clocks in at 847 words.

I am proud and somewhat amazed that I have only fifty pages left to complete this gargantuan task. At times the book can be like sucking fudge through a straw. The exquisite power of the language, the depth of the writing, the scope of the descriptions, the insights into love, death, grief, loneliness, lust, desire and dreams of men and women. I truly believe that if one calls him or herself a lover of books, then reading Proust is a must do action.

I have read many books in my life (so far) but none of them can stand up under the blazing light of Proust. If you like challenges…read these books. You’ll never see another book, your life and your dreams and memories the same way again…ever.

[Proust had little need for paragraph breaks, commas and pictures.]

[All photos are mine.]

Out Of The Woods

Goodbye’s too good a word, babe

So I’ll just say “Fare thee well”

–Bob Dylan “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”

[Our front yard on July 10, 2022. Photo is mine.]

Look close. It’s hard to see. If you’re reading this post on a laptop, you’re out of luck. On a mobile device you can use your fingers to enlarge the photo. See the sign in the background? The one that reads: Tir Na Nog. It refers to a very old Irish legend. Tir Na Nog is (was) the Land of Eternal Youth. If you lived there, you would never grow old. If you left that place, and touched the ground in the ‘outside’ world…you could never return. And you would grow old and eventually die. This was the name of our camp in the Adirondacks. The whole spell worked for a time, and then it didn’t. I grew old.

The sign in the foreground speaks for itself.

A small bit of backstory here.

I have been coming to these mountains since I was five years old. Seventy years of family camping, canoeing, hiking, climbing and building sand castles became part of my DNA. As a teenager I first had the feeling that living in these glorious hills was a dream to be wished. Time passes. Hiking partners, several dear friends and a brother or two…fellows who shared a cramped lean-to, built campfires, swam and sweated together began to move on (a sweet euphemism for death), leaving me alone without the motivation to climb just one more summit or paddle to just one more lake.

Did I mention that I have a deep fear of being alone? Loneliness most often brings me to tears.

A hiatus set in for several years. Then I met the woman who would be my wife. Even though she was born and raised in Queens, she took to camping like a bird takes to the clouds. She loved it. She often said that the Adirondacks were “soul satisfying”. So we bought a house in the woods where deer and bears roam, by a lake with a dozen loons, under skies that rang out with thunder and the rain fell by the pailful. We moved from our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Rainbow Lake in November, 2011. We decorated with gusto, bought a wood stove, hung Adirondack posters, bought several kayaks and a new pair of hiking boots. We were happy…until we weren’t.

[Our house is nearly hidden by the trees. Photo is mine.]

Those of you who have followed me on WordPress have read my many posts highlighting my many complaints about the harsh weather, the length of winter and the incessant presence of mosquitoes, gnats and black flies. A winter or two ago we had a week of frigid arctic air. The high temperature for that week never rose above -9° F. But make no mistake. I have also celebrated the quiet snowfalls, the early summer wildflowers and the jaw-dropping autumn colors.

So, I’m turning another page in the book of my life. Pending any financial issues, we have found a buyer. Boxes are already filled and labelled: BOOKS FROM PAT’S OFFICE. TO NYC. Eleven years of memories are going with us…but just as many are staying…for the new owners and for a few friends.

Not an hour ago I said a tearful farewell to my daughter, Erin, her husband, Bob and to my precious grandson. Elias got to see where grandpa has spent the last decade. I’m so thankful for that. The next time he visits, I’ll be taking him to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

I will be trading the tall pines that surround our house with skyscrapers of glass and steel. Some of my friends don’t care for urban life but I thrive on the buzz, the convenience and the lack of isolation. As I wrote a few lines ago, the wilderness (the Adirondacks have lost the real sense of wilderness experience to the masses of hikers seeking this very isolation…ironic, but true), breeds loneliness in my soul. Where I once found solace and quiet, I now find sadness. The ghosts of my brothers and close friends lurk around alder thickets and shadowy forests. I can not escape them.

[Manhattan skyline. Photo is mine.]
[Our front yard. Photo is mine.]

But the Adirondacks haven’t seen the last of me. I will surely be back to take care of the items still resting at the bottom of my bucket list. I’ll return on a glacially cold day in a future January and ski the slope on Whiteface Mountain where the Men’s Downhill was held in 1932 and again in 1980. Then I intend to learn the intricate moves of curling and join a pick-up team.

Or maybe I won’t.

I already have a plan. Once we’re settled in an apartment, I’m going to order Chinese take-out. Or perhaps I’ll take a walk in Central Park to experience nature.

I will have the freedom to choose.

A Spadeful of Earth

Grief is the price we pay for love.

–Queen Elizabeth II

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

–Abraham Lincoln

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’

–Erma Bombeck

[The High Peaks of the Adirondacks]

The photo above is the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. My friend, Greg Stella and I used this beautiful region as our playground. Every peak, every valley had our boot prints in the mud and the rocky summits felt the back of our heads as we daydreamed away the hours after an ascent. After the ascent. Such a misnomer. It implied a “last ascent.” There was never really a last ascent. There would be another, and then another…and another. In the area shown in the photo were the majority of the oft-mentioned ADK 46. Other peaks were found outside the frame. There were 46 peaks (according to the original survey) that were 4,000′ or higher. If one climbed all of them, he or she would be eligible to join the “46 er’s” and get a patch to proudly wear on your parka or rucksack. Greg and I climbed about twenty or twenty-five of these peaks. We decided, sometime in the 1980’s that ‘bagging’ the summits wasn’t what we were searching. It became less about the numbers and more about re-climbing our favorites…some many times over.

The room in the funeral home in Owego, NY, set aside for the service was filling up fast. I was going to give the eulogy, but I had to wait until a full military service was complete. Then the priest said the words that were so often spoken at funerals. He spoke of God’s mysterious ways and equally mysterious reasons to bring down upon us congregants the unspeakable grief of an unbearable loss. Then it was my turn. I positioned myself at the podium, away from the slide show of my friend’s life. If I looked at them, I knew in my heart I would not be able to string two sentences together without a box or two of Kleenex or even better, Angel Soft. I had to focus on my note cards and pretend my heart was still whole and not cracked open with grief.

We climbed in the rain, the snow and the sleet. We slept in lean-tos when it thundered like an angry Greek God over our heads. We curled up in our cheap sleeping bags when the ambient air temperature was -30° F. And, yes it’s true. If you left your hot chocolate out beyond the roaring fire, it would freeze over in about four minutes. We slept on bare rock summits on balmy summer nights. If it was during the New Moon, we would drift into sleep under unnumbered, uncountable myriads of stars and distant planets that made the midnight hour almost bright enough a time to read a book…or a poem. But hiking wasn’t our only shared experience. We rock climbed in the ‘gunks near New Paltz, NY, entered and competed in the General Clinton Canoe Regatta. Cooperstown to Bainbridge on the lazy Susquehanna. For that we were given a small trophy and a patch for our anoraks. This was in 1976 and we came across the finish line 74th out of a field of over two hundred. Not bad for two canoeists with no training.

I completed the eulogy and held my composure better than I thought I was capable. I knew I had to be strong for his family and other relatives. I took several quick glances at Greg’s urn. It was beautiful. I wondered how they put his cremains and his spirit, talent and humor into such a small square container. If I sound like I’m bragging about all the amazing adventures Greg and I shared, nothing could be further from the truth. I felt humble and insignificant beside such a grand person, larger than life and now silent for a very long time.

We’re at the graveside. There are his parents. Over further are his neighbors. Further on are my parents. In between are our childhood friends who never walked off a plane after a tour of duty in Viet Nam. There were old girlfriends and so many others that we walked past on the streets of Owego in years gone by. Someday, I will mingle with the soil of this hallowed ground not too far from my friend. The priest said his final words. We all stood and began to slowly drift away to get on with our lives. Someone said my name. I was handed a shovel. The small hole was nearly half filled already. I scooped a spade full and let the earth fall on the top of the urn, covering two cloth patches. A green Adirondack Mountain Club patch and a red “FINISHER” patch that I had given to Patti before the service. Soon the grounds person laid the final sod clumps and tamped it down.

It was over, the ceremony that is. What was just beginning was the flood of memories so many of us spoke.

Good-bye my dear friend. I know we will meet again, on a new trail, in another place. This will happen sometime on a sunny day, when the clouds won’t be hanging so low and seem so impenetrably grey.

[Greg and I climbing a mountain in the High Peaks]
[Photo courtesy of Brad Brett]

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

–Robert Service

[All photos are mine unless otherwise indicated]

Into The Woods

[The Adirondack Forest. Photo courtesy of Brad Brett]

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.”

–Carl Jung

In the rearview mirror of the last three weeks of my life, I see I’ve left behind many things and added many memories. I’ve left behind the heat and sand of Florida, the peaches and boiled peanuts of Georgia, a friend and his wife in North Carolina, the breathtaking vistas and overlooks of the Blue Ridge Parkway and later, Skyline Drive. Mariam and I sat in a restaurant in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and played music bingo. We passed Carlisle where my daughter went to college so many years ago. We drove apace with the trucks and cars across New Jersey and plunged straight into the Holland Tunnel.

The Grateful Dead: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Once we were settled in a generous friend’s apartment, we began to search for a place of our own. Both of us want to come back to New York City to live. But it’s proving to be harder than we expected. One place is too small, another lacks outdoor space. One might be a walk-up. I can’t do four floors as well as I once could. No, not now.

Why move? you might ask. You have waterfront, kayaks, canoes, snowshoes and bikes. The answer is simple and complex at the same time. We love the quiet woods. We love the sound of our paddles as we glide along on Rainbow Lake. But, so much of what the ‘dacks provides are activities that are fit for a younger man (I speak here for myself). We miss people. The quiet can be overwhelming sometimes and brings with it the loneliness of the North Woods. As a person who has struggled with insomnia since childhood, I dread the dark nights, those dark nights when the wind shifts in strange ways and the moon struggles to peek out from behind a dark cloud.

I don’t want to shovel another millimeter of snow. I don’t want to get into my car just to get our mail. I want something of a social life. I want to be able to order in Mexican or Chinese food. I want company.

Bob Dylan: “I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea. Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, at times it’s only me.”

With the exception of my mother (she never took to the camping), my entire family had strong ties to the Adirondacks. They made Eighth Lake, Raquette Lake and Long Lake special places. But these people have passed on. Around every corner I turn, behind every tree, on any lake, along any trail…there are ghosts lurking…not to harm me, but to remind me of the many great times I had among the mountains. One spirit, however, follows me. He was a good friend. I took him on his first trip to the High Peaks. On a chilly November night…I remember the gibbous moon…this friend died, not in my arms but very nearly so. I’ve told this story before. His presence, his souI and his life have followed me for forty-eight years. My memories of the night he died are dark and are the stuff of my nightmares.

Gordon Lightfoot: “Like brave mountaineers, we aren’t bothered much by time.”

I’m heading headlong toward a milestone birthday…and I am fearful. There are so many years behind me and not very many left to me. I accept that. But I don’t have to like it.

I’m not done yet.

I can only hope.

But, in the end, I will never totally forget my love of the mountains, even though they are now beyond my grasp.

‘There is beauty in everything. Even in silence and darkness.”

–Helen Keller