"Birth"

From "Cloud Atlas"

Our lives are not our own.

From womb to womb we are bound to others.

Past, and Present.

By each crime, and every kindness we birth the future.

"~\V/~"

"~/A\~"

"Snow"

I remember long ago it snowed like crazy all night. However of course schools were open,...or so we thought. My brother John, and I fought our way through the deep windy Brooklyn drifts for five blocks! Only to discover that our school was closed. There was a last minute decision or something, and we didn't get the word. I recall Johnny being less than happy.

(...doll stunt doubles for me, and Johnny. I'm on the right,...ahem.)

"The Ring-Ding Episode"

Okay here's the situation. I just worked for about 18 hours straight. I'm completely fried. My eyes are cooked from staring at various CTR screens, and I'm totally irradiated from being in close quarters with broadcast equipment.

But this isn't the problem.

Going blind, being radioactive, having the flu, being radically stressed out, and awake for a couple of days is no big deal I've been doing this sort of thing for 30 years.

What I'm worried about are the 'Eight' count'em 8!! Ring Dings, (tm) I just ate in rapid succession, and then washed down with several cans of Pepsi.

I figured this would pep me up.

Anyway what I wanna know is,...are them things gonna kill me?

Granted I used to consume vast quantities of dangerous drugs while doing all the above mentioned work. Eh, this was back in the day, and it was socially acceptable. ...ahem.

However Ring Dings as wonderful as they are also far more dangerous than any combination of nasally absorbed powdered additives. I think the Pepsi may be the triggering mechanism of this little drama.

I can hear the EMT guys talking over my deflating body in the meat wagon.

"What a dummy."

"If he just sucked down them Pepsi's, and nuthin' else he would'a made it."

"If he had 'only' scoffed down that bucket of Ring Dings, and left it at that ditto!"

"But ya can't do both, and sure as hell not at the same time!"

So should I be calling all the people that have bleeped me over during my life so I either forgive them or finally tell them what I really think of them.

Or...., should I have some more cream filled, chocolate coated, sugar glazed bits of Heaven?

Dammit if this country had National Health I wouldn't have to worry!

"~\V/~"

Every Dream has a price.

"Phone Home"

I have an idea for two little stories. In one I buy an old rotary phone at a flea market. I take it home plug it in, and dial my childhood phone number.

My Mom answers.

Time has twisted on itself somehow via the mixture of old, and new phone technologies, and patched me through to 1960. So there I am with my Mommy on the line. Our phone lines stretching 56 years to connect us.

I haven't taken this idea further.

Perhaps just sitting there knowing my Ma is on the other end is enough,...for now.

In another story I'm on the train to Hollis Queens. I get off at the Hollis stop, and notice that winter has turned to spring. The platform has shed 54 years.

Men wear brimmed hats, and all the ladies are in dresses. The streets are fresh, the buildings seem newer, and the cars have fins. According to the newsstands Kennedy is President, and Elvis is still King.

The MTA has delivered me to 1962.

My dear, and long departed Aunt Sybil lives here. We always called her "Mum". No one remembers why. Just as we don't know how my sister became "Cookie".

Anyway back then this part of Queens was still attractive. I'd forgotten how lovely it was before the city swallowed it up. It went to hell in the 1970's thru the 90's., but now it's back. Lovely again. Oh the cycle of cities, and now I'm old enough to have actually witnessed one.

Well in this time shift realm I walk to Auntie's house. I ring her bell, she opens the door.

"Hi Mum" I quietly say.

She knows who I am at once, and invites me in. I pour my heart out to her just as I did as a lad. She cooks as she listens.

I'm "almost an old man" I tell her. I'm "tired, sad", and confused. The 21st century is a cruel, and bitter place. I can't find the strength to keep faith with all she, and my Mother had taught me. She listens, and comforts, and instructs as only she could.

I mention our going to the moon then stopping. Never it seems to return. She smiles as I describe our little robots driving around on mars, crashing into rocks, and flipping over into ditches. I tell her about our Negro President. She nods thoughtfully.

I spend an afternoon in 1962 with Auntie. Back there when our biggest problems were merely nuclear wars, and racial integration. Such an innocent time it was.

After a wonderful meal, and helpful words I leave my version of Heaven. Mum keeps our trans-temporal meeting her secret.

54 years to the day later my cousin, Mum's only surviving son, hands me a sealed note.

Yes, It's from my dear Auntie. She set it aside to be delivered to me nearly 30 years after her death.

What does it say?

I don't know.

The creased yellowed envelope sits before me now. Sits patiently. Half a lifetime of patients. Waiting to be opened.

To be continued.

"Why Can't Life be like a Movie?"

Maybe I should clarify.

Why can't I be in a 'happy' movie. Most of what ya gets these daze is either stupid or evil. Zombie, vampire mailmen that suck your brains out through ya eye sockets. That or surreal love stories about rich butt-holes that fuck a lot, and drive 1938 Bugatti's.

Nah, I wanna live in one of them hopeful Capra fantasies.

The kind where some good hearted yokels go through some contrived bleeped up whooie, but in the end all's well.

I want to be the crusading Teacher, Pastor, or Reporter. There's always one of these swell guys wear'n a cool hat in the script. Always fighting for the innocent!

Usually some old guy is losing his farm or a bunch of cute depression era kids are about to be dumped into an evil orphanage.

The farmer might go to the glue factory, and the kids could get sodomized, flogged, and generally bleeped to hell'n back.

Somewhere in all this I gets to make this passionate speech, or sermon or editorial. This usually saves everybody, and I get the girl or boy in the end.

In the final scene gramps is on his farm knee deep in pig shit, and the kids are back on the block stealing stuff, and breaking windows.

'All happy as junkies that stumbles onto 50 kilos of China White. (...uncut.)

The music swells, and the credits roll.

What could be better. That, and no one has to see the messy contradictions of the film's characters getting on with everyday life. Then the lights come up, and you go out into the dreary hell of your real life'.

This is why we love movies so much, and why I wants to live in one.

(...Okay yeah it's always only white people same as now, but we can re-write.)

The dream world that these flickering phantoms live in. Their universe, their eternity is one that has never, 'ever' had a backed up toilet or a dead body in floating the sink.

"...asleep"

It's a "Cobbley". They're a primate species that's been quietly hanging around us for some tens of thousands of years. Some think they're the origin of the Faerie myth. This one I call "Hotpoint". This because i found him living in an empty refrigerator box when I was 11. He's been following me around ever since...btw I think these guys are near immortal.

Anyway Hotpoint sleeps most of the time then eats watches TV, and goes back to sleep.

This is why folks almost never seem them...they're asleep. Also they're usually mistaken for cats. Anyway Hotpoint looks after things at my digs. He's been helping me eat healthy to. He knows herbs roots all that. These guys can also perfectly imitate anyone's voice. He calls my doctor for me...stuff like that. The down side he orders weird stuff online. That, and sings opera highlights when I'm trying to sleep.

"FB Chat-Homeless"

Gary Introne Thank you, David James, Sidney Smith, Sean Symborski, Tracy Billings, and Arunav Barua. gar

Sidney Smith I note her swollen ankles. The same happened to me when I was homeless 10 years ago. This because you are always moving you can't stop anywhere for too long. Cops crazies property owners come after you. You can't lay down anywhere to actually sleep. Like this woman I crouched where I could for 10 or 15 minute kat-naps, and moved on. All this puts weight, and pressure on the feet, and ankles...they swell. This is also why the Homeless always look so exhausted,...because the are. They're sleep deprived.

Gary Introne True again, Sidney. The swollen ankles (and the general demeanor) are very fair guideposts to determine an authentic, wandering, homeless. The tired, plumpish bedragglement, the off-hand collection of possessions being dragged around, and the almost narcoleptic nodding off and innattention to things are also true-to-form. These are the ones for whom I really break. I do feel there are plenty of other, not so authentic, ones around, but that's a subjective call not to be made except for my own use. gar

Sidney Smith New Homeless of course look healthier. Their coats, and such are fresher they can almost pass for a housed employed person. This fades in a few weeks to a month. After that they take on the traditional look of our wanderer class. it's near 10 years since I become a person again. However like a vet of an unpopular war no one wants to know about what you've been through. I found there were no services or consoling for those returned from the street. So like my brother after the war I was on my own. You see so few come back from all that there's no infrastructure to help. To this day I drag around all that happened. To me it was not 10 years ago, but yesterday. It will ''always' be yesterday like it is for those home from a war no one cares about.

Gary Introne Pretty resilient bunch, usually.

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Sidney Smith The long term ones yes. The sick or crazy die off fast. The scammers go to jail. The strong or those with some wit survive. It was these that helped me find my way in that world. It's somewhat though not exactly like the depression era Hobos. They have a code. This keeps them functioning.

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"...it passes the evening"

Sometimes when I'm nuts, and such I write little stories. The other night I started a another one. It was seriously bad. So what it passed the evening. Here's the only part that was sort of fun.

"The Cat Did It"

It was after midnight as they turned their old Corvair onto Route 26, and saw the last folks fleeing Peach Bonnet. Peach Bonnet Arizona.

There was an ice cream truck bells jingling neon lit, and leaving a trail of Almond Vanilla Coconut. Next a 1952 Hudson full of cats.
Then the town's hearse which had two stuffed alligators tied the roof.
This followed by a guy dressed like Santa Claus in a rusty pickup with some Zebra in the back.

Turn a little town upside down, and the damndest shit will fall out.

The last to escape was a driverless fire engine. It careened down the highway lights flashing siren going nuts, and it's whole body bumper to bumper engulfed in red, and yellow flames.

Then quiet.

On the horizon a pulsing glow where Peach Bonnet used to be.

That's where we were going.

The rest of the story was biblical bullshit,...burning trees not consumed people, and animals turned to glass.  Demons defiling altars. Fun stuff only a Catholic survivor could come up with. But like I sez it was fun.

"Time Goes By"

This very well may be me, on the top, in one of my brief earlier lives. I say "brief" because I don't think I lived into old age in any of the others. This may be the first time for that.

Which is why everything now is such a surprise.

Well here I am, on the bottom, at the very start of this time around. I recall so well how so much seemed familiar. I was so sure I'd seen certain things before. This I suppose because in the early 1950's so much of 19th century even traces of 18th century New York was still apparent.

Life after life.

This can't be proven scientifically. It's all so subjective. I hope it stays that way. We need the mysterious. Things that are not quite there yet there.

Like touching an Angel's wings.

It's said that they are just this side of solid. Like running your fingers through warm air. There, but not quite.

As it should be.

"A Moment"

"Oscar, and Leo"

Oscar Wilde, and Leo da Vinci look over the Maestro's new portraits of Che's little known twin brother Eddy.

Unlike his deranged brother Che. Eddy spent his life quietly. He was a school bus driver, and part-time accordion repair man in Dayton Ohio.

The most exciting thing that ever happened to Ed Guevara was his meeting Walt Disney in a gay bar in Berlin in 1958.

Mr. Disney paid Eddy two million dollars to keep quiet about their one night stand.

True to his word Eddy kept Walt's secret, and his money

Btw he gave most of the dough to his brother Che for the Revolution. Che put it to good use too.

So we can indirectly thank Walt Disney for Castro, the Revolution, extra-judicial executions, ...hey they meant well, and generations of Che t-shirts.

Anyway this is why Leonardo da Vinci is honoring Che's quiet, and unassuming brother with a series of Andy Worholesque portraits.

...imagine that.