"...a wonder"

 

"Once upon a time..."

A brief though hard rain blew through town late this afternoon. Winds tossed the trees back, and forth. Leaves filled the air. All that Wizard of OZ stuff on steroids.

Later that evening I went out for a walk on the Parkway. Eastern Parkway in fact. This street began as a deer trail. Later a Native hunting path. Then in colonial times a horse, and carriage track.

In the early 20th century an auto highway with parkland on it's sides.

Here is where I lived, and played as a child.

Time, and circumstance have brought me back to where I began.

So many changes. I recall all the Whites fleeing to their 'Burbs when Coloreds, and Hispanics started to come in. Now their grandchildren are here. Back from their strange exile in the land of Bar-B-Q pits, and Segregated schools.

They're welcome as all are here.

Walking tonight along the Parkway I heard the symphony of languages that so marks this Emerald City. Haitian French Creole Russian varieties of Spanish Romanian Mandarin various sorts of English,...I think I even heard a few bars of Standard English in the Symphony's adagio.

I couldn't live anywhere else.

I sensed autumn.

Just a very slight aroma. The fall scent was in the air after the storm. It was warm, and humid yes, but the breeze had an edge of coolness about. In the same way you sense spring in very late winter...a cold breeze yet with a faint warm edge.

The Sun, and Moon have chased each other through the seasons. We have lived another summer, and now prepare for short days cold nights, and the turning of the leaves.

A Wonder.

"...static"

I was just chatting with a FB pal about our lives, and what may be remembered of us. He linked me a video of an artist that shot an image of himself everyday for decades.

I unintentionally did this by being on the air for 36 years. I can listen to myself from my 20's through my mid-60's. I have six boxes of stored media holding some of this.
Some few may survive like old photos in the family. I wonder what my great grand Niece would make of distant Uncle Grampa riffing on what to make of iPods in 2002.

Or my live,...on tape walking the Hudson with radio comrades to NJ when the river froze from side to side in 1982.  We turned around a quarter way through as the ice was getting rather,...thin.

See below. My B'cast archives or some of it.
1977~2014 more or less. It could have gone back to 1969 if I could find the college radio stuff.
Times being what they are I sublet the roof of the archive for toy car parking.

I was listening to my 27 year old self doing station breaks announcements the weather, and interviews with assorted fanatics, and opportunists. How earnest BBC smarty pants, and utterly full of it I was. By my 40's to 60's I had advanced to my easy going bleep it attitude,...it was way more fun.

Every now, and then I listen to a random program. I just heard one from summer 1982. I was naively well intended. I'm younger than that now.

"...be safe be kind be brave"

So the holidays. For our very lives this year we must be separate. Such is life in a Plague Year. An odd year in our republic where near half including the head of state don't believe it's happening. This despite 250,000+ dead at our feet. 

America is a strange land. 

It was once a good land,...could be again. The Holiday season for some was a pole star to be looked forward to. I remember back when cars had fins milk was delivered in bottles children could wander safely, and you could have TV in any color as long as it was black, and white.

In that faraway time before we crammed near space with debris, and online meant either jump rope or waiting to get into a movie. I remember Uncles, and Aunts tons of cousins, and family friends pouring into each other's houses.

I remember our house. 

All done up as best we could. Our traditional six foot tree. Decorations some going back to the late 1800's mixed with flashy electric geegaws of the 50's. Dad, and the Uncles all gathered in the daddy spots yacking about the Army...WW2 was recently won. What routes they took to get here. They all came on the new Interstates that Eisenhower just built. 

My Ma, and the Aunts in the mommy space...the kitchen. Going on about how them uncles drove them crazy how the kids were just as nuts. Who was graduating college soon...a bunch of aunts did. Also who was having a baby. Babies. I remember babies showing up all the time. Endless new cousins,...even a new sister.

Meanwhile our dog Brownie was under the table listening. That's what dogs do for kids. They listen to what's really going on. Then tell all good girls, and boys what's coming their way. Good Dog!

Presents.

Besides tearing the house apart all me my siblings, and the cousins. We dreamed about the neat stuff coming our way. I mean Santa never let us down,...mostly. Yeah I was still into the guy then. Still am somewhat.

There was the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalogue that the mailman would slip us every year. Yep the instruction manual for materialist yule heaven. The thought was that Santa ran Sears. At least at Christmas,...made sense at the time.

Then Thanksgiving part two.

I would have gone on about part one, but my fingers are tired...com'on I'm an old guy now. Anyway it was mostly the same stuff, but with a Turkey, and family incidents. Christmas on the whole just had the Turkey.

Christmas Turkey.

As I sez part two. Before the age of fast food gluttony. Folks only pigged out once or twice a year. The Holidays. As had been traditional for over a 1000 years. 

Now we stay up all night eat constantly. Obliviously use tech that would seem magic to our folks, and us. But back then we just had each other. ...and it mattered.

The aroma of cooking filled our house. Near every house. We sat said grace then the passing of food all manner of wonders. Laughing stories the tree bright blinking it's soul to heaven in the background.  We were family we were friends we were together.

Remember these were Depression, and WW2 folks. They were making up for lost time. Those that could made sure the kids had at least a taste of security.

As my ma told me years later. She dad, and our aunts, and uncles. They gave us good memories on purpose. They knew what desperation want was, and what it did.

They deliberately created a sense of harmony despite everything. I was told years later we nearly lost our house...more than once. I found out in my thirties. They so loved us.

There was also music.

My family both sides played instruments. This was a common thing before mass entertainment. In the days when radio was cutting edge. Folks made their own music. Having instruments, and sheet music was common in every house. 

We sang carols. We actually sang.  My dad played the piano assorted uncles or aunts accompanied on violin,...even viola. Everyone sang. Even me shy as I was. We sang, and meant it because we really believed in things. Each other,...even a G-d.

Yule gatherings have been with us for 1000 years, and more. Beginning as folk solstice rituals. It's been passed on to many peoples each adding their touch to it.  Family friends gather at certain points in the year for a reason. A Blessed one.

Sometimes in war or like now in plague it must be put off. But it stays in our hearts. That, and as many are already planning. Next years gathering after the vaccine will be as is being said, "A Fucking Blow Out".

I have every intention of being around that that. 

Bless you all. Be brave be safe be wise be kind.  

"... It’s the little things"

Like whole living demographics. I’ve been outside of this culture’s main steam from birth. This gives one a unique view on many things. We see what the majority won’t because our lives our stories are different. We survive within mass of people who either don’t see us or if they do don’t care about us because they don’t have to.

They are like tourists wandering the forest eating poison berries, and mushrooms because they’re superior, and above nature,…till nature kills them. We just stay away from the poison. Even when we warn the lords, and ladies they ignore us…what could we know after all.

Many of us see the poisons’ of the mainstream, and stay away. While the settlers eat them, and die.

Don’t eat the bad fruit, but don’t fear death either is all we say.

 

 

 

I dreamed I was on 14th Street. There was no light in the City. I was sitting alone before a campfire at the intersection. A large Northern Brown Bear calmly walked by.

"...kind"

 

In such times.

The most revolutionary thing.

Is to be kind.

 

 

~RED BARBIE~

 

Boys, and Men should play with Dolls.

We invented Music, and Dolls

before we invented Beer, and War.

Does this tell you Anything?

 

~PAPER THEATER~

 

I used to do paper art stuff for a while.

"...life made simple"

 

"...life made simple"

World Peace.

This is very easy.

"Everybody shut up, and eat Cake!"

 

"...dance"

 

"...dance"

In such days

we should be like Cat Woman

and dance more.

 

Old gent in a 1932 trainyard reads a strange article.

It goes, "...As you read this people all over the world in the year 2019~AD will be watching you. Somewhat befuddled he looks around, and sez, "...I'll be damned."

 

Nurse Barbie's Health tips #468.

"It's that time again."

"Get ya Flu Shots and bundle up. Don't do nothing stupid. There's a new strain coming on top of the Second COVID Wave. Parts of Canada already hit. So hang tuff.

Also easy on that legal Ganja less Sugar, and don't Vape. That, and call zoom email ya family, and pals. Especially your elders this Winter. Mail them sugarless cookies. I got some for my birthday.

"...time, and again"

 

 What with COVID I've written no new time travel stories.

There's the overt danger of infecting the past, and radically changing history. However here's a pre-Virus story from last Fall.

I set my Dark Matter watch for Central Park.

Just south of the Bridge. October 16th 4:02pm 1956~CE.

I come here often.

Temporal mechanics being as it is I never meet myself.

There's peace in this time in these few acres. The climate not yet visibly changed. A chill in the air the colors at peak.

In my base time of 2019 it would still be warm with no colors whatever. In this "when" gents in fedora's women in skirts children in cowgirl, and cowboy outfits. I remember I had one too.

Wind color clouds.

All here enjoy the peace of not knowing what's coming, and little of what's already happened. I sat on a 1956 park bench dressed for 2019. Yet as always in New York getting no notice.

I slept.

 

I slept this afternoon,

and had long strange Film Noir dreams.

 

“Hell”,…sort of.

This an adventure from a few years back.

So I woke up at what I thought was Social Services. White halls with the smell of antiseptics. Long rows of hard plastic seats, and them flat screens with lately Fox News on them.

#45 was pissed when he heard government waiting rooms showed CNN or Cartoons.

So now we watch Fox.

It’s almost as funny as Cartoons.

I was the only one there. It pays to go early. Still wait I did. 40 minutes into some Fox guy “proving” the moon is made of cheese. I see my code blink on the board.

This is when I realized I didn’t know why I was there. No cards or ID. This gets you sent to another hall where you wait some more.

However instead of being drop kicked by security.

There was loud music.

Sort of like “Tubular Bells” from the 70’s.

Santa the Tooth Fairy my Guardian Angel,…the worthless jerk, and my Grandma shoves me into a sedan chair. I’m processioned to the elevator to the tune of “Penny Lane”.

Like the Tardis it was much bigger on the inside.

…a local.

Folks in costumes of different centuries was coming on, and off. They talked shop with my pallbearers or had faces buried in their devices.

Me I was just along for the ride.

We got off on 485th floor. I was dumped sideways off the chair into an office,…smaller on the inside.

Gawd or one of them was sitting at Her desk piled high with parchments floppy disks, and Edison Cylinders. She was smoking a pipe. She puffed away on “Holiday” tobacco,…like my dad.

She nodded to an old folding chair, and I sat.

Fox was yacking away on the wall screen.

This time some Nazi in a bowtie was saying how they want to exterminate everybody,…but in a nice way.

Lately these guys are trying to appear reasonable.

Anyway he was going on about how the lower orders could all be killed with Neutron Bombs when Gawd turned the screen off.

Sort of like that scene in “1984” where that Inner Party enforcer had the juice to turn off the tele-viewer,…much to Smith’s amazement.

Sez Gawd.

“First off ya dead pal.

Dead as a bag of hammers in Hiroshima.

No I dunno how. Those details get lost up here, but ya a goner.”

No there’s no Heaven or Hell,…eh ya not going to cry or some shit? Religion makes people do that. No? …good.

Well there’s an orientation to bring you up to speed. Eternity dark matter the non-temporal realms all that crap.

Ya gots a lot of unlearning to do before you can get along out here. Religion, and science has fucked you guys up bad.

However that old time Diggers Beatnik Hippie stuff was close to the mark. Your file sez you was into some of that.

Let’s see,…you was on da radio talking love, and stuff. Ya printed little broadsides about it too. Not bad.

You’re full of shit about everything else though.

So I’m sending you up for remedial ironic humor, and maybe reprograming about the properties of the Multiverse.

You guys got that one wrong big time!

Galileo took it well.

Niels Bohr, and his crowd of smarty pants was really pissed though.

…fuck'em.

There was a gong like at the fights. Me, and the folding chair dropped through a trap door, and I was in Heaven. Well not that, but the name will do.

A vacant lot in Cincinnati 1946.

Like some stories say they start you out with stuff you’re used to. So for me working class mayhem segregation evil cops, and keys to a tenement. The upside,…this not being hell the digs was real cute. Like from Architects Digest.

There was some sort of 3-D Google, and all the greasy food I every wanted. Being dead there’s no craping or farting, and ya can eat like the frigging Sun King. I used the complimentary iPhone to order a 1932 hand made sky-blue Bugatti.

It appeared in my living room. I called back, and told them to quit fucking around. I heard a room full of kids laffing. They sent it down to the street.

I decided to start a journal blog thing,…Chapter One.

“I’m fucking dead, but the food’s great.”

 

Do Angels speak?

I know they're around.

However they never say much.

In times like these I wish they would.

 

"...light"

 

"...Be Here Now"

 

 

The Meek armed with Teeth, and Claws

Will inherit the Earth.

 

"Ephemeral"

I've been dreaming about my decades long career in broadcast. Specifically dreams about doing shows. Much as soldiers dream of wars conductors dream of concerts, and mystics, and children dream of gawds.

Just now I dreamed of being in studio with old friends. Some of them now gone. It made me wonder if we did any good. Did we help at all?

I hope we did I think we did. I mean in that time for those people. I think yes.

It doesn't matter if we're not personally remembered. In that medium it's rare that anyone is. Our contact was intimate, and on the whole to the good. At least as best we understand the "good'. In the sort of performances we gave. A kind no longer really done. A one on one with a person in the deep of night...you, and them.

Each member of the audience was being spoken to individually. It was a command performance for folks in the sanctuary of their most private places.

I told stories from my life, and related them to the world as it was then. I wrote stories, and performed them. I deliberately played music that I both loved, and hoped would help the folks get through the night. We did this. There was a crew of unique brilliant people speaking into the night. We shared intimate space for a few hours in the depths of the dark once twice or several times a week for yes decades.

Margot Adler whom some of you know from NPR started at the same public station I served. I remember things I heard from her on the air that she said near 40 years ago, and they still matter.

What we did mattered.

I have no awards or trophy's. These were rare in the era I worked in. Now there are awards ceremonies in the industry for wiping your butt, and flushing. What we have. What we were given is more ephemeral, and more lasting. We touched hearts souls. We informed were informed gave laughter hope rage confusion insight the whole catalogue.

It was what it was, and still lives in those that were there to share it.

"Middle Heaven"

 

"Middle Heaven"

 

These are from my notes written during my year of being "Houseless".

"Time passes strangely. A minute is a year a week a second."

"My previous life has become an echo of an echo."

"I wander the frontier of an unknown country".

I had once planned to do a one person play about my time of living outside. My Houseless year of over a decade ago. My going out into the streets alcoves, and parks.

However after I got back in. Into a secure home behind my own door with my own key. I found I just wanted to forget it. All of it. Who would want to pay money, and sit through such a thing...I sure wouldn't. Not just then at least.

I needed time.

Just as survivors of war need time. In fact when my brother found out ,...I told no one what had happened. After hearing of my experiences my brother John a decorated soldier told me that I was a "Veteran" now. In that I'd spent a year in constant danger of losing my life or sanity as he had.

Time.

This past decade has been more than interesting for me. So many great lessons learned. The Houseless year. The retirement from my career. The loss of family, and so many friends.

Much lost, but much gained.

A play a book an essay.

I will soon do one of the above about my life, and times.

 

I wrote this maybe three or so years ago. I just read it again. It's a hopeful tale. We could use a few of those.

"The Day"

One day it just stopped. We all just stopped doing it. The cruel selfish mean things stopped. No sparkling lights no Angels around. It just stopped.

You know how some would step over the homeless, and hungry all that. The bad stuff everybody always said they were against yet allowed to keep going. Well it stopped.

At first I didn’t notice,…exactly.

Till I went to a Chinese take out joint, and they fed me,…for free.

Btw I went back, and gave them an “Astro Boy” action figure in thanks. This is going on as ya know. People exchanging things. Not barter exactly. Just a nice sharing.

Police began taking homeless persons home to stay with them. That, and releasing those they knew were wrongly busted. Firemen took poor folks into their stations. Treating them like family. The News became very funny. Them jokers was all coming clean about lying to us.

Fancy stores, and regular shops began giving stuff to folks.

Not just the poor, but all of us. Like at the Chinese place. Where they told me, “…everybody has to eat”.

Btw none of that “Black Friday” greed festival stuff ever happened.

All this, and somehow the economy still worked,…better than ever. It wasn’t just us. This was happening all over the world. I mean I was watching that BBC special about how our aircraft carriers are being converted into grain ships.

The government, and president had nothing to do with it.

The sailors, and farmers just got together figured it out, and did it. A lot of this going on. Like them big Israeli Iranian water purification projects in Africa, and other places.

Mind you as you knows too well. Folks is still folks.

We still have all sorts of assholes running around loose. Just not as many, and they’re not in change anymore.

As for “The Day”, and what the hell it means.

Well the surprise was that we’ve been in a post scarcity world economy for near a hundred years.

Some of them wonks think longer. We’d been in a hand to mouth boom bust war genocide tradition for so long we just didn’t know how to share.

Predatorily capital, and Soviet style communism were signs as to how wrong we were getting it, but were too stupid to see.

So one day it just changed.

Basically all at the same moment.

Some religious types think it’s some deity or other. However the smarty pants online, and TV call it an Evolutionary Awakening. Sort of like when the ability for language suddenly spread all over the place. They think we’ve had this cooking up for a very long time.

Sort of explains the peasant revolts through history. Abolition Women's rights even hippies, and similar attempts through the centuries. One day like a genetic log jam it burst. Works for me.

Though I’m still holding out for some Angel stuff somewhere.

All I know is I finally got to open a free book store, and hobby shop.