“…In this Episode”

 

FB dumped another memory on me.

This from three years ago today. I should compile all my pre-COVID emergency room posts in one file. Make a neat comic book.

It begins:

So there I was minding my own damned business trying to sleep when all fucking hell breaks loose.

It felt like a stroke or heart attack coming on. I bleeping googled it not wanting ‘ever’ to go back to a hospital. Sure enough I had every heart attack symptom there was.

At one bleeping am I called the meat wagon to get me to the slaughterhouse. When they think they’ve got either a stroke or heart attack "in coming” they make room for you in a big way. They was pushing victims aside getting me to the ER!

They worked me over good too.

They actually cut my shirt off when I went into shakes. They were all ready to do their thing on me. I was attached to everything in the room. 'But then,...

They calmed down…didn’t tell me shit.

However I could see the fun for over. Muscle spasms massive gas build up dehydration body fatigue. Next time I’m pretty sure it’ll be for real so I asked “...what are my odds."

I was told to exercise eat right try to have a positive attitude that sort of bullshit. I told her "I’m a breath from 70”, and wanted it straight. “How long have I got”. …just like they say in the movies.

She dodged the point by saying as they always do that I’m in very “good health for a person my age”. In other words don’t make any long term plans pal.

…and here we are.

Anyway they fixed all that muscle spasm mayhem with meds shots 'n stuff. ’…gave me assorted prescriptions to pad the Medicare bill. They also gave me valium. ...extreme anxiety panic attack…the freaking shakes. Couldn’t control it. It just came on. They said it sometimes happens to folks my age after a trauma.

Swell.

Later they gave me transport home.

Being shirtless in the snow. They gave me one of them open butt smock things to wear on the way. Think I’ll put it on for next Halloween.

’And that’s what I did for da holidays.

What else is on da radio?

"...just so"

Well once upon a time.

I dreamed. In this dream I was a kid in a huge tribe of kids. We were ragged fast smart keen to get over. We were survivors.

The Dream happens on a war ruined world. We roamed tumbled down cities. In dreams you have friends who when waking vanish from memory. Only to be waiting for you when you sleep again.

This dream was just so. I loved my tribe. We hunted sang slept together shared danger, and love. Who could ask for more?

A Mystery.

There were mysteries in this dream world.

I remember a bunch of us sitting on a pile of bricks looking up, and watching huge airships. Great floating cities. They were silent as they glided by.

Silent, but burning. They sailed over us one after another like brightly burning clouds. Burning. Not consumed. A mystery.

Dragons.

We were so often chased by great dragons. ...not of one them smiling!

We could fly.

We flew from street to tree to window to roof.

This dream so real. I could feel the rush of cold air the whistle of wind in my ears.

All the while being chased,...by Dragons.

The dream morphed.

I leaped landed in a tree house. War world gone. I was on a world of trees. Like America before civilization ate it or Endor before the prequels.

A great pale ringed moon was rising on the horizon.

'But this is another story for another time.

 

"...what dreams may come"

The Moon above the 309th day of this Pandemic. It's 309 days,...best I figure, since the NYC lockdown order. Speaking of comedy. I attempted to watch a parody of a 2020 year end roundup on Netflix.

No,...just no.

It's too soon by a decade to make fun of this past year. The fuck were they thinking? There was nothing funny at any point in this hellish experience. Murderous self-inflicted tragedies gross ironies vindictive irrational governmental behaviors.

However not much that was funny.

Speaking of dreams. I just had one. Many like this these days. As I've been messaged you're having them too. Here's my latest:

I'm a pallbearer,...great start. I'm with folks hauling a coffin about. Were wandering places I know,...this don't look good.  The deceased is someone close. Perhaps closer than I'd want as we go to places from my life.

I morph as one does to an alcove in the deep of night. Cold rain sleet. I'm sitting homeless cold. Then walking. This place empty a deserted city. One of the sharp memories of my homeless year was being wet cold alone, and walking the nights. 

All the while I'm composing.

Composing an opera. This while processing the streets with the dead, and  while freezing in the rain. Memories the place where dreams come from. I don't remember notation, but in my dream state I did.

A mystery.

Years ago I helped to care give for an elder aunt that lived with dementia. All that she was had left. Those portions of her brain the held her soul had vanished. This is the cruelty of that condition.

However sometimes for moment minutes, and even parts of days she'd return to us. A mystery. If memories are not held in the brain,...then where? A mystery, and a wonderful one.

Another day. Face it with courage humor, and kindness.

 

"...Dreams"

I'm reading a book. One made of linen. It's pages it's leaves flutter in the breeze. It speaks to me this linen book. Telling not only the story within, but how it came to be.

How it was cut sewn stitched. How the words were so slowly, and carefully threaded together.

This book of cloth told me of it's inner life. About the lives the ways of all the books like her.

Then gone.

I enter another world in mid-sentence.

Friends. Three women friends of which I am one. In dreams you live whole lives in moments. I entered a world with life long friends about me.

I yearned to tell the 'secret' my great, and terrible secret.

What for them was a lifetime was for me a brief vision as I lay asleep.

We sat, and laughed at the foolish world. A world I was about to leave. Leave, and forget. This place, and my 'momentary' friends will vanish.

Leaving not dust.

I awaken with the fragments of lives on the tip of my tongue. Fragments which as the moments passed melt away.

"...let's eat"

Times being what they are meals are problematic. This for millions of us. The national, and local economy has been effectively destroyed. Still I'm moved by all the sharing. Hard times bring out the best in many,...maybe even most.

On the local front,...my kitchen.

Making dinner is always a project. Like building a Ferris wheel with an erector set or a Meccano set in the Commonwealth. Btw did anybody ever actually finish doing that. It looked so cool on the box, but always ended up like a pile of aluminum spaghetti.

That said one builds a meal these days with assorted unlikely parts. Found items around the kitchen that might be eatable. Some chosen some not exactly. 

I've gone to a local pantry they only have what they have. I'm seriously grateful mind you. However I was never a fan of canned artichokes. However the Army MRE's are a good stock for stews.

This is what our folks prepared us for. The Depression/WW2 generation made do, and instilled that practicality in us. Millennials not so much...but these are learning. 

So thanks to the U.S. bleeping Army Saint Augustine's pantry, and my careful shopping at the supermarket Dinner is served.

Is this a great country or what?

"...born"

I was reading from a notebook of my Houseless Year. This I thought was a telling entry.

"My former life is becoming an echo of an echo. Everyday it vanishes a bit more, and is replaced with the present. An eternal present.
I'm changing.
Time, and place are not what they were. This is a new world.
I have just been born."

 All is quiet

The rooms are still

books rest on their shelves

eyes glasses in their cases

coats in their closet.

All is quiet.

Except for the kitchen clock.

It still hangs on its wall

calmly ticking through eternity

as we, crowns of creation, fade like dreams on waking.

(On hearing of the death of my brother John.)

"...slept"

 

I set my dark matter pocket 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.

"...histories"

Life at Home. Day 271...I think.

Now I hardly do anything. I did contracting work on my digs through the months. I ended up painting where I painted plastering where I plastered. I wrote did art slept a lot. Spent too much time online especially here. Now I just sleep sit eat,...repeat. Mortality is vivid anxiety more than last spring. Nightmares. Emptiness. Yet we go on. Above...the little things get you by.

Our lives our histories memories are multi-dimensional. Sights smells sounds emotions spiritual tingling's of the un-nameable.

Keep these things in your hearts. Especially this Holiday season.

"...exist"

 

I make my pretty things for their own sakes.

I make them so they will exist.

I make them because these are the worlds I want to live in.

Even if such worlds can never be.

"...Brightly Floating"

I'm drifting, and dreaming about this life. My mortality. Oh life you are so strange so terrible so wonderful so short.

Mortality is no longer a distant rumor a vague imagining. I've sailed just off it's coast, and seen it's mountains mysterious valleys. Even so I have felt the Bright Wonder of Life.

Every day a Miracle of sensations.

Walking sleeping hot showers books sorting laundry talking to friends on the phone. Tapping on the computer parks shopping. Watching folks birds cats bugs wind rain, and dreams. This, and attempting to decipher medical forms rules balancing income all that stuff.

Wonder upon wonder.

I lay in bed, and listen to my Heart beat. It sounds just as it did when I was little, and wondered at every new thing.

"Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~bap"

It sounded through my pillow. On, and on. Hardly a missed beat in near a 100 years.

As I said on my recent 70th birthday, "....'Closer to 100 than 20".

Not bad. ..."Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~Bap"

So it goes.

I'm drifting, and dreaming about this life. My mortality:

Oh life you are so strange so terrible so wonderful so short.

Mortality is no longer a distant rumor a vague imagining. I've sailed just off it's coast, and seen it's mountains mysterious valleys. Even so I have felt the Bright Wonder of Life.

Every day a Miracle of sensations.

Walking sleeping hot showers books sorting laundry talking to friends on the phone. Tapping on the computer parks shopping. Watching folks birds cats bugs wind rain, and dreams. This, and attempting to decipher medical forms rules balancing income all that stuff.

Wonder upon wonder.

I lay in bed, and listen to my Heart beat. It sounds just as it did when I was little, and wondered at every new thing.

"Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~bap"

It sounded through my pillow. On, and on. Hardly a missed beat in near a 100 years.

As I said on my recent 70th birthday, "....'Closer to 100 than 20".

Not bad. ..."Ba~bap~Ba~bap~Ba~Bap"

So it goes.

 

"...Majik"

I've often wondered how the magical manages to live in, and around today's world. In da old days it was easy...stay the hell in the woods. That, and keep clear of them maniacs with swords.

Now a bit more complicated.

I mean our little Faerie, and Sprite pals are around. They keep modest. Locally they turn up working in Bronx bodegas Brooklyn Hispanic Botanica shops. Libraries...they're good librarians. That, and the NYC Department of Social Services.

They gravitate there to help folks despite the system.

I had one as my case worker once...kind soul she was too. As for their traditional work. They perform Majik healing spells, and such in parks on roofs subway tunnels empty lots abandoned buildings, and places of worship in off hours.

I mean they do what they can.

These are the folks that spread wildflower seeds in spring plant saplings on side streets cleanse the reservoirs, and stuff bio-degradable leaflets about using less plastic in your mail box.

That Santa's Workshop thing is partly true.

They unionized that outfit years ago. However it's mostly Native folks of the upper North that does the real work. In fact they run the show. Santa's their Colonel Sanders front person. He gets a percentage so is fine with it. Anyway that's what them little folks is up to.

Well one thing,...they did stop that Nuclear War back in 1962.

The launch order went out from Moscow then Washington. The Wee folk were ready. They put scrambler spells on the lot of them missiles,...not one lifted off. How 'bout dat. They saved our butts never bragged or looked for credit neither. Swell folks.

"...books"

 

"...books"

One of my dreams has always been to open a little book store. Granted in this environment of the deliberate destruction of these by technology predatory capital, and general indifference.

Despite that I still keep the dream.

I could due to the ravages people are enduring at the hand of said predatory conditions. I could beside going broke be shot in the face behind the counter for my pocket change.

All that said.

I'd 'still' do it if I could. My hood has everything a working class area needs. Bodegas church food pantries Social Security offices handy subway lines trigger happy cops,...though oddly not that much violent crime. Almost none compared to the old days. However the cops are still trigger happy,...tradition.

We have dozens of liquor stores too.

However no book stores. ...not one. Well not counting the religious Botanica shops. These where you can get assorted religious scribblings, and near life sized plaster statues of the saint of you choice.
Mostly really big Jebus icons covered in blood from the scourging.
These are all over the place.
I prefer the Virgin Mary items,...they're less dramatic. One doesn't get the feeling she was just shot, and or hacked by looking at her.

Folks need, and believe in weird shit.

About that store I had in mind. I'd still do it. If only to see what would happen if one showed up. Showed up in a pre-gentrified way.

There's plenty of Book Shoppe's in the re-whited hoods of my part of town. ...think Klan lite. That, and very high priced health food supermarkets yoga studios. Also white only store front pre-schools, and better services...cops sanitation like that.

So I'd like to do a social experiment of a little book shop for real people. I might make a go having Zero competition. Yeah there's the local Library however it's a ghost of what it was.
Just a few stacks a couple of computers. A pissed off bored uninterested civil service staff, and almost no one sitting, and reading...other than a few old folks like me.

Okay so far this post is a tale of urban horror, and almost makes you 'want' gentrification. Which I would if it weren't so much like what happened to the Plains Natives. In our case the settlers would be sitting over our bones eating tofu ice cream, and reading Proust.

Almost forgot,...why I love the idea of a book store. Obviously because I love to bleeping read. I wrote drew, and used to publish my own books. Hand printing binding all that neat smarty pants crap. I was in with a whole gleeful deranged crowd that did just that.

We self styled ourselves the "Micro-Press" movement. This just to generally have fun, and in reaction to the dreary hunting to sell movie rights bunch from of the "small press".
Before the internet folks used to read. That, and publish their dreams on office copiers offset presses hand cranked mimeo even carbon stencil. The latter like Soviet era dissidents. We had a fucking ball.

The memory of that happy noise stays with me as does the idea we all had of opening a book store.

However as happens life, and responsibilities took over. I was just starting as a broadcast engineer. My comrades we also just beginning careers, and families. That, and so very many were lost in the AIDS pandemic,...the rest is postponed history.

40+ plus years later the idea still swims drifts in the currents of my dreams. Yeah a damned bookstore in the heart of a hood when they think no one would bother to ever look at a book.  I'd put it right next door to the liquor store. ...cross over traffic.
The place would only need a core of 50 regular customers to pay the rent...so word of mouth, and weirdness of design might work.

Just 50 or so secret Dreamers.

"Uncle Sydney's Shop of Bewildered Wonderments, and Curiosities"

Has possibilities.

"...electric trains"

Dear Santa,

I'm writing to you to let you know I've been very naughty, and or weird my whole life. When a kid I told jokes, and or fell asleep in church wouldn't do my homework, and adopted ants.

I also planned to jump out my window to see if I could fly.

...never got around to it.

As a youth I used massive amounts of drugs conspired to overthrow the government bought tons of porn published 'Zines full of insane poetry also slipped them onto book store, and library selves, and was as Queer as I could manage at the time.

Later wandered the whole country then just went to work, but continued with overthrowing the government stayed Queer, and tried not to not get shot by cops. All while while searching for gawd. That, and I ate, and drank heavily every chance I got. Loves them Chinese dumplings.

My only regret is that I'm too bleeping old, and nuts to still be doing that swell noise. Although I still try from time to time.

I did this mayhem, and tons more that I'm now too gaga to remember. That said. I want electric trains a nice hat, and world peace. Thanks. Little Sidney...though I think I got bigger.

"...we went"

"Moon over Lisbon",...old 1940's radio show reference.

I'm running into more, and more sites pages, and persons insisting we never went to the Moon. The space station is a studio in Texas, and there never was a space program. This, and a growing fad,...the Earth is flat.

Well,...We went to the Moon a number of times. Many probes then several manned expeditions. We sent two probes to the stars. The second just joined the first into interstellar space.

Several rovers even now explore Mars.

Since the early 1970's we've now done a preliminary robotic probe survey of every planet in our entire solar system,....including a number of asteroids, and two comets.

So far so good.

We'll land people on Mars within 10 to 25 years. Depends on the funding not the technology. We'd be there already if we had the will to do it.

Btw GPS now guides regular people all over the earth, and you are at this moment using a system started by NASA Universities the DoD, and the Department of Energy. Them as well as folks working on ideas in their garages,....it's called the internet.

The thing people are using to say all I just mentioned space explorations new tech, and such wonders do not exist.

Merry Christmas.

"Looking for Fezziwig’s"

Fezziwig, old Fezziwig was the good hearted shop keeper that young Ebenezer Scrooge was apprenticed to in the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol".

In that story the character Fezziwig kept Christmas with a gleeful merry making that he, and his family shared with their employees, and indeed the world.

Christmas eve at Fezziwig‘s shop was a fine display of bright decorations, music, dancing, games, and boisterous laughter.

Oh, but the food!

Long tables were weighted down with all manner of tasty morsels. There were pies, cakes, hot breads, roasts, and cider!

Most of all, most wonderful of all is what Fezziwig gave of his soul. Loving kindness, warm fellowship, and an intuitive understanding of the true meaning of the day.

Christmas Day.

As Charles Dickens says through the character of Scrooge’s nephew Fred.

"Christmas is a time of generosity. A kind, and forgiving day. A day when men, and women from all circumstances open their shut-up hearts to the world."

‘And so it was true of Mr. Fezziwig. Silly, dear old Fezziwig, and his family, and apprentices. They were happy in each other’s company, and rejoiced in the day.

The Fezziwig parable from the story of Scrooges is very special to me. This because it touches upon a need I have. That perhaps a great many have. You see I’ve been searching for Fezziwig's for many years.

I’ve been looking for that humble shop so filled with joy for most of my life. A place of heart, and acceptance I so far I can only dream of.

Since I was very young I’ve always felt outside, far from the hearth, beyond the window, outside of the door, locked out at the gate. Always outside looking in, and hoping to be noticed.

Through these many years I’ve searched for a tribe, a nation, a faith to belong to. To be enfolded into, and kept, and loved, and needed. I longed to be in a place where you could taste the love in every giving, and receiving.

I had hoped I would one day stumble upon such a miracle.

On many a Christmas Eve I wandered the streets of this vast Emerald City. This busy place of towers, lights, and noise. Through the neon canyons I looked for a very particular kind of magic. I have yet to be blessed with it’s discovery, but I do not despair. Because despite it all I still believe. I still have faith.

I Believe in Dreams.

I Believe in Holy Magic.

Most of all I believe in the power of Good. The power of Loving Kindness. Even in a world as dark, and uncaring as this.

So I know,...I Know.

One Christmas Eve yet to come I will walk down an unremarkable street with unseen Angels at my side. I will walk down a narrow snowy street, and at last find a small humble shop. A shop with wide open inviting doors, warm golden lights, music, bright laughter, joyful songs,...and best of all welcoming smiles.

I will have at long last found my Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

(I wrote this many years ago, and read it annually on my radio program.)

 

"...good"

This morning I portaled to just outside of Kittery Maine. Tuesday 11:47am April 22nd 1938. I had thought I'd be alone. I often like to wander the countryside of past eras. I happened on this family with car trouble.. They asked if I knew about engines. I said no. I was a writer. The older lady said, "...oh for them Colored newspapers?" I said,. "...in a way." We chatted,...they were a farm family. Generous they offered me some of their packed lunch.

"Anne Frank had a point, "People are at heart good".