"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.

"...soap"

FB just gave a pre-COVID memory from four years ago. Just days before #45 took office.

A dear friend told me we have two souls. A Warrior's, and a Mother's. Our "Warrior" side fights to survive in this deranged world the "Mothering" side makes Art, and Cares for Family Friends the World. ...my shrink came to mostly the same conclusion.

We try when not caught up in our own noise. We try to give what love we can to whoever we can.

I just met a lady while shopping. This before Christmas. In conversation it came out she's a recovering Addict. That, and fearful of falling back in. I don't know where my words came from, but they always do. It's the same for you. ...they just come.

I spoke about my own destructive habits, and how I got out...and stayed out. We went on like this for a while...a very long Holiday line. Ya see we're all Angels. We all are called on from time to time to give a message. That's what an Angel is. A 'verb' not a noun. A message.

We're Messengers 'all' of us.

Anyway we parted well, and I'm sure she's passing on her own messages. She certainly gave me one. Imagine called on to give healing words when all you think you're doing is buying soap.

Life is like this.

"...Alice"

When I was eight. Sister Alice my teacher gave me something magical. She said all of our lives every moment, and everything we did no matter how small,…was a prayer. To G-d every living being all life is a prayer. Individual special living prayers. My Mother gave me life Sister Alice gave me a miracle to put in it.

 

  "Me in the 9th U.S. Colored Volunteer Infantry",...1863

While in this time of troubles I turned to my old friend Walt Whitman. This his Civil War prose from my well thumbed volume "The Portable Walt Whitman" Penguin Classics. I've dragged this thing around with me maybe 20 years now.

It never lets ya down.

In particular given my current adventures I've been sailing his Civil War writings. The hospital notes for sure. He while a scribe with the War Department,...or was it Interior? Well after his duties he'd go over to the overflowing soldiers hospitals spread about Washington City as it was then.

He would give comfort to those of both sides. He'd listen give little gifts of writing paper pencils hard candy. Take mail from them, and such small, but vital kindnesses as that.

As he said the listening the just being there seemed to these men the greatest gift. In reading of these survivors from our worse most bitter war. These boys young teens to older gents. These who fought in this Republic's most cruel of People's wars.

They tore slashed burned, and shot each other to tatters. This for an idea. Wars fought for these...for ideas were then very new. Traditionally one fought because your prince or king ordered you to. Now it's for what's in your heart. Which only made the cruel institution even worse.
As I've read the tragic nature about the War Amongst the American States was that it was fought over a dream. A tragic difference in dreams.

I was asked why would I as a person believing in peaceful resolutions wear a uniform? Well,...other than I just like it, and it's interesting drag. I wear it because like most of you. I'm a soldier in the unfinished business of our Republic.

Now here we are at yet a new stage of that on going great contest. Still imagining Dreams. Our direction as a community of communities still being decided though now digital battlefields.
The outcome remains as it has so long been,...Uncertain.

"...murdered"

 

"...murdered"

I wrote this about four years ago. At the start of the Trump era. Very little has changed.

About that Executive Order to roll back many of the long fought for Human Rights of assorted Queers Perverts trouble makers, and Inconvenient Artists. Amazingly it seems one of Trump's daughters,...ya know the sane one implored her dad to not do that. Not sure if that worked.

Many forget that this thing started not for the various middle class obsessions like marriage, but for the Right just to be Alive.

Maybe some remember that's what we went out into the streets in the first place for.

The "Right" not to be arrested harassed blackmailed fucked over beaten up on the street at school or even by family. The basic Right Not to get Murdered to the applause of most.

Perhaps if we aired out a few hundred bullies bashers, and assorted Nazi's the playing field might get a bit more level...ya think?

The emotional impact of 100...'One HUNDRED' Queers being shot.

100 Queers, and their pals were 'shot' in an Orlando Florida nightclub. 100 Queers shot in the same time at the same place. More than half are 'Dead' now.

This is what the Nazi's did, and Isis does.

This crime has been acid within my soul all summer fall, and winter. If it were any other group they'd be putting up big marble memorials or at least planning them.

'But hey it was just a bunch'a Queers,...so.

'So' I went nuts for a while wanting bloody vengeance once, and for all against those that have made our lives hell. Hell for all of our lives.

They have made "me"/us live in hell from childhood to old age. The thing is both they, and 'we' have just accepted it as just how it is. Decades of activism notwithstanding...just how it is.

So I wanted to give 'them' a taste of the hell they so casually obliviously subjected me, and mine too. Subjected us to this fire for centuries, and centuries.

Vengeance is wrong, but they finally brought me to it's edge.

Yeah sure yeah I'm still a Queer pacifist, and all that, but sometimes this shit gets to be too fucking much. Also there's that law of nature that ya has to eat what ya kill.

Bigot meat is poison.

Also I ain't that hungry.

"...Yawk"

This is rather long,...it got out of hand.

Well for me "Old New York" were the immediate post-war years. I was born in 1950 so remember the city from the early 50's. The town still looked much as it did in the 1930's.

It didn't radically change till the 60's, and then again in the 1980's. It's doing it again now.

However I have a personal memory of how things were then, and I miss it. Not the crap awfulness, and Jim Crow. Yeah we had plenty of that. I never learned to swim because many public pools were locally segregated.

That I don't miss. Rather a sense of the better things as they were. ..or at least as I remember them.

The city was historically interesting then. We've since lost so many of the late 19th, and early 20 century places, and things. Places taken for granted for generations.

For example my Mom, when we went shopping, would take me to lunch at the "Auto-Mat", ...yeah that one like you saw in 1930's, and 40's movies..

Many streets were still cobblestone. This from the era of horse drawn wagons, and carriages. Some of which were still running around loose to my childhood joy.

Also people dressed better.

There was more consciousness of appearance. One that had nothing to do with fashion dementia as today. It had to do with self respect.

Well-to-do middle or working class all dressed as best as they could when they went out. I remember my Dad taking me, and my sister Sylvia to our neighborhood park.

We dressed up!

He wore a tie, jacket, and fedora, and we wore clean play clothes. I don't have to tell you what it's like now.

There were no glass, and steel clad skyscrapers yet.

Everything was granite, limestone, and marble. I used to think that the buildings were made from Graham crackers, and cookies. This because in the afternoon sun that's exactly what they looked like.

A whole city made from cookies or biscuits...for you folks in the Commonwealth.

You could tell the cars apart as well. This because each manufacturer had radically different designs. Our cars are now made of plastic, and look like melted sneakers.

The subways system still had rolling old stock in service. Everything from the AB Standard 1914 model to the 1948 Red Bird were banging around our tunnels.

Also while standing on the platform you could get a five cent Coke out of them classic old machines. From news stands,...news agents candy was five cents, and a comic book 10. cents!

I remember on one birthday my Ma gave me $2 bucks! A vast fortune in kid currency. I bought five comics down there.

Best of times the worst,...blah, blah you get the deal.

It's just that things seemed to matter more then.

As I say I think we were all more connected to our person-hoods back in that day. Stuff mattered, had value all that.

Mind you maybe them that was adults then might think all this is a load of baloney. Hey I was a kid, and this is what it looked like to me.

Anyway I was just thinking about them times is all.