Travel
The suitcase sits before me bulging, it's zippered teeth clenched laughably tight as if it might purposefully prevent the regurgitation of sweaters and socks.
I feel like taking a break now and napping. I was up early collecting news stories on Lebanon in the hope that by the time we get there, if we get there, I will understand it.
I'm not sure I am going to need the xanax to get to sleep on the 9.5 hour flight to Istanbul. At the same time I'm pretty sure I won't be able to resist popping a pill if I have one to pop.
Bernadette is down in the basement perhaps making final arrangements with her employer. Her employer loves her and just yesterday said the day Bernadette quits is the day she the employer would retire. I said that is a fine vote of confidence to have the day before you go off galavanting for a month.
We are about ready to leave for JFK.
Traffic was slow and the ride to JFK was bordered with black snow.
We are traveling the first part of the trip with a Costa Rican guy who is known by some as the Demon. Bernadette has breezed through the first part of the security check point and I am waiting to be gleaned worthy of forward progress by an ex middle linebacker...I'm sorry to be abrupt but I must post now because I am In a free wifi zone.
Let me just assure you though, Istanbul is off the hook.
...more recent posts
2010 Snow
The Plowing
There was a considerable amount of snow that fell. A friend found a semi-naked semi-conscious woman half buried in a snow bank. He saved her. Plowing did not occur rapidly enough in some neighborhoods. People died. Lack of plowing was added to the list of why people die. Political ramifications were explored. Some people believe heads will roll. More death. Following the great snowfall there were a number of sunsets and sunrises, the snow turned black, and melted, and a number of other things happened which pushed the talk of snow to the side, as if the talk of snow was snow, and the other things happening were a plow.
There was a considerable amount of snow that fell. A friend found a semi-naked semi-conscious woman half buried in a snow bank. He saved her. Plowing did not occur rapidly enough in some neighborhoods. People died. Lack of plowing was added to the list of why people die. Political ramifications were explored. Some people believe heads will roll. More death. Following the great snowfall there were a number of sunsets and sunrises, the snow turned black, and melted, and a number of other things happened which pushed the talk of snow to the side, as if the talk of snow was snow, and the other things happening were a plow.
A Young Hawk
This Land Is My Land
He's writing a book about which subway trains not to take.
Chapter 1 goes on about how to distinguish between good and evil.
It is a book about the experiences of a novice rail rider with hints of philosophical meandering.
Chapter 2 is flashback wherein the author gives window into his or her sordid past in graveyards or on freight trains. There is no mention of transvestites or necrophilia in this chapter, so that at its end the reader is questioning what was all that his or her in the graveyards about?
He, the author (herein the rider), addresses the wavering sexuality issue somewhat defensively in chapter 3 by describing how the posture of the person just now getting on the train, seen in the rider's nine o'clock periphery as but a shadow, is tempting him to look up and take a proper gander. When he does so however he finds that the sexy thing he imagined in glancing to be a woman, was in fact a white middle aged businessman in full suited business attire. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the rider makes note to not invite anymore odd dreams or daytime miscalculations by falling asleep watching Almodovar's more sexual identity adventurous movies, as he had the previous night.
Chapter 4 goes on at some length about how it is possible for a rider to get off a B train at 42nd street Port Authority, intending to go back one stop uptown to hear that amazing violinist, and realize a B somehow became a C or maybe even an A. Was he ever on a B he beseeches to his inner self. A rider thus confused can then start thinking about Far Rockaway and perhaps a communing with the Atlantic Ocean. For those who are able and only those who are able there is a sing a long at the end of this chapter to the tune of, and hopefully too, the words of, This Land is Your Land.
Chapter 5 is a flashback to earlier in the day and is a discourse on the dining options for wayward travelers. The rider after walking Central Park from the seventies to the north end continues on up to one caddy-cornered block from the 125th street station and, lacking temerity, goes in, and then out of Manna, because he can't figure it out, he doesn't know if he should just queue up to the buffet or should he pay first. Even after he intuits that queueing up is probably safe he can't decide if he wants to take out like everyone else seems to be doing or...hell, he can't see any seats so other than take out may not be an option. He then goes back through the door and out into the drizzling rain. Soul food. When I or rather he, the rider, was growing up he called pork chops and mashed potatoes supper, and then sometime later without a lot of fanfare, just going with the flow of the evolving middle class mid sixties sophistication revolution, he started calling it dinner.
Chapter 6 is a continuation of his failed dining experience and we find the rider speaking in an almost grunting fashion to the server at Popeyes Fried Chicken on 125th. One section of the menu is designated for Louisianaists, or something like that. The rider ordered from that section and squinting asked the server what kind of sides they had, afraid that Popeye's in Harlem would be completely different from Popeye's south of Mason-Dixon, with which he was more familiar. But no. So the rider sits down with his fried strips and red beans and rice and biscuit. The calories for this meal were listed on the big main menu as either 980 or 1450 but he did not pursue further what might account for that range.
In this chapter you would also learn about waiting too long to use the bathroom, if indeed you needed to. In this case the bathroom gets highjacked by a woman and her child and then about 4 other people lining up for it and complaining rather aggressively about the wait time. Prior to this the rider had been profiling the various people and had mistakenly categorized them as nice friendly people. He had needed to go and it was free for a long time but he was too casual about it so lost out because he could not see himself waiting with these sore sports, and did not get to relieve himself until miles later, behind some scrubby looking shrubs near the Atlantic Ocean in Far Rockaway, while the gentle cold rain embraced him, moistly.
In the Popeye's there was a disturbance. The chapter seems to be meandering all over the place, the rider begins boring us with tales of near death in Louisiana chicken joints and then almost too coincidentally a young man starts using the F word to one of the servers and also calling her B. He is very loud and acting almost as if the world really is a stage, but one where the audience only listens, too shy all of them to make eye contact. The rider begins musing about how did the B word get changed to B while the F word was still fuck. Would we, he pondered, in this version of the book not written, have to start referring to the B word as—the second letter of the alphabet word? Such philosophical soliloquy’s might could find themselves edited out in the final version because the audience for this work already seemed limited or narrow or thin as a thread.
Lost in thought with thumbs clicking before him, the rider takes that A train all the way back, way back, too far back, 14th street is wrong but he stays on until 23rd where he gets off and reverses to W 4th, and from there catches the F home.
Early reviews--similar in reality (if somewhat more likely) to the rider's handling of the rude Popeye's boy (rider jumps up, punches index finger in the boy's chest, then soccer kicks him across the lower calf, taking him down, knee in the back, bending of the bad boys arm backwards until it pops at the shoulder blade, and for good measure treats thumb of same limb with equal sincerity, but that pop is more of a crack)--question the gratuitous violence and wonder just how wayward would a wayward traveler have to be to consider Wayward Traveler (as the book finally written was to be called) anything but a slightly musical if misguided attempt at subway humor, arriving late and clamorous to the station, a travel guide only if it finds a place on the definitive what not to read this summer list and thus guides the careful reader away from itself.
He's writing a book about which subway trains not to take.
Chapter 1 goes on about how to distinguish between good and evil.
It is a book about the experiences of a novice rail rider with hints of philosophical meandering.
Chapter 2 is flashback wherein the author gives window into his or her sordid past in graveyards or on freight trains. There is no mention of transvestites or necrophilia in this chapter, so that at its end the reader is questioning what was all that his or her in the graveyards about?
He, the author (herein the rider), addresses the wavering sexuality issue somewhat defensively in chapter 3 by describing how the posture of the person just now getting on the train, seen in the rider's nine o'clock periphery as but a shadow, is tempting him to look up and take a proper gander. When he does so however he finds that the sexy thing he imagined in glancing to be a woman, was in fact a white middle aged businessman in full suited business attire. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the rider makes note to not invite anymore odd dreams or daytime miscalculations by falling asleep watching Almodovar's more sexual identity adventurous movies, as he had the previous night.
Chapter 4 goes on at some length about how it is possible for a rider to get off a B train at 42nd street Port Authority, intending to go back one stop uptown to hear that amazing violinist, and realize a B somehow became a C or maybe even an A. Was he ever on a B he beseeches to his inner self. A rider thus confused can then start thinking about Far Rockaway and perhaps a communing with the Atlantic Ocean. For those who are able and only those who are able there is a sing a long at the end of this chapter to the tune of, and hopefully too, the words of, This Land is Your Land.
Chapter 5 is a flashback to earlier in the day and is a discourse on the dining options for wayward travelers. The rider after walking Central Park from the seventies to the north end continues on up to one caddy-cornered block from the 125th street station and, lacking temerity, goes in, and then out of Manna, because he can't figure it out, he doesn't know if he should just queue up to the buffet or should he pay first. Even after he intuits that queueing up is probably safe he can't decide if he wants to take out like everyone else seems to be doing or...hell, he can't see any seats so other than take out may not be an option. He then goes back through the door and out into the drizzling rain. Soul food. When I or rather he, the rider, was growing up he called pork chops and mashed potatoes supper, and then sometime later without a lot of fanfare, just going with the flow of the evolving middle class mid sixties sophistication revolution, he started calling it dinner.
Chapter 6 is a continuation of his failed dining experience and we find the rider speaking in an almost grunting fashion to the server at Popeyes Fried Chicken on 125th. One section of the menu is designated for Louisianaists, or something like that. The rider ordered from that section and squinting asked the server what kind of sides they had, afraid that Popeye's in Harlem would be completely different from Popeye's south of Mason-Dixon, with which he was more familiar. But no. So the rider sits down with his fried strips and red beans and rice and biscuit. The calories for this meal were listed on the big main menu as either 980 or 1450 but he did not pursue further what might account for that range.
In this chapter you would also learn about waiting too long to use the bathroom, if indeed you needed to. In this case the bathroom gets highjacked by a woman and her child and then about 4 other people lining up for it and complaining rather aggressively about the wait time. Prior to this the rider had been profiling the various people and had mistakenly categorized them as nice friendly people. He had needed to go and it was free for a long time but he was too casual about it so lost out because he could not see himself waiting with these sore sports, and did not get to relieve himself until miles later, behind some scrubby looking shrubs near the Atlantic Ocean in Far Rockaway, while the gentle cold rain embraced him, moistly.
In the Popeye's there was a disturbance. The chapter seems to be meandering all over the place, the rider begins boring us with tales of near death in Louisiana chicken joints and then almost too coincidentally a young man starts using the F word to one of the servers and also calling her B. He is very loud and acting almost as if the world really is a stage, but one where the audience only listens, too shy all of them to make eye contact. The rider begins musing about how did the B word get changed to B while the F word was still fuck. Would we, he pondered, in this version of the book not written, have to start referring to the B word as—the second letter of the alphabet word? Such philosophical soliloquy’s might could find themselves edited out in the final version because the audience for this work already seemed limited or narrow or thin as a thread.
Lost in thought with thumbs clicking before him, the rider takes that A train all the way back, way back, too far back, 14th street is wrong but he stays on until 23rd where he gets off and reverses to W 4th, and from there catches the F home.
Early reviews--similar in reality (if somewhat more likely) to the rider's handling of the rude Popeye's boy (rider jumps up, punches index finger in the boy's chest, then soccer kicks him across the lower calf, taking him down, knee in the back, bending of the bad boys arm backwards until it pops at the shoulder blade, and for good measure treats thumb of same limb with equal sincerity, but that pop is more of a crack)--question the gratuitous violence and wonder just how wayward would a wayward traveler have to be to consider Wayward Traveler (as the book finally written was to be called) anything but a slightly musical if misguided attempt at subway humor, arriving late and clamorous to the station, a travel guide only if it finds a place on the definitive what not to read this summer list and thus guides the careful reader away from itself.
Virginia Late Fall
Landing At Bedsend
The cat, crouched, by nature defaulted for inexplicably timed erratic behaviour, and pondering God only knows what, I mean good God, what could it be she ponders, catches me not so surprisingly unaware and leaps from the nearby recess between bed and bedside table, uses the back of my resting hand as springboard, albeit an old, craggy, veiny, dried out, scaly and scabrous springboard, and with razor claws inserted just briefly into one of my wrinkles, catapults herself with pun-less abandon high into the air, grinning or smiling it seems with whiskers folded back by the force of her flight, and pausing briefly in mid-air to wave to the adoring crowds packed sardine-like behind barricades, lands at bed's end, where she promptly closes her eyes and falls asleep.
The cat, crouched, by nature defaulted for inexplicably timed erratic behaviour, and pondering God only knows what, I mean good God, what could it be she ponders, catches me not so surprisingly unaware and leaps from the nearby recess between bed and bedside table, uses the back of my resting hand as springboard, albeit an old, craggy, veiny, dried out, scaly and scabrous springboard, and with razor claws inserted just briefly into one of my wrinkles, catapults herself with pun-less abandon high into the air, grinning or smiling it seems with whiskers folded back by the force of her flight, and pausing briefly in mid-air to wave to the adoring crowds packed sardine-like behind barricades, lands at bed's end, where she promptly closes her eyes and falls asleep.
Cat
Back To Birmingham
The child running up to me with her complaint that she was afraid was in truth mostly a distraction to my intended purpose. Which was to take in as much information on a subject as possible within a limited period of time. That photographs of men hanging dead from trees with ropes around their necks while in the background played the haunting overlapping recorded voices of men and women espousing their ignorance and hatred frightened her was not so much a concern to me, rather an ok that's good, check, she's fine, normal in a good way, now run along and let me finish this ride. We just came back, Bernadette and I, from Birmingham, Alabama, where we enjoyed a most outstanding version of Southern hospitality, with drinks on the lawn flowing freely (the first spying of Johnnie Walker black at an open bar is to me like being accosted on the street by a supermodel, kissed and hugged and fussed over and then slipped a couple of C-notes before a lucky delivery back into the loving arms of Bernadette), and hors d'oeuvres followed by shrimp and oysters on the balcony followed inside by tables and tables of...I can only remember the bloody red meat and biscuits and cakes and cookies but I'm told there was other food as well. Could I have another Johnnie Walker? was never met with resistance, I do remember that. It was hard not to see and think about the stereotype of exclusively black service staffs attending to the needs of all us white people but no one I talked to about it could come up with any necessary reason a black person should not serve a white person, as long as they were fairly compensated. And as the work environment seemed like one to be envied, those of us with memories fueled by sixties era news footage and our Gone with the Wind criticisms were left, while stuffing our faces with snacks from passing trays and southern influenced cuisine spread across many tables to...well...shut up, and have another miniature crab cake or, hopefully without too much attitude suggest, perhaps a little less ice in my Johnnie Walker this time. But to the reasoning of or the seed behind the juxtaposing of men hanging and people celebrating, it was the commenting of our hosts who on two succeeding nights, while accepting our thanks and sending us off into the night, inspired me to present this as a good Birmingham, bad Birmingham story. The man, the father of the bride, on the first night said, well I hope we have given you a better impression of Birmingham than you came with. Perhaps it was me standing next to a native New Yorker (a northern agitator?) or that we had flown to this wedding from NY that inspired his comment but in any case, it strikes me as remarkable that the man, and so I think by extension, much of the city's inhabitants, are suffering still from scars almost 50 years old. I suppose though it is these apparent scars that give hope to humanity. It is hard to ignore that the part of Birmingham that wasn't recreated as suburbs through white flight in the sixties, that old part of downtown, and the area and neighborhoods within proximity to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, is still in need of lots of help. While the area is clean and shows evidence of some renovation it is marked also by a sense of abandonment. We left the Sunday brunch at the second of two Country Clubs we visited this weekend, after drinking bloody marys and eating bacon and eggs and corn pones on yet another beautiful balcony overlooking a splendid golf course, and drove from the wooded winding hills outside of Birmingham back into the downtown area, past where we had the day of the wedding gone to Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is next to the church where the four teenage girls were killed from the blast of a bomb on September 15th, 1963. The actual neighborhoods surrounding downtown Birmingham have that familiar feel of poverty and the lacking of hope that comes with it. Inside the institute the pictures, the recreations of diner counters and a bus with a version of Rosa Parks on it and a jail cell and video and audio of humans espousing sincerely that which you wish could not come from a human soul and that small piece of charred stain glass from the church next door, sort of as a punctuation or a kick in the guts or a little piece of rope around your neck or the jaws of German Shepherd on your arm, the blast of a fireman's hose forcing water up your nose to nearly drown you while knocking you senseless, all these things do very effectively what I think they are intending to do—travel you through time and make you feel something that simply reading the facts cannot make you feel. In the end I do not have anything new to say about any of this important stuff. Subjugation of humans by humans is not nice, that is something I think we, those of us who aren't evil bastards, mostly agree on. However, criticism without construction is meaningless and I do not know how to make people respect each other nor do I know how to fix our broken school systems or bring hope to so many inner cities that once got a lot of attention but now, with day to day problems of equal severity but less eye catching than is created by men in hoods burning crosses or heavily armed black men with berets, go largely forgotten. I do think the citizens of Birmingham should give themselves a break. I have been there several times before this trip and while I am sure that there is lurking somewhere that evil that made the news so compelling for those years in the sixties, I am equally certain that you as a city, populated mostly by good people, have paid your dues. Birmingham has I think carried the weight of racial wrongness disproportionately to that which exists in the United States and in the world. Undeniable though, you did have some pretty compelling ignorant crackers spewing unapologetically all manner of ridiculous bullshit for a number of years. My point is, less compelling racism is and was existing right alongside yours, all over this great land, but don't get me started on that. Not a moment too soon I will close by saying—ya'll do throw one hell of a party. And for that, Merci beaucoup.
The child running up to me with her complaint that she was afraid was in truth mostly a distraction to my intended purpose. Which was to take in as much information on a subject as possible within a limited period of time. That photographs of men hanging dead from trees with ropes around their necks while in the background played the haunting overlapping recorded voices of men and women espousing their ignorance and hatred frightened her was not so much a concern to me, rather an ok that's good, check, she's fine, normal in a good way, now run along and let me finish this ride. We just came back, Bernadette and I, from Birmingham, Alabama, where we enjoyed a most outstanding version of Southern hospitality, with drinks on the lawn flowing freely (the first spying of Johnnie Walker black at an open bar is to me like being accosted on the street by a supermodel, kissed and hugged and fussed over and then slipped a couple of C-notes before a lucky delivery back into the loving arms of Bernadette), and hors d'oeuvres followed by shrimp and oysters on the balcony followed inside by tables and tables of...I can only remember the bloody red meat and biscuits and cakes and cookies but I'm told there was other food as well. Could I have another Johnnie Walker? was never met with resistance, I do remember that. It was hard not to see and think about the stereotype of exclusively black service staffs attending to the needs of all us white people but no one I talked to about it could come up with any necessary reason a black person should not serve a white person, as long as they were fairly compensated. And as the work environment seemed like one to be envied, those of us with memories fueled by sixties era news footage and our Gone with the Wind criticisms were left, while stuffing our faces with snacks from passing trays and southern influenced cuisine spread across many tables to...well...shut up, and have another miniature crab cake or, hopefully without too much attitude suggest, perhaps a little less ice in my Johnnie Walker this time. But to the reasoning of or the seed behind the juxtaposing of men hanging and people celebrating, it was the commenting of our hosts who on two succeeding nights, while accepting our thanks and sending us off into the night, inspired me to present this as a good Birmingham, bad Birmingham story. The man, the father of the bride, on the first night said, well I hope we have given you a better impression of Birmingham than you came with. Perhaps it was me standing next to a native New Yorker (a northern agitator?) or that we had flown to this wedding from NY that inspired his comment but in any case, it strikes me as remarkable that the man, and so I think by extension, much of the city's inhabitants, are suffering still from scars almost 50 years old. I suppose though it is these apparent scars that give hope to humanity. It is hard to ignore that the part of Birmingham that wasn't recreated as suburbs through white flight in the sixties, that old part of downtown, and the area and neighborhoods within proximity to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, is still in need of lots of help. While the area is clean and shows evidence of some renovation it is marked also by a sense of abandonment. We left the Sunday brunch at the second of two Country Clubs we visited this weekend, after drinking bloody marys and eating bacon and eggs and corn pones on yet another beautiful balcony overlooking a splendid golf course, and drove from the wooded winding hills outside of Birmingham back into the downtown area, past where we had the day of the wedding gone to Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which is next to the church where the four teenage girls were killed from the blast of a bomb on September 15th, 1963. The actual neighborhoods surrounding downtown Birmingham have that familiar feel of poverty and the lacking of hope that comes with it. Inside the institute the pictures, the recreations of diner counters and a bus with a version of Rosa Parks on it and a jail cell and video and audio of humans espousing sincerely that which you wish could not come from a human soul and that small piece of charred stain glass from the church next door, sort of as a punctuation or a kick in the guts or a little piece of rope around your neck or the jaws of German Shepherd on your arm, the blast of a fireman's hose forcing water up your nose to nearly drown you while knocking you senseless, all these things do very effectively what I think they are intending to do—travel you through time and make you feel something that simply reading the facts cannot make you feel. In the end I do not have anything new to say about any of this important stuff. Subjugation of humans by humans is not nice, that is something I think we, those of us who aren't evil bastards, mostly agree on. However, criticism without construction is meaningless and I do not know how to make people respect each other nor do I know how to fix our broken school systems or bring hope to so many inner cities that once got a lot of attention but now, with day to day problems of equal severity but less eye catching than is created by men in hoods burning crosses or heavily armed black men with berets, go largely forgotten. I do think the citizens of Birmingham should give themselves a break. I have been there several times before this trip and while I am sure that there is lurking somewhere that evil that made the news so compelling for those years in the sixties, I am equally certain that you as a city, populated mostly by good people, have paid your dues. Birmingham has I think carried the weight of racial wrongness disproportionately to that which exists in the United States and in the world. Undeniable though, you did have some pretty compelling ignorant crackers spewing unapologetically all manner of ridiculous bullshit for a number of years. My point is, less compelling racism is and was existing right alongside yours, all over this great land, but don't get me started on that. Not a moment too soon I will close by saying—ya'll do throw one hell of a party. And for that, Merci beaucoup.
Rhode Island
