My last trip to Spain

I've been Spain three times. All those times via ship/boat. Twice I was in the Navy. The last time I was a wandering traveler. That last time, 1977, I went to Spain I took a Traghetto from Palermo to Livorno and it was the most pleasant of trips, cloudless and comfortable with a view of a gorgeous setting sun into the sea/sky horizon. Once there I took a train to Genoa and left the following day on another Traghetto, this time to Barcelona. We encountered the worst storm I had ever been in since a hurricane in the Caribbean in 1964. There was a lot of crying going on among the passengers, not to mention vomiting and crapping but I had been in worse.   I left Spain twice the same way, by naval vessel. The final time I took a bus to Marseilles while recovering from a food poisoning well past the vomiting stage and not having eaten in two days in time grew incredibly hungry but with not a morsel of food and stopping at a rest stop in France, I had no Francs only Pesetas and could not buy even a piece of bread, I went through the cafeteria taking the scraps of food left in trays on the tables. Desperation it was. Some man shouted at me in French. I gave him the Italian chin flick and headed for the bus. I tell you this because today is the fortieth anniversary of that last trip. 7/29/1977. Today is 7/29/2007

Something we just say

Every time there's a random shooting or an attack deemed a terror attack, many people say, "My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families." Why? Are these well-meaning individuals actually sitting around having thoughts about the victims and praying? How long does it go on for? How many thoughts? How many prayers? I know what prayers are, having started out in life as a Catholic. But what about the thoughts? What are they? What kind of thoughts? Are they meditating on the awfulness or the horrors of bloodshed? Are they thinking about the pain being experienced by the victims but also the psychic pain suffered by those close to the victims? And how is it that such "sympathetic" utterances lessen the pain or is it expected that the "thoughts" projected in sympathy suffering somehow expiates the horror and grief? Since thousands of people die everyday from diseases of every kind, from accidents, from others kinds of murder shouldn't these sympathetic people be professing their thoughts and prayers every minute of the 24 hour day? I know how my Mother would have explained it. She would have said in her annoyed voice, "Philip, it is something that we just say!"

Manchester Bombing

Another attack on another unsuspecting western city.  This time it's Manchester, England. Sleepy small town vibe, innocent Manchester, but 2nd largest city in England. Yes, it's horrendous that children were killed, innocent children, among the young adults. Humans who have limited understanding of their growing identities into whom they will become.  Cut short. Life is over. It's a horror I agree. And governments are incapable of preventing this sort of thing or are they?

Our constant invasions and our own attacks on the Middle East certainly haven't helped the situation. What roils me most, besides those numbed brain fanatics killing & maiming people, are the lame verbal responses from government officals and the tough talking retired generals and the cable "news" shows talking about how the fanatics can make their bombs and the triggers they use and the pointing of fingers and the showing of yellow taped off scenes and interviews with the shocked who had been there and the "will ISIS take reponsibilty?" meme repeated over and over, but also the responses from ordinary people on social media. The so-called "in our hearts" response. Oh fuck you already. This is your way of saying what? Oh I'm so sorry. No, what you're saying is I'm glad it isn't me. Stop supporting this so-called war on fanatics because there is no victory in the current way we are doing it. And it's not going to stop. This so-called war is fig leaf bullshit. All the crap that we the U.S., the Europeans are doing is window dressing, theater, security theater.

What we've got to do is get out of the Mideast. Stop with the racism. Try to come up with some kind of diplomatic reasoning. Stop kissing Saudi Arabia's ass as well as the other countries in the Mideast that are paying up to prevent attacks on themselves.  It's their problem. Not ours.

Western governments have bombed the stuffing out of the Mideast and social media discussions support those assaults on their innocent children or at best "tut tut" over the air strikes, but their children aren't wept over in this manner. How many are dead, maimed, demoralized in Syria? There are thousands and thousands killed and maimed. (No we're not bombing civilians! Russia is. Only Russia. Right?) How many drone strikes does it take to help destroy a country. How many Mother of All Bombs will we need to drop on Afghanistan. Yeah we're going after ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and I don't know who else. And nothing changes and bomb makers are making lots and lots of money! You know who the losers are? We're the losers. The winners are the arms manufacturers.

It's not like England doesn't have an expensive top of the line security apparatus as does the United States as does the EU. And it is costly. But that's not going to stop one individual. Doesn't matter how many stops of entrapped wanna be fanatics there are over the years. It just takes one who is smarter than that.  So that old saw that says: if you keep repeating the same things over and over but expect different results you are crazy.  

I don't want to sound heartless. It pains and upsets me when I hear about these insane bombings. It upsets me about the babies, the children, the young adults, the old people, the destruction of families and the loss of friends and also the people who have to clean up and try to put people back together. And what about the houses and communities and cities that are destroyed? I put myself in the shoes of the survivors. I think what if I were in that situation, what would I be doing, saying? Existing? Responding? Goddamn it we are all humans!  But here sitting at my laptop or you sitting at your laptop, tablet, phone are so far removed, and so it's alright to strike one's breast in sorrow but how about a mea culpa already? We are guilty too.

No E-Reader for me -- Ever!

(This was written originally 11/29/2007)

The NPR radio program "On the Media" ran a segment on the e-book reader and mentioned the Kindle.  In addition there was an interview with a writer whose name escapes me but the title of his essay remains: "Hamlet's Blackberry." What he said at least in the interview was that paper itself is a technology. Those of us who have been around for sometime before this wonderful e-revolution still require that we have the feel of paper, the feel of a book in our hands as we read. Our hands in some way inform us in this process of reading and in fact do quite a bit of work. These days as a retiree I don't buy newspapers much but read them online.  On the rare occasion when I do encounter a newspaper I realize how much I miss holding the paper and scanning the page and folding it up and pulling out sections and so on. And if I want to look at an advertisement I will. . . and if I don't want to I don't.

But I gave this Kindle some thought. It would be great to carry around 200 books with me. But does anyone have any idea how long it takes to read 200 books? It's not like I'm going to read them all in a Subway ride on the F-train on my way into Manhattan from Brooklyn. Besides  all these years I've always felt close to my books, to the paper, to the feel of new pages and being able to mark up something, some scrap of thought in the columns. I love the look of different fonts. I love to see how far I've gone along and how far yet I have to go.  And I sometimes love to just flip back and check out the first few pages and maybe skim them  while I keep keep my thumb as a place marker.  And then I love to look at my book shelves and sometimes pull down a book I read long ago and just look at it and feel it or skim through again or maybe even decide to read it again. Often memories come back of a different time and it evokes a certain feeling.

So no Kindle for me ever. The problem I see is that the  e-revolution has just allowed us to become a more of a throw away, uniform society than we were before. The mystery and the wonder of a book will hold nothing for us anymore.  In fact with computers the concept of wonder no longer holds a thrill for us.  I think it was Goethe who said that the highest form of thought is wonder. Sadly with the internet beneath our fingers wonder is just a word on Wikipedia.

Found in a journal I wrote back in 1977

In Paris June 1977

The other day I saw a Jazz trio—Soprano Sax, Banjo and Bass, playing near Le Bon Marche. They were under an overhang and it was raining and many of us crowded under the overhang. No one wanted to be wet. These were all young men, student age or less, full of spirit and passion and full of the blues and they were like nothing I'd heard except maybe on a Sidney Bechet recording. They played the West End Blues beautifully, so beautiful that if Louis Armstrong was alive and was listening he would have had a smile from here to China. My eyes welled up from the beauty of it. Then they played Out of Nowhere. The Bird I thought had played that the best but these street musicians played good enough that the Bird would have accompanied them. They played maybe an hour maybe two hours because I lost track of time and I kept throwing francs in the Sax case. On the 6^th day here, all that suffering of travel and feeling uptight was worth it just to hear these guys play. My spirits were raised beyond buoyancy.

It was unreal. Was I in New Orleans? Chicago? Was it the 1930's? No I'm in Paris, it's 1977 and these are very impressive players. The Soprano sax player was diminutive, no more than 5'3”, thin with short dark hair that hung like bangs on his forehead, black intense eyes and he knew his instrument like he knew his body. When he played he crouched then walked back and forth in time to the music. He was the main soloist. In between solos he sat on a small low ledge and shouted out in a French accent, “yeah, OK!' many times. And he'd clap his hands or he'd growl out words of some sort with a deep guttural sound. Sometimes he'd puff on a cigarette. Sometimes he bantered with the other players and the banjo and bass player wouldn't miss a beat even as they all laughed. The banjo player and the bass player each got solos. It was Jazz in the raw. It could have been completely free. They probably wanted the money but they loved playing, it was obvious, and seemed solely to live for that.

The crowds kept gathering and some were out there in the rain cheering them on and clapping in time to the music. Oh it was an event suddenly, a moment in time to never forget, to be fully human and be able to comprehend all that was going on. All the ugliness of life disappeared as a tune that was probably a Sidney Bechet tune echoed under that overhang and even the Gendarmes who were probably called to break it up stood there with the crowd and clapped. At some point une jeune fille ran up and kissed all the players when they had stopped between songs. And everyone applauded.  

April Fool's Day

 April Fool's Day or as it originally was known as "All Fools Day" originated during The Hundred Years War. (1337 to 1453). The House of Plantagenet and The House of Valois were the main combatants and were struggling over who would rule the Kingdom of France. Because it was such a long and protracted war many generations died. In 1415 both kings decided to start a tradition during the war to "lighten the mood" for at least one day during these battles. When the Lancastrian phase of the war started almost 80 years into this bloody conflict the King of England and the King of France chose April 1 under the old calendar, BTW, which probably made it somewhere in the middle of April these days. Anyway, the Kings decided to send their respective Fools (or Jesters) out into the battlefield to play pranks on unsuspecting soldiers. Usually that resulted in the Fools' deaths by cruel and unusual means because the pranks really weren't very funny but their deaths for all to see caused much merriment among the troops and a few kegs of rotgut wine were broken out (you expect the kings to give away the good stuff?) and everyone had a party.

Going No Place

I own a bungalow in a co-operative in the Shawangunks, south of the Catskills, just off Route 209 in Spring Glen, N.Y. The area abounds in history, that is, if you consider places like the Nevele in Ellenville or Kutchers to the north in Monticello significant. (Both gone now)  Personally, I'm not familiar with the history of resorts, but the significance of the Catskills area, especially for New Yorkers of previous generations, it matters. 

The borscht belt of old was the training ground for many who went on to be famous entertainers. Like the Coney Island of old, the Catskills was a playground for the not-so-rich. In the sixties and seventies, the Catskill region fell on hard times, and it suffered the way so many other poor areas in New York State have suffered.        

Many of the bungalow colonies, that undoubtedly did fabulous business, folded up. Most were deserted and still remain looking like small decaying ramshackle towns.  Some such as ours have been turned into co-ops and the summertime occupants have brought in telephones and TVs, indoor toilets and even baseboard heating for those cool evenings.  And today we have colony wide WiFi. We have to keep up I guess. Our colony, in addition, has a refurbished pool, a tennis court in need of repair, a decent playground and a sometimes basketball hoop.        

Initially, this was not my idea of a vacation. But after renting one summer for two weeks and seeing how attached the kids became, my wife (at the time) and I decided to buy in. That was in 1989. Then there used to be about twenty-five kids running around all summer at our co-op, and the place thrived with laughter and fun, barbecues and swimming.  So it's 1992 when this was written. Everyone is up late and they all sleep in mornings. Nothing gets locked up and you can hear the crickets and tree frogs all night, the bubbling stream not far away and the wasps warming their nests just before the sun rises. From the middle of April to the middle of October Spring Glen is our home, while the house in Brooklyn becomes a place to stay during the work week. Opening day is a wild day, mixing memory with desire, as the poet says, and on closing day, you can feel the leaves fall from your heart.        

I've made some good friends in the last three years at the co-op, but the thing I've grown most attached to is the relief from this nightmare we call living in New York City. And how does that relief come about? Mainly just from watching things grow, or hearing people speak unhurriedly, or bicycling up a mountain before the sun sets to watch the deer cavort in the fields, or just going no place at all.  But in all honesty I have lots of places to go.        

On the mornings it doesn't rain, and drought watchers know it doesn't rain much, I walk about four miles as early after sunrise as I can. There are two directions I can go and one has an alternate walk besides. I can walk past the Homowack resort (also defunct these days) up beyond Poplar Grove Cemetery or I can walk up the Mountaindale road where the trees are thick and darkening and glints of morning sun streams through, the way light streams in a cathedral. I always go by myself. And though the excuse is to go exercise, it is not my intent to succumb myself to physical exercise and miss everything that happens.  So what happens? Not much.     

  

I know every inch of my walks and can shut my eyes and replay every inch of them as well. The road past Homowack I've laid out in miles from my bungalow. At the first sign announcing the resort, I'm 9/10's of a mile away. At 1.2 miles, I've reached the telephone pole with the noisy electrical box attached to it, just alongside the golf course. At the end of a small New England style stone fence on my right is an apple tree; it's 1.6 miles.  The cemetery is 1.9, and if I go the extra distance I'd make it to the gravel pits almost 2 1/2 miles away where some flea bag hound won't stop woofing.

The way is marked by the changing seasons; in particular, there are the masses of wild flowers and the indistinguishable growths that jut out alongside the road and the stream that parallels it. Somehow the way these flowers have avoided the wheels of cars and the fumes that the cars spew, clarify for me, in some heady manner, the drift and hue of life. I don't know the names of the flowers and I guess that doesn't matter since they don't know my name either. I remember them by their shapes and their color and the time of the year that they appear. At some point all the colors appear at once, and they become flaming carpets as they sway from the road's edge into the fields leading to the mountains in the background.        

In the early spring there are the white and purplish almost onion-like looking things, prodding up from the soil like little fingers. Next as the deciduous trees burst with leaves and the flight and twitter of insects and birds in pursuit of survival takes place, small yellow balls sit on top of tender shoots. Among them white parasols of lace shoot up and bend in the breezes. As the weather warms bell-shaped fleshy blue climbers attach themselves to road signs, trees and fences, growing up out of soil looking like hardscrabble. By midsummer, everywhere the eye looks is taken over by the reds.  Amid the glow and glisten in the fields, yellow and black striped birds glide and land. The red passes on to the nodding heads of heavy golden flowers fiercely challenging the onset of the fall colors and the coming winter.        

I really don't know why this scene performs so well for me each and every season. It's not like watching my own children and their friends or even my friends who grow and change and objectively seem different every year.  Perhaps I will grow tired of it all soon, and sleep late like the others.  Maybe it's just that predictability doesn't disappoint, but instead grows weary, a little the way all relationships can grow weary.        

My favorite walk is to veer off away from the cemetery past the Homowack golf course which is seldom played and walk up Myerson road. Defunct colonies of Bungalows lay rotting on either side and the forest encases them like a tomb. Tall pines and scabrous looking hard woods with nary a distinguishing color in the depths hold fast my eye and my heart. I keep walking up the hill, the sun hidden from view, and then suddenly an open field, one a farmer had either forgotten or is letting lay fallow for years, spreads before me. It just bursts in an explosion of green, white, red, blues and yellow. And then I know why I'm there and why I'll never get tired of that scene and what it is about the wild flowers--it's so I can jump up and down and shout "whoopee" at the top of my lungs in total abandonment.