4:00 am alter ego

I was looking for the dark places, where the shadows rule. Where I can be one with the night. Feeling the after midnight breezes cool Invisible without the light. But there was nothing hidden All could be seen under the bright street lamps

On the road

When I'm on my bike for even the shortest ride I will frequently imagine myself being on a long bike trip, heading somewhere distant by myself. I try to be a realist in my daydreams and think of the likely travails of lousy weather, getting sick and the dangerous riding on bad roads crowded with motorists. But yesterday as I explored in my mind this scenario I thought that these problems on the road would be preferable to the worries that I have now daily of being in debt and of the government's tax man looming. Maybe more existential problems of survival are what I need? What would be the worst that could happen to me while biking a long trip? I think that getting sick and injured would be at the top of that list, followed by running out of money. That last one is the rub. I could travel very cheaply on a bike; I would have no car that needs to be fueled, maintained. licensed and insured. I still would need food and shelter along the way. I picture myself pulling a 2 wheeled trailer, about the size of the ones that parents use to haul small children when they go riding, but in one of these I would keep most of the gear I would need, including a small tent and bedroll. That would help with the cost of shelter but would I be able to find a place at every night's stop where I could set it up, and do so under the nastiest weather? This would be a trip where I would need to be lucky, lucky to meet people who might let me stay in their homes for the night and lucky that I don't have my bike and gear stolen. The worst would be to become the victim of a violent crime. That's a fate that makes for the grist of so many ancient stories of travelers getting waylaid on their journeys'. I think my travel plans would be like becoming a hobo, except I'm not hopping freight trains but making my way by pedaling on 2 wheels. Am I up for that kind of life at such a late point in my life after living so long with running hot water and soft beds at the end of my day? I would be escaping from life with it's tax and credit card debts. What have I got to lose? In another 2 years I'll be getting social security and I'm only going to have that to live on anyway. I only need my son to find his own way because this is the end of the road trip for an old guy.

Miss Hollywood

Miss Hollywood was my 4th grade teacher. In my school it was always a relief to have a lay teacher rather than a nun. There were a few sweet and kind nuns but more often than not they were fearsome in their administration of discipline. The lay teachers were all sweet and kind, none more so than Miss Hollywood. She was everything you would imagine someone to be with that name: tall, soft complexion and with Grace Kelly blonde hair, except in her right hand she was missing her middle and ring fingers. My parents knew her a little because she had been a high school classmate of my older sister, and the story I heard about her hand was hard to comprehend. It was explained to me that she had a hobby of going to cemeteries and doing what are called "rubbings". She would take a piece of light paper and press it over the surface of old tombstones from the late 18th and early 19th centuries and make impressions of the artwork on these tombstones. One time as she was doing this a tombstone collapsed on her hand and crushed her fingers. To this day I can not imagine a scenario on how it would be possible for this to happen in the way it was described to me. It was a testament to Miss Hollywood that this disfigurement did not diminish Miss Hollywood's beauty in my eye. It may have been that I was so happy to have a lay teacher teaching the class, or maybe it was also that I was becoming of age to recognize that some woman were especially attractive but it was not hard to put her injury out of my mind. She spoke to the class with a soft and re-assuring voice and that was heaven for me. During the lessons she would take a piece of chalk and then curl her index and little fingers and put on the blackboard the most gorgeous handwriting.

My legacy

Satre said that a man doesn't begin to live until he truly recognizes his own mortality. I'm thinking that advice should not apply to a younger man or woman. Much of the enjoyment of life is in making mistakes. You do want to avoid making the ones that may put you into hospitals, correctional institutions or the morgue but you don't as a young person want to live your live so deliberate and calculated that you will not experience the joy of doing things successfully that are also risky. No, the advice is better suited to people like me who are further down in the life expectancy tables and who should be cognizant every day that time is running out. I have surgery on Wednesday where I will get general anesthesia and I have been thinking about the risk that comes with that. I fear death less than dying, that something should go wrong during my procedure I that it will leave me in a comatose state and a burden to my family. I only fear in death that I leave little in material things (meaning money or property) for my family, especially my son. That he, unemployed and still trying to get purchase in his personal and private life will be left adrift with my passing. At this stage of my life, how can I change that?

Escape

I had serious thoughts of running away yesterday. The occasion of my birthday on Monday reminded me that my time for doing so is dwindling. I could be hobo if I knew how. It's kind of late to start learning how to hop freight trains so I would stick to travel on my bicycle. Would I be able to make money as a busker to help pay my way? I just want to keep pedaling in any direction until I run out of pavement or hard packed dirt.

Thoughts on the 16th anniversary of September 11, 2001

Lucy texted me today with the question, how do I feel on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and I responded with "it's just another day". On the occasion of every anniversary I used to keep in touch with a woman I met that day but that tradition didn't last long and ended about 3 years ago. And there was a long period after the attacks when the unique view that I had of the 2nd plane hitting the 2nd tower would play in my vividly in my mind. I now longer think everyday of that plane coming up over the Battery. I resented the way these attacks were exploited to drum up the patriotic fervor that got us into an unnecessary war. It all seems so long ago now.

Musically Inclined

If my mother was alive today I think that I could easily impress her with my piano playing. She wanted me to play guitar or piano, and not the trumpet I picked up for a few years starting when I was 12. I never sounded anything but crummy on that horn. I know she was disappointed that I displayed minimal musical ability back then. One time I banged a cymbal on a drum kit a little and she made a remark to somebody that maybe that was a sign that I could really play drums. It was as if she was looking for some slender thread of any music talent on my part. At that moment I felt the disappointment she had with me. I'd love to show her today how i can now play with both hands on the piano the pieces Greensleeves and Scarborough fair. Maybe after listening she would think that there was still hope for me.

Recycled people.

I've been thinking about reincarnation a lot in recent years. There's something more appealing about it as I enter old age than the idea of going to heaven, hell or purgatory. We come back to life as somebody else, which is easier to understand than trying to imagine living as ethereal spirit somewhere in another dimension. But what happens if we are reincarnated into something that is living a wretched existence, like those insects that are used by wasps to carry their eggs? Or imagine coming back as a human living in a slum or some war torn region. But I like to think that it would be exciting to be a new human being, a baby with a fresh start on life. It would be a delight if we had that opportunity in this life that we know.

Our stuff

Becoming decrepit and a hoarder seem to go hand in hand with late age. I remember my aging relatives and all the clutter in their living spaces, where there was hardly a square inch on any upright surface that wasn't occupied with a photo frame, a ceramic figurine or other such bric a brac. I don't want to end my life in such squalor. I'm determined to throw stuff out now before I get too old and no longer in good health to remove them.

You don't have to live like a refugee

Last week I moved to a new apartment in the same building I've been living in since 2014. The move was less expensive this time around since my son and I did all the labor, with the exception of two Central American guys ( more on that shortly) but it was no less physically and emotionally exhausting. The lifting of most of the heavy furniture is always less difficult than gathering up all the little things, the pens the pieces of paper on the floor that have to be inspected and all the bric a brac and and miscellaneous items in drawers and in shelves. I always make a vow that after the after the move I will have a monthly throw-something out day, and it is a vow that is never kept.

Easter Sunday

I went to church yesterday for Easter Mass; last week I went for Palm Sunday services. Along with Christmas these are probably the only days in the year when I will attend. I thought of what I should pray for during the services and thought less about beseeching God with his help on my problems but that I should reach out to my mother, my father and my sister Diana. There must be someway that I can experience the manifestation of a spiritually connection to all three, now deceased. It's been so many years since my mother died, my memory of how she looked and talked has faded some, though I can still slightly hear that New England accent when i think of her. When I try to remember her I primarily now have in my mind a photo I have of her with my father that was taken on the sun porch at our summer cottage in Maine. If I can only have one vision of them then let it be of this picture. It's a good picture because they are both smiling and I can imagine how happy, especially my mother must have been to be my with my father that day, in that place she loved dearly. I decided that would also be the spiritual image i would want to see of my father. We had so much that was good together and his voice is louder and boisterous in my memories. The spiritual image I have of my sister is more uncertain. Strange that she, so photographed in life, yet I only have the sad photo of her that my brother made copies of to commemorate her life at her memorial. That sad beauty of that photo was so uncharacteristic of her it can not be the primary memory I will have of her. I have that framed picture on my night stand but it got in the way of the mental image I tried to use as a spiritual template for her. It was better to put away thoughts of her looks, not an easy thing to do, and more to focus on how funny she was. The laughter was my spiritual connection to her yesterday. The sounds of the voices of those now gone is not a lesser memory that the visions. I wanted to find also those that I never knew. My brother Ricky, my mother's father and the uncle who I never knew but after who I am named. I held out hope that I might gain some insight on to the spiritual remains of all these and others who are no more for this worlds, even though I am most doubtful about what is claimed about an afterlife by religion.I had no illusions of a deep revelation but I held out a slim hope of having an epiphany moment of making some sense of all this. But at the end of the Mass as I walked out I thought that it's all about the effort in trying. When we stop trying to reach them is when they are no more in spirit.