Category: Moments

Fleeting, fragmented beams of memories, caught and preserved so they might grow or, at least, not be lost forever.

HURRICANE HELENE

It will be just a storm here. But as of 2:57 p.m., September 25, 2024, there is an ominous gray, a buiding steady ominous breeze, a silence, a realization that some neighbors have fled. Anxiety. The old Florida thing.

It is out there in the Gulf, freshly emerged from Cancun. It will get stronger over warmer waters. Stronger and stronger.

A widening, multi-colored, swirling electronic blob on the TV radar, embracing, it seems, everything and threatening everything and everybody with wind and water. A monster.

I pray. And I think of those quiet Gulf-front villages and roads of the Panhandle, constantly being reconfigured by these ancient, prowling, giant, all-devouring meteorological beasts. In some cases, nearly wiped off the map. Mexico City, for instance. Wiped out.

And they give these creatures names so that they almost have faces, arms, legs, lips. Female or male, they are androgenous bodies destined to dissolve into rain, fluttering and stirring branches on some northern sidestreets until the sun shines again, and all is still and all is memories and so much is broken in its wake.

I must leave my tin and vynl domicile for somewhat safer ground.

SAD AND HAPPY FIGURES RECEDING IN THE REAL AND CINEMATIC DISTANCE IN ART AND LIFE

Feel like I’ve indulged in this meditation, or something nearly like it, before.

It has to do with figures, mostly meaning people, viewed as they recede in the distance. It is a familiar trope of Hollywood movies, sometimes sad, sometimes happy at the end of a drama — the hero or the lovers together or a disappointed lover alone walking off down a beach or John Wayne, at the end of The Searchers, walking off alone as the door to the house closes and THE END appears. In a John Steinbeck story called “The Mountains” in his book, The Red Pony, a child has a distant view of a man who’d been a visitor riding off into the mountains.

Edward Arlington Robinson captured such a moment and such thoughts, meditated on them over and over during the long poem, “Man Against the Sky” that begins:

Between me and the sunset, like a dome  
Against the glory of a world on fire,  
Now burned a sudden hill,  
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,  
With nothing on it for the flame to kill
Save one who moved and was alone up there  
To loom before the chaos and the glare  
As if he were the last god going home  
Unto his last desire.  

Well, I’m traveling and constantly saying hello and goodbye to people along the way. But in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, my companion Diane and I checked into a motel and then went looking for a place to have dinner. We pulled into a rather plain and ugly parking lot in front of what looked like a restaurant, but it turned out to be an ice cream place. That wouldn’t do. So we sat checking the internet on our phones in search of another address of another possible eatery. It was dinner time, or just after it in some households.

Now, I’ve been living in Florida, a very flat state with few exceptions, those being up in the panhandle. There are no mountains or notable hills — true hills. This section of Pennsylvania, by contrast, had mountains — be they the Poconos or some stretch of the Appalacian range. The motel looked off toward mountains.

The parking lot where we’d paused was ugly, as noted, and had a strange dip in a break between strip centers where one could drive or walk to a lower parking beyond which there was a steep hill topped by a neighborhood of houses.

As we sat idling in the car, a young boy of about twelve emerged from the ice cream shop with what was certainly his little sister. They commenced to walk toward that macadam dip, probably bound for those house. The boy had a bundle, probably ice cream, destined for the dessert table of one of th ose houses where parents and maybe other siblings happily awaited this post-dinner ice cream feast, or so I imagined.

The little girl — the little sister — appeared to be about six or seven. She was pretty, wore a dress, had long hair and she was…marching! Yes, her happy stride, holding her brother’s hand suggested delighted expectations – for ice cream and for all of her still innocent life. She was marching along with big brother who was just walking, probably kind of used to the way little sister liked to happily muse and march along in life. I watched them, yes, recede from view as they headed down that black tar gully and out of sight. And I said…I’ll remember that picture.

But, as we went to drive away from that parking lot, there suddenly appeared, unexpectedly to one who for five y ears now has dwelt where the last view of anyone or anything is on a flat plane — a fond, heartening, distant vision:

The young boy and his high-stepping, pretty little sister appeared again, side-by-side with their ice cream bundle, rising distantly up that hill toward those houses, small figures now, destined to vanish from my view. But there they were, a distant, receding vision, destined to vanish from my happy view of them and from that moment — forever. I wished I could have followed them, seen the rest of their life’s drama — how life would treat both of them, praying for the very best for them as they climbed that hill, getting smaller and smaller.

They will always be walking — her happily marching, him with his bundle — and that glimpse of them will always linger in my memory. Yes that movies will always be running in my mind..

without my ever seeing on the screen of my memory the words…

THE END

A TOWN WITHOUT SAUCE

Returned to the old town, mill town, never ultimately “home” but home for a long while, but seeming less like home for this moment in time for reasons unclear to me.

Got a steak sub at the local sandwich shop. Had been there a fair number of times before. Didn’t recognize anyone.

Got the sub back to the old neighbor’s house where I was staying and found that it had no sauce on it. None. Just a scumble of beef nestled in plain white bread.

No sauce. No taste. That’s what’s missing in this old town. Maybe it never had any real sauce or taste.

I was sad, trying to remember what the town had tasted like when I was in it. I ate what I could and threw the rest away.

LIKE GLASS

Summer 2024 everything moving quickly, too quickly, toward its outer edges. Chaos, as usual, all around. Sameness. So much sameness. And fear.

I’m thinking of last summer — borne backward, against the current, by easier memories — to when I spent all of July in Upstate New York; Rotterdam Junction, to be precise, in flight from the Florida heat that I could not escape this year.

I had stayed at a friend’s house, just up a steep little protective grassy bluff from the Mohawk River, just down from Lock#9. It is a serene, fairly wide stretch traveled by the occasional cabin cruiser likely bound for the Hudson River where the Mohawk flows into it. There is a grape arbor and a shed by a fence. My friend built a little porch on the shed, facing the river.

There used to be a little boat, if I recall correctly, in a little shaded opening of trees down the slope and near the water’s edge. It was — again, if I recall correctly — gone last year, as was the little pier my friend once had for that boat. Getting on in years, he might have tired of maintaining either, and seldom, if ever got out onto the water for fishing or leisure. But he also could not bring himself to move himself and his wife away from this humble riverside haven where he’d lived happily for so many years.

I’ve never been out on the Mohawk, but loved being near it.

If I were my friend, I couldn’t have moved, either. (He did, in fact, once move to Florida, but wound up selling his mobil home down there for far, far less than its value, and hastening back to the realm of seasons, snow, ice, complex family memories. Back to the river. )

During my month on the river, on a pleasant but unaccountably anxious July evening, I wrote, simply:

The Mohawk tonight, as the light dies.

Good to be near it, to stand on the cool grass

Reflecting, on all that can be shattered.

A life, a river

Like glass.

THE STORM, A FRENZIED DRUM…


It’s here. It’s dark. The wind, so much wind. Rain, constant rain….

A lake has formed out back where the grass dips into a swale. Water in the street. There was, briefly, a tornado warning. Seems a water spout might have moved on shore. It dissipated, happily.

That was not that close to us, but it might have been moving this way.

Those were uneasy moments.

Storms can urge you think, not alone of thepresent danger, but of the future — of this house, the people and the animal in it. Of life in Florida. Of children.

And in 1919, W.B. Yeats wrote, amid the storm,

A Prayer For My Daughter…

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid

Under this cradle-hood and cover lid

My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle

But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill

Whereby the haystack-and roof-leveling wind,

Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;

And for an hour I have walked and prayed

Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

He continues….

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour

And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,

And under the arches of the bridge, and scream

In the Elms above the flooded stream;

Imagining in excited reverie

That the future years had come,

Dancing to a frenzied drum,

Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

Yeat’s daughter Anne was a sickly child, but she became a painter, constume and stage designer and lived until age 82 and died on July 4, 2001. As such, the poet’s prayers amid the howling storm were answered. His daughter lived a long and apparently happy life. Yeats died January 28, 1939 at age 73. Another storm was brewing then — in Europe. But then, if I’m to continue, I’d have to get into Yeat’s complicated politics, and complicated life, which mingles with the stormy history of the 20th Century — which his daughter managed, from those infant moments in 1919, to live well beyond — dying before the 21st Century Age of Terror began in earnest at 8:46 a.m., September 11, 2001

It is 9:25 on this Sunday night, and THE TELEVISION IS BLARING ANOTHER LOUD, URGENT ROBOTIC VOICE telling us that four-to-eight inches of rain have fallen and flash flooding is imminent. The announcement is interrupting the televison drama Diane was watching for comfort and escape from all the nerve-shattering danger abroad in the air. She yells at the TV in frustration. PLEASE STOP!

I hear either thunder, or the tin roof bobbing in the gale. Will the power fail? Bringing silence? No escape?

Call this A Prayer For Us All, agitated and menaced by tropical turbulence whipping empty streets of wildly dancing palms and bobbing street lights. And here we sit in the most fragile of tin and vinyl domiciles.

THE LOUD ROBOTIC VOICE AGAIN, THIS TIME ANNOUNCING A TORNADO WARNING TO THE SOUTH AROUND SARASOTA. “DON’T WAIT TO HEAR A TORNADO,” THE VOICE SAYS. “TAKE COVER NOW.”

Where, people down there must be asking?

The dog, at least, seems calm, under the influence of CBD Cheese Bites.

Weather bites tonight.

Poetry sooths.

O that we could be in Gregory’s Wood now, where it’s probably calm.

But then, Yeats was writing in a time of violence political turbulence.

So am I.

But we still have power.

And the power of prayer in troubled times.

(THE INTERNET FAILED JUST AS I POSTED THIS)

MERE BEING, MID-JULY

The 17th. Sultry

Clouds, gray, massive, wooly.

…piled and piled

Like gathered-up forgetfulness.

-Wallace Stevens

But these are storm clouds

Comes, then, the rumbling, the distant violence, the electric…

The dog Cricket can hear it all, wherever.

Distance, fearful moments, are always always

near for her.

So good that she forgets it all when

it passes, or seems to.

Mere Dog moments

speak of no future but ashes

But right now, for her, it is

Like an Army approaching.

Trembling, a spotted study in pathos.

On goes the thunder shirt, a half tab of C.B.D.

is proffered, devoured.

hidden in peanut butter

It will not matter. Terror roams the tin house.

The jacket, the drug do nothing.

Sometimes you have to pass through fear

Mortal and mere dog.

Til there is only sun again, bright, drenching air.

And the human anxious hours go on, endless

not to be hidden

In peanut butter.

I write. I must write.

____________________________

The mocking birds and their babies are gone.

They were out my window.

They have twice built nests at the end of the carport.

In the flanking shrub and palm.

Three baby beaks, massed in fuzz, turned up, begging

A mother

Nurturning them in the spikey crest of the Robellini palm.

Odd place to build a nest, eye-level, thorny.

Then there was just one, so big, timid, flapping

Ready for the sky. The last baby.

Gone all at once. What is sadder? Death is what.

They will sing and soar their hour. Be glad of it.

May their song, theirs and their fellow mockers

tails bobbing be always about us.

But we wish we knew where they were now.

____________________________

That nest. The coiled twigs of abandonment, fragile to begin with

Unraveling. A wind might take it. Or time, which

will take us

And the nest will be gone.

Forever.

But there are always nests.

______________________________

I add seed to the old feeders.

I wonder, where human life in concerned, where — from here?

Where? When? Exile. Sub-tropic exile.

And the poet wrote that…

The palm at the end of the mind

Beyond the last thought, rises

In the bronze distance.

And he wrote: The palm stands at the edge of space

The wind moves slowly in the branches.

In the fronds.

In Mid-July

Or just past it,

on the 17th.

It didn’t rain.

THE DANISH KID

(Part 3 of the 4-Part Barcelona quartet)

Mid-summer, 1966. Sparse, elliptical entries dot my flimsy 19-cent travel notebook from that period. Especially entries about my two-days in a broken down Barcelona youth hostel: Voices in the barren dusty hall below…. (sound of) a broom against the hard floor…children’s voices outside…it is cool and cloudy….I must write some letters and determine how I will get back to France….

Thereafter, unaided memory and only a few random, barely legible pen scratches help me reconstruct the moment in the wee hours when I woke to find a leg dangling by my bunk, then another, then both legs wiggling down to the floor below, using, if I recall accurately, my small suitcases for a stepping stone. Whoever’s legs these were had obviously missed curfew – probably a midnight curfew — and was climbing into the dormitory through a window. This particular window, right by my bed, had a broken screen, flapping loose, making possible this stealthy, illicit entrance. (Small wonder the dormitory was hungry with mosquitoes.) My initial annoyance was tempered by the memory of wandering lost in the city the night before. I could just as easily have missed curfew. A tolerant sense of fraternity seemed in order.

Presently one, perhaps two other youths slipped through the same window and quickly found their bunks. But the original arrivee, a lean and frenetic youth, circled briefly and restlessly in the dark, the hot red dot of a lighted cigarette arcing occasionally up to his mouth.

Someone smoking? In this fire trap? Again, tolerance, compounded by exhaustion, must have overridden outrage or alarm. I dozed off. Everyone else was snoring.

I met this smoker and curfew-breaker in the morning over the hostel’s meager bread and hot cocoa breakfast. He was a Danish boy about my age, his name forgotten. I don’t recall him smoking again, in or out of the hostel. Indoors, in sight of hostel proprietors, this would have violated strict rules – though this fellow seemed the kind of soul who was careless about rules: high-spirited, affable, dark blond, about nineteen. I don’t recall anything we spoke about, nor do I remember asking him the reason for his peculiar late night entrance. He was outgoing and lively in conversation, an ice-breaker among strangers. At some point, both of us must have befriended a young Scottish hostel guest. My notebook says: The Dane and Scot rode with me to the Placa Cataluña. I’d doubtless heard of the Placa’s splendor and decided to invite a hostel guest – the Scott – to travel there with me for lunch. By now, the Dane had gone off somewhere.

Sadly, I have no memory of this Scot. It’s obvious he struck me as a congenial travel companion. But once again, the Danish boy made himself memorable by rushing toward us as we headed for the door. Where were we going? He was eager and curious to know. Could he go, too? I realized then that, for all his sociability, this Danish kid was a solitary, perhaps lonely, traveler. He urged us to “wait a minute, will you?” speaking that axiomatic English phrase clearly and deliberately, making it unintentionally sound like a demand.

We must have traveled by taxi. I’m sure we had lunch. Sadly, I have no memory, written or otherwise, of the Placa Cataluña’s grand, storied ambiance and architecture or of my conversation with these newfound friends. Tweaking my subconscious, however, I believe I can see us in flashes – three strangers at an outdoor café table, the Danish boy doing much of the talking. Or did he become more reticent as the hours wore on?

Later, packed up, briefly idle, ready to depart the hostel for a final walk around central Barcelona before catching a night train to France, I was again approached by the Dane. He asked if I’d join him for a (quick) game of chess, if such a thing were possible. I agreed out of courtesy. We pulled chairs up to a ping-pong table and he removed a square plastic novelty from his belt where it had hung by a little chain. It was essentially a puzzles — a chess puzzle — with sliding black and white pieces designated as kings, queens, bishops, rooks, knights and pawns. He put this minute chessboard between us at one corner of the table. Then, speaking of puzzles, there followed a puzzling deliberative silence of a mere second or two. Without looking at me, the Dane suddenly asked, “do you like boys or girls?”

A very peculiar question at a time such as this. “Girls,” I answered quickly and with considerable emphasis, still puzzled, but suspicious — whereupon the Dane, giving a little chortle, abruptly flipped the tiny chessboard so that the tiny white squares faced me and the black squares faced him. He muttered something to the effect that his inquiry was merely a means of determining who’d play with which colored chess pieces.

Really? Why not just say, ‘do you prefer black or white?’

Was this just another among the multitude of trans-lingual misunderstandings or trans-cultural vagaries I’d occasionally encountered during my European travels? Musing over this antic moment after many years, I can’t say for certain, naïve as that sounds.

But, no matter. Only one or two rooks or pawns had slid about the miniature plastic board before we both, with a glance at our watches, declared it time to move on – I to the heart of Barcelona for a final look; him to wherever wild Danes went in that wide open decade.

His was among my briefest human encounters of that summer, although also among the more memorable. I now and then think of him – even say a little prayer for him — whenever I see a window with a broken screen.

ON THIS DATE…

in 1966, after a trip across the Atlantic in a Norwegian freighter, and on the same day that freighter docked at Antwerp, Belgium, I traveled by train to Paris, arriving at the Gare du Nord at dusk, arriving by taxi at 20 Avenue Victoria, Paris.

And I began a three week stay in Paris, and a stay of eight weeks or so in continental Europe.

I’ve been back to the Continent only once, to cover the death of a pope.

I see the city, Paris. Many friends have visited. Two friends have lived there. I’ve seen a picture of a woman I briefly called a girlfriend during the Seventies posing with a female companion in front of the famous Left Bank cafe Deux Magot.

The summer Olympics will open there soon.

City of Light. City of so much history.

I must get back.

ONCE UPON A CHILDHOOD…

Schnectady Union-Star, November 23, 1954:

Mrs. C. D. Livingston, 952 Wendell Ave., entertained Saturday afternoon in honor of the ninth birthday of her daughter Diane.

Tommy Atkins entertained with puppets “Magic” and her two ventriloquial friends, “Cookie and Oogle.”

Guests were Marnie Morris, Kathy Vinick, Emmy Tischler, Ceil Cummings, Donna Cole, Peggy MacAndrew, Maxine Dehncke, Enid Hart, Eileen Casell, Betty Lou Ragland, Elain Cramer, Elaine Fifield, Anne Gates and Diane Durante.

The two-story brick house at 952 Wendell Avenue stands occupied but freyed from the urban life that has circled and gnawed away at it for seventy years. As a brick dwelling, it has done better than many. It has two spacious front porches with nice railings.

Schenectady, New York is a hard scrabble box of memories — The Electric City for its General Electric association. G.E. and its steam turbine division have dwindled to an iconic brick building and a sprawling, mostly empty parking lot.

Tiime rushing in a torrent along the Mohawk River.

I’ve driven by that house on Wendell Avenue in sunlight and shadow, in all seasons — Diane has pointed it out to me — driven up the gentle hill that is that sidestreet toward a main street — the street and neighborhood having slowly gone to seed.

Diane Livingston became Diane Harrison in 1963, pregnant at 17, mother ultimately of four children by David Harrison. The other little girls…she knows the fate of some, not of others. Not of Tommy Atkins.

There are home movies of that November day, shadowy, puppeteer Tommy Atkins? It is a woman, an elegant woman, the puppets floppy, silly and delightful, talking. Tommy’s lips move barely perceptibly. The movies are silent, the girls delighted, their small voices only imagined, shy before the camera, all dressed up by their mothers.

Mrs. C.D. Livingston died in 1999.

One of the girls, Marnie, became a ballarina in New York City.

The sweet, aching dance of time.

Out of Childhood.

Away from Innocence.

Diane turned nine on November 26, 1954

I turned eight the next day.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

-F.C. Fitzgerald, 1925