Moonshine

I don't know why but I look outside

And I gaze  up into the wild night sky

I see the world through a  brand new eye

Looking down through bruised clouds.   My eye, the moon.

Some things always end too soon

Like a sunset walk and a rising moon

So now I stumble like a fool

It's not over, or that's what Daughtry said

Over

Starting Over

But it was.  It is.  You are.  Nuff said.

Moving forward, getting  it right in my head

Moon diving While lying in bed.

Moon shine on my brave new world.

Moon shine on my brave new world

New eye, new mind that's what I heard

And what I felt, uplifted in a word

When I looked outside and saw the moon.

Peace to the Planet...

What's it like?

What's it like?



What's it like?
What's it like to fly so high?
To wipe a tear from your mind's eye?
To be so perfect, to be so wrong?
What's it like?

Whats it like, to be care free?
To be oblivious and wander without wonder?
To fool the world?
To fool yourself?
What's it like?

What's it like?
To be like you?
To be like me?
To be or not to be so high?
To wipe those tears from your mind's eye?
What's it like?
What's it like?

PTTP...

Stinky shit

Maturity.  Something grown adults struggle with, never mind adolescent boys.  What is maturity really?  To BE mature?   It's one of those things that,s hard to describe or explain but we all know it when we see it.  Or when we don't.  Maybe its another case of my outsized expectations for my kids when a certain level of maturity is expected even for an adolescent boy,  and one who has always been a bit immature even among his peers.  So when the boy states "I think I stepped in poo" it's not until I realize he is removing the aggrieved sneaker from his back pack that I wonder again about maturity and how it can be gained, proffered, learned or taught.  Then I realize....maturity?  No.   Putting a shit covered shoe in your backpack along with books, lunch box etc.  well, it actually has nothing to do with maturity, unless the shitty sneaker is put in someone else's backpack.  What it really is is common sense.  And that shit is even harder to define than maturity

It hurts

  Things have changed drastically in my life over the last three years, and for the most part I have adjusted and the kids have adjusted.  For the most part.
  I miss having that traditional family, a Mom a Dad and kids doing things together, big things like vacations and holidays and little things like dinner and lazy mornings.  It took me a while to realize that while I was mourning the loss of the old family unit, I still had a family with my kids, just a new and different kind of family.  But I still miss it.  It still  hurts
   It hurts when my daughter no longer wants to go back and forth between the homes but now stays solely with her mother, limiting our already strained relationship even more.  I barely get to parent her and sometimes I feel like I am just her shuttle service, and even that will be short lived with her getting her license soon.  How can I improve the relationship when I barely see her?  It's frustrating, and while I won't give up I am letting go a bit more since the harder I try to hold on the more she slips away.  It hurts.
  It hurts when my young son comes home  from school with a drawing of his family, and I, his father, am not in the picture.  I know he loves me, but shit!  Not inpare the picture.  That cut me bad.  It hurts.

  It's hard not to feel sort of useless as a parent, not to throw my hands up, not to feel sorry for myself.  It hurts.

Peace to the Planet...

Sometimes I wonder...
I know that at times, to other people, we all have our moments of ignorance.  You know, when you do or say something and there's no turning back and no rational explanation that can be given, nothing to say that won't make the matter seem even worse.  To both yourself and the other person/people.
 But sometimes I wonder how some people make it  through the day.  And through the next day.  And eventually through life.
  For example I had two exchanges with what appeared to be a fully functioning woman, while she was shopping in my store.  First she approached holding a "Harleys Rule" coffee mug-"Does this mean Harley the motorcycle?" she asked "Yes." I replied.  Certainly not the all time dumbest question I've been asked, but Harley is one of the world's most recognized brands and I was left wondering, is there some other Harley?  Ah, whatever, maybe there are a whole bunch of Harleys out there with other meanings and associations and   I am the ignorant one.  Then she brings up a car magnet, one of those oval "euro" deals just like the decals except, you know, its a magnet. It sticks to metal.  You can move it or remove it if you want to.  It is clearly marked "magnet".  She knows this is a magnet, sees it , reads it, and then she says it.  "will this magnet stick to glass?"  she asks.  "No." I reply resisting the urge to add that it will stick to metal however.  Now I don't mean to be condescending; we all have our "blind spots"-mine in the realm of anything mechanical or involving any tools more elaborate than a hammer, screwdriver and pliers.  But imagining this woman out in the world or worse in a grocery store left me wondering what it must be like.  Seriously.  I felt a little bad, I mean I don't have to go to the hardware store (much) or the auto parts store (at all).  But everybody has to grocery shop, don't they?  And if they don't, without the necessities that we buy at the market, they'd have to make menu choices at a restaurant (even worse or harder for someone like this than shopping) and select a hotel or motel.  Imagine checking in to your hotel room, finding a queen bed and (gulp) you're not a queen.
  Maybe a little harsh but I do sometimes wonder how people like this function. seriously.

Nature reigns in the mystery of history

Branches break, deer leaps
Picking Summer's fine bouquet
Bells ring nine, all at once

an artist painting with words or a child scribbling madness with crayons?


Nature cries for you and for me. on my bald head, rain drops.
Walking through summer's smells of the past, rain on pavement, Summer's sweet perfume, bats feeding overhead as light falls from the sky, losing its battle with the stars. I walk in with a bunch of flowers, no vase to be found, and they end up on the counter, then in a glass of water. And I head back out into the light drips of rain, falling through the streetlights, a curtain falling down on the day. No drama on this stage, just the past peeking out from every corner and hiding behind each house I pass.

Eye contact

She could barely see, but she drove methodically on, like a slowly rolling river finding the path of least resistance and propelled by gravity.  The windshield wipers could barely keep up with the waves falling from a sky the color of a cold arctic ocean.  But they couldn't wipe away the tears falling even harder than the rain.  It was amazing she could even stay on the road, but this was a dream.  Wasn't it?  Yes. She was sure of it.  So sure, she let go of the wheel.  Fuck it, why not?  Watching her hands fall to her sides in slow motion, as though they were someone else's, she turned to find a passing pedestrian slogging through the torrents.  He turned at the same time, his eyes meeting hers, locking on and not letting go.  Afraid- no, unable to look away, she saw darkness, she saw light.  And then he was there, holding her in the rain on the side of the road and she laughed, rain and tears confused on her cheeks. Taking what felt like her very first breath she could hardly find her voice "You saved me" she whispered, eyes still locked. .  "It's just a dream" he replied.

Man about town

Feelin good.
Feelin groovy.
Feelin like I'm fifteen again.
Man about town, walkin all around.
Under a moonlit sky,
kinda...fly.

Across the swingin bridge,
back down the hill and piss.
Stop for a treat,
then I'm on my way.
Walking. Flying. Feeling. Flying.

Keep walking
Man about the town
Keep walking
Never looking down

Echoes of Fletch
Calling from a ways
I stop to reflect
On the Wall, from cooler days

Watching traffic pass
Invincible at last
no one sees me here
A ghost from the past

I hop down off the Wall
Look up at the moon and laugh
Maybe Nancy's home
I Cross the street of past
Nancy's not at home
Oh well, it wouldn't last

I keep on walkin past
Through days gone by, my past
I lift my head and shout
This is MY TOWN!
Then the street light goes out...

Once again I laugh,
I laugh right through my past
Through days gone by at last
No one sees me here
Afraid, I have no fear.

White sneakers and Jose Cuervo

Two Haiku (haikus?) inspired by two divergent observations today.



Spotless white sneakers
shuffle through life, and the mall
"Get Dirty!" shouts Death




Jose rides shotgun
Hot wind blows AC/DC
Summer is the nuts



By way of explanation:
The first observation was of this old dude shuffling down the sidewalk in a pair of sneakers so preposterously white...I imagined him shuffling around his house, around the mall, anywhere flat and clean, shuffling safely and spotlessly toward death. And I thought, what kind of life is that, for him or his sneakers?!? Screw being safe and clean, Might as well get dirty...


The second was an observation on one of those perfect summer days; really hot, a few puffy clouds in the sky, cruising with the windows down, warm summer air blowing and flowing, enjoying AC/DC cranking loud and the bottle of tequila I just bought sitting there in the front seat next to me.

Peace to the Planet...

For the Birds and Robert J.

  Mindfulness has taught me to be in the moment, taking it all in, noticing things large and small, subtle or not. Clouds in the sky.  The hum of insects in a field.  Even the very breath that sustains our life.  It is so easy to miss these things as they blend in to the tapestry of life around us.  But because they are part of that tapestry, they are literally part of the fabric of our lives.  They are life.  Like the cliche-It's not the destination, it's the journey or something along those lines, it is true!  Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to get somewhere and because of that we miss so much of what is the essence of life along the way.

  As I said, it is so very easy to let these seemingly insignificant things blend in to the background of a busy life.  But with a little practice it can be just as easy to be mindful of life's simple moments and pleasures, even to the point that it can help you through more difficult times (don't forget to breathe...) or provide perspective that can be invaluable when the shit seems to hit the fan.

  And with more practice, mindfulness becomes a habit, noticing life's small wonders where before there had only been the mundane.  So as I was out walking early one morning recently, I enjoyed several different birds singing their songs.  A call and answer sequence between the same species blended with several other bird-songs, and seemed to form a natural jazz with my breathing and footfalls forming the rhythm.

  As I marveled at this and smiled,  I was transported back to my pre-teen years, waking and getting ready for school.  Every morning my sisters and I were greeted with the sounds of birds chirping and singing...on the radio.  At 7 am, seven days a week Vermont Public Radio (and other public stations in New England) aired a program called Morning Pro Musica, and it's intro was not a theme song or other typical show opener.  The show opened with a minute or two of uninterrupted birdsong. And eventually a deep, resonating voice would slowly, and deliberately, and with....many........long..................pauses,  bid you a good morning and introduce himself and the show.

  He was an original.  He was a bit quirky.  He was a New England icon.  He was Robert J. Lurtsema.  And thanks to him and Morning pro Musica (and to my Dad for having that radio on and tuned to VPR 24/7)  I now have an appreciation for classical music, for public radio and for the simple pleasure of listening to birds sing.

Robert J. (as he was known)

click for a listen:  Morning Pro Musica intro

-one more note on Robert J.  I remember my parents dragging me (do we have to??) over to Windsor Vermont, home of the VPR studio for what must have been an early anniversary celebration for the station. Bo- ring.  I believe we toured the studio and the offices but it must have been pretty unremarkable-I don't remember a thing about it.  What I do recall, as we were walking down the street after this "memorable" tour, was looking back to see a minor commotion as a car pulled up in front of the small studio building.  Out of the car came a man, distinguished but no one of note to me.  "That's Robert J."  my Dad said.  And for a kid of eleven or twelve, I was actually impressed!  He had come to be a part of the anniversary celebration and broadcast from our own little VPR studio (he always did his show from WGBH in Boston I believe).

Peace to the Planet and to the birds....

Summer Solstice

 It snuck up on me this year.  I love the solstices, but the Summer Solstice is a little bittersweet.  It kicks off the start of Summer yet the days begin to grow shorter immediately after.  I love the season for its warmth, the lush and abundant vegetation and the ability to enjoy  splashing around Vermont's lakes and rivers.  But I think my favorite part is the long days.  Nothing like enjoying a cold beer on the porch after having mowed the lawn, after dinner, it's nine pm and the sky is still light!
  Interesting tidbit gleaned from VPR this morning.  The word solstice means sun-still. On the two solstices, the sun stands still as far as its seasonal path of movement before reversing direction, thereby beginning the next season.  Similarly the two equinox, vernal and autumnal, represent the beginnings and ends of seasons, with the word equinox meaning equal night, and occurs on those two days when the Earth's axis is neither pointing toward or away from the sun.  Most people know what the four days represent in terms of season and length of day,  and many probably know what the root meanings of each word represent, I just never stopped to think about it.

The pure potential of emptiness. Deep. Dark. Thoughts.

Silence. Dark silence. Enveloping. Infinite. Dark and quiet, but somehow crystal clear. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to smell or taste. Nothing for the senses except the feel of the silence, the utter lack of sensation leaving a feeling of being shrouded in something that isn't even there! Consumed by the lack of any perception. Swallowed by the pure emptiness, and left with nothing but the thoughts inside your head. Silent thoughts. Dark thoughts. There is no up. There is no down. No right, no wrong, no good, no bad. There is nothing but soul, pure essence revealed in the mirror of self. Your true self. Unfiltered and unadulterated. Pure. Soul. Take it down to the real you. Not the face or the body or the clothes, the car, or the house. The real you, the true you is not beneath all that. The real you is beyond all that. Out there in the infinite dark silence, after you stop noticing the lack of anything, you start noticing what is real. That's the easy part. The hard part is to remember what is real, once you leave the silence and darkness behind.
But maybe you can't totally leave it behind. The silence. The darkness. It has been suggested that in various forms these voids are everywhere and that they in fact give our world it's definition. Without the space between the words on this page there are no words, just letters. Without the rests and rhythms in music there is no melody, just noise. Without darkness, there is no light, no end, no new day. And, it is in these empty spaces, as vast as the empty space in the universe itself and as minute as the space between an atom's particles, that pure potential and possibility exist. Think about it. If nothing is there now, than anything could be there later. Pure potential. Anything is possible. In the silence you will find pure potential. In the darkness you will find that anything is possible. You will find your true self, your real self, your soul. A blank page, a story waiting to be written, a canvas ready to be painted, a vessel wanting to be filled.



Peace to the Planet...and everything "in between"




Post script- no, I'm not stoned. Yes, I've been exploring meditation and eastern philosophy/religion.

But speaking of being stoned and empty spaces, made me think of Pink Floyd's "Empty Spaces" from "The Wall"

Here are the lyrics and then animation segment on the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, well, you should. Then you'll need to watch it a few more times. It's that brilliant. It's that mind bending. It's that fucked up. Oh, so if you haven't seen it, you will find out why we called this segment "the Fucking Flowers" and, fair warning, the imagery is powerfully disturbing even in the context of the movie; out of context it may seem scary and insane. But sometimes that's the pure potential that fills the empty spaces.

Empty Spaces - Roger Waters

What shall we use to fill the empty spaces
Where waves of hunger roar?
Shall we set out across the sea of faces
In search of more and more applause?
Shall we buy a new guitar?
Shall we drive a more powerful car?
Shall we work straight through the night?
Shall we get into fights?
Leave the lights on?
Drop bombs?
Do tours of the east?
contract diseases?
Bury bones?
Break up homes?
Send flowers by phone?
Take to drink?
Go to shrinks?
Give up meat?
Rarely sleep?
Keep people as pets?
Train dogs?
Race rats?
Fill the attic with cash?
Bury treasure?
Store up leisure?
But never relax at all
With our backs to the wall.
empty spaces animation segment from Pink Floyd's The Wall



Yeah. And then there's Young Lust. I need a dirty woman. You know, as pure potential. To fill. The empty. Spaces.
young lust-next cut from Pink Floyd's The Wall
Collect call for Mrs. Floyd from Mr. Floyd.  Will you accept the charges?

Red Sox and Haiku

boston.com recently asked fans to submit poetic homages to Fenway and the Red Sox in the form of Haiku.  Since these are two of my favorite things combined,  I couldn't resist.


Red Sox haiku

These photos were taken during a late Sept game in 2006, my two oldest children experiencing Fenway for the first time.  I can't remember who they played (Toronto?) but I remember they won and Papi set the record (later extended) for home runs hit by a Red Sox player in one season-maybe 51 or 52 at the time.  The Sox were out of the race by then but it was one of the best days of my life

red sox haiku #2

What would Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hedeki Okajima think?

Peace to the Planet and to Red Sox Nation...

An Old Movie

It's almost like watching a favorite old movie for the first time in many years.  You know all the scenes, and all the lines.  You know the actors and the outcome.   Something approaching deja vu, but not quite, because while the scenes and characters are familiar and the same, the effect they bring about  is now distorted through the lens of time.

  That's a bit of the feeling I have had, moving back to my home town.

It's kind of  funny, because it's not like I was gone a long time.  Only a year and a half.  But the town I moved back to is not the town I left when I moved out after my marriage fell apart.  It is more like the town I left when I   moved away for college twenty four (gulp) years ago.  Wait.  That's not right.  A quick consultation with my calculator tells me that it has been more than twenty seven (bigger gulp) years since I left for college.  But I digress.  What I am trying to relate is that I not only moved back to town, I moved back in time.

This came to me as I was walking around town one evening, no kids at home and nothing better to do than get some fresh air and exercise under the starry sky.  That's when the movie metaphor hit me, it almost felt like I was on a set;  same streets, same sky, same houses, even some of the same characters, but a different time.  It reminded me of when I was a teen, walking or riding my bike on these same streets under the same sky.  Going to or from my job at the Inn in town or a friend's house.  The buildings are still there but the friends are gone, most of them any way.  And those that stayed or returned, like me, are now different people.  Aged and distorted like one of those time lapse effects in a show on Discovery or National Geographic;  a bud springs from a dormant patch of earth or a seemingly dead branch on a tree, and quickly it explodes in size and color like a fourth of July firework.  Just as quickly ( and also like those fireworks)  the colors fade from the petals as they first wither and droop and then they fall away.
  I feel lucky.  I feel like possibly, this is the sequel to that favorite old movie, the rare sequel that's better than the original.  The second segment in the flower time lapse;  after the beautiful but short lived flower has dried and blown away.  If I'm lucky, it's the part where fruit is born and seeds are sewn and a new cycle/sequel begins.  Same earth.  Same tree.  Same Place.  But a new seed, a new flower, a new fruit, a new life in a new time.  But it feels like an old time.



                                                                  -epilog-

Maybe you can tell from the change in tone midway through this post, but I had started it late last Fall   right after I moved back and didn't get to finish, so I decided to come back to it now; and the result is a bit uneven.  I think what I was originally going for was an attempt to convey the surreal aspect of moving back to my hometown, the same yet different, and how it felt like so much time had passed when in reality it was  a lot of life that had passed during only a brief time.  When I began writing again I jumped (maybe a little too hard) on the movie metaphor, milking it so hard as to obscure the original thought.  Oh well.
  Coincidentally if not ironically (always easy to mix or confuse them) Vermont native Jay Craven  was in town just recently filming a few scenes for an upcoming movie "Northern Borders" based on the great book by Vermont author Howard Frank Mosher.  Kind of a coming of age story of a boy on his grandparents farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.  (Craven also produced "Where the Rivers Flow North" and "A Stranger in theKingdom" both also based on books by Mosher.) Kinda cool. It was filmed at the train station just down the street from my childhood home, where I spent a lot of time, sold a lot of lemonade to the tourists, conductors and the engineer of the train and risked derailing the train every time we placed a penny on the track to see it get flattened.

Peace to the Planet...

I h8 txtng

Maybe it's because I just don't get it.  Maybe it's because of the role it played in my marriage falling apart, real or imagined, literally or symbolically.  Maybe it's because when I am around people texting, it feels a little like someone whispering to someone else while I'm standing right there, not being let in on their little secret.  Whatever.  No matter the reason, I can't stand the whole texting thing and am irked by people being so attached to it as a form of communication.
  Maybe I actually get it a little more than I used to.  It started to dawn on me a few years ago at work, when I would notice teens and pre-teens enter the store with their parents, eyes and thumbs glued to their device, clearly messaging back and forth.  Sometimes the whole group would be walking around like zombies, eyes aglaze and thumbs ablaze, texting away.  (I often imagined them texting each other while standing right next to each other instead of talking {omg,  how cute is this ring?---rly? h8 it, roflmao@u}).
 Maybe  I can kind of understand texting's ability to communicate for a quick informational check in, like "need milk while ur out" or "b back soon"( ...wait, that would actually be- brb)etc.  Call me old fashioned but isn't it just as easy to call and speak, or leave a voicemail?  OK, so not always, I can understand that.  But to carry on a back and forth conversation, ongoing, for ten or fifteen minutes?  Maybe more?  Some people say we are more connected because of technology, but how is that more connected than having a conversation?  Again, why not call and have that chat, so you can hear a voice, they can hear yours, getting more meaning, and more connected, by actually hearing the words spoken instead of reading them on a screen?  Getting back to my point, I started to realize a big reason why people text when observing kids texting with parents around;  texting allows people to have a private "conversation" in public. Kids could find out where the party is going to be, or who got busted in school or who slept with who, without being overheard, and, just as good, without having to (gasp!) wait until the next free moment or even the next day (!) to get the goods.  And I certainly realize that it's not just kids doing it for this reason, it was simply the circumstance that brought on the revelation for me.
  Maybe I'm am a little more tuned in, a little more sensitive, and a little more resentful because of how texting symbolized the beginning of the end of my marriage.  The ex seemed to use it as a way to distance me.  It also enhanced the jealousy and paranoia I felt since I seldom received and never sent her any texts, and I would always get vague and or evasive answers when I would ask who she was texting all the time.  So I admit to, and own a strong personal distaste for texting.
  But with it's popularity and ubiquity, I have started to grudgingly accept it.  I even stoop to its use on occasion myself. Not on my phone, I don't have a plan and my phone is just a phone dammit!  but I got an ipad recently and I do use the messaging feature to communicate with the ex when I have info to share about the kids or whatever, but I either don't want to have a conversation with her or I just don't want to hear her voice! (Ahhh,  new enlightenment on why people may use it!)
 Or maybe it's when shit like the following happens:
Twelve year old son gets picked up at school, tells me "I need to go take some pictures for my (really big, really important) report (due tomorrow)."  We don't have a camera with us but he tells me he can use his phone.  "You know how to get the pictures uploaded?" I ask "100% sure?"  Yup. "You've done it before?" Yup.  Ok. So we go and take the necessary photos. 8pm that evening "Dad?  I can't get the pictures off my phone."  "What?  I thought...blah blah blah"  "Oh yeah, that was my old phone"  Great. I try unsuccessfully to get the job done, and the wheels start turning, how can we do this?  I know!  We can send them as pix messages to his sister, who has an iphone, and she can then e-mail them back to me and we can print from there. One minor step in between though.  Due to responsibility and trust issues (time+access+12 year old=porn trouble) there is a text and data block on my son's phone.  Like I said, a minor step online and the block is removed, pix messages sent, e-mailed back, and printed. 9:30pm- Project complete-hooray!
   Son goes off to read and then to bed while I do basically the same.  Although nodding off while reading, I am then unable to fall asleep.  Thinking back through the day,  I remember that I didn't turn the text and data block back on. Rather proud of myself for not completely forgetting about it, I log into my account online to do the block and I notice 57 messages in the usage category.  Hmmmm.  I check it out, knowing none are from my line, and that there should have been only five or six from the photos sent.  The detail portion shows the other fifty or so messages, sent and received, nearly all to and from the same number.  Over the course of an hour.  From 9:00 - 10:00pm. A little shocked (and a  lot pissed) at how he couldn't resist the temptation, almost as soon as it presented itself,  I checked his phone, curious to found out who he had been texting with (and yes, what subjects were discussed). I was neither surprised, nor pissed when I found out who (an ex-girlfriend {already? he's 12!}) or what (typical teen pre-teen, boy, girl, post break up pre get back together stuff)  was discussed.  I was pissed (but not shocked) to find out that the message count was now in the 90's and he had been at it until after 11pm.  Steady. For an hour and a half after going to "read" and a half hour after goodnight, sleep tight, lights out.
  I don't care so much about the back and forth with a girl, that's pretty "age appropriate" as they say, although there is a time and a place for it and I'm not sure alone in your bedroom at 11pm is either for a twelve year old.  But I can deal with that.  It's the fact that, literally, within minutes of the block being removed he started doing what he knew he shouldn't. And then lied, begging off  to read and go to bed, while actually texting the whole time.
  So maybe it's a trusting issue not a texting issue.  Or maybe that's just another reason Y I H8 TXTNG.
  And then there's those who use their blue-tooth thingies in public, so you think they're talking, you know, to you.  Don't even get me started on them.  That's a (rant) blog for another day.

Peace 2 the Planet....