Recollection

I can't explain why, but lately my mind has been filled with recollections, some good and some bad and a few in the that silver-grey area of ambiguity. One memory I have goes back to my childhood. I recall an adult, a neighbourhood guy who was loved by all, both kids and grown-ups alike. He was the best parent on the block, Mr. Keane was. His kindness and generosity touched nearly everyone. To me and my buddies he patiently taught us how to play baseball or he took us ice skating, in short an all round great person. On top of that, he was always good to his son Patrick, who was also the best of us.

But Mr. Keane had a dark story from his past that he didn't keep secret. See, during the war he was an ensign in the U.S. Navy working out of a ship in the South Pacific. He and his buddies got drunk one night and missed their boat embarking from a harbor. It might be easy to see where the story goes, but the ship got hit in some major naval battle and every crew member died.

I don't know why, but Mr. Keane's life was never filled with bitterness nor guilt nor did he try to hide from his past. It seems as if he was a better man because of what happened, and now, after all these years, I think I know why. Maybe to make his own life livable he decided to be the best person he possibly could be, always treat others with kindness, generosity, and respect. Maybe this was his way of honouring the memory of those who perished, at the time young men just like himself. I guess all soldiers should just miss out on war. But if they did, there would be no war at all. Imagine that kind of world.

For Whom the Old Man Toils

A couple of gravediggers are working the long end of their shovels, digging deep into an early frost and hard black earth. It is predawn. At first light the young man asks the old man: "Is this when the cemetery gives up the dead? When the souls rise up to meet the living?"

The old man stops digging, steam leaving his mouth as he answers ruefully, "You wannabe writers think to much for your own good. When this job is done all I want is a belly full of hot coffee and some warm bread."

His words make the young writer think of Hemingway. But these thoughts give way to a feeling of emptiness in his belly, and he too craves hot coffee and a warm slice of bread.

Chances Are

I met a girl at a bar. She was attractive, so we flirted with suggestive words and lingering stares. She seemed ripe, like ready fruit for the picking. I asked for her name and number.

She said, "You can find me on page 917 in the phone book. First column, third name from the top."

Was this a wanting tease, or a clever brush-off? I'd been there for both in the past, but I was feeling vulnerable these last few weeks, not really sure if I could handle any type of rejection. I put off looking for her name in the white pages for a couple of days until curiosity got the better of me.

Best to use a pay phone, I thought. I opened the phone book, found the page and column, and counted down three names. With my lucky index finger I pushed the silver buttons.

After three rings I got: "Leonardo Pizza."

"I'd like a large Hawaiian, but go easy on the ham."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, you know an attractive blond with long legs, a nameless flirt who plays with a man's heart?"

"We got one of those. Is that delivery or pick-up?"

Response to the 'Dox

The 'Dox writes:

I had an English professor who never wore a watch and he said it was because "time is always now." Time is now and the past and future are just concepts we create in our mind. When we live in the "flow" of the present moment, it enables us to let go of things. It is too easy to get stuck in a moment and try to hang on to things that are no longer.

The bluesman John Lee Hooker once sung:
"Serves you right to suffer, serves you right to be alone, you can't go on livin' in the past, them days...is gone."

But what of the writer? To me memories are like dice I shake in the palm of my hand. I toss them off a wall and they land on a hard pavement. The numbers that come up are the stories I tell.

Doctor, Doctor

Recently I visited my doctor. I told him of a deep circle of pain that surrounded my heart and shot through my legs and arms whenever I moved. A professional, he proceeded with medical diligence: my blood pressure and pulse were checked, blood was withdrawn for the usual analysis. Then, with great worry on his face, he presented me with an X-ray.

"Tsk, tsk. See your X-ray. It's out-of-sorts, like a de Kooning painting. No real shape or form that the eye can easily discern. The colours are fine, but little else. In short, you have a defective heart of the formless modern man. As much spiritual as physical."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Ah, the spiritual part, that's for you to determine. Let me just say you are in some danger if corrective measures aren't taken. Just last week I had two patients. One had a heart that looked like the mad strokes of a Riopelle, the other like the furious drippings of a Pollock. Both died within days."

The physician presented me with another x-ray. "See this heart. Perfect, just like a Modigliani painting. There is much lively interpretation of the human form. The shapes are wonderful, the colours bright and healthy. The kind of cardio-vascular system you should develop."

The good doctor told me how I had to change my diet, exercise more, control stress, lose weight, and try to see beauty in a more usual way.

I always do what doctors say, even though sometimes it goes against my intuition of what's right. So I did try my best to follow his instructions; less fat to consume, more greens to eat, longer and brisker walks to take. And I must say I kind of dig this Modigliani cat and I wouldn't mind owning a heart like one of his paintings. But I did find an artist at a gallery whose work appears more suitable to my spirit. These are the paintings of Marc Chagall, the rich colourist with his recurring goat. I don't know much about him or what any of it means, but I think it would be kind of cool to have a goat running through my veins and arteries. I'll have to check the fat content of goat and see what the doctor says. Hope it's OK with him. Wouldn't want to end up dead like a Riopelle, overrated like an oversize Rorschach test.

Motion

I have a condition of wanderlust that follows a strange pattern. Whenever I'm in movement, going about in vagabond shoes, I feel free. My life is mine alone, steady in ever changing balance. But should I stay too long in one spot I become stricken with a woeful variant of motion sickness. My head wobbles, my mind is unclear, my legs and feet feel unstable. I have this urge, as does Ishmail in Moby Dick, to knock hats off the heads of men.

Although as rare as it is, I am happy with this reverse condition. It keeps my legs strong, my heart beating at a healthy pace.

But there are downsides. Take, for instance, work. Should I sit at my desk too long-- day after day, weeks on end--I become agitated, slipping into a state of animated delirium. Recently, while working as a clerk at a trademark office, I rose from my swivel chair and gave a primal yelp: "Yeeee,heeee." I then cried out: "My name is Tortelli."

With my unsteady legs I moved to my boss's office. I said, "Forgive me, Mr. Beam." I then proceeded to knock the toupee off his round head.

There was no work for me the next day, so I moved to other employment in an actuary's office. But soon the variant of motion sickness overwhelmed me. "Yeeee, heeee," I cried again. "Miss. Baxter, forgive me, but your a$$ is fat." I then knocked a box of boardwalk fudge off my supervisor's desk and left the office, never to return.

But a cure has come to me in size 91/2 re-soled leather boots. Not to forget a long smooth bindle stick I hold with my barest of belongings tied up in a cloth at the stick's end.

Today I began my hobo's journey. My feet are steady, my life once more in balance as I move from place to place.

In Short Order My Life Has Been On A Long Decline

This blog entry is about poverty, my own gnawing poverty. It isn't going to be like some nobility novel of the lives of the poor. Nor is it going to be like some bleedin' heart, paternalistic, condescending case study of the victimised-- those who lose out to the capitalistic system and spend their lives railing against it but have no qualms cashing in French fry coupons at McDonalds.

Nah, this is going to be a rant for the times we live in...I live in. And if you think the story rings false, so be it. If you think of it as allegorical, you are entitled to your own literary allusions. Because I don't care what people think. See I'm on the edge. What that edge is, I won't say. But sometimes it feels sharp, and sometimes it feels dull. And sometimes it feels hungry. Draw your own conclusions.

Take yesterday and my last apartment meal. I scavenged my closets, finding an old cellophane bag with one serving of stale Captain Crunch cereal. What else did I find? A can of coconut milk. But not just any can, a dented one with sentimental value. See this was the can an old Thai girlfriend threw at me when I came home drunk from a strip bar with a strutting sex on demand attitude.

Those were the days. Yeah, back then there were dependable buddies you could drink with at girly bars, watching their nimble pole dancing. The days when you could come home late, staggering drunk. When women of all levels of exotic styles were to be chased, and sometimes made yours. Yours as either quick rolls in the hay, or longterm chicks like ones who throw cans of coconut milk at your head. But those were also the days when you were young and fast enough to dodge deadly tin projectiles and make crazy demands of Thai ladies you should have treated better.

Why treat 'em better? Because they deserve it. You deserve it. Because life changes fast. Guys get older and get caught up in their own families, the lives of their spouses, kids, and careers and the kids sports leagues. And you don't even know what they think because you haven't seen them in years because most of them have moved on. And you think that because you're doing bad they must be doing well. But you don't know for sure. You'd look 'em up and talk about the old days, but what good does sentimentality do you? Especially when you're hungry. Especially when Captain Crunch and a four year old can of coconut milk is your last best meal for awhile.

What of changing your condition? What of making a stab at the world of employment? Of finding some job on the internet? How about the free stations at the library when you have to sit next to some poor, down on his luck street miscreant who reeks of stale cigarettes. The smell burns your eyes. The smell scratches your throat, but your ass in the chair is steadfast because you don't want to lose your chance at employment, any employment, longterm employment, brief employment, employment to tide you over another month's rent.

You look at the emaciated, smelly tobacco guy and wonder how far he is from starvation or from being found in some snowbank frozen like a lost sausage in the back of some rich guy's walk-in freezer. You also wonder how far you are from his fate. But you got knowledge, too. You know something rich guys can never quite figure out: the economy is like a rug, it can be pulled out from under you at any time.

Mistakes, mistakes. Like when you run into that old Thai girlfriend and she looks beautiful, like she hasn't aged a day. She tells you of the money she's making from the chain of beauty salons she owns and how she's married but wishes you didn't have those dark parts of your character. Because if you didn't she'd a married you and the both of you would be happy together. You pass it off as a joke, but it hurts 'cuz its true.

So life's travails go on. Finding food, hoping never to smoke, hoping to find a Thai woman who you will treat better next time. But if there is any lesson in life it's this: Value each can of coconut milk you own because some day they'll all be gone. Out of spite they'll chop down all the world's palm trees and then all you'll be left with is yourself and small bowl of stale Captain Crunch cereal.