I would like to experience ...

These things I would like to experience ...

• Jumping out of an airplane and feeling the slam of wind and dizzy effects of a freefall to earth.
• A trip to space and a backward glance at the earth ... the place where I was born.
• Meeting someone great like the His Holiness the Dalai Lama and having an audience with him with no one to bother either of us.
• Embracing the longing for love with no sense of fear or reservation.
• A week alone in the wilderness with all that I need to survive and enjoy the peace of the wild.
• Just a moment on stage with my guitar, a great band and vocalist, and 5 minutes to solo while the crowd rages.
• Bartending and listening to the stories people bring to the forefront of their lives when in a vulnerable moment.
• Getting another chance to watch the birth of a baby - such beauty brings both tears and joy.
• Cooking for a huge crowd of people and having all the money I need to buy what I must have to make it a night never to be forgotten.
• Feeding the hungry in Africa ... laboring to provide a meal for someone that would otherwise die if I was not there to hand them sustenance.
• A trip down the Amazon River with friends and our own personal traveling bartender!!!
• To go into Barnes and Noble and see a book that I have authored and labored over on display.
• Playing a classical guitar concert and hitting every note with perfection.
• Taking my kids on an ultimate trip somewhere exotic.
• Returning to my original stomping grounds in New York with my sisters and parents and remembering everything ... reliving the past for a moment in the Big Apple.
• Having the time to read EVERY book in my library.
• To feel the sincere touch of redemption and grace
• To awake one day and realize that it really doesn't matter what others think about you so long as you have joy and grace in your heart.
• To see my mother and father young again ...
• I would like to wander all over the island of Puerto Rico and go on an archeological expedition there.
• I would like to reach the age of sixty and then start counting backwards every year after that for thirty years.

A Comment on a Comment

Well, it appears that my last posting to this blog drew some attention from a few anonymous souls wishing to cast their criticism and run. In particular I was amused with the comment about my apparent bitterness over life’s choices and the need for familial dedication in hopes of ultimately reaching the “glory land.” For this poor uninitiated soul I offer a simple nod of the head and a sincere hope they will arrive to a destination not so filled with glory and charm. No doubt they are half way there already. In the meantime I will strive to enjoy the glory land of the present, i.e., the real life of the here and now with all of its strange and indescribable turns and yet thankfully on occasion visited by twists of grace.

I really don’t get very many comments to my blog. Quite honestly I don’t know who reads these posts or how they even stumble in by surprise. It’s of little concern to me really. So, commenting on a comment is a new experience in this cyber venue.

And why bother with a retirement plan anyway when you can have the luxuries heaven can afford. Only problem being you just have to be dead in order to get the rewards of that apparent benefit. I rather like to breathe and feel the warm sun on my skin.

Tick tock and life on planet earth

The days go by too quickly. I’m not quite sure why it seems like the older one gets the faster the days seem to zing by. Maybe part of it has to do with the constant litany of activity that we all seem to heap onto our busy lives. I don’t think I have a friend or acquaintance that doesn’t feel the need to inform me of how laden they are with activity.

“Oh my God, I’m like sooo busy!”

Am starting to wonder about all this retirement talk I hear from people of late. What is it that we are really looking for? No more nine to five? Laying by the pool, head slightly dizzy from that second gin and tonic … music fades in an out in the background … turning pages in a book we’ve been reading for the last three months. What are we wanting escape from? Our kids, who clamor for our attention and never run out of energy as quickly as they run out of money … a wife who has seen better days and is for all practical purposes just there legally … is it to escape from the burden of financial issues or from aging parents … escape from the dreaded “C” word from the doctor? What is it? What is it that we all really want down in our core being?

If you are tempted to respond with something along the line of St. Augustine who said we are restless until we find our rest in “Thee.” Try again. Well, you can believe that if you’d like. A faith that sees earthly pursuits and joys as frivolous, that sees art appreciation as crying over spilt milk and that promises no earthly contentment is shortsighted. A creed of “trust and obey for there’s no other way” and whose eye is always on that of “heaven” and that lives in a perpetual state of struggling is a faith I am no longer anxious to explore. It has been mined out, If heaven is all we have to look forward to in this life, what a sorry lot we all are.

You can find fault with what I say and can dismiss all of this as the ranting and rave of a lunatic or of an “angry soul” in search of meaning and significance. Don’t give in so easily to these worn slogans. When you are alone and there is no one to impress with the right answer, the right turn of the word and the like, what is it that you ask yourself? What does your heart say to you? How do you respond to its questions? What do you mean in this life?

Some things I would like to experience? I think it would be wonderful to …

Fair Creatures of an Hour

The following are my thoughts on David Kirby's first poem in his recent collection of all-things-old-and-new. The poem is the first in his latest collection entitled "The House on Boulevard St." and is published by Louisiana State University Press in Baton Rouge. If you are interested in purchasing a copy here's where you can do that:

http://s50780.sites40.storefront-hosting.com/detail.aspx?ID=1608

When I first read this poem I thought, like I do on most first readings, "What the hell is he talking about?" That's usually a good sign that you are on to something though. I figure that if you "get" a poem on the first reading that it's a sure indication that you are either really arrogant or that the poem is shallow, or worse yet that you really don't "get it" like you think you do. (Self deception tastes so good sometimes, eh?) So, after repeated readings of this first Kirby memory poem I feel like I'm ready to make a few stabs at what he could actually be getting at. Oh, and just for the record, if my interpretations are no where near what Kirby (DK) actually meant that's okay. This is after all the beauty of poetry. The reader is permitted to see the strokes of word colors on his own particular canvas, and everyone you must understand has a different imaginative canvas.

This poem is about aging, about hope, life and the inevitable we must all face -death.

The "big stomachs" on the men of the fist line and the observed "brooches" that the ladies at the fortieth high-school reunion are wearing all address something regarding the aging process. A big gut means your dying slowly - a bulbous symbol for all to see that death is imminent. The brooches are of course later on explained in the poem. They are worn by the ladies as perhaps an unspoken symbol that death need not be ugly. Butterflies, flowers, colorful starfish of the sea and pretty golden salamanders ... who thinks of death when they see these??

Of course the walk down memory lane of those who in their misery took their lives and are as a result sadly absent from the reunion is another shot at death and the despair that is associated with it. I like the declarative and interrogative juxtaposed alongside one another with " ... They could have been happy. Didn't they know? Couldn't they have waited? Frederika Moats waited and eventually did land upon what she was looking for. The others ... they checked out too early. There's a phrase somewhere in the book of Ecclesiastes about the connection between life and hope. Death is the end of hope in this life and those who take their own life lose out on what is always potential.

The scene that DK paints for the reader of Antonio Delfini and the death of his father is eerie. To look down and see your father frozen in ice, youthful and locked into the past, and to define your age in the presence of his youthful death is something to think about.

There's much more to say but that's about all for now. This was a good start to this collection of poems.

By the way, I actually wrote to David Kirby and we exchanged a couple of emails. He was in Italy at the time teaching a class for several weeks. He was very down to earth.

That's all folks! Go buy this book! Then YOU can tell ME what you think these poems mean.

Awake! Oh Sleeper ...

It is hard to believe that November 30th of 2006 was the last time I entered something into this storehouse of random cyber thoughts. I have the option of dispensing with pure drivel in the way of excuses or simply confessing, as if I needed to anyway!, that much has happened since I last posted an idea of mine on this blog. I am trying hard to avoid the temptation of chronologically outlining a series of, what would be to you -oh reader!, meaningless events. What is it to you? Yours is but to read and chuckle, peruse and ponder, inhale an idea and exhale a judgment. So, I will simply just start again. Tabula rasa! Clean slate ... here we go.

I woke up this morning when my clock radio went off. Normally I will just take in the news, drift in an out and on occasion will vanish off into a dream which I later realize was in someway connected with the goings on in the news and I am brokenhearted that my ESP has seen better days. This morning ... well, this morning I reached over with my index finger and promptly turned the news off. Click! Silencio. I then reach over and grab the most recent book I am struggling my way through - they are all a struggle you realize, any book worth reading will make your thoughts wrestle against each other. I pull my hand back and begin my descent into Reading Lolita in Tehran - a memoir about a group of Iranian university students that meet in secret with a renegade professor of literature, forced into retirement, to discuss Western literature. The book is titled such because the first work of literature they choose to dive into is none other than Vladamir Nabokov's Lolita. I read Lolita last month in preparation for this read. You wouldn't know this, however, since I kept this is secret from you!

Half way through a paragraph that described the hell of a totalitarian state where armed thugs patrol the streets ready to pounce on even the slightest hint of disregard for Islamic norms, I realize that my little act of turning off the radio was something of a freedom most of the world is incapable of experiencing. I thought of the irony of it all. Here I awake to a country with a free press, freedom of speech, a constitution protecting the civil rights of its citizens and I turn off the radio to read a book about a group of women who lust for their weekly gathering to discuss books that collect dust on most bookshelves in America. Surely there is something wrong with this picture. I thought this morning of how much criticism the current administration is getting in United States. I thought of how President Bush is referred to often as the worst President this country has ever seen. I thought too of how happy I am to live in a country where we can say these things without fear of reprisal. The Fourth of July is right around the corner. I have made myself a note to return to this entry and remind myself of these thoughts I took in today.

Well, enough of this self-imposed guilt. I want a cup of coffee.