Milk

Me and Siobhan went to see "Milk" last night. The movie is set in San Francisco during almost exactly the years I lived there. Back then, in my twenties, I was living cheap, playing in a rock band, working a crappy job and trying to dreg up a sip of inspiration from a well that had gone dry. My band was playing occasional gigs at the Coffee Gallery, a bar in North Beach where Kerouac had once shouted poetry with Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, but all that we could find of the Beats was a disheartening drunken Gregory Corso slurring obscene rhymes as the police dragged him out of City Lights Bookstore. The Grateful Dead were in the sole touring lull of their career and the Haight was a place you didn’t want to be at night. I attended The Last Waltz and was haunted by the thought that it might actually have been the last waltz.

Around the time Harvey Milk was rising in his political career my band had broken up and I’d let myself to drift out of familiar orbits, trying to figure out exactly where I might fit into San Francisco, a place I inexplicably loved, even though it didn’t seem to love me back.  But by 1978 things seemed to be opening up a little for me.  I had moved to my own studio apartment, a third floor walk-up in the Mission District, blessedly living without room mates or parents for the first time in my life.  Things jogged perceptibly in that square bay windowed room and I caught my breath.   I built a platform to put my futon on and there was light on my honeyed wooden floor.  I had joined the S.F. community choir and gotten a crush on one of the altos. I had put together my dream band, “The 80’s Band” for a choir talent show replete with ass shaking background singers and a rhythm section comprised of friends from my musical past.  I had sung with the San Francisco Opera, cast as an Ethiopian slave in Aida, In rags, dyed black, crouched at the feet of renowned soloists, daring not to look at the orchestra in the pit below or at the audience tuxedoed beyond.

I didn’t know much about Harvey Milk, even though I lived just a half a mile from his camera shop. On the day he and the George Moscone were shot I was at work not far down the street from City Hall. I vividly remember the immediacy of the moment I found out about it. Even though my link to the news was certainly someone's  T.V or radio, the shock waves from the event were so intense that word seemed to have arrived on a blast of hot wind rushing up California street, the horror of it passed breath to breath; nobody didn't know. I thought I heard sirens coming from downtown. 

When I got home that night a friend from the choir called to tell me that a candle light march was planned from Castro St to City Hall.  Each of us held a candle sheltered in a dixie cup. Many of the marchers cried as they walked.  Seeing "Milk" evoked a visceral memory of that breath-taking stretch of light.  The movie helped me put together something about that moment and about my years in San Francisco. 

After the movie Siobhan and I went to a little kosher falafel place down the street from the theater. We were about to start eating when the staff at the restaurant announced that they were going to light Hanukah candles, inviting customers to join in. We put down our plastic forks and went over to the counter where the menorah was. There was a brief delay while someone went to find me a keppah. I felt proud that I was able to sing most of the blessing along with the Orthodox staff, with Siobhan beside me to fill in occasional blanks. Lighting candles felt surprisingly familiar, like a comforting return to something I had missed since my divorce. After 15 years of trying to be a little bit Jewish I guess I’ve soaked up something after all; a bit of the sentimental education which I'd often lamented that I lacked. These things take time. It was the last night of Hanukah and all eight candles flared in the little tin menorah, a book end for the one I’d carried in a dixie cup down Market St. thirty years ago.  

The Zone

I once thought it would be cool to write a song for every kid who spent more than two weeks in the inpatient psych unit where I work. Not that I have time to do that, but there’s a crying need for some of these passionate stories to be told. These children are a force of nature and will not be denied.  Their parents or foster parents only bring them here when they explode and careen past the farthest imaginable limit of adult solutions.  The hospital oughta pay me to write songs, record them and then include the CD in the discharge packet. Right, that's gonna happen. As my dad always said, “wish in one hand and poop in the other and see which one gets full first.”

It's Christmas time on the unit and there’s a big tree all lit up in the dining/game/tv room. Even though it's a fake tree it looks cozy in there, and every time I walk by I feel the urge to go in and hang out with the kids while they're eating or cutting out snow flakes or otherwise attending to the glow. There’s a cardboard menorah too, but it pretty much gets short shrift, sitting by the fake fireplace next to the stockings.

I’m here late because this is my night to work in the ER. It’s dead, thank God; just a couple of stragglers, including one morbidly obese guy who got a psych eval. He was depressed and hungry. We gave him a box lunch and a list of local food pantries and sent him back out into the frigid night in his dungarees and orange hooded sweatshirt.

On these late night I feel a little disconnected here in China Town. When I first moved to Boston in 1980 this part of town was called “The Combat Zone”.  I remember coming here once or twice back then and it was scary enough that I steered clear. It was a hot bed of prostitution, alcohol and bad judgement. The oil and water cocktail of drunk-off-their-asses townies, college students and hard core street hustlers was always simmering, inviting each and everyone to exercise bad judgement of their own.  There’re a few old timers here who remember the regular influx of bruised and lacerated patients that used to pour through these ER doors on a Friday or Saturday night. The citizens of China Town banded together and squeezed the strip clubs and porno shops out of their neighborhood. I don't blame them because they had to live and raise families there, but I must admit I feel a twinge of regret at the loss of the wild dangerous place which used to incubate down here.

When my shift ended at midnight I rushed out into the icy cold, stepping carefully on the way to my car which was parked in the garage just over the Mass Pike. It is my custom on these nights is to catch the end of the Grateful Dead Hour on WUMB as I'm driving home.   It's all esoteric live recordings and in my predictably exhausted and dissociated state the music has direct access to the part of the brain which is best able to appreciate the tonal linguistics of the Dead. Garcia's emotive bell tones and assertive sixteenth note forays were a clarion call as  I drove up wrung-out Tremont Street, along the Roxbury line and cut up thru Jamaica Plain. A strong wind palpably buffeted my car.   More Christmas lights began to appear; a magnificent swatch of them reaching down from a church steeple, still lit even at this late hour, bouncing perilously. Blinking yellow lights and white icicles clusters swayed.  The Dead were hitting their stride in a space jam which was like a mainline infusion from a concert hall long ago. The transitive nightfall of diamonds came around as I turned left past the monument; almost home.

Turkey Slipstream

Me and Anna and Siobhan had a Thanksgiving brunch on the third floor.  Crepes, blintzes, scrambled eggs and bacon were served; a striking departure from anything I even remotely associate with Thanksgiving. Anna had requested the crepes and Siobhan the blintzes.  Anna had big traditional dinner plans coming up later in the day with her mother, but we managed to find our way into the turkey slipstream for a couple of congenial hours together.  

After our meal the four of us, counting Schwartz, went for a walk down Penfield St., under the train tracks, across the baseball diamond and up the fancy residential blocks to the Arboretum.  I had recently teased Siobhan's about her contention that Schwartz might be the fastest dog on the planet.  My mental image of Schwartz has him either flat on his side sound asleep, or sitting in front of me, staring for twenty minutes at a time with a quivering intensity which threatens to bore a hole in my skull.  He does this for no apparent reason (not counting begging for table scraps).  Most of his running is done on the business end of a leash which, as long as his leash is, still limits him to short, brutally terminated bursts of speed.  Today however, in the Arboretum, Siobhan let him off the leash.  OMG! 

Schwartz is a black dog, as the multi linguists among you might have guessed.  He's a long-eared, blessedly unsculpted miniature poodle and his mission in life is to bring joy and greetings to all species, including moving cars.  This is the main reason why he doesn't get off the leash much.  The other is that he's so full of ungoverned joy and speed that one is tempted to cover one's eye's as he tears, hell bent for leather, in a fish hook path towards an unsuspecting person or critter.  Mayhem would seem a certainty were it not for the genius with which he eases on the haunches at the last possible second, coming to an almost complete stop at the exact moment of sticking his nose into somebody's butt with riotous good humor. 

The trees in the Arboretum were bare, but on this Thanksgiving early afternoon the weather was not yet freezing.  The long grass on Peter's Hill, where locals bring their dogs to sniff and frolic, was still soft and leaf shards were loose.  The almost inaudible metal click of the unfastening leash might as well have been a starters pistol.  Schwartz bolted, unrestrained, ears flying back, tracing a lightening arc way, way down the back side of the hill leaving sheep dogs, cockapoos and wheaton terriers in his wake.  The Boston skyline beyond him, he banked and turned, racing all the way back up the hill, returning, tongue lolling, like a sentient boomerang.  

At that moment I had to admit that if he's not the fastest dog on the planet, he's definitely some kind of speedy Bodhisattva.  Everybody who saw him smiled a little and their Thanksgivings were nudged a few heart beats towards perfection.   Peter's Hill erupted in sociability between each being there assembled.  Each one talking, sniffing, exchanging dog stories, and working up an appetite en route to tables heaped with turkey and dog bowls piled with scraps. 

Sherwin

I've strayed far from my blogographic intent.  With new resolve I post these words that I wrote for the funeral of a close friend who died last week:

During these last few sad days I’ve scrambled, from miles away, to remember Sherwin fully and to try and bring into focus why our friendship mattered so much to both of us.  Looking back, I’ve realized that there were years when I lost track of Sherwin   Scattered memories resist chronology.  All I can be sure of, is that at some point about 15 years ago I realized that it was very clear that on my infrequent visits from Boston, Sherwin was someone who it was important for me to see each time, to touch base with, and to stay connected to. 

We grew up, during our adolescence, in the same neighborhood two blocks apart.  We went to Gage and Poly.  We knew the same people and places and times.  The hours that Sherwin and I spent together; hanging out and listening to records, hunting with our pellet guns in the hills beyond the city limits,  walking for miles barefoot on sun warmed Cornwall Ave and Argyle Way, climbing up to the cliff over the Riverside  Swim Club and gazing back at the letter ‘C’ on the Box Springs Mountains to the east, all these memories and a thousand others, some of them purely sensate, were a bond that we mutually recognized was important. 

During high school, I watched with astonishment as Sherwin dared to carve out a persona for himself.  I can’t be sure how it felt to Sherwin, but from where I sat, it was nothing less than a transformation.  He took a hold of his life and dared to follow his heart.  At his 50^th birthday party I told the story of how he had raved about a psychedelic shirt my grandmother had sewn for me for Christmas.  She had modeled it on a shirt I had pointed out to her on ‘Laugh In’ or a Moby Grape album cover or who knows where.  It had fantastic swirling colorful fabric and long cape-like sleeves.  It was very cool; way way cooler than I was, and I laughed at the notion that anybody could think that I would actually wear it to school.   Sherwin said, “If you’re not going to wear it I will!”  I handed him the shirt, truly believing that there was no way that he would have the chutzpah to show up at Poly wearing it..  The shirt was just too fabulous.  Needless to say, the next day he showed up at school wearing the shirt. 

As the years progressed Sherwin went on a journey that to this day has me shaking my head.  He made new friends, he tried new things, he learned new skills.  He hounded movie stars and rock stars and insisted on his place in the world.  No life was too fabulous to claim. 

He was unpretentious and open hearted; funny and sometimes crazed.   I have an enduring mental image of Sherwin’s body language when he was ticked off about something that always cracks me up.  We’d talk for hours on the phone, reminiscing about the old days and encouraging and advising each other in our struggles to make our way in life and to find true love. I was honored by his friendship.

To all of you remembering him today, raise a glass to Sherwin and to his courage and enthusiasm.  He was unique.  And he never gave up.  Sherwin, I love you and I’ll miss you.

Deuce

     My mom’s really upset about her new six million dollar hearing aids.  She wishes she’d never bought them.  They haven’t helped her hear any better, except for the sound of her own voice, which she never had trouble hearing in the first place.  Now her voice “echoes like I’m in a metal box.”  As her rapidly deafening son, I’m able to emphathize, not with the metal box part, but withnthe leaning your head down and saying “what?” every five seconds part.

     She’s also very upset about the fact that the old bastard who lives at her assisted living facility yelled at her in the dining room in front of everybody.  She told me she felt humiliated and who could blame her.  For a year and a half now Mom’s been in charge of choosing the Opera Of The Week out of the old bastard’s record collection, which in turn gets played on the facility-wide Opera Day.  That is, until the other day, when somer doddering fool who sits at my mom’s table at meal time told the old bastard that Mom “hated him”.

     Apparently that was the last straw.  I don’t know anything about the other straws, but Mom denied that she said that or that she feels that way.  Knowing mom though, she probably said something.  And also, and not necessarily related to this, Mom says the bastard always kisses the fool on the mouth whenever he greets her.  Except for that mildly disturbing piece of information, the whole affair had the tone of a school playground.  I told Mom that she was better off without somebody who would yell at her in public like that and Mom agreed, saying in passing that he was “arrogant” and a “very difficult man”. 

     That reminds me, I bought a Mac.  It’s my first Mac and I’m feeling pretty good about it, although I haven’t really figured out how to use it and still approach it with Windows-brain, which is a real shame.  Kinda like trying to understand the Torah via the New Testament.  The computer sat in the box for three days after I bought it and only got set up after Anna demanded it.  We worked on it together with me doing the heavy lifting and Anna pushing buttons even as I pleaded with her not to.  Unfazed by the new Apple operating system, Anna plunged into iTunes, inadvertently tapped into the guy downstairs’ entire music library, which was cooler than mine by a factor of about a billion.  This impressed her, as did the fact that it’s got a built in camera, which she immediately started goofing with.  I loved watching her fool with the new hippest toy I’ve ever owned, my first electric guitar notwithstanding. 

     But I digress.  It’s Summer and soon Mom will be back east on her annual pilgrimage to New England.  For the two of us, hearing will only be an issue in the way that flat balls impede a lively tennis match.  You just have to whack them a little harder.  It’s actually better exercise.  The bastard vs the fool, a match made in heaven.  

 

 

Sleep Study

The most vivid memory of my sleep study last week is when the red headed technician came breathlessly into my room in the pre-dawn pitch darkness and softly said “Good Morning”. Even at that uncivilized hour I maintained civility and fumbled a forced unfazed reply. It was odd, knowing that she’d been sitting in the other room all night, watching me on camera, listening to me breathe, counting my heart beats, measuring how high my belly rose and god knows what else. This was the end of her shift. She spoke in the same dulcet tones she’d used last night. Even though I knew they were scripted, they were calming nonetheless. She stepped back into her observation room and spoke to me through a speaker right next to my head



“Look up. Look down. Blink your eyes five times.”



Then she came in came back in and began unhooking me from the monitors I had been attached to all night. I’d had the presence of mind to grab my cell phone, drag my ponytail of wires into the bathroom, and snap a picture of myself in the neon light. There were sensors stuck all over my head, under my nose, to my eyes, to my temples and cheeks. My hair was globbed with glue-like stuff now solidified into exquisite clumps. The brochure had said that I would have the option of showering before I left, and that was what I had planned to do. However, faced with the actual facility where such a shower would have occurred I opted not to. It didn’t really have the look of an amenity to be used for anything other than cleaning up after an accident.



I live a half a mile away from the hospital and figured I could make it home with just enough time to clean up and dress before driving to work. I stepped out into the dawn, be-clotted hair, wearing an amalgam of work clothes and pajamas; grey sweat pants and wing tips. It was damn early. Early, like when I had gone to work at the chicken ranch in Southern California at age fifteen and a half. I know for a fact that that's how old I was because I’d just gotten my learner’s permit and I remember that my dad had let me drive out Victoria Avenue in the darkness, my friends watching in sleepy awe from the back seat. For a moment I was triumphant, but in my reverie I overlooked a red light. Dad got mad, and made me pull over and relinquish the driver’s seat. I still get a twinge of embarrassment thinking of it.



I don’t usually come to this hospital, but it occupies a significant place in my life. In 1923 my mom was born here.Here, five years ago, my wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. In the early Eighties I’d come here for treatment of chronic debilitating headaches and during those same years saw a dermatologist for treatment of a basal cell carcinoma. But ominous news notwithstanding there was something I liked about the way the building perched on the edge of the massive arboretum across the street, just on the edge of urbanity. The trees were authoritatively silhouetted on the horizon and the low clouds were veined with crimson.



When i tell people about it they're amazed that I was able to sleep last night attached to all those wires. But in an odd way, the wires had actually helped me fall asleep, limiting possibilities of posture and movement. My phone, my book and my glasses on my left, a standby sleep apnea mask and TV remote on a bedside table on my right, I had dozed off midway through Letterman. I awoke a couple of times during the night, wished I wasn’t there, and then faded away before I could think too much about it. As I climbed into my car I realized that I hadn’t remembered to ask the technician about my rapid eye movement, although I’m not really sure what I would have asked.



I made it to work, presentable. The pasty stuff used to secure electrodes took about a week to finally wash off. I have another sleep study scheduled in June. In some grim way I look forward to another wiry embrace.

Honkin Flakes

The snow shovelers are out again. I heard one of them scrapping the sidewalk at 5:45 this morning, a little surprising since its Saturday. Why in the name of God is anybody shoveling at this hour? The sounds are filtered and diminished by the time they reach my ears on the third floor. I needed to get up anyway. Sleep hasn’t been the same since I broke my arm.

I start to move around my little apartment, my morning routine already well worn. My slippers, the heat, coffee on, juice and pills, up and down the narrow kitchen. I like to say I can step from one end of my apartment to the other in three strides. That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. I’ve scaled down. I still need to throw away a good half of what I frantically packed into boxes and broke my back hauling out of my previous home. I know I’ll feel better once I do it, but I'm still a ways from letting it go

Last night I was talking to one of Anna’s friend’s moms. She's a person I don’t see too much anymore; since my divorce we’re ships passing in the teen chauffeur night. Most of these mom’s only know about my accident and for that matter,everything else in my life, filtered and diminished by my soon to be ex-wife. This mom commented “This must have been the worst year of your life”. I appreciated the sentiment, as it was an acknowledgment that I was actually standing there in front of her, but fortunately it wasn’t true. On the contrary I can honestly say that this has been one of the best years of my life. Even the broken arm had its rightful place in the scheme of things. It completed the strophe; new job, new apartment, new roads to get home and to work on; all new. Painful and exhausting at times, but definitive and finally moving in the right direction.

I went downstairs and stepped out onto the front porch. It was wet and cold outside but it felt good to get back down to the street where there was a chance tha I might catch a glimpse of the mystery tramp every once in a while. A guy walked by with his dog on a leash and nodded a greeting. The snow was still falling in big honkin’ flakes like at the end of “Dubliners”. It was a part of the book where Joyce seemingly got a little emotional, maybe even choked up. I remember a college English teacher at UCSB who once asked my class whether we thought Joyce had intentionally become so floral in his writing, in contrast to the rest of the book. To my ears that passage had been a sweet moment; I almost felt tears welling up when I read it. In his description of the falling snow, the blurring, the putting to bed of everything it touched, Joyce was certainly talking about death. The writing was sentimental, but sentimentality falls into a new relief when the subject is death.

It seemed important to this English teacher, who I now realize was actually just a grad student only a few years older than me, that Joyce was being ironic. I didn’t agree, but when I haltingly put forth my theory it was quickly dispatched without much of a struggle on my part. After all, he was the teacher and it was my first college level English class.

My arm’s finally to the point where I can scrape ice off my wind shield again, albeit inefficiently. It occurs to me that I too might be waking somebody up, even at this hour, but this won’t take long and, unless they need to get up too, they can go right back to sleep. How’s that for rationalizing? I’ve become one of the snow shovelers.

Doggy Heart

Since the blog concept can seemingly encompass gratuitous inclusion of anything the blogger decides he or she wants, here are some liner notes I wrote some years ago for Bob’s (I’ve disguised his name by spelling it backwards) CD and have always liked. If you’re interested in purchasing the CD, let me know and I’ll have “Bob” send you one. If you do buy one you might find that the songs move into your brain and stay with you, rent free, for the remainder of your adult life. If the reader of this happens to be a child or an adolescent, the songs may stay with you for at least a portion of your childhood and/or adolescence but will stand a greater risk of being forgotten, or at least fading into a more generalized memory of “the kind of music your parents used to listen to” as you progress into adulthood. Good luck to you.

After we’d spent the night rehearsing, recording, stepping over mics and wires in the kitchen and horsing around in general, Bob would always walk me down the narrow stairs of his East Boston flat to see me off. We’d stand for a few minutes on his gigantic marble front porch overlooking the perilous traffic on Saratoga Street and discuss the fate of the world. Bob always made the trip downstairs, not just because he enjoyed doing so, but also because he has good manners. Bob stands on ceremony; the view’s better from there.
My car would usually be parked across the street pointing north towards Winthrop. This meant it was going to require a bit of athleticism (and luck) to get into the driver’s seat without being hit by a speeding vehicle hell-bent on making it to the 24-hour store before closing time. On occasion I’d park in the lot behind Bob’s building. The risk factor in that case was Fritzy, a big white dog just a chain link fence away, who hated me and wanted to kill me. Fritzy, who’d already barked himself hoarse upon my arrival five hours earlier, would be well past his refractory period, and by then would have blood in his eyes and rage in his doggy heart. I would have liked for him to kill me someday because he seemed so earnest in his desire.
This CD contains nine of Bob’s songs, realized in the kitchen and washed down with orange juice and instant coffee. The performances are flawed, “just demos”, “could be better” and all that other nonsense. But there are moments which are beautiful. The songs have been turned them over and over and over, looked at from every angle. They are polished, though not in any technical sense of the word. When I listen to them now, years later, I can still remember stepping out onto the back porch for a break and watching jets roar straight at us, just seconds away from landing at Logan Airport. I’m put in the mind of homemade bookshelves and Becky’s paintings of horses. I can even recall Bob Halperin’s raucous guitar playing, though that was from years before.
God knows where I’ve been for the past 15 years. Fritzy died, unrequited and Halperin has moved to an undisclosed location in upstate New York. These days Bob has taken to burning CDs in a bright pile in his backyard. He claims to be perfecting a production concept he calls the “picket fence of sound.” I don’t have the heart to tell him that you really need a banjo to pull that off. Maybe I’d better just buy a banjo.

Broke Bark Driveway

The tree next to my driveway has a section halfway up the trunk where the bark is cracked open and coming off, as if the tree's unbuttoning its shirt. It’s an inconspicuous feature which would not warrant mention were it not for the fact that this bark crack happens to be a gateway into the jaws of hell.

Until I’d rammed my car into it while backing in, I wasn’t aware of just how close to the edge of my narrow driveway the tree was. Close inspection revealed that the trunk was bent inward, but that that bend was camouflaged by a nasty little bouquet of leaves.

I remember a story told to me by a friend who lives in Boston about one lone tree on his urban block. All the neighbors were intent on getting rid of it, or any other tree, because “trees are dirty”. Such a sentiment seemed ridiculous to us and we laughed about it. But now, if I could, I’d chop the tree by my driveway on down, feed it branch by branch into a wood chipper, and piss on the sawdust.

The dent in my car cost me a couple of hundred dollars to fix; and that was just to replace the tail light. It would have cost me a few hundred more if I elected to get the body work done. Instead I enlisted the help of a robust cousin wielding a 2x4 in pushing it out. But there’s still a wrinkle of a dent there, a lingering reminder that I no longer live on the wide streets of Milton, but rather in the capillaries of Roslindale, where simply driving past another car going in the opposite direction can be a harrowing and death defying act.

My next encounter with the tree was a few weeks later. Siobhan was pulling out of my driveway very early in the morning as I lay sleeping on the third floor. I was jolted into consciousness, wide eyed at the sound of ripping and breaking metal as her side view mirror was separated from the body of her car. It was a sound that had the anonymity of the city to it, a sound denoting somebody else’s misfortune, but intuitively I knew that this was for me.

Now it began to dawn on me why the bark was coming off the tree. The mark was a battle scar. I began to regard the tree with distaste and loathing. I despised the way it slouched there surly and damaged as I climbed into my car every morning. It waited for me when I returned at night. And worse, it didn’t give a damn. I wasn’t its first dance partner and I wouldn’t be its last. I’d drive carefully past it the way I would a vagrant hoodlum, avoiding eye contact, slightly tensed

My driveway parking spot had been granted to me, by special mention of the landlord, as my own personal space. While each of the other residents of my building, who’d lived there much longer than me, had to jockey their cars in and out of the opposite side driveway I was guaranteed my on unshared spot. In hindsight this was a red flag.

Then on a freezing midnight, just as I’d stepped past the tree on my way to my apartment, my left foot hit ice, went completely out from under me, and I was suspended sideways in mid air. I have a fixed image, which I now can’t get out of my mind, of a crack in the sidewalk where I was about to land. Milliseconds later flesh and bone met ice and concrete; shoulder first, full body weight. What followed was a nightmare of emergency rooms, surgical procedures, comically awkward pain, human kindness, and surrender.

Enroute to the hospital on the day of my shoulder operation, Siobhan and I stopped at my place to pick up some clothing and personal items. She pulled into the driveway and went upstairs to get my stuff while I waited in the car, drugged and sullen. My gaze fell on the tree next to me with its insolent disclosure and its mocking bunches of leaves. It had been in on this. And it was still standing. Now it was my time to go off to the elephant graveyard and lick my wounds. But our day would come.

Nickering

I’m equal parts intrigued and disturbed by my blossoming Dilaudid habit. Who knew that after a life time free of substance abuse, or any inclination towards it, I would get the chance to glimpse addiction from the consumer side, always helpful if you want to actually understand something like that.

In the emergency room on the night of my accident they’d given me a couple of shots-in-the-ass of Demerol to no avail whatsoever. Awaiting surgery, I had spent the next three days taking as much Oxycodon as the doctor prescribed. Truly my mother’s son, I would never take more. On the day of the operation, in addition to the general anesthesia, they gave me a “pain block” which was stunningly effective. I woke up in the recovery room groggy but pretty much pain free. The block was still in effect, I was told. A few hours later a persistent thrum of pain set in, and I drifted in and out of CNN dreams, unable to see out the window but told that there’d been a big snow storm and that the whole city was paralyzed. I became an expert at using the “1—10” pain scale, and for the next twenty four hours, whenever asked, I consistently answered the nurses with a terse, “Ten”. I finally arrived at Dilaudid by way of Oxycodon and IV Morphine. I could never tell exactly when it went into effect; only that roughly two hours after ingesting it, the pain became just this side of bearable. And that was enough for me. I wasn’t looking for recreation, just something to stave off misery with a sharp stick.

A week later at my follow-up appointment I was told that I needed to “begin to taper the Dilaudid”, my persistent pain not withstanding. This edict was delivered to me about the same time that somebody told me that they’d googled Dilaudid and discovered that it was highly habit forming. I’ve always been somebody who hates putting pills of any kind into my mouth and whose addictions don’t tend towards pharmaceuticals, so I wasn’t that concerned. On the contrary I found it a little annoying that I wasn’t at least getting a pinch of pleasure in exchange for this enforced breach in my behavioral norm

Still, I remember that in the morning, after each horrible tortured night, I’d toddle out of my borrowed patio chaise lounge into pre-dawn darkness, pop three pills, turn on the TV, and wait for deliverance by the Early Bird news. And in those moments, sipping my unnaturally cherished cup of coffee, I’d get just a sliver of a back door feeling of peace. My friend, who had been an addict for several life-destroying years, told me that Dalaudid is a heroin addict’s favorite substitute, but you could have fooled me because my use of it was strictly tied up with my pain, one end of a miserable teeter totter between wretched ache and oblivion. But there was that nickering of peace.

So now it’s six weeks later, and even though I’ve been tapering, I was sitting on the couch in therapy this morning and it dawned on me that, as my friend so aptly described it, “the curtain” had come down. I was at peace just sitting there in my little pillow posture on the couch. I’ll be damned if my life isn’t in a breath taking careen of change, but at that moment I didn’t care, because I was behind the curtain.

My friend warned me that this was a good moment to be careful, and Dear Reader, I agree.

Campbell Brown

I was standing in line at Best Buy, looking to exchange my new 24” HDTV for a 26” one. The guy in front of me, a vaguely gnarly outdoorsy type was exclaiming on his cell phone something bout “so now it’s back to the grind”. I didn’t think much of it, focused as I was on the length and lack of movement in the Exchange/Returns line. Sheesh!!* He had a Tivo in a box on the floor in front of him right next to my TV in a box and I impulsively asked him what a Tivo costs. He garrulously launched into a story starting with "$250" and then on to something about not being able to get a cash back refund, followed by a running observation on the age and training of Best Buy staff with which I wholly concurred. I volunteered my purpose in line and he enthusiastically urged me to go “bigger, bigger!!” I told him it's all I could afford, getting divorced, etc etc….and it turns out he’s just got divorced too and has a theory about what a guy needs to get started again….a micro wave, a large screen TV. And I said "don’t forget a computer" and he goes, “oh yeah, ya gotta have the naked ladies” So we proceeded in this rapt conversation until at some point, I’m not exactly sure what queued me, but I realized I was talking to Livingston Taylor. I was star struck, as Anna said the time we met Campbell Brown at a dinner party in Newton, but managed to maintain some conversational functionality. But when he asked me my name and then forthrightly introduced himself and there was no use pretending anymore, so I reverted to geeky fan. I did manage briefly to get back into the moment when apropos of I forget exactly what he boisterously pounded me on my slinged left arm, of which he wasn't aware cuz it was draped with my cape-like overcoat. When I revealed the sling and told him that my attorney would be contacting him in the morning we both had a good laugh and then his number got called. Before he left, he called out across Bestbuy-Space, “So long Chris!” and I said something partially geeky like “keep on keeping on!” and that was it. And then I went to analysis.

*thanks Bill

Maiden Voyage

Once I bust thru the tissue of self consciousness I should be ok.

Wanted to do this for a long time but needed a sign. I broke my arm by falling flat on an icy sidewalk at midnight on December 9 (auspicious date) and nothing's been the same since. I still haven't gone back to work yet and although today was to have been the day a big snow storm has intervened rendering the environment icy and inhospitable, and lord knows I need a hospitable environment to step back into. So instead I'm starting my first blog toady....and no that's not a typo.

Since I'm the only one who knows my blog address....Good Luck to me!!