I wake up from a dream on the old leather couch, head propped up on a pillow, in the quiet apartment.  My father, at dinner.  Family, my brother, the grandkids. He's the most beautiful of all of us.  The star.    And we know, in the dream, that he won't be around for ever, but he's so gracious, so kind, so soft spoken, all we can think is that we have him now, we have his light amongst us.  While he is here.  The table is prepared, a dream foggy supper.


We did not know this, when we headed out into the world, the world with its darkness, with its strife. With its pride and vanity.


He had come to bring his grace unto me.  And I should never have moved away for all my futile endeavors, I remember this in my dream, dreams in which one has wisdom, and does not act like a fool fumbling against the control of the world such as it is....



I've not chatted with my old buddy Daryl, from my old hometown, in a while, a new old friend in Covid times, and we converse for hours, until about almost three in the morning.   He's down on the South Carolina coast.  "You just have the patience for it, that's why you're the one who keeps mom okay..."  In the meantime, I eat some of my meatloaf, still warm from the oven, but in the meantime, I drink a bottle of wine.  (Too much, in fact, on top of the ragweed lethargy, I'll find out the next day.)

The wine goes down easy.  I was writing before, and had come to the end of my steam.  I'm not a very patient person when my writing gets sidetracked.  It seems to hurt.  But if you've come to the end of your confessional booth time, you let the guard down.  So, I listen carefully to my friend;  he has good advice.  He's a good sounding board.  What's Peckham up to?  His brother?  McHenry?  The Coe brothers.  It begins to be a lot to absorb, and as I tire, in the wordy parts of the mind, the wine is increasingly soothing and relied upon.  That's how the system works, the one you built.  And it is natural that it gets overwhelmed from time to time, and the wine serves to numb and protect, the balance between the inner and the outer.  You know how it works:  you go along with it.


I'd been writing about how when I post something on social media I have a strange reaction afterward.  Often, why did I post that?  Making yourself so obvious, so in front of people has a backlash of shyness, though I'm not saying this with any clarity.  Regrets.  Giving out an in-road into guarded mental processes still on going and active.  Exposure.


Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like:  He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock...
Luke  6:46...


You are free of sin.  Go in peace.


So, as the autumn solstice comes, and the Jewish New Year, too, and I nerve, the ragweed takes all my energies away, and I get up to go lay on the couch, if not back to bed.  The couch is soft, softer than the bed's firm mattress and one day, as I try to get up it's like my lower back giving out on me.  This is where I normally sit, hunched over like Jerome, the laptop on the coffee table before me, as I lean forward.  But with this stiffness there is pain when I do this.   A knot, tying up everything from neck down.

I go out to the little deli grocery store on Saturday, before it closes at 6.  I walk down to the bluff, and when the people walk away, a mother, who was conducting iPhone work, and two daughters at play by the picnic table, I venture my headstand, and it works, easier than I thought.  I limp back, slowly, and remember to take a shower, get the pollen off, important to remember.  I get the yoga mat out, and it's slow, and painful, bending down to go into sun salutation, trying to touch my toes.  Hard to do.  Everything is interconnected.  I can barely reach forward.


To get out of bed the last few days is like performing a shoulder roll, tuck legs in toward chest, roll on my side, get the feet down on the floor, lift with the legs.  JFK, pain every day of his adult life.  Could barely put his shoes on.  My Amish rocking chair of bent wood is a help indeed for the soreness.  I have to hold onto the arm rests to lift myself up out of it, but sitting and rocking in it soothes, and I avoid the old leather couch.


Friday, yesterday now, Mom had her helper Mary visit.  Canale's for a late lunch.  Around 8 at night, I get a call, "Not to worry you, but I think I might be having a heart attack...  I just threw up."  But she is brave about it.  I'll go back to bed and we'll see what happens.  I call her in a few minutes, we go through a few more symptoms...

I order Chinese, fall into long nap on the couch, wake at 5 AM...  At 8, Mom is calling.  Another mood.  Angry at me. "I'm sick.  Where are you?  I'm all alone.  Nothing to eat."  There should be something in the fridge.  "Help, help!  Help!"  I hear her call as she looks in the fridge, to see what's there.  For a moment she is calm, speaking to the cat, letting him out, perfectly normal.  But then, forgetting I'm on the other end of the receiver, she wanders off...  Where are you?  Crying...

I look at my phone and pull up the Instacart app, to have some groceries sent.  I rest some more, back in pain, moving difficult.  I lapse back into sleep.  Woken by my aunt.  So I get up.


Writing is painful every day.  It's taking sore muscles and trying to work them out, so that they don't hurt anymore.  Much like yoga.




As you get older, my age, say, fifty five, fortunately or not, it becomes more and more, perhaps even all, about the creative process, even if it is a strange personal one, your own odd-ball form.   It's your own source of making connections, supporting the work of your mind.

The evils of the day are often enough, to ask for a glass of wine.


Later, after musing about Jimi Hendrix, one contemplates how badly his manager, Mark Jeffries, who managed The Animals, stole Jimi's hard-earned dollars.  And then it became very hard for Jimi.  He should have had been able now to enjoy the fruits of his labors at this point in his life.  The guy left him with $20 in his London bank account.  Tragedy followed Jimi along in life.

A Chinese dinner, delivered, here in DC, costs about $30.  Tip on top of that.  $5.  Bottle of wine $10.  Cannot bear my own cooking or black-eyed peas, or Boars Head cold cuts, nor hotdogs, another day, or not today. I need my energy to fight these battles, alone out here.


Why does genius get left with nothing...  not that I'm one.

It's healthy, on the one hand, to divorce yourself from the things of Caesar, but...

This is where people start to, if not hate you, distance themselves from you, as if what you had were contagious...  You're poor.  This makes you an embarrassment, a weighty burden.  Why can't you get along  with the system.  Why don't you want to work within it?  We do, why can't you?

(and believe me, my father had the right wardrobe, a very proper man for his profession, which he performed with huge talent and beautiful grace...  There's good in dressing well.  It helps us understand each other, where we are coming from...)

Like Jimi, beautiful soul, wandering out from his homeland, his drinking parents, his old Indian grandmother up in Vancouver, how many thousand hundred acts of grace and genius and things like that did you perform...   Look at it that way, for a moment, from a more Castles Made of Sand eternal point of view, if you'll allow.

"What is the kingdom of heaven like...  I'll tell you what it's like..."  A little, a beautiful little lesson squeezed in here and there, and in fact this is what people remember about you.

It's like a joke now, to bring Jimi and Jesus and the nature of the acts of intelligence together, a new way of looking at something....  a new way of thinking...  a new way to use language, toward a new metaphor, such as the old thinking of the impossible is transferred into the realm of the possible.


It took the Aquarian Age from the thing to come back, more or less, the outer space science fiction Vonnegut was tipped off to, the return of the miracle, the return, in short, of the spirit of Jesus's spirit. Sort of.  Maybe.  In some poetic way, perhaps... Slaughterhouse Five, published in 1969.

Who can forgive sins, but God...  But what is easier to say...  Is it not just as easy to say, your sins are forgiven you than, say, get up and walk.

What have I to do with thee, Satan...  That's another line you have to like.  People pull shit on you, mess with you in their money poker faces...

Well, remember, but they're not doing the work you're doing.  It's less within their frame of mind to get that work, isn't it.

And, as Jimi knew, sometimes they take what you have rightfully earned, your work in the vineyard, and leave you with jack.

They seemed just men.  Perfectly ordinary in their mindsets.  But...  why does the system they play by leave you with nothing...


And now, of course, Jesus would be construed as creepy, going around, saying things like "arise, Tabatha, it's time to get up...    She's hungry.   Feed her."   (From the dead, to life.)   Yes, that was part of it, he simply creeped them out, the prominent risen members of society...  That's the way to get rid of oddballs, call them creepy.


I lift myself up out of the rocking chair, getting my feet underneath me.   Hope.