Old Men

My father was the principal of the orthodox, Jewish day school I attended. (For the record, someone suggested to me recently, that I may be short on material to write about and so consequently, consciously and somehow create pain in my life just to fill that void - almost like a perverse form of research. Besides being a statement that hurt me immensely, the opening sentence above obviously renders their notion completely false. Anyone who can claim to have experienced any, let alone all the elements of that sentence, possesses enough mental anguish to fill books with.) Whilst all old collegians, excepting those that may have been his oldest son, remember him as warm, trusting and as a sort of early mentor, at the time they were passing through their days of attendance, they saw him a little differently. See, the old man, whilst on the surface quite cherry and literal, was also an incredibly and unconsciously idiosyncratic fellow. Extremely.

Of Dreams and Highways

On their 2001 album, 'Time (The Revelator)', Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings close out with a sweet, sparse, fifteen minute, song that drifts, lifts and rambles its way from pain to hope and back again, in the golden way that only they can. The song is called 'I Dream a Highway'.

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

In my favourite moments of self-determination, this song is exactly how I see this whole wandering routine that I'm on. I'm simply heading my way back to you, I just need to find the ribbon with a band of gold that will lead me there. That's wrong, actually. I have found it and I'm trying now to find you. I must have found it, for I can see it. It's real. In my mind anyway, but I can see it and if I can see it, it's real. A real passage with real moments. A real winding highway.

Next Time

I used to manage Australia's first, fine-dining, certified organic restaurant. Or something like that. I'm not sure if it was the very, very first, or if it was precisely fine-dining, but it was at least an approximation, if not an exaction, of the two. It's regardless, for either way it doesn't really have that much to do with the story I wish to tell you here today. I used that statement, just to provide a historical timeline and framework. It was my first, real, restaurant management job. I was grossly under qualified and only won the position due to a combination of personal, dashing charm and a Machiavellian power struggle and reshuffling between some of the directors of the group, that owned the place. My hiring was meant to provoke a further on reaction and I am not so vain as to be so unawares, that I was simply a pawn in their game.

The Bicycle Thief

If you were to step out the entrance door of my East Village apartment and onto the sidewalk, the first thing you would notice would be the tangled up mess of rusted steel, that is four bicycles, chained together and around one of those upside-down-U-shaped metal pylons. The sort of thing that councils install, to act as a docking and locking up point for your environmentally friendly mode of transport.

Nothing unusual there. Yet.

Now, look across to the East (that's towards the direction of The East River, for those of you who seem confused by direction. Can't imagine why they called it The East River.....). Only but a few feet away, stands another one of these blackened steel pylons. This is a fancier one, as it  more so resembles an upside-down-W and is able support more bicycles. Congregated around this one, is an even denser throng of rusted steel. This time, the orange of said rust is darker, richer and thicker. So thick, that one wouldn't even need to notice the punctured tires or the twisted spokes or the broken chains, to surmise that no one has sat on any of their seats or turned any of their pedals, for some time. Now look back to the first pylon, the one just outside my front door, and you'll realise that the bicycles around it, suffer from the very same tell-tale signs of idle languor.


So far, not too much to write home about. These two 'Living Sculptures' are interesting enough, but perhaps they are just an odd, isolated 'Happening'.

Ok, well, now suppose a friend of yours was going away and you were charged with the responsibility of dog-sitting her little joy. Let's say, for example's sake, that this particular Jack Russell Terrier was fairly advanced in years and, as such, ambled along on his several daily walks, at a particularly sedate and restrained pace. Furthermore (and I'm sure this is the domain of all dogs, so I'm not singling out this dear old fellow), his stumbling stagger, would be punctuated by frequent attempts to sniff at each and every street-sign, tree, dust bin, flower bed, pylon and, well, virtually anything that is stationary and rising up from the sidewalk.

'How Much?' in Two Parts - Second Part

Dear Reader,

I was going to wait until tomorrow, but a bit of Britpop on the iPod has fueled me. Here's the second half, freshly minted.

(if you are reading this one first, skip to the one below it and then return to this one second.)
hershatlarge

How much?

I'll tell you how much: Everything.

Personally, I'm willing to give everything. Not because it's that important; nor because I'm the sort that is prepared to risk all; nor because I need your love beyond the reasonable level of desperation; nor because I've put you up on a proverbial pedestal and feel that the corresponding, perceived, example of perfection that I see you as, requires the highest price it's possible to be paid, in order to deserving of you; nor because a shortage of love provided during adolescent years, has resulted in a great fear of rejection and as such, I am afraid to let even the smallest spark fade out, for it brings up and out all those old, dark corners of depression; nor because your smile is my muse; nor because I'm too tired to do anything but lay my head down on your soft pillow.

'How Much?' in Two Parts

Dear Reader,


Today I wish to conduct a little experiment. All the postings you read on this page, are exercises in stream of consciousness. Not so much the flow and rhythm of the sentences and phrases, but more so the content of the ideas, emotions, stories and confessions. The ramble of the prose is somewhat more calculated and drafted, but the subject matter is supposed to be a collection random remembered emotions and happenings of the few days prior to construction. I believe this allows me to be most honest, for I am expressing with as little perspective of rational distance as possible.


However, this post will be written in two parts. The first will be with the agitated mindset of this morning and the second half will be with a more sedate and embarrassed mindset of in a day or two's time.


Feel free to Feedback me in between.


Hershatlarge

Love, or the expression of it, requires self-sacrifice - the sacrifice of 'Self'. To state it; to show it; to convey it and pine for a reciprocation of it, requires an action far outside one's 'Self'. An action that, if it is committed in a true, accurate and total way, removes one from within the comforting barriers, borders and turf of Self and Self-Preservation and risks the probable concession of some of those very borders and turf. To me, love needs expression. Not to make Love 'real' - not to validate it by action - but rather because Love is not and never can be passive. Otherwise, it is simply a deduced opinion on the emotional position one may have towards another, existing only in the mind and not in The World. One needs outlets to bring Love out into The World and one needs The World for Love.