Thoughts as 2008 Wanes

Using my governmentally bestowed half-day float, I am entirely off today, the last day of 2008. I have used it rather profligately so far, sleeping until 10:30, although that by itself is not unusual, I suppose. I always go to bed late, have trouble sleeping, and even on a work day, thanks to the perk of being a manager, I don't come in early. But 10:30 on a day off is also not unusual. I only got up because my three cats were using my bed, and thus me, as a trampoline, alerting to their rampant hunger.

A few days ago I ground beans of an especially dark and aromatic roast from Whole Foods, and was looking forward to my first cup. While it dripped, a good friend called Ms. Nes 55, and we talked of the year's challenges, during which she has managed an amazing calm, in part, using Scarlett O'Hara's philosophy of "Tomorrow is Another Day!"

The coffee was good, but not a revelation, which may be more the result of the pot in which it was made, than the beans. I allowed my big white cat, Bleu to roam around in the hallways of my apartment building (really, with only four units, like a private home) and watched HGTV, for the first real extended period, about "virgin" buyers.

Tonight, my friends and I will go out to a nearby restaurant and welcome the New Year, but a quiet day has generated thoughts of the past year.

In fact, there are only two things that stand out about the year, the rest whirring away in a blur. The first, of course, is my father's last illness and death in April. Though he was 90, his end wasn't expected. And, from my perspective, it wasn't either his heart nor his bladder, the two areas of his life's health problems that did him in. It was the lack of empathy of his two doctors. It was also the failure to keep him in the hospital after a "procedure" of removing infected kidney stents. As to those stents I frankly, to this day, wonder whether they were truly necessary. From the moment they were placed, my father declined. Although I have decided that a malpractice suit is not the direction I want to go, despite my legal background, I cannot think of these doctors without anger, every time an errant bill or explanation of benefits, still, arrives in Dad's mailbox. I have planned to write each of them a letter about how I perceived their miserable ministrations. I keep hoping that the angry emotion behind what I might write will minimize. It hasn't so far.

As long as it was 2008, the possibility of Dad's coming back or that the whole affair did not happen persisted. With 2009's arrival, the finality, I think, will hit me. Nonetheless, with his last published story in "Senior Moments" in May 2008, with a Christmas card arrived from an army buddy of his who did not know of his death, with another "hello" from a friend of ours who also did not know of Dad's demise, with fresh memories of his last well celebrated birthday,(in which lovely Sophia joined us after some nearly 30 years after their last in person contact), it has seemed Dad remained alive for nine months. The gestation period for letting go, I guess.

Before my father died as he lay so small and agitated in the hospital bed in the throes of a sepsis, requiring sedation, and breathing tube, people rallied around: my pastor, Monsignor Murphy, Sr. Pilar, the hospital chaplain, the Eucharistic Ministers who visit the sick, my uncle Steve, Dad's brother, and my friend, our friend, Susan, who was there when the end came. While I may have little affection for the doctors who were my father's caregivers in the last 7 months of his life, I have great affection for the young doctors and nurses who surrounded him in ICU. One doctor, in particular, offered reasonable hope on that first night of Dad's days there so that I could sleep. I was given wisdom and calm from my former pastor, Monsignor Parnassus, who advised me when I did not know what was good and proper for Dad's physical and spiritual welfare. And from a fellow parishioner, Veronica, who said, "Pray that God does the most loving thing", which He did. As well, in the final inevitable farewell after Dad died, I found out how many friends I had. My cousin, Carol, flew immediately across country simply to "be there" as I did what I had to do. My uncle Steve went with me to see my father, now dressed in his debonair best in the casket, for the last time, my having decided that a wake would not have been Dad's preference, I think. Len of "Len Speaks" and Mr. Anonymous of the Barbara Judith Apartments, each took time from their jobs to visit mortuary and cemetery with me as I made arrangements. Len did one of the readings. Veronica did the intentions I had written for the occasion. Dad's cousin Helen, drove all the way from Riverside to be in the family pew. My long time friend Carol, who also knew dad well, flew in from Chicago. Susan was there in the family row as well with all of these. My friends and colleagues from work attended the funeral. As did two of Dad's writing class members, Ric and Edith, and his next door neighbor Jack. I was touched at how many parishioners were there to say good bye, Peter, who also served as one of the pall bearers, (with Len and Andrew, who knew dad from our undergraduate days and darling Chris, a "new" friend at some 15 plus years), Ted, Jim, Trudy and Walter, Sal, Erin and others I should remember, but in my haze do not. Una hosted at her home, and provided the food for, the reception after the funeral. Delores sang my father to heaven. And again, were the two Monsignors, who concelebrated Dad's funeral Mass at the parish in which he had been received into the Catholic Church five years before, and in which he had been a dedicated usher. The homily, given by Monsignor Parnassus, was not only that of a religious shephard, but were the words of a man who had particular insight into my father, the "reluctant Catholic" and who clearly felt the loss.

The other event was a sudden trip to Hawaii, with my cousin Carol, in August, to try to sort out the condition of an elderly aunt. Unmarried, childless, without family there, financially and medically compromised, we tried to get her help, but she is living a bit in a fantasy that everything is fine, when it is not, and remains, not terribly cooperative with our efforts. On the good side, this was the second visit of my cousin Westward within months and the two of us did manage to have fun in Hawaii, even with a small family crisis. Benefit of benefits beyond that is that both events closed the nine year gap between us (I am the elder) from our childhood and made us friends. She sent me an ornate plate which I have on my wall, "Cousins by chance, friends by choice".

And so it was losses paradoxically brought gains. And reminder of how short is life, and how much it is to be savored.

This year, I particularly understand the "We'll drink a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne." For times gone by.

Errant Thoughts While Sitting Before the Blessed Sacrament

I am a practicing Catholic, emphasis on the word, "practicing".

Sometimes I am more active in my practice than at other times, more than just once a week Mass, and the odd visit for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Much depends on my mood; alas, not the most appropriate impetus for acts of devotion to the Lord.

My parish has a fair number of hours for Eucharistic Adoration, that is, a large Consecrated Host, which we believe is really, truly and substantially the Son of God, is placed in a special holder called a Monstrance. He is always there in the tabernacle, but this way of making Him visible in front of us, is a special form of Adoration. It is rather like having a friend sitting next to you, in silence, understanding all you are to each other. You sit. You meditate. You pray. You read passages from the Bible or non-biblical prose. You quiet yourself, separate yourself from the world, to be alone with Him, the One who came into time, to restore us to Himself, to His Father. You remember the trail you are on, with He who Leads.

Well, ideally.

For the nine days before Christmas, there has been an hour long such Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, that includes about 20 minutes of plain chant, the O Antiphons. It's the kind of thing you might have seen if you watched the movie "Into Great Silence". Night vespers. I have managed to go to three of the novena events. I have learned how hard it is to sit quietly for only an hour. I have used one or another mantra, one, "My Lord and My God" or the other, longer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." As you do so, as in any form of meditation, thoughts intrude. The idea is to notice them, but let them go. The letting go of them is hard. And while I have sat, my thoughts have turned to the mundane, the sad, things that have annoyed me, things that anger me. They have passed, frequently unfair and unkind, but they were there, incongruities during apparent prayer. I wonder if the others, who look so holy, are having the same experience. That's one of the thoughts. A woman to my left is kneeling on the hard floor, rather than using the cushioned kneeler. Does she want to be noticed? Or is it true humility before God? I tend to think the former. Let that thought go. The pastor seems to be nodding off in the front. Sometimes I wonder, watching his body language, whether he believes, at all. Let that thought go. The woman behind me keeps turning the thin pages of her missal or whatever she is reading. Why does she keep doing that? Why can't she settle on a page and stop the noise? Let that thought go. One of the chanters, his red cheeks betraying his youth, is conducting the two sopranos. The conducting seems to take away from the prayerfulness of the gathering, to me. And it isn't working. They are missing notes. The gathered are supposed to join in but the voices are too high, and we can't match them. Let that thought go. For a passing moment, there is nothing but my mantra passing through my mind. As soon as I notice that, I lose the quietude. I lose the clear path to God.

But I know that it can be found again. Maybe tomorrow.

Fourth Estate and Other Media Lies

The New York Times' famous motto is "All the News That's Fit to Print". In the day, the news was merely reported, and not every five seconds in every venue known to man and woman, elevators, gas pumps, I-Phones. I would bet that in some big law office, there is a flat panel monitor on a lavatory wall, just as there used to be telephones in the stalls.

But today, the news first is made, and then reported, and what is reported from what was made, is interpreted. A game of "Telephone" even before you pick up the paper or flip on your computer.

This reality began to bother me, last weekend, when I went to "The Grove" in Los Angeles. It is merely coincidence that Dennis Prager spent a couple of his programs this week on the same sore subject of our not being able to believe what our media tell us because it is so royally skewed.

Everything that we have been told by pretty much all the media outlets is that people are strapped for cash and won't be spending money at the holidays. Initially, it looked like Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) showed a real spurt of purchasing, but, a day or so later, there were clarifications that this was not really the case or that it was tempered by some other factor. It is almost as if "they" whoever "they" are, want people to hear that no one is going out an buying, so that they sort of jump on the not buying band wagon out of, maybe, guilt that if others can't buy, they shouldn't either?

So, I was figuring my soujourn on Saturday at "The Grove" would be an easy one, few people, few cars. After all that's what we are being told--no one's out there because of the economy. But, wait a minute. I couldn't easily get a spot in the lot that is usually the more empty one, near the contract Post Office, by the Children's Place. And the stores were, well, stuffed. And people had shopping bags, and the kids were going to see the Santa Claus.

And yet, we will continue to hear the opposite of what we are actually seeing with our own eyes.

I have long been troubled by the stock market reports. Years ago, you had to read the paper to find out what was happening during a day on Wall Street. Now, every report, everywhere tells you about every up and down. Every movement. "The stock market is down thirty points". "The stock market is up three points." Anyone hearing about this roller coaster is going to run for the hills, and so the story about the market generates further fears, and further losses. Why do they have to do that?

Dennis Prager last week was mentioning how he was in some town where it had snowed, and to hear the reports, it was blizzard conditions everywhere, except when he looked out his hotel window, it was nothing of the sort.

Today, he noted, (and I just cut yesterday's national map out confirming it)that given the cold that has hit us East to West, Global Warming is something of an obvious lie. Except that now, the words are being changed. "Warming" is no longer the operative second part of the phrase. It has been replaced, to adjust for the cognitive dissonance, to "global climate change".

There is nothing that is not being orchestrated for our minds to believe---in small things and bigger things and urgent things. We are being brainwashed and may have nothing whatever we can do about it. Especially if the euphemistically denominated "Fairness Doctrine" is forced upon us by our so-called representatives in Washington.

. "All the News that's Fit To Fake" would appear to be the sub rosa motto.

George would be proud. Not Washington. Orwell.

A Most Unusual Visit

There has been a hiatus, hasn't there. It is the Christmas season, cards, work parties, friend parties, ordinary life obligations. And then once again, my large white cat chewed through the wire attached to my modem thus eliminating my access to the net.

And my mood hasn't been one for writing. No reason, in particular.

But new modem attached and somewhat out of eye level of beast named Bleu, I am ready for an entry about another visit to the cemetery, a bit over a week ago.

I ordered a flower holder for my dad's niche. And I decided, about a week later, to go back, and see if it had been placed. I should have checked before I bought a small bunch, to assure it was attached so I could place the flowers. I didn't, trusting that, though I said there was no rush, a week was sufficiently without rush. I got there with my flowers only to see that nothing had been done.

I got one of the little vases, with the intent of placing it on the ground near the niche, since my dad's neighborhood is sparse of other occupants. Unfortunately, the vase had a rounded bottom that, even leaning against the wall, was blown over, throwing flowers and water all about. I was making a mess of the wall and the floor and only hoped that some denizen who watches what mourners do and bring (they are very strict) would not see all the water splashed on the wall and mixing with old dust on the floor.

I hoped that the splash marks would dry before anyone came by. But I tried again to fill a rounded vase to place the flowers, even if it were only for the rest of the afternoon. This time, I used a rubber band from the flowers to wrap around the vase and attach to the half inch or less protrusion that should have had the vase holder. It worked. I congratulated myself for my ingenuity, and began talking to my father, and writing in my journal. It fell off. Splash. Since my father hated me to spend money on things that had no value, and he was not that interested himself in flowers, I considered that he was throwing them at me. Then I thought, "He wouldn't do that." But then worried again. The last time we had words, his were angry ones, yes, in the midst of delirium, but I suddenly had the vision of an angry ghost, a la Ghost Whisperer expresing dissatisfaction in similar ways. On the other hand, I don't believe in ghosts, well, an angry one named Constantine, anyway.

The flowers were starting to wilt, so I decided that the time had come to place them in various other holders, that had water, of several other columbarium occupants. But during the course of all this personal sturm und drang over flower placement, I had noticed a burly young man go to a niche diagonally across from my father's, "on the crowded wall", meaning where a whole lot of other folks were interred. He came with a small bottle of some pre-made Starbuck frappacino and I was slightly irritated at his making a visit with a coffee shop drink. I suspected him of not being a serious visitor. I was wrong.

During one of my visits to the sink where they allow visitors to fill up vases, I had heard a repeated noise. Like something slapping, with the sound of a kind of clear wrapping paper. Like someone slapping a pack of cigarettes against his hand afgter dislodging the covering to free one cigarette for a smoke. The sound echoed through the marble and granite hallways. The number of times the pack slapped against the hand smacked of a sort of ritual.

When he saw me return to my side of the hallway, he stopped. I knew it had been him. I wanted to look, and did so askance, in between trying to concentrate on my own visit. Then I smelled smoke. He had lit a cigarette. Actually, it turned out he had lit two. One was wedged into the crevice of the niche the young man was visiting. In a fashion, he, and his loved one, were smoking together. What might have been a desecration was suddenly very moving, because I could hear the young man choking back tears. He was recreating something, in this imperfect reality, that had been something they shared. I could not see whether it was a father or a mother or a brother, or a sister. I wanted to ask, but I dared not intrude into this moment of mourning between heaven and earth.

Abraham Biggs: Another Casualty of the Culture of Death

He took an overdose of pills in full view of web camera peeping Toms. They watched. They commented, some encouraging him toward his demise as if it were just another television show. And no one thought to call 911 until it was too late.

There was no nick of time when the police burst into Abraham Biggs' bedroom curled up mortally.

The thinking American public is so shocked. How could this happen?

How could it not happen is the more accurate question.

As Abraham, age 19, is buried, an adult, a mother, named Lori Drew, will probably be acquitted of driving a 13 year old to her death using the internet. They have no on point crime to fit what she did.They had to cobble together a few felonies already on the books. With her own daughter and a friend, she created a young man who wooed a teenager and then turned on her. She hung herself.

When a child in a womb, right up to nine months, is fodder for dismemberment; when one that survives the invasive assault and comes out of the woman and is left to expire on some cold table, lacking legal personhood although not actual existence, when at the other end of life, statutes are passed to allow someone to die "with dignity", the line for when dignity begins and ends a relativist's dream, why are we surprised when the encroachment approaches those of us in the middle of the bracket between beginning and end?

People don't like to hear about the "slippery slope". Heck, we are well down it and these hot news events of a teenager who throws her newborn into a dumpster, or a woman who leaves a person she hit impaled in her windshield in the garage to die, or an Abraham Biggs, these are natural to the slide.

If your value or my value is a matter of someone else's determination, not God's, not Natural Law's, then we are all at risk in the lying name of "choice".

Perhaps we should worry less about tobacco and more about the deadly euphemisms with which we are killing ourselves and others.

Expectations of a Super-man

I was going to take my own picture of this poster, another version of which, enlarged, is now over the T-Shirt Shop on Melrose Avenue. I found it, not easily, on line. I was actually surprised, since I have seen it in my travels a lot in Los Angeles, that it did not have more coverage nationally. Or maybe I just missed it.

Friends of mine who know I was inclined toward McCain have gently approached me to assess a mood about the outcome of the election. They seem to expect some kind of ruthless rage. I don't know why. I can speculate. But I won't. Maybe they figure that most of us in the 47 percentile will put up our version of the sign I used to see in various locales, including my office, about soon to be former President Bush, "He's not my president" accompanied by a Mad Magazine big eared version of his face. I took my McCain-Palin sticker off my car on November 5, and I am now, in my little, non-Washington non-insider way, a member of the "loyal opposition". That's how I view it. He's got the role. I respect the role and thus, the burdens of the man who is in it. And I wish him Godspeed. Yeah, I'd like him to shift on some of his positions. Maybe he will, or maybe he won't. But he's got the big job, and he deserves respect, and a chance. But back to the picture of President Elect Obama as Superman. It's hard enough to be President, but coming in with the aura of being more than human? Whoa!

There is some simplistic idea out there, despite Political Science 101 courses that surely many of the young kids who voted for him had to have taken, that the President can wave his arms and effect the promises that are ab initio generalized hyperbole. He's going to get us out of Iraq, toute suite. He's going to close Guantanamo, he's going to sign FOCA and finally shut up the pro-lifers in the states, he's going to cut taxes of many Americans, particularly apparently the ones who don't pay taxes right now. He's going to solve the economic downturn that had its genesis in the early 1990's, you know, during another Democrat administration. I don't know if he's one for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, so that for every Conservative Talking Head, there will be the concomitant Liberal Talking Head to counter, no doubt in high decibels.

He is going to have to leap tall buildings in a single bound and right over the heads of any opposition, and be faster than a speeding bullet indeed so they don't see him coming or going.

Me? I am hoping that faced with the reality of what I still think are checks and balances and the input of the real Loyal Opposition, he will do essentially what Clinton did in his turns at the Presidential tiller, he'll take a more centrist tact. And mean it.

Superman is impossible for any mere mortal. President of the United States is probably a close second.

Visual, and Olfactory, Memories of A Summer Night in the Bronx

Me on the first stoop 1596 Townsend Avenue, in an early bad mood! But it WAS summer.



It's been a tad warm in Los Angeles this early Fall. In the 80s today, but as is more rare, fairly humid. When I left the office, in the gloaming, and got in my car, I decided to go up Pico Boulevard to avoid a protest that was over by MacArthur Park. Pico has always reminded me a bit of my Bronx, circa 1960's, well populated, and just a little seedy, but in a way that somehow is nostalgic. I was thinking though that I can always tell a scene in the movie where LA streets stand in for NY streets. It looks mostly the same, but there is just something that usually isn't precise about the buildings, or the sidewalks, or the general feeling.

Tonight, with the humidity and the lingering heat I found myself feeling like I was there, in the Bronx, after a hearty game of "Freeze Tag" that meant lots of jumping and leaping off the stoop that we were now resting on, summing up the summer day. We might be eating a pomegranete--this was before health was the measure of all things and it was just fun to peel and pick at the red seeds until your mouth and fingers were smeary red.

We were still sweaty from the running, and because the sidewalk radiated the day's sun still. The sidewalk gave off a smell that I suppose should have been unpleasant, a combination of heat, dirt, garbage gathering nearby mingled with cat or dog pee, but somehow wasn't. Old folks were taking their evening walks, a neighbor in the first floor window talking to another still on the street, kids making the last throws of their pink spauldings as high as they could as long as he dusk light lasted. A few kids still at a game of "Skully" with wax filled bottle caps on the chalk made street board. A couple of middle aged guys wandering down to Louie's, the laundry man, so they could place an illegal bet in the back. It was just before we'd be going upstairs to watch a favorite TV show on our black and white TVs, maybe the "Mod Squad" or "Honey West" (well, that was probably only me) or something like that. Maybe mom gave us some money to get a couple of hot dogs each with mustard and sauerkraut and a knish down the block to bring back for dinner.

Yeah, that's what came to mind as I went up Pico tonight. And I had to do Google Maps and "walk" the old neighborhood. So much has changed (my old apartment building is no longer there and is a public school), but so much hasn't. You can get really close up with the satellite stuff and I went all the way up Mt. Eden Avenue and to the Grand Concourse tonight,and all the way down to the Jerome El, 175th Street stop, just moments ago. I took a deep breath and marvelled at how much time has passed.

If I ever miss the Bronx, that's the one I miss.

A Djinn's Excellent Adventure!

I am on my way to the "Rock 'n Roll" Ralph's last night. So I take Sunset Boulevard from downtown when this is my grocery site du jour. Around the kind of seedy, but up and coming Elysian Park area, getting towards dusk, I see a black bird, clearly injured, trying to get to the quasi-safety of the sidewalk. I am amazed at his focus about doing that. I also know that given all the cars speeding past him as he hop-jumps as if he can fly, which he can't, he is about to be squished. In the universe of ills, one about to be squished to death starling (I think that's what he was) is not a blip on the cosmos' screen, and my initial thought, as I was going the opposite direction from where the bird was fighting for its life, was to say "Don't be silly, Djinn. How will you get to him even if you turn around and park?" But the image that came to mind of his being alive as I left him with me just going about my life, made me more than guilty. The picture horrified me. Made me feel vile. What's the difference between this bird (if a starling, they are considered pests, and not, by the way, to my animal loving mind)and the many already dead and packed chickens I have consumed with gusto without a moment's concern. This bird is arguably even more inconsequential to a carnivore. But, there WAS something different, even if I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe it was that in some part I had the power of life and death in that moment, and I was going for the side of life, if fate would intervene, and part the cars that I'd have to get past to get him.

I made a u-turn. I found a quick spot (that itself was a miracle). By the time I was able to do this though, moments this bird did not have, in particular, if it moved from the center of the street, it could have been over. And there were the left turner also. I do not know how they missed him. But there he was. Still.

The traffic also miraculously, broke, and I almost had him, but he popped in front of a slowly travelling car, who obviously saw me chasing him. He stopped. I reached out. I grabbed. There was no time for the makeshift towel. And I got him and started to the sidewalk. The bird was surprisingly able to maneuver with his broken wing and escaped my hand to the sidewalk, but since he couldn't fly I was able to get him again. All the while I am reminded that the last time I saved a bird, he died in the hat I placed him in for safekeeping, terrified out of his avian mind.

Another hat. Another bird. I placed him in the hat and covered him with pants I intended to give away. He freaked. I figured I'd be burying him shortly in my back yard.

I thought, maybe he can move now, so I got out and placed him near a tree, where he promptly fell over and shook profusely. Great, the bird is having a seizure. No. So back to the car, but this time, though you are not supposed to touch wild animals too much, for a variety of reasons, I held him in my left hand and drove with my right, and used my left thumb to pet his tiny head. Mostly he calmed down, and then there was the occasional effort to get away, and a pitiful squawking sound that made me feel like the Wicked Witch of the West. Here I am trying to do the right thing and get him to my animal hospital, and I am unintentionally torturing one of God's creatures.

I hoped that though I have only seen dogs and cats at the animal hospital, that the word "animal" would encompass my bird, who, at this point, I had named "Harry". "Harry" was not pleased. But the reception people looked at me and my bird askance and pointed out that their vets had no expertise with birds, and, they can't take in "wild animals". This bird fit fully in my left hand. A little squeeze and it would be no more, "wild" I guess applies, but it was kind of amusing. They were nice, though, and helped me call around. One place said that even if they took it, because it was wild they would have to euthanize it. They sent me to the voice recording of a wildlife center in the Santa Monica Mountains. There were instructions on how to care for the bird overnight. I had already violated several rules, but it is very hard to do some of that whilst running across a trafficked street in the near dark.

They did, however, have a box and a towel into which I could put the bird and provide a bit of quiet and warmth and security. I left a message on the machine of the wildlife center with hope they'd call me and my errand of mercy would not end in a dirge.

I have three cats. The bird looked like he would expire any time, a little like a stuffed bird, with just about as much limpness.

Luckily I have a large walk in closet I use as a library, and he spent the night safely ensconced and so far as I can tell, no cat got a whiff of feathers. I checked on him before I went to bed and he actually was standing, and moving without jerking various parts of his body.

At 9 a.m. I had a call from the Center. They asked me all sorts of questions about the color of the bird, his beak and his feet. I hadn't looked that closely. But it turns out that they want to be sure that the caller is legitimate. So much so that they won't give you their address until they are certain. I said that I hadn't looked in the box, and I was a little afraid to after 8 plus hours. Phone in hand, I went to the closet and carefully opened the box, and saw, nothing. How could the bird escape? then I realized there was a bump in the towel. He had moved under it for extra safety and was looking up at me with his pinprick black eyes.

Off we went, Harry and I, he becoming more agitated as we reached the wooded mountainous area where the center is. They whisk them away, they do, with the proviso that you can't join them in the examination because, again, they want to limit human contact. I don't know. That ship might have sailed with Harry. They let me look through the door and Harry was in the hands of a young vet (this is non-profit and free)and well, good news, I don't know about his future, but I left him alive, just as another family brought in a huge beautiful owl that had been hit by a car. Harry was placed in a new, and special box, second to the more exotic owl. But that was ok, at least, I thought, he has a chance. And I can, and will call, to see if he makes it.

The wildlife center is about to have a new volunteer, if only to learn how to handle this creatures upon which I seem more often than not to come upon in precarious situations.

Djinn and All Creatures Great and Small, mostly small.

First Memories

Leaving, for a moment, the world of controversy, religion and politics and going back to a simpler time. There I am in my playpen, calling out to the world at about age what? 18 months? Younger? Well a lot younger than now, that's for sure.

Whatever was I thinking?

Reminds me of the question often asked of me, and by me, "What's your first memory?" I read somewhere that what we think are our memories are not always so. I think it was in connection with a dire subject, repressed memories of traumatic events. The jury remains out on whether what seems to have been repressed really was created by the power of suggestion, or leading questions, as the case may be.

But in the circumstance of what might be fond or interesting memory of old, of a time before we could talk, or walk, or pick up a spoon, it is rather lovely to think about.

You think of yours. I'll tell you a couple of mine. In the picture there, in the corner, there is this large stuffed poodle. Her name was "Fifi". We lived in a five floor multi-part brick walk up on Townsend Avenue, as I think I have said before, just about three or four blocks north? (my directions always were lousy) of the Jerome Avenue El, 175th Street stop, and about four or five blocks south of the Grand Concourse. I can't place things exactly, but there was a park nearby, closer probably to Mt. Eden Hospital, where I made my first appearance, with trees, and swings and flag-ish stone, and most importantly metal swings that held you safely in when you were too young to hold yourself in place. But I am getting ahead of the earliest memory. I wasn't going about in swings quite about this time when I was hanging onto the edge of the playpen holding myself up. Anyway, 1596 Townsend, brass mailboxes, brass railing downstairs and wood as you went up, black and white tile floors. Ours was a one bedroom apartment, $50.00 a month. I don't know where that playpen was, I am guessing the living room. The crib, though, that was by one of two windows in the bedroom, which until I was old enough to have a bed, I shared with my parents. The cat my mother had long before I came along, already about 9 or 10 years old guarded me, wherever I was and spent time in playpen and crib, hissing at anyone other than my mother or father who might come near me. My Irish grandmother, opined in brogue accented English that the cat surely would smother me. All of this I was told later. This part I don't remember.

But I seem to remember that, like most near toddlers, ready to explore the world, I did climb out of the crib early one morning. I seem to remember my triumph at conquering what seemed a great height. I think I could walk, but I did not. I went out on hands and knees into the living room and saw, the large yellow eyed cat, one in a series of not friendly creatures only my mother could really tame, was on the chair that she decimated with her claws. She watched me approach, paws folded under her ample chest, still as stone. I seem to remember, "that's close enough". The visual ends.

In the next visual, I am about two or three. I have a bed now, in the same corner space in front of one of the two windows in the bedroom, which by the way, is painted a dark brown, with beige heavy drapes surrounding the walls and covering the only closet and a series of home made shelves that are used as closet space. On the side by the door that goes to the hall leading to the living room there are library shelves, full of books. The bed is some kind of custom made, I can't say whether my father put it together or they bought it somewhere. It is about twin size. It is more a big piece of wood, stained brown, with fifty-ish lava lamp shaped legs, tipped with some kind of brass-ish covering. The mattress is really covered foam rubber. It is comfortable enough, but it is not like any bed I had ever seen or ever had later in life. I am guessing my mother designed it, and my father brought it into being. It is very feng shui to the eye, this at a time, when nobody ever heard of feng shui.

Fifi has survived to whatever age I am. While I am on the bed, she is propped on the window sill. I may be having a conversation with her. I was an only child. I amused myself readily, and easily with my stuffed friends, Mrs. Chang, a stuffed angora cat, being the earliest along with Fifi. I think my father was in the room with me, and perhaps my mother. Their bed was still there, I think. A real bed. Not long after they would trade a real bed for a Castro Convertible in the living room to give me privacy.

I may have made a point with Fifi and as I touched her, she went out the fourth window to the back of the building. The alley of our building faced another, very much a "Rear Window" sort of view. When you called out the window, there was an actual echo because of the building across, and not that far across. Wow, as I write, the memories flood. I want to digress, but not this entry. I think when a stuffed loved one goes out a window, reality is not quite distinct from fantasy, and I was horrified that my white fluff paymate had fallen to the concrete below. This may have been the first time that my father was rescuer. He sped downstairs to get my toy and friend. I don't know, it being what, like 1955 ish that anyone would have stolen it, but Fifi would be dirty, though not bruised, and maybe someone would see her and think her abandoned. I heard his voice from all the floors down, assuring me that Fifi was safe, and retrieved. So much I must be imprinting on a flash of remembrance. How much true? One thing is certain. In that moment, my life was happy and safe.

Yippee!!!!!

As I write, I actually am at work, well, about to leave work. I checked my home e-mail and saw that AOL journals had made some deal with Blogger.com, where I had resurrected, as it were, a blog, calling it as above Djinn from the Bronx Two, and that I could move the old one to blogger.com, with merely a couple of clicks. Well, it had never occurred to me everything would work out so easily and I could just have waited before starting a "two" and just gone on as if nothing had changed, except location.

Well, here's how I see it. It is a bit of a page turner, so why not go with the flow. I will leave The Djinn from the Bronx "ending" where it did with AOL, though it has migrated with me, successfully. I will continue with Djinn from the Bronx Two. What's the difference. Just a "the".
The first one, still there for reading, reflecting more than a year's worth of entries, is http://TheDjinnfromtheBronx.blogspot.com/ The new one is: http://DjinnfromtheBronx.blogspot.com/

The same, but different. The same Djinn. Confused? Me Too. But delighted a year's worth of writing has survived intact!

Le Djinn Arrive!

Can't say if the French is accurate. Djinns can be female or male, and I am female, but somehow a "La" in front of "Djinn" doesn't quite work. So for purposes of this introduction to my existence some 50 plus (I shall not give the exact date), I title it comme ca.

I was not born in a log cabin. It wasn't that long ago. But I was born in a now defunct maternity hospital, Mt. Eden, just off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, let's see, I always say 9, but it was just shy of 8 years of my parents' marriage.

If one can become a citizen of a country by virtue of the timing of one's conception, then, I am Canadian, specifically, a Montreal Canadian.

Alors, a digression: My father had some army reserve thing to be accomplished north of the NY border. My mother, in what must have been a rare moment of spontaneity, agreed to go with him. And they were joined by her sister, Terry, and brother-in-law, Frank. They drove, likely in my uncle's convertible Buick.

There may have been some sight seeing, but mostly, it was nightclubbing, places like "Ruby Foo's". I believe I have inherited a swizzle stick from one such evening.

There are pictures, slides, actually, memorializing the good time had by all, my aunt, my uncle, my mother, elegantly dressed in black, her favorite color. Each time they were shown, I was reminded of my beginning, that very weekend.

Naturally, there was the question. "Why did it take nearly 8 years for me to 'come along'?" I asked my father this well into adulthood, with the follow up, "Was I wanted?". My father was a master at the ambiguous response. "You were not 'not wanted' in that sense." What? This double negative explanation was all I got, besides the intimation, more than intimation, that during the weekend in Canada, my mother experienced another rarity in her way of being. She was relaxed. Ok, 'nuff said. Well, truthfully, that's all I know, whether it is enough or not.

My mother, I am told, did not show. What that meant, practically, is that I had too little room in the womb and came out with a slightly twisted leg syndrome, easily corrected by special "shoe brace" type things worn for a few months.

My father told me that when he saw me, he thought I was pretty bad looking, a mass of black hair (all babies have black hair) and yes, I looked like the old man that they say babies tend to upon their arrival in the world. You can judge for yourself. That's me, above.

Home I came after my mother spent the then requisite week in the hospital (oh, the good old days when you could stay in the hospital after major things like child birth), to 1596 Townsend Avenue, the Bronx, New York 10452, CY9-7549. I would spend the next 16 years of my life in the little one bedroom apartment that resembled, more than anything else, a nightclub, with its browns, and ambers, and mirrors and bookcases.

And, it would turn out, that my father was more equipped as a mother, than was my mother. It was he, having read the au currant books on child rearing, like Dr. Spock, responding to my cries. My mother, damaged in some way that we'd never understand, had difficulty in the nurturing role. What she did do, from the moment I came into the world, was to instill in me that I could be whatever I wanted. No one had done that for her.

I Am Born

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously."

Nope. The quote isn't about me. It's the famous beginning of "David Copperfield", but a combination of a conversation with my friend Len of http://Lenspeaks.blogspot.com/ and mulling over these literary lines this morning while I stretched out of sleep led me to an idea for this reconstituted version of my blog.

The conversation was on Friday night. Len and I saw an awful movie with Ricky Gervais that even Greg Kinnear's charm couldn't save. Over my guacamole and chips with a Margarita chaser and his potstickers at a Grove cafe, he looked at some photos from our just post college days gone by and some of my way before college life. I must have made my millionth mention of the regret I sometimes feel about not having anyone to leave photos, and other personal memorabilia to, when (I almost said if, silly me!) I shuffle off this mortal coil, kick the bucket, buy the farm, all the Monty Python euphemisms galore.

This always brings out the "There she goes again" look from my otherwise fairly tolerant friends. I try to convince them of my sensibleness when I regale them with my now 15 year ago visit to the Exploratorium in San Franciso that featured an exhibit on all things related to memory, including personal histories which are a microcosm of a society's history. I loved that show. It included information and experiments on how we learn, about Alzheimer's. It had artifacts from the lives of ordinary people, people just like me. And these people long dead were fascinating. It is just a variation of what made walking through Pompeii so exciting for me--touching not only the past, but bringing the people of the past into the present, where they are in a way alive again. Alive in the red paintings on crumbling walls. Alive in the container spaces where ancient food was placed and given to passersby. Alive in the mosaic mat that says "Cave Canem" ("Beware of Dog").

But the truth is, let's face it, as much as I believe in eternal life in the "Hope I make it to Heaven" variety, I am narcissistic enough to want to carry on in minds and hearts beyond just the few people who thought I was okay enough to hang out with from time to time. I want this, my earthbound immortality, and heaven too! There, it's out there. The truth. And I also want it for the people who have meant something to me. Some of the "stuff" I have, it's from and about other people. An invitation to a Halloween party at "Black Rock" in the Bronx. A series of letters or cards from Ralph, Len, Noreen, Andrew, John, Dennis, Glenn, Connie, Ginny, staying connected to the first of us who travelled out West to seek her fortune. (Two others have joined me in the lap of weather's luxury here in Southern California since those days). Wedding invitations galore. Love letters from my father to my mother in 1956 from his three month exile in Camp Gordon, Georgia as a reservist.

I want what has had meaning to me, and to others, to last beyond our limited score of years. I can enjoy it now, but I want to, I need to, preserve it, so that it can be bequeathed to? A generation? Posterity? I don't really know. I like the idea that nothing and no one is really ever gone. Maybe that's part of it.

Whatever it is, my new plan, in the ever changing spectrum of plans I have, is to write about things from "I am born" and day to day to here and whatever is the fullness of my years, whatever God has in store for me. `

Tales of Djinn from the Bronx. That's it! That's the ticket!

Welcome to the Djinn's Blogging Round Table!

AOL Journals is about to shut down. Thus I find myself migrating. As someone who is ashamedly techo challenged, I am having a hard enough time trying to paste a counter into this web page and the one dedicated to my father, Legacy of a Courtly Curmudgeon, let alone trying to cause the old journal to migrate with me here. Apparently, it can be done manually (not likely, since I would have to be the first cause) or I can wait for them to do it. I will wait.

Meanwhile. . .I have been enjoying the blogging process and cannot conceive of abandoning it. I hope to become more conversant with things like linking (thanks to my friend Len Speaks) to favorite sites, and adding other gadgets to make the experience engaging for me and a good sharing with my social circle. I hope to tell more people about the blog, and encourage them to comment. Done right, blogging is the modern version of the 18th Century Salon, where folks can offer thoughts and ideas, or a cyberspace Algonquin Round Table (with or without the dry martini to complement the dry bon mots) in New York, where latter day Dorothy Parkers and Robert Benchleys can twitter about this and that in the public forum. That's my vision anyway. A magical place to comment, quip and laugh?