Once

 Once

Summertime

Childhood memories

Away from the hot city

Then

Once

Long car ride

On a country road

To the Catskill Mountains

Farm

Once

water pump

Peeling white house

Wraparound porch, rocking chairs

Then

Once

Blueberries

Tongue and fingers blue

Dad’s big pail brimming over

Then

Once

Mom baking 

Warm blueberry pies

Sour cream smeared pierogen

Then

Farm

Warm cows milk                                                                                                     

Weathered red barn                                     

Campfires at night, sparkling stars              

Once

Ethyl H.

Sept. 2020

Reverie

At some point in my childhood my mother bought a piece of artwork and hung it in the living room.  I remember gazing at it often with childish wonder.  The journalist’s questions always going through my mind:  Who? Where? What?  The one question I didn’t need to ask was when.   That answer never changes because it is always now, the very moment we are facing an image that arouses and engages every time we’re in front of it.

Decades have come and gone since Mom and Dad celebrated holidays and birthdays in that living room and since I played games there on rainy afternoons after school.  What eight-year old thinks about artwork and images?  I never did.  

Recently my brother was going through his portfolios and throwing out a lot of his work from FIT and Pratt Institute.  He had them ready for the next day’s trash collection in big black zippered cases sitting by the front door.  Out of a vague curiosity I began leafing through his work. 

I was doing it with mild interest until I saw a print that he’d folded in half to keep his assignments together.  There it was.  The centerpiece of our midcentury living room, an iconic remnant of my childhood life! 

“Steve, how could you do this?” I shrieked.  “I love this picture and I’ve always wondered where it went.”

“I was just using it as folder for my designs.  I never liked it, it’s so depressing,” said the visual artist in the family.

“I wish you hadn’t creased it, but I am going to frame it.” 

Five weeks later I picked it up from the frame shop and hung it in my dinette on the wall facing the living room so I can see it from three rooms:  the kitchen, the dinette and the living room.  It is titled “Day Dreaming” and dated 1964.  The artist is Christian Larsen.  I have the foggiest memory of my mother acquiring  it when she and her sister were at an exhibit for an international children’s organization.

Hope it warms your heart the way it never fails to for me.  It benefits me greatly to eat my dinner in the room where it hangs.  Sometimes it reminds me how blessed a life I lead.  Other times it transports me in time as I marvel while peering at it. Mostly it brings me joy.

 

Yvonne A.

Sept. 2020

Love Song to the Sky

 O, Sky, my love, you won't believe  how deeply you have made me grieve.

For days and days my upward gaze  met nothing but a sickly haze.

Your lovely tint had grown so dim; I'd never seen you look so grim.


Your ivory clouds looked quite bizarre, as if they'd just been brushed with tar.

Stock-still they stayed, each one in place.  No wisp of wind to make them race.

 Unholy thought:  That you would be a still-life for Eternity!


The Sun himself appeared distraught. He tried to smile; it came to naught.

So weak he was, so deathly pale from all the smoke he did inhale.

He could not rouse himself to gleam, to liven up the dreadful scene.


But now the fires in the West have at last been laid to rest.

I want to skip and shout, "HOO-RAY!" to celebrate this joyous day.

My eyes can once again embrace your dear, delightful azure face!

Maxine Fisher

September 19, 2020

Fat Man, Skinny Dog

The fat man walked slowly and deliberately down the street. He chose each step carefully to avoid injury due to his prodigious size. His clothes were loose and poorly fitted. His pants were cuffed at the bottom and contained enough crummy crumbs to sustain a starving family for quite some time. The excess cloth piled on top of his shoes folded into folds like a theater curtain at the end of a performance, and the pants appeared to have been altered by a blind tailor. Below the pants were scuffed, beat up steel toe boots. The leather had been worn away to reveal the shiny metal below. His Fedora looked as if it had been in a fight before exiting the millinery and was not the finest work of the hatter. Against all odds a little feathery feather still survived in the side of his hat. In the left corner of his mouth resided the stub of a cigar which appeared to have spent many years in that exact location neither growing longer nor shorter during its tenure. An occasional wisp of a foul belching furnace, not unlike a nineteenth century coal plant, emitted its stench, polluting the air for a wide radius.

On his hand a narrow bright pink rhinestone leash that strained and stretched, disappeared occasionally under folds of fat. Rosey, a two-pound Teacup Yorkie (the only physical remnant of his girlfriend who had left him) pranced along cheery and cheerfully in good spirits. In the same appendage a large Pepperoni Sausage, wrapped in a paper towel, was clutched there. This sample was the remainder of a much larger sausage which had been intact at the beginning of their walk. Lion chunks were unceremoniously torn from the meat at intervals and consumed.

During times just like this, the cigar stub somehow managed to retain its location, unaffected by these perturbations. Rosey however would be reeled in as the leash handle rose to his mouth. This snack, a five-day supply of calories to the average man, would carry him until a proper breakfast could be secured.

Rosey carried the stub of a carrot in the side of her mouth, an apparent attempt to mimic her new master. Rosey mused that an exchange of treats, might in fact prove beneficial to all concerned but dismissed the possibility of such an occurrence as unlikely.

Although the dog was a constant, painful reminder of his lost love, the man, in spite of his gruff exterior, treated the dog well.

The man spoke briefly to the merchant in the candy store and purchased Yachtsman, a magazine that advertised sales on sailboats, a package of cigars and two candy bars, a large one for himself and a miniature one for Rosey.

The fat man and the skinny dog now reversed course to return to their quiet, lonely, untidy apartment.

“Let’s go Rosey,” the fat man said, rearranging the cigar in the corner of his mouth. Rosey nodded her approval while rearranging the carrot in the corner of her mouth and pranced along gleefully happy with the new day.

 

Jim

September 2020

December Sunset at Jones Beach

My son and I once took a December Sunday afternoon drive out to Jones Beach to see the Christmas lights display. I didn’t feel driven to drive that day. It was a spur of the moment decision and I just assumed that I would somehow find it once we got there. I had always heard that it was located in the parking field for the Jones Beach Theater and therefore made the mistake of not finding out exactly where to go. I’m not sure if I had a GPS at the time. Even so, I’ve only used my TomTom on a few occasions. It works fine, but I just prefer to do it the old-fashioned way with hand drawn maps and directions written on index cards.

          My wife, Reyna, chose not to go that day and so it was just Daniel and me in the car. As we approached Jones Beach from the Meadowbrook Parkway, the Jones Beach Theater, an outdoor amphitheater resembling a small stadium appeared on our left, but there was no sign of the Christmas lights display in the parking field. By this time, I had already driven past the theater exit, so we made a quick change of plans and continued on to Field 6, the last of the parking fields.

          The air was crisp and the sky a crystal-clear blue on this beautiful December day. As Daniel and I stepped out of the car we could see the sun already lowering in the late afternoon sky. It was daylight, but twilight was approaching. Some people sat in the warmth of their vehicles parked in the row of spaces nearest to the beach listening to the radio while enjoying the ocean view through their windshields. Some do this as well in summer taking advantage of the late day coolness as the sun sets behind them on their right. Because of Earth’s tilt, the sun sets over land at Jones Beach in summer, but gradually shifts closer to the shoreline as fall turns to winter. A totally different experience for anyone who marvels at the beauty of sunrise or sunset!

          Daniel and I began our walk on the paved walkway leading up to the wooden boardwalk. We encountered other walkers like us bundled up in parkas or down ski jackets, wool hats, and gloves. One group, mostly middle-aged couples and seniors, sat in beach chairs outside the concession stand just as they do in July and August calmly enjoying the salty air while looking out towards the horizon. I once read a newspaper article about a group of college age friends that in the late 60s or early 70s gathered here regularly at twilight to play guitars and sing songs. Attempts to reunite have had only partial success. Perhaps some of these people were once a part of that beach party group so many summers ago. It is only natural to have longings for the past. I hope they do eventually have a full reunion.

          Anyway, Daniel and I continued walking past the pitch-and-putt golf course, which sadly no longer exists (another story altogether), the iconic water tower, Jones Beach’s postcard landmark, the art deco band shell and swimming pool, and the immaculate softball fields. From there we came upon one of the less frequently used parking fields where we witnessed something I had previously seen in photographs, but never in person. A group of hobbyists were driving, or should I say riding, three and four wheeled wind powered go-carts with tall sails, from one end of the parking field to the other. I had seen these landsailers years before in magazine cigarette advertisements. The scenes were usually in wide-open remote places such as the Mojave Desert. These go-carts seemed to be do-it-yourself models built in garages and hauled to Jones Beach in pick-up trucks or trailers. With the steady wind blowing, my guess is that they were reaching speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Not bad for vehicles with nothing but the wind to propel them! I admired the skill and hard work that must have gone into building these vehicles and took note of the joy and camaraderie the riders seemed to feel.

          Daniel and I turned around at this point estimating that we would make it back to the car at sunset. As we came to the end of the boardwalk, we started craning our necks every so often to observe how close the sun had come to the horizon. I recalled once reading that at low latitudes there is a brief moment at which the setting sun appears green and wondered if it ever occurs further north in places such as Long Island. There did not seem to be any change in color that day. All the while we had to be careful not to look directly at the sun, being fully aware of the potential danger in doing so.

          When the sun was just at the horizon, Daniel and I stopped to fully witness one of the most stirring and yet simplest commonplace events in nature. A change in perception came over me. I now sensed the motion of the earth and sun in relation to one another, something I’m not quite able to do when the sun is high in the sky. Now, I could almost feel the earth rotating on its axis. Without staring directly at the sun, I detected what I thought were wavy circular movements on its surface. An appreciation for the enormity of the solar system, milky way galaxy, and space beyond came over me. As big as our world is, it is really no more than a little speck in the scheme of space. I realized how insignificant I am as a mere human and yet at the same time I felt a strong connection with the universe.  I felt very strongly at that moment the presence of God, a higher being that created it all. The inevitable question of whether we are alone in the universe entered my mind. I don’t know, of course, but I do believe that with the billions of stars in the milky way, the many other galaxies, the many clusters of galaxies, and clusters of galaxy clusters, there must be other worlds with life. The question of whether that life is anything like us is one whose answer we’ll never know.

          Eventually, the tip of the sun dipped slightly beneath the horizon. It continued its disappearing act and did so rapidly. At the last moment I said to Daniel, “Let’s do a count-down!” I think I embarrassed him a little with people around us, but I couldn’t help myself, I was so enthralled, so we did it anyway. Well, actually I did it. Daniel was too self-conscious, so he just tolerated my silliness. Usually I’m the one who is self-conscious. Starting at ten, we counted, or should I say I counted aloud backwards to zero, but when we finished the sun had still not made its complete disappearance. So, we tried again with a baseball announcer’s homerun chant of “Going-going-gone!” just as the sun made its final dip beneath the horizon and disappeared from sight. This time Daniel chimed in. He’s an avid baseball fan and couldn’t turn down a touch of baseball in winter.

          A few minutes of twilight remained as Daniel and I walked back to Parking Field 6. A peaceful “hush” came over the remaining Jones Beach walkers as everyone returned to their cars. My inner mood of excited serenity almost put me in a trance while driving home. I only wish Reyna had been there with us to share in the experience.

Steven T.

September 2020 

Falling Dream, circa 1992

I am falling through a sky of fire.  There is fire everywhere.  I am clamoring to stay on top of a large inflated earth-like ball, floating calmly down through this sky of fire.  The ball is about 10 feet in diameter.  I am safe, for now, sprawled atop the only earth I know.  I am falling through a sky of fire.  Not feeling heat, but quite aware that my situation is precarious, I barely manage to hold on and not slide off of the floating blue globe.  I notice that I am descending through the fiery atmosphere, yet not dangerously.  There is nothing below me.  It is all swirling flames with the vibrant reds and oranges of a dreaming mind.  The alchemy of the dream state has placed me in these Venusian currents. 

   For a moment, I felt like an explorer on the open sea, alone, vulnerable, terrified by the vastness of the fire, it unrepentant like the sea, and not in control, as the sea would have it. 

   As the muted fall continued, I hit with a light “Thump!”  I have landed somewhere safely.

   On my neighbor’s not so spacious suburban side lawn, feet from a sturdy maple tree, flat on my back, I look up.  There, sporting a moustache and a long beard is my family German Shepard, “McKinley.”  He was part Alaskan Husky, thus the name McKinley, for the highest mountain in North America, now called by its ancient name “Denali.”  My parents brought home the puppy McKinley on Christmas Eve 1974; our family had been in Fairbanks, Alaska in the summer of ‘74.

   The sage looking McKinley is speaking to me, putting forth proverbs of wisdom and discussing important things.  In my mind, he is the enlightened man upon the mountain, yet my journey to him was not a climb, but a fall.  I am in awe. I barely understand.  Then I wake up. 

   What was that? I tried to fall back asleep and regain the dream.  I could not.  It was gone.  It was done.

   A few days later I was at my parents’ house, three houses away from where I “landed,” and I told my Dad and my brother, Joe, about the crazy dream that I had.  Joe was quick to say, “What were you smoking?”  I said it wasn’t pot but my mind that up conjured this phantasm.  My Dad, always an insightful man, said, “Wait, there’s more to this.”  “There was a lot of stress resulting in the fire, the blue earth was safety, although a fragile safety.  You were safe, for the moment.”  The Earth is only as safe as the next asteroid’s trajectory. 

   He went on, “McKinley, our dear family dog, was home, it was good, and familiar, it was sanctuary, God saw you home.”  Joe said, ‘Wow, good analysis, Dad.”  I think he’s on to something.  Although the Tscherne’s, formerly the Izzo’s, side lawn was nice, it was a weird sanctuary.  Why did I land on this lawn?  Maybe my Dad was cutting our lawn at the time, and I didn’t want to unwittingly land on him.  The sapient McKinley, on the other hand, speaking knowledge in tongues, let me know that everything was alright.  My Dad was right.  All arrows pointed to my being safe and secure.   

   Perhaps the bearded McKinley was a representation of my father, who wore a moustache and beard.  He has always been my favorite human until his passing in 2014.  I was secure in the safety of the father, in a nice neighborhood, with feelings of contentment, well-being, and emotional rest.  A God-loving, Church-going family man, my Dad once said to me, “My best moments at work are not as good as my worst moments at home.”  He was always happy to be home, in his and my Mom’s house, which he worked his butt off to maintain. That feeling has lent itself to me.  My Dad said he didn’t care if my Mom swamped him with woe as soon as he entered the house from work.  “Steven spoke abruptly to me, Loretta got a ‘C’ on her math test, and Richard broke roses off the neighbor’s rose bush.”  Ah, good times. 

   I don’t remember what could have provoked such a dream.  Maybe it was 10 bottles of Beck’s (with friends, of course) or being over-served some flaming beverage that brought on the dream, or, was it just a curious twinkling of an unencumbered mind?

Richard M.

Sept. 2020

Dream World

 In life I had been a member of the court, a Djat, what would be later called a vizier or advisor to the Pharaoh and the highest civil servant in the land. I was thus guaranteed a proper interment, complete with preparation for the afterlife and burial at Saqqara. My heart, the seat of the soul was left intact while the worthless matter in my head was removed with hooked tools through my nostrils. The canonic jars representing the four sons of Horus were used to secure my internal organs. Qebhsenuef the falcon headed, looked after my intestines, Duamuutef the jackal headed cared for my stomach. Hapy with the head of a baboon looked after my lungs and Imsety with a human head secured my liver.

The wrappings that constricted my body were annoying even in death, and they also blocked out Ra. I wished to be a young scribe again running and playing on the hot desert sands in my free time. The smell of the Nile in my nostrils had thrilled me, while watching the hippopotamuses and crocodiles in the great river, as Ra blessed me raining down on my shaved head.

When my body was stolen during a tomb robbery, I had no idea where my remains had been taken to.

Here I lay exposed to the elements presumably abandoned, or put up for ransom. I did not wish to be picked apart by Egyptian vultures. I began to roll myself rocking back and forth at first, finally rolling to the edge of the precipice. I could sense the change in temperature from the updraft but the height of the drop I did not know. Finally, I took a chance and rolled over the edge falling through midair hoping for a soft landing.

Suddenly I was awake wrapped tightly in my sheets and I could see the floor of my bedroom rapidly approaching as I hit the carpet cushioning my fall from the bed. My book on ancient Egypt landing next to me. I had fallen asleep reading it late into the night. Just then my mother yelled up the stairs wondering about the noise .

“Are you all right up there?”

“Yes Mom, I got twisted in my sheets and fell off the bed,” I yelled down.

“Ok, breakfast will be ready soon. Make your bed and come down for school. You weren’t up all-night reading that book again, were you?”

“No Mom!” I said rolling my eyes up to the ceiling.

It was nice to be alive and only twelve years old with a full life ahead, but it would have been cool to be a Djat in ancient Egypt!

Jim

Sept. 2020

Concert for Two

I have attended many concerts, some in large arena venues, some in the park, some in a theater or club. I’ve even sat inside the orchestra next to the bass players. When I’d close my eyes, the music would envelop me and play through me. On this one magical evening at dinner, it felt as if the trio in front of my friend and me were playing just for us.

Richard and I came to the dinner exhausted. We each had driven up in weekend traffic to Great Barrington in the Berkshires. We had shopped for the 8 people on our weekend, hauled at least a dozen bags into the summer house, and put away the items that needed to stay cool. Too tired to conjure up dinner from all the food we had bought, and with the other members already out on their Friday night excursions, Richard thought we deserved a reward.  No Four Brothers Pizza or Uncle Louie’s Gyros for us. There was a fancy four-star restaurant all the way back in Hillsdale about 22 miles away. I vetoed the idea. No, too far, too expensive, and too fancy. How about the little white restaurant and inn on the dip from Route 23? We didn’t know much about it. Just looked cute with its white picket fence. Maybe we were a bit underdressed for dinner, but it t was, after all, the laid-back Berkshires.

”Any room at the inn for dinner?” we asked.

“No, no, we don’t have reservations.”

“Would we be willing to sit at a table up front, not actually in the dining room?" I thought that meant the bar area.  Wrong. While we waited, they whisked out a table and two chairs, placed formal settings on the white table cloth, and then sat us down . . . right in the middle of the dance floor. The maître d’ explained that there was going to be some live music that evening, but no one would be dancing. No problem. We didn’t need fancy dining room carpeting underneath our feet.  After all that food shopping, we just needed to be off our feet.

Everyone else was seated well off to the sides and behind us. If I craned my neck I could see them. It was as if we had a restaurant to ourselves. We ordered from what turned out to be a much more sophisticated menu than we expected. He had pasta primavera and I ordered chicken piccata. As we sipped our soothing wine and made merry with the offerings of bread basket, a violinist, a cellist and a flutist entered the room and set up at the end of the dance floor, perhaps 10 feet in front of us. As the sweet strains of Vivaldi played, it was if musicians were playing just for us. No one else was in our line of sight. Richard dressed in khaki’s and a striped polo and I in a top and jeans, felt as if we were regal, so deferentially served and played to that it felt as if I could have been wearing a silk moiré gown with small diamond tiara and he  a formal tux with satin lapels.  This is what it must have felt like to be in the rooms of the kings and queens of Europe.

We clapped graciously between sets as in any royal salon, nodded at the musicians in appreciation.  After dinner, when we strolled out into the rarified air of the Berkshire Hills, we stepped to what could have been a carriage and four (but was actually a road-dusty Honda). We had conquered our supermarket duties, had been served by our lady and gentleman of the wait staff, and entertained by our court musicians. The waxing moon blessed our return back to the palace on the Lake, where we could rest our regal heads while the sounds of the lake lulled us to sleep. That night we were royal.

The next day and evening, we two would transform into the sweaty cook staff and waiters in the Lake Buel house kitchen, cutting, chopping, steaming, mixing, and whipping up a dinner from our grocery list the night before. We had to compete with the standards of all the other Saturday night dinner presentations that preceded ours that summer. Wine, cheese and crackers. Salad. A feast of poached salmon, served cold with cucumber sauce, asparagus and cherry tomatoes Italianate, and pasta pesto.  Rhubarb-strawberry pie with three choices of ice cream. Another Berkshire banquet for the dukes and duchesses of our rustic share house at our “royal” country retreat. Still it was not as grand as the unanticipated “private” dinner served so elegantly, with our “personal” musicians in attendance to entertain us. Another magnificent weekend of meals and music in the Berkshires.

 

Marsha H.

9/1/20

 

A Familiar Old Song

I had walked into the old bar by the airport to get in out of the inclement misty soup. I was immediately struck by the song playing on the jukebox. It was our song, As Time Goes By. I knew all of the words and the melody as it had been very special. It had been our song, Elsa and me. Sam had known enough not to play it after she left me abandoned in Paris, but then I had been given a second chance to be with her when she walked into Rick’s Café Americain. The ivories tinkled that old, worn, comfortable melody. Hearing it was like putting on a favorite old sweater as memories washed over me. A flood of images flashed through my mind like photographs in a slide show. I could smell the thick choking smoke of Moroccan tobacco from so long ago. I could taste the spicy Moroccan food served in my café.

“Bartender, can I get a drink?” I asked.

The young woman turned around, and there she was!  But she couldn’t be! The same beautiful face, the same deep soulful eyes and sensual lips, how could this be?

“Elsa is that you?” I stammered out.

I’m sorry sir my name is Ellen. What can I get you?” she asked politely.

“I’ll have a shot Ellen, and you better leave the bottle, please.”

“Yes sir.”

I knew now that I was just a crazy old man, living in the past, a hollowed out old airplane hangar, unused and unwanted, still standing due to having become invisible and forgotten, no longer with a purpose or mission to be left standing.

“When you get a chance can you play, As Time Goes By again, for as many times as this will allow?” I asked, pushing some bills across the bar.

“Yes sir.”

 I had done the right thing. Victor needed her and loved her as dearly as I did, but his work was instrumental to the war effort. That was twenty-five years ago, but the emotions were still raw and unhealed. The melody played and the bottle evaporated as a stormy afternoon turned into night.

“Play it Sam, again and again,” I mumbled in my stupor.

 

Jim

Sept. 2020