A Very Personal Letter to a Friend

 

Dear Emily,

I hope this letter finds you well. I just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for having you in my life. You have been such an amazing friend to me and I feel truly lucky to have you in my corner.

I want you to know how much I appreciate your presence in my life. You have been there for me during some of my darkest moments, always offering a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on. Your unwavering support and encouragement have helped me through some tough times, and I am so grateful for that.

But it's not just during the tough times that you have been there for me. You have also been there to share in my joys and successes, cheering me on every step of the way. Your positivity and enthusiasm are infectious, and I always feel better after spending time with you.

Your friendship means the world to me, and I can't imagine going through life without you. You are one of the most caring, genuine, and kind-hearted people I have ever met, and I feel so blessed to call you my friend.

Thank you for being you and for everything you do for me. I am so grateful for our friendship, and I look forward to many more happy times together.

With love and appreciation, your friend,

Georgia

Scaring Myself

 

What am I doing here?  How did I wind up with three teenage friends, in the woods of a local park, in the pitch black?

When we were walking on the sidewalk next to the woods, it seemed like a fun thing to do. Leave the sidewalk where the street lamps light up everything and venture into the woods, where the pitch darkness turns everything into something else.

I was shaking inside non-stop so much so that it felt like a group of mariachis were playing inside my stomach.  I was terrified on the inside but tried to act cool on the outside.  My three friends didn’t seem scared but I sure was!

I started remembering a story my sister and her boyfriend told me recently where they were going to walk into the woods at night but then something made them stop in their tracks.  They insisted that they saw the outline of an adult’s stomach lying on the grass, nothing else, just a pink stomach. 

Could they have been right or were the shadows and blackness of the woods at night tricking their eyes and minds? Had somebody just left behind a half of a watermelon on the ground from an afternoon picnic?  They didn’t stick around to figure it out. They were sure it was a person’s stomach cut away from its body.  They ran out of the wooded area and right back to the safety of their homes.

My mind started concentrating on the present again and there I was with my friends who had managed to creep into a darker part of the woods. Trails that were there on the ground to guide us in daylight had now become invisible like a bunch of ghosts hiding in a haunted house.  Invisible paths were playing hide and seek with us in a ghostly way.

We stopped and as I looked up toward the sky.  All I could see were what used to be tree branches but now looked like the long menacing tentacles reaching down to grab all of us and crush us to pulp. Every breath of wind made it seem more and more like those tentacles were bending down lower and lower to grab us.

Then we saw a threatening little man standing off to the side with a machete in his right hand. We stared at him for a minute unable to tell if he was a sinister criminal or not but this was the last straw for all of us. Was this man really just a tree trunk which took on scary shapes in the complete darkness or was a machete being sharpened and ready to use?

We didn’t stay to figure it out. All of us started yelling and screaming while trying to find our way out of those pitch dark woods. We all promised each other that we would never go back in the woods at night. As for me, I never did!

Ellen / Apr 2023

Moonlight Walk

 

The moon was full and bright in the sky, casting an otherworldly glow over the world below. As I stepped out into the night, I was struck by how everything seemed different in the moonlight. The familiar streets and houses took on an eerie, unfamiliar quality, and I felt as though I had stumbled into a dream.

The trees rustled softly in the breeze, their leaves reflecting the silver light of the moon. The shadows they cast were long and twisted, and I found myself jumping at every sound that I heard. As I walked further, I realized that I didn't recognize any of the houses or landmarks that I passed. Even the streets themselves seemed to have shifted and twisted in the moonlight.

I walked on, my heart pounding in my chest, until I came to a small park that I knew well. But in the moonlight, it was transformed into something else entirely. The trees and bushes seemed to have grown taller and wilder, and the pond was murky and shadowed.

I turned to head back home, but found that I couldn't remember which way I had come. The familiar streets and landmarks were all unrecognizable in the moonlight, and I felt disoriented and lost. It was as though the moon had transformed everything, I knew into something new and unfamiliar.

Eventually, I found my way home, my heart still racing from the strange and eerie walk. As I climbed into bed, I couldn't help but feel grateful for the moonlight, which had turned my familiar surroundings into a thrilling and unforgettable adventure.

Georgia

Majestic Landscape

 

I remember the first time I laid eyes on the landscape that swept me away. I was driving to Finger Lakes, New Jersey on a sunny day. The car was gliding up an incline and I saw a vast and open plain, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The golden grass swayed gently in the breeze, and the sunlight played across the undulating hills, casting shadows that danced in time with the wind. In that moment, I felt a deep connection to everything around me - the earth, the sky, and the very essence of life itself. For a few brief moments, I was lost in the beauty of the moment, swept away by the raw power and majesty of the landscape. And in that moment, I wished with all my heart that I could remain there forever, basking in the warmth and wonder of it all.

Georgia
Apr 2023

Panic at Midnight

 

Lauren Bacall had just finished her run as the lead in “Woman of the Year” on Broadway and Debbie Reynolds was about to replace her.  At the time, I owned a catering company called “The Next Supper” and we received an order from the staff at Studio 54 that they wanted us to cater a “scrim party” for about 150 people the night that Debbie premieres in her new role.  My company prided itself on serving fresh high-quality foods for the entertainment industry. A “scrim party” was a party held on the stage of the theater that Studio 54 had become. The scrim was a somewhat sheer curtain that separated the private party goers from the dancing hordes. 

So we set the banquet up and at 10:30 pm the crew from the play came in and just devoured the food. After an hour, everything was gone including the garnishes!  At that moment, the stage manager comes up to me and says, “Ms. Reynolds and her mother will be ready to eat in a half hour.” Totally shocked, I told her that the guests had eaten everything in sight. She turned to me and said, “You better come up with something or you’re done here!!”

In a panic, I scrambled out onto a very dark 54th Street and tried to figure out what I could possibly do. It was approaching midnight and everything in this neighborhood had closed. As I searched frantically from block to block, I was getting increasingly desperate. There was nothing anywhere!!! The only place I found was a Kentucky Fried Chicken and I shuddered at the thought of going in there but finally, having run out of time, I went in and bought a bucket of chicken. 

I returned to 54 and grabbed a silver platter and tried my best to decorate the chicken and we sent it up to Ms. Reynolds dressing room. As I did this, I felt like I was kissing my career goodbye and losing this incredible account. 

After half an hour passed, the stage manager came up to me and said “Ms. Reynolds wants to see you in her dressing room immediately!!”

I was sure this was not good. As I entered the dressing room, I see Debbie and her mom sitting there. She turns to me and says “Chef Robert!! That was the best fried chicken I’ve ever had!! You have to give me the recipe!!!”

Robert

Apr 2023

Soulscape

 

My father’s dream was to buy some land in upstate New York, a couple hours ride from the city. He and my mother dragged my sisters and I all over the Catskills region one summer in the mid-sixties in our Ford Impala station wagon in search of the perfect parcel of land.  After weeks of exploring, he found a five acre wooded plot with a small stream running through it in a miniscule town called Cahoonzie just north of Port Jervis.  

 As a young boy, I was thrilled. Having grown up as a city kid in Queens, this was such an alien landscape. I couldn’t wait to explore it. Once we purchased the place and settled in a bit, my parents were comfortable with me going off into the woods for hours on end. Eventually I could disappear for days without them thinking twice about it. It was as if they had a different set of rules for me in that environment.  

 My father taught me how to use an axe, a bow, his BB gun, a sledge hammer, saws, and crow bars. The rules on how to safely build fires were clearly laid out. The area at that time was very sparsely populated and I could walk for miles in any direction and never see a soul.  I would spend endless hours in the woods by myself, hiking, camping, trapping, and climbing. I would find all kinds of wild pets like Red Efts (eastern newt), turtles, frogs and snakes and bring them home. 

The camping alone was full of sensory input and so fascinating to me. There was one night when I had pitched a lean-to with a plastic tarp under some trees along a stream. As the darkness took over, I noticed what sounded like rain drops hitting the tent but it wasn’t raining. The sound got louder and louder. Eventually I realized that I had camped in a section of the woods where the gypsy moths had decided to defoliate the area. The “raindrops” were moth poop raining down on me!!!

It was not unusual for a raccoon to walk over your sleeping bags while you were sleeping.  I eventually learned how to survive in harsher conditions like snow and deep cold. 

 There was always an adventure to be had. Once during a hike, I spotted a porcupine and followed him along his journey for hours. This freedom to be myself and explore was addicting. I never wanted to leave it and when I was away from it, I would be thinking of what adventures would be next.

 The camping forced me to learn how to cook for myself at a very young age.  At first it was heating up cans of soup, but little by little I became more adventurous cooking the fish I caught, foraging mushrooms and ramps. These culinary treks might have been seeds of my spending the most of my life as a chef. 

 When I first started camping on my own, the deep silence of the woods touched me deeply at night. I would ask myself, “Why are the nights so different here?” Besides there being no pollution to obscure my view of the Milky Way, there was something else. When I returned to Queens, I realized instantly. My whole life in the city had a background soundtrack. We lived two blocks from the Long Island Expressway and there was the 24-hour soft constant buzz of that highway that was always there. 

 During my travels through the woods, there was a particular campsite that drew me towards it like a magnet.  It had this deep calming effect on me and I loved spending as much time as I could there.  There were many old pines there and their needles made a nice mattress under my sleeping bag. Eventually as I got older, I would bring friends there to camp with me. We eventually built a more permanent fireplace there and would spend entire nights telling stories.  I remember my best friend one night insisting on recanting to me every single scene of a movie he had just seen called “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!”. 

Thirty years later, as a Buddhist monk, I was asked to be part of a construction crew for a new temple being built upstate.  When we drove up the first day, my jaw dropped. To my astonishment, the temple project was being built on my favorite childhood campsite!!

 

So, when wondering whether I ever had the experience during my travels of encountering a landscape that spoke so directly to your soul that you forgot (at least for a while!) everything else and just wished to remain there, this experiences are what came up for me.

 

Robert

Apr 2023

A Walk through Old Calvery Cemetery

 

In addition to being a memorial to those who have passed, a walk through an old cemetery is a walk through an underutilized park with the addition of a history lesson thrown in for those who stop to read the stones. It is also a visit to a quiet sculpture garden complete with towering obelisks reminiscent of ancient Egyptian.  Traveling thousands of years forward in time, brooding medieval angels stare down knowingly along with many other iconic representations of the afterlife.

I come across a beautiful old stone from the 1800’s in memory of Harold and Cynthia Miller. The stone explains that they both had been distinguished entomologists and founding members of the American Entomological Society of America. I wonder at the myriad assemblage of unique species that this couple discovered, described, and catalogued in their careers. While I observe and appreciate the intricate stonework on a seal of the society displayed below their names, I wonder what this interesting couple looked like? Do their spirits still exist wandering the cosmos and if so are they happy and still together?

It is a grey soggy day which combined with the somber setting and dreary gravestones make it all the more surprising to see two brightly colored butterflies in the sky above me descending while fluttering flirtatiously around each other as they drop into the cemetery and make their way in my direction surprisingly landing on the Miller tombstone. The larger butterfly is a bright cerulean blue and its smaller partner is an iridescent pink. This is very strange as there are no other insects visible in the cemetery today? Is this a visit from the beyond? I have a nervous feeling of butterflies in my stomach as these questions fluttered around in my consciousness. Now the two insects sit adjacent to each other and begin to sidestep, moving closer towards each other. When they are within reach each extends their adjacent forearms and hold them together. Both insects stare directly at me intently as if through this behavior they are attempting to communicate with me and answer my philosophical questions. The sights and sounds of the city melt away as this is a surreal experience. This seemed like unusual insect behavior and I intuitively feel that all of my questions are being answered.

Without moving the thought occurs to me that it is time to move on, and as I mentally say goodbye to the Millers, the butterflies, seemingly content that their mission is accomplished, released each other and launched into the sky, continuing their joyful flight and disappear over a hill.

Jim

April ‘23