Welcome to my PERSONAL WEBLOG. Reviews, Poems, Songs, creative fiction and
news from the life lived in
4/17/08
I am
beginning to post my log to Blooger.com.
April Fool
Welcome, Goddess, to your
day, your week, your month.
This is the spirit of the
night that writes to remind that
You are one who gives love
and joy to the world.
Receive her bounty and take
from her pleasure.
In lands fraught with all
the ugliness of war, disease and hate,
I have been more blessed with beauty than I
can express or relate
And you, bright star in the
sky of Earth's natural splendor,
I do not define, I remind; I
just say what you have given,
You define yourself, powerful woman,
Whom I would rather have the
love of
Than respect of man.
April 6th, 2008
Photo Session
So...Chia 
Look for
some elder statesman of poetry, singer/song writer, actorly type shots being
posted shortly. Hectic is now my middle name. Not a state for a
thoughtful, meditative sort like me, but these days require a certain sense of
urgency. So...here I go. Working at the DOB is stressful to say the
least. So much responsibility...so little power to really change the way
construction workers operate. You need guardian angels looking over
everyone's shoulder every second of the work day to keep them safe and from
making things dangerous for the public. This is our task and we all do
the very best we can with what we have. I love this City and I feel
deeply wounded with every accident, with every injury, with every death.
When I started this job, none of these lines on my face were as apparent as you
will see in my new headshots. They say the wrinkles add character.
So now, thanks to the DOB, I have loads of character. Sounds like
complaining but really not. I think at last I am ready to work in front
of a camera, in front of an audience without any hesitation or
reservation. Do you hear that Industry?
I AM READY FOR MY CLOSE UP!!! 
3/31/08 Do the
math. I have worked 252 hours in the month of March and
have averaged 242 hours per month for the year, and I think professional
Burn-out is a real possibility. Soon I
will be training the inspectors (0n 0vertime of course) who will someday take
my place. I have not written a word since that frustrated
entry on the 17th and no creative writing has taken place in any
form since I do not know when. Good news
is I have been back to Katherine’s class and that feels good. I am on track to
take new headshots this Friday and that is exciting, and we have booked a
swank, sexy night club to be the site of my 50th birthday bash ball
poetry reading karaoke lap dance. Fun,
fun, fun ahead.
3/17/08 Another week, another disaster…Worst nightmares realized as yet
another construction accident claims lives and property damage in our
city. It never ends this battle against
catastrophe. A devastating blow to a
shattered neighborhood, a complete failure of an immense piece of equipment has
us wondering just what is going on. We
must find out what happened in the harrowing moments just before the crane
failed. What went wrong with the jumping
operation? Where do we go from here?
3/10/08
We worked all day I the rain…making sure an old converted carriage house, home to an
elderly man and his adult son, did not slip into the excavation being dug
adjacent to it. My new boots got
muddied, my new department issued duster-like rain slicker shed downpour and
drizzle. I watched a city engineer
shepherd a fledging contractor through the process of making safe. I, on the other hand, served the violations
and posted the Stop Work Order. All in a
days work. Then the winds came. At around 7 pm the pager went mad, as job
after job came pouring in like water through a breech in a dam. Most of it sounded worse than it was:
scaffold collapses were nothing more than some plywood and 2x3 parapet blowing
across
03/03/08…
Well I’ll Never See Dylan
I’ll never see Dylan
And he’ll never see me
Never be young
Like he used to be
But if I could see you in the morning
With your arms around me
Then if I never see Dylan
How happy I’ll be
To pickle my liver
While I deliver
My own versions of sermons
From Buddha to Jesus
To your willing ears
Eager to see thus
To dream of you naked
Beside the three fates
With keys to the garden
And all the locked gates
The tonic for greed
And all those who hate
Sing blues with me baby
While the hour grows late
My body grows old
But my lust is a babe
Alive in its cradle
Crying to be saved
From the silence and violence
Of a this callous age
I’ll never see Dylan nor even be his page
I simmer and steep in industrial rage
Get drunk by twilight and purge by day
Driven mad by the thoughts I am thinking
I’ll never see Dylan and
He’ll never see me
In this time nothing is
Changing.
March…3/1/08 As Bob Murphy, the late baseball announcer,
said very often “Let’s go to the happy recap,” and wow! What a month.
February is short yet last month felt even longer than leap year. We started out with Beckett and graduated to
Mac Beth. Between work and play, it was
a full and exhausting month culminating with a reading at
2/25/08
Everyone Dies in
February…is a lovely little absurdist
piece in development by Vanessa R. Bombardieri with The Whitehorse Theater
Company. Emily Coffin and Liza Frank wrestle with the subtle
text about two sisters the elder of whom wants to throw herself from a rooftop
to which they have resorted in January while the other with child-like
innocence loves life and can’t fathom why her sister want to end hers. They both face the same nemesis in the
ubiquitous “HIM” living on the floors below. He seems to be the source of
suicidal Annabelle’s depression which in turn is the central conflict in the
play and child-like Bess’s obstacle to happiness. I had forgot my reading glasses and so I
could only get from the larger print in the program notes that they were on a
rooftop in the present with childhood flashbacks, so my impression that this
was a Beckett inspired existentialist turn at exploring the lives of two women
in a close relationship was a good one.
The playwright is onto something though the naturalistic direction taken
by Cyndy A. Marion, the Artistic Director of Whitehorse, may have done more to
confuse than enlighten the audience.
Having seen two recent productions of “Happy Days” by Samuel Beckett one
only this month at BAM with Fiona Shaw, and one a few years back at Classic
Stage Company, I know the difficulty in mounting a piece of this type. When I got home to finally read in the
liner-notes that the playwright had once directed “Happy Days” things made much
more sense. And this I find truly
exciting. In a spare Lab type
performance it is difficult to portray with limited costume and set pieces the
deep complexity of this play. The
surroundings resembled more a bedroom than a rooftop, and
2/20/08
You know I try…to keep up, but I worked Monday, President’s Day and I have not stopped
since. Jennifer is at a charity bowling event with Ricks and Ray. I
was supposed to go, but I had an emergency…I had to come home and find out who
I was. I looked into the cupboard, I looked under the sink, finally I sat
down at the computer trying hard not to drink. Yes, I have tricks in my
pockets, things up my sleeves, but I am the opposite of a stage magician…I
spent all day inspecting
2/11/08
Full
steam, yet chilly! Sounds like a weather forecast crossed with orders
from a ship captain. Sunday night’s shift felt like two. Combined with
the double last Monday/Tuesday we covered four legit emergencies including a
truss roof collapse at a waste transfer station, a two car garage that went up
in flames…with the two cars in it, a car “in” a building that was not a show
room for new automobiles, and the failure of what amounted to someone thinking
that installing a full tile floor, complete with vapor barrier and two
inch thick mud job, onto the side of a building 50 feet up in the
air was a good idea. That must have made quite a sound.
Fortunately, no one was injured in any of these events and no one had to be
relocated except some pigeons at the transfer station. No one was in the
garage, the driver of the car fled before the police could arrive and the bulk
of the heavy masonry that came crashing down landed in a huge planter.
Yesterday, Sunday was a very strange weather day with warm temps and rain in
the morning, snow flurries and dark clouds mixed with sun in the afternoon, and
high winds with A blissfully bone chilling deep freeze last night. Saturday we
went to
February
4th, 2008
HAPPY
DAYS, And not just because the New York Giants won the Super Bowl, a
victory made ultra-sweet by defeating the nasty New England Patriots, but also
because we went to see Fiona Shaw do Becket at BAM Harvey Saturday Night.
Read my review below. Shout out to my nephew…Happy Birthday Robert!
Our Horoscope says this month is going to be a productive one in terms of
creativity and money. So I better get started. It seems I have been
away from work for over a week, and it has been a welcome respite full of trips
to Miami and romantic evenings with my wife at our favorite little Happy Hour, SAMPLE, a lovely little joint on Smith at
Bergen Street serving wine, spirits, meats and cheese boards by Maya. She
is so wonderful to us. We met with Cyndy last week and had a wonderful
time. The White Horse is undertaking
Tennessee Williams again this fall, Small Craft Warnings, this time and
I will be auditioning. Very jazzed by the theatre we have been
seeing: August: Osage County, back in January and then Happy
Days the other night. Their cumulative effect results in the poem
below…
Happy Days
(A Review)
I wanted to write about the ruins
The Ruins
But the construction men
Keep trying to cover them up
Behind their curtain walls
Of steel and glass
The Past
The Past
Crumbles before our eyes
And the Distant Future
The far distant Future
Resembles not us
But our ancestors’ lands
In broken disarray
Bloody and with women
Buried to their necks in debris
January 29, 2008
I know, my friends, I have been remiss, in making regular
visits to this, my site to delight, incite, invite, excite, and get tight with
you. I’m working on my story for the Write Club, hopped a flight to Miami
Beach for a sibling family reunion (no I would not give you false hope on this
strange and mournful day, but the mother and child reunion is on the emotional
way). All my sisters have played mom to me in my
life. I owe them debts of gratitude larger than the national deficit. So
many irons, so many fires, so much to do and to say. Writers
concentrate. I should be working, out inspecting buildings, but I have
really hit a wall this month. Getting back to the gym, back to work, playing
banjo and guitar, leaves not much time for the blog. I am going to
January 11, 2008
Sad news from the extended family.
My step sister’s husband has suffered a massive and debilitating stroke. He is 52 years old. January is becoming the cruelest month. This is the second of my three step sisters’ husbands in as many years to suffer a life altering illness. My own doctor has recommended I start taking an aspirin every day. I am doing so along with all my other supplements. Today I was reading American Theater, I began to think about my acting; how the truth of anything is so accessible while sitting alone, yet get up in front of people and truth bolts like a mule deer in hunting season, and I stand falsely abused by my own shortcomings. When I am reading Poets and Writers, I am inspired to write and look at the vast, prolific pile of words I have crafted together in my life and wonder if I will ever get off my ass to publish. I contemplate my mental faculties and question whether my perception of language is equal to the standard of genius, or common idiocy for that matter. Do I look at and use language in an artful way at all? Is artistry only for the truly talented or the filthy rich? I am neither. Yet I consider myself the King of infinite space for the gifts I have, my health being the major one. I treasure that gift and commit to taking care of myself, so I can take care of others.
I am the bad, bad thing
You never did
If
you were to be
I would be Sid
Millions have seen the Taj Mahal
And the Pyramids
But I want to do what very few
Get to do
I want to be with you
January 8th, 2008…Today…I learned the physics of what
happened to my father so many years ago when he fell from that slate roof
approximately thirty feet one Saturday morning while at work. We had an OSHA class on Fall Arrest
devices. A two hundred pound person
falling from thirty-six feet takes about a second and a half to land, is
traveling 35 miles per hour, and hits the ground with the force of about
fourteen thousand pounds. This happened
to my father’s body and has been happening to mine in my mind ever since. I love my dad. The example he showed me is not in how he lived his crazy life, but
with dignity and heroism, he faces his pain.
My father is 77 years old. He is
a marvel of sheer defiance of death. His
feet were broken so badly he was never able to walk without a limp again…but
walk he did. With his inspiration I am
determined to never stop learning, even though the painful reality of how I let
so many opportunities in my own life slip by un-noticed, presents itself with
each revelation. I could have been…so
many things. Yet, I am me….and I make
art of that. For the universe is
unfolding as it should, as it must…my experience of this hour is such a gift,
such a pleasure, such…a life. Psst….I miss you…all.
January 3rd, 2008…The last two weeks of December, better known as the “HOLIDAYS”
went by in a blur of work and Williamsburg VA where we spent a blissful
10 days visiting family and friends far from the maddening crowds of NYC. I came back to
December 16, 2007
This year we are taking control of Christmas…We are not going to just let it happen to us yet again…cards will be sent, not just received….we won’t just
admire the lights and trimmings of others, I am stringing some lights myself…I
won’t wait until I hear John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War is over) on the radio…I’m
playing it myself…So this is Christmas! I
decide what where and when. Truth be
told if Christmas spirit is about love, I’ve got it 24/7/365, but people get
sick of all that mush (especially in Jaded Town, Emerald City, Gotham, aka NYC)
so sometimes I get a little cynical just so people will take me seriously. All
I know is it is dark and snowy today, a perfect day to stay indoors and contact
the ones most near and dear to us. Talk
to you soon…
December 12, 2007
“...The thing to hate about house rigs
is you don’t really have a relationship with the equipment. You didn’t set it up. Your fingerprints and tool prints aren’t all
over every bolt, every tieback, and every shackle. You have not inspected every inch of wire
rope for burrs, dented strands or felt a strange vibration in a motor
indicating something not all-together right.
These are thoughts you do not need on your mind suspended 400 feet above
the hard concrete plaza. House rigs are usually used for window washing and
that’s it… The worst thing about a
house rig is there are no independent safety lines that dangle down from roof
to sidewalk. You just have to click
your lanyard to a rusted trolley line strung inside the back rail…and
pray.” From a story I’m working on
called Nothing Man. It’s about
a construction worker sent onto one of the contraptions that failed completely
not long ago. I don’t agree with a lot
of the commentary I am hearing about it.
House rigs belong to the building.
They are permanent pieces of equipment installed and maintained by the
building. Enough said. I think a miracle happened with this guy who
survived the fall. I would like to meet
him.
November 28, 2007
Write Club…The place was noisy, not very conducive to conversation. 4 out of the 6 of us were visibly ill. Sarah couldn’t make it she was so sick. The food, though appetizing was a
distraction, but the beer was very, very good.
I missed my freshly brewed Lap sang Soochong. The noise factor was just abysmal; I must be
getting old because I could not hear a thing at my end of the table. At one point, Maureen apologized to me for
something, but I never heard it, and she didn’t repeat it. She sat right next to me. So, hopefully, for our next meeting we can
have a nice quiet space.
November 27, 2007
I could hear my mom smoking…over the phone as we had our Thanksgiving conversation
several days late. She recounted her
turkey day with my sister at her house in Plymouth Meeting PA and how they all
went out to…smoke after dinner. There
was always a cloud of smoke I could not penetrate. The reason I learned to eat so fast was
because I needed to be done with my meal before my mother lit up. Millions of little moments where we could
have learned to love each other lost to the Marlboro man. I often wonder if it was as simple as my
parents did not know how to love me…and if they did not know, how would the
world? And how would I know how to love?
In the end, it all works out, but my inability to cope with people who
choose to inhale poison and exhale it into the air I breathe has cost me an
intimacy I will never know. I try to
think, well this is just my racket, my reason for not taking responsibility for
the distance between my family and I…but then I get a whiff of that noxious contagion which sticks in my
craw, automatically closing my airway
and my heart. My head spins and my
stomach turns and I think this can’t be love.
My mother is 78 years old and I guess she has earned her last few packs
of smokes, and I do love her more dearly than she will ever know, but I have
never been close to her. I often wonder
what it would have been like to be close to her or my father, or my sisters. Ah, the holidays…stirring such wistful memories,
I can’t wait till Christmas.
Nov-Remember 24, 2007
Montauk Lighthouse.
It had been a mythical
place for all these years, a place I visited once as a boy with my father, two
sisters and step mom on a long Labor Day trek to the end of the earth. We simply drove around the end of the point
and the lighthouse; I remember looking up at it from the back of the station
wagon. It was awesome, and memorable. So when Jennifer and I were out in that area
yesterday, we took the opportunity and made the journey. It was good for both of us for so many
reasons. For on thing the place was
actually accessible, though it was far from deserted, we made the trip without
much traffic. The day was cold, crisp
and clear, Block Island and the coast of
November 9, 2007
November 7, 2007
WRITE CLUB.
Tonight
was one of those nights you live for.
Just when I thought the world would swallow me whole and burn me into
toxic waste with gastro-intestinal fluids…instead she opens her arms and
welcomes me like a prodigal son. My
submission to the Write Club sparked intense commentary from the most
indescribably wonderful people. It’s not
that what they said was so complimentary, but the passion with which they
talked about my work has brought me to the brink of tears. In other words: I needed them today. Just when I was feeling unloved and unwanted
by some of the muckity-mucks I work with in Civil Service, tonight the most
articulate and creative of souls you could hope for surrounded me with a
virtual group hug. I just want to gush
over Maureen and Sarah, Mike, and Script-ends, and Tiara, who make me feel so
alive just being near them, for showing up en masse and delivering such
supportive advice. Writing is the most
solitary of activities mirrored only by reading. The symbiotic relationship between author and
audience is absolutely sacred. Emotions
conjured by the symbolic joining of like minds is powerful indeed. Feelings I thought died in me a long time
ago were rediscovered in this creative endeavor we call a writing group. I feel young again. (I found them on Craig’s List.) I just want to thank them all for being so
willing to let me into their lives and I, in turn, am so enriched by having
them come into my life. It is like
magic, this possibility. Eternally
always all around us, but sometimes we forget it is there, this is the reason
to live. I may never become a famous,
celebrated author, but tonight intelligent, serious persons, committed to their
craft took the time to read me and made notes.
I am grateful. So here is to
the Write Club and the people who have made it happen to make a regular thing
of coming together to celebrate the creator in all of us. Can’t wait till
November 28th.
November 4, 2007
Happy 77th Birthday to my Dad! If my father knew he was going to live this long he would have taken
better care of himself. Actually, I will
be going to spend a few days with him in a week or so. My sister is flying to
October 27, 2007
October…when the trees are stripped bare of all they
wear. It is an old fashioned rainy day today. Jennifer is at her work-out class; I feel the
hiss and swoosh of traffic on Court Street, feel the darkness and the drear of
a three day rain event. I wax nostalgic
for rain when it seems the city empties of people and spirits rise from where they
are normally interred. Only the sporadic
hearty traveler braves the early morning weather to grab a paper or a
scone. It is a good day to sleep
in. A cool, damp day full of closeness,
void of sunshine or school children ranting and screaming on the street,
wailing with youthful joy for the joy of being young. Nobody is working in the building with
banging hammers or screeching saws-alls butchering yet another quiet Saturday
into a dismal ordeal where we a re forced to flee from our homes by the super
and his helpers. I have my coffee and my
NY1 local news worth watching all the time on Time Warner Cable telling me it’s
raining outside and will continue to do so until tomorrow. I get all the important numbers: the temperature, the relative humidity, wind
speeds and direction. I shut the sound
because I have already heard the story of the Chocolate Jesus and wonder why no
one has thought to use the Tom Waits song from his Mule Variations collection
to under-score the frivolity this work can incite. It is not a slight to Catholicism if you ask
me; it is just 200 pounds of fun.
Halloween is all about fun…and darkness.
Daylight savings time is lasting longer theses days and what with the
war(s) going on and the impending election year looming where our countrymen
and women are preparing to say some nasty things about one another in an effort
to get elected where for four years the losing party will hurl insults and
accusations at the winners…but, I digress.
It is a quiet, lazy, rainy Saturday morning in
October 25, 2007
So the wife says she says “You haven’t changed your
blog…” I’ve been busy…and bored.
Working like a dog, sprucing up a story for the write Club…oh, yeah, they
let me stay even though I think I may have insulted Maureen. Hope not.
Sent my first submission in today.
I’m not too nervous. We did go
see Margaret Cho the other night (we meaning the royal Three). That was fun.
Work, work, work. I’m looking forward
seeing CSC Richard III and RENT.
7 October 2007
So I flaked on the writing group meeting, but that was ok
and they still want me. More on that later. Right now, I have some emotional landing to
do. As many of you know, I am an
Emergency Response Inspector for the Buildings Department here in
4 October 2007
Let the writing begin, tonight I meet the group. Details of the nights’ meeting to follow after I find out who the
members are. I have a serious case of
the “I don’t Waannaa’s”. I am committed to going out tonight after I visit mom
and see if I can’t get off the dime and continue with the novel. Hi to everybody.
30 September 2007
A writing group. A week or so ago I was feeling
bored with my creative life (like I don’t really have one) so I went on Craig’s
List and searched for a call for writers to join a group. I sent some of my short story work to
28 September, 07
Something’s going on in our building! As I write this a private carting company (aka a huge noisy garbage
truck) is outside gobbling up the remains of what was once the interior items
of an apartment (mattresses, boxes, chairs, tables…ect). It was all stacked in the hall last night then
mysteriously appeared curbside this morning and is now…gone. This would not be so disturbing if it hadn’t
been the second such event this month. A
week or so a go we were kept awake one night by someone “moving out” from
upstairs. I can’t help but worry about
coming home to find my possessions on the street and being loaded into a
garbage truck. Creepy is not the
word. So I ask the world: “Who is
evicting people at 240 Court Street? and Am I on the List?” On another note while “blogging” on the Brooklyn Blogs I came
across this item: “… when the
building … started digging they went well below the water table to start their
structure and in doing so started to pump the water. When pumping the water, it
pulled up the oil from the subsurface and it kept
coming as they kept pumping…” Black gold,
27 September 2007
We are still talking Academics here. There are no more “normal” days. Life is far too precious an experience to be
relegated to mere “normal”. As most of you know, I have
never been a fan of “normal” owning to the fact that it is a
word, for me in the least, which defies definition. Once upon a time I established a semblance of
what most people would agree was “normal”.
It was quite possibly the first time in my life I felt “normal”. That all ended in September of 2001 at which point I
decided “normal” is not all it’s cracked up to
be. So I embrace, indulge and actively
seek the less familiar, more comforting, chaotic ab-normal. All that’s
required for this is for me is to live in NYC.
26 September 2007
Dissertation Time.
My wife is writing her
dissertation, so de-facto I am writing one too.
I need to support her in a way that will be beneficial to us both so I
am committed to these pages as well as writing more creative stuff in support
of her writing habit. Our cat is in a
sunny place on the carpet. He is
committed to showing us how to relax. We
are all looking for that sunny spot on the carpet. We can do this. We will do this. We will do this together.
24 September 2007
Wonderful Weekend.
Spending 9/10ths of it
at work seems not to be the ideal way to relax on a Saturday and Sunday, but I
did see many a splendid thing. I got to
read some of my latest book: “The
21 September 2007
Someone’s got to be the next Woody Allen; Woody Allen
can’t be Woody Allen forever…can he? Such an esoteric remark would require pages
of explanation the payoff of which I am not sure you would be so
enthralled. Needless to say, I have so much to
say I can not efficiently organize my thoughts to convey even the most
rudimentary of ideas. I cannot even keep
my desk clean. There’s so much I want to
do, so much I want to say that more often than often I don’t do or say
anything. Such is the atrophy I feel. This week I went on the Craig’s list to find
a writing support group (when I wasn’t scanning the w4m nsa casual
encounters). I sent in some samples of
my work. They said they might get back
to me, but they have problems with procrastination so they might not. Oh, and Happy Birthday cousin Stew, it was
great spending that night at the ballpark with you, your son and your
father. Hope you had a good time
too. Love to hear from you.
September 17, 2007
I have a problem with the passage of time.
I feel it rushing by like swiftly flowing tidal water of the
September 14, 2007
There is a huge literary event happening in
Mud
Having been young more than once
Nobody wants to see me grow old
Least of all me,
I would like to savor my childhood
In late recognition of that gauche position
Opposition to my outward appearance
Silent in the face of furious catastrophe
Casual stakes at a
game of dice in
Vetted tales of turbulence within the hollow
Illegal single room occupancy of my mind…
There is no heat in the winter and no cool
Water will not flow through pipes choked
With lead, rust, and about a dozen other
Toxins which wait to be discovered
Neatly deposited deep within my body for recycling
The cellar floor is made down of a damp clay-like dirt
Which when the washing machine overflows
Or stinging deluges from up north fall in barrels
Or when high tide creeps over the sea wall…
I sink down to my hips without a sound that sucks
Like catfish bottom feeding at Willow Brook Pond
My father drunk asleep with the car door open
As I fish with the corn kernels and Pillsbury dough
Of our quality early Saturday morning
September 11, 2007
It is
hard to fathom six years of life passing so quickly. I continue to search for words to communicate
my profound, sorrowful bewilderment.
September 10, 2007
Hail and well met.
I used to love football, but after yesterday I may have
finally lost my taste for the barbaric game we call “Modern Day
Gladiators”. Those of us who grew up
with the game remember Darryl Stingily, the first casualty of a spinal cord injury
made a quadriplegic cripple playing the rough and tumble game we all loved and
enjoyed in our youth. The tragic events
taking place for a Buffalo Bill and the body slam to our own Eli Manning
combined with a mugging I witnessed during the Notre Dame/Penn State game has
me re-examining my values of sport, play, manhood and competition. The “rough and tumble” are quaint expressions
of the past. The violence of our nature,
one I romanticized in my youth, is revealed in all its true, devolved
nature. Do players help each other up
any more? Or are they too busy gloating
and mugging for the cameras? Is there
any such thing as a “clean hit” anymore? (I’m not
talking about a perfect untraceable mob murder.) On a day when I will ever re-evaluate my values,
when I thank God I took the road to life instead of the road to death at the
World Trade Center six years ago, I question what we are fighting for in this
country. Is it the right to maim and
cripple on national TV? Is it the right
to show the crushing force of fame as
September 5, 2007
To you belligerent yellow cabbies: Those of you
with no respect for the rules of the road.
Those of you who have no respect for a bargain. You took the two fare hikes greedily and now
you don’t want to hold up your end of the bargain by installing technology you
agreed to. STAY OUT ON STRIKE! You have no respect for the rights of others;
you think the streets of this city are your private domain for the sole purpose
of making you money. You make the honest
hard working cabbies lives miserable. GO AWAY.
STAY AWAY. The public will manage
without you, we survived the Transit Strike, and we will survive your petty,
grandstanding attempt at grabbing the
August 24, 2007
A new series of introspective poetry begins with;
Earth
From the Night soil of my birth
To a blasted, scorched and garbage strewn earth
Spun out from years of bad marriage
Woke up roadside
I was 35
Immediately set off for the deep end high dive
Only chaos made me feel alive
Black leather knees crawled through a licentious dream
Body tortured to purge my pain
When I came to
I was 40
Seems more like 17
Looked into a mirror
To see where I had been
My face is like a road map
With no North or South
From crooked creases around my eyes
To the four corners of my mouth
Get me drunk and there are tales to tell
But you’ve heard them all before from better men
This is not self pity, but a stone I roll
So when I come at last to the water,
I will have my toll
August 21, 2007
What a difference a few days makes…I have been down town lately
shopping for that suit for that wedding.
It was a pleasure really, to shop for a new suit of clothes and not have
it be stressful. However, this is not
the subject of my missive. Last week I
walked past the infamous
August 18, 2007
Today…I
will go to the gym…probably call my mother, send my nephew a card for his new
baby, go buy a new suit of clothes, and have a wonderful dinner somewhere with
a beautiful woman who just happens to be my wife. Enough for any man to be happy, yet I am not
just any man. Normalcy has never felt
normal for me. It is taking some getting
used to, some adjustment. I AM TRYING TO
STAY AWAKE.
August 17, 2007
Earthquakes in Peru, miners dieing in Utah, stock market
crashes…it would seem that
with all this bad news it would be the end of days when merely it is simply the
end of Summer, and a long busy one it has been.
Thoughts and prayers go out to Peruvians and the families of the coal
miners and their valiant efforts to save their brothers. As Shakespeare says in Hamlet: “when sorrows come, they come not single
spies but in battalions”.
It’s the Law! Almost. We are about to pass a law in the city that
would make it illegal for a parent or any other adult guardian of minor
children to light up in a car. HOORAY! When I think of all
the puking I have done, all the head aches all the breath holding all the
nausea I suffered…and it’s not like I was meek and never complained, my family
knew all too well my disdain and downright rebellion against the act of smoking
in confined spaces. It made me sick, it
still makes me sick and I truly believe the measure of someone’s intelligence
can be directly linked to if they and what they and how much they smoke. Now you may scoff at me and say “well Mark
you smoke,” and I say yes, I smoke cigars occasionally, and I admit to being
not all that bright. So to you chain
smoking morons as my old boss in the Produce section of major’s supermarket
used to say: “hurry up and die, but die on your own time.” And for God’s sake, stop smoking with the
kids in the car.
August 14, 2007
“He who thinks greatly
must
Err greatly.”
Martin Heidegger The Thinker As Poet
The
poem for today can be found on MySpace.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&ping=1&indicate=1
August 11, 2007
In my life…in my lifetime, I have seen the homerun record broken…twice. Both the single season mark and the all-time
homerun king changed mantles and if I am spared, I may see both records broken,
indisputably broken, again. I’m not sure
what this all means; I see the young ones looking at me wondering what they
will be like at my age.
For what is a heart…?
but a couple of question marks?
One straight forward
One reversed
The second joined
To the front of the first
And what is Love
But the place between
That infinitesimal universe
Inner space of dreams
August 9, 2007
Cyclone
in
August 5, 2007
“Oh, my
lover for the first time in my life my eyes are wide open…” I miss John Lennon. It is hot; the heat brings up the deeply
buried chimeras of subconscious thought.
Untitled
Rather indulge my darker nature
The one I keep chained inside
The body of this navigator
The one where I
Am still the Pride of my Pride
One not yet mated
That is to say not yet procreated
Shall we not birth children of our own?
Conceived in lust and in vanity sown
To fulfill the promise of our prophecy blown…
And oh what beautiful creatures they would be
The best of you, the best of me
And would not our ardor be inspired
Each time we see ourselves reflected
In their eyes?
I am stalking
I am…prowling
I am a puma
Hunting for more than meat
Closing in on...
My prey, my sweet
I shift below
To sweat in heat
Caged animal
Panting free
July 28 2007 Happy Birthday Susie!!!!!! IT’S MY KID SISTER’S BIRTHDAY. We celebrate her life, a life spared the cruel fate of our Beloved
Cathy “Marbles” Oppenhiemer, we will always carry and cherish her memory in our
hearts. My sister did not die in a car
crash resulting from two mad men drag racing on the streets of Staten Island as
happened tragically there again last week.
I love you Sue, and I am so proud of you too! Your daughter, my God-Child Sarah, is
beautiful! Sorry to get all mushy weird
folks, it happens sometimes.
July 21, 2007
Happy Birthday John-E-Boy! Here’s to a man who teaches me about family.
City Surf
I balance myself
Live center of a steamy car
All those slimy stainless poles taken
My hands dive into soft dark pockets
Of my camouflaged shorts
Knees bent slightly hips loose and dynamic
I rock and roll to screeching screaming wheels of the “F”
I think of my mother’s grocery list
How it is composed from memory of the market’s layout
At the top her fruits and vegetables
A cucumber, grape tomatoes
Next, it’s bread
She loves to tell her story
About the first time she ate store-bought bread
She called it “cake”.
Two loaves of oat bran and a loaf of rye
She’ll freeze some
Then preserves and peanut butter
A two lb. can of Maxwell house
In her mind she is walking down the aisles
She used to love to shop
Asking me to reach for things
She could not reach at the top
I am doing that for her now, reaching
Half a dozen eggs, two pounds of butter
A half a pound of bacon,
They sell very little by the pound any more
I am reaching mom, but not for
The un-disinfected MTA hand grips
The list meanders a little in the middle
Where a jumble of merchandise
Shifts with the seasons
But she has not forgotten the yogurt
Or the Ben and Jerry’s
Now I am surfing home
From my best friend’s
Quiet Party
Surrounded by unquiet urban spirits
Buried deep under streets ready to blow
Thinking of my suburban labor of love
And how far I still have to go
July 8, 2007
The thing about Reggie Jackson’s Home Run Trot…is that just before he got to
second base he would pull up from his loping gate to take three or four short
stutter steps to the bag before continuing on to third. It is something I don’t think Daniel
Sunjata quite captures in his
portrayal of Reginald Martinez Jackson.
That, however, is not going to prevent me from watching “THE BRONX IS
BURNING”, a ESPN mini-series based on the book based on the quote from Howard
Cosell made during the 1977 All-Star game…”Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is
Burning” as a helicopter showed the image of a building fire in the south Bronx
in July of 1977 while the National League pounded the American 7 runs to
5.. I am so excited by the fact that my
wife wants to see this TV event. I was
19 years old that year; it was the Summer of Sam and the infamous Blackout of
“77. It’s a big nostalgia watershed for
me, a turning point in my life, my endless summer. Ladies and gentlemen, my life is burning.
July 5, 2007
The Air Conditioned…itself, the rain came and we slipped onto a firework laden
rooftop where ladies used the metaphor of a female orgasm to describe
pyrotechnic displays that had us agape with child-like wonder. We talked intelligently about vintage classic
porn, only this morning I pinch myself.
Was it just a dream? I have been
working mad overtime lately. With the
office in
June 26, 2007
Taking…a few days off has only served to illustrate just how
tired I was. Wow, jumping back into work
with both feet can be hazardous to your health.
As you can see by my last entry, I can get quite sentimental when I’m
bushed. Yesterday though I wandered into
Jim
and Andy’s in search of Jicima, a delightful root found in Mexican
cuisine, we needed it for our black Bean Salad.
Here was an example of a typical
June 24, 2007
Sometimes…my
sweet exhaustion fuels such passionate thoughts as to drive me mad at 1
AM. On the way home from work I tonight
listened to WNYC which featured mountain music juxtaposed with songs sung in
Gaelic. All of it was, I believe, contemporary.
I was very moved, as I always am, by the songs sung in a language I do
not understand. I may not comprehend the
words, but I know the songs by heart, if you know what I mean. They made me realize I have
June 20, 2007
A perfect
June 19, 2007
Would Forever Be Too Long? I spent the day putting in another 10 hours of overtime for our city
and the Department of Buildings. I’m
bushed! As hard as I worked last month
getting in shape for the role of Half, I am now making up for lost time
inspecting my way around Greenpoint,
“How to Write: Advice and
Reflections”
by Richard Rhodes. A startling statistic
proceeded to jump out at me as
June 17, 2007
FATHER’S DAY. This is a day of such mixed emotion
for me. I do not know if I can express
what is coming up for me today. There is
just so much guilt associated with fathers and fatherhood. For one thing, at nearly 49, and childless I
don’t yet know the joys and trials of the relationship. I only know it from my childish perspective
and yet I believe I have done my unborn children justice by waiting until I
could fully appreciate them. What am I
trying to say? I do not know. I do begrudge the quality relationship
between fathers and daughters, fathers and sons. I believe the relationship I have with my
father and his with his own father, my grandfather, whom I never knew, is the
single most unique thing in my life and it is responsible for me being who I
am. What does that say about me not
wanting to have children of my own? Is
it time for a therapist perhaps instead of a public confessional? Is my father
like my brother and my uncle like my father and am I not jealous of the
closeness of my wife and her dad, my brother-in-law and his? I only know that I love my father very, very
much. His suffering has inspired me to
achieve all that I can, and if his suffering would be eased by my child, then
my guilt and lack of compassion is compounded.
Perhaps instead of a terse conversation with the father figures in my
life today I can broach these tender subjects with them. It will be self serving on my part, but it
will also give them yet another opportunity to parent me before it is too
late. I love you dad. I love you Uncle Stewart, I love you dad
Mobley. Thank you for all you have shown
me of the world; for the common wisdom and simple values of a golden rule, how
without that guidance I would not have the courage, however late in coming, to
stare mortality in the face and to finally stand and be counted. If they have taught me anything, it is that
growing children in this world is not a matter to be taken lightly. They do themselves an injustice by not giving
themselves the credit they deserve for raising theirs to be good and decent
human beings. I admire that conviction,
that quiet nobility. They have made it
look easy. Take a moment to acknowledge
yourself for the accomplishments of your lifetime. Happy Father’s day.
June 12, 2007
Pushing 50
I have seen half a century
Of war and disease
Decades of misery
People doing what they please
I have heard the sweet harmony
Seen a man on the moon
And plates run away with a spoon
I have seen half a century
Of love and desire
Took what came near to me
And gave back with fire
I come from sweet sacrifice
Into an age of excess
To struggle with the meaning of success
I have seen half a century
Of injustice and woe
Of violence and cruelty
From above and below
I have witnessed some history
Sometimes close at hand
A student still yearning to understand
I have seen half a century
Of children growing old
Of destruction and building
Of being bought and being sold
I’ve feel the chains of prosperity
Which are invisible to see
Connecting everyone to you and to me
I have lived half a century
Mostly timid sometimes bold
I have listened to calumny
Brought out truth to behold
I have turned to face my enemy
With great stillness in my heart
Only in peace can compassion start
I have seen half century
Of miracles and cures
Of potential and possibility
Of walking through open doors
I have seen human beings
Be so generous inside
Yet it’s something so many of us hide
I have seen half a century
Of the world spinning round
Of hope rising to cacophony
Of despair crashing down
It is not hard to imagine
What the future must hold
But the present is all we control
I have seen half a century
Of fantasy and dreams
I have written out my poetry
In rants and in streams
I have drawn my inspiration
From the spirit and the land
To feel alive with a moth in my hand
I have seen half a century
With the people I adore
Some have been royalty
Some have been whores
Save for them I’d live in poverty
Abandoned and alone
Without the comfort of silence or home
I have seen half a century
Now often I wonder
How much more will I see
Of the calm and the thunder
I have loved and I’ve lost
And spent much of my time
Contemplating Nirvana
In search of perfect rhyme
I have seen half a century
Of callousness and pain
Of wounds that have infected
My pride and my shame
But in the midst of insanity
I continue to Love
That one true great revolution
Given from above
June 8, 2007
Last night…was truly the first night away from the play. Jennifer had a play date with Lee the real
estate lady. Lee had come to the Sunday performance but had to rush off before
a proper post-mortem could take place.
So here I was: alone after my salad and crab cakes thinking about a shot
of Jack Daniels and the door bell rings.
“Who the f…” I mutter, the thought crosses my mind that I should just
not answer it, but then again it may be a package for us. I hit the intercom “It’s Jill, we’re doing a
drop in.” So… it is Jill and Kelly and I
smile because I know Jen is not here but they do not. Not to worry as they discover I am stag, and
they are drag. I have a cold bottled of
Char-Donny in the fridge and they, being the gracious guests, were not about to
cut and run. So… we sat, drank, chatted
and watched the Yankees play the Chicago White Sox (of course as Kelly is the
good
June 7, 2007
Closure. Jennifer and I both attended E.
Katherine Kerr’s class last night. It
turned out to be a much more moving and rewarding experience than I’d first
imagined. At the outset, I did not want
to go. My resistance was palpable. However, I took the opportunity to do my
monolog from the play directly to Jennifer, instead of out to the audience as I
had done in performance. The result was
closure for me, I finally got to say this to her and have her respond, have
myself respond in a realistic, human way.
At last, I feel at peace and finished with HALF for now. Jennifer got closure (I hope) as well. We did the opening scene the way she felt it
could have worked. She expressed her
repressed self, her truncated Cai for the first time. E.K. was most passionate in her support that
we never let anyone under any circumstances take our “presence”
away. She was adamant and as clear as I’ve ever
seen her, seated on the very edge of her chair very firmly declaring we must never let someone take our agency. It was a powerful and extraordinary
experience, one I’m so glad to have witnessed.
Katherine also went on to use this instance to highlight the altruism
that we learn much more from difficulty and distress than we do with ease.
Fortunately, for Jennifer, she gets right back to work on a part written for
her by Scott Brooks in the new play soon to seen in the Mid Town Festival: DUPLEX. On another note, today I declare Led Zeppelin Day. 30
years ago, tonight I sat in the first row at
June 5, 2007
THANK YOU. I CANNOT EXPRESS MY APPRECIATION
ENOUGH! To those of you who made the
effort to see and experience our play, you help theatre stay alive! Just to keep you up to date on things, my
wife, the lover-ly and talented Jennifer Scott Mobley, will be next seen at the
Mid Town Festival in an original play by Scott Brooks called “DUPLEX” and if you think HALF was written for me, you will love
Jennifer in this role. Last night the
finality of it all sank in as we watched episodes of House (our new fave), and tried desperately to relieve our manic
stress about the imprisonment of Paris Hilton.
Have to get back to work now on finding another part for myself! Keep in touch!
June 4, 2007
HALF closed
yesterday afternoon. Its brief workshop run concluded
with a solid showing by the actors, crew and design team. With a grand sense of
accomplishment and pride, the end came as we struck the set and returned the
Jewel Box to black for the up coming Mid Town Festival. A fond farewell, but not good-bye to the
tortured merchant marine who took off for the sea once again to roam the world
alone. Today I return to a hectic
schedule of training of another sort. I
am going to miss going to the gym every day for a week, but I will try to get
there as many times as I can and continue to work this body. That should ease my racing, restless
mind. Thanks to everyone involved with
this production, from the audience to the guys painting the walls when we
finally departed after yesterday’s performance.
June 3, 2007
Certainly Not Just Another Saturday Night…Greg was wandering around the
vacant main stage theater last night during our performance; he said he
couldn’t watch again, he has the re-writes in his head. Poor Cyndy was ill, I hope she will be all
right enough to come in today for the final workshop performance of half. Last night was so special for me to have my
sister and brother-in-law in the audience along with friends Holly &
George, Jill and Kelly. This has been
the role of my lifetime so far; I was so ready and worked really hard training
my mind and my body to become Ewell/Half.
We did not so much feast last night as dine responsibly on the play
finding new nuance in each moment, living life onstage with an audience that
could be best described as eclectic.
After much anticipation of what may come after last nights rare and
beautiful performance, I ended up alone with my beautiful and talented wife at
an garden table at JOYA toasting with Chardonnay, eating soft shell crab and
shrimp in green curry. We relived the
strange moments and talked about what worked and what was strange about the new
things we tried. As I looked at her on her bench seat, sitting above the low
table her beauty was all the light and warmth I need on a warm summer
night. She later offered her throat to
the wolf with the red roses. Normally I would feel sad about ending a project,
but not so with this one. I have used it
as a vehicle for change, I have changed my body most certainly, but also I have
changed my perception of myself. I have
faced some deep and terrible demons through this problematic process, many
having to do with acting itself. I have not so much found a fountain of youth,
but a deeper, more meaningful manhood.
The tattoos make me feel tough! At this point, I am experiencing a great
sense of accomplishment, joy and bliss and am looking forward to the final
performance this afternoon.
June 2, 2007
We had a not so great show last night. I don’t know if it was the full moon or an audience of people who knew
too little about theatre or too much, OR if we just were black holes sucking the life out of
this play, but the sound of crickets would have let us know at least something
was alive in the theatre last night.
It’s not so much that we were off, I just think the playwright is in
search of an audience for his play and I don’t think it showed up last night,
which I believe helps us learn more about what works and what doesn’t than an
audience of jovial party goers ready to laugh at anything. My friend
June 1, 2007
We had a great show last night!!!!!! We are off and running friends.
With two performances down and three to go we have started to relax into
our roles and “play”. This is very
satisfying. This is just what I wanted,
a meaty part in a play no one has ever
done before. I do not know where it will
lead, I am just so enjoying every moment.
We have all worked so hard to get here.
The process has jump started my physical fitness regimen. The whole thing has been like the fountain of
youth for me. Rejuvenation I have been
looking for since before I started this page.
The loves of my life are all in my life at the moment (some blessing counting here): both my parents and all my siblings, my wife, my friends, our
adoring fans (aka our girlfriends and boy friends)
May 31, 2007
I could not bring myself to write last night…I was too excited and too….drunk!!! It all started with our opening night. There were jitters and technical snafus a
plenty, but all in all, when the performance was over Cyndy was JOYUS and Greg
was popping the cork on bottle after bottle of champagne. We hung out in the
lobby of the theater until Eliot finally closed up for the night. The entourage proceed to the New Yorker
Hotel, while Davey Jennifer and I started the long trek underground to
May 29, 2007
Tech/Dress…We had the technical rehearsal and the dress
rehearsal in one day, one
very long, exhausting day. I went to
Bella and had my TATs done. I hope they
don’t run. The set, the lights, and the
costumes are great thanks to Deb, Andis and David. We did a quick cue-to-cue and then onto the
dress with invited guests and several people snapping photographs including the
ever popular Joe Bly. After two whole
days off, I was afraid it would all be gone, but no such thing. There were glitches and some faux pas, but
nothing to discourage us form the fact that we have a play. Five performances only ladies and gents. Get your seats while you can. The theater is small, very intimate. Hope to see you, tomorrow we open this
workshop run.
May 27, 2007
Yesterday…The
run ran smoothly but for the occasional botched or dropped line. Greg gave us his blessing saying it was the
first time he had ever “heard” his play.
I was very moved by that.
Jennifer continues to wow me the more we work together. Last night after rehearsal, we went over to
Kelly and Jill’s place to enjoy the first of many warm house parties. Routh was there along with Kim from DC, L.J.
and Erin from out of this world, our hosts the lovely Jill and the fabulous
Kelly, Jen and me. In honor of my
supposed South Pacific odyssey I drank an entire bottle of Sake (cold of course
in honor of Memorial Day) and today wish I had some hair of the dog, although
the coffee Jennifer makes is doing the trick as always. Today is
May 25, 2007
It happens…sometimes you
just don’t have it. Last nights run through had its highs and
lows. The highs were as high as we have
seen since the process started; the lows were miles below the sewer. This is a shared event. We were all off at various and sundry moments
and that includes the people behind the table.
Better for it to happen here, in the rehearsal room than in the
theater. One thing is certain, the
stakes have been raised and our progress towards the ultimate goal and true
spirit of the workshop has not been impeded or compromised. We learned a great deal about communication
last night, about what is useful, and what is not.
It was a bump, and then a pothole, but I think the vehicle
survived.
May 24, 2007
Happy Birthday Mom!
My mom, dear Rosie, was
born in 1929 and has yet to use a computer, not to mention never read a blog,
but today is her 78th birthday and her boy would be remiss if he did
not mention this to the world. Today,
while I drive to Hightstown to deliver her birthday card in person, I’ll be
listening to my lines on-tape (one of my most standard memorization techniques)
pouring over the dozen or so lines still giving me a problem. Last nights rehearsal was devoted solely to
Jen and me since Bill came down with an eye ailment and could not work. Ken got
a well earned rest as he busted his butt during the Fight Night on Monday. We worked act one and I feel it was a great
luxury for us to do so. We finally got
on the right track for the opening scene and I even scored the act ending mom-o-log
(oops, I mean monolog) with Cyndy.
Tonight playwright Greg Lemoine returns to the rehearsal room to see and
hear his play for the first time in two weeks.
Let the performances begin.
May 23, 2007
First Things First…admittedly the first scene of the first run through was a
complete and perfect disaster. Rhythm,
timing, cues, line pick-ups, intensity, energy…where are you? Jennifer and I enjoyed a lengthy, productive
artistic discussion into the wee hours as Cyndy sent us word we have made a mention
in SHOW BUSSINESS. At about one
in the morning, after a shot of Sauza, a voice, Half’s voice, came into my head
and gave me some sage advice which I then passed on to Cai and we agreed that
we would try a different tactic tonight.
We are closer to the goal, the prize, we need simply to relax and play
the scene and stop worrying about taking care of the audience. Holes in problem lines are starting to fill,
dead places are coming alive, “CONCENTRATION!” does not slip away, my baby is right here,
she followed me into the bar.
May 22, 2007
Off Book, On Stage…We only have five performances of Half, so to me, tonight
is opening night and I am going at this as if we are previewing the new
play. My lines must be solid…my goal is
to relax more deeply into each moment of the play, to find the truth in each
and every one, to find the many truths and to choose the most important, valid
version and it bring to our audience. I
feel a bit nauseous at the moment, maybe that’s because I just tried to do 100
one armed push-ups. “Gonna fly
now…gonna try now…”
May 21, 2007
Tonight…Fight Night…now that was a rehearsal!
We did our best to follow the apt and brilliant instructions of Mike
Chin. Poor Ken will need some serious
R&R after tonight. Fortunately,
tomorrow he will only have to do it twice, or three times at the most. Cyndy finally figured out that I might have
to be wearing a long sleeved shirt for this scene for reasons to become
apparent later, so the “guns”, as Jennifer likes to call them, will have to be
hidden for at least part of it. No
biggie, I’m sure everyone will have had quite enough of my bare skin by the
time the curtain falls. It will make for a quick change between scenes but it
makes sense that I would finally change clothes after all this time. We ran our
scene to the point where all three of us Bill, Ken and myself, began to play
with things while at the same time embedding our lines deeply into our
bodies. I should sleep really well
tonight! Cyndy again has been great at
measuring the tempo and getting the structure and the timing of the scene just
so. Vanessa and the line throughs are working. Tomorrow night we put it all
together in our first full run through.
I am loving it.
Act II…yesterday,
Sunday, we ran through the second act twice.
It flows. The scene between Bill,
Ken and I is absolutely HILARIOUS! I
cracked several times during the second run-through partly because Cyndy was
laughing so hard and partly because Ken and Bill are a pisser (pissers?) to
work with. I want to sit in the audience
and watch this scene! (Not enough to give up my part though.) Today fight coordinator Mike Chin will be on
hand to choreograph our little scuffle.
I have seen him work on past productions, and he is a marvelous coach.
May 20, 2007
Am-bushed…ridden
hard and put away wet (as it was a rainy day).
Rehearsal was brutal. Lots of
notes. Good work, I finally have
something concrete to do (in getting my costume back on). Afterwards we treated ourselves to burgers
(with the red hot chili peppers because we both like spicy food) and beer. We improvised the scene where we had dinner
that night in the bar…I still had my wrists wrapped from rehearsal. Ewell asked
Cai if she would like to go into the city to the Village Vanguard. She said she
had an early shift, Ewell said they could see the early show. She questioned about money, Ewell has plenty
of money (no bills, no rent, no debt ect.).
He offered a cab. Then we watched
an exciting Preakness Stakes while we ate the best bacon cheese burger and
slurped the coldest Brooklyn IPA that Cody’s has to offer. There’s a hospital two blocks away too. Lot’s of EMS drivers, nurses and hospital
executives are regulars at Cody’s, so we have adopted it as our de-facto
May 19, 2007
May 16, 2007
We now know what we don’t know…another useful rehearsal tonight. We learned a lot about what we don’t know
about scenes 1, 3, 5. I thought we were
only scheduled to work 3 & 5, but when I came in and saw the pre-set for
the opening of the show I knew we were going back to the beginning, which
didn’t bother me one bit. Cyndy is very
organized and she knows what she wants to do and where she wants to go. With Vanessa’s fresh eye, we were put through
our paces, throwing things out that were not working and trying new approaches
with sometimes hilarious results. It is
still very early in the process I feel, the words are not yet second nature so
dropping lines was a bit of a problem, I have to remember to relax, slow down
and say the words. We are off until
Saturday when we do the infamous “bedroom” scene. Cyndy has asked us to be off book a day early
which we will try to do, Jennifer has her monolog in that scene and I am going
to see if I can do something to help her learn her lines. I have been to the gym now 9 straight days
and 14 out of the last 17. I am down to
183.5 lbs from a high around the holidays of 195 lbs. I have a ways to go before I resemble Half,
but I am on my way. Spoke to a make-up
artist Bella Peker about air brushing the tattoo… we have an appointment for 12
noon. Keep your fingers crossed.
May 15th, 2007
Nitty gritty…this night we just rolled up our sleeves, me and Jennifer with Cyndy,
AD Vanessa Bombardieri, Stage Mgr,
May 14th 2007
Off Book Act 1…And were
off. On May 1st, way back when, I remember feeling
sad as we held the first read through of the play. Sad because I knew our process was about to
begin and now that it was out of the “anticipation” phase and into the
“working” phase the END phase was only thirty days away. Our costumer, David B. Thompson, made an
observation the other night about how the tattoos of a merchant marine were
symbols of significant events in a sailor’s life. A milestone, if you will. A milestone in the life of this play is when
you cut the bond to the physical script, leave it on the other side of the room
and begin to live and breathe the words once so visible and accessible on the
page. Now they rattle around in your
head, sometimes getting jumbled or transposed.
The actors call for “line” every so often, but in between some semblance
of real life emerges, the real life of this play on stage. The creation takes another step forward
towards its final form. All the
training, all the exercises, all the lessons and experience of each member of
our collaboration filters into the work in the rehearsal room and we can see
the lump of wet clay begin to take shape.
I remember my first “thread the needle” performance for Jean Kaplan down
at HB. I don’t know how that is informing
what I am doing on stage each night, but I know that it is. When things come up in my body I think of
Katherine Kerr and get present immediately, I am so present, relaxed and
communicating I am forgetting to be self conscious and cerebral. This is a wonderful
and profound time in my life and I am taking in every breath. I go to the gym
every day and I wear my “t”-shirt from
May 13th, 2007
Happy Mother’s Day…today
was the mother of all rehearsals. Not really, I just realized that
maybe 15 minutes might not be enough for me to land after my monolog at the end
of Act One. Also today was the last day
we could use our scripts for Act 1…so it’s like flying blind now. I’m pretty sure I have 99.9 percent of the
words in my head and memorized….now it’s just a mater of attaching the words to
the emotions IN MY BODY. That is the
hard part. That’s the work. Hitting the emotional notes in my actor’s
register without it feeling forced or un-natural is the challenge I face. I continue to get present and that’s where
the mystery of my narrative will begin because I don’t know what will come out
from the vault of my own emotions once I deeply relax and communicate this
story. This is where I wish we had the full six weeks of rehearsal, but I feel
I have an advantage over almost everyone else in the cast in that I have taken
this time to devote entirely and exclusively to this project. After all, I’m in the title role. Each time I say this monolog out loud the
deeper it cuts and the more stuff comes out of my own old wounds. I am truly not going to be responsible for my
own actions once I let go. I really
don’t know what’s going to happen in front of an audience. All I can say is this: Who I am is the POSSIBILITY of TRUST, LOVE
and CREATIVITY. I trust myself, I love
this work, I am creating Ewell/Half. I
trust Cyndy and Jennifer, I love Jennifer and through this collaboration we are
creating something never before seen. My
main goal is to make Greg, Cyndy and everyone else know that no other actor
could have done better job, (a different job yes, but my best is given here,
everything, nothing held back). Maybe
that’s what I find so frightening. What
if my best is not good enough? Then I just have to trust…this is not about
me. I have to remember my goal. My goal is to introduce the audience to Half.
May 12th, 2007
We went, we saw, we had some ribs…Field trip to Elizabeth New Jersey. Half way between
the Goethals and the
May 10th, 2007
We did table work and blocked the last scenes in the
play…giving us Friday off and
a much needed day of rest. (REST? That
is a very relative term for my wife whose boss has just undergone breast cancer
surgery.) So we are through the first
phase of this. The road trip to
May 9th, 2007
Another Scene in the Play…we blocked and rehearsed the scene
between me, Bill and Ken, Act 2 Scene 2!
What fun working with those guys!
Cyndy and Greg are fantastic and Elliott is like another AD. Cyndy really has a vision for each moment of
the play and gives clear, concise direction without resorting to the ever
annoying “Line Reading” which endears her to this actor for sure. (I don’t think Id even mind one from
her). It’s part of her intelligence,
training and charm. I love work-shopping
this play with everyone. It’s such a
collaborative creative process. I marvel
at how different each reading of the material becomes as we start to move
around, living and breathing the words on the page. Greg is enormously helpful with insight,
background and a willingness to make things work. He is a quick study (like at the speed of
light) and is making cuts and revisions as we go that are thoughtful and serve
this new thing he has created.
May 8th 2007…The Most Intense rehearsal Ever!
So of
course, it was the “bedroom” scene if you will.
To start with I became a bit “pissy” if I do say so myself, which is
very unlike me. I do not think I was quite prepared for the emotional investment
required to just begin working through this scene to get it on its feet. I apologized profusely to Cyndy who seemed to
take it all in stride, but Greg left before I got the chance to tell him that
he wrote a magnificent and challenging scene.
I think if it were any other actress but Jennifer I would not feel so
protective of her and what she has signed on to do. I explained to Cyndy, but now I would like
Greg to know, that Jennifer and I do not fight in this way, that it really is deeply part of the real me that I “NEVER Hurt
No One!” Cyndy closed the set and we did an
improvisation of the moments leading up to my refusal. It was extremely realistic, more real than
anything I have ever done in a rehearsal before. Things came up for us as a couple that, I
never would have imagined. My wife is
one of the most brilliant, generous and unrecognized talents in theatre today
and I am not worthy…but I am so glad she is in this with me and I am with her. I cannot thank Cyndy and Greg enough. Elliot, too, was patient and gallant. I can’t wait until the next rehearsal when I
get to go at it with Bill and Ken. This
stuff is exhausting. 185.5 and falling.
May 7, 2007
Last night…was the first stumble through of the first Act with changes finalized
to the text. It’s exciting. I’ve begun to record my lines to play them
back constantly so I can memorize them.
I can imagine that in the days before recording machines I would have
hired a young lad to read the lines to me over and over. It’s shaping up to be an interesting process
with loads of subtle choices to make.
Everyone is excited about our Saturday field trip to
May 6, 2007
2nd Rehearsal …Another productive day with Cyndy, Greg and Elliot in room
B at the Epiphany Theater. Elliot is
the stage manager. Greg is writing and
editing as we block and stage. He is
really into it. We are doing a stumble
through of the 1st act tomorrow night already and off book by the 14th
for the first act. Feel so alive right
now and it’s sad to think about Dee Dee and her impending surgery which will no
doubt alter her life forever. It’s life
at its worst and finest all at once.
There is pain and the agony along with triumph and victory making for
conflicting feelings of happiness and despair.
May 5, 2007
1st Rehearsal…Greg had been up till three in the morning wrangling
changes to the text. We worked the first
scene with many cuts…mostly words and phrases here and there, nothing
major. The direction of the scene from
Cyndy is clear and concise. That opening
moment is still something we a re working ourselves through, but I feel we
marked the beats to the scene rather efficiently. Yesterday before rehearsal I installed the
security gates at our dear friend’s apartment and Jen went out and bought us a
brand spanking new vacuum cleaner. Life
is good.
May 1, 2007
Time… to check Susan Miller’s Astrology
Zone to see what the stars say. We had
our first meeting of the creative team and the read through of Half tonight. The set designer and costume designer were
there with the stage manager and assistant director. Of course, the director and playwright were
there as well. Afterwards Jennifer and I
left with the other two actors, Bill and Ken.
Rain fell cool and fragrant as we made our way through colorful, crowded
4/30/07
More spring cleaning…I put the winter things up in the bin today and took the
summer things out. Our new A/C unit is
waiting for the first 90 degree day.
Tomorrow we begin the workshop of “Half”. I am waiting for the UPS guy to come with
what I think may be my customized stencil of my tattoo. No one else will have it, of that I’m sure. I made the design myself from a photograph of
my wife. Working with her on this is
going to be interesting to say the least.
It is a provocative piece still in its formative stages written in the
realistic style by Greg Lemoine. I hope
to do it justice and to discover more about myself, life and the world in which
we live. Below is a letter to “Half’s”
mom. In studying the relationship
between the two, it appears nowhere in the text, I have chosen to place the
relocated ex-wife of Ewell’s father in
1/15/93
Dear mom,
Thanks
for the sweater. It will come in
handy. How have you been? I’m doing ok.
We will probably be in the port town of
Love
Half
4/26/07
Spring cleaning in a big way…invariably turns up some old relics. The following is something I wrote when I was just twenty two years
old. It brings me back to a place and
time before all of what was to follow, and yet it is intrinsically me, so much
so as to say I have not changed one iota since then. The themes, the voice, the word choice, are
all recognizable to me. It is very
telling that I published this piece in the college newspaper under my nom de plume Iam Blank. There appears to be a great deal of self
pity, but I rather see it as a very early attempt at an exorcism of demons that
posses me to this day. One could say it
was one of my first attempts to posses them in a healthy and productive way.
Hell to Fire
(Originally
appeared in the College Voice of CSI 11/5/81 under the name Iam Blank)
Don’t tell the devil where you live now,
love.
If he’s determined, he will find a way
to locate all of us in his own time.
The rabbit died Easter Sunday morn
and I cried, I cried until my eyes
were swollen and bright red: my rabbit is
Dead.
Deep inside I’m only seven years old
and crying for some tender mother care,
but mom works all night long and doesn’t
hug
me that much anymore since dad left
home.
Do you remember the first time you
realized
you were mortal? A mere machine of
organic
composition moving with effort,
sometimes
effortlessly through time and space as
one,
as many, a vast conglomerate single
entity
who must not tell the Devil where he
lives!
4/25/07
For what is a heart…?
But a couple of
question marks?
One straight forward
One reversed
The second joined
To the front of the
first
And what is Love
But the space between
That infinitesimal
universe
Inner world of dreams
4/21/07
We have not seen such
grief…since 9/11. We have mourned this week the inexplicable
violence of what took place in Virginia Tech.
We witnessed the mass media again make info-tainment out of horror and
tragedy. The blessing and the curse of
both the first and second amendments to our Constitution of these
4/17/07
Yesterday…I
was reduced to a puddle of goo as the news poured in from
4/15/07
The day back in 1947…when Jackie Robinson became the
first man to play in the there-to-fore all white major leagues of
baseball. I remember all the great
athletes in my day who have come after and think myself blessed to live in
these enlightened times. I feel sorry
for the wrongs of the past and even more so for the ignorance of the
future. I look forward to the day when
our children’s children look back on our barbaric times and smile with moral
superiority on how backwards and brutal we were, but how a few brave people led
the way towards a brighter, more dignified, more equal time. Today is also the anniversary of the sinking
of a great sea vessel called Titanic, its mythological maiden voyage doomed to
a fate which lives in our collective conscious as almost inevitable. No ship is unsinkable and no person lives
forever. Today is actually a rainy day
here in NYC. A day so brutal we have
spent all of it cozy indoors as the rain has fallen outside and made its way
inside our little apartment in several locations over the windows of our east
facing wall. The damp is palpable as the
smell of wet sheet rock and masonry competes with the aroma of garlic and
onions. Today, from the journal of
Ewell aka Half:
4/15/89
This
day in history the Titanic sunk to the bottom and today we received a distress
call, a may-day from a fishing vessel not far from our position. I spotted the life raft in the water with
survivors. Not many men from the boat
made it. I also saw the bodies of the
crew floating in the cold salt water. I
don’t think I have ever seen a dead body before. It was an experience. We had to haul the dead men aboard and wait
for the Coast Guard cutter to meet us. I hope and pray we never ever have to do
that again.
4/12/07
It is a shame about Don
Imus. For years he has
been a creative and powerful force in modern radio. A pioneer, innovator and mentor to many, many
people who sit behind a microphone to make their living as well as a fund
raising fool for worthy causes like his Imus Ranch. I have been a listener of his for
most of my life always taking for granted that people knew he was not serious
when he said the things he did. I must admit I have not tuned in since he fell
off that horse, and rarely looked in on his live television feed. It’s a wonder he never stuck his boot so
firmly in his mouth before now. I always
thought: “How the hell does he get away
with that…?” The crux of this story is
not that Imus said something off-color and controversial, he’s made a career
out of doing just that (he taught Howard Stern everything he knows about being
s shock-jock). The story is about
reactions by the real hypocrites: his sponsors and network who are cashing in
on his misfortune by bailing on him. The
sponsors who are pulling their ads are doing so because now they can get much
more coverage for free, not because they have suddenly grown a conscience. They have supported this guy for decades and
just now they are finding out he’s an often insensitive self-righteous
dolt? Same goes for MSNBC. It’s not that they are taking the corporate
high road and caving to pressure by special interests, it’s that they should
have taken Imus to task a long, long time ago.
Was Don wrong? You bet. It wasn’t
the first time. It might be the last.
4/11/07
The transformation has
begun. I need but stick to my Spartan regimen and results
should follow more and more. My
cardiologist told me to go “climb mountains” and that is what I intend to
do. 187.5 lbs. My once wayward gut is returning to the
confines of my body. On the “To Do” list
for today is call the Tattoo artist for some information. Last night we saw a production at CSC
(turning out to be our favorite venue these days) of “Prometheus Bound.” Awesome spectacle of the old Greek classic,
with a new translation by director James Kerr, and with the Powerfully disturbing image of a near naked, bloodied black man bound
by oversized chains defiant in the face of his captors and Zeus the
almighty. Giving quarter neither to
himself nor the audience, He rails against the Fates and Furies themselves with
prophesies of human kind’s rise and the fall of Gods. David Oyelowo at once fetishises and embodies
the plight of us all “bound” by our beliefs and desires, our visions of the
world as it is and as it will be. To
watch him struggle against his unbreakable bonds is to witness the struggle of
us all to break the yoke of tyrannical oppression invisible on the surface of
our existence, yet ever present in the subliminal world of domination and
slavery. The set was bare platform with
great chains suspended from the roof trusses, six inch links of polished steel,
three quarters of an inch thick with devilish manacles around the waist and
wrists, the chorus of beautiful women draped in black all by Paul Wills, simply
elegant AND evocative. Who knew Greek
could be so much fun? Well done Aquila
Theatre Company!
4/9/07
As my
character I am asking myself questions about the relationship Half may have had
with his mother, especially following the traumatic events leading to his hasty
departure and epic travels. Below is a
letter Ewell may have written to his mother in the months after he took to the
seas.
May 10, 1987
Dear Mom,
I am writing you just
to let you know that I am fine and have gone to work on a ship. I want to make sure that you are going ahead
with your plan to leave Dad. I hope you
have already done it. I am sorry I am
not there to help you. Since I did not
hear anything I guess he’s not dead after all.
Please move as far away from him as you can so I can visit you
soon. I have met lots of new friends.
One guy, Pete, is teaching me everything I need to know about being a Seaman
First class. Pete is older, a lot older,
like forty or something and he likes Jazz.
He says Jazz is the only pure music.
He plays lots of tapes when we are not working on the ship. He has been around the world something like a
million times and tells me about all of the places we are going to see. Right
now we are headed for the
Love, your son,
Ewell (HALF!)
4/8/07
April
is indeed the cruelest month, but not for the reasons T.S. Eliot proposed. There’s very little breeding of dead
lilacs. It’s been right cold, yet
beneath the surface of the chill, a frozen spring, icy and clean is attempting
to purify this polluted world. I have
been pushing myself lately and making too many creepy discoveries. I am creeping myself out trying to keep the
“creep factor” to a minimum. I’m not a
creep, I am a man. A man who for the
first time in his life is discovering the changes to his body once transient
and malleable are now become more
entrenched and permanent, much to my chagrin.
This but serves to fire my ambition whey-by I hurt me further and more
painfully as punishment for my idleness.
Other than that everything is fine.
3/31/07
Last
night we had downtown
3/29
So this
physical transformation thing is beginning to take effect. It is not so noticeable on the outward appearance
yet, but inside there is a leaner, stronger, more alive Mark David Ransom. He is awake, and I can feel him inside this
suit of me I am wearing. Can you see the
real me? Can you? Jesus asked “what is truth”. Is that the same as asking what is real? I feel differently about myself but I know
the world perceives me in its own way, a way I have not yet managed to
completely master. That is the gift of
the actor, when your character can be communicated through your body. Be committed, be present, relax, communicate
and trust yourself. Who I am is the
possibility of Trust, Love and Creativity.
WORD.
3/26/07
I’m a
little low energy today; I have the Monday morning blahs I guess. Lots of
mundane, yet pivotal, organizational work ahead. Organize the mess on my desk, organize the
banking situation, organize the dirt and dust on the floor into the vacuum
cleaner. It’s an actor’s life for
me. On a more exciting note, my TAT
stencils have arrived. A brief history
on how and where Half got each is in the making.
3/23/07
Even
though I have highlighted my script I should not yet start memorizing lines
since a new draft may be in the works.
(Oy!) The director has informed
me that she and the playwright have been to the bar in
3/22/07
I feel
like I want to cut off my own hands, like I want to change my skin, like I want
to deny my DNA. This is the character
for those of you who are afraid. This is
Ewell. He is disgusted by his history;
he has removed himself, selfishly, from society for society’s own good. The rise and the fall of the rough sea has
been the only thing strong enough to quell the torment inside. He would go out on deck during violent
storms, volunteer for the most dangerous watches, made the most money which he
quickly spent in port on the most…pathetic whores, the ones most sailors would
pass up. Sometimes he would just talk
with them, if that was his mood. Many he
counseled to try another path in life, that this was not their way. How many listened? He didn’t know. Something about their desperate plight gave
validity to his own. He took solace in
their pain and misery.
3/21/07
All of
my life I have been living in the Bathos-sphere, where high trickles down and
meets the low bubbling up. I am in the
middle, the middle of the road the middle class, mediocre. Laughing stock would be a compliment. But this is no longer about me. It’s about Ewell. I get to be the victim of another man’s
chimera for a time. Ewell, named for
Ulysses, rather than live in the middle, chooses the extreme; he would rather
live on the very edges of civilization than live under a tyrant. I have a piece of nylon rope that I have
begun to practice with, practice my “seamanship”. Using it on a stick is difficult, because it
does not bite like hemp rope. The half
hitch, for which I’ve taken my own name, likes to slip. I have been thinking about what “K” thinks
when she first sees me playing with rope, does it get her excited? Does K stand for Kink? Does the rope excite her? I wonder.
In May at
3/20/07
SPRING. It is only a day away and that
means for me a workshop production of the original play “Half” by Greg Lemoine. Jennifer and I will play star crossed
lovers. What follows in my web-log will
be a documentation of my preparation. Half aka Ewell is a misanthropic
prodigal son returning home after twenty years of roaming the seven seas as a
merchant seaman, an able bodied seaman no doubt, a mere boy when he left, he
returns now a thirty five year old man carrying all of the baggage that sent
him abroad in the first place. I have
been researching merchant marines, TATs which are Temporary Airbrush Tattoos,
and begun my physical transformation from a fat lazy building inspector, a role
I have enjoyed for the past several years running, to a lean, hungry, suicidal
maniac in love with the sea, tortured and tormented by his past and uncertain
of how he can possibly acclimate himself to fit into “normal” society. Today I weighed in at 189.0 lbs I had half
(no pun intended) of one of my brother in law’s scones for breakfast.
Please make
a note on your calendars for the end of May and the start of June 2007 for five
exclusive bare bones workshop performances of “Half”.
3/12/07
The Elite Theatre of New
York (Formerly known as the New York Public Theatre) is currently offering
William Shakespeare’s King Lear with Kevin Kline in the title roll, but of course
no one of the general public will ever see it since it is completely sold out
for its entire extended run. Just thought I would pass this
information on to you. Why am I
bitter? Because it is my wife’s birthday
and the one thing I would like to give her is likely an impossibility, unless
of course I go through a scalper who is a member of the general public and will
make a general killing on the mark up of said ticket for which if we wait and
the play goes to Broadway (not bloody likely) we can pay the same price for an
uncomfortable seat in a real theatre instead of an uncomfortable seat in a
converted library. It seems we are being
squeezed out of the public by the elite which is constantly growing while the
“groundlings” are being systematically phased out completely. Joe Papp brought Shakespeare to the masses;
Oskar Eustis is giving it back to the royals.
Thank the fates and the US Constitution we can still buy the text.
3/5/07
Get it done…my wife says. Meaning get to the
doctor, make sure she sees you today because this pain in the right side of my
chest feels like a mule kicked me. It’s
been a week and I don’t know when else I’ll be able to go to take care of my
health problem since I work tonight, and I will, in all probability, be going
to a funeral this week for my mom’s eldest brother, Rico, as he was fondly
known, was 81 years young, a man of conviction, and a veteran of WW II who
rarely, if ever, spoke about it. He was
a retired civil servant in Baltimore, and my uncle.
First of March 2007
Beware the ides…
It’s not that I am overworked or underpaid
(of course I am,) but this statistic should put things in perspective regarding
our work load at the Department of Buildings:
According to the
daily news brief The Department has received record numbers
of construction complaints, which in 2006 rose to 97,000, up from
47,000 in 2002.
Love Poem to Death
What is this pain
In the right side of my chest?
Is it Death?
Shouldn’t he be
Over
To the left?
I went to the doctor
But she wasn’t accepting
Walk-in patients
After eleven,
It was Thursday
Didn’t Death know
Alternate side of the street
Meant I had to park
My car?
February 27, 2007
A Day in the Life
In
I see the car coming
I wait for it to pass by
Wondering if I will live
Or die
I feel the shrapnel
Pierce my side
I see the flames
Blind my eyes
I hear the explosion
Silence my voice
I smell
Burning hair
And flesh
The car passes by
And I do not die
I stand and I spy
Another car
On the horizon
2/23/07
I adore
Anna Quindlin. Her piece in Newsweek
entitled “Tomorrow, Tomorrow,” is as moving a tribute to Iraq War rhetoric as
I’ve read. I particularly appreciate her
quote of the late Molly Ivins, “We are the deciders”. Problem is
Americans can’t agree (yet) on what to decide, and tomorrow never comes. Since I know President Bush reads my blog (I
called for an increase in manpower in
2/21/07
I have
come home from work this morning, the fountain is fountain-ing, the cat is
curled up in his chair, the pot rack is still hanging pots, I am home. My wife is at work, I won’t see her until
Thursday night, I am working overtime tonight.
It’s almost like having a long distance relationship. We fill our lives with work, working for
the things we want, the home the life, but then is there time to have the life
we are working for? Should I…we, be less
ambitious or more? Should we go for the
beach house, the investment property, the building in
2/14/07 Happy
The
subject is love dear lovers of life, liberty and the pursuit…my cat just
scratched me, we like to play rough sometimes, I still love him. My mom will talk ad-infinitum like that
little girl in the Volvo commercial, and I lover her. My wife is…my wife and she wants to stay with
me for the rest of her natural born life and what’s not to love about that? Love my sisters, love my dad, love the life
I’ve had and am about to have. I love
acting and am about to throw myself “fully into my career.” And on the opposite side of the Janus coin,
the other of the Gemini twin, the left Cancer crab claw…madness, obsession,
possession…
Can’t Call It Love
I can’t call it love when
Love isn’t trying
I can’t call it life
When life isn’t denying
I can’t call it anything
But madness for
You
I can’t call it lust when
Lust doesn’t care
Can’t call it a fling
Or even an affair
Can’t call it anything
But obsession for
You
Can’t call it a dream
You’re standing right there
Can’t call it a demon
Or even a nightmare
I can’t call it anything
But possession
By you
And now a word about what we did for love of country.
First-Class Help
All major print media reported that it took
more than five years, but Mayor Bloomberg has finally vowed to get first-class
health care for the tens of thousands of heroes who responded in the days and
months after the
I am in the WYC registry and have applied for Workman’s Compensation should I develop health problems linked to the work at the WTC site after 9/11. I say again I hope it never develops; I don’t want to be sick. I feel better now than I have in a long time, but I can still notice the changes in my body since that time and I can’t help but think post 9/11 stress and strain has a lot to do with it. My case aside, there are people who toiled there day and night for several months. Sufficient monitoring of the air was never done. We don’t yet know the full long term effects of exposure. I am glad the mayor sees this and supports what must be done for what people did for love of country. It was the front at home for so many months after 9/11 and in many ways it still is. The government must not abandon its troops on the field of this almost forgotten battle.
2/5/07
Good
news is that Mom has pulled through the surgery with flying colors, she’s
healing and waiting for the next step of radiation therapy...”In a bar of a
Tokyo Hotel” has opened at the Abingdon Theatre Complex. Jennifer was the assistant director, I helped
with the set. Opening night party at the Players Club was fun, three martinis!
Work the next day. No problem.
Work Day
We arrive in the neighborhood
Early
Shortly after local
Night-owls have gone
To sleep
Too soon to start work
Yet preparations
Need to be made
Silent as Monks we
Make precise, measured
Movements
Any disruption of which
Draws grumbles of
Disapproval
From grizzled old
Mechanics
Brick must be stacked
Just so
With-in the individual reach
Of each man
Mortar mixed just so
Not wet like slop
Nor dry like clay
But tempered to
The humidity
Of our present day
I am young
Even if the world
Is not so
And I live for 8 O’clock
When I can be
Out On
To watch that beautiful
Woman walk her dog
And the rest
Of the morning show
1/24/07
Three Days of pain…the waiting is the hardest part. All the pre-operation prep work is done and
the procedure will begin today. This is
a very stressful experience; I know first hand what it is like to say “good
luck” to your mom as she is rolled into surgery for the first time. All we can
do is wait now.
9/11 Kin Protest in TV Ads
Newsday, amNew
1/20/07
Wow. It has been quite a few days. First the sad news, the profoundly sad
news…the woman, my wife’s age, lost her battle to cancer. She passed away a few days before the
benefit. We still held it last night at
Tangine, the food was good, the performers were better, and we couldn’t help
but be stunned by the unfortunate turn of events. We celebrated life with song, we did a
make-shift memorial to a woman many of us did not know, but she was young, and
she was pretty, and she should not have died.
My wife is still in
1/15/07
I am
not becoming a republican, but if the object of our leaders is to lead they must
sometimes do unpopular things. I was
against the war in
Happy martin Luther King’s Birthday!
Speaking of cancer,
eDiets.com reports in a piece about beer that among other things:
Beer is good for breasts.
True: Research by scientists
at the Universidade do Porto in
That
along with no cholesterol has me hoisting a few everyday!
As you
may now know my wife has gone to be with her mother to nurse her through the
maze of doctor’s appointments leading up to her surgery. The rapidly declining health of all our
parents has us making more serious choices about diet and exercise.
1/13/07
The big C. It’s a word no one wants to hear
directed at them, or anyone, but like so many unpleasant and deadly things, it
is an ugly fact of life not to be ignored.
Cancer has once again reared its fetid face and is sneering in our
direction. My mother is a breast cancer
survivor, as my now mother-in-law is about to be. I hear it in the voices of our friends, how
much they care, love and support us in this battle, and I just want to say for
my wife, and for her mother…Thank you.
1/11/07
Back in August of 06…you may have read in this very blog the call from this
Democrat (actually I’m registered with Working Families) for more troops in
The Post and New York Times reported that
construction workers at Ground Zero will begin pouring concrete today for the
largest foundation built in the city since the excavation of the site of the
Twin Towers four decades ago. Known as the “east bathtub,” the 4 foot
thick wall of concrete will descend 70 feet to bedrock and stretch a third of a
mile to surround the future site of three of the new towers and the massive new
transit hub between Church and
WTC Bones Tested Again
Newsday, the
1/7/07
A number of thirty year anniversaries are pending!
I’ll do my best not to bore you with all of them, but the
highlights will be forth coming through out the year. No DOB news today as it is the weekend. My shift begins at 3:30pm today. Tomorrow at 7:30pm a screening of the Scott
brooks film “Like A Springsteen Song” will be shown here in town. I have a cameo where I believe I will be
doing a verse from “Booze ‘n Porn”. Very
excited.
If you watch enough TV you can be
easily deceived into believing we are a nation of obese insomniacs with high
cholesterol, diabetes and erectile dysfunction.
Life is good here in the
We have no new year’s resolutions
this year, only predictions. I predict
that I will have completed not one, but two music CD’s this year and compile a
book of poetry and loose weight and get more fit. You heard it here first.
1/5/07
The Sit Up
The desert collaborated
with my hallucination
and offered a volume
of shaman incantations
incarnate as a green
sidewinder Number 6 Train
headed for
Then I woke up
in the middle of the night
to this very strange present
Evil had made its move
drawing me out
into a war in which
there’s no spell
to prove Peace
my gut struggles to leave
my body
it is not glamorous
1/4/07
The News today in building
department land includes a stop last night to a woman’s home on the brink of a
next door excavation in a very old residential part of Bay Ridge. It’s a tragic story; the woman was involved
in a building collapse nearly 20 years ago, she then resided in
More Bones Found at WTC Site
The
New York Times, Daily News, New York Post reported that workers found
nine more human bone fragments in the City’s ongoing search for the remains of
September 11th victims missed in the initial cleanup after the
attacks. Five bones were found in debris from the
New Radio Communications for Emergency Response Agencies
The Daily News and New York Post reported that the FDNY, NYPD and other City agencies will used the same radio frequency thanks to the Vertex walkie-talkie, a new radio that was unveiled yesterday by the Fire Department.
Deutsche Bank: The Building That Won’t Go Away
The New York Times reported that City officials say the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building by the end of this year is critical to progress at the World Trade Center site. That means the 41-story tower will have to start coming down at the rate of almost one floor a week. In 2004, Governor Pataki promised the building would be demolished by 2005. Yesterday Governor Spitzer said through a spokeswoman that he is “confident that the demolition will proceed according to schedule.”
Looking forward…looking back. I am listening to my latest edition of Dylan’s greatest hits Volume II,
a collection I once owned and wore out. A mighty gift from my powerful woman
wife I listen to the past into the future. Reading my hand written journal of
several years (it was started in 04) I read with relish how resolutions of
years gone became predictions of times to come.
(All Along the Watch Tower, If Not For You, Hard Rain)…like this entry
from the January ‘05 trip to The Big Island of Hawaii…
There is no translation
for being here
with her
no verbal equivalent
to the depth of volcanic
oceans
as sunlight breaks
over rough surf
then words swell
like waves
and crash
pounding relentlessly
my lava rock heart
into sand
I grasp for her
When she comes
with-in reach
I hang on
And if I’m clever
She lingers
Just near
My finger tips
And
this verbatim entry from later that same month:
If it’s Super Sunday—it must
be
The
Starbucks is noisy @ 9:30am. Yesterday
Jen, Jeff and I went out to the River Inn @ Glouster Point; we had a positively
sumptuous lunch after which we proceeded to the
1/2/07
Hail and well met my loyal followers, fans, relatives and curiosity seekers. I wish a Happy New Year to you all.
Life is
a marathon as were my holidays. After
working the double X-mas eve and X-mas day I scooped up the cat and everything
else I could remember then took off for points south. I got a chance to stop in on Dad, Sarah and
Sue to drop off some cheer. Proceeding
south the cat and I bonded in a way I wish we hadn’t. In
In an
effort to make this blog more of a news gathering and distribution vehicle I am
including snippets from our daily news briefing complied by the NYC DOB. I will mainly offer items on preservation and
development in and around the city.
War over
The New York Times reported that there is no
end in sight in the war over Public School 64 in the
Preservationists Oppose Plan to
Build Atop
The
For more information you can go to the Buildings website: NYC Department of Buildings
So,
here it is 2007. May it be more
productive than the last year, may we somehow build Peace on earth. Come what may, hope springs eternal.
12/21/06
Where does
14 days of life go to? My boss, Kurt
Hoffmann, is about to leave city service.
He led and taught by subtle (and not so subtle) example and I have
learned so much from him. My return to
continue my education was a direct result of not having landed the position and
for that alone I am grateful to him, but more than that he showed that we can
and do make a difference everyday and the world is as we perceive it, is as I
perceive it. I know that I will miss
him. His best instructions were “Give me
a call,” anytime. Now that option is no
longer available. Hopefully we’ve grown
up enough to know whom to call next.
Exams and school semester are over.
Christmas looms with a promise of new-year and of progress for our world. Peace,
brothers and sisters, cousins and nephews, nieces and children of all
ages. Peace and love uncles and aunts,
fathers and mothers.
12/7/06
Mom… is
going to see Dr. Kim today. She is
really hurting and I hope and pray something can be done. I still have hope, I still pray. I still dream, but I can understand those who
no longer indulge in any of that. When
you hope, when you dream, when you pray, you do not absolve yourself from the
responsibility of such. You are
obligated to live with those values in sight at all times. Yet when you do not
hope or dream or pray, then only your nightmares end up actuating themselves.
12/01/2006
I Study
Dents and ruts
In our resurfaced porcelain
During my bath tub
Bidet
I contemplate the
Fate of a world
Where in a righteous search
For evil
Evil ambushes the righteous
And the guilty party
Is in their own hand
There will be guns
And rumors of guns
But it will not be yet
Thanksgiving 2006
You can get anything you
want at JC’s restaurant! (Excepting Johnny!)
We woke
up early after a night of no sleep due to anxiety about the trip and an over
active feline. It was rainy and the
balloons maybe were not going to fly for the first time since 1972 (or was it
three?) in the Macy’s Parade. However we
flew and made it to DC despite the rain and wind to spend Thanksgiving with my
Dad. My sister and her husband swept the
cobwebs out of an un-used oven (that’s another longer story about my little
sister Sue who had gone with her husband and little daughter to visit her
in-laws.) Dad, not being fit to travel,
was a bit under the weather, but being the trooper that he is he put up with
the high spirits of his son and other daughter and their respective spouses. My
brother in law expresses himself through his culinary sophistication. He shows his love with a steaming bowl of
turkey soup. My sister shows her love in
Goddess like fashion as she tirelessly moves about the Northeast from my mother
to my father bringing caring, nurturing and support where ever she goes. She is a true and gifted leader. They made for us a feast in
11/20/06
Are you ready?
Are you ready for the next
disaster?
Is preparedness all we’re after?
This is not what I dream
When I dream of Peace
If the end is so near
Then I’m nearer release
When will man understand
Love is not a disease?
I follow the letter of law
But not the spirit
For that I can be held
In contempt
By hypocrites
In power at the moment
In the land of the free
And the tax exempt
11/13/06
The Thirteenth! It has become a magical anniversary
for me. In another lifetime on a cool
rainy Friday the 13th I consummated a seduction started in the
bowels of my debauchery. We visited
places that no longer exist. I was a
loner then, a shaman and a freak. I’ve
sublimated those characters now to serve mankind as best they can. It’s a rainy cool day today, it is not June,
there’s no full moon and I am not alone.
Surrender Dorothy
The passion of this Love
Has quelled
Solidified and settled
Like sediments
Buried deep
That metamorphoses
Into slate
And then marble
And on into a proper
Gem
Sentimentality
Has been dislodged
By a constant deluge
The torrent washed emotion
Out to sea
Where all that remains is
This wide division
A universe
Between you
And me
11/11/06
Mystical magical time.
November 10, 2006
I feel
a weight on my heart today, heaviness I would call a bad case of free floating
anxiety. Maybe it was the Kentucky Fried
Chicken mom and I had. I’m trying to go
vegetarian, but it’s so hard. I told mom
I probably was not going to have kids, none of my own anyway. It just came right out in the course of
conversation. I told her we might
adopt. Then she started talking about
Madonna and Angelina Jolie while pointing to pictures in her People
magazine. I love my mom. She’s having
trouble getting around. It’s hard for
her to clean the house. She lives for
cleaning house. And I’m watching her
fade. Could this be why my chest feels
so tight?
November 8, 2006
Sometimes
I forget that I am a poet. When I get
wrapped up in the going and the getting and the trying to be, I forget…to
be. Long ago I decided I would obsessively
observe this life and obsessively express what I feel it means to be alive
regardless of who may be watching or listening or buying what I say. I don’t make the safe, popular choices. It shows in my work. I routinely go too far. Boundaries are not my thing. I have been exploring ambition lately. Going back to college and taking engineering
courses while working 65 hour weeks on a scattered, syncopated schedule where
sleep is rarely in consecutive hourly units.
Nothing is regular. The time is
out of joint. O, cursed spite, that ever
I was born to set it right. Yet right it
will be set, to my perception, my liking, my terms. I value my vision; I value this life, so much
so that I will not leave it without contributing my unique perspective. We are all dust. Yet in our dignity we can find the tremendous
value in the least of us. In truth there
is no least, the least is all there is.
November 6, 2006
Night Inspection
I watch another moment pass
And fly up towards a full moon sky
On a puff of blue cigar smoke
I am a vampire with a job
Watching over dead things in the
night
Dead buildings consumed
By live fire
Gutted of their furnishings and
Occupants
Hooded men in black cloaks
Move about with pikes and lights
Poking at the now still beast
While silent structures loom
With gaping vented wounds
Their insides very often
Vomited
Out into public view
The entrails of entire lives lie
steaming
On the pavement
And inside rooms
Charred by flame, disfigured by
blasts
From water charged hoses
Watching their final moments pass
And fly
Towards a full moon sky
On puffs of white
Sorrowful smoke
November 5, 2006
Noe
Did you go
To
My friend
To watch the runners
Limping in
Through the November darkness
And in wheel chairs
My friend
Was that you
Cheering there?
November, 2006
I enter
November a little queasy in the stomach and achy in the head…yes I’m…I think
…Halloween Hangover. Oh, mommy, I don’t
feel so good.
October 18, 2006
Time,
time, time says Tom Waits. Bang the drum
slowly…I miss everyone.
Columbus Day 2006
Just
had lunch with my wife at Robin Dubois.
Very sensual in the garden today.
Beautiful weather, we had it to ourselves for a time. Our third anniversary approaches and we talk
realistically of marriage and what it means.
Worked another double, so very tired right now even after coffee and
brunch. Jen is napping, I am here
writing this.
I’m ready to burn
This storied past
The rainy days
A journey into joy
Our wedding
The cola miner
With his bag of chips
Expandable abs
And balloon biceps
The wood waxer
With Lacanian slips
The soda waterer
With thin kissing lips
He has you to thank
For this blissful trip
Into the heavy elastic
Fantastic
That…all that
And much more
Black sand shore
That…
And an appreciation for not dieing
Because there’s possibility still
Living
In your sky blue eyes
October 3, 2006
The
state of network news today is truly in the toilet. I listened as events unfolded today in Nickel
Mines, Lancaster PA and felt sick to my stomach, but when I heard the music
behind the CBS Nightly News w/ Katie…I threw up. How fucking dare they…but that’s what it’s
become, hasn’t it? Info –drama. Fuck you CBS.
I turned on channel 4 and then went to PBS. I guess I’m not in the demographic anyway. They are tearing up Court Street tonight the
Yom Kippur peace giving way to DOT destruction in the name of
construction. Hopefully soon it will be
done. I guess we are the lucky ones;
they started at our building to night. I
know what Paul Rebhan would say…
October…and the trees
are stripped bare of all they wear…Monday
The 2nd. Yom Kippur, very…quiet out on Court Street right
now. We had a great Theatre weekend,
Jennifer and I. I almost didn’t make it
through the Hairy Ape awake as I had
very little sleep Friday night, what with the crane incident and all. Add a full day of classes Saturday and only
the magnificent Eugene O’Neil could hold my attention. Then on Sunday it was a masterful Richard II with Michael Cumpsty in the
title role. Bravo CSC and Brian Kulick.
Then last night our good friends Jill and Kelly (or Kill and Jelly as I often
transpose) dropped by to liven up the evening perfectly. Weather outside right
now is drop dead gorgeous, just like our friends! I take this moment to commemorate
my Aunt Jo’s 75th birthday and the passing of my cousin, Sandra’s
husband Rob. Here now…words fail me.
Tuesday 9/26/06
Worked the double, one tour for me and another for Lloyd. Very tired right now, but not about to lay down. Set up my new drawing board and have been practicing my lettering. Saw mom today, she is in real pain and I am…again …so helpless to ease it, I mean literally go into her body and rearrange some biology so my 77 year old mother does not have to lay down for half the day. Went to get her car inspected, wore my step father’s shirt, felt his love. He was a great man Carl Annibale, let me get that on the level in writing right here. He loved my mother and I will always love him for that. Have so much material. Enough for two entries, so here goes…9/26/2006
Can’t Call It Love
I can’t call it love
Love isn’t trying
I can’t call it life
Cause life isn’t dying
I can’t call it anything
But madness for
You
I can’t call it lust
Lust doesn’t care
Can’t call it a fling
Or even an affair
Can’t call it anything
But obsession for
You
September 18, 2006
Things Not What They Seem
All my words join a pantheon of rhetoric
I toe the line between patriot and heretic
Not sure I can find the common ground
Without this ugly truth I’ve found
But when I see the beauty in your eyes
I forget all the subtly blatant lies
Wish I could stay there all the time
Cover the dead with roses and lime
September 17, 2006
The sun
is brightly shining through our windows giving the Fichus tree branches a much
welcome drink. All is quiet here on a
Sunday. Jen is on the phone with Bill,
I’m still a bit groggy from a wonderful, peaceful night of sleep. Sleep can not be taken for granted since I
get so very little quality time in the sack.
I don’t have work until Tuesday and I can concentrate on school, my
construction drawing and material strengths. It’s early in Cobble Hill so not
much traffic. It’s like Sunday. Time to pray. I pray for
September 14, 2006
Spent a
boat load of money today on gifts for the wife in celebration of her passing
her 2nd exam, and for drafting supplies. Worried about money for this schooling that
supposedly will help me make more money?
Everything is so confusing.
People come and go so quickly here.
I am going mad and can’t sleep, worried about the separation of Church
and State. Here’s an example of the
consequences:
O say can you see
Our Father which art in Heaven
By the dawn’s early light
Hallowed be thy name
What so proudly we hailed
Thy Kingdom come
At the twilight’s last gleaming
Thy will be done
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
On earth as it is in Heaven
Through the perilous fight
Give us this day
O’er the ramparts we watched
Our daily bread
Were so gallantly streaming
And forgive us our trespasses
The Rockets red glare
The bombs bursting in air
As we forgive those who
Gave proof through the Trespass
That our Flag
Was still against us
And lead us not
There
Into temptation
But
O say does that
Star Spangled Banner
Yet deliver us
O’er the land of the free
From evil
And the home is the kingdom
Of the brave
And the glory
Now and forever and ever
Amen?
September 11, 2006
I am
indeed grateful to the fates to be alive and writing this to all of you. Despite the increasing politicalization of
the day, it’s still one where I remember ordinary people doing extraordinary
deeds in the face of real life horror.
My faith in the goodness of humanity was fixed in those hours, days,
weeks and months since. The way we look
at each other, talk to each other has significantly changed, but I will never
forget the goodness, the kindness, or the grief. It was a Passover of sorts, a
resurrection. I am thankful for all the
love I’ve made and all the love I’ve taken and given. Though
9/11/06
I remember exactly
What I was wearing
Wool-rich shirt
A plaid short sleeve
Un-tucked
Tiny leather patch
Over the breast pocket
Susan bought me
A pair of shark skin slacks
That Joey Gippetti
Handed me down
A pair of too tight
NIKE snookers
Jennifer bought me
Ones that had marched
The miles to a
Green sand beach
In
I remember everything
Each moment
Each chilling moment
Since the plane flew by
My office window
September 6, 2006
Time
flies. Like a rocket to the moon, I
thought it was June, but a big balloon just told me it was fall after the
ball. Spent a long weekend with dad,
trying to keep food in his frail body, we caught up on the old movies. Can you believe I never saw Paul Newman in
“The Hustler”? Or “Mr. Smith Goes to
August 30, 2006
I’m
writing to get ahead of myself because I’m going to be away for a few days over
the weekend. I’ve been reading the
journals of Jack Kerouac Windblown World back
when he was 25, 26, 27 years old. He
sounds a lot like what I sound like now which speaks volumes for his maturity
or my lack there of. He too is
cautiously optimistic and religious in his hope for a better world. I read a great chunk while waiting on the
Bursar line to pay my tuition at City Tech.
Glad I brought a book. My classes
start Saturday September 9th and I’m excited after the whole last
minute procrastination thing. I finally
overcame my inertia and registered for courses hopefully having to do with the
building trades this time, though I did enjoy the challenge of algebra and
geometry, trigonometry and logarithms, my brain is becoming a bit inflexible
when it comes to such abstract thought.
I’m no longer the sponge I was years ago. It has been dark for days with rain here and
Jennifer’s big day is the 31st.
After tomorrow we’ll know if the next few months will be drudgery or if
it will be an exciting moment in history where she proposes her dissertation
which will add to the pool of knowledge and scholarship useful for all the
world now and for times to come.
August 30, 2006
A life
lived in public is a tricky thing, of course I censor myself. Sometimes I say things just to see who might
be reading, sometimes I get comments from my friends and family, most often I’m
left to wonder what kind of impact my public journal makes. I work at being
spontaneous and authentic, so difficult in a world of spin, but if I can’t be
honest here, where can I be honest? I’m
waiting for Jennifer. This is the week
of her Oral Exam. No she is not going to
the dentist (we can’t find one in this city both affordable and decent). The Oral Exam is part of her Ph. D trials at
the
August 29, 2006
When a
fire fighter dies in one of our buildings I take the news personally. I knew Lt. Carpluk from a job we did almost
across the street from the fire house a while back. A worker had become trapped in an un-shored
excavation when loose soil fell in on him.
The worker was rescued and survived thanks to the efforts of the
FDNY. This was a case where the
contractor was trying to underpin the adjacent property in the proper manner
and the pits being dug to install the form work for the concrete were too
narrow and deep without shoring and the lot itself too small for the size
equipment being used. There are other
incidents with less happy results and a report today about the lack of teeth in
Buildings enforcement is something we as inspectors have complained about for
years. Ours are the faces that get
laughed in as we try to maintain stop work orders, curtail illegal week-end
work or force a derelict landlord to correct violations. Ours are the eyebrows that rise when we see
repeat offenders get issued more and more building permits. We are the ones who face assault in the
course of doing our duty. All of this
pales in comparison to the danger first responders face when entering any building
in
August 27, 2006
You can
always tell when I’ve be listening to NPR because you get highly politically
charged entries like the last which only polarize us further in to camps and
under flags with our differences thrust
in front and center instead of aside where we can see our common ground. We went to visit Paul yesterday at the Anada
Ashram. We met the swami, Dr.
Patel. He is 83 years old, looks 60, and
is a joy to behold. He, too, had a
political opinion. He carries the scar
of a British made bullet in his right knee from when he was 12 years old and
snuck out to a demonstration led by Mahatma Gandhi, but his core beliefs are in
our human-ness, that fallibility is part and parcel of our perfect
imperfection. Dr. Patel is a believer in
Gandhi and non-violent resistance. He
says “we are all at a different zip code, but there is only one Post Office” as
he points to the sky. “It is when we
believe there is a different Post office, that’s when we have the problems.”
August 24, 2006
As many
of you who read this page on a regular basis know: I am opposed to war. The idea of it sickens me on a human
level. Man killing man is wrong. I often say that cruelty is what separates us
from the beasts and war is our cruelest invention. That being said I would like to send a
message to my fellow Democrats with aspirations to Senate seats or even the
White House. With regards to the
August 22, 2006
Wild Iron Slave
Yeah
Out on the street
They throw the sound
Around
In an effort to
POUND
Me
Into audio
Submission
Submission transmission
Television supervision
Transition
Somebody give me
An ACT
Of contrition
Keep my face from the
Facts of tradition
Want to win my race
To the edge of Perdition
And back
Forgive them
Father—the leaders of the Free Bird
FATHER
THEY KNOW NOT
WHAT
THEY
WHY
THEY
HAVE FORSAKEN
US
Out on the street
The summer bleeds
The stone and concrete
Takes what it needs
Sometimes I look at myself
Like I will never be free
From the tenacious demons
Coveting me
Submission
Nuclear fission
Decision
Procreate or die
Out on the street
The sirens scream
Since September
Submission
To the Defender
Surrender
Fools
SUBMISSION
Is futile
Fruitless
Useless
Like Ulysses
I travel the globe
In my mind
Like the book of Job
Landmines
Take my legs off as they blow
Once upon a time
In
That was the biggest problem
The manic energy
Overtakes me
I am lost
At sea
Don’t mistake me
I know what I mean
When I say
Don’t forsake me
Lord, don’t fail us now
I say
LORD!
DON’T FAIL
US
NOW!
KA-POW!
THE EXPLOSIONS
Go off in my head
I can’t tell
If I’m alive or dead
The river flows
But all I see is red
I scream for PEACE
I get war instead
I POUND
Myself
Mistaking pain for pleasure
I’ve bound
Myself
To prove freedom’s a treasure
I torture
Myself
With inaccurate measure
Submitting to the Commandment that says:
THOU
SHALT NOT KILL
(Love thy neighbor as thyself)
LOVE PEACE ROCK OUT Y’ALL
August 21, 2006
Manic energy.
It comes in the Fall for me. Full
moons and crisp cooling nights, my summer basil dies, and my dark imagination
comes alive.
August 17, 2006
Way
back when I was a senior in High School I, in my YOUNG,DUMB and FULL of…haze, I
asked two
girls to my
prom. Well actually I said yes to
one who asked me
and then I asked my girlfriend at the time.
Crazy, stupid yes all of the above and it seems I’ve been getting mixed
up ever since. Not ever feeling complete
with that fiasco, Oh yes, I did end up going to the prom with the girl I asked and the one who asked me sat in the
front seat of the car with her date, my girlfriend’s big (and I do mean 250 lbs
big) brother. Needless to say I ended up
drunk and throwing up all over my rented tux.
In an effort to celebrate and exorcise the demon of those days I’ve
written the following ditty.
Non-Traditional Irish/American Drinking Song
(Her Thighs Were On Fire)
(spoken)
When I was a young man
Young and full of the devil
I was looking for guidance
But there was none to be found
In my confusion
I turned to the bottle
But the bottle I spoke to
Never uttered a sound
(Sung to the tune of an old Irish Folk song)
From my knees I was praying
To the heavens above me
I prayed to the heavens
To show me a sign
From the air there came falling
Two pieces of moonstone
So lovely and glowing
And sure to be mine
Chorus
O Her thighs were on fire
With me in the desert
Water, water everywhere
And not a drop to drink
Her eyes were like stars
Deep set in the night sky
And I wept to behold them
As I stooped on the brink
When I ran to the spot
Where I thought they had landed
I found there two ladies
Beautiful and fair
The one hair of golden
And eyes like the ocean
The other a redhead
With a mystical flair
Chorus
Together they bound me
With spells then unspoken
With spells and cantations
They withered my will
One glance from the ocean
One word from the temptress
And all of the world
Became perfectly still
Chorus
Her thighs were on fire
Her mind went a racing
Her body it flew
Through the blistering sun
And I’ll follow them both
One God weary traveler
Oh I’ll worship them both
“Till my days are done
Chorus
August 13th,
2006
I…know I promised to regale you with
stories from Chi-ca-goo, but today I have something else on my mind. What’s in a name? What does spelling have to do with it? Can somebody please tell me the correct
spelling of the group
My Poetry
Has all the subtlety
Of a sledge hammer
Mashing Concrete
Back into the dust
From whence it came
Not unlike
The shock and awe
Of an air bombardment
In a wayward military
Campaign
How can I stop the world
From killing herself
With what I have to say?
How can I let
The carnage
Happen all night
And all day
I want to heal the world with words
Can you help find the magic ones
That will make war
Go away.
August 11, 2006
So…still on the first we take a break
after the reading rehearsal. I adventure
back to the hotel on the
Next
day will be one in which I walk
August 8th,
2006
Greetings,
hail, and well met. We have arrived back
to the sweltering, humid international mess that is
The
play, Not
Enough Air, written
by Masha Obolensky, is based on Machinal by Sophie Tredwell and seemed right at home
in big-city-land such as Chicago with
references to the “Trib” and the “Trial”.
Diana Looser directed us with skill and flair providing cues and even a
visual prop. The ground floor space is
spectacular, sunny and open surrounded by storefront windows with huge shades
that move on rails so you can configure spaces. This day it was wide open with
our backs to a closed shade. The microphones and music stands were arranged in
row on a low platform stage and worked stylistically with the scenes of radio
announcers and hosts. Thankfully the A/C
worked brilliantly as well for this was the hottest day in
The
play follows the artist Tredwell as she uses the real life 1920’s murder trial
of Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray for the basis of her play Machinal. The moral dilemmas associated with her
profession as a journalist, of using the misfortune of a woman in tragic
circumstances in the creative process, her alternative lifestyle in marriage to
fellow writer William “Mac” Mc Gheehan, the intrusiveness of the media (print
and radio at the time) are all meticulously woven by Obolensky with researched fact and
cunning conjecture to produce a truly interesting and sardonic look at
what it means to be a gifted, caring and provocative woman in the modern world.
(to be continued…: )
July 31st
2006
The
heat is on. I am in a strange place
mentally and physically. The mystery
rash is lingering. I hoped it would be
gone for our trip to the
I wait
For my
When I lay
My body
Alongside yours
And press my face
Into your bosom
My tears
Dampen the fabric
Of your old blouse
The lid has been lifted
From a stone jar
To reveal a room
Of water
The mist of which
Scents the air
With peace
And forgiveness
July 12th
2006
Who
needs to go all the way to
July 7, 2006
Last night…well early this morning…I was working for the city. You
can learn all kinds of things on the MARCH with the NYPD. I learned how to go about making a complaint
for a barking dog. Found a swank little
place on Mott, checked the old Knitting Factory on
July 5, 2006
The 5th of
July…a rainy day? Wow, buckets of rain. A sorry welcome for our friends from the west
coast. We had a spectacular 4th
of July together here in the hood, spent the day catching up, the evening
trying the new Mexicali and capped it all off with a view of the fireworks from
our rooftop in Brooklyn. Fun, fun, fun. Really glad to have D&D here for a couple
of weeks, we are going to check out the Petersons at Joe’s Pub Monday
night. Hope to see you there!
June 30th,
2006
Hola, hello. I am
happy to see you. Jell-o. Shell-o. Bellow.
Below you shall
find the blog, the life, the meanderings of my mind. Blind I am in my fourth eye. Aye, I said, it was my word….HEY…later this
month I will be in a reading for the
June 24, 2006
Dear Loyal Fans…and family members, friends, lovers,
concubines, paramours, co-workers, colleagues, peers, cohorts, and fellows…I
celebrate another year here on this good Earth lucky…oh, so lucky to be among
such fine people in these troubled times.
I have felt and received an outpouring of love and attention the likes
of which I had not noticed before. Thank
you all for your wishes, cards, gifts and thoughts. I look ahead to
exponentially forwarding the vibe.
June 18, 2006
For those of you who
don’t know…I was born
on Father’s Day. My mother gave birth
to me in a building converted to condos many years ago. My father was pleased to finally have a
son. He calls me his buddy, his bud and
has taken me into the garrulous places of the world where hardened men and
women would give me knowing smiles as if this bar room on this sunny day was as
good as it was going to get in this life.
There was always the hint of a glint of some hope that they could be
wrong and that for me things might just turn out differently, but then they’d
laugh and order another gin and tonic.
When my father fell so much fell with him. Enormous pride and dignity staggered him to
his feet and he has hobbled along ever since.
The meaning of pain is etched in the deep creases of his face. The essence of failure pooled into the
crystal blue of his eyes; however my father’s story is not one of despair, but
one of triumph. The fall was both
metaphorical and literal. Before it he
had the world by the tail, with movie star good looks and a personality to
match, he charmed his way through the still harsh existence of post war
June
4 Letter to King Freak
Who are all these people who think they are in
5/17/06
I am
just a lazy ass. Where have I been? Where have I been? What have I been doing? All the domestic stuff plus learning
trigonometry. Final Friday and I’m so
whipped from working all night long. I
miss my baby, miss my youth. Miss my
identity, miss the truth, miss my Flower, and miss my Routh. The sun is shining on this lovely cool
spring afternoon and
4/27/06
No one wants to pan “United
93”. Neither do I. I am not going to see it either. So what I’m going to pan is the idea of the
film. To me it couldn’t come at a
worse time. Just when it seems we are
making headway with reflection on how we are waging the war on terror, what’s
going wrong, what’s going right, just when we are getting close to an
accountability from our government on how it has bogged us down in Iraq, just
when Iran is shaking things up with a threat of nuclear armament, a convenient piece of propaganda in the name
of “United 93” comes along, with the
blessing of still grieving family members no less, to whip up the frenzy of 9/11 all over again.
I don’t know if it is
It may come as a surprise to the
film makers but there are actual war-mongers in positions of power in our
government. Hawks, we used to call them
in the 60’s and 70’s though that term denigrates a beautiful wild animal, people who are in the business of war who want to wage it under any circumstances and by
any means. “United 93” and the sentiments it can evoke is just the sigh of
relief they need so that the pounding of relentless war drums can continue.
The actions taken by the passengers
of that jet take their place beside the legendary actions of Patrick Henry,
Crispus Attucks, Fredrick Douglass and millions of unheralded soldiers and
civilians who’ve braved certain death to resist the yoke of tyranny.
I am not an anti-war activist, sad
to say. I do believe we need to fight, and there are many ways to fight, for
our way of life. I just have zero
confidence in those who are currently in charge of that fight and this film at
this time serves only to justify their incompetent positions.
Lastly, I am simply appalled that
the terms “9/11 Tragedy” and Box-office” are now linked.
4/26/06
So much
to talk about…but really feel like going back to bed. Had a rough shift the other night, but it
could have been worse. Things stuck in
the open position: Pros and Cons.
Things Stuck in the Open Position
Good
Things Bad
Things
Subway
Turnstiles Gasoline
Pump
Toll
Gates Interest
Rates
Dance
Floors Screen
Doors
All
Night Diners My
Pants Zipper
My
Heart Engine
Throttle
Dictionaries Booze
Bottle
My Mind Pandora’s
Box
4/14/06
The new film about Bette Paige is out and I’ve seen the
advertising. I can’t help but be
reminded of a woman with whom I am oh so obsessed. Every one knows who she is. She knows who she is. I’ve been riding this rock too long and now
as I hurtle towards middle age, obsession is not a nice word anymore. I look around the subway car and all the
women look so young, and I feel young as they, yet looking in the mirror I see
an unattractive image staring out at me.
Who the fuck invited you? You pot bellied, bug eyed pasty faced old man.
Go away. Please. Back to my not so nice
obsession. I guess the very nature of
obsession is that un-full-fill-ment is part and parcel of the equation. I thought I could lose the lost feeling, but
everyday it grows stronger. I am not as
physically addicted to sex as I once was, but my mind has yet to receive the
message.
4/12/06
My
friend Paul, My Pal, RENTAPAL, Quiet Party, Noe and Hell raiser. Thanks for restoring
my
blog.
3/26/06
It is the dawning of a new era in computing for yours truly
and family (aka Jennifer). The 8 year
old Gateway sits peacefully on the floor of our office/living room here in
3/22/06
Sometimes I Think
I’d like to spend all my money
On expresso coffee and cigars
Spend all my time writing poetry
At diner counters and
in
Lay with my lovers naked
Beneath the summer
And what a peaceful world this could be
If I could convince you all
To hang with me
3/14/06
Dear
Dad,
I can’t believe it’s going on two
months since I last saw you! Time moves
so fast. I watch the hours flow and
there’s now way to stop them or even slow them down. Not much to report other than this Math class
is a bit more demanding than the first.
I have it all on Fridays, four hours of it. Jennifer’s boss, DD, the hot blonde from the
video, wants to fly us to
We have been going to quite a bit of live
theater. It’s part of Jennifer’s work
for school. She has to stay
current. I’ve started going to the gym
at least three times a week. Trying to
stay in shape for the summer. I will
probably do some work for Pat and John and my partner, Damon, needs a stoop
built in his back yard. There is also a
chance we may nip off to
Somewhere along the line real soon I
hope we are going to be able to drop by and see you and I hope you are feeling
better. I can’t express how much you
mean to me. We both love you very much
and want to see you soon.
Your Buddy,
March 9, 2006
Dear Fans,
I may not be able to
write to you here for a while. Our
computer has cancer and is slowly dying.
This morning while trying to delete all the Spam in my Outlook mail box,
I was still receiving the vile sperm (I call them sperm because they are
relentless little swimmers trying to penetrate the sanctity of my bank
account), yes I still had them incoming as I deleted them. They were now coming
in faster than I could get rid of them.
I never thought they could win, I thought I could outlast them. Thought I could fight them until a law or a
firewall that really worked could be devised.
I was wrong. This had never
happened before. The e-mails coming in faster than I could delete them, I’ve
been wrong before, but that’s another entry.) In a panic I destroyed my
Outlook. I deleted Mark@MDRansom
from the face of my computer, and for all intents and purposes, from the face
of the earth. I don’t know if it will
ever return. But the damage has been
done to our computer. Soon we will have
to put her down. Our trusty Gateway has become a filth encrusted tunnel letting
the scum and excrement of the Internet violate our ever-eroding privacy. In the mean time please use mdr338@yahoo.com
to e-mail correspond with me.
March 1, 2006
Wow. Ash Wednesday
already. A day where we Catholics
acknowledge the brevity of life and the worthiness of sacrifice. I’m no better than the Dunkin’ Donuts worker
who died last month, save for that I am alive to write this now, and so I
shall, so I shall. We continued going
to theater at a rapid pace last month seeing friend’s productions of Buried Child and Greyhounds. Last week we finally saw John Patrick
Shanely’s Doubt and Adam Rapp’s Red Light Winter. The two
plays were contrasts in misogyny where he-men rule with somewhat tragic
consequences. In Doubt there are plenty
of doubts, but one uncontested truth is the institutionalized misogyny embodied
in a 1964
On the other hand
Adam Rapp employs them all to bring us the garrulous character of Davis whose
prowess with women is legendary, whose heart is big as the ocean is wide, a
star on the rise at his profession, a smoker, a joker and a midnight
toker. I bet he was a picker and a
grinner too, but the play was long as it was.
Of course
Both these plays use blatant misogyny
to hammer home the point that macho men have all the power and that sensitive,
intelligent caring effeminate men (which some Catholic nuns were mistaken for)
have none. Ok. Now I feel better. I got that off my chest. Hey, I can’t help it if I’m macho.
February 9, 2006
He stood his ground
And gave his life
Made the ultimate
Sacrifice
For freedom
Manned his post
In front of
Creams
Whole wheat old fashion
And coffee with dreams
Of the American better…
He was gunned down
By an armed attacker
A man, a hero, a
Dunkin’ Donuts worker
February 4, 2006
Jumped back into theater going
in a huge way this past week attending shows at each end of the Off Broadway
spectrum. One play headed for Broadway and the other for posterity. Both were quite good and worth the while, but
I was more moved by the lower budget production. One was The
Little Dog Laughed at Second Stage Theater.
I won’t say too much about it other than: it was a polished, sardonic
satire of life in a faster lane than I am used to travelling. The other is Sam Shephard’s Buried
Child at the American Theater for Actors.
Cyndy Marion and the Whitehorse Theater Company do an admirable job with
a tough text and a horrid space. Am I so
rare a person that when I go through all the trouble of getting myself out into
a theater I expect to be moved and challenged in a visceral way? Shephard’s work is powerful on levels I’m
still exploring. His characters for male
actors span the range of one’s career and I look forward to working on his material
again and again. Here are a few excerpts
from e-mails I’ve sent to director Marion and actor Kroll:
Despite the limitations of the space I
thought a great thing happened there. I particularly LOVED the smell of the
corn and the husks, the aroma of carrots freshly peeled, the damp rising from
their greens, a true, real earthy feeling was evoked by those sense memories… I
noticed…the young actors, Stetson as Vince and especially Ginger Kroll as
Shelly. Brilliant bit of casting there… I thought Dodge was spot on and Halie
so good I didn't like her. The music (by Kevin Paul Giordano) was evocative and
well placed. You did justice to the text in word and deed. Bravo, I had a
moving experience.
--- Mdransom <mark@mdransom.com>
wrote:
> Just want to say I enjoyed your performance in
> "Buried Child" last night (Feb. 2nd). Perfect
> casting. You lit up an otherwise dismal space and
> worked well with the cast to bring an awesome, yet
> difficult, text to life. Rock on.
> Mark David Ransom
> www.mdransom.com
Hi Mark,
Thank you for your email- I really appreciate hearing
such an enthusiastic and warm response. It is a
difficult show and we put our blood and sweat into it
every night! Pass on the good word!
Thanks,
Ginger
Well here I am doing my best to pass on the good word. Go experience
Buried Child in all its
twisted glory. Some old hands and some
rising stars combine to bring a surreal landscape rich with history and wide
open spaces into a small room on the 4th floor over a police
precinct in
__________________________________________________
January 31st 2006
I’m guessing (or hoping) you are bored with the x-mas story
by now. We’ll pull it out next year for
a feel-good, warm fuzzy. Let’s talk the
first month of ’06. Working backwards, I
got my new reading glasses today.
There’s a new girl at the mailbox place and I’m going to have to flirt
with her. She’s a fox. Speaking of fox I saw one last weekend in
http://www.myspace.com/mdransom
December 24, 2005
Christmas
story.
The events I am about relate are true. They happened last night. We were in the office after our route in the
field. The work was pretty much buttoned
up and I was going to bring my red record binder back to my locker in the
hall. When I turned the corner I noticed
a figure in an off white hooded parka
standing in front of an open locker.
It was my locker. I could see my green duffel bag emerging from behind
the door. Then the person became aware
of me silently approaching and carefully put the bag back. “I didn’t take anything.” He said as we came
face to face. “What are you doing here?”
I asked. He couldn’t have been more than
five foot tall. I just came up to use
the bathroom, and I saw the locker open.
I’m not a thief, I’m just nosey.”
That was the first lie. The lock
may have been unsnapped in the hasp, but the door was definitely closed. “What is your name?” I asked authoritatively
though my heart rate was certainly accelerated.
“Joanie,” she said. “Do you have
any ID Joanie?” I asked in my best cop tone.
“No,” she replied dejectedly. I
flashed her my badge, the one I use on construction workers to get them to
behave. I told her she would have to
come with me. “Can’t you just let me
go? It’s Christmas.” “I’m sorry, I can’t do that.” We rode down the elevator in silence to the
December 22, 2005
Hope we can be laughing about this together soon!
‘Twas the week before Christmas and all
through the city
People are shaking their heads saying “Oh what a pity.”
The Subways and Buses are all parked with care
With hopes transit workers would soon be there.
Young children all snug nestled in their beds
With visions of “NO SCHOOL!” dancing in their heads.
The walkers move faster than cars on
Faces frozen like tangerines stuck in the back of the fridge.
Hack drivers and cabbies all smile with glee
Fare gouging New Yorkers like it was 1970.
And I in my sweat pants, my wife in her pajamas and robe
Had just settled down to watch Harry Potter on the tube.
When out on Court street there arose such a rumble
Our building shook and vibrated I thought it might crumble.
So I sprang to the window to check out all the fuss
And swerving down the road came a huge city bus.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear
But the Mayor and the Governor trying to steer.
They smiled and grimaced and called workers thugs
Equating their actions with those who sell drugs.
But labor and management have returned to the table
To hammer out an agreement, but of that are they are able?
If this morning’s round of negotiations should fail
They are going to throw Roger Toussaint in jail.
How much more of this can our tired feet take?
The MTA would like the union to break.
And one thing about this really not funny
Is
So here’s hoping Santa can battle traffic on his flight
And bring an end to this bitter gosh-awful strike.
But I thought I heard Peter Kalikow as he drove out of sight
Saying Merry Christmas New York, and have a good night!
December 19, 2005
I like the Christmas letter. A summation of sorts, a reason to wax prolific about
…stuff. Monumental year, this. We marked some terrific milestones
personally. For instance I returned to
school and I’m about to pass intermediate algebra (for the second time in my
life). My dad turned 75 years
young. Quite the feat for a man who
lived every day like it was his last and was convinced he would not make it
past 48. I recorded a couple of new
songs and produced some old ones and I am oh, so close to actually putting out
a CD of music for the world to listen to and I am almost
giddy. (I would be positively giddy if it were not for the fact that this effort
is about 25 years late. Oh, well, hey,
relativity works. I am more in love with
my wife and life than ever. I love my
cat. Love my job. Love this stupid city, but most of you know
that. One thing happened, my cousin
finished that video of our wedding in mid July and we are packing it out to
interested parties (at least we hope they are interested). It’s not really a video, more like a DVD
album of photos. We had some fun this
past year. We suffered some setbacks. We started in Hawaii w/ David and Ken,
renovated #3 Provost Drive’s kitchen w/ JC, celebrated the upcoming production
of Greyhounds at a fund raiser with Cheri and John, and our second wedding
anniversary, purchased a new Chevy and put the old Dakota out to stud, and
ended up at an all night jam on the 25th commemoration of the death
of John Lennon with Amy, Clare, Jack and David.
Highlights include our night at the Met with DD Ricks, the Virginia
State Fair with Dominick and Christie, a road trip to Essex with Jill and Kelly
(or Kill and Jelly as I like to lovingly refer to them) Dinner with Donna and
Routh, Thanksgiving w/ Mom and Dad Mobley and. baking cookies with mamma Rose
Annibale on Christmas Eve. I want my
friends and family to know I LOVE THEM AND I WANT THEM TO KNOW I NEED THEIR
LOVE. The world grows increasingly more
dangerous and strange. Without my
friends and our shared vision of a world with possibility I would be lost. Thank you all for the love and the time we
spent together or the time we spent thinking good thoughts about each
other. Lets work to make a better
2006. Love Peace and Folk Rock.
December 7, 2005
It is
11/30/05
We have a rule about working at the computer while under
the influence. However, spell check can
eliminate the most embarrassing of foul ups, and nothing I can say or write can
be construed as life altering. I just
want to say how much I love life. Sick
and crazy as these times may be, I feel I am doing the very best I can. That if I can just love life enough that it
may be what we need to tip the balance of power in the universe to the
positive. This is my fantasy, and
fantasizes may be worthless, but I have made fantasies into reality
before. So I believe, I have faith in
the ultimate goodness of our species.
Our goodness must prevent the ultimate doom of these times. This is what I believe, drunk or sober, we
are flesh and blood, heart and bone, and despite the deluded few, or the
deluded many, we are ultimately good.
And that goodness will prevail.
This is the basis of my faith.
Call it Christian; call it Buddhist, call it fucked up. It is…what it is.
11/12/05
You still there? Good.
Noe and I were having a beer yesterday, toasting the veterans. We got on the subject of happiness. I told him I’d be happy if I were six foot
two. Anyone who knows me knows I’ll
never be that tall. So in fact I never
will be that happy. But that’s no
reason to not make others happy. Just
because my life is not working out like my hallucinations, like my delusions of
grandeur, like my hopes and childish dreams, doesn’t mean I can’t count my
blessings and enjoy the beautiful gifts of this life I do have. Making others happy doesn’t require some
great design, or some plan of pious beneficence. No, it’s as simple as a smile, a kind word,
patience when all around you are impatient, calm when all around are
distraught, bravery when all around are fearful, quiet when all around are
boisterous. Nothing of more effort is
required. I believe in Karma, that what
we radiate will be reflected back at us, that what we send out we will
receive. I still get angry. I still get jealous. I still cry for what
could have been. So sue me. I’m only
human. But with mass murder occurring on
a regular basis this world needs all the good vibe it can get. Those who have militarized the planet will be
quick to point out that but for them we would not enjoy the peace we have. And of course the opposite is also true,
without them there would be no war.
10/13/05
This truck is a legend.... If only it could talk...
the things it's seen, the things it's heard, the
things it has carried, the things that have probably
been cleaned off of it... if it decided to speak it
could have its own 1-truck off-Broadway show....
The new owner should cast it in pewter and enshrine it
on a rotating pedestal atop the show-world
building.... P. Rebhan
The 1990 red Dodge Dakota is history. She went on e-bay, she got donated, she was
last seen spontaneously bursting into flames on
10/5/05
Dear Dad,
It was great to see you Sunday. The Eagles did come back to win that game!
You look really good. I know everyday
must be a struggle, but I hope the pain of your therapy is worth the
reward. As you saw we got the truck. It was a whirlwind process. We went to a dealer on Saturday, the credit
union on Monday, picked up the truck on a Wednesday afternoon and were in
We are going to donate it to a local charity. I still have to call and make the
arrangements. Right now it is parked in
Patty and John’s yard in Suffren. I’ll
be back up there either later on this week or next to paint the deck and
hopefully dispose of the Dakota. Sad to
see it go. For the most part it served
me well for 15 years.
As I cleaned out the toolbox I came across my prize
possessions: all our old slate tools. I
have to send you new photos of the church steeple I did, they completed the copper
portion of the tower and it looks a lot different. The slate is still perfect as the day I laid
it. My toolbox is crammed with stuff I
don’t use, but cannot bear to part with.
I can’t get rid of my tools though.
You never know when they will come in handy. In a couple of years I’ll have a place to put
everything and then I can fill my toolbox with sleeping bags and camping
gear. Jennifer and I love to get away
into the woods!
Well that’s all for now, I’ve got a truck to dispose of and
a Math test to prepare for. Again, it
was great seeing you and I’m looking forward to the party. Keep up the good work Pop. You are in our thoughts.
9/20/05
Test tomorrow. Test everyday.
9/14/05
My father will be 75 in November, but I can’t wait. This came to me last night at 4AM while I was at work.
Dear Dad,
Daddy, it’s the end of the day
The equipment and tools are put away
The lock box is closed
We change out of our work clothes
And turn around to see what we’ve made
At the supper table we pray
Before digging into the food on our plate
When we’re finished I hear you say
“Well that’s another mark on the slate”
Daddy, it’s the end of the day
The ropes and the falls are put away
The gang box is closed
We change out of our work clothes
And turn around to see what we’ve made
Dad, we didn’t always see eye to eye
And it must’ve been hard to watch me fail
But to learn truth from what is a lie
I had to follow my own trail
And now Daddy, it’s the end of the day
The ladders and scaffolds are put away
The shanty is closed
We change out of our work clothes
And turn around to look at what we’ve made
Dad, I’m proud to be your son
Is what I want to say
Weather I lost or I won
You’re with me every step of the way
And now Daddy, it’s the end of the day
The hammers and saws are put away
The toolbox is closed
We change out of our work clothes
And turn around to look at what we’ve made
Yes, Dad, it’s been a hell of a day
9/11/05
So there I was, taking my position along the perimeter of
what once was the north tower of the World Trade Center as part of The Honor
Guard in this year’s 9/11 ceremonies (courtesy of the NYC Department of
Buildings). 60 feet or so below street level, staring up at the huge star
spangled banner fixed to the American Express building in
August
30, 2005
Dear
Dad,
Well, yesterday I did it. I went and registered for a math class at New York Tech. I figure I should tackle the math first. If I can’t hack it it’s best to know right away. I’ve declared a major in Civil Engineering Technology, which is a two-year associate’s degree. If I can’t cut the math I go for the one-year certi