New Eyes

In these days of despair, I turn to the enchantment offered by art and loving friendships. Here I am on the couch writing these words yet the wall behind me is filled with paintings, a drawing, two constructions and a ceramic piece on the far table I haven’t really looked at for far too long.

In fact, some pieces have faded from my mind’s eye altogether the way furniture becomes unseen. Ironic that our most cherished works of art take a position at our backs. When I enter the room, I head for sofa seldom taking in what adorns the wall.

I can name only three of the six pieces without peeking. The largest is an abstract construction by Laddie John Dill of glass, paint and resin which emits an energy field since it was hung almost forty years ago. To one side is a drawing by Daumier of a windy day in Paris, a woman’s dress billowing and two gentlemen holding on to their hats.

The kinetic drive of these two is answered by a deeply shadowed café where a male figure on a stool is playing the bass and two people are deep in conversation in a back booth. The artist, Werner Nienow, has caught and cast a contemplative mood.

On the other side is a non-figurative collage by a street artist in Venice, Italy which spoke to me and still does in ways without words. Above that is another indoor scene of the Rose Café as it used to look when one could sit with morning coffee at a long table for long stretches. This is a watercolor saturated with color. A male figure in the foreground is either reading or writing and three others fill the back space in isolation.

The ceramic piece is a tall, multicolored sculpture which could serve as a vase but that, I think, would debase it. Now, I’m seeing it again as if for the first time. I'm glad it is indescribable, all the more immersive.

I intend to revisit all my walls which vibrate with photos, masks and woodcarvings along with books and artworks. Thank you, Donald, for these new eyes. Now, will you please leave?

 

Tonsils and Other Unwanted

When I was a mere slip of a lad, shortly after Aristotle and Socrates, it was customary to have one relinquish one’s tonsils. I was probably emotionally attached to my tonsil, vestigial as it might have been.

A tonsillectomy was a sort of rite of passage. We were rewarded with an ice cream cone, vanilla, no doubt. This went on well into the sixties until the jig was up. It served no medical purpose other than providing doctors with a new Oldsmobile every year.

The prospect now looms that the Health and Human Welfare Department will be handed over to the least qualified person ever to head a federal agency. If Robert F. Kennedy is confirmed, he would be a public menace.

I don’t know his views about tonsils, but he threatens to dismantle essential safeguards such as the Food & Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health.

This is a man who believes that the Covid virus was designed to protect Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews, while inflicting harm on the rest of humanity. He has publicly claimed that part of his brain was eaten by parasitic worms which might explain his bizarro behavior.

Whether he had swallowed his tonsils as a youngster is still to be determined but his voice is as raspy as Satchmo’s. Yet he toots his horn, propelled on the seat of his pants, with flights of toxic conspiracies.

With his nonsensical prank dragging a dead bear hundreds of miles into Central Park and other lunatic ideas, Kennedy has disgraced the family name, His nomination is unconscionable. One gets the feeling that Trump appointed him just so he wouldn’t suffer by comparison.

If RFK Jr. should restrict the use of early childhood vaccines the consequences would be dire. Over a century of medical progress could be reversed or, at least, halted and we might expect the return of diphtheria, measles and polio epidemics, to name a few. Soon we would be returned to leeches and back plaster. He might even advocate the hemlock smoothie that Socrates drank.                                                                                          

From A to Z

Trying to avoid the contamination by the new regime, I’m on my stationary bike pedaling to elsewhere. Here I am in Africa admiring the four legged-creatures from antelope to zebra, all herbivorous quadrupeds.

The only thing I know about antelopes is that they rhyme with cantaloupes.  And here’s another thing. The word is an umbrella term for a group which include gazelle, impala, and even wildebeest, also known as gnu. They are all undocumented and live happily munching grass in the savannas except when they are running like hell from cheetahs.  

Detroit looks toward four-legged creatures to sell their cars. Neither the Ford Bronco, Chevy Impala nor Dodge Ram could ever compete with the Ford Mustang. The less said about the Pinto the better….and then there’s the Jaguar. But horsepower is still the unit of measure which is an endearing way of honoring the past.

Creationists may argue that zebras got their stripes from the American flag or that God was watching the refs at a Laker game but everyone knows God is really a baseball fan and was fixated on the Yankee pinstripe uniform.

It has long been noted that zebras are social animals. When they congregate, their stripes form what looks to lions as a huge blob and too much to take on. Another more compelling reason for the stripes is that they evolved over millennia as a protection from the tsetse and horseflies.

(You have to admit this is far more interesting than wringing our hands over what went wrong on election night.)

Horses, which lack horse sense didn’t think of stripes and rely on their tail to shoo the flies.  Zebras, with their striped skin, are deemed less inviting to blood-sucking insects. The flies are attracted to solid surfaces because the light waves emitted resemble the light reflected from pools of water where they breed. From the POV of those insects one might say the system is rigged.

Yet zebras, stripes and all, don’t have what it takes for domestication. Horses were feral once also but opted for a barn and steady meal instead. In exchange they had to pull loads of men with whips.

Zebras should be credited as the first to come up with bar codes. They may all look the same to us but each carries a signature on its hide which singles them out to other zebras. In case you are asked what color zebras are, the answer is black with white stripes.      

Whether antelopes eat cantaloupe has yet to be studied.

All life forms evolve to give them the best chance of survival. Mankind seems to be the exception. Our most fearsome predator is ourselves. Four-legged creatures know better than to make such a mess of their habitat.

 

Mourning After

The page is funereal white. I feel the need to fill it up with squiggles that could be buds or birdies, but first some bile.

Did something just die in America or was it a chronic illness only now revealed? I believe Tuesday’s election was a full-body scan showing a long-festering malignancy exacerbated by a megaphone of nostrums causing massive disorientation.

What seemed like a sudden demise is really a pre-existing condition. Perhaps, even a congenital disorder as a consequence of familial misdeeds never addressed. We have yet to wash the blood off our hands from a rapacious past blighted with human bondage.

The underlying cause is systemic with severe maldistribution of needed nutrients. The body politic had grown increasingly sclerotic with an irregular pulse. Organic deficiencies in the bloodstream have long been ignored. Tendencies toward misplaced loathing are not unexpected.

Our free enterprise system yields winners and losers. It has always been thus. Every benefit won by the working class or middle class has been hard fought and earned. Even with new prosperity for many, a large body of aggrieved workers have been left behind.

The usual inequities have been compounded by a bipartisan push to seek cheap labor overseas which has always been the goal of corporations. Jobs vanished with shuttered factories as manufacturing moved offshore. Trump did nothing to confront the problem during his four years in office. Biden has, at least, brought computer chips back to the U.S. 

What we have witnessed, tragically, is a population overthrowing the very forces which offer their best hope. Rage has left them deaf to the menace of his words and blind to his misdirection.  

A new social contract is desperately needed which ensures the health, education and welfare of everyone. Instead, the MAGA program would scrap or weaken the very institutions providing access to the wealth of this affluent nation.

While on life support, we can still live our lives of compassion, creativity and love with even a deeper appreciation for the fragility of those values just rejected. We shall write the psalm needed to see us through this wasteland. Or better yet, live it, forged out of a new dawn with an incandescence to see us through this dark passage within sight of beginning sprouts and the feel of wings.

 

Harp in the Carnage

For every bomb dropped, particle of noxious air belched,

for every last syllable of loathing overheard,

moral violence spewed, every barbed lie,

choke hold, groping, ignorant oath, every

truth denied, every shrug in the midst of indecency,

 

Is there an answer in the stanza,

a poem that can override the filibuster?”

Will the bell in the fuchsia

toll for the mesmerized?

Is there enough nectar in the hibiscus,

enough dew to quench parched minds?

Is that a camellia blooming on the

blood-stained bandage,

a harp in the carnage of a smashed piano?

Can the trumpet in the foxglove be heard?

 

In the pharmacy poison foxglove

becomes digitalis. What can kill also heals.

The leaf that stops the heart

contains the alkaloid that slows

and strengthens it.

Counting My Chickens

John Maynard Keynes put it this way: Capitalism is the astounding belief that the wickedest men will do the wickedest things for the greatest good of everyone. But enough about Trump.

When greed and arrogance are valorized and smarts are vilified, I need a remedy. So, I stroll in the garden I don’t have and pick up the cello I don’t play. Yet the coleus leaves are bent as if toward music and leaves are falling into goldfish.

Having taken refuge inside Keats’ odes and urn I emerge rhyming with every word and empowered like a heroic couplet.    

I am insinuated with sky. Today’s dome was particularly vast, saturated with a blue not-seen-before. It was furrowed with cloud formations like rows in a vineyard or a wrinkled brow having just discovered a cure for loathing.    

Breath held becomes breath released sufficient to refresh the foul air. Gusty winds enter windows to vent the miasma. Spring bulbs stir in anticipation.

Thanks, will be given. No food-fights over white and dark meat. Our Founding Fathers are my fantasy guests seeking forgiveness for the sin of an Electoral College.

This page was written as I watched my Dodgers come from behind to win the World Series. The losers did not call for a recount of the score nor did they threaten the umpires or overthrow the stadium. May life follow baseball. 

In the Fall of ‘41

Often, I am eight. returning to that time of two awakenings. Franklin Roosevelt’s intonation came from the radio speaker. His voice was God’s voice and spoke of infamy at Pearl Harbor. The war rearranged faces. Emotions were suddenly made public. I felt the barrier dissolve between adults and myself. It was my portal into a world beyond my small one.

Two months before December 7^th I had another initiation which sounds frivolous. The World Series was the World Serious to me. The Dodgers were playing the Yankees as they are today. A Yankee player struck out to end the game, but the game did not end. Without going into details, what seemed like victory turned into defeat. Baseball is a lesson in failure but failing gracefully. There would disappointment but tomorrow's a new ballgame. I learned it that day and never forgot.

Memories are moments that cling, momentous or puny; it doesn’t matter. The declaration of war by Germany four days after that December Sunday prompted Churchill to dance the jig. He knew our entry into the European theater would save England. For me, it would set into motion a cluster of childhood tableaus.

There would be air raid drills and blackouts, rationing and war bonds. Refugees entered my class. The Four Freedom posters by Norman Rockwell appeared on our school room walls. I rejoiced with Allied victories and wept with Roosevelt’s death.

As for baseball, there were historic feats performed that summer of 1941 which will never be equaled. But I was too young to take note. It wasn’t until that day in October that I was ready to take on the world. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a tragic event but there would a reckoning.