Reading Aloud

Most nights Adele and I read short stories aloud over the phone. Often, the narratives offer portals to a dimly remembered moment in our own lives to be shared. Sometimes, we halt and re-read a passage beautifully rendered.

We have read dozens of Joyce Carol Oates short fiction and, as if a rejoinder, tackled several collections of John Updike’s priapic yarns. She treats men as a sub-species with uncontained menace and Updike’s males are happily predatory as if that defines normalcy. His women have no agency. Yet both are masters of language so we turn the page and read on.

When we moved on to anthologies we discovered authors we had never heard of. One such is E.K. Ota’s gem The Paper Artist, the story of Japanese tradition and the heavy toll paid for patriarchal pride. So beautifully written it elicited sadness and joy at the same time.

Another author previously unknown to us is Brad Felver. His work appears in two editions of O. Henry Prize collections, 2018 and 2025. He is not to be missed. While most entries are heavily plotted, Felver’s are masterpieces of nuanced love. They resound with truth and speak to our core.

He strummed a toy ukulele for her. It wasn't long before Annabelle learned how to smile. D minor and G were her favorite chords, and for hours he would play them, the D minor hovering like a Frisbee in flight, just out reach, until he would finally resolve it with the G, and little Annabelle would smile and kick.

Several times we pause, thinking we must have missed something. But the gaps are meant to make demands on us to fill in the narrative. Queen Elizabeth, the title story is meant to be a tree. It is our surmise; we are never told as much. And just when we figure it out the tree becomes a metaphor for their dead baby. 

His language is spare as if sculpted from a larger block of marble. We get the essentials. His genius is how effortlessly and quietly he draws us into the drama. Communication happens from what is unsaid. Somehow he articulates the silences.

After receiving the gift of those two stories Queen Elizabeth and Orphans, we have now moved on to his newly published collection, Dogs of Detroit. The stories have turned harsh and the environment unforgiving as he explores the extremities of relationships. We hope they take a turn back to soulfulness.

Reading aloud is a different experience than reading to ourselves. We are sharing the moment; the sounds and cadence of the phrases are like music and, in the hands of great writers, our hearts are stirred together.  

Life-Support

The patient is in the emergency room. Microbials never seen before threaten the beating heart. Pus everywhere. The wound is abscessed and weeping, monitors bleeping. A miasma of avarice metastasizing and resistant to judicious measures.

The patient is us. Our democracy is on life-support wth I.Vs dripping. 

Half the country is in a comatose state, can’t be bothered or wants to pull the plug. The other half calls for massive doses of truth, they gather, they shout down the assassins with an arsenal of adjectives.

The third half, Independants, overwhelmed by the moment, ponders as if two plus two just might be three or seven. As if the lord high executioner really isn't naked; maybe his clothes will soon come out of the spin cycle at the all-night laundromat.

Someday, the undecided will be studied as a group accomplice in aiding the criminal act which laid to rest our country's heritage.

No hospice, our former Democracy will go to rehab. Can our country be transfused with new blood? I say Yes. Yes to resuscitation. Yes to the healing power of decency, to intelligence and yes to compassion. Sadism, psychosis and junk science have a short half-life. Degeneracy will give way. 

When, you ask. There will be a tide. 

 

 

 

Root Canal

I felt a toothache coming on Tuesday. No you didn't. Yes I did. It was gone on Wednesday. By Thursday evening it was loudly squawking. Friday morning, it was gone again but I answered its call of yesterday's distress. My dentist squeezed me in with the dreaded announcement that I require a root canal. Off I went to an endodontist. Now the deed is done.

The old joke is Life sucks and then you die...but first you get a root canal.

Not so, say I. First of all, life is such a joy. I can think of nothing better. Secondly, I enjoyed every moment of my root canal. How did it get such a bad rap? I love canals. My first non-memory is doing  the backstroke as I made my way into this world. Then there were those canals in Amsterdam and Venice. But I digress. 

The procedure was painless. He didn't talk to me about his portfolio as other dentists have done. Nor did he ramble on extolling the virtues of  DJT when all I could do was grunt and spit. Rule number one which I must have learned swimming down that first canal was, Never dispute the man when he has a drill in your mouth. 

One grows emotionally attached to one's body parts. Molar #19 had behaved itself for lo these many years. True, I may have abused it, early on, with Necco Wafers and Milk Duds. It registers every scoop of pumpkin ice cream or key lime pie passing through its ivory gates. So this, I suppose,  is pay-back time. 

Strange how teeth have a limited shelf-life. Elbows and knuckles last in perpetuity but molars have not only bitten and chewed but have also put up with all my gush of barbed words and the occasional poem with its jagged right-hand margin.

I can't say enough about my endodontist. After looking at teeth all day he must dream of corn on the cob or boy scouts lined up in rows. Or maybe he would welcome someone with fangs. I wonder if there were animal orthodontists in prehistoric times treating saber-toothed tigers?

As I write this, my anaesthetic is wearing off. I am, after all, long of tooth. Time for 600mg of Ibuprofen.

Shadows Of Doubt

The split in the Democratic Party is sure to be exploited in the weeks ahead and even more so heading into the 2028 election. Electability will be the operative word. Let us wrestle with it all but the opposing factions need to show up for whomever emerges as the candidate. 

To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, The trouble with this country is that right-wing nitwits are cock-sure of themselves and Liberals are full of doubt. True a hundred years ago and even truer today. However along with doubt are nuances, mitigation, forgiveness, empathy etc…

Ten years ago Judge Amy Berman Jackson castigated Paul Manafort for fifty minutes in what seemed like a prelude to an additional ten years in prison. Yet the final sentence was a mere three years plus. Spoken like a true Talmudic scholar. There’s this yet there’s this also that. The Jewish tradition is disputative of text.

Search in and out and roundabout

And you’ll discover never

A tale so free of every doubt

All probable, possible shadow of doubt

All possible doubt whatever.

So sings a character in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Gondoliers. There comes a time when doubt begs for resolution.

Tyrants make no room for doubt. I have never heard of Trump cogitating. Nor did Jim Jones. If I may be permitted to plagiarize myself, Dying begins when doubt is forbidden. This comes from a poem I wrote a long time ago addressed to my friends at Jonestown before they lost their two teenage children. Doubt encourages the freedom they were denied.

The trouble with the world, as Russell saw it, is also our strength. Progress can be measured in the extent to which we move away from absolutes, and dogma. People of true faith wrestle with doubt in their dark moments of dread. Keats wrote of negative capability which asks for one to live in a place of uncertainty and mystery without reaching for resolution. Sounds like doubt to me. The pre-condition for allowing the imagination full sway.

In 1933 Germany the Nazi Party had about 37% of the vote yet Hitler became chancellor. The other three parties hated each other more than they feared the Nazis. Our Centrists must reconcile with Progressives and DSA for the greater good.

When objective facts are gathered and well-considered by scrupulous, deliberative minds, doubt can be overcome and conclusions drawn. In other words oust the man in the Oval who soils our national fabric. The alternative is to invite American style fascism

What Keats described applies to the creative, not the political, process. He, himself, was fiercely opposed to the conservative agenda of his day. There can be no equivocation in the search for truth.

God In Movie Guise

In the 1936 film, Our Man Godfrey, William Powell sets the world right. Just as God would do if he/she answered prayers. Godfrey, as one of the Forgotten Men, is plucked from among the filthy homeless to become butler in a household of the filthy rich. Homeless filth washes off but the soiled lives of the mindless moneyed family takes God(frey) an amusing ninety minutes to wipe clean.

Carole Lombard is the perfect ditz; Powell, the no-sweat hand of providence. Both earned Academy Award nominations. In those hard times I suppose we needed gift-wrapped endings.

Fast-forward a dozen years. Lombard had died in a plane crash. Indeed the whole world had crashed in the carnage and abominations of the war. A new God appeared in Samuel Beckett’s, Waiting for Godot. He wrote the play in 1948 and it was first presented five years later. In fact God did not appear. He was a no-show as he was for millions in the camps. Estragon and Vladimir aren’t sure if they are standing at the right tree at the right time but it doesn’t matter. Beckett evokes the absurd as the two men echo Laurel and Hardy. In another play he spoke of a shrub as a hardy laurel.

In the mid-fifties God makes a comeback in the first Godzilla movie. Now God is a mutated monster from the effects of nuclear radiation. This became Japan’s cautionary comic-book tale of the dangers of continuing Hydrogen bomb tests. The creature is killed in the way Beowulf got his. At the bottom of the sea… which could be our unconscious. Since then almost thirty other Godzilla movies have roamed the big screen.

During these years we were rescued, abandoned and warned. By 1972 we are held up to a mirror with the ultimate sympathetic anti-hero, Brando / De Niro / Pacino, the Godfather. The business of America is business and Michael Corleone tells his brother after a round of blood-letting, It’s not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business. The Godfather is an extended version of what this country, in its grotesquerie, has become. Worshipful of power some of us have turned away from humanity. The almighty dollar replaced God almighty.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Over time even the false idols have left. The Miracle Worker went over the cliff with Thelma and Louise. Godfrey could not be accepted in today’s American Hustle. There is no million dollar payoff from a magazine sweepstakes in Nebraska, no Silver Lining Playbook. Nor can we wait for Godot. We’re on our own. The Boyz ‘N the Hood want a piece of the rock and why the hell not? 

Back in the day we Praised the Lord and Passed the Ammunition and assumed we had God on our side. He may be at the Next Stop, Wonderland….but I doubt it. The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. As Tennessee Williams said, We all live in a house on fire, no fire department; no way out, just the upstairs window. 

Jack and More Jacks

Back in the day the name Jack stood for everyman and he was everywhere. There was the boy who went up the hill with Jill. And the kid who climbed the beanstalk, not to mention Jack Horner who sat in a corner and Jack Sprat who ate no fat. Indeed he was ubiquitous until he wasn't so hit the road, Jack. 

The other day I received a letter marked personal and confidential. Anything not offering a large pizza for $8.99 was enough to catch my attention. It came from a law office in Toronto representing the estate of Jack Lasky. The first sentence identified them as executors. Right away I flashed back on all the Jacks I hadn’t made friends with over the past 93 years. 

The letter went on to explain they were looking for the certain Norm Levine who was living in Southern California in 2002 and a friend of the dear-departed Jack. I checked my driver’s license and sure enough I was Norm Levine and I have no memory of being anywhere else that year. 

So far, so good. I then googled, Jack Lasky. The first six hits had to do with a Jack from Long Island who is a Trumper. I presume he is still alive and well, even if his politics locate him beyond my threshold of endurance.

The second Jack L. was my man. Born in Toronto, died in Honolulu with a plaque on a kibbutz in Israel. Sounds like Jack got around, especially posthumously. I wrote back as requested, regretting my lapse in never having made Jack’s acquaintance. Already I felt close enough to be on a first name basis. Had I been afforded the opportunity I'm sure I would have been a loyal friend. I can imagine us in animated conversation over Chinese chicken salad and iced tea or better yet a Guinness. No doubt he was a helluva guy. Almost knowing Jack Lasky has made me a better person. 

I told the law office that I did have a friend named Jack and I remember a Lasky in my college days. Does this count for nothing? I never met a Jack I didn’t like.  

I suggested to the lawyer that should they fail to contact the worthy Norm Levine I'd be happy to serve as a surrogate. I have a particularly warm feeling for Canada, now more than ever as they stand up to their bully neighbor to the south. 

Going back to the generic Jack, I see that his name in folklore was regarded as an average guy ranging from resourceful person to a clever trickster, from playing card to jackhammer to jackass.

Research reveals that there was a Horner who tried to bribe Henry VIII when he pulled out some plum deed to a manor house. Not such a good idea, Jack. Beware of nursery rhymes. One can lose one's head over the ditty.

The Jack and Jill who climbed the hill were codes words for a half pint (Jack) and a quarter pint (Gill) which King Charles I tried to reduce as part of his tax plan.

It now occurs to me that maybe the real Norm Levine owed the late Jack Lasky some money in which case I'm glad not to be him. Or as my friend Fred put it on his answering machine, If you owe us money please leave a message after the tone; if we owe you money leave a message before the tone.

Life Story

My daughter recently videotaped my life story. Everybody has their own biopic. Even if we are second bananas in someone else’s, we create a sort of movie about ourselves in which we are the star of the show.

I found myself relating a collection of moments rather than a flowing narrative. It is like the distillate of Great Lakes reduced to fit inside a thermos. 

When I think of my ninety-three years, it’s astonishing how much I have forgotten or misremembered.

After about four hours I declared myself done or, at least, spent. It didn't take long before my mind flooded with all the memories I had left out. Maybe we’ll have one more session as an appendix but I suspect, even then, there will be large chunks which deserve mention and have escaped me.

There are some stories I’ve repeated so many times I can’t be sure they really happened or whether I’m remembering an embellished version. Did I really sit on a stoop with grandpa, at four-years-old, eating a bagel with a mustache of cream cheese? When I opened up Norm’s Pharmacy did I really tell people my mother named me after the store? 

What excites my imagination is a tableau which has endured for decades in my head for no apparent reason and suddenly I find myself investing it with meaning unavailable to me seventy-five or eighty-five years ago. When I threw a ball against the outer wall of my father's drugstore I never thought I was beating a portal into that store becoming my father.

I didn't say enough how Peggy's life was a constant stream of enthusiasms. She found beauty in tree stumps and peeling bark; in ashtrays (though no one smoked) and old paper as in ticket stubs and business cards. Many of her passions became mine and extended into new friends and into her poems. What she exhaled, I inhaled.

Toward the end of our video sessions I spoke about the arc of my life. My early years were steeped in evidence-based science and reinforced by philosophy which stressed objective reality. It left me with little tolerance for junk science and the irrational. My life's journey has been to make room for my imagination, for the chaos out of which creativity and connectivity grows. 

I'd like to think some of my blogs have charged the air for others just as I've been sparked by words and images of other fine minds. We're all pilgrims and we're only passing through. If all this sounds like I'm on the verge of checking out, I am not. I would hope I am still becoming.

If I were to mention all the things I never did that would take far more than four hours. High on the list would be having an ear for classical music, playing the piano by ear, carrying a tune and dancing the tango – I’ll catch up with these in my next incarnation.