Taking A Deep Breath

I read somewhere that we hold thousands of smells in our olfactory vault. I wonder if I can trace my way back from today’s burnt bagel to yesterday’s gasoline fumes at the pump….and back ninety-three years to my first diaper change. I think it was on a Thursday but I really don't want to talk about it.

Donald has provided us with the malodorous stench of arrogance, degeneracy and malice. I need to clear my lungs. The flower section of Trader Joe's has many spring blossoms and some have no odor at all. Both the orchids and tulips have traded vivid colors for scent. Even those hot-house roses come to us deodorized. I feel cheated. My nose leads me to the stargazers to take a deep whiff.

Peggy first wrote her poems in a notebook with a number two pencil. I’m the guy who sharpened them. I admit getting a temporary high from the shavings. Not high enough to write my own poem but often achieving a height sufficient to write a blog.

I’m seldom hungry………until I see and smell the plate. That wakes my salivary glands and I get in trouble trying to subdue the flow. As I write this I’m thinking of the rhubarb crumble I recently devoured. Speaking of food I’m the only one I know, outside of my daughters, who doesn’t like feta cheese. In fact I can’t stand it. My brain registers it as vomit. Blame it on a blemish in my double helix.

Among other vapors I could live without are newly laid black top, coconut, rancid acacia and asafetida. I don’t expect anyone to connect with the last two. They transport me back to those years in pharmacy. In my days at my father’s drugstore, there were no glued labels. The pharmacist made his own out of acacia powder dissolved in water turned upside-down with gauze covering the opening of a wide-mouth jar. After a week or two it stunk and that rancidity has never left me. Asafetida is a gummy substance used to ward off evil spirits which emits a pungent odor one wants to run from out of the room along with the spirits.

Childhood fills my nostrils. There were faint vapors of chalk mixed with bubble-gum from baseball cards. (I was so dumb I saved the gum and chewed on the cards.) Airplane glue got me for a short time. Neatsfoot oil soaking into a leather mitt. Citronella to repel mosquitoes. Licorice or wild cherry syrup in cough medicine made respiratory infections not all that bad. The eucalyptus and compound tincture of benzoin in the vaporizer took away our suffering. My father’s store breathed a curious mixture of aromatics which he carried on his body … a smidge of Evening in Paris perfume comingled with tuna fish from the sandwich board along with malt from the fountain and all this triturated by the overhead fan with crude drugs leaking from the apothecary jars, sometimes sulfurous, mostly warming, ancient, botanical, and slightly intoxicating.

Subways smelled of sweat especially with raised arms holding onto dangling straps. The straw seats retained traces of everyone who sat there. We inhaled each other and exhaled our communal air. Maybe we even got to like what we smelled recognizing a whiff of ourselves in the mix.

Then there was Mrs. Spizzeri’s parmesan cheese cooking on the second floor from which I dashed holding my breath on the way to the sanctuary of my apartment 3 FB in our four-story walk-up. Today I love eggplant parmesan which tells me how far one comes away from those first foreign aversions before our noses accommodate and finally embrace them.

Our inspirational leader has mastered the art of deceit. But I'd like to believe that Truth always passes the sniff test. I cannot define it but I know it when I smell it.

Simple Times

Whether the late 1930s and 1940s really were simpler times, or I only thought so as seen through child's eyes, remains an unanswered question. 

I never got around to asking my father what he thought. He may have yearned for 1910 when it was an even simpler time.

Socrates complained that the youth of his day had bad manners, contempt for authority and disrespected elders. I imagine he also longed for those simple times of Homer.

Are those the years Donald is yearning for or, at least, peddling as paradise, when it is actually closer to the American mythos. While sloganeering to make us great, he is, in fact, making America grate.

We idealized the past because we had no idea of the troubles behind our innocence. I was blind to the hardships leading up to the war, the bestiality of the Holocaust and the imagined threat of nuclear annihilation.

World history and personal history have a way of conflating in one’s mind. I like to believe that America came of age exactly when I did. I was a good boy and the U.S. were the good guys. 

The simplistic patriotism of the forties yielded to a more ambiguous post-war, cold-war decade just as I was disabused of thinking I had all the answers. Hollywood grew nuanced along with me. Suddenly the good, clean-cut detective had a back story. He was a recovering alcoholic or fathered a child he abandoned in Italy. And the villain had a good heart beneath his grizzled veneer.

The broadcast-journalist, Tom Brokaw, called those men and women who endured unimaginable tough times both during the Depression, then later as G.I.’s, as The Greatest Generation. If they were the greatest I would have to settle for being only the goodest. We behaved ourselves, conforming as we did, until the sixties when we unconformed, got iconoclastic and less simple.

Simpler times may be another way of expressing a longing for youth itself, particularly for those who never grew up. The seismic changes that have quaked us into today’s world create a certain nostalgia for those snows of yesteryear. 

Much as I find history compelling, there is a trap romanticizing the past. In the 17^th century nostalgia was regarded as an affliction, a form of melancholia prevalent among sailors who  couldn't wait to return home. Maybe we are all rowing to Eden.

One day I’ll ask my grandchildren if millennials think of these times as simple. They probably won’t entertain such thoughts till they reach middle age and look back having lost their simple child’s eyes. By that time mobile phones will have been implanted in newborn’s fingers at birth. It’s really a simple procedure.  

In The Middle Of the Air

When those in human bondage looked down they saw cotton. When they looked up they saw sweet chariots coming for to carry them home. 

Ezekiel saw the wheel / Way up in the middle of the air / Ezekiel saw the wheel way in the middle of the air

Little wheel run by faith / Big wheel run by the grace of God / Ezekiel saw the wheel way in the middle of the air.

Now you never can tell what Ezekiel will do / way in the middle of the air / He lie about me / He lie about you / way in the middle of the air.

They may also have seen Lucifer falling from grace. According to Mormons Lucifer was Jesus’ brother. Not so, say everyone else. After all, only begotten sons generally don’t have brothers. Especially to rival them. Lucifer was no ordinary sort. When he fell, he landed with a thud not unlike Humpty-Dumpty who was too much for all the King’s horses and men.

Lucifer was one of those pagan figures appropriated by the Christians to suit their fable. He was, in fact, the name for Venus, the morning star which seemed to fall out of sight daily. The New Testament took his beauty, his brightness and worldly brilliance and consigned him to eternal deviltry. How dare his curiosity which can lead to defiance. 

Lucifer also takes the rap for Adam munching on that forbidden apple. Have a piece of fruit, he said, and for that gets a sentence of life plus forever. The lesson is, don’t mess with the fiction on the all-time bestseller list.

Icarus was another mythological young man who dared to defy authority. His father, Daedalus, warned his boy not to fly too close to the sun or his feathered wings held together by wax would melt. The accepted lesson seems to be that Icarus displayed hubris and paid the ultimate price. The way I see it the kid showed gumption. Who listens to their father? Fathers are yesterday’s news. The next generation pushes the envelope. How else would we have Saran Wrap?

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him…is the name of a great book by Sheldon Kopp. Kill him metaphorically, of course. Listen to authority and then go beyond. Listen to yourself.   

Icarus was out there investigating the middle of the air and then took the plunge. But there is more to the legend. Breughel, the Elder, painted the scene depicting the legs of a figure going into the sea while a plowman is tending his field, oblivious to the important splash in the water.  Benign neglect? Calloused indifference? There is a Flemish saying, And the farmer continues to plow, describing man’s indifference to human suffering.

In 1938 W.H. Auden took that theme and ran with it. In his poem, Musee des Beaux-Arts, the poet imagines several Breughel paintings showing townfolk ice skating, playing or doing chores and never looking up to the middle of the air. Auden was dismayed at the rise of Nazism on the eve of World War II. His poem was a cautionary tale of wanton disregard for the peril at hand.

This is my long way around to warn a somnolent American public of the imperative to vote in the primary coming up and then again in November. (The expected turnout is 38% in California). Too many voters seem uninformed or complacent, busy in the counting house counting all their money or at the table eating bread and honey. We are in great peril.

Now is not the time to caulk the bathtub or become a no-show because our Democratic candidates are less than perfect. 

The Devil Donald and his sycophants with their brimstone of malice and mendacity must be defeated. To his supporters I say, question authority. The man at the podium is a false idol with no chariot to deliver you. He lie about you. He lie about himself.

Pickled Herring

My thoughts are turning to pickled herring. This is what happens to nonagenarians. I'm thinking how Mavis can’t get enough of it and Adele and most of my other friends who, at least, never said a bad word about the stuff...except for Judy who has my condolences.

It may be a generational matter. My daughters have also shown no inclination for herring, but they all have other redeeming qualities.   

And then there is Putin who looked in the mirror one morning and saw Pushkin eating pickled herring. Napoleon might have conquered Russia if he didn’t run short of herring to feed his marauding troops. When invading Russia one is advised to pack sufficient barrels of pickled herring along with warm underwear, but not in the same suitcase. I’m sure the Russians never run out when they gobble up territory on their western flank.

Danes are crazy for the stuff and Latvians and Estonians. If I were stuck on the Monopoly board on Baltic, which is my lot, pickled herring would be a staple as it is for those folks in northern waters.

When I used to put out pickled herring for our Sunday Salon, back in the day, it was always the first to vanish. I wonder if some friends brought Zip-lock bags and slipped a few bits and pieces into their pockets.

Schmaltz herring is also worthy of mention....all those consonants supported by a single vowel. It is herring at its most plump, just before spawning. Best devoured with sour cream, dark bread, potato and onions. It offers transit right back to the shtetl. 

Herring is not a bottom feeder as some creatures so designated to vacuum the ocean floor. Knowing herring as I do I might presume that is beneath them. They feed largely on plankton rendering them low in carbs and high in an alphabet of vitamins including the all-important D and Omega oil without which one can expect to die a day or two earlier than previously fated.

Some like it split, salted and smoked which goes under the name, kippered herring. If I were a herring I’d much prefer being pickled. However the kippered variety had been the breakfast of Brits for centuries which may have kept the empire from falling. When it did fall, Kippers also fell out of favor. By the 70s, due to its association with the past, it was no longer part of the full English breakfast, replaced by eggs, bangers and blood pudding. What a loss. However it is now making a comeback as those rebellious Boomers are getting aged themselves

The purpose of this tribute to pickled herring is to fill up the page on a subject I really knew nothing about. Here's a tidbit to drop at a dinner party sure to get you reinvited: herring don't get to be called by that name until they mature from being merely sardines. In fact, there is no single fish named sardine. They can be any tiny fish. Whether there is an initiation or Bar Mitzvah to earn herring-hood from sardine-ness has not yet been determined.

Carrots-Recycled

 I ran into Smart & Final the other day and came out finally not so smart. In my haste, I passed the produce section and remembered that we had run out of carrots. I grabbed a package and got home to discover I had just purchased 26 carrots. It must be the industrial size for restaurants. The average American eats 10,866 in a lifetime. This should make up any deficit I may have had.

I do love carrots as much as the next guy. I like to peel them. I like to dip them in whatever dip we happen to have. I enjoy the way they crunch and how noble I feel eating them instead of one of those unmentionable sweet snacks for which I have a special tooth.

For the past three days I’ve been eating carrots at the rate of Bugs Bunny. I remember, as a kid, hearing that carrots were good for the eyes. It made sense; I’d never seen a rabbit wearing glasses. Research shows that rabbits really don’t eat carrots; another lie I’d been raised on and swallowed. Now, after my eleventh carrot, I’m beginning to lose my taste for them.

This must be the source of food-phobias. A dear friend of mine dislikes all fruits except apples. I’m imagining he was trapped under a truck-load of peaches, apricots and plums as a child and was traumatized. How else to explain anyone disliking summer fruit? One day I may trace my hatred of coconuts. If I were shipwrecked and floated on an orange crate to a desert island with a coconut grove I would pass it by and take my chances.

But I digress. The subject is carrots. If I weren’t so busy blabbering, I’d bake a carrot cake. I just looked it up. There are 943 recipes for carrot cake. The average one lists 13 ingredients and carrots are the tenth, behind flour, sugar and cream cheese. Each serving adds 47 grams of carbohydrates to one’s diet. Forget it.

If you take the wrong freeway and find yourself in the Hebrides, Scotland toward the end of September you might wonder why carrots are being dug up by the locals. It is, of course, to celebrate Michaelmas. Wild carrots are ritually gathered. It is an occasion for revelry and why not, I ask you?

Carrots translate to some fairly strange words in other countries. Spain calls them zanahoria. In China they are huluobo and marchew in Poland. Remember this. It could come in handy one day.

Starlings seek out wild carrots which kill certain mites in their nests. The carrot contains a compound that repels mites and inhibits their egg-laying abilities. How starlings know to choose parasite-deterring plants like the wild carrot remains a mystery. I might go on a starling hunt tomorrow and drop some carrot-mush in their flight-path. Then again parasites need love too. Let the birds fend for themselves. Better not mess with Mother Nature.

Final thought: If I had 26 karats instead of carrots I'd be a rich man but I'd rather remain lucky instead.

Certain Words

Apart from their unfortunate attachments, two of my favorite words are syphilis and diphtheria.  Their mellifluous sounds roll off the tongue. However, their baggage consigns them to the unutterable column. Such a waste of lyricism.

Emergent, is another word I admire not for saying but for what it contains. It has urgency, even emergency. It is dynamic, seeded with something new.

Also, hiding in emergent is the word merge. I’m all for it. The way column A drifts over to column B. Sweet and sour, hot and pungent. Some films, seemingly big, are also notable for small moments. Amid the high decibels and extravagant (extra vagrant) production, are artful scenes, possibly memorable.

Could it be that categories are our feeble way of trying to organize the chaos?

 If you think you know me, you don’t know the half. Apple-pears and fusion food. Hybrid gender. Hybrid cars. Quantum particles, Quantum waves. 

For the unknowing eye baseball is boring; football, brutal and basketball is swagger. For those of us with arrested development like myself, basketball is balletic, football is chess with fractures and baseball, life itself.

When Donald first reared his artificial head I saw Bozo the Clown, P.T. Barnum, then Jim Jones, Huey Long and finally Adolf or Benito. The question still remains: handcuffs or straight jacket or both? His mouth is a weapon of mass destruction. The soulless manipulator and mindless sociopath have merged, and we must now confront our underbelly.

In the literary world a memoir is likely to have as much fiction as a novel and a biography can be cherry-picked into a hagiography. Some narrative poetry reads like a conversational anecdote.

I started writing poetry about fifty years ago in between labels as a pharmacist. After my work found its way into literary journals, I began to question what made this a poem and not a paragraph. There began the merging. Some words sing; some need line breaks but others shed the stanza and are comfortable as prose or blogs. There may be poetry hiding in the sentences.

My first book is entitled The Marriage of Everything. I see life as a web of connective tissue. The rose with its petals; the rose with its nettles. Life can be both enhancing and death-defying. The two in a melodic dirge. The Streets of Laredo. Mack the Knife.

In the merging, what emerges is not necessarily progressive. Maybe we needed this historical moment to pause, value what we cherish and experience its fragility as the fabric trembles. Latent strains of racism and misogyny have been uncaged and legitimized. The malady of our times is as malignant as syphilis or diphtheria. 

 

Mother's Day Rememberance (from back when)

 My mother was a woman of the century. Literally. Her birthday was January 1^st, 1900. The date itself is auspicious and a bit suspicious. I’ve heard that many immigrants choose that date as a way of disowning their past and claiming an American heritage. Of course, that would have been an erasure on the part of my grandparents.

The reason I even question her date of birth is because she played loose with her age along the way. In the 1930 census she claimed to be twenty-seven. Be that as it may she lived in the lower eastside of Manhattan with six brothers and got her education in the university of the mean streets. Life was combat among the pushcarts and tenements. As the decades went by no one had told her there was no war. Truce had been declared but not for my mother. Her life’s journey of eighty-eight years was a chronicle of an awkward assimilation while, at the same time, proclaiming a disidentification with the Old World. 

She lived as if haggling was for life itself.  My mother was ever on the lookout for a thumb on the scale or a rotten apple slipped into her bag. To get to her butcher she passed three others because she believed Murray the chicken plucker saved the best cuts just for her. I remember his blood-stained apron, that sawdust floor and the hanging flypaper.

While she was in the trenches in this extended skirmish with shopkeepers and the superintendent of our four-story walk-up, my father was the voice of tranquility. Through her blurts of aggravation I came away with a vocabulary of Yiddish curse words. She cursed the grocer, the landlord, the fascists and she cursed God for God knows what.

Though my dad worked long hours and was often absent in my tableau of childhood, he pacified the household. It was his temperament that was to be my inheritance. His soft voice prevailed over her loud complaints.

Beneath her pugnacity was the vulnerable little girl, teased by six brothers, who grew into a fearful woman. Those wounds were scarred over and her skin grew tough. She did mellow in her twilight years even as her trepidations became more evident.

Look. at those magnolias I called out on our last drive through  the prettiest street with the prettiest homes. Just keep your eyes on the road, she replied from the back seat where she did all her driving. My mother had a particular terror of trucks which she seemed to regard as assassins.

Her unease in this world denied her so much of the gardens and good life during her near century. I never saw her laugh. This Mother’s Day I want to celebrate her for her love which I somehow never doubted and recognize all the joy and awe she may have  missed in her daily struggles. 

I'd like to believe she had her own inner life I wasn't privy to. Maybe she even heard the mermaids sing.