addressing ROAD TRIPS, poems

It became a long pondered decision. Should I address in interviews the content of my book, ROAD TRIPS, poems, and talk about "the process"... or should I let the words marinate inside the readers' heads and allow conclusions to develop based on their own perceptions? Those who write poetry usually do not like to discuss the internal dialogue that was present as the work was composed. Poets are private, we tend to keep the pieces close and try hard not to pull back the curtain. 

After I received feedback that referred to my work as "self pity," I was gobsmacked. I realized even prior to that message that many readers were concluding my book was autobiographical and I never interfered with that perspective.  But were they thinking my heartfelt work was an exercise in which I was feeling sorry for myself instead of a somewhat fictional prevarication and at the same time layered with nostalgic partial truths of my own journey? Were my road trips disingenuous?

I regretted not writing the work differently with more precise clarity and in the third person... to distance myself from the narrator of the poems and thereby allow more of the emotions to be relatable and not to be concluded only as a personal reflection of my own life and memories. The lucid dreams were built on a quiet fever fantasy within my solitude during the end of 2020, when we were all still greatly impacted by COVID, and my imagination drifted to places where I created limited and carefully controlled fanciful bends in the road which took me to almost hallucinogenic places within tricks and mind games of a mental kaleidoscope.

Here is the difference in what might have been:

The strong wind knocked something 

Over and when I looked through the 

Window and saw under a streetlight 

The way he was looking at her,

I realized life had passed me by.

The strong wind knocked something 

Over and when she looked through the 

Window and saw under a streetlight 

The way he was looking at her,

She realized life had passed her by.

In any event, I thought about great literature that evokes sadness. I know it is what is referred to as "the soul of a poet" that drives many to create sorrowful work... And for me, there exists no work so melancholy as James Joyce's THE DEAD. Here is a short excerpt from the end of that masterpiece:

"... One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age..."

"... His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling."

"... The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

I remain still fascinated by streetlights. A particular streetlight that is my favorite appears in the picture above. If time travel is possible, it seems to me that it could only happen if the traveler stood under a beautiful streetlight at night. 

I read today that the TV show, Quantum Leap, is coming back in the fall. So I am not the only one who perceives the past as a fascinating heady destination. 

On the lighter side:

The Purple Guides the Way Home

Ruby Is Here With Me

And this was Ruby, my father's cousin.

1965:

"Now, a little more than two months after the proceedings against Miss Loughran and Miss Kikumura, the Grand Jury is still probing the "Little Apalachin" meeting of big name gamblers and underworld figures held in October 1965 at the Palm Springs-residence of these two Las Vegas showgirls."

"More specifically, witness Ruby Lazarus, a Miami Beach and New York City bookmaker, was interrogated extensively about Vincent (Jimmy Blue Eyes) Alo and Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno, New York members of the Cosa Nostra "Family" headed by Vito Genovese, as well as Jerome (Jerry) Zarowitz, credit manager of Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas "Strip" and Elliott Paul Price, a host at the same club, all reported by the press to have been in attendance."

"The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Cosa Nostra operations such as gambling, casinos and narcotics dealing along with the division of the illegal operations controlled by the recently killed Albert Anastasia."

from Ruby's testimony: 

"Q In October, 1965, for what purpose was a telephone call placed from Palm Springs, California to the Prokos Brothers in Miami, Florida?"

"A I respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me."

"Q Did Tony Salerno use the phones there to conduct gambling business?"

"A I decline to answer that question."

"Q Did Alo use the phone in connection with the gambling or other activities of the criminal syndicate known as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia?"

"A I decline to answer that question."

"And the said Ruby Lazarus having refused to answer said questions, it is..."

 

"ORDERED, that the respondent Ruby Lazarus hereby is found to be in contempt of this Court and is hereby committed to the custody of the Attorney General, or his authorized representative until such time as he shall comply with the Order of this Court and answer the questions of the aforesaid Grand Jury."

And before that, in about 1941: 

This is my family, readers, it isn't me.

SADNESS COMES FROM THE MOST UNEXPECTED PLACES

 

This bit of news took me by surprise, and my reaction stunned me. I suppose this may be something that only other people who live alone will even understand... because we are a strange group of bizarre dwellers. I would think that to those who are married, to those who raised children and have grandchildren and have large families, this will be something that will be eyeball roll worthy or a piece to even ridicule. And that is why I hesitated to even write this... thinking it would be considered trivial within so many of the greater losses of others. 

But, there may be a few who will read this and get it, and it is that group that I always label as having the soul of a poet. 

I live alone, but never feel lonely. I can surround myself with others all the time. Within my small space, there are sounds that have become familiar as I sit in my back apartment: the song of the mourning dove, the unexpected howl of the wind as it hits the fire escape, and the patter of the footsteps above me that have been the same footsteps for over fifty years. 

The walls are so thin here and the floors so weak, I could hear my neighbor (who lives upstairs) as she rocked back and forth in her chair and I would awaken late at night when she got out of bed to walk to the bathroom. I grumbled when she dropped so many things and for years her dog scampered around on the uncarpeted floor as he chased whatever toy she threw his way. 

The years pass quickly and somehow I never think anything in my confined world will change. There have been big changes but the small things remain the same.  The consistency of the minutiae keeps me grounded as I age. 

But sometimes a situation happens and fills me with unexpected sadness. Mary is moving away. Mary, who moved in to live above me in 1970; Mary, whose footsteps strangely comforted me through decades... is going back to her home town. That made me cry. I never would have thought that the anticipation of total silence above me would effect me this way and while I know it is temporary, it's the particular specific sounds I will miss. It's going to be weird for a while having nobody up there and hearing no movement. It's an undefined feeling of emptiness that comes from sentiment that many might consider so meaningless. Nevertheless, just as Gabriel in THE DEAD, I pondered this "riot of emotions."

My strange intense reaction was unexpected and the melancholy remains with me... perhaps this will only even be understood by those who live internally and who capture memories in time like little dandelions that wait for the parts to unexpectedly be blown away. 

This may explain it well: "And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world, like everything around me this solid world itself which they lived and reared in is dwindling and dissolving..." --- James Joyce, THE DEAD