All those green apples. Well, at least I have one!

To summer-ize…Something’s missing.

The partay is over. New Year’s confetti is now disappearing in a landfill and the world is waiting for the next shoe to drop,
vis a vis the wars. Although night is still night. Day remains day. The sun is stubbornly resolute and constant. Oceans seem pretty full. Wind hasn’t died down. Rain persists in falling from above. Above, by the way, is still above. The Earth is being chewed up slowly, mine by mine, as block by block developers take time away from their next martini to package people in boxes of concrete and metal, and trumpet progress.

However, the small universe of bacteria really gave the New Year a pass. They just grew and almost held the progress of medical science in disdain as they become stronger. Now going to an emergency ward or staying overnight in a hospital has become an invitation to get a serious infection, at least enough to make the accounts receivable office smile.

Yet something is amiss. Something which I feel an obligation to relate, less we all go pell mell off a cliff or stay huddled in the corner of an attic, or wait on some line…not really cognizant of what is happening. And that thing which is amiss amidst all of this? Well, as we hear the news, read the newspaper, or the latest Internet News report, see the outrage on TV, we are missing something. That something is quite invisible and so it’s comforting in a way to know that we’re missing something but yet we can’t see what we’re missing. Yet one has to crawl out of bed in the morning, and peek through the venetian blinds. What does one see? Oh…it’s only the backyard!

To consider that all the progress, the hustle and bustle, the Election, the News, and of course the Ignorance that is the War and Cruelty, is occurring in our backyard, our Homeland Planet Earth, all at the same time that we are traveling thru space, is a worthy consideration. All this goes on as we hurtle and spin towards an unknown destination. And not even The Buddha, Allah, Hashem, Moses, Krishna, Mohammed, Jah, Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, Lao Tse, or Brahma, Reverend Al, Mayor Mike or all of the Nobel Peace Prize winners or losers ( might as well mention Britney), know the Unknown Destination toward which we travel.

Yet, that’s not the unsettling part of all this. It’s that this complete, idiotic, unconscious bloody mayhem continues after all the thousands and millions of years, all the time our kind has inhabited Earth, and continues in a relatively minuscule space, when comparing Earth to the size of the Universe. Kind of like having a rodeo in a comfy bed and breakfast.

It cries out for one to step back from all of this for just a moment or two, to step back and see one’s apartment or home, to step back and see the block where one lives, then to step back and see the state, and country, then stepping back further to see the planet, see the planet in one’s mind’s eye and then to fly back, away from the planet, to see our homeland Earth disappear into the black of space, then to realize that while not even seen the Earth is engulfed in madness… to travel with the mind beyond our solar system, our galaxy, and then to remember one is still at home in the kitchen, that the patina of aggression and madness is continually occurring, that you just hear a gunshot a few blocks away, that the Prince of Darkness has wed the Maiden of Light , and all of this goes on on a small, teensy bit of rock in an endless universe, while people profess to know answers, and all the time the cycles of cruelty upon cruelty are played out in ritual.

And that is what leaves one to feel that something is amiss.

OH MIGHTY BRUTE’S FORCE
KEEP CENTERED
IN THE MIDST OF ALL THE CONDITIONS…
THE JOB, THE FAMILY, THE FRIENDS,
THE COMPETITION,
YOUR BODY, YOUR MIND,
YOUR BOSS….
NEVER FEAR,
DRAW CLOSE
TO THE BEACHFIRE OF YOUR BEING OBSERVE
YOUR HEART FLAMES
YOUR EYES AGLOW
HEAR THE ENDLESS WAVES
OF TIME SOOTHING YOU

TAKE CARE
THESE ARE TRICKY TIIMES

STAY THE COURSE
Your Servant
Brute Force

Spring Day at the Beach.

Spring has arrived on time this year. But it has taken a while to feel like Spring in NYC. The cold just kept hanging on. In 90 minutes I was on the beach in New Jersey I walked the length of the beach and found an unattended log fire. It drew me close. I knelt to feel its warmth. I dipped my hand in the red and brown ash, and touched my finger to the middlle of my forehead. A poem play I have witten, starts out with just such an experience. I put sand on the embers as there was a stiff breeze and the fire would probably grow. I wanted to prevent a glowing ember from being carried in the wind. You know what Smokey the Bear says…don’t you?

This April Spring day I dipped in the Atlantic. The sun was warm, although the breeze off the ocean necessitated me building a wooden wind shield, about a foot high. Lying close to the barrier I caught about 2 hours of the sun, and an occasional whiff of tar emanating from the wood.

It was very fine, being away from NYC, very close to the Big Water. And the ocean was cold, yes, but a bit more tolerable than the previous 3 months. I found a few shark’s teeth while walking and spoke briefly with a few acquaintences. A woman approached me, said she’s writing a book, and asked if I had known of any ghosts or legends in the town., a town I’ve been returning to for some 55 years.”I’ve never seen a ghost here,” said I. I guess I could have said that perhaps I’m a bit of a legend by now…But that’s not for me to say.

I took some pics of cherry blossom, or dogwood trees, I don’t know which, anyway they were pink and beautiful.

Pink and beautiful..

On the way back to NYC I had a great hot dog with the hot red relish, sweet red relish, green relish, mustard and sourkraut, and a small root beer. Later I consumed an ice cream sundae… Medium size cup, coffee ice cream, chocolate syrup, toasted coconut sprinkles and whipped cream. The young girl asked me if I wanted a cherry… I said, “No.”

She reminded me of the cherry blossoms.