Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2013

Grateful for High Self-Esteem

Truth is, I have struggled with self-esteem issues all of my life. High self-esteem. I know, I know. Sounds counterintuitive but it is the truth. I first remember being in sixth grade in about 1976 and had gone to a Mount Vernon Rams high school basketball game with Becky, who was in high school. She was my, well, I‘m not sure if she was actually related to me or not. She was my grandpa’s (who was technically my great uncle) cousin‘s daughter. We went to the games together that year. It was at one of those games that I knew I was different. I had left to go to the bathroom all by myself and then to get popcorn and a soda. Looking back, it was a little scary for a sixth grader to go to the bathroom all by himself. I had gone during the third quarter to avoid a big crowd, but there were still plenty of people in the men’s room. Somehow I did it, even though there were old white men with slicked back oily hair going to the bathroom and smoking at the same time. There were also young

Fall Poetry Festival at Leonia Library at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 20, 2013

I will be reading this Sunday , October 20, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. in the Leonia Library Poetry Festival with Fred Stern , an event that will feature some of Northeastern New Jersey’s best poets reading from their works. (I am grateful that Mr. Stern lets me read in these events. I am uncertain if the $26 bill I always mail him when I find out there is an event influences him or not.) I plan to read a few new, unpublished poems written over the past year that I hope to publish in a forthcoming collection whose working title is Passages of Time . Open microphone will follow if time allows.

Praying with Sartre and Foucault on My Birthday

Recently I picked a little French restaurant in the NoHo section of New York City for us to go to on my birthday called Le Philosophe . It turned out to be quite an ironic choice, albeit an accidental one. Earlier in the same week, I had attended my daughter's middle school soccer game in Haledon, New Jersey. I arrived in the second half to find our team well ahead and to find the other team with two players on the other wearing Islamic headscarves, including the goalkeeper. (I am uncertain if there is any connection to the headscarves and our soccer victory.) I do not recall thinking to myself, "Well, if we were in France, I don't think they would be doing that!" although earlier in the year I had read the first chapter of a book called Why the French Don't Like Headscarves , which is about the ban on Islamic women from wearing the hijab , or headscarves, in France. I guess it turns out that having a secular society doesn't necessarily correspond to havin

Head of the Line

When a person’s last living parent dies, there is not only a profound sense of loss and finality, but also another aspect of the grief that may not be so readily apparent: the end of being someone’s child. After waiting in the family line for a lifetime, the grieving son or daughter now moves to the front of the line. And it is as this point that he or she realizes that the next train into the station will be coming for them. I think the grief of losing a parent is not just the pain of losing a mother or father, but it is also grief at the loss of one’s own youth to the throes of advancing age. The mist of our lives is evaporating, and nothing like the loss of a parent can make it any more apparent. Mortality is on full display when our last living parent departs because each of us knows our own death must also be lurking out there in the murky waters somewhere. I am not yet fifty, yet I have been standing at the head of my family line now for several years. It is a burden that has

The Formless Void

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at an outdoor table at a Hilton Resort in Orlando, Florida, occasionally looking up from reading and writing. I found a quiet, unoccupied area overlooking the pool. I am like a cat and will try to find a corner wherever I can to be alone in the quiet. It is just after 7:00a.m. and there is a glorious stillness before the sun climbs its ladder into the sky and heats up the day while frenetic activity resumes. Because these twin summer deities—sun and activity—know people will attempt to squeeze every minute out of vacation, the two will triumph over mortals trying to relax a little on vacation. Haven't you noticed vacationers always return home exhausted? I will be no different after getting up early each day to watch the sun rise over the cow pasture behind my in-laws' Florida home where we stayed most of this trip. Getting up early to watch the sunrise is something I believe is worth letting go of a little sleep for. Since we were at t

The Memorial Day Parade at Flat Rock Brook

When I sit by a stream, I start to remember who I am. The sunlight shines a spotlight on the water in certain places and you can see the rocks clearly on the bottom of the brook. The liquid facade hides what is below in most places, except where the brightness brings clarity. And the same brightness seems to shine in my soul when I am at Flat Rock and I somehow remember who I am. My life feels like it is a mess today. If I think this thought through rationally, I would conclude this is not true. But I emphasize that it  feels  this way because the feelings are so powerful and desperate that I cannot shake them off at home or church or work. But they are only feelings . No events or circumstances in my life demand such desperation, but inside me is turbulence and chaos. I am on the verge of tears but they never come. I long for the gentleness of the brook's waters that glide by to somehow jump the bank and enter my tempest-tossed soul. A woman who was walking across the woode

The Devil Doesn't Wear Prada . . .

He wears a hoodie, and this is why wearing a hoodie is wrong. Point of clarification: I'm talking about wearing hoodies and actually putting the hood up on your head. This is the point where it crosses the line. You don't have to agree with me, but this is how I see it. So if you're driving a car with a hoodie on, hood over your noggin', I'll think you're planning to do something illegal and the hood will conceal your identity. Wearing a hood while you walk down the street? Got my eye on you, even though I've noticed people wearing hoodies will not make eye contact with me. Is it 90 degrees outside? You're wearing a hoodie with the hood up in that weather? You are obviously up to no good because a hood holds heat in and in that kind of weather, it's cooking your brain and making your skin oily, which causes pimples. Yuck. But I digress from my main point: wearing a hoodie with the hood up is oh-so-wrong! Know how I know? Like I said: The Devil do

Fifty Shades of May

A spring day in May has the power to make a person feel young again, even when that is no longer true. Why? Spring brings hope. Things return to life, pointing toward the radiance of summer. Age feels powerless against imminent waves of heat.  Spring means I can't help rolling down the car windows to let the wind blow through my hair and let the stereo blare Jackson Browne's “Before the Deluge.” I don't think I'll be dying in spring because the prospects of lying in the sand by the ocean shore lifts my soul above the declines of the rest of the year. People move to Florida to escape chill of fall and winter, but if the reality of those seasons does not catch you then their shadowy metaphors soon enough will. So I plan to stay up North and ride out the seasons until they get the best of me. Today's luminous leaves are suspended on firm branches so green and secure, and will remain so for several months. But you can be sure that fall's chill will begin to fell

My High School Friend Elton Skelton Talks About Our Hometown

I was back in my hometown last summer visiting with my old high school friend Elton Skelton at the annual 4-H barbecue. We were both eating a thick barbecue sandwich, corn on the cob, and homemade potato salad when I started telling him about New Jersey. He thought it was the strangest place in the world. He kept saying, "Well, Chrissy boy ( He always calls me "Chrissy boy" ), I don't know how you live out there in a place like that!" I then asked him if he were to try to explain to someone from New Jersey what Mount Vernon is like, what would he say? Well, he had plenty to say and I've tried to summarize his rather lengthy response below. “What’s it like in Mt. Vernon, Chrissy boy?  Well, first, I'd tell 'em: Let’s get this straight—it is nowhere close to Chicago! Okay! Try 280 miles SOUTH of Chicago! Chicago gets most of our tax money and wastes it on bribes and other such corruption. You think it is an accident that Blagojevich and Obama a

How to Check the Iron When You're Approaching 50

I can tell I am getting older by the way I check to see if the iron is on. Now that I am nearing fifty, I have noticed it is too much trouble to bend down and see if the iron is plugged in. I mean, it is a long way down there and lots of things can go wrong bending down that far. Dizziness can set in. You can pull a muscle. Wrench your back. (I am finally learning not to reach into the back seat while I'm driving the car for that very reason.) It is also way too much trouble to bend down and unplug the iron to be sure the iron is turned off. Besides, bending down that far for one thing is really not a good use of my time. If I'm bending down that far, I better have more to do than just check the iron. At my age, you just can't go around wasting your energy on frivolous activities like checking to see if the iron is plugged in. Wait until there's a few things to do down there before you commit—picking up paper clips, dryer lint, stray used softener sheets, etc. Getting d

Inversion Boots

The media has never really influenced me much. I could always watch what I wanted on television and suffer no ill effects, like a man who can eat a large piece of apple pie a la mode every night after dinner says it doesn't bother him because he sleeps like a baby. But let a guy do that over a period of years and it will eventually catch up with him. But mine was not the cumulative effects of media consumption over time; I had a one-time episode resulting from a movie that I know got the best of me: American Gigolo . Richard Gere played a . . . well, okay, a gigolo in the movie who hung upside down shirtless in inversion boots and drank Fresca out of the can. (This is all I really remember about the movie except that Lauren Hutton was also in it, and I figure if she came of age now they would have put braces on her to fix the gap between her front teeth.) I believe it was around 1982 when I saw the movie, so you can guess what happened next: I bought a pair of inversion

My First Car Advice Column

In honor of 2012 being the final year Car Talk would record new shows, I have decided to launch a car advice column in 2013 to take advantage of the strategic opportunity due to diminished competition in the auto repair advice space. Who knows? Maybe I will finally get my big break. So here goes with some of my best advice. Get your child an old car when he or she gets a driver's license . Too many parents nowadays buy or lease the golden child a new car. Why? Learning what to do when your car breaks down is a valuable life skill. Plus, with cell phones it's just not that hard. The engine dies. You pull out the cell phone and make a call. The tow truck comes within 45 minutes or so. It's not that big of a deal. Back in the old days, breaking down was tough. You stood by the road and hoped someone would pull over to help you. Usually they did, but it was usually some rough-looking guy with a beard because those are the people who know about cars. He would get