Christmas Morning

8:30 Christmas morning
Get out of bed
and squeeze the oranges for mimosas
that bubbleth over
Ball up the newspapers
Pile on the kindling
and a couple logs in the fireplace
Start a nice small blaze

Presents first
Mutts by McDonnell
Amphigorey Again
Lindsey’s Playboy
and a Kindle
new Tom Waits and Gyllian Welch
paint a lovely picture to get lost in

Then the cream cheese and lox
on toasted bagels from Blocks
that crunch just before melting
in your mouth

The laptop says Patty Cake is open
and the Sticky Buns you forgot
might still be had
with a walk down the quiet ravine
on a crisp sunny morning
On the way back
sample the molasses cookie
Return for french-pressed coffee
and warm frosted pastry

Remember all those
with whom we shared this morning
in the past
exchanging smiles and gentle touches
in the warmth of our home
and searched for a peaceful happy moment

I Wonder What Prince Valiant Has Been Up To Lately

As part of my personal financial austerity program, I regretfully canceled my weekend subscription to The Columbus Dispatch. I might be tempted to use the trendy excuse that I get my news and opinion digitally these days (is WCBE digital?) but that has been true for a long time. The fact is the newspaper never served to keep me abreast of current events or provide much in the way of in-depth coverage or intellectual enlightenment. I primarily used it to satisfy a more basic hunger for the plebeian entertainment found in the sports section and the funnies. Reading the softly lit online version of their Buckeye coverage feeds my appetite for spiritual intimacy with the team but I miss the comforting sensory experience of the traditional weekend morning spent settling in on the couch and maneuvering large sheets of crinkling newsprint that waft through the air like wings when the pages turn and end up falling like leaves collecting in piles on the floor and the furniture, scattering the den with headlines and photos echoing the exploits of my champions.

There was also a very practical secondary use that was part of my recycling efforts. One of my cats, Muffy, aka Muffah, is a surly old girl who does things her way and using a litter box is just not her style. She does show me the courtesy of consistently using the same general area of the floor enabling me to keep it covered in recyclable material. While Muffy’s lavatory literary selections usually consisted of the mundane black and white sections of the paper, I kept the colorful pages in my bathroom where I rationed consumption of the strips, like hoarded Halloween candy, to be savored throughout the week.

Not that the Dispatch offers a great selection of periodical humor. If Bloom County was still in there, I would never have canceled my subscription. Doonesbury has always been well-written, masterfully illustrated and precociously liberal for such a conservative rag. Foxtrot was my favorite new strip with powerful, simple lines, bold blocks of color and a topical narrative about a commonplace American family that was wickedly smart. 9 Chickweed Lane had a whimsical weirdness factor but I was more attracted to its very soft-core porn whose proximity to the Family Circus always amazed me. As for the rest, I enjoyed the art and humor in some while others just provided mindless reading material to pass time as I occupied the throne.

I’ve been reading the comics in the Dispatch for fifty years probably. Some great ones have come and gone like Li’l Abner and Calvin and Hobbes. Fortunately, editors were smart enough to reprint classic Peanuts. Some of the strips grudgingly keep going, impervious to the passage of time like Blondie, Beetle Bailey and, one I just started reading a few years ago, Prince Valiant. I’m not sure what kept me from spending time with Prince Valiant earlier. Maybe its realistic style seemed sloppy to me, maybe the subject matter seemed too uncomical. Once I started reading it, however, I got hooked on the momentum of its never-ending story, an epic that began 3,700 weekends ago, according to Wikipedia. In the early days, apparently, the Prince did some aging but the passage of time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Valiant is as much of a bad ass as ever and Queen Aleta stays youthfully beautiful without the help of plastic surgery. Over and over Prince Valiant bravely meets the most dire challenges and barely emerges victorious to fight another Sunday. There is no quitting, no changing, no defeat. As the colorful life of the funnies rolls on, now without me, I find myself wondering what Prince Valiant has been up to lately.

The Mystery of the Blue Suede Boots

   After spending half of the lovely first Sunday of Fall inside my cave watching football, I felt obliged to go outside and take a walk in the balmy air that seemed not to want to let go of Summer. It turned into one of those walks you take by yourself sometimes to figure out where you’re going and what you want to do with your life. The daylight wore the clouds like a gray sweater it didn’t need after all. Kicking through the season’s incipient layer of leaves in the street, I noticed a few splashes of red, orange and yellow, the stigmata of the autumnal equinox. As I descended into the cooler atmosphere of the shady ravine, I imagined risking a new start and sidestepping the March of Time. But before I could break away from the path I was on, I needed to solve the mystery that had held me in such excruciating suspense for so long. I had to know why The Girlfriend never came home.

    When I’m walking or bike riding down the ravine, I usually have to remind myself to keep my head up and enjoy the scenic view of this sylvan corridor instead of focusing on the the wildly irregular surface of the patched and potholed asphalt. However, no amount of innate concern for my personal safety could have prevented me from noticing  the incongruous presence of two cornflower blue suede, high-heeled half-boots sitting in the glade between the road and the rocky bank of the creek, barely hidden by a lace veil of leaves. Their intensely colored skin and flamboyant design brazenly called out from the quiet woodland browns and greens. It was as if two pieces of sky had fallen to Earth.

    I wondered what the story was behind this oddly conceived still-life. I assumed that a woman had purposely set them there because they were standing next to each other, carefully aligned side by side, the way they might be neatly stored on the floor of her closet. She hadn’t just tossed them away like the various forms of debris thoughtlessly strewn along this precious thoroughfare. It was unlikely that she had forgotten about them. On her way out, the rough terrain under her bare feet would have reminded her. She had probably placed them there temporarily with the intent of retrieving them upon the completion of an adventure in which boots could not play a part. That plan had apparently gone awry in a manner so serious and unforeseen as to cause her to reject her need for their comfort, endure the pain of an unfettered retreat and abandon a once-cherished item of her wardrobe.

    All that remained for the inquisitive passerby was the silent image of a lonely pair of boots, empty of their human companion, unable to follow her, unable to move forward and no explanation to be found.

The Visit

My son, Ruyd, would have been 36 years old today.  I visited the pecan tree in Goodale Park that was planted with some of his ashes. Over the past nine years it has grown tall and broad creating another oasis for Comfesters seeking shade near the Main Stage. There’s a little bronze plaque installed at the base illustrated with the small relief of a squirrel holding an acorn. Ruyd always had a thing for squirrels. A couple splotches of guano had landed on the metal and I cleaned them off with spit on my fingertips. On previous trips, I would talk to the spirit I imagined inhabiting the tree. Today, I was silent, remembering a recent radio discussion of the poem  “On The Nature Of Things”  by Lucretius and his revolutionary idea, for a Roman, that death is the end of a person. There is no one there to talk to anymore. The living are left with only memories. So I just stood there and gazed at the thick trunk and the profusion of thin green leaves.

Suddenly, a squirrel descended from the branches above. His headfirst scramble froze right in front of me as he clung to the rough bark of the trunk, seeming to defy gravity, with his tail flicking in the air above his head that was cocked up to allow his big eyes to look straight into mine. He stayed in that precarious position for what seemed an extraordinary amount of time considering how close he was to me. He showed no fear of me. On the contrary, he seemed mesmerized by me. I stood still and silent, meeting his stare, returning whatever effort he was making to connect with me. And then, I smiled.

Risky Behavior

As the days of our lives turn into the years of our lives, the building blocks of the passage of time are made up of patterns, habits and repetition. When we look back, we see the highlights decorating our personal history with memories of special events and unique experiences. but like trophies, framed pictures and art objects, they merely adorn the mantel of the fireplace built with identical bricks and mundane mortar. My mornings are filled with rituals and routines. Most weekdays I wake up and exercise on my stationary bike or, weather permitting, take a real bike ride on the Olentangy Trail. If I take the trail south, I always look for the white heron standing in the wetlands. If I go north, on my return I will detour through the prairie wildflower preserve.

Each morning I have to be in Court, I must walk through a metal detector. During my wayward youth, I developed a survival instinct triggered by the presence of law enforcement that assesses my vulnerability to being arrested by doing a mental scan of my physical circumstances. There must have been hundreds of times as I approached the courthouse checkpoint that I questioned whether I might be carrying some contraband paraphernalia and imagining the consequences of it being discovered if I set off the alarm. This morning, I was going through my usual self-inventory as I walked up to the x-ray machine conveyer belt when my fingertips detected the slender wooden box housing the metal mock cigarette that I had picked up off the bedroom end table and pocketed with the intent of returning it to the den before I left the house. Depending on my short-term memory is always risky behavior and now the dangerous situation I had imagined so often was upon me.

I flashed back to the image I had seen just minutes earlier outside the courthouse of a handcuffed, barefooted man in a white tee shirt and what looked like black boxer shorts being escorted by a sheriff down the sidewalk towards the back entrance to the jail. I had wondered how he came to be transported in such a state of undress. Had the cops rousted him out of bed to execute a warrant for his arrest or had he rushed outside chasing after someone in a fit of passion during a domestic dispute?

Even though I had often considered the possibility of finding myself in this predicament, I had never formulated a plan to deal with it. Without looking directly at them, I knew there were usually four or five security officers staffing the station and that I was likely being observed. They see me walk through there almost daily so I was trying to maintain my normal flow of activity by placing my bag and the tray with my phone and keys on the belt while frantically calculating my options. I let my belongings pass through the x-ray and then made a momentary retreat around the corner to think. I realized I was now acting suspiciously and the “flight or fight” response hormones were coursing through my body. I had an unusually busy schedule that required me to be in three different courtrooms so I had been particularly focused on being punctual that morning. Weighing the gravity of my responsibility to clients, opposing counsel and the Court against the inconvenience and the perversely anomalous nature of just abandoning my entrance in midstream and returning to my office, I allowed myself to be swept away by the momentum of my familiar pattern of behavior, braving the dangerous rapids of the magnetometer.

Still Smilin'

The summer usually feels like an endless death march through a hot arid desert devoid of any of the life-sustaining nourishment and hydration, the intellectual and emotional pap if you will, that is otherwise provided the remainder of the year by the vicarious thrills I experience living on the edge of disaster, celebrating victory and agonizing over defeat as I watch the slowly unfolding drama of my favorite teams’ seasons of football and basketball. A truly uncivilized time of the year when one is actually left with no other option than to venture outside into the brutal nuclear light, cutting one’s own electrical umbilical cord, abandoning the mind-clearing sterility of pristine cold conditioned air for the profane breezes corrupted by inapprehensible earthly ingredients, replacing the gorgeously colorful, focus-group-approved digital images with the stark green reality of wild trees and untamed grass and weeds and the shimmering waters whose cool refreshment beckons you like a Siren to immerse yourself and feel the visceral relief of a suicidal plunge into aquatic madness and dissolution.

It is only every four years that I’m able to find some some blessed relief in the comforting growth of anxiety and apprehension that comes with the early stages of a presidential campaign when some measure of sanity is restored to the womb of my darkened cave, illuminated only by the flickering images of talking heads as I hang on the results of the endless stream of each new poll. Thank God for my deliverance from the soul-killing, existential boredom of this off-year election by the divinely-timed confluence of the rise to power of the Tea Party and the expiration of the debt ceiling. Little could I imagine that the results of the 2010 election would rain down like manna from heaven to relieve the stifling heat dome of 2011. Just as Moses raised his arms and parted the waters of the Red Sea, the Republicans have, with the same biblical majesty, overreached and used their power to reveal the deep chasm that exists between progressives and conservatives and a clear path to the Promised Land between towering walls of massive economic destruction.

The current countdown to ecstasy has been a deliciously painful and torturously slow crawl on our hands and knees toward our dominatrix who will eventually determine our credit-worthiness as we beg for her to tighten our bonds. The ultimate denouement of our unknown, yet inevitable punishment still awaits us just a few tantalizing days away. But tonight, I was rewarded for my for my slavish attention to every unfolding minute of congressional pornographic pageantry as I let fly a righteously satisfying exclamation of glee upon learning that Speaker Boehner had suffered a humiliating spanking at the hands of his own party, like an insane snake thrusting its fangs into its own body. It is a moment like this, standing on the precipice, seeing, in the near distance, the voluntary and self-induced dismantling of our way of life with misery, deprivation and increased suffering in the future of so many, where chaos and reverberating recriminations will fill the air, as our nation and world decline into a nightmare scenario where the fragile framework of our interconnected stability begins a slow-motion crash into dystopia, as we turn our heaven into hell, for this moment, I realize how glorious it is to still be able to smile.

The Cat That Didn't Come Home

I allow my cats to do as they please. If they want to come in, I let them in, if they want to go out, I let them out. I whistle and call for them when its time to eat and before I lock up at night. They don’t always respond to my invitations. They tend to hang around within earshot but they also venture out into our quiet little neighborhood. I noticed that my old Norwegian skowcat, Weiner, hadn’t been around for a couple days so I got on my bike and looked around in the direction I had often seen him heading, toward the next street parallel to mine. I knew there were some neighbors over there who had a reputation for feeding strays and that is where I found him, lying in the sun on their little concrete porch beside a paper plate filled with dry cat food.

I was quite relieved I’d found him. I called him and he came to me, yowling in recognition. I carried him home, which he didn’t appreciate, fed him and let him back out whereupon he immediately ran away. I wasn’t sure he would return to the neighbors and regretted not putting a collar on him with an ID tag. Years ago, someone found and returned one with my info by hanging it on my front door handle. It hung there for years, a ghostly reminder of the long gone cat who had eschewed it. The next day I walked back over to the neighbors and there he was, perched on the porch. I brought him home again and put the collar on him leaving him none too pleased. He bolted as soon as I let him out of my grasp.

At this point, I started to get the message. He had relocated and if I wanted to see him, I would have to visit him there. Nothing had changed or happened at home that I knew of to make him want to stay away. The neighbors told me that he and my other cats had been visiting and dining at their place for years. For some reason, his usual habit of returning home was now forgotten or rejected.

I began to make the short walk around the block to spend time with him on a daily basis thinking that I needed to regain his trust. It soon became evident that he was willing to continue to accept my affection but only within the  framework of a long distance relationship. A routine developed in which I walk up the yard to the the front porch, he utters a little cry and gets up to greet me. I either sit on the porch with him or in the grass if he has been seeking shade by the side of the house. I scratch him and pet him as he winds his way around allowing me to get at different angles and areas that need attention and insistently nuzzles my hand if he’s not getting enough. Then after five or ten minutes, I get up and walk away. When I turn around, I usually see him contentedly preening himself, apparently unmoved by my departure, much less inspired to follow me home.

Its been a couple weeks now and my regular efforts at professing my unwavering commitment to him haven’t yielded so much as one return visit. I’m sure he remembers the way home, he obviously had been traveling it back and forth for years. I guess he’s just not impressed with my refusal to give up on him in the face of rejection or he mistakes my understanding approach for acceptance of his decision to make a change. I realize that cats make changes in their routines and the places they like to hang out but this one seems pretty extreme.

It has led me to contemplate the possibility that maybe he’s no longer my cat, that if I quit visiting him, he might be just fine with that. He’s been my cat for about 15 years. When we were living in Grandview, the Girlfriend brought him home from a family down the street that was moving and couldn’t keep him. I’ve taken good care of him and spent many hours loving him and sharing the couch and bed. When all of my cats would stake out their positions atop my supine body, he always occupied the furrow between my shins. In the last few years, I’ve watched two of my cats expire and suffered the disappearance of another one. Those losses were painful but seemed to be in the natural course of things. It is harder to accept that a pet I have loved so long and who seemed to return my affection could make a decision to leave and stay away without any apparent explanation. I still plan on visiting and can't imagine just giving up. When the door hasn’t been shut, hope keeps Love walking around the block.

How Lucky You Got In

At the end of one episode of my favorite television show, Taxicab Confessions on HBO, there is an old guy from Brooklyn playing the violin in the backseat while he talks to the driver. He’s playing “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life”, a song made famous by Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald back in 1935, in which the lyrics make the banal observation that the “mystery” is solved when one finds love. But while he scratches out the melody in a saccharine vibrato, he embellishes on the song’s meaning in a weary wise Brooklyn brogue. “It’s about the enigma of Life, the fact we are in existence which is a Big Number. You want to sit back sometimes and look at yourself, examine yourself and when they ponder the question, you know, its begging the question, ah sweet mystery, its the great sweet mystery of life. What a gift, heh? How lucky you got in.”

I’d been pondering my existence and wasn’t feeling my “Number” was too “Big”. After completing nearly five decades here on Earth, it felt like I hadn’t made much of that incredible gift I’d been given. In terms of my career, I wasn’t very successful. I was satisfied being a “poor people’s attorney” so I never made a lot of money or gained much renown. My job was never my passion, it never defined me. I enjoyed the respect I received, I enjoyed being my own boss and helping people with their problems but it was what I did in order to survive and do the things I really enjoyed doing like listening to live music or volunteering. When people refer to my “work”, I often say “If that is what you call what I do.”

Just surviving means that you don’t get to to taste the cornucopia of luxurious goodies that the world has to offer. I haven’t had the expensive toys, made the trips to foreign countries, experienced the gastronomic delights, the inspiring architecture, never saw a Broadway show. Of course the best things in life are free or nearly free but I haven’t cashed in on much of that either. Despite my love of words, I haven’t read a lot of books. I never became much of a musician. I remember thinking at age 18 that it was too late for me to learn to be a good bass player. I’ve dabbled in drawing and watercolor but its not much more than child’s play. My writing is quite amateurish, I know. I would conclude that I’m too lazy to make much out of what little artistic talent I may have but I know that I am capable of hard work and enjoy it. I guess I just haven’t pushed myself beyond my comfort zone.

As for the “Sweet Mystery of Life” that Nelson and Jeanette were singing so rapturously about, I’m not sure I’ve had that revelation. I believe I’ve been in love, experienced obsession and jealousy and the black hole of heartbreak, but I’ve often wondered if I have actually loved anyone beside myself. There have been people for whom I would do anything to help them or make them happy, people I cared for unconditionally, but did I love them in a way that transcended my own interests? Did I ever make the Copernican transformation from the center of the universe to a planet in an eternal adoring orbit? I tell myself I have but the answer to my personal mystery may be unknowable, eclipsed by my ego.

There may be much I’ve missed out on in my life, many wondrous and beautiful opportunities that I couldn’t or didn’t reach for. When I seek consolation in that existential emptiness, I picture myself, marching down the middle of the street in the Short North on the Fourth of July, surrounded by a motley crew of patriotic clowns wreaking an uncontrolled cacophony of musical silliness upon the assembled crowd, clad in a short, red, white and blue striped summer dress, red fishnets and black boots, my flailing wavy white gold locks topped by a red elfin beret, my face disguised with pointy black and silver sunglasses, my head tilted in the air as I raise my clarinet toward the sun, blowing with all possible enthusiasm a joyously crazed obligato paean to being alive. How lucky, indeed.

ONE WITH COMFEST

This retirement thing is working out real well. I was just a volunteer at Comfest this year. No organizing, no endless meetings, no stressing about getting things ready or worrying about how they are going, no suffering from the obsessive/compulsive disorder known as Comfest-on-the-brain for six months. Just show up on the last full weekend of June and do my shifts as MC, legal observer and late night garbage man, get my tee-shirts and tokens, drink all the beer I want and cruise around the park, stopping at a stage just long enough to get a taste or staying longer if I hear something really good, hardly losing any forward momentum while exchanging “Happy Comfest” greetings, handshakes and hugs and gliding away when the show is over. Just how I always imagined it could be all those years when I was working or on-call. I always knew that Comfest was the most beautiful coming together of people in the most laid-back, peaceful, comfortable, happy, respectful, friendly atmosphere imaginable, that it was Heaven on Earth. But this year, I felt like I was part of the crowd who came there to enjoy it instead of someone serving the crowd and observing them from the outside. And that felt really good to be a part of that group. I am now one of the people for whom I used to work so hard. I am now one of the people who is so thankful to the organizers who make it all happen.

As I meandered about, I was definitely aware I was missing that feeling of pride I used to get surveying the wonder we had wrought, the magnificent Village of Joy we had built, the ephemeral Brigadoon we had magically conjured. I kept correcting people who were thanking me, only grudgingly conceding that l might have had some lasting influence on the proceedings. What I found surprising was that even though I wasn’t proud of myself, it didn’t keep me from being totally blissed out about how beautiful it all was. I felt the same pride about my community, my people, my local music and my beautiful Goodale Park that I always had. It didn’t seem like I was missing that much. I was content to just be a part of it and to sing its praises. I lost myself in that sea of humanity, my Comfest identity dissolved and I was one with Comfest.



Observations and photos for Comfest 2011:
 Best performance: Tim Easton, Aaron Tasjen, J. P. Olsen and The Madison Square Gardeners

Most Improved Bands:
                                                                         Wing & Tusk

Way Yes

Most Amazing New Musician: Professor Spira (N. Michael Goecke)


Best Dressed: Michelle Ishida with Mary Adam 12




Best way to begin the day at Comfest: The Spikedrivers



Best View of a Costume Change: Rachel of Openheart Art (not usually dressed this conservatively)




Best New Act: The Ferals




Best Veteran Act: Tony Monaco (pictured with Derek DiCenzo)

 
                      
Handsomest Baby at Comfest: Raad Page



Happy Comfest!

The Last Father's Day card

The card I make for Father's Day this year will be the last one. Dad passed away Saturday at home surrounded by his family. He finally gave up his exhausting and painful battle to stay alive, a battle he bravely waged with every ounce of strength he could muster from his emaciated body, with every rattling breath he could inhale into his water-filled lungs, all without complaint, not because he wanted to cling to life but because he knew his family did not want him to leave. In his death, as in his life, unselfishness was his defining trait. He worked hard all his life, sometimes holding down 3 jobs with the singular purpose of providing the best life possible for his family. His contribution to the community included years of loyal service to The Council for Retarded Citizens. He grew up during The Depression where frugality and self-denial forged his character. Dad was not the type to indulge himself with anything beyond a little bowling and a cigarette, both pleasures having been left behind many years ago. In retirement, he followed my Mom to the casinos for a little fun at the slots. But as I listened to the family stories weaved between the sobbing, the common theme was all that he done for us.The memory I hold closest to my heart about Dad is the way he chauffeured my teenage rock band around to our gigs and was there with us as we unloaded the equipment at two in the morning. That was an incredibly supportive sacrifice by a father back in the sixties especially when his son sported a shaggy head of hair that he detested. As I examine the person that I became, I like to think I see my father’s influence in the pleasure I get from volunteering and doing pro bono legal work. It satisfies the part of my soul that I inherited from my Dad.  An important aspect of my art has always been the act of giving it away and not expecting anything in return. So, this Father's Day I will make a card for Dad and though I will not see the gentle smile on his face that thanks me for it, I will offer it in a one-way tribute to the man who gave me so much.

You will always be my father
I will always be your son
You will live inside my heart
Until my days are done

I learned from you that giving
Returns its own reward
And the price of showing kindness
Is one I always can afford

I look to you to guide me
With the wisdom you bequest
Your work I will continue
As you finally take your rest

A Special Season

Today, I performed the sad ritual of taking down the red Ohio State banner hanging in my porch as the last Buckeye basketball team made its exit from the NCAA tournament. I was hoping this year I would be waiting for the men’s team to finish their season but, once again, the Lady Bucks outlasted them, albeit, by less than a day. Its been a special season. The men’s team had an incredible year up to their premature ejection in the Sweet 16 round. It has been so much fun to be able to watch the team of my allegiance and alma mater establish themselves over the entire season as the best team in college basketball that just happened not to do so great in the tournament. This year, thanks to friends, I had a chance to see them play at the Schot five times, allowing me to do my yelling and screaming with thousands of fellow fans. But for the rest of the games, instead of watching it at a friend’s place or being comfortably ensconced on the couch at home with the cats...until they scurry off in fear of my sudden outbursts...I took the opportunity to travel out to my parent’s home in Whitehall to watch the games with Dad.

Actually, I began watching OSU football with Dad when he was hospitalized last fall. After he came home, I continued to watch all the games with him as the sports season changed to basketball. His illness made me realize that I didn’t have much time left to spend with him and the games were the perfect passive activity for us to share. Dad can’t do much more than sit and watch TV these days. Fortunately, he loves the Buckeyes almost as much as I do so we had plenty to talk about. There aren’t many other subjects of conversation to get into with Dad so I’m very thankful we have OSU sports to share. I could tell he enjoyed my company and attention. I felt like his little boy again when he would ask me to sit close to him on the couch while we watched. I chattered a lot and he listened, acknowledging me with his wry smile, a funny face or an occasional whispered comment. He would sit or lie there in his pajamas and I would lightly poke a frail arm, grab a skinny leg or slap a hesitantly offered hand to celebrate a good play. He would ask “Who did that?” and I’d tell him. I never felt more comfortable with him. never more like his friend.

I’ll rehang the OSU banner the week of the next OSU football game. I don’t know whether we will have another one to share but I’ll always have this special season with Dad to remember.

Remembering Ronald Koal & the Trillionaires

I was proud to call myself a hard-core groupie of Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires. My love was not for Ronald personally but for the art and performance of Ronald and his collaborators. They wrote great songs, songs that should have been shared with the World, songs that could have become staples of classic rock radio formats and part of our cultural consciousness. They were as good as anything anyone anywhere was writing and performing in the early 80s. There were strong, memorable melodies and lyrics and the music was fresh and innovative with rhythms that were extremely danceable.The musicians backing Ronald and helping him write were very talented and they just kept getting better as they worked with each other. Even today, echoes of the Trillionaires reverberate in Columbus. My favorite local band, The Randys, features the incomparable guitarist, Matt Newman, and drummer Jimmy Castoe has been omnipresent in the Columbus jazz and rock scene for 30 years. I even remember being pleasantly surprised when Ronald came back after the Trillionaires with some really excellent bands that included Todd Novack and Ed Shuttlesworth playing some great new material.

Ronald’s appearance on the music scene happily coincided with a turning point in my life. I got divorced and graduated from law school in 1980. I had been hanging out with the same Eastside crowd of musicians and friends since high school and I was ready to move on to a new life. I don’t remember how I found Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires but once I did, I was hooked. I discovered a whole new world in Columbus’ music underground. My current family tree of social relationships begins with the people I began meeting around the music of Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires. The dozens of performances that I was lucky enough to witness were the graduate level of my continuing education in rock and roll that began with my garage bands and involvement with the Dave Workman Blues Band.

Those years of going out to hear the Trillionaires were, for me, joyous, golden days of a great girlfriend, great sex, great drugs (714 sopors) and great rock and roll. There was a small group of us who danced to every song, all night long. We knew most of the lyrics which we would sing at the top of our lungs and interpret, as if for the hearing impaired, with practiced hand and arm movements and facial expressions. I experienced so much happiness listening to Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires and I am so thankful to them. I will certainly never forget them and I’m glad to see that others are trying to perpetuate the memory of this high point in the history of the Columbus music scene.

I knew that Ronald was the stereotypical tragic genius bent on self-destruction. My best friend from my old crowd had the same problem. I never got close to Ronald but he knew how much I appreciated him and I knew that down deep underneath the cool rock star image he was a warm and gentle human being. Towards the end when he experienced some legal difficulties, he called on my expertise to help him out. It was pretty simple, I didn’t do much but he appreciated it enough to make me a laminated card that I have carried in my wallet ever since. Yes, it is sad that Ronald ended his life and who knows what he might have accomplished if he had survived the difficult turns of fate that came his way. Who knows what happiness he may have been able to find for himself. He may not have known what he was he was doing when he pulled that trigger under the influence of those little yellow pills but I suspect that maybe he knew that he had created something truly wonderful and beautiful during his life but that maybe he believed he never would again. I’m going to respect his decision to not live in a world where he might finally be arriving at Destination Zero. Hopefully, the rest of us can keep alive the memory that he once was Living For Something.

What Is Up With Mark?

A Hole In One

I’ve never been into making New Years resolutions and actually trying to keep them but this year when someone asked me “What’s your New Years resolution?” I came up with a real one. “I resolve to resolve my relationship with The Girlfriend, one way or the other.” I hadn’t seen her for three years. That’s not a good sign. It wasn’t as if one of us was away at war. Hell, soldiers get leave to come home occasionally. I assume maximum security prisoners get to have visits where they can make eye contact through thick plexiglas. They don’t even send astronauts or cosmonauts up in space that long. No, there aren’t many good explanations for not seeing someone you’re in love with for three years especially if you’re both living in the same country that has a system of highways and regular air flights.

And yet, such was the case with The Girlfriend and I. So, what was my explanation? For three years, she had kept me at bay by making repeated promises to come home from the place in which she was working, even making plane reservations at times. I wasn’t invited to come down to see her.  The nature of her work was so secret, I couldn’t be entrusted with her address, only a post office box. She insisted that she be the one to make the trip because she wanted to see our cats. But every time, just as she was about to leave, something prevented her from coming. I never kept count but I’m sure that happened over a dozen times. Occasionally, I was given a reason that seemed plausible like a health problem but usually it was just generically related to her work which could never be explained in detail. Each time, I would go around and sheepishly tell people “I know you think I’m crazy but this time I really think she’s coming.” It worked out well for inspiring me to do those extra-effort “company’s coming” cleanings that a house needs occasionally.

My faith in our relationship was never completely shattered by the repeated blows of disappointment because, when she would find time to call me, she made me feel like nothing had changed between us. Her voice was like an aural narcotic, washing my brain in a calming euphoric glow, releasing memories of the comfort I’d felt during the years we spent living together, the days when I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. As the calls became less and less frequent, even an email or a text message could trigger the endorphins. These regular reversals of paranoia led me to believe and often remind myself that when it comes to figuring out what she is thinking, I’m always wrong. No matter how high the evidence was stacked or how indefensible her failures to come home, communicate or provide explanations seemed to be, I just assumed it had to be my failure to understand her and have faith in her. This interminable rollercaoster ride took its toll. I was just hanging on by a thread and I was ready to fall but I couldn’t be the one to cut it because I was ready to climb back up if she still wanted me. I had to hear it from her. I told her I was a big boy and I could take it but she never threw the punch.

Recently, the signs had gotten worse. After begging her not to let three years go by before we saw each other, she informed me by text that she had cancelled her flight to come home for Christmas for the second year in a row. Additional texts outlined additional cancellations but never any explanations. Weeks went by with nothing but a text here and there asking if I was snowed in or claiming she’d call later but never doing so. Then the texts stopped and after receiving no calls for 2 months, I looked at my calendar, saw a week with nothing scheduled and decided to go find her. I’d planned on doing that the year before but she talked me out of it before I had a chance. I had put together some clues to her whereabouts that allowed me to triangulate an area with a beach she might frequent. I spent quite a bit of time visiting it on Google Earth and imagining how I might find her. When the call never came that might dissuade me, the morning of departure arrived and the momentum of my fantasy voyage launched the black BMW Loveboat down the road.

I realized that I might be doing something really stupid. Driving a thousand miles to visit somebody who doesn’t know you are coming, who may not want you to come, whose address you don’t know, who may have travelled out of town herself, who may or may not be visiting a certain beach at any particular time is a plan that doesn’t seem well thought out. I didn’t want to warn her I was coming because I seriously thought she might hide. The success of my plan was definitely a long-shot. NASA engineers could at least calculate where the moon was supposed to be once the lunar lander arrived. I was heaving a basketball a thousand miles and hoping it would swish through the net. It was like stepping up to the tee and swinging for a hole in one.

On the drive down, I had time to think about why I was making this quixotic journey. Winter was coming back to Columbus after a brief respite and my last escape had been Christmas and New Years 2007 in Key West. But I wasn’t going because I needed a vacation. I just needed a simple answer to a simple question and I felt like the only way I could force her to answer me was by holding her there with my eyes so she could see the tortured soul that needed to be comforted or released. The separation was killing me softly and silently, like being smothered by your lover’s pillow. I needed to momentarily defeat the distance and the silence by pushing back the miles, breaking through the sound barrier and gasping for just enough of a breath to ask her if she still wanted to be with me. I wasn’t hoping to accomplish any more than that and was prepared to make a quick obsequious exit, figuring the chances of her giving me the answer I wanted to hear were slim. Yet I continued to bet against myself and fantasize about a sweet reunion.

I wasn’t looking forward to the long drive but I soon remembered how pleasant a road trip can be despite the aching neck and sore butt. The miles and the hours flew by as I entertained myself. In between discs of David Sedaris reading “When You Are Engulfed In Flames”, the new Gregg Allman was perfect traveling music and it was good to get reacquainted with Tom Waits, Gorillaz and Emmy Lou Harris who contributed the inevitable song that seemed to be written for the occasion. “One of these days I’m going to take that ride/Though there may be nothing on the other side”. As I crossed into the South, I smelled the steamy broth of life cooking outside, warming the inside of my nose and causing me to radiate under my sweatshirt.

I planned to spend the night with my cousin in Goosecreek, S.C. I exited the freeway just as night fell and my fear of having trouble following the directions to her condo in the dark turned out to be well-founded as I drove back and forth looking for a hidden street sign and discovered I hadn’t been given her correct phone number. After finally figuring it out and getting some sleep, I got back on the road in the dark at 5 AM. As the daylight returned, I felt a strange hopeful sensation when I turned off my headlights. I arrived at the hotel just in time to get ready to watch the Buckeye basketball game. Their defeat, which I took to be a bad omen, didn’t dampen my excitement and enthusiasm for the job ahead as I immediately headed out to do some preliminary reconnaissance of the target area.

I confidently navigated through the area I had often visited on maps and in satellite photos, parked in the public lot and took the path to the beach as imagination became reality. On the bridge, dappled with patches of sunlight between the shadows of the trees and bushes, it occurred to me that she probably walked through this intimate wooden space many times and now I was moving through her lingering presence. I emerged and was drawn to turn north where it seemed less populated. It was a beautiful warm day and the beach was full of people near the entrance. Even though I didn’t plan to start looking for her until the early morning when I imagined she would most likely be there, I soon realized that I was going to be unable to resist looking for her in the face and body of every woman I saw there.

I reached the smooth wet sand of the shore that gave ever-so-slightly to the impact of my bare feet. After strolling a short distance with my eyes wandering between the waves and the beach population, I noticed the translucent heart-shaped water balloons with purple stitching and tassels in my path. Remembering the warning on the chalkboard at the entrance about the presence of man o‘ wars, I wondered how many I had just missed stepping on. Then I saw a woman at the top of a dune, lying on her stomach and a blanket wearing a floppy hat, big sunglasses and an orange dress. I couldn’t get a good look at her face but I noticed her hair was the right color and the body-type was close. I wondered how many times I would see women in the next few days that would look like possibilities. I didn’t want to appear to be too obvious about checking her out so I decided to walk a little further and then double-back to get a better view of her. On my way back, I saw her running at me with an open-mouthed smile.

I’d been on the beach for 10 minutes. She had noticed me walking past her and wondered so she kept an eye on me. When I turned around, she saw the scarlet and grey “The Ohio State University” game day tee-shirt and suddenly I was telescoped into her world. It was unusual for her to be there. She hadn’t been to the beach much. Even then, she was working. That window of a couple hours on Sunday turned out to be the only chance I would have had to find her there. We talked easily and comfortably for about an hour. I was disappointed when she mentioned that I couldn’t come to her place which had to remain a business secret but she did ask how long I could stay and when I said all week she suggested I just remain at the reasonably-priced hotel I had chosen.

She said she would have to leave in a little bit to finish up her work but that she could be back around 7. I was just glad that I’d found her so quickly and that we had so much time to spend together. I saved the question I had travelled so far to ask for later. She came back after just a couple minutes to tell me to watch the moonrise which should occur around the time she returned, then left again. I was brimming over with happiness, luxuriating in my good fortune. I didn’t need to walk to the bar down the beach to get a beer. I was exactly where I wanted to be, laying on her plush red towel on top of a pretty blue and white bed sheet, watching the waves breaking and the people walking. The sky began to darken and the stars shyly revealed their whereabouts. As night fell and I was left alone on a deserted beach, the moon and The Girlfriend were no where to be found. I texted her “Nothing but stars”. She called and said a business emergency came up and we wouldn’t be able to get together that night. I quietly conveyed my disappointment and gathered up my stuff as best I could for the long slog through the sand, but the blindly-constructed arrangement of objects fell apart at the entrance to the bridge.

A hole in one can be deceptive. There might be some skill involved in getting the shot close but its luck that guides that little ball into the cup. Making one gives you reason to celebrate for a moment but its not as if you can just stand there and admire it until night falls and everybody’s gone. You’ve got to move on to the next hole where odds are you’ll be lucky just to shoot par.

What Is Up With Mark?

I rationalized that I haven’t written anything lately because all my creative energy has been spent on the production of Christmas cards and Valentines since the day after Thanksgiving. Well, I made it through another two months of monkish devotion to small repetitive motions and once again I am left to consider what I have wrought. The Christmas cards are usually safe for holiday consumption although the naked Santa in my take-off on the Birth of Venus may have been an exception. I want receiving one to be like unwrapping a present that makes you say “Wow!”. This year, the little monkey climbing up the tree decorated with fruit probably didn’t elicit much more than a smile. For the valentines, I want the experience of image and poetry to be passionate and disturbing. I imagine that people probably don’t have a hard time appreciating and maybe even being moved by my expressions of passion but I worry about how they react to the dark aspects of my art for a holiday that is meant to celebrate romance. A few years ago, the heart that was skewered on a pitchfork burning in Hell was at least full of warm colors and accompanied by an unrepentant lusty verse. This year, the stark simplicity of a heart behind jail bars did not do much to alleviate the poem’s painful irony about a lover who cannot let go of someone he has no power over, thus imprisoning himself. I can only hope that my recipients will feel the loving care I tried to put into the execution of the image and the abstract serenity in the symmetrical equilibrium of the delicately pale gray bars and perfectly centered heart looking out at a sunny day and realize that I am celebrating the indomitable power of love that lights the darkness.

            With that said, I would like to reprise from last year’s Valentines Day blog, the reading of Oscar Wilde’s letter written in prison to his lover. Happy Valentines Day and may it be a passionate one for you.

"My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. I am determined not to revolt but to accept every outrage through devotion to love, to let my body be dishonored so long as my soul may always keep the image of you. From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. O dearest of created things, if someone wounded by silence and solitude comes to you, dishonored, a laughing-stock, Oh! You can close his wounds by touching them and restore his soul which unhappiness had for a moment smothered. Nothing will be difficult for you then, and remember, it is that hope which makes me live, and that hope alone. What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field, think of the burden which falls to you, a burden which love alone can make light. ... I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.

"Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other..." Oscar Wilde