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.