Sunday, June 28, 2020

Yo! 

No piece next Sunday, July 5th, but one coming Saturday, July 4th. Why not Sunday? Read it to see it, and, while I'm here, thanks for reading my stuff all along. It's a joy to do it. Your comments are everything this writer wanted to hear about his work since he scribbled his first word. I didn't know I'd be feeling grateful, but I am. A surprise perk.

When I first arrived in Hollywood and could do no wrong for awhile, I nurtured this dream that, some day, if I wanted to write about a blade of grass, I could. So, I do. Nobody's out there cutting me a check which might spice things up, but I'd be lying if I didn't confess to every living creature on earth that I'm still having a really good time. Can't complain. Won't complain. It all does seem to be coming together, yet I wonder why it also seems so hedonistic? Because I'm having a good time? Uh, huh. Bingo. Houston, we don't have a problem. Got it, fool? However, I have yet to write about a blade of grass.

All I really intended to do was notify you about the Sunday to Saturday info. I didn't intend to write this piece at all. Like the red shoes, however, I couldn't stop my fingers. "Falling in love again, Don't know what to do, Never wanted to, Can't help it." M. Dietrich

Spread the word!

Safe safe.

Father's Day, 2020

Reuben Henry. My mother said when she first heard his name she thought he was a hillbilly. Reuben Henry Foreman. Sixty years since he died. I'm not sure who he was because he never said. He'd tell the occasional story about his life at the turn of the 20th century, although I doubt he gave that much thought. He was funny, but he wasn't a thinker. He told a good story, great characters, fine punchlines, a chuckle when he finished. It's my inheritance. In the eighth grade, Ruby's father barged into his classroom, took him by the neck, and apprenticed him to a plumber. He eventually went into the tire business when there still was one. Ruby also talked about the time when neighborhood boys had to fight their way from block to block. One day my father ran home with a stick in his ear. His father opened the door, pulled it out, and pointed his son back to the street. But, Ruby was a goodhearted guy who rarely got angry, rarely raised his voice. That was left to my mother, who rarely lowered hers. Ruby was not mean, and he wasn't angry, he was a cripple. Huh? My father a cripple? Where'd that come from? It came from Jamie Donnelly, my wife. We were visiting Baltimore for the first time. Jamie was looking at an old photo of my father when she said, "I didn't know your father was crippled." "What're you talking about?" "Look at him, Stephen," she said, "he's got two metal canes. His legs are bowed. Head too large. He's crippled, but you never told me." I could see sure enough that he was, but the odd truth is, we never thought of him as a cripple, and I never heard him complain or cry out with pain.The word was never mentioned in our house. No law against it. It just wasn't a word in the Foreman family lexicon. I was genuinely surprised to hear Jamie say it. Dad was dad. He wasn't a cripple. He was Dad.

His body had become so deformed and shrunken he had to have his suits custom made. Saul the tailor sat cross legs in the window of his shop sewing by hand. Ruby was a man who had been devilishly handsome, five foot ten, black hair, eyes always amused by what they saw. One day I glanced into his room while he was looking at himself in the mirror. He wore a new, blue suit complete with vest. He seemed so sad, seemed to be saying, "Where did I go?"

1940 something

He held my hand as we walked up the block to the first house in the neighborhood to have a television set. It was dusk. The short walk was illuminated by gas-lit street lamps gleaming from their glass bowls. So how old could I have been? Old enough to have spent hours chucking rocks at those glass bowls, old enough to watch Joe Louis fight on television. If I could remember how old I was, I could figure out his opponent. Whatever, whoever, it was Joe Louis, the Joe Louis. Mr. Land, the man who owned the television, gave me this tiny bowl of peanuts, no super bowl spread. Who knew and who cared? Joe Louis!

1961

My father was propped up against a pillow, eyes glazing and staring at nothing. I closed his eyes. My last memory. We had been in adjoining rooms, although he didn't know it. I had an emergency appendectomy and requested the arrangement. Sometime during the dark hours I heard a bedpan hit the floor in my father's room. I knew the dull clunk from having worked in a hospital as an orderly, and the next thing I remember was standing in the hall outside his room as the doctors and nurses filed out. I have no memory of pulling all the tubes out of my arm, only of standing outside his door in the hall while it was still dark out.

What of the years in between? Not much of a through line, only isolated incidents: John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man at the Pimlico theater followed by my first t-bone steak at the White Coffee Pot around the corner. A smoker where a wrestler in black tights wrestled with himself. A ball game at Memorial Stadium with my brother. I don't remember he said anything special when I enlisted in the Marine Corps, but then I came home. My first liberty. Stripes on my sleeves. Marksmanship medal on my chest, spit shine, all squared away. I had survived Parris Island intact and was now training at an outpost called Courthouse Bay. The train from North Carolina arrived in Baltimore's Penn Station, and I headed for the doors at a good clip. There was my father, entering the station, walking towards me, then right past me.  Right past me! Didn't know me from the guy selling newspapers. The last time he'd seen me I was an overweight teen-ager with pimples and a string of bad news behind me. "Dad," I called out. He turned around, looked at me, saw me, saw his son, and cried. I hadn't seen him cry before or since. It wasn't that he burst out in wails and lamentations, beat his breast, tore his clothing, but he did lose it for a second, and that second has counted a lot.

I know things about my father, but not who my father was. However, Alaska taught me something fierce. Alaska's turf was much harder than I anticipated, starting off with swampy tussocks that had me praying for rocky climbs. I'd been trekking through the bush following a trapper's line. About 17 miles in, the line played out. Turn around. Head back. I couldn't go any further because all the skin on both my feet had rubbed off. The trapper I was with said he'd go on to the village and send a helicopter back for me. "No way," I said, "I'll get out of here on my own." "You sure?" he asked. "If you send a chopper I'll hide," I told him. I was serious. I was gonna get outta there myself. Why? What was I trying to prove? Anything? Not that I knew at the moment. I just wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there on my own. Seventeen miles back. Do it.

I did it. It was the most gruesome trek I've ever been on. The Bataan death march was worse. The trail of tears was worse. Jews marched to their deaths in freezing weather. Lotta stuff much worse. I'm not claiming to have topped the field by any stretch, but, what I can say, is this was grim, as painful as anything I'd yet experienced then or now. Whenever possible I walked in the river to freeze my feet enough to move. There were periods when I'm not certain I was conscious but plodding foot after foot. I never thought I wouldn't make it. I never thought I would. I never thought anything at all except "Move", and that wasn't thought but sheer reflex. Limbs moving on their own. At some point, I had to leave the river to follow the trail back to the village. No cold water to freeze my screaming feet. It took all I had to slowly shuffle forward. Remember, too, I carried a large pack on my back and a rifle. The trail to Eagle became the road to Damascus. At some point the doctor told the family that when Dad walked it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back, and, there I was, a heavy pack on my back, painfully, step after step, making my way. If my father could do it, so could I.

2020

Sunday is father's day aka grandfather's day. I will begin to tell my grandson stories of his great grandfather who served in the navy during WW1, who laughed about fighting the Battle of Great Lakes, whose uniform is still in my closet, who bounced me on his leg singing, 

     "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm," 

Just like I'm doing with you right now, boychik.

     "After they've seen Paree -ee-ee".

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Plague Redux 6 - Finito

MAY 20, 2020

Some years ago, Jamie spent the last week of a friend's life by her side. They sang and prayed and traded tears and laughter until the end. It was calm and peaceful. There was resolution, and sleep. Later, J told me how much she cherished this experience. I mulled that over for awhile, knowing how important J's beliefs were to her, and how important my beliefs were to me, said beliefs being decidedly more pagan than hers "J," I said, "When my time comes, forget the prayers, the singing, know what I'm sayin'? Just bring me a bucket of fried chicken. The colonel's fine. Thighs."

So, what has this to do with the plague? Word has it that by the first of June, two weeks from now, 20,000 more Americans will be dead. "Who shall live, and who shall die?" Jews wonder during Yom Kippur, their holiest day. Will they be written in the book of life for the coming year? Who will be alive two weeks from now? Will I?

This plague has changed the way we die. Our caregivers are encased in hazmats, masks, and plastic. Tubes are in the patient.Ventilators hide the patient's face. No one can see anyone else. And people die like this. Alone. Connected by tubes. Encased in machines. Among strangers. Without the touch of a hand. Without ritual. Wrapped and protected. Protected from what? It comes anyway. Where is the word for dying like this?

Two prisoners condemned to death are asked by the warden for their last wish. The first prisoner says, “Warden, I want to hear “Achy Breaky Heart” one more time.” “OK,” says the warden, “What about you,” he asks the second prisoner. “Warden,” the man says, “Kill me first.”

I've been reading stuff like Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus" and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning", Whitman's celebration and Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition". How come? They're all about the meaning of life, so maybe I've been looking to see if I've skipped anything? The meaning of life? Who knows, and who cares? I have a number of definitions. One, when my grandson shrieks with laughter because I'm goofy. It is a perfect moment, and, in that moment, there is only that. Two, when my words work. Three, when my brother and sister, and I laugh about our crazy mother. Four, the fact that my wife still loves me. Five, the faces of my children. Six, chocolate ice cream. More? You get the point. It’s up to me. The meaning of my life is whatever I'm doing in the here and now. The substance of my day is its meaning. To deny it is to waste it.

There is another way to look at it. My amigo, Rob Lindstrom, a very bright guy, who sees the organization of the world through his original concept of "Sphericity", recently sent me a quote from Joseph Campbell. "People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life...I think what we're saying is an experience of being live, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being live."  

The rapture of being alive.

Still, it is certainly awful out there. Every day another atrocity emanates from that seditious oaf in the White House. Is it a waste of my time to pay attention? Every breath I take that includes this guy is a breath I could have taken elsewhere. I write; I talk; I vote. What else? Where else?

Marianne Williamson once looked at me hard and declared, "There is in you a place of perfect peace". Tru dat. She said it. To me. Forget where and how. That's between Marianne and myself, but she did say it. To me. There is some truth to this, even though the current toxicity makes life that much harder. Saying "om" out loud could get you killed. However, like Brigadoon, the legendary Scotch village that comes to life only once every hundred years, said peace is not always in place. Sometimes, I need to fetch it back, call it in, like a wild turkey. Humor me. I find it helpful to think this way.

Spring. Air flush with scent. Cut for sign. Find your spot in turkey woods and settle in. Take a seat with your back against a sturdy tree. Get quiet. Don't move. Stay still. Start calling. You can use a turkey bone or a caller from the market. Yelps. Clucks. Burbles. Chirps. Talk like a hen to lure in a jake. Get his attention. Seduce him. Time. Patience. Sounds a hen would make except it's you. Peace is necessary. You are absolutely there without being anywhere else. Peace is necessary. Without it, you will stutter and fail. So, what's the point? In order to hunt turkey, you need to be in the woods. If you're in the woods you're out of touch with everything else. No wonder it's peaceful. What about when you're not in the woods? There's no turkey hunting in the wilds of Manhattan. There's also no turkey. So, I don't live there. I live here, in the woods.

Ommmmmmm...


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Spring, 2020 - a modest change of pace

                                  Fiddle heads outside my window
                                         The music of Spring

"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event," wrote the French philosopher, Bachelard. 

Like so many displaced easterners, when I lived in LA I missed the change of seasons. Of course, there's change in California, too, but on a microcosmic scale. Locals revel in it - poppies, birds of paradise, kumquats - but I say, "Feh". Our woods and fields in the northern Catskills (a far range of the Appalachians) are flush with Appalachian spring. Our brooks and creeks are high and clear. Fresh, vibrant colors on Hunter Mountain. Trees with full chests proudly puffed out. So many shades of green. Dew on the buttercups. You don't need to search for flowers in the east. Look anywhere, some tiny, like pinheads, dots of color, hard to see. How many angels can dance on them? Others the size of tulips and rhododendron and lilac, early blooms. All of their aromas mix and swirl in pure air parfait. Why breathing was invented. 

Spring came so slowly this year it seemed as if the planet had stopped. It's here now, the time of the year when I feel the most alive. This one, this spring, is different than any that have come before. I no longer see Spring through these jaded eyes, but through the eyes of a twenty month old rambunctious little boy, fearless, a curious, observant, joyous little life with a swarthy walk, his arms trailing behind him like a cape. He is Dorian Alexander, my grandson, my first, my only, who has taken my heart to new dimensions. Who knew? You think you know, but you do not know. Strike a match; Detonate a nuclear bomb. That's the difference we're talking here. 

Today we planted the garden, and Dorian discovered a wheelbarrow. His observation is  meticulous. What is this? What does it do? How does it work? Can I eat it? We planted pumpkins first so there'll be a magic pumpkin patch for Halloween. Last night we cooked hot dogs over a bonfire, Hebrew National with Nathan's mustard. He sprawled in my lap as we watched the bright, sickle moon dodge in and out of roving clouds. Art makes me cry. The night sky strikes me dumb. He did not take his eyes off the spectacle, and I did not take my eyes off his face. His uninhibited joy blots out the world and all its problems. I think to myself, "This is perfect. This is wonderful." Sparks flutter up and disappear in the darkness. No pull of gravity. The peace of sleep. Wouldn't this be when you'd want to die? When everything is perfect? Not that I'm ready because I certainly am not, but wouldn't it? In theory?

Tomorrow I intend to introduce him to buttercups, and soon we'll go down to the edge of our brook and hunt salamanders. Dorian's never seen any of this before, and, consequently, neither have I.

"Oh, come on, Foreman! Stop posturing! You know you've seen all of it, over and over and over. 'Fess up.  Over and over."

Well, guilty, yes, of course, I'll 'fess. All of it before, most every bit of it, however, just as every garden is the same and different, every tree the same and different, every creek the same and different, everything out there seems brighter, more vibrant, more aromatic, a gentle, golden shimmer over all. 

And now I know what a wheelbarrow is.

                                                              END

                                                 

A Racist Confesses

It’s been many years since I was called a racist, once then, and never since. Oh, yes, she said it with a smile, actually, in retrospect, it was a gotcha smile, but she meant it. Huh? What? Who? Me? A racist? What am I doing here? Here was Morgan State College, 1964, the year then Cassius Clay fought Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship of the world. Morgan State was one of America’s historic all Black colleges. I was the only white man matriculating back then. How come? Some other time. Maybe. This is about racism, mine.

Clay had not yet shed his “slave name” - that would soon come - but, even so, he surely was in white america’s face, right away, smack up in it. Ali was physically beautiful and gifted with an uncommon grace shared by few other fighters, but his mouth was titanic, the size and range of a cannon, and that cannon launched outrage after outrage into the flabbergasted faces of fight fans, white fight fans, and then white people period. He flaunted the norms. “I’m so pretty”. “Float like a butterfly". “I am the greatest”, "Sting like a bee". “Allah, Allah, Allah”. He became a Muslim. He called the round. “Ain’t no jive, down in five”. He clowned. He posed. He preened. He talked about injustice. How dare he? You’re supposed to hit the guy, get your money, shut up and go away til we call you. He hadn’t yet taken his stand on Viet-nam. Everyone was sure he was crazy, but canny, ferally smart. People - white people - hated him and wanted to see him pulverized. Sonny Liston, the current heavyweight champion, was just the beast to do it - Mighty Joe Young - dark, brooding, taciturn, lethal, shambling, not so bright. I doubt there was a white man in America who didn’t want Liston to take this uppity loudmouth apart. I’d been a boxing fan since my father took me to see Joe Louis when I was four or five. I, too, wanted Liston to destroy this fat mouthed blowhard with his dumb-ass poetry.

So, I was at Morgan, now approaching graduation. Jackie Shears, a popular co-ed and I were very school chum friendly. We shared a couple of classes together, so we saw each other quite frequently. One day, as we were talking in front of the language arts building, Jackie asked me if I were going to watch the fight? “Yeah. Sure. Absolutely,” I said, “Wouldn’t miss it.” “Who do you want to win?” she asked. “Liston,” I answered. She checked me with a “gotcha” smile and said, “That’s because you’re a racist.” 

Huh?

“A racist,” she repeated. That gotcha smile. Or smirk? “Me?” I’d been active on campus, walked the March on Washington, picketed to integrate a movie theater near campus, wrote a local TV show, “The Unknown American”, on Black history, produced with actors from the drama department...”Gimme a break, Jackie. What am I doing here if I’m a racist?” She just smiled and nodded her head. What the hell was this woman - This woman and I were friends! - what the hell was she talking about? She just kept on smiling. It took a while, but, finally - Flash! - I got it.

Sonny Liston was the white man’s Negro. He knew his place even if he didn’t know he knew it, didn’t roil the waters, was a murderer in the ring, a stalking beast, not pretty, not loud - a cocked weapon, unlocked fire power in each fist. Awesome, but he didn’t challenge the prevailing notions white people had about the “colored”. Muhammad Ali didn’t give a damn what you thought. His thoughts were as good as yours, and the camera was on him. He was a true original, never been anyone like him before or since. The man galvanized a population. Even Jack Johnson was not as flamboyant as Ali. Until Colin Kaepernick came on the scene, no athlete has ever been hated more...by white people.

Systemic racism. Here I was, immersed in the culture as most Caucasians never were and never would be, had been since I was a little boy hanging around my father’s tire business in Baltimore's most depressed neighborhood, yet I had no idea. It’s in the air. You breathe it in, you let it out. It’s normal. Doesn’t mean you deliberately treat anyone with disrespect. You simply have no idea. Black people don’t act like that segues into why are they acting like that which is not far from those people shouldn’t act like that. We notice a Black guy driving through the neighborhood. Does the Negro salesman with a weird haircut at Radio Shack know as much as the white guy with wire rim glasses? A Black man impeccably tailored with polished shoes, power tie, and a hand-tooled, leather briefcase draws our attention. We are aware that a physicist is Black. Black women have big butts. Subtle stuff. When I was a kid I remember a man who worked for my father shoveling the snow off the walk. His name was Gainwell Haines aka Sporty. It was freezing out there, but I remember being amazed that, since Sporty just kept shoveling away, he must not have felt the cold. And I admired  him for that! Seemingly harmless, these assumptions eventually bore into the soul and puncture the spirit.

How to ferret out this stuff? It is everywhere. It is subtle. Listen. Hear. Hang around some Black people. Read something. Question authority. Keep picking away. Am I finally free of it? Of course, not. I’m never going to be completely free of it, and neither will you, so that means we need to be patient with each other and understand we have only good will.

Should I hold my breath?

As for Muhammad Ali, he became the single sports hero I’ve ever had, only partially due to his uncanny skill in the ring. I came to live and die by his antics. The fight with George Foreman damn near gave me a heart attack. My first year in Hollywood I was asked if I’d be interested in writing the biopic about Ali. I told my agent I’d do it for free if Ali would give me lessons in the ring. Of course, I was thrilled, although the odds were against it, and, in fact, it never did happen. I actually met him in, of all places, West Virginia, where I was teaching. 1968. Viet-nam was raging. His title had been taken; his license had been lifted. I was shocked at how big he was, so big I had to lean back to see his face. A statue. “David”. Sports writers portrayed Foreman as gargantuan, inbred, monstrous, yet Muhammad Ali didn’t give away a pound or an inch, just as big, different proportions, and, let's not forget, "Pretty". When we shook, my hand disappeared in his. However, most important of all, was his stand against the war in Viet-nam. It was a display of pure principle, an act of raw courage, rare courage. Unlike most celebrities who speak out, Ali risked everything, every single thing including his freedom, his title, his prime, his livelihood, five years in federal prison. Ali was not showboating. He believed with all his being, no less than those who bear the label, saint. He stood his ground. He didn’t cave. A very strong man.

Agree with him or not, compare the courage of a Muhammad Ali with the gutlessness of those in Congress who know better, yet still take a knee to a dangerous bunco artist whom they've watched  wreaked havoc upon our nation. Ali risked everything. They risk nothing. They hide their faces and shamble away from the press while mumbling something about being late for lunch. And then there’s Lindsay Graham.

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