Ghosts and Skeletons

My friend Mike, whom I've known for more than forty years ( ...! ), is a history buff, and a dedicated nostalgic when it comes to shared memories and our personal histories.  I can always count on Mike, whenever we have any occasion to catch up (which is not nearly as often or enough as it should be), to remind me of some tidbit from not only our childhoods growing up together, but also my own experiential Akasha ... which should never have become wiped away in the first place.

I thought of Mike the other day when I 'stumbledupon' something I forgot even existed:  "(Mostly) Unpublished writings by New York City author, poseur, poet and flâneur" ... JgNYC.

If you click there, you will enter a world of gamely attempted, lame stits and farts, before Twitter or Facebook ... before even LinkedIn!  My first post, an early slice of Slice / Life, dated April 28th, 2003 ... Apparently, LinkedIn launched that May.

first "Contact"

And then I found, resurfacing from the bowels of the deep web, one of the first online formats which granted me publication - an until now MIA zine called Strawberry Press ... which, with Underground Voices and Thieves Jargon, cut my teeth;

then, circling back to my giant, small steps into the early, first "blogosphere" -- that abandoned single page of posts on jglovsky.blogspot.com -- I became further reminded that I was, and still am (if I can find the password!!), a proud member of Zoetrope ("one of the first uses of social networking on the internet") ... a virtual writers' workshop sponsored by All-Story.

Who knew??  Who could remember any of this, when work and life demanded attention and the past four years, especially, have been starting over?

While starting to weep now, I'm actually happy:  to have come across these footprints from a more recent past ... clinging as I tend to, to my longer ago, Gen X sense of self, and the spirit that still haunts those streets and footsteps ...

October Song

"To most men the past is never yesterday, or five minutes ago, but distant, misty epochs some of which are glorious and others abominable." - Henry Miller

"Excuse me!" he whirled, on the airplane in flight, to the fat woman sitting behind him and armed to the teeth with a duty-free magazine.

The woman had rolled up that weapon and clocked him over the head with it ... because he'd had the temerity, in flight, to recline his seat into her overweight lap.

"Excuse me!" he whirled ... and the woman played dumb, trying proudly to play like she hadn't just done that.

I wonder where those two are right now?

I think of the 'ones who got away' sometimes ... those fleeting passengers through my life, who wouldn't have reason to think of me, but nonetheless made their impressions felt and registered on my akasha.

I think of the 'ones who got away' ... From the roadside café in Pennsylvania, that angry, long-legged bird with ripe plumage ... I spied her storming, arms crossed, smoking, stomping down the roadside, carless ...

Left my café booth to ride her.

Many years later, this hotel AV gig ... The "V" guy (I was doing "A") raced sloppily through his post-show chores, because, as he put it, "the wife" promised him "a little fun" if he managed to get home early that day.

I cried at the innocent beauty of life ... then went home to my own wife and "fun" of our own, as we fought about money and tore down our scene.

Growing up, on a ship, northern Michigan waters ... My little baseball cap blew off.  A fair-haired, red-nosed Minnesotan joined me hanging over the railing, waving my baseball cap bye-bye.  Her name was Dawn, that's all I know ...

I wonder where Dawn rises now?

Little League, early effort at teamwork ... I whacked that baseball almost out of the park.  Watched it sail, like Icarus, into the sun.  Then I chased it ... past first base and into the outfield.

No one told me where to run!  No one told me what to do when I hit it ... I had a coach (and had a dad ... but Dad cared as little about sports back then as I do now, if that's possible (and if not less) ... My dad can't be faulted.

... I guess.).

I asked the coach which way to run ... What to do, if I ever hit a baseball.  Not believing, dismissing my foolish question -- because in Coach's athletically fit, trim mind, it couldn't be anything but foolishness -- he answered my dumb, yet sincere, ask with sarcasm.

"See that scoreboard?" he chewed and spit, and smiled sort of shittily.  "Ya run out there, climb up that fence and touch it!  Then run back to the dugout when you hit the ball."

He said that.  I did it.

... My dad watched, his heart sinking faster with each step my cleated feet took, charging and high-stepping out toward that scoreboard ... racing the ball I just whacked toward the sky.

I wonder whatever became of that coach guy?

With every year that passes by, the incidents, visages, in my mind's eye grow clearer, taking on lives of their own as my own life counts down toward an inevitable 9th inning ... beginning now, slowly, to stretch toward the 7th ...

I look back, slow motion sometimes, sometimes smiling, and think of the ones who got away.

"The Memory", ©Jeff Glovsky