Age Removes Smugness. Mine Anyways.

Religion for me, the social justice parts of it, I am ok with. The more Old Testament views that God is a Cop in the Sky just waiting to pull you over doesn't fly with me at all. You can choose to believe what you want.

The late 70's was when I was became an awful skeptic, thanks in part to higher level biology courses, heard what carbon-14 dating was about and a steady diet of National Lampoon magazines. Add to that my natural distrust of most adults during that time who said one thing, then did another. I was unable to “Respect my elders” when my elders were full of shit. On my street alone for a sampling of “elders,” we had a child fondler, alcoholic, child beaters, wife smackers and a gambling addict who blew the paycheck at the track instead of the household bills. That's something to look up to only because they were older than me and “knew better?” Respect my elders....horse shit! Hence my streak of thinking independently and distaste for conformity.

Today I find adults, including myself, to be full of shit at times still.

So, in the late 70's I easily moved towards that cliched view that religion was a crutch for weak people. I've since changed that view out of some compassion and not any agreement with any precepts I thought were wrong then.

You get older, you see more things, experience grows. I've come across many people who have literally shit in their lives in one form or another. Health problems, families that were just sick environments to begin with and a host of other maladies that people easily succumb to. These people, who I witnessed pretty closely, search, reach and claw to find a cure, and come up short. They try different avenues in hope only to find nothing worked. You could try therapy but you have to find the right therapist which clicks with you and then enjoy years of struggle as you to fix yourself. Many aren't up to that task, nor have the money. You want to find the worst enemy ever? Try yourself.

Some of them turned to religion, God and for them, it worked. I cannot, not now, criticize what works. Who am I to take away a palliative or even perhaps a transcendence? I'd be a dick if I did. I keep my damned mouth shut now in front of those I knww who have nothing else to turn to.

**

There are those of us who put everything personal on Facebook, some of us who don't out of fear of judgment and the likes of me who put up whatever the fuck they want. If you read between my lines you can discern as much as you want, positive or negative. I don't care. Judge me as you will as we all do it. The really personal shit others post is great reading, sometimes too great, as you discover just what they are.

I found an old friend from the Triassic period today and nearly all of the posts, had him praising God, telling himself that being “broken” wasn't an unacceptable thing or that finally accepting himself as he was A-OK. He hadn't discovered Jesus lately either, this has been with him since his late teens. What blew my mind, as I read between the lines, was that he was a wreck! I never knew this when he was a child! Well, I suspected some shit was going in that house as I was nearby enough but the extent, the depth of the darkness was far greater than I thought.

Wow....

I felt bad for him. Then again, as I read further, deeper, he managed to cobble together a life, family and struggled like we all do to make it day by day. Some of us have it harder going though. He managed to make it this far and that's good enough.

As for his religion...I cannot point fun at it. If it was all that worked, stabilized his life, made sense of the shitstorm that I garnered that was his childhood, good. 

Whatever works...

This Talking Heads song works for me however...enjoy the ride...even if it ends in a giant ZERO.

DNA 2.0

A rose will bloom,

It then will fade.

So does a youth.

So does the fairest maid.

Comes a time when one sweet smile

Has it's season for awhile.

Then...Love's in love with me

Nino Rota

Rhode Island is too small. No matter how many years go by or how far someone moves away, you can run into them again. Either they come home for good or they have to visit for one reason or another. If luck has it, you'll run into them at a Chello's. Which I did.

When I knew Charlene at an old job, she was 23. She had the stupid genetic luck of being born pretty with everything in the right place and she knew it. She was one of those girls whose face was proportionally correct, a skinny body that was proportionally correct and correct big tits. It's amazing how some people, through no effort on their own, get lucky on the Wheel of Genetic Fortune. She traded that currency for a boyfriend who was earning a chemical engineer's degree from U Mass. She knew this guy would go places eventually. In fact, from what I knew, his entire family was born with that mathematics gene and every son managed to find their way into those hot, 1990's industries around 128, when 128 was THE place to start a career. If it wasn't that, then it was working in one of the Big Five accounting firms in NYC.

I once took the GRE's and psychology subtest at Providence College back in the early 90's. When the Dominican proctor was handing out the subtests, he asks, “Who are the chem majors? A few hands went up and he walked over, handed them the subtest and then made the Sign of the Holy Cross at them. I too, looked over my shoulder at them and under my breath said, “Whew...chem GRE's? That's gotta be tough.”

No one was admiring them that day. You have to be a brainac in order to make it that far.

I digress, but her beau was one of those wizards at it.

Charlene's level of education never went beyond high school or fixing her hair. She wasn't a dumb sort, just not cut out for higher learning. Her interests back then included fixing her hair, watching MTV and being pretty much clueless about the world outside of Warwick. There was no dogged attempt at being ignorant, it just sort of was natural. Her ticket to ride was to be her looks and she was slowly bagging the engineer to be that would insure her an easy life.

I once, because she was pretty which can stun us guys like a Tazer, asked her out once when she and her beau had a longish spat over God Knows What. She politely shot me the hell down and I found out later from another girl that “Charlene didn't figure anyone in the social services (me) was going to make 'that kind of money,' ever.” Charlene wasn't that stupid I guess. The last time I saw her was in 1997.

Twenty years later! Zooom!

I was walking out the door of Chello's and walking in was...wait...is it...it can't be....yes...Charlene?

I go back in and have to ask. She looks at me for a few seconds and then it all hit her. “My GOD...Ronnie! Your hair is all WHITE!” (Jesus...that again? Always the hair they point to!). We picked up where we left off and did the quickie resume thing. Where ya been, What ya doin', How are ya?

At 43 those genetics still were holding up in a way. Of course, the past twenty years of life had etched itself on her face. There's always that world-weariness you get when you get past 40. Hell, some of us get that at 30. The perkiness, kitten-ish-ness and all around girl next door looks were abraded.

I ask about Mike, the chem major guy she eventually married and she admits she's been divorced for the past three years. I then said, as a bit of a joke, “Irreconcilable differences?” and she shot back, “No, younger girlfriend.”

“How young?” I ask.

“She'll be turning 30 in a few months. They “met” because they worked on the same projects together, she was on loan from 3M and he and her...I guess, hit it off. When I found out about it, he was planning the whole divorce thing for months. We were quits not too long after.”

At my age, I shouldn't be startled by much but I am constantly at times because of what I think is going on in people's lives or if I haven't seen them in a while, what I thought their trajectory would be. Nope...the details are behind closed doors and you never really find out, til it happens.

We talk further and the subject goes onto finding another mate.

She goes on: “Dating is soo hard now...I haven't been out there in decades and it's like I'm invisible to a lot of guys.” I don't dare explain why. I've heard that from other women who did know why and I didn't want to deflate any bubble she had. Why be the bad guy?

Her order came up, as mine was turning cold and we walked out and away from each other, to our cars with a final, “Good to see you agains.” All I could think of was when she had the world by the balls, could pick anything she wanted and this is how it ended.

That's two in two weeks I've run into..who's next?

DNA

Usually I zone out, looking across the greens of Pawtucket Country Club, when I put gas in the car at the Quickie Mart on 152. Tonight for a third time, I came across someone from over 20 years ago while pumping the gas. I find that funny, how you can run into people while gassing up your car. This should happen more at reunions or supermarkets.

“Hey, Jacopo,” a kid in the driver's seat shouts out to him, “Get the grape one! Get the grape blunt!”

“Jacopo...Jacopo?” I know this name I think to myself. “Who else is named Jacopo but the one I know?”

I do know him. His full name goes sort of like this: Jacopo Luca Giacomo Angelo Tataglia. I knew his mother back in the 80's when I started really working. She was small Guidette from Providence who was similarly named by her Dad, Nicole Adele Sofia Tataglia. From what I could tell, her entire family was low level mafia. The family was “heavy” into Italian heritage and hence the names. Nicole was mix between Mt Hope High bad-ass black girl/Italian princess, with a penchant for wearing lace covered jeans, Obsession perfume and having the ability scratch your face in an instant when pissed off.

After hearing that name, I follow the kid into the store and ask, “Is your Mom's name Nicole?”

“Yeah...” the kid is eyeing me suspiciously. I eye him in a similar manner because all I see is wigger with a “fuck you” attitude.

“I knew your Mom when she was your age. That first and last time I saw you, you were in a bassinet in Women & Infants. Your Mom had two black eyes, busted blood vessels in her eyes from pressing down so hard to birth you.” That I remember, Nicole was wasted after giving birth and looked like a redneck husband had worked her over with a club. It was the last time I saw either of them and that was 1993.

We talked for a short bit, finding out his Mom had remarried another guy and that Jacopo was living in Providence now. We walk back to the cars and he promises to say “Hi' to Mom when he sees her.

They drove off and all I can think is “Holy Shit..How about that?”

Being a awful snoop, I have to find out about him, his mom on Google. I type in her name a some very scant information comes up on Mom. OK, she's not big on the internet scene. I type Jacopo's name in and....I find news stories, police logs and State Police blotter accounts of breaks in, jumped warrants and the usual punk, petty thief charges. The kid's Facebook is mostly lyrics from rap songs and him flashing gang signs on grainy iPhone pictures. There was the usual old photo of a young girlfriend and him, with solemn promises to love one another “for-eva” and if you read a bit further, you see both relationship statuses are “single” now.

“Oh Jesus...the kid's a LOSER!” I thought.

I wasn't too surprised in fact. I knew of Nicole's family back then and there was a hint, well, more than a hint of criminality to it all. Once, while on a run from work to Nicole's house to pick up her clothes for a night out, we made it just in time to see her younger brother being manhandled to the ground by five Providence cops. He had had a temper tantrum over god knows what and was smashing the windows out of one of the many cars parked in their yard. They had to release him when the found the registration on the car belonged to him.

Apples don't fall too far from the tree they say.

It's happened more than once, I running into the kids of people I knew when I was young and finding out these kids are fuck ups, unhappy or still trying to find their way at 25. I, of course, usually don't identify myself when I hear these stories, and being the curious prick that I am, I draw it out of them and I can pretty much piece together the past family life. Again, I am surprised at times by this, knowing who the parents were at one time. I had thought that stable people I knew then might have produced stable kids. Well, there's no guarantee that any kids you have, will turn out right or as you had hoped.

Now, only if I could run into a few teachers I knew back then while pumping gas. Ah, I'd have a better chance running into them at a nursing home now.

Walden

I've always, for a reason, been attracted to the Transcendentalist writers. Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott and the rest of them. Over the years, I read them all. It's not particularity easy reading either. Back then, they wrote in a style that was exacting. Each sentence is packed, stuffed full of meaning. The words of the sentences are fashioned w/o mortar and there are no gaps as it all fits with precision.  It's that tight.  As you read, you have to bite off a piece and chew it carefully or you won't comprehend what the hell they're talking about. It took me, casually reading, Emerson's "Self Reliance," about a month.

I, on the other hand, write like I have an extra chromosome.I'm easy to understand unless my sentence structure leaves you going, "Huh? What?...He put up a first draft again!"

It's slow going for a 21^st century reader. Especially Emerson, like I said...He's like eating a whole rib eye covered in bread crumbs, butter and fudge. When you're done, you've just consumed 8,500 calories. You lie like a gorged seal on the beach, moaning for having eaten too many fish.

The first I read was Thoreau, his Civil Disobedience treatise, in St Rays. His complaints were slavery and the Mexican-American war which disgusted him to no end so he decided NOT to support the gov't and refused to pay, for six years, his taxes. Well, don't short Uncle Sugar or they'll come for you and they did. They chucked him in jail but someone (probably his aunt) paid the tax and he was sprung the next day. Being ripping pissed off about it all, he wrote that propaganda piece that went straight up the gov'ts ass a mile.

Yay First Admendment! What balls!

Thoreau, I think, coined the phrase about “marching to a different drummer” and that he did for all his life. What I liked about him, was his never-ending ability to give a real stiff, upright middle finger to those who didn't like the way he lived his life. He was a non-conformist w/o any regret. I'm no Thoreau...but...I do admire and have, in some sense, lived a life in a certain other way. If you read this blog, you can discern that I was, for the most part, something of a feral child who was left to his own devices due to a father far too busy climbing the corporate ladder and a mother who abdicated her role due to illness. I was let loose young and learned to like my freedom...very much, to the point of feeling abraded when others tried to put a curb on it.  There were a couple of instances when others, outside this family and feeling it was their duty to interfere, tried to "put me on the right path."  After I scrutinized those actions, most I found did it out of a religious bent and I REJECTED them and their actions outright. I had too many run ins with busy-body evangelical types. I found most of them to be unbalanced anyway. I witnessed the inner workings of their families, the rules and their kids...who were fucked up in their own way. 

Thoreau, probably sick to death of having to deal with the mighty, bustling city of Concord in 1845, gave them the finger as well and took off for the woods not too far out of town for two years to chill with chipmunks, squirrels and bunnies and wrote “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” That I read too and it's no travel journal. While writing about his journey, he has excursions into what he think life's all about (like anyone's figured that out yet) and other opinions of the fast disappearance of colonial New England to the Industrial Age. Thoreau could be preachy, selfishly focused on himself and hypocritical. He had his demons as we all do.  After two years with the sparrows and mice, he returned to the Megalopolis of Concord and wrote "Walden."

I've wanted to see it, where it happened, stand on the very ground where they were. To see where those left winger/no-good-radical-freaks were romping about and causing trouble for everyone. So I went finally.

Walden Pond. This is it. I didn't know it had a beach. There are warning signs all over begging you not to swim in it as kettle ponds are notoriously cold and deep. Walden is 100 feet deep in some places. There are no lifeguards to pull your silly ass out if you happen to swim through a cold patch and freeze up and sink w/o a sound.The water is clear, probably drinkable and the quiet is deafening.

This me holding Walden Pond beach sand. Now I can say I did it.

Great! What I want now is to be misdiagnosed for 8 months until they get it right, Lyme disease.

When you reach the actual spot where Thoreau's cabin was, there's this sign. It's the opening lines to “Walden.” That pile of rocks next to it is all the people over the years who have left them as mementos. They scoured the area so clean of rocks that I couldn't put one there myself.

Archaeologists found the site back in the 1940's. There's nothing there but sandy dirt.

It's hard to read but the stone says, “this is where we found the actual chimney foundation” and thereby nailing the spot where Thoreau's cabin was.

I stood where the front door probably would've been and this is presumably what Thoreau saw when he looked toward the pond.

This railroad is completely up to date and current. In his time, Thoreau would write about hearing the steam trains rolling by the pond and waving to the passengers on them. I remember reading the passages about this rail and it was weird to actually see it finally.

This is what his home looked like. They restored it and if you want to get an idea of how big it is? The shed in your backyard is a close approximation.

Spacious huh? I guess that's all he needed. A place to write, sleep and a battered old stove to heat the place and cook

I suppose, if you got this thing screaming hot, it would turn the inside of the cabin into Miami for a while

.

I'm sitting at the faux desk where Thoreau wrote. The real one is in Concord museum and I'm sure they wouldn't let me sit in that one.

**

Concord, MA

Well, let me warn you about traveling there. There are about 790 5-k bicycle groups tear-assing all over the town and roads, so drive carefully! There is no real 5-k event, just a ton of weekend warriors with their 10 speeds, mountain bikes, wearing their skin tight aerodynamic body suits. They travel in packs and have the airs of "this road is for bikes ONLY, you user of the gasoline engine!"  I guess I shouldn't bitch, I used to be one of them when I was on a health kick a while back. I never wore any protective equipment and probably looked like some guy who had to travel by bike, due to a DWI.

Other than that, Concord is old, very OLD! It's also very picturesque, post-cardy with many homes looking like what was described in any Nathaniel Hawthorne brooding novel. You can traverse the entire town in about 5 minutes doing about 20mph. I'd advise you DO 20mph, it's too easy to run over a biker.

**

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Thank god for GPS coordinates. I found all the graves where these Transcendentalist girl and guy writers are buried.

They're all up there, ontop of that knoll.

This is the Thoreau family grave. 

Henry himself! I guess back then, you bought a plot, then placed the major family name marker on it, buried dad and mom under that and any kids or relatives get tiny little stones. Henry got his and people are piling up stones and acorns on it. All those tree roots...they must have invaded his coffin and him. Henry is part of the trees, leaves and whatnot now.

Nathaniel Hawthorne of Seven Gables fame. What I thought was cool were all the pens people left on it. I won't get into it but Nathaniel was a depressed, worn out character who lived in the shadows of Concord. Well, when your great-great grandfather was abusing, prosecuting and hanging witches in Salem a while back, the family legacy is a dark one.There's probably a penchant via genetics for depression in that family as well. If ever read House of the Seven Gables, better not do it on a gray, rainy November day or you'll mop around for days. Nothing says Puritan Gray like that novel.

Louisa May Alcott. She wrote “Little Women” and was one of the very first feminists. Again, the pens left as a memento..cool!  See how Concord was a nest of liberal scum and villainy?

The Alcott Family plot. The big marker is for Louisa's dad, Bronson. He founded the very first hippy-dippy commune in the United States ever, call Fruitlands. Fruitlands didn't even have a chance. Bronson made sure that anyone that decided to come there could follow any whimsy, idea or whatnot to further their “growth” as a person. Also was the rule that farm animals were “people too” and could not be used for farm work. Well, when you have a bunch of diaphanous writer/artist types traipsing around the woods and NOT planting enough food for winter...you get the idea. They did try to plant some corn and such, but when you don't use beasts of burden to turn the soil and whatnot, you don't have enough to live through the winter. Fruitlands died as fast as it was founded. Had they marijuana, cocaine, amyl nitrite...they would've failed even faster.

The King Transcendentalist of them All, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He thought, "Screw the Puritans, Catholics and all of them...I will decide for MYSELF!" His marker is a strange quartz boulder. The picture doesn't do it much justice as it cannot pick up the weird bending of light within the crystal producing a rainbow effect.

Orchard House, where Louisa and her Dad Bronson Alcott ended up after the Fruitlands disaster. She wrote “Little Women” here.

This weird place is behind the Alcott home. It's where Bronson held his talks, salon and groove-vibe-hang loose think tank. This is is the very first Esalen type Institute of it's kind. The current Esalen is in Big Sur now, where Hunter Thompson, the Beach Boys hung out.   Primal Scream Therapy and Fritz Perls Gestalt psychology were either invented or practiced there. I have little idea what Bronson invented here in his backyard, I ought to catch up on him.

Anyways, it was cool to finally see where all these vanguards of American progressive thought were roaming around.

Boy's Bikes...

While digging through my shed, which I turned into a blackhole to toss anything into, I came across a part to an old bike I had as a kid. I was buried beneath so much crap I had forgotten about it. Also it came with one of those vinyl handlebar grips. Talk about time warping!

It looked like this except for the color combination. 

It was my favorite bike. Murray had built them so simply and tough that it was pretty much indestructible. I know, we boys treated them like dirt and tried to break them.

Some of you know Evel Knievel, that motorcycle daredevil who proudly claimed to have nearly busted every bone in his body by jumping things (buses,cars,etc.) with his bike. We kids, watching this on TV...just had to try this too! It was easy!

 We boys looked up to this fool!

We built a decent ramp on the street and lined up some smaller things to jump over. The boys, trying to prove “they weren't scared,” would hop over these smaller obstacles. But after a bit, you get bored with the small stuff. We raised the angle on the ramp, and put in place, on their side, garbage cans, the old aluminum ones. First it was just one, then two...then we tried three.

Well...that last one didn't go too well.

The problem with my street was that it was level. You really had to start a bit  back, peddle your ass off to gain the speed and hit the ramp at the right moment. So I, being all brave and full of it, promised to jump over a third can. I started back even further. I peddled and peddled, trying my best to get up to, what? 15Mph? Those gears on those bikes weren't built for speed! I hit the ramp, yanked back on the handle bars and shot up out of the seat to give some “oommf” to the bike. Everything looked great till I heard a dull thump, that was the sound of the third can crushing and then I remember seeing colors, lots of colors spinning all around.

What I saw were the colors of the cars, houses and other kids as I flew over the handlebars and came crashing down onto the asphalt.

“ARRRRRRRGHHHHH!”

Two bloody elbows, one knee and a nice gash on my forehead. I'm wounded! You know what ran through my mind a few minutes after this as I tried to calm down and staunch the blood? “Don't Go Home and Let Mom Find Out.”

If I had, I'd get the usual SALT rubbed into every cut I had. “WHAT did you do? The other boys were doing it so YOU had to do it? I'm NOT taking you to the hospital! (Not made up, I got that once!) What are you, STUPID?”

Gotta love Moms...they can really make you feel like a total heel at times.

I stayed away from home till the cuts dried over. The abrasion on my forehead would take some explaining though. So like a boy, I lied through my teeth about how I got that. I fell on second base at Dagget's ball field. That sounded a lot less moronic than jumping garbage cans.

**

One of the fun places to ride a bike was at a local mall. I didn't know it then, but we were mall rat kids at times back then. It was a strip mall with a Stop & Shop anchor, CVS, McManus restaurant and the obligatory laundromat near our neighborhood. We kids would zip in and out of the parked cars, ride up and down the concourse and generally piss off store managers and shoppers. Stop & Shop provided us with grocery carts. We rode by them, grab ahold and pull them as fast as you could, in order to aim them at the Fotomat kiosk and let go at the right moment. CRASH! Those teen girls who worked in them didn't like us all that much. We never, ever had the balls to aim them at some parked car though. Though a few did accidentally.  Damn wheels on them always pulled to the left.

We tried wind sailing once. I have to explain! Since we romped all over the mall complex, we'd find litter, milk crates and what not on the edges of the parking lot. It was just the detritus of Middle America shopping till it dropped.

One day was really windy and one of us found cardboard boxes up against the hurricane fence on the east side. We broke the larger ones down and used them as sails. We go to west side carrying the cardboard, peddle like hell with the wind and then let go of the handlebars. Riding with no hands was easy then. (I tried that in 2012 when I was on a health kick. I was 48 and nearly went over the handlebars again when I wondered if I could still do it). Anyways, we'd then lift up the cardboard above our heads and let the wind take you. This is how we city kids wind surfed.

Back behind the mall, there were the loading docks along Walcott St. For some reason, Jim and I, bored again, lifted out bikes onto the dock, which was about a good 100 feet long and we biked as fast as we could then jumped off the bikes at the last second before we reached the “cliff” of the dock. Yeah, we'd watch our bikes go sailing right off and bounce and crash into the ground. We probably did it 16 times in a row. Dumb huh? This is what you do at 11 when you're bored and you created your own entertainment.

**

I was hit by a car once...sort of...on an angle. Again, I was 11. Gee...that age had a lot of “stuff” going on with me! What's great about a bike and being a boy is that you can imagine you're flying an F-15. I was tearing up and down the sidewalks on my street, weaving on and off the driveways, into the street, back onto the sidewalk and the effect felt like flying.

A problem existed though, people parked their cars on my street and that blocked everyone's view at times. I was flying off of Mr Knight's driveway when, HOLY SHIT...a car was coming at me! You know how LOUD rubber car tires sound when skidding? I had turned my bike a bit and avoided the bumper but body-skidded all along the driver's side, whacking my left hand onto his metal side mirror,  then I and the bike hit the street with a whomp. 

Every.Single.Mom came out of their house hearing that skid. They see me lying there in the street and I look dead. My Mom and Dad came running over and as usual, Mom was in a panic and Dad took one look at me and figured out I was none worse for the wear.

Ahh..that poor guy..the driver. He was shitting his pants, apologizing profusely to everyone around him who looked like they wanted to lynch him from a tree. My Dad wasn't too dicked about it though, he knew I was guilty, partly anyway. After I was interrogated by him, he tried to calm the poor driver down, saying that I was a fool for not looking into the street with the view being blocked by a parked car. This was when you didn't sue the shit out of someone at the first chance you got.

My Dad let the guy go.

I stood there, bleeding from all four knuckles on my left hand feeling like a boob now that every neighbor was reconsidering the level of my common sense. Steel side mirrors..owww! It took the skin off every knuckle. I was a little more respectful of moving cars after that one.

**

I've owned several bikes since then. 10 speeds, mountain bikes but nothing compares to that Murray though. I miss it.

This is a girl's version of a Murray. You can tell by that lack of a crossmember near the top of the bike. Now why the hell did they design boy's bikes with such a high cross members? You girls know what it's like to fall onto that bar with your nuts? I'll give you an example. When you wake up in the middle of the night, walking to the bathroom and smashing the shit out of your shin bone on a chair or something, it sort of feels like that, except deeper...and it lasts longer.