My imagination carries me to an imaginary river, where I float, the sky above me like a catheral. Imaginary ships glide by like priests serving communion and tugboats scurry, not like mice or nuns, but like dressmakers tucking in a hem with pins. Although she was neither tugboat or dressmaker, I think of my mother. Somewhere along the river there will be a tug pilot's ball. Mom loved to dance.

As do I. Today, though it's cold, I will walk to the Hudson river and watch the tugs. And the liners like brides.

I was introduced to spirituality in a very strange way.Returning to Manhattan from Brooklyn on the F train I saw an obscene drawing scratched into the stainless steel above the seats. It was late at night, I was alone--I was coming from a friend's poetry reading.

The "etching" was titled "Yo Maria." Her tears were comically large. Her pubs scarred. Yo Maria, I thought , look what they have done to you. And I felt her pain, more than I ever felt for her son . The light was glaring, her steel real. I did not think of the suffering of my own mother, though I do now. Then I thought of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. I first read it as a child and thought it a wonderous sea story. Ishmael, not Ahab, was my hero. He too, felt pain.

Sailing thru the oil slicks,I reach and touch the sea. Sophie, my 97year aold friend, is back from the doctor after having eye surgery. She had her drooping eye lids sewn up. She is fine, refuses help, though Bill went with her to the doctor. He too is in our plant class though he also teachs arts and crafts.I am not into arts and crafts and I rarely sit thru all of plant class. I did, though, do macrame during my last hospital visit, finally learning how to tie a square knot. I missed out on Boy Scout camp by not being able to tie a square knot. I was afraid to ask you know who to show me. Our relationship was clear. I was the helper, he was the helpee. It did not occur to hem that it could be otherwise.We went deer hunting once and ended up stealing two chairs. They were nice chairs and fit well in our kitchen.

Nearing 70, he coralled me to steal sand for one of his grand daughter's sandbox. Such was Pop. He always got away with such shit. He was an executive, highly thought of in his field (engineering) but he thought himself brilliant across the board and he sure as hell wasn't--though he could add long columns of figures in his head.

He had a habit of using people and when they were no longer of use, discarding them. Sometimes I felt that was the way he was with me too. He took every opportunity to show what a no nonsense, tough, man's man he was. Aside from golf and his job--he was a workaholic--he loved the Elk's club, paticularly his pinochle club cronies.

Every year they drove to New York City, 140 miles away, to drink and carouse without wifely interference and to watch cross dressers dance in a chorus line.Year after year this wa the highlight of their trip. I don't think any of them were gay, certainly not my father. He semed to have no interest in sex. He claimed impotence in his mid-forties--Doc Zimmie gave him some pills--this was 40 years before Viagra. Pop called them his "Pecker Picker-Upper" pills and he sold them at a Satuday night Elks club dance for two for a quarter.

He had takers. Mom sat quietly at the table. My sisters say the only time she ever mentioned sex to them was to confide that "she didn't get any in the prime years of her life." Sex education was not a high priority in the Clayton household.

Me, I was steady whacking it. My friend Hal wrote a sly poem about streaks in his underwear. I was a streaks on the sheets kid. Mom washed them without a word. I guess she had some tobacco stains of her own.

As for Pop, he caught me watching the neighbors two daughters undress. Always the problem solver, Pop told the neighbor, who was a nice jewish man with a mistress and a Jaguar sports car. The shades came down. I as usual said nothing to my father but on the bus that took us to school I jerked up a kid so my school mate neighbor could sit. She gave me a strange look. Bipolar sounds so much more politically correct than manic depressive. Reality comes in a bowler hat. I tip it occasionally. "The angry never eat" writes Lorna Dee Cervantes. I'll buy that.

Went to our soup kitchen's writer's workshop yesterday. The topic I chose was "What was the dumbest thing you ever did for love?" Having rarely been in love I couldn't think of anything. Perhaps it was going to college. I wrote the dumbest thing I ever did was not to believe in the healing power of unconditional love. Hooray the Dalai Lama. Hooray Walt Whitman. Who could find then naive after the wars they went through?

Went to my GA meeting. Now a temporary chairman, it looks like I'll be elected chairman. They like me. Tonight I have dinner with my beloved.Will sort of report on that tomorrow...

"Food is love in trust" writes the poet Lorna Dee Cervantes. It doesn't seem to be just for babies.

Licked by those hungry hounds, the East and Hudson rivers, Manhattan stands tall in square-toed boots....great gift my imagination...something my father had little of, although he once had a house built with the back facing the street. One was supposed to drive around to the front. No one ever did. Imagination.

I escorted my friend Chris to the hospital for some routine work yesterday. She tells me of being as a small child, at the Hindenburg blimp disaster. She sid it happened in seconds and that she thought the people were in the balloon part of the airship.

Later, when taken to the movies, a newsreel showed the disaster again and she dove under the seat thinking the newsreel was real. She thought movies real too and refused to go to them. Later at the opera, when the heroine died, she dove under the seat again and was startled when the heroine came out, after the opera, and bowed.

I didn't think to tell her that when my mother,sister and I went to see the movie Snow White I dove under the seat when the witch appeared. My mother yanked me up. It was my first lesson.

Chris also seen a small plane hit the Empire State building and she saw one of the twin towers fall on 9/11. We share a love of Enzio Pinza who she first heard at the La Boheme performance and who I heard on a soundtrack of South Pacific.

I would like to recall that I sang "Some Enchanted Evening" while on the farm while plucking chickens but I don't think I did. Father had the baseball bat and I didn't trust his temper. I did sing that song and I sang too the title song from "Oklahoma." My father liked Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. Now there was chicken plucking music if I ever hear it.

My mother's father,my grandfather, was born in Scotland and Easter too came Scottish. The Rev. Liz Maxwell, of Scot heritage, gave a sermon in part, on Mary Magdaline, mentioning Mary's love of Jesus. My m0ther, also named Mary, was more devoted to her family than Jesus. She loved to dance and when a little drunk, would do the Charleston. Liz loves to dance too. Golf. Like my father, my mother loved to play golf, although she came to the game late.

Golf, I once wrote, is that somebody took a stick and somebody else added a ball. Thus started the civilization of Scotland--for before they used sticks to hit each other. Yes, in Scotland, gold is an atonement for past sins--one whacks a ball rather than a fellow man. Whack only the ball, get it into the hole, get it on the green, stay out of the rough. Civilized things. Do not cut up the ball with your irons or you will have to purchase a new one.

Peace over power except when one drives. Mom couldn't drive far, but she could pitch and she could putt.Write poems only about sitting behind women with cooties in their hair. Chase down straight shots of whiskey with Guiness stout and call it boilermakers. But I remember my Scottish grandfather as a kindly man. Mom said he was so lazy that he quit his job the day she graduated from high school so she could support the family. Mother had different ideas that included my father whom she said was smart and ambitious. Ugly and nutty but smart and ambitious.

Third day of spring...wanted to walk to the park...but it is too cold and windy...went to our garden..some Daffodils are up, their tops yellow-- they nod like sleepy children.I look to my archives for inspiration, find my four year old poem "I Love Lucy". It goes:
I imagine Lucille Ball--all mouth and eyes--eating a seven foot long strand of spaghetti when a tiger enters.
Lucy says: Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of the night.
The tiger says: Grrr
Lucy says (0ffering bowl) You have another red sauce that you're fond of?
My friend Ron loves this poem. I will read it for him at the soup kitchen workshop. I have never been a soup kitchen "guest." But I used to volunteer and I'm a church member. Another poem pops up from four years ago: it goes:
I love to love love
I love to love
I love
yes I love to love love
and somewhere, somehow, father,
I love you.

That poem took years to write. Spring is here and soon there will be birds and bees. It took Pop years to give that lecture and only when that square badge of masculinity a package of condoms was discovered in my car's glove compartment.
"Use your peter to piss with " he said. Stunned (I was seventeen) I had no use for condoms for several years. I would not be trapped into fatherhood like my dad. It worked out. I was too ill for marriage and family.Until now. Though fatherhood is out of the question. Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, the song goes. That was me. Perhaps it was Lucy too. We all have our tigers.

Today is Good Friday, a time of quiet. My 79 year old friend Chris calls to see if I am available next week to take her to the doctor. I am. I ask her if she wants to go to church Saturday Eve and she says yes. I tell her I will take her there.

Yesterday I came early to plant class and saw Sophie, my 97 year old friend. I tell her she is my true love, my girl friend and I ask her not to cheat on me. It is our standing joke. She is going for eye lid surgery and is worried only about getting into a cab. Her legs are so stiff in the morning, she says. She is so lovely and lively.

Another treat: the horticultural therapist (read plant lady) arrives. She is in charge of our Times Square garden. It is too early, she says, to discuss what we will plant. Impatiens of course, perhaps bananas--they held up last year. I tell her the Daffodils are coming along.

My mother, if she had lived, would be close to Sophie's age. When it was obvious my mother was dying, my youngest sister snatched, I mean snatched, her from the hospital and brought her to her apartment home. Sis said riding in the car, Mom bounced aroung like a cord of wood. We all sat with her for three days as Mom died. I wrote poem after poem for all. Everybody else partied, at one point lifting my mother off her death bed, putting her in a wheelchair, and bring her to the kitchen, painting her lips with Scotch so she could join her farewell. Such is life with the Claytons, we are a hearty bunch. Middle sister stood in the way when the undertaker finally wheeled Mom out. I wrote no eulogy. But most of my poems were love poems. Easter in two days. I am an usher. I will dress in my best, remembering the powder blue Easter coat my Mother bought me.

The glare, the brightness, the pulsating life--the news banners telling of war,celebrations, deaths, births, sports scores.Theu always advance; they do not go backwards. But they turn corners. And the video screens, hanging from office towers like bait. Who is the fisherman? Damn if I know. But people drop our Times Square Ball each New Year. Times Square. Where we have, amid humongous traffic, a small garden.

'the bone of the fish silent these empty glasses silent, silent too" Funny poem. It was written in March,2005, a time when I was not drinking and was starting a friendship with my special woman friend. I gess I was looking back...I was a bar room drinker big time until the late 1980's when I just quit with the help of my therapist. Ambivalence. I felt it for my professor love Walter and "Ruby" felt it for me.I was just frightened by both, I had been with a nymphomaniac once before and I had left town in a hurry. But I had feelings for "Ruby" it seems so awful even to give her a phony name. She was the final meltdown. I got myself out of her apartment and I raged thru the streets. More on that later. Love was a bitch, finding love was even bitchier.

I tried going back in time, visiting places and walking backwards; the hospital elevator was a time machine with bright glaring buttons that was a time machine taking me back to where I had been loved. Before the aide could stop me, I pushed for Korea and the prostitute who had unconditionally loved me. I got a Asian doctor and I not very nicely demanded that he get me back to "Peggy"my Korean whore. The time machine had left me in a locked mental ward. Sometimes I was euphoric, but I usually raged, walking and walking the locked ward until large doses of Thorazine finally floored me.

"The giver of rocks left two peaks and one cliff--said climb up some time"...I wrote in June 2004,some 33 years later. That summer of 1971 I also signed up for some night courses at NYU one in music, one on films one in computer programming. I was going to start new careers. I was going "straight"-poems would come as insights on special occasions. But I showed one poem to Walter, who taught an English class I had also signed up thinking I would go back to news reporting, a career I had miserablly failed at earlier. Walter almost gushed that I had talent renewing my hopes. I wrote him off at first as a gay guy blowing smoke trying not to hope or fall in love, which I did. One more melting bolt.

The there was a woman.Ruby (not her real name.) She, if not a nymphomaniac, was at least a sex machine.

David, New Orleans French Quarter, almost 40 years ago. David, my dearest friend, was more "Beatnik" than "Hippy." He took off in a van of dubious title to sell tools to Cajuns. Inca, who thought herself a witch, gave him a case of the clap. I guess she was a witch. She took off with Snuffy but she soon returned. I guess she gave Snuffy a dose too. Later, at a self styled "House of Horrors" she and a guy was busted for raping a woman at gunpoint.I had left for New York City, where with my father's help, I got a construction job as an iron worker, walking high steel.

The first week I was there, I had to march in a parade, honoring "America." They, the construction workers had beat the shit out of demonstrators at the World Trade Center, which was about half finished when I got to town. Seems the minorities wanted some of the high paying jobs. So we white guys marched. And gave speeches. I ducked out on that, although I was determined to go "straight" , to "grow up". Another bolt that loosened. Another bolt that melted away.

Saturday

Tat-tat-tat,thud thud thud, the connecting bolts tighten, tying beam to column, column to column. The World Trade Center's Twin Towers, designed with a central core, designed with each floor a ring, the bolts melting on 9/11, the floors----this morning the wind still blows like the bone man.

I arrived in NYC in 1970 or 71, admid political turmoil. We, the" hardhats" beat to shit protesters at the then arising Twin Towers and we were proudly marching over it. Well they, the hardhats were the rightists. I was if not a leftist, at least a liberal. But I marched keeping my views to myself. Another factor in my breakdown.

Thursday Eve

Wwent off to dinner and a movie with my woman friend. We saw "No Country For Old Men." It was the most powerful movie I've ever seen and I'm still processing it. Up early, ran into Ray going for his horse racing program and I remembered those days when I used to send 12 or more hours studying the Daily Racing Form. It was my Bible. Death. I would like to think of John Donne's poem "Death Be Not Proud" but I don't recall any of it. The man I loved the most is probably dead, he was a Second World War vet. He did something heroic with Germans.

I met him in 1971 shortly after I arrived in New York City from New Orleans. My father got me a construction job--the now tumbled Twin Towers was still being built --and I signed up for some night classes at NYU's School of Continuing Education. That was where I met Walter= he was a professor of mine. He was everything my father was not-urban, handsome, witty and suave. I showed him a poem, since lost, and he thought it brilliant. That was all I needed to hear. Goddamn it, I would finally become a writer.

He was also gay.

Thursday morn

Thoreau, Herman Melville, indian mounds, those burial grounds, the only good indian is a dead indian. Love it or leave it and I'm still here. Melville starts Moby Dick with "Call me Ishmael", not "Fuck you I'm Ahab." Ishmael, the lover, survives. As do I. I first read Moby Dick as a child. I thought it a great sea adventure. I held on to the picture of a coffin turned life buoy. I thought it spoked with screen door springs. Reading the novel later, as an old salt, I thought Ishmael homosexual, a straight sailor's joke to other sailors. Although I have loved four men, two of them gay. I never had sex with any of them. I never wanted sex with any of them. They didn't atrack me in that way.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll. Met Jose in the elevator going to breakfast. He is the most natural clown I've ever met. He took too much Viagra once and his "it" wouldn't go down. He told the desk clerk to call 911. The cops came. It was their first case of Viagra misuse. They didn't really know what to say. I think one of the cops said Jose had a real problem. Before my special woman friend, my big love was a man. He was everything my father was not. He was gay. I am not even bisexual. Enough. I rest. Fear is the basis of my illness.

Wednesday afternoon

Blue and love, love in the insane asylum. I wrote a very good poem about the coor blue;it's buried somewhere in my blogspot. Blue eyes, all us Clayton kids. Suzanne Corry. She had blazing blue irish or scot or scot-irish eyes. My one grandfather was born in Glasgow, my great-grandmother and great grandfather were born in Ireland. Miss Corry strode, I mean she strode the corridors of the old Bellevue hospital, locking and unlocking ward doors for her assembled bunch of crazies. Blue blueeyes and long long legs. This was when NYC had money and a very liberal mayor. I started crying in music therapy--sometime during my first ever week--eyes afire she demanded to know what I was sobbing about.
"I lost my heart Miss Corry" I answered. That was all a Corry had to hear whether Scot or Irish or a combination of both. The day before I was sprung she and I and another patient went out in Manhattan. She took us to a small park with a waterfall. She had been listening for two weeks to my insane babble about farm life and about working the high steel. As we walked I saw a Chicago boom bring ing down a guy derrick.

"Look--Miss Corry look," I shouted they're bringing down the guy derrick!" Guy derricks are history in New York City. It's a self jumping derrick where the boom is stepped out and lifts the mast. Returning I stood while she sat. The bus too said nothing.

My second breakdown I was in a hospital 40 miles from Manhattan. But I called and looked for her. Enough. See ya tomorrow. The sky is still blue. But I left iron working.

Wednesday morn

Indian mounds, those burial grounds, seated high on the hill above the lake in Sanatoga , Pa. We had a Boy Scout campout there one summer afternoon. That was when I got the moniker "Squirrel." Boy's Life magazine did me in. They told of cooking meat by burying it under the campfire. My Mom gave me some meat and I buried it under the campfire despite the scoutmaster's protests. I put it in a glass jar. Boy did I believe in Boy's Life magazine. The meat is still there, food for the dead indians I guess. Everyone else roasted hotdogs. They pissed on the fire over my meat to put it out. The incident made the rounds and I was the "Squirrel." I have never believed one fucking thing a magazine claims since.

At my high school 30 year reunion Harold, better known as "Jackie" called me "Squirrel." He had a lovely wife and two sons. Single as I was (and am) he figured I had nothing. He was almost right. But I had my health then and I was trying to write.

At that reunion, a woman who was madly in ove with me was given a surprise 25 wedding anniversary party by her two adoring children. Her husband is a prince of a man. I was elated for them; there was a woman I didn't mess up. She is in the minority. Enough.

This morning the sky is pale blue; rain in forecast but it hasn't come yet. I walk to the corner. The Oscar Meyer weiner wagon is parked in from of the TV studios. I remember that too. Now they are two wagons. One is a small hotdog.

Tuesday

The neck bone meat was pork not turkey. Youngest sister said one cooks and cooks until the meat falls off. She said it's almost a stew and it's very cheap. She and I are the poor ones in the family, both of us disabled. Both of us compulsive gamblers. My vice is horses, her's is slot machines. The govenor apologized (sort of) about a tryst with a prostitute. Although I lost my cherry to a Korean prostitute and was in love with another I don't sympathize with him. He cut benefits to us seniors starkly. More later on my first love. I left her behind and without seeing to her future. I am not proud. Enough. Sex si, marriage no. Dr. Low, of Recovery Inc., states somewhere that fear is the basis of the illness. The answer to fear is there is no danger. Enough.

Sunday

Cold. I walked thru Times Square on my way to 9th Avenue. The neon signs are antiseptic this morning--few people or cars on the streets. Reach 8th Avenue--it is half awake too and 9th is like a dull mud. I smell the diesel fumes of the buses leaving the Port Authority. That 9th Avenue is mud may be overstated. But there is no glamour to it. Picking up my friend Chris, I am bound for church. I spot a gold finch with specks of gold on his or her chest. And neck.

Neck meat, neck bones. I regale my special woman friend with a tale of my sisters, the youngest tell my middle sister the joy of eating neck meat. My youngest sis's great love so far was a black man. The middle sister tells her she will stick to pot roast as a comfort food. I don't know which bird or animal gave up his neck meat and I don't want to know. Pot roast is a comfort food of mine too. But I believe in flecks of gold. And gold finches are too small to have much neck meat.

I walk to Central Park. It is stark, drizzle no sun. At breakfast my friend Harry tells me he saw white swans on the Hudson River. I give him my bread.

Saturday morning

My special woman friend is okay. Her doctor said it was "a barnacle of old age". Thank You Jesus, thank you God. She doesn't want me to use her real name and I will not make one up--so she is my woman friend or special woman friend. And she truly is. Enough.

Enough already of my father knocking. He was not a vicious brute. He could be funny and charming. He seemed to rage only when his authority was questioned. A man of little or no imagination he couldn't understand my dreamy laying around. Hyper, he was always active, always with a project. Or his job or golf. All his children were his servants and God forbide if you handed him the wrong tool. You were told what a dumb shit you were if you handed him the wrong tool. And I, always scared, often handed him the wrong tool. Secretly, I still think of myself as a dumb shit. But he was a good provider. That was his and my mother's deal. He would earn the paycheck and she would tend the kids. That was it. None of this love malarky. Yet he loved her deeply and he loved his kids-who of course were all stupid-- leaving him to make all the (and their) decisions. The food was always abundant and tasty, the housing outstanding and he mostly paid for my college education, a place I did not want to go. I wanted to join the Navy, but he insisted, but insisted, I go.

They, the college years, were the most unhappy years of my life. When I graduated I almost handed him my degree and I almost said "Hear Dad, here's the degree you always wanted." But I didn't. I just joined the paratroopers as an enlisted man. Somewhere I knew I was not officer material. Too many "you're a dumb shit" had been called or something like that. And I, a determined virgin, had more than one broken romance. Dad gave up his freedom like that--Mom was pregnant with my older brother when they married--I would not be caught like that. Enough for today, I will write more later. Oh, the ball glove. Mom bought it as part of my plethora of Christmas gifts. It was not a Rawlings. I could not make a sweet pocket by using a gallon of Neets foot oil and pounding the mitt with a baseball. It didn't matter. My father, a star catcher and an allstar slugger never though of having a game of catch. But I could carry his golfbag and save him caddy money. Yes, from him I inherited my illness. Perhaps he too secretly thought of himself as a dumb shit. Some say we all do. Enough already. As my costruction friend Kenny used tosay,"No hitting in the face." He was raised in an orphanage.

Thursday eve, Friday morn

Late 1960's...peace...make love not war. I'm in Asheville NC working in a glass factory. I made friends with Buford, a co-worker,---he is from Madison County arguablly the moonshine capital of the world. Buford and I bond like brothers; he has a dog a blue tick hound with ticks in his coat like an unseen universe. Trouble is the dog howls so much he keeps the neighbors awake. Buford decides to trade the dog and we are off into the mountains. Trading was a custom that was well woven into the mountain culture. When you had something you didn't want or need, you traded it for something you needed or might need.

We found an interested party, a man with a mean looking coon dog. Buford and the man extolled their dogs and a trade was made. When the club chained a coon to a platform in a pond his dog was the one who always escaped drowning and tore up the coon the man boasted. Buford of course said nothing about his dog's barking and the man said nothing about his dog being also a chicken killer a fact Buford discovered when his new dog got into a neighbors fighting cocks.

Buford's father made the best whiskey I've ever tasted- it was a blend distilled from wheat as well as corn. He carried the obligatory pistol in his blue bib overalls and he wore a kahki shirt, a felt hat and he wore brogans. Such was the uniform of his time. The mountains. They brought me peace. I vividly remember standing on the edge of a hilltop listening to beagles arooing around a mountain, probably after a rabbit. It was a misty twilight and I remember thinking yes there was a god, or there was a god inside me. Though a loner,I was not alone.

Friday

Up early,head up 6th Avenue for the mountains of Central Park, the sky with willowly ribbons of white with just a hint of pink--all this on a blanket of robin's egg blue. As I approach the trees change from a grayish brown to a darker hue. The grass is a worn mat but has an aliveness from the just rising sun. Poplars or Elms have a shabby peel but the sunlight gives their east side a glow. The shadows are stripes. I am reminded of an ivy league tie I used to wear with muted browns and greens. The trees and I are fellow old men. I think briefly of Thoreau. a professor once made a comment about Thoreau never bought a boy (read son) a ball glove. Nor have I.

Thursday afternoon

My earliest memory is one of rage. My father chased us to bed by swinging his belt. At the top of the steps I took off my belt and started to swing back and he laid it in to me with stinging blows. I finally took off. I could not defeat the dragon. It was my fault, I was a coward, I had run away. As I said earlier I am a self blamer. Even now, when I know of my illness, I tend to still self blame. Mom was no help with the beatings. By God, her children would mind. Not me. My woman friend spoke the other night of the Oedipal phase as something that all boys go thru. I don't know--such stuff smacks of psychobabble to me. But there were times when I wanted to kill the son of a bitch. And times I loved him. Enough. I'm back from the library where, as I often do, peruse an old collection of women poets. I was in the "K's". Maxine Kumin seems to be the only who may be in the stacks. Tomorrow I will find her. Tomorrrow I will take a picture of my woman friend's lump. I prayed for her and for my doctor yesterday and will pray again later. For myself I just meditate.

Thursday morn

Up early, off to my Gambler's Anonymous meeting. I go twice a week. I chair for the first time but I'm not really nervous. Couldn't do it a year ago but now I'm alright with it. Things go well. Walking home I check on the bomb explosion in Times Square. Rumor has it --a pipe bomber on a bike. He hit the Army Recruiting station. Such is life in Times Square. The explosion woke me--it seemed long--I thought it strange to have thunder in March. The US Army. One could make the argument that it saved my life--it got me into writing. I was a correspondent my last year and a half, a paratrooper before that. I, bipolar even then, alternated between rage and goodness. I wrote very well--I am a college grad--but my bouts with rage got me into trouble, especially in the paratroops. Enough on me, I turn to my last stay in a mental ward, and to Gary, who was a fellow patient.

Gary was a Special Forces Vietnam vet. He claimed many kills, mostly while in the service. He first went insane his third tour in Nam. He was testing a new super high velocity rifle, one that featured spinning bullets theat would tear whoever they hit apart. Gary positioned himself along a popular trail, shooting all that came alone just to see their pieces fly. Enough. I rest. Me, although I almost jumped into Cuba never hurt anyone, even while insane.

More Wednesday

I answer Cynthia's Email about ushering over Easter--tell her again I'm very available for whatever dates she needs me. Leap year. Easter comes in March. My first breakdown come in March. I vividly remember my father demanding,but demanding, that the aides shave off my beard. He didn't want me poisoned any more by that Christ Jesus hippy shit. They obliged. I resisted but was too drugged (and insane) to put up much of a fight. Always the problem solving engineer was my father. This happened in 1971. My rebirth didn't start until 1978. At first it wasn't really spiritual:it was just a deep commitment to get well. The last time I went to a VA hospital in Maine and got the time and medicine to get well.

My father. Let's start with a funny one. One summer we were barbecuing in our back yard.Father started the charcoal fire with lighter fluid and he put on the hamburgers before the fluid burned off so the burgers all smelled and tasted like lighter fluid. We told him so and refused to eat them. Pop, to prove us wrong ate the whole smelly and foul bunch, as if we were the ones missing something good. Such was my father. I rest. I wait for the Easter Bunny. He or she has given me a new life.

Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday morn

"Why put a label on it? What's all this nonsense about boyfriend girlfriend?" I waffle--I have no real reply. Lamely I say I want to be twenty again and have a standard boy girl relationship. "So do I" he answers. He has been been my shrink for more than twenty years and we are more like brothers than doctor patient. He has a very bad back problem and ventures about future visits. He cannot sit. He can use a phone and Email I answer.He is handsome but I don't, after twenty years need the standard format. As I leave I tell him I will pray for him and he thanks me. I will miss seeing him as he will miss seeing me. Two bus rides later, one across the park I meet for dinner with my lady friend. I have quit referring to her as my true love, though she is. It smacks of male chauvinism. She is not my property nor will she ever will be.
She arrives and tells me of a new medical problem, a lump or her back. I am concerned
She has a doctor's appointment and she wants me to take a picture of it and I agree.I tell her what my doctor said. She responds that no I am not her boyfriend.
Don't take that as a putdown or that she doesn't love me she adds. It's just a reality. She can't take me anywhere. I tell her that I accept that. The bistro food in not the best, but we had a lovely conversation. I talk to her which, all my former girlfriends, said I rarely do. I am not a talker, I am a writer.
A new on the job store clerk gave me too much change yesterday. It was ten dollars too much. Twice I started back to rectify, but the rage was still with me. Today I go and pay the manager. She is breaking in another new cashier. I feel good for doing it, although it took me a day. Better late than never.

Monday night, Tuesday morn

Fear, fear, fear and rage. My doctor says their chemical make-up is very similar. I feel that one can't have one without the other--but I'm the patient not the doctor. That distinction seems obvious but for millions it's not. It took me seven years to learn to take my medication daily. I knew what was best for me. Ha. Ha.
Rage. I wrote two wild and surly Emails to my woman friend She replied with her usual cool intelligence. And love. Later I reply that I take full responsibility for my illness and my humaness. Perhaps overstated. I am always the self blamer. The conventional boy, girl relationship is not, or will it ever be us. So, I tell myself live with it. But it is hard.

Up early as usual--it is warmer than normal day. I walk to our garden and note the growth of the daffodils..they are coming along. The MTV video screen runs a number of hilarious spoofs. I feel at home. Back for breakfast I greet my homeless friend Jimmy, the one with the most jingle-jangle walk. I ask him if he needs money and he says no. He always trys to repay my loans but I refuse. Rarely does he ask. In the dining room I sit with Harry, another homeless guy, giving him my bread and milk.n There is more love in this SRO than I have ever known. Nobody stinks this morning except maybe me. I go shower.

Bar rooms and a honky tonk jukebox--they were my loves.One night met a middle aged barmaid (judging by the spread) who was a former Raio City Music Hall Rockette.She prided herself on her intelligence and she was a real ballbuster-a know-it-all like my father. I happened in looking for a waitress I had met--the barmaid sniped and sniped about that but I ignored her. With a few drinks I--in my then customary Norman is a piece of shit mode-- remarked that I was a writer who was doing more high paying construction work than writing.She remarked that she had a degree in fashion design but bartending had always paid more. She added that she owned apartments in Queens--"don't rent to airline stews" she said. I was in about the middle of my six breakdowns and not taking my meds. I didn't tell her I threw away a couple of hundred bucks during my first breakdown. But perhaps she would have understood. I left alone,but I left a big tip. Back to this Sunday. Our assistant rector is a woman and she gave us a fine sermon about the blind man who Christ healed. Yes was blind but now I see. Writing. Got to learn to contrast better.My parents were young adults during the Great Depression. Understand Norman, understand.

Mostly Sunday

Received a couple of Emails, one from MTL saying she was sick and wouldn't make it to church (where we met) We have issues to be settled. The second was from head usher Cynthia saying "I'm a doll" for volunteering for all Easter services except the vigil. She added "doll" was baby boomer language. I wrote back and told her she was reading too much Mickey Spillane. Nowadays even the women want to be Mike Hammer.
Sunday. off to escort my 79 year old friend Chris to church. I walk 8th Avenue past the Port Authority,patting the bronze tummy of the statue of Ralph Kramden the bus driver portrayed by Jackie Gleason in his "Honeymooners" skits. It was the only show my father ever laughed at. Pick Chris up. I like to get to church early and listen to the choir rehearse.Light pours thru the stained glass windows and I start to relax and meditate. Later I amble to the mission house and join friends.I am, for once in my life, on the inside looking out. My drinking is history as is my gambling. I never considered myself an alcoholic but that depends on how one defines alcoholic. I was a real bar room guy. Enough. I rest.

Saturday

I begin Saturday morn dancing, waking from a long nap shortly after midnight.I put on my wireless headphones, tuned in my radio and I boogie.Pilates.Still trying to coordinate arms and legs. Need to sleep nights and be awake days so I take extra meds to knock myself out. It was a long nap. I'm up at dawn hoping to walk in Central Park - I went back to sleep at two. Rain--light--but rain. I write.
Later I go for breakfast, the line is queued outside the dining room and there is a bad stench. Some of us residents and nonresidents seem allergic to water. I leave and return later.
It's a lemon zinger of a day. My True Love (MTL)is descended from an old New England family and relatively well off financially. Me, I am the almost homeless guy with a mental unbalance, though I haven't been in an insane asylum in 30 years. But no pity needed. I am quite happy. I never wanted to be anything but a poet and a poet I am. Cobwebs.Perhaps I'm not the beautiful butterfly who escapes but I'm not the dead fly either. Enough. Happiness is having an inside toilet and a shower.I use both.Eat your heart out Henry David Thoreau, wherever you are.