Wool and berries

   During my childhood and early adult years, my sister, my father and I would go out to the grandparents' house for family gatherings. These were generally on Jewish holidays, but sometimes included Thanksgiving, I believe. but I might be wrong about that.
    After a long train ride to the Van Wyck station in Queens, my grandfather (and sometimes grandmother) would pick us up and drive us to their home, which had a smell that I recall as particular, but has over so much time for me become vague. Perhaps it was of moth balls. I remember more specifically the candies that they would offer us younger ones from a heavy glass bowl. They were shaped and colored like blackberries and raspberries. The light grey poly blend wool gloves that I often wear for my morning walks in early morning and chilly Golden Gate Park have a smell that remind me of those candies. Mustier, with a slight sweetness. I am often amazed that I am able to experience some things so vaguely yet with so much force.
   I kind of half-enjoyed going way out there to Jamaica, and even though it felt like we were interlopers, Emily, dad and I still felt like some kind of unit. The rest of the family, the cousins, aunts and grandparents, seemed to exist in a world so complete before we would arrive and we would leave. We were there, seemingly out-of nowhere, then gone. When I think about my own death, I imagine it similarly.

Living in the valley

In our hotel room in Purmamarca, in the country where Fernanda was born
(much closer to her comfort zone than mine)
she and I looked at a map,
a pamphlet really
that is given to tourists like us to inform them of nearby sights to see
and which I am a bit embarrassed to say was not only useful
but also entertaining.
After reading the destinations, we decided to go to "Salinas Grandes",
and set out the next morning,
And as the driver drove, and Argentine tourists repeatedly sang songs that quickly fluttered out in that bus we were on,
I looked ahead and out of the windows.
And while not feeling pressured by them, the mountains that bordered us
impressed on me the sensation that we were being wedged in
and I thought how often I feel stifled by the ideas I have about the world.

At that moment
I wished that my vision of the world was as lush as I imagined that valley could be
between me and those hills, fed by rain
and melting snow.
Probably, they held their moisture well, using every last droplet.
And as we passively eased through that landscape
I remembered that the hard crust of the earth shifts, and is flexible enough to alleviate built up pressure.

Cézanne and I

   The park can be a place where I can feel remarkably free. Sometimes, I am bothered by the people there, but when I focus on other things, I feel liberated, and can sometimes perceive things in ways that are fantastic.

   I saw the tree in the picture below during a recent morning. It seemed as though I could not fix my vision as I walked towards it. The branches were undulating, there and not there, perhaps partially due to the light wind. They seemed to be moving in a space as unfixed as mine, it's leaves, blurry. The lack of a fixed point of view upended the sense I generally have of being somewhere, and although the sensation struck me at the time as very beautiful, it now makes me a bit anxious as I think more about it.
   I  remember many years ago visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with my friends while we were all under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms, and when I saw the way the artist Paul Cézanne painted leaves in some of his landscape paintings, I understood that he had seen them much the same way I had in Central Park during the walk to see the museum. Although there has been things written that the drink absinthe (popular with many during his time), caused hallucinations, I imagine that he had altered his attitude, not his mind.
   I have found that opening my eyes just a little, squinting even, can sometimes change my perspective a lot, as can the mindful exercise of looking at things as if I had never seen them before.    
   There have been times that I have been able to see without the use of drugs.

Splinters

 In my parents' apartment I had to walk down a long hall, turn right, then turn right again to reach my room. Hanging in a recessed panel above the door was a sign that my father had painted, with the name Adam in letters the color of ripe oranges. That name was, and usually remains, as foreign to me then as now. My sister had a sign too, just a little ways from mine across a short hall; hers had purple I believe. It said "Emily" on it. That was her name.
   The front door to the apartment, which would make a large clang when it shut due to all of those locks and heavy frame, would deposit me at one end of that long front hall. Sometimes, when I had been inside for a while, I would run alone, or with my sister down that expansive space, and would end up with a splinter in a foot. Sliding with socks on, in the wood went. It was strange to have to remove a tube sock to find it, and it could be very difficult to locate. Layered calluses. I might still have some slivers down there. Sometimes, my emotions seem inundated with slivers from that time.
   The overwhelming sensation I had as a child was that I was completely alone, and my room, although usually messy and chaotic, still seemed safer than anywhere else. Of course, this kind of security was relational. I imagine that I would feel more safe with a bulletproof vest on knowing that I'm about to be shot in the chest with a bullet. I'd prefer not to have to make that choice.
   I do not recall caring about much of anything then, but a new Elton John record or KISS' "Alive" album, which I would beg my father to buy for me, provided comfort. The records had booklets sometimes and notes on the back that I would read with the music playing in headphones, totally immersed. I cared about those things. I also cared about the AM radio that kept me company in that apartment. Harry Harrison, 77WABC. AM was music back then.
    Luckily, and perhaps as a form of self-protection, I was only able to vaguely sense the desperation I experienced during those years. The nightly panic attacks during a couple of them came with such regularity that they produced a kind of rhythm.
   Although I still feel some forty five years later many of the feelings that I must have had then, I do now know that they are feelings. As a child, my anger and despair, like those splinters I could feel but not find, did not seem to even near the surface. Little daggers in the feet of a neglected boy. The floors which produced them, rough and uncaring.