Thinking, again, of the image of myself looking back at my grandparents home upon leaving and recognizing that they must feel similarly, I recalled a bit of free-verse I wrote a couple of years ago.

Witnesses

On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood

A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.

Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could

When he bought them.

Was it nineteen sixty four?

One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,

“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,

The leather’s still good, the color still brown,

And inside

The author hadn’t changed his name."

Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man

Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.

These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,

That from vibrant forms,

Takes man and transforms him to Lore.

H. Covitz 10 July 1994

I think the wingtips must still be there in the closet.

Depends Whose Doors Are Getting Shut

My spawn and grandspawn left this evening after dinner and for the first time I remembered what it was like to look at my grandparents home when I was leaving and how I thought of them as “past.”

Odd to look, again, from the other side of the door ... and remember.

Busy, Busy, Busy

”Busy, busy, busy?” I never liked that expression. It seems to me that people have used it when they haven’t wanted to talk to me. ... but, then again, I think I’m growing dermal brown spots and a sensitive crotchetiness at the same time. Five surgical procedures in the past 15 months haven’t helped. Maybe the docs were operating on the wrong parts. They always ask:

“Can you tell me your name?” (No?)

“What’s your date of birth?” (I was born in the 40’s before Facebook began mining our data.)

“Why are you here?” (Because people who say they love me told me to come.)

Past few years, I’ve been trying and not particularly succeeding in making peace with the changes I perceive in the United States. I've written a little bit here and there about my sense that we’ve lost interest in decency, kindness and love and my dissatisfaction with the elections — primaries and general — in 2016. Disappointment? In both the administration and the resistance. I’ve devoted much of my adult life to promoting the notion that mental health is all about recognizing that my “others” are people in their own right. That they experience pain like me .... have relationships that are independent of me ... cry sometimes and wish they were never born ... feel disappointment and have their own theories and gods. The fragmentation of the past few years ... what we popularly call tribalism has become dominant in our culture. I feel disappointed in myself, too, that I thought my generation had made some immutable changes in our World.

Silly me!

It's Been Too Long

The Last Quarter is too short for me to sleep through it!

Wake up, Howard, wake up!