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last sunday it rained in nyc so no open tennis. on monday an old racquetball buddy, me & 2 kids went to us open final. it rained again. we sat in an empty bar for 2 hours. bar was people crowded but no liquor which was all packed away thinking they were done for the year.  common sense: during rain some people go home before play resumes so we sat 9 rows from court. i saw sweat droplets on nadal. i looked around;  people were on cell(sell) phones and berries not paying attention(not really caring) to the best tennis on earth ever. key words: not paying attention. i wondered: even with future trans-humanism, nano tech and ability to grow both extra hearts when yours gets clogged and tuna fish in a dish, could there ever be two humans hitting the ball harder than nadal and djokivic? but many people missed it. the game was different 15 years ago; ashe, navratilova, edberg, mc enroe and graf came to the net. today a power player gets passed at the base line. no time. no net play. so i thought: what a perfect definition of human evolution. no net play. we are evolving. we are video games. reality tv. obesity and sex on the beach. vegas pool parties and abs. microwaves. disappearing newspaper delivery to driveways. debt and deficit. doubt and depression. drugs and dogma. digital doctoring and defense. damn.

so skittling. i aim to inform on these blogs. skittling: when teens purge parents medicine chest taking elevating drugs and throw them into a plastic punch bowl at a party. each soul grabs a pill or two and blindly ingests. kennedy was president when we just spiked the punch with a fifth of vodka and invited sororities. skittling: another form of human evolution i suppose. but i use skittling as throwing information into this blog. meanwhile by october some 30,000 pairs of eyes would’ve read my blogs and it keeps growing. my thanks for the support which spurs and stimulates, motivates the digging into intestinal lining and cranial constitution. funny what resides within the soul. excavation is such a hopeful word. is it like that box of chocolate that forrest’s mom talks about?

last night on facebook i shared information on the impending extinction of wild tigers(maybe 10 years left). i can’t believe it could happen. what about the detroit tigers? what happens to their team name or the mascots of hundreds of colleges and schools? lsu? clemson? i thought people should start families so there’s still time to show a child a live tiger. wild tigers are on a path toward extinction, unless we act fast. it’s estimated that fewer than 3,200 now remain and of these only 1,000 are breeding females. with world leaders meeting this fall to negotiate a plan to prevent the wild tiger’s extinction, it is critical that we make sure America shows leadership on this issue and gives tiger conservation its full support. i’ll post a link for more information at end of blog. boggled and baffled i was beaten down a bit. no one responded on facebook to the comments and links about the tiger. but people still smoke. people play with cell phones at the us open. the united nations says in 30 years no more fish in the ocean. two months after capping the gulf oil volcano, with most of the oil still sitting somewhere down there, news coverage, memories and concerns are like that feather at the end of forrest gump. then i read that pg&e (the power company from california) diverted repair money from the san bruno pipeline with the subsequent explosion and weren’t they the company that made erin brockovich famous. damaging storms hit new york city yesterday(the media hyped for hours and hours that they were tornados possibly. great for ratings. of course it wasn’t a tornado) but for two solid hours nyc tv stations interviewed people who had a tree fall down. sometimes from cell phones. sometimes with people’s kids laughing in the background(someday those laughing kids will get their own cell phones and take them to the us tennis open). all those hours of downed tree coverage. one spot showed a man single handedly clearing branches so kids could walk out of a brooklyn school easier. he said it was better than going to the gym. and i asked myself about all this energy of tv media coverage of downed trees but no one ever told me about the wild tiger becoming extinct or how bad that company in california still is. how many more movies have to be made? how many more miles does a white dove have to sail in the ocean before rest. and i worry about lions too. and all animals. extinction is ALL around.

i mentioned spirit. someday i’ll write a book about my special journey to spirituality. maybe you all (yawl) should know a little bit. five years ago innocently one night at 4:44 am i was taken into this wonderful world of enlightenment. the more you open, the more you receive. i’ve been open for five years. i live in a world of angelic intervention. i’ve got plenty of earth bound witnesses to all this. a diary filled. ‘haunting’ now one of my favorite expressive words. i’ve been to sedona 12 times, mostly on solo ‘souljourns’ , climbing barefoot on vortex mountains. there is something out there and all around and way up in the sky. it warms, lifts, opens and makes me realize every day i’m evolving. i love evolving. it’s like forrest’s box of chocolate. i never know what i’m going to get or what i’m going to think and when i’m going to wind up in montana on Christmas eve.

oh the link to stuff about the wild tigers:   (Thanks to Grace A. for lighting my fires of awareness to the tigers, to the gulf, to the environment, to air we breathe. we all need fires lit. can’t get enough fires)

http://bit.ly/cMDV89

or

http://www.thehungersite.com/clickToGive/campaign.faces;jsessionid=D90B0749C0AFA3D09B0CC6BBFB3D1799.ctg-b?siteId=3&campaign=WildTigers

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what i wrote a few hours ago on facebook prompted this blog. am i way too young to be close to the mountain top? do i see clearly now and forever? i see a pond. like walden. it’s deep. i can tell. it’s dark. so maybe these words should be. i’m a lucky sapien. i’ve been touched by spirit( someday a novel). i know something is out there way beyond. good stuff for a cold winter night with a leaky roof, cracked window. soon that seasonal passage. so here’s what i wrote on facebook(Cal Schwartz, friend me):

“i was tip toeing before. headache. sounds from florida. disbelief. i grabbed a calendar. wasn’t sure. my kingdom for a wormhole. i want back. no more cutting hair. flowers there. everywhere. tired of insensitivity. waiting for the train on a bench. it’s not coming. good listening. mood stuff. who here? i love brown mustard on almost anything except 70% cocoa intense dark chocolate.”

my friend who cut my hair earlier today was worried that i’d stop cutting my hair. i said, “only if i can slip through a wormhole, find myself on the corner of haight-ashbury in san francisco with a flower in my hair.” i miss monterrey, woodstock, reflecting pools, chicago 1968. people listened. cared. reacted. got together. now we’ve stepped back into a reverse worm-hole. we’re throwing lepers into a valley and burning holy books. where is evolution. revolution. solution. compassion. world war one and it’s a long way to tiperrary. we’ll never get there. i think i almost give up. give me the wormhole. give me liberty. give me another start. give me a parallel universe. give me a princeton math phd candidate in the 1950’s. give me angelic intervention. i’m so disappointed in the race. i feel so bad for the white dove that keeps sailing, hoping to rest, but never will. i said i love brown mustard. i do. it flavors in a non-caloric way. it’s healthy. oh, but they used mustard gas in world war one. but this dark chocolate cocoa 70% is so healthy. my gastroenterologist friend told me on labor day, a passage day. i do have a lawyer acquaintance but they don’t know about flavonoids and anti-oxidants.

last wednesday i watched the passage of hurricane earl from my jetty at the shark river in belmar, new jersey. the wind blew east. i heard the muffled roar of the ocean. my long hair, blowing in the wind. i miss mary. i saw her in new brunswick in 2008. one of her last concerts. the hurricane frizzled. no punch. it passed. so did summer. the hottest summer ever. i thought about passages standing there, challenging the ocean to catch and moisten me.

i was a little kid when the dodgers won the world series. i loved the brooklyn dodgers because i loved jackie robinson and bravery. i wasn’t even a teen, yet i knew the dodgers were part of a passing to a new era. i rooted for the dodgers and not the yankees even with their babe ruth molecules. as the dodgers were closing in on the pennant, emmett till was murdered on aug 28, 1955( 8 years later to the day Dr. King gave his speech in washington.) emmett’s death in mississippi was a passage into the civil rights movement.  In november, 1973 nixon told the country, “i am not a crook.” america was passing into a new political reality. in june, 1987 Reagan told Gorbachev, “tear down this wall.” (later years raissa and nancy held hands in california). in the 1990’s the world was passing the tipping point into irrevocable warming. much has been said since(notice i say nothing about it here). much has not. why upset a terminal patient(earth). make the patient comfortable. i love the u.n.’s quietly passing a report through the media that in 30 years, no more fish in the ocean.

i’m supposed to be passing into a new stage of life so a lot of books and pseudo folks tell me. thirty years ago i decided to alter the passing and not be like archie bunker coming home every night, yelling to edith for a beer, lighting a cigar after dinner, sitting in that chair( in the smithsonian now). i’d rather explore the world of fountains, telomeres, anti-oxidants and angels. i often wondered could a 60 year old archie bunker play 3 sets of tennis and ride the bike for another 90 minutes. passages are subtle.  they’re all around. then sometimes when i hear about stupid sapiens wanting to burn sacred books, i ask myself if we’ve really done the passages thing. do we learn. grow. understand the big picture of the universe and spirit. i just put 1/2 a bar of the 70% cocoa dark chocolate into the microwave for 44.4 seconds. it was soft and smooth. somewhat bitter. i guess i am too.

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12 days ago spent 6 hours 44 minutes in a mammography office. well documented. life changing experience. promise to notice life’s details; a tree not blowing in the wind. sadness. a painting. a book with ailing binding(are there binding repair specialists?)  unique grains of sand. ships sailing on horizon heading right to left. turpentine on shelves. words before you can’t catch them. balloons escaping a backyard party. a glance. a smile. a blink becoming a wink.  5 years after a headline.

asbury park on saturday august 21st. clearwater environmental folk festival. i remember years ago at sandy hook; seemed many thousands roamed. saw tom paxton carrying a guitar. it felt like 1969. i like that feeling. this sunday i parked 1/2 block from festival on main street. a red flag? i stepped into a new world(without christopher columbus) of new jersey environmental awareness. not enough people to make vendors smile. new jersey’s newspaper selling subscriptions. an exuberant man with electric car. under the hood was just a big battery(no oil dip stick), gets 100 miles to charge. i asked a question: what if you drive 53 miles from home?  saw people with tatoos and gray hair. a family with 2 little kids playing on the grass listening to singers of folk, parents leaning on elbows on blanket. a ninety year old woman sold me a booklet on after effects of war and pollution. i paid the asking price: $1.00.  a food court with aromas of beef kebab cooking on charcoal. no vegetables anywhere for me. frying french fries. bottled water. canned soda. friends from the new jersey environmental federation; wonderful seeing meaningful friends. i’ve lived in jersey decades. no one i know was at festival; a small park bordering a small lake. a breeze from north dakota made me smile. still so few people. not enough time and people. can you tell me there’s still time brother. or brother can you spare a dime. i was waiting for someone to ask that. i was comfortable with my age. a few college tee shirts. i wanted back to summer 1968 chicago cursing mayor daley’s use of cops and force amidst democrats inability to platform and identify. i wanted to be there. i wanted to be in washington on august 28, 1963. and woodstock. a life of wanting to be. a life of learning now just to do. there were a few poignant singers with idyllic voices. notably emily wherever i may find her again. closed my eyes. she was tracy chapman. there should’ve been thousands listening, not dozens. alas i saw one flower child imported from napa valley or sedona, barefoot contessa, bracelets, wide-eyed ideals. all said, not enough to get me back home. a congressman sat down next to me to listen to a round table on environmental justice. a few teens from local schools asked questions. a few learned people from newark who know all about environmental justice. a politician’s response was worth the trip as donuts say. he identifies and feels the words but votes with the big polluters of the world who finance him not middle school kids and people who live in linden, new jersey, with high asthma and soon a coal burning plant. money talks. i had enough listening to lonely words. i walked(to my car which was so close)

a few days later last friday, a friend took me to see the jets versus redskins in new meadowlands stadium. we sat near the field and nearly bumped into woody johnson(sharp green tie) who owns the jets. i smiled; used to be the pharmacist for some johnson in princeton a long time ago when calvin coolidge preached about persistence and success. i stared and stood for 20 minutes at the enormity of it all as stadium filled with green. before hand we went to jets boutique store. a simple jets cap was $35. jerseys in jersey jets green averaged $125. the stadium filled. since i notice detail now, i noticed demographics. i felt insignificant. i thought about environmental justice and building an incinerator in newark, just down the road. i wondered as i watched the kickoff clock tick down, why they never built an incinerator in short hills or livingston. i wondered why they want to build a coal firing plant in linden and not rumson where the old owner(leon) of the jets used to live. linden and rumson are both close to ocean and railroad tracks. i wondered about the demographics of the fans and thought about the song ‘blowing in the wind’ and how long and far that dove has to sail before there is environmental justice with incinerators and football fans. i kept looking around. the game started. i felt deja-vu. i was in a roman coliseum. the vastness, depth, breadth of football, so inculcated. i’m so small. i thought about the movie, ‘rollerball.’ i wondered how it’d feel if i were character ‘jonathan e’ and feel celebrity and power. i exhaled and inhaled. look where i was; in the capital building of energy and emotion. everyone was wearing a $125 jersey. i was in jersey and there’s no place like home, thinking auntie em.

on saturday sitting on the beach then on my jetty thinking about the horizon, raising my son strong and straight, sincere and sympathetic; knowing i did good. noticed the sky was serenely blue. no humidity. seagulls named jonathan flew nearby. covered my head once. it was a close fly over.  egrets and regrets. both with skinny legs. water was so warm. i thought a tropical system would have a field day carousing, strengthening and intensifying. how prophetic; soon hurricane earl. i marvel at the beauty of planet earth while sitting under a beach umbrella. the gentle ocean, white sand, smell of salt air. i marvel how i notice such detail now. the last thing on my mind about the day: a mother. a grandmother. a six year old little boy hugging his grandmother, then running off to buy a popsicle. he came back and offered his grandmother a lick. she held his face with two hands. i knew what she was thinking.

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an august thursday last week. 10:30 am. i need to accompany and support. first sight. a painting of a woman, large prominent features, wings, surreal, tall as me.

two women assistants looked at me looking. one pointed with a long finger and i imagined, some kind of instrument used for cutting dense overgrowth in a jungle far away from central jersey. she pointed to a waiting, waiting room of varying comfort level of chairs, none soft and cushiony. a lonely box of kleenex on table near a book, ‘art of survival’, binder broken, pages ready to evacuate. anatomical paintings on wall; two half globes, america and australia. two lockets with small pictures of women. two half globes of a green mossy substance, small dinosaurs and dragons walking precariously on side. a painting of a planter covering a wide chest expanse, a vine escaping.  reminded me of a bean stalk. i was jack for sure. looking around, wondering, imagining, asking myself questions. what if? why am i the only testosterone person here?(just the word i thought of too) music piped in through speaker directly over my head (what used to be my soft spot). my day of crossing canal coincidentally close. not just music, no elvis. no rap. no dusty springfield. no iris dement. no voices. lots of piano. 5 hours of this music. not music but a dirge dragging on. i was in the land of funereal thoughts. couldn’t help it. outside the window to my left, a courtyard separating a one story building with all glass walls and no people about. one lone tree notably branch neutered and not moving or blowing in the wind. i wondered if the operation made it lethargic. the sky was uncannily blue. not a cirrus or cumulous cloud for 5 hours. not one passing by to change view. why was i the only male here? the colors all around were beige, green and white. chairs were too. i was feeling ominous, beige and white and sickly.

a woman walked in with a clipboard. filled out a form. i was busy reading a primer on hemingway, the particular page about living life, experiencing and inventing. i was where i never dreamt to be. no eye contact with the woman. i think it was mutual, perhaps for me out of privacy respect. another woman walked in, dropped belongings and paced back and forth endlessly. i understood. i felt. that’s it. i started feeling things like never before. was i invading a private world. i still waited for gender company which never came. why was i the only male? i walked outside office looking for gender company. even my gender’s washroom, no gender company. the silence of a washroom, water splashing. strange but i was noticing things i never noticed. something was happening. surreal air in the conditioning system.

back to waiting room. even a crying baby would’ve worked to break an eerie silence. more women and clipboards. i started noticing faces. a sadness. a fear. a silence. one woman sat facing me. i tried to bury myself in book. there’s only so much clinical hemingway to absorb in an hour. an assistant walked in and handed that woman a large folder of x-rays or something. a few muffled words. a face left with no emotion. i saw fear. i wasn’t there. i was silent but felt i was changing. i think i was resolving to notice things in my world for the rest of my time in it. i couldn’t help it. i was changing. i hoped for gender company. none would ever come. another woman and a clipboard. another what if for me and then another one. hours passed. i didn’t even want one of the butter cookies on a tray in kitchenette(what a strange word, kitchenette). i wanted no water.  i wanted no movement. i just noticed a painting was not perfectly level and the neutered tree which i realized was probably my gender was still not moving. maybe there was no wind. a mighty wind would win branch movement. i wondered about this special kind of place and a special kind of fear and it’s gender tender specialty. the dirge music annoyed but i knew why it was there. i noticed i’d been there a long time. patients have come and gone and i still sit, hemingway now resting near the lonely kleenex box. if i wrote tissue box would readers know?  why am i the only male here?  why is there such loneliness here? why am i so lonely?  why am i still here?  why hasn’t one of the pointing fingers come in to reassure and point me out?

finally an assistant. “just coming out now” i noticed her face, then a whisper, “we have to come back for a biopsy at 2:45pm”  we drove around then some lettuce with balsamic to  masticate, kills time. back in waiting room. more women no men. more clipboards. more fear. more noticing details. i was never so quiet for so many hours. a few more hours. more, what if?  i wondered about erectile dysfunction and if that gets more money for research than where i am. there are no words as hard as i try to describe my evolution and revolution. i’ll notice and feel and be a better human. promise to myself.

 lasting thoughts: a day without male company. a day of fear, unknown, feeling, noticing and thinking about words. two hours ago on this day of my birth, writing words, praying and communing. then a simple phone call that things are alright. happy birthday calvin. Best Gifts are simple life things. i noticed that.

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            I’ve been roaming around Texas in 106 degree heat for the past eight days (no blog posts therefore) and now back to the streets and streams of New Jersey. There’s a soulful love and splendor discovering America. How can I keep from singing?  More travels west and south. Many more miles before I sleep. My homecoming gift: a pound of tuna salad (imported from Long Island. Thanks Michael W.) with red pepper and fresh jalapeño chunks blended (tuna, a once a month indulging due to mercury allergy) Dedication time: In the vastness and complexities of the universe, a new spirit reached my soul with a dream and has taken me down a quirky red brick road. Squinting, I can almost see Montana or the castle at Pedyston Crag, where Cathy and Heathcliffe frolic in the heather. I’d love to be there. ‘There’ is a wonderful place; a fulfillment of every kind of journey; heart, mind, spirit. Sometimes I wonder if ‘there’ is the place the conductor calls out to a nearly empty train, “last stop.” Thing to do is to get off just before the last stop. So, to my constant companion, my ‘Harvey,’ Reckless Ostrich, freewheeling, soulful, inspiring and holding me tightly to dream filled writing, here’s to you. And to Cousin Stuart(we missed each other all these years, my Texas guide, friend, riding (car, not cycle or horses yet) partner; you have become the brother I always wished for. Thanks for the memories (many yet to arrive).

            Tray tables flipped. Exit aisle seat upright. Out the window, endless flat green plains, devoid of mountains or elevation. Dallas-Fort Worth Airport; size of a city back east. Everything is bigger in Texas. On the way to Frisco and Cousin Stuart, I saw my first mountain (not); a vision like I was back at the Jersey shore, sitting by the dock at the bay. Sweeping déjà-vu. The mountain promises adventure, solitude and a feeling like where Puff, the Magic Dragon lived, Honah Lee. It was 106 degrees; the dashboard reminded. Yet this mountain had a hint of snow at the summit. Why the feeling, as rapid cars busily passed me by, that I was a worker ant, in loyal servitude, about to ascend the mountain, such a long way up. A maelstrom was out the car window; papers and small pieces of plastic flying around in cyclonic revolution. I was glad the ant was ready to climb; a low center of gravity was resistant to the harsh wind. He’d make it up by the end of the century or when tuna is extinct, which ever comes first. Dreamily I missed my exit. Garmin, in a British voice re-calculated.  

            My head bobbled back and forth. Frisco was a kind of utopia. Buildings were new, glass and reflective shiny. From a distance I thought it was CGI generated, unreal, make believe. Every blade of grass accounted for. Sound barrier walls on new highways looked like they were hand sculpted. Synchronicity embraced me the next morning for breakfast, meeting Sanford, a veteran oilman; my next novel deals with oil. My soul was moved later in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza where President Kennedy was shot. I was in college back when. Silence and a heavy heart accompanied me for the next hour, walking around the sixth floor of the Book Depository.

            Fort Worth produced a cattle drive on arrival; more synchronicity. The door to the rodeo was open (friendly place). Imagination filled the empty seats; cheers for Calvin, the roper from New Jersey. A real Texas barbecue (some culture shock); my half chicken was dropped on a plastic tray; a sheet of white paper (my plate) came next. Across the street was ‘Billy Bobs,’ famous for riding the mechanical bull (sure you can do that in New York City but not the same).

            Back in the car, air conditioner blasting, I was quiet and so was Stuart. I saw another mountain with the same wisp of snow. On the summit, I closed my eyes. The cold snow felt good, my face buried in a small drift. Texas was magic, real and beckoning. Tomorrow I’d descend the mountain and head to Austin. But the cold snow on the non-mountain startled me into remembering I’m from Jersey and in all my decades, I lived a suburban comfortable life, never even spending a moment in a tent on a boy scout overnight. An occasional house spider would wink at me just before I used a high powered vacuum to make it disappear, a finger poised to dial 911. Once as a college freshman in Ohio, the fraternity rented a cabin on a lake in Indiana. The hard splintery wood floor with a sleeping bag was the biggest roughing it of my life, then and now. At 2 am, I felt a movement in the bag. Jumping up, pulling the light cord, I found the kindest, gentlest frog. My sleep was over and so was the cabin on the lake experience. I left for New Jersey a few hours later.

            Back on another mountain, in the middle of endless farms, cows and horses grazing, I wondered what life was like way out here in real Texas, on a farm, miles from the closest health food store. The air was noticeably thin on the mountain; it cleared my optic nerve. I was just passing through. I slipped and fell into the snow. It was cold and woke me up. I am a Jersey suburban boy. But I love Texas and Austin and the state capital building. In an elevator, a civilian in a cowboy hat wore a holster with a pearl handled gun. It’s allowed. In Jersey, that’s 10 to 20 for attempted.

            San Antonio and the Alamo. Seeing David Crockett’s name on the wall moved me so. I was where some of our bravest Americans fought valiantly for all our ideals of freedom and independence. Six hours of driving was not in vain. Yet another mountain encounter on the drive out of the Alamo. More snow on its peak. More cold reality. Texas is a wonderful place. I’m a suburban Jersey boy. Am I like Ebeneezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve, before the ghost of things yet to be and is it too late to change?

            The next afternoon in Tioga, Texas, birthplace of Gene Autry and home of Clark’s Outpost and amazing barbecue, with Stuart, John T.(a former all pro punter for the Philadelphia Eagles in the 80’s) and Ned P.(a die-hard Green Bay Packer and former Wisconsin wide receiver) I met Jim, rancher, rodeo man extraordinaire who’d like to train me for riding rodeo, cutting horses, and roping despite my awful center of gravity. I’d like that (and I’ll take him up on his generous offer) even if it metamorphoses into a pony ride when this suburban Jersey boy realizes there’s still snow on the mountain.

            My last night in Dallas, at the Frisco Bar watching the Cowboys preseason: To my right, a pair of soft gleaming, sparkling eyes, effervescent smile, excited with every Cowboy score.  She was pure Texas and I was watching the Cowboys with hometown fans in Dallas; exciting but I still love the Giants, Jets and Rutgers. Synchronicity conjured all kinds of reasons for me to get back to Texas. I’d like that. And I wouldn’t need snow capped mountains next time to tell me I’m a Jersey suburban boy. I’m still learning. I’m about to start writing a new novel. I’ve got the spirit of Reckless Ostrich, a brother in Stuart, a world of loving support to come home to, and fueled memories of Texas Mountains (not) to energize me for a long time. I love America.

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