give thanks?

Today will have been the last day I saw my grandfather, James Allen, alive.

 

He's in the last stage of Alzheimer's at 73 years of age, and he'll be gone any day now.  He is the closest approximation of a male role model that I've ever had, i love him very much, and will miss him dearly.  I will have nightmares of what I've witnessed today for the rest of my life.

He lay there, in a fetal position, more bone than flesh, a skeletal and helpless shadow, completely devoid of dignity with his mouth agape.  His arms and legs have wasted away from atrophy, but the tendons remain only to torture a good man with constant tremors of the hands and feet.  His own body is now his worst enemy, with dry and red eyelids hardly able to open and lips just as useless, and chapped like peeling paint.

Contact with my patriarch was questionable. He can hardly hear and found it difficult to speak, only stating "yes" when offered water by the spoonful.  His eyes while open constant

ly blink with a consistency akin to the tremor in his extremities.  I had to test our contact by moving closer and farther and watching his pupils slowly find focus, and to the side to see if his eyes followed. I think he did see me, but I could just be deluding myself.  

I told him of a chance encounter I had with his former place of work, FDNY Engine Co. 33, where he served as a lieutenant, and of his photo on the wall from the 2005 "Bowery Boys" Old-Timers Reunion. I told him that I always miss him. And I do. He's the only one in the family willing to entertain a discussion of politics, if only just to push my buttons. I told him I love him, held his head, and kissed him goodbye.

His older brother Larry was there, speaking of him as if he were already dead, and musing that he's "got a few years left and then he'll go." This disturbed me profoundly. 

Back at the house, where we had earlier eaten a pressured noontime turkey dinner, my grandmother made me choose which of his suits he will be buried in.  And then a tie. 

On the way home, my uncle, grandfather's namesake, told me that grandma wants us to serve as pallbearers. I could only think that there are but two adult males in the family capable of this, that my brother Jack and cousin Errick are still too young and small. This did not sit well with me.  

It took every ounce of my will to hold back the tears that are currently pouring from every hole in my face as I type this. My composure was reserved for my family. I treat myself now to a total lack thereof. This is what I am thankful for on this day. That I can give water in honor of a man that I love.

So, the lower east side delivers, with a cheap dive once again.  

I found myself at the bottom of a barrel of beer, having a conversation through a snorkel with these three girls.  Didn't get any numbers, because frankly, it was boring.  Although I did enjoy the way they looked at me.  Instead, I chewed out Kristen for going to New Zealand. Fine, fine, fine. JustfriggingotoNewZealand, itsfineIdon'tneedanyfriendsoranything. 

Then, who do I see on the subway but Jessica Louise and Sarah.  According to them, I peed in the street on our walk home.  Ah, friday night.  Yes, I believe I do prefer the company of lesbians to fucking a stranger.

follow through

So I went to the psychiatrist today.

She actually took a history.  That's enough for me.  She asked for details, past and present, rather than just writing down observations.  I am to be referred to a therapist, and will follow up on the 6th of December.  And I gots pills.

Bupropion and lorazepam.  Generics.  Still too expensive.  The point is, no freaking out beyond tolerable human capacity, and stabilization; no more shutting down.  

While I wait for the chemicals to kick in, I'll be ice skating in Bryant Park.  Because meds make ya fat.

yerba mate

So, its been said that I look like this guy, and that's a first.  Cool.  He sang about perfect days and heroin and all things darker than all things cool at the time, a bit like that other weirdo on the west coast.  The difference being that the eastern anti-star underwent a bit of electrocution, which he was told was for his own good, whereas the western medicine-man just saw some dead folk bleeding on the roadside.  These are apparently turning points.  

Unlike, say, ice skating with your mom on a sunday afternoon in Bryant Park.  Mom is so damn cool!  Every time somebody fell, she said "that was a good one!"  Heh.  Mom.

My next search in this burg is to find some yerba mate, and there's a paraguayan place that hopefully will serve it in a gourd.  Then maybe I'll look like this guy.

YUP!

YOU GOTS TO KNOW YOUR CHICKEN!

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The Dutch are an horticultural force unlike any other.  

Since the age of their long-gone empire, they have hybridized and engaged flora species, taking mother nature to the salon, and given her a makeover.  The Dahlia didn't look like it does after the Dutch took her from Mexico, but now, some 400 hundred years later, she hardily blooms still in November in New York.  This is what amazed me at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden today.  

The Japanese hill and pond garden is a most serene and auspicious place, fit for a time spent alone, sorting quandary.   Unfortunately, the rain does its job on everyone, and makes us betray our feelings.  It makes the future mirror the blackest parts of the past.  So, strife seeming nearly amenable, easily turns tragic.  Solutions unbalance.  

The rains do keep these hederae, colanthus, and cacti alive, though.  And things don't just stay bleak and repeat themselves like the rain's melancholy mirror says.  The proof is in the Dahlia, tempered to strength and stability by endless care, trial, and error, and fed by rain for thousands of generations over hundreds of years.

festivals of fall

Halloween.  The Black Mask attended a parade, and evil Jamie left the parade.  None of the makeup left except the black in the eye sockets, and the black dye of my follicles, I trudged through the gorgeous maelstrom that was New York breathing for the first time in months without being motivated by its wallet.  The concern in this air has been pasted on thick; but Halloween blew the caps off the steam tunnels and the streets were full of the bacchanalia, a well deserved reprise for the nation's nerve center.  

New York took some ecstasy and had a parade round its heart, while its citizens screamed the fear out of its circulatory system like antibodies executing pathogen invaders.  Yesss... New York is well. It stayed up well past dawn taking care of its most precious lovers, delivering them from evil in return for the therapeutic exuberance that washed the dread from its streets.  New York most certainly got laid this Halloween.

A few days later, after commuting in reverse to where I'm still registered to vote, stumbling off the G train in a neglected neighborhood, New York's least represented answered a collect call from their ancestry.  "Excuse me folks, do you know who your next President is?"  

The streets were still there somewhere, under the choir, but the hope and the optimism that this neighborhood hadn't ever seen had laid down a thick cloud cover over geography and economics... All that was left was a promise, the "checks cashed" establishment has opened its doors, and the poor in white neighborhoods and the poor in black neighborhoods wait for Barack Obama to deliver.  

Atmospheric tendency had felt like the opposite, I had been expecting to emerge from the underground to cars flipped and on fire, flaming effigy, and pain, after some of the whispers I had overheard prior to the election.  This is much preferable.