Minefields & Timebombs

A Walk in NYC

Fall in love with a thousand strangers,
Knowing full well that the lure of anonymous connection is never to be made in flesh,
Shirk in fear of a thousand apparent felons,
Knowing that the whack of the leaden pipe, the cut of the blade or the leering bullet engraved with your name will never come…..
Until it does…

Hope my poem doesn't sound paranoid. Reminds me of a story: man goes to a shrink to prove his friends wrong.....they all say he's paranoid. Doc does battery of detailed psychological tests, calls him in: 'well, I have good news and bad news for you..."

"what's the good news?"
"you're not paranoid"....."Great! 'Knew it!....so, doc, whats the bad?"
"Checked around a bit.....everybody really is after you"

I find myself living amidst minefields and timebombs....
the first is of a more pleasent variety (2 and 6 year old daughters....
"mine!""mine!"mine!""mine!'MINE!!!! WAHHHHHHHHH! / you get the picture.

The other is of the PD variety. Still early enough in this process that many of the things that inevitably will happen haven't.

Timebomb: telling at work
Timebomb: telling wife's side of the family....
Timebomb: explaining this in a healthy way to my children....
Timebomb: further impact of process..

Things kept unexpressed develop more psychic gravitas....suppose the key is to accept the reality of changes coming....not to rush them....and not to fear...

New Forms of Deep Brain Stimulation....

Played handball today with my six-year old - felt really good and triggered some 'thinking-

At first, I was amazed at how much my body remembered - spent a good part of my teenage years playing handball growing up in the Bronx - and it all came back. First, the pain....hurts like a son-of-a-bitch, at least at first. I used to play so hard that my hand would swell to the size of a plump grapefruit - and then I'd go and try to make music at the keyboard. Switched by my early 20s to a raquet, which insulated me from the pain....'kinda stopped playing all together by 40.

But playing today, and feeling the pain -and exhilaration to see that even my gimpy left arm still knew in some deep place how to return a ball - watching my daughter run this way and that to whack the ball - all the pain of PD faded and I saw myself back in the Bronx, not much older than my little girl trying unsuccessfully but happily to return the effortless volleys shot by my Uncles Joe and Uncle Izzy, the pickle maven (ran "United Pickle Co".,or so he said...probably was some front for the Mob, looking back)...and, if but for a moment, it was all OK.

So, seems I have stumbled upon an organic form of Deep Brain Stimulation -
buried memories triggered by the whack of an errant tennis ball - 'gots to beat the kind where they pop electrodes into your head and turn up the juice in your cranial toaster-oven.

Parkinson's strips away the insulation of any happy plans you may have - think I'll start playing again....without the racket. Feels right.

Strange Attractors

Gin a body meet a body Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body cry?


When like meets like an attraction, a visceral magnetism seems to operate to pull one towards the other. Kabbalistic lore posits that we were all once part of the primordial body of Adam Kadmon, the initial human containing all the souls of every human form ever to manifest. And when you feel an unexplainable attraction to a stranger its probably because in your primordial state of creation you were both part of the same organ ... maybe the primordial ear, or hand or eye (....now we can better understand where assholes comes from .....:)

As for my story, I've noticed a strange - non-sexual, but compelling -- attraction towards another teacher who I can clearly see has a Parkinson's condition (unilateral tremor, stiff arm, etc....all the markers I know too well) - though she has never come forward and revealed this to the faculty or students (...nor, have I).

So when I run into her the best I can describe it is as a meeting between the PD consciousness in me and the PD consciousness in her - its as if 'it' recognizes a nearby manifestation of the same 'morphic field' that it inhabits. Strange stuff, strange attraction. Go figure....