Larry David & Richard Lewis

"Mantra"

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George Harrison & Leon Russell

Beware of Darkness

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Still Life from Alamance Hisorical Museum

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Dusk with Stoplights

Burlington, NC

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Citygarden Fountain

St. Louis, MO

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Greensboro Train Station

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Kenny Dalton Sleeps with Angels

When I lived in Lemay I did a four year stint as a daytime Dad-Mom, and nighttime pizza delivery driver. At the pizza joint I got to know and became friends with Kenny, who was born and bred down there, and who was a natural born streetfighter in every sense of the word: a square peg anywhere, who sometimes would go to local watering holes for the express reason of getting in some hillbilly's face, and then kicking his ass "for practice". Aside from the fact that I think we both felt like outsiders, there was really not too much we had in common. Somehow he took a shine to me, and me to him. He loved my guitar playing and wasn't shy about letting me know about it, and I liked that, alot. We had a few lessons on my back porch with the dogs and some cigars, coffee and cigarettes. He was an enthusiastic student, and had stumbled upon a riff and wrote a song around it, and would proudly and unabashedly play it over and over for me, until I could muster up enough courage to ask him to stop. I sold him the modified Mexican Telecaster my friend Karen (drummer for my seldom seen or heard three-piece, Pye-Dog) had given me (that ended up not so soon after in a pawnshop, somewhere).





Kenny, was a junkie-- heroin, and "hillbilly" heroin, i.e., Oxycontin, Percocet, Demerol, &c. I was clean and had been, and did my best to steer him in the direction of some, twelve-step fellowship. I think he actually did come with me once, but just didn't much care for it. Kenny took to me the way tough guys sometimes take, I think, to those they like or admire in some way, and who they can see are maybe a little too vulnerable, a bit too defenseless. My friend Malcolm-- pal, bodyguard, running buddy, beer-buyer and songwriting partner (from my brilliant lost, fifteenth year) was like that to me, a big brother-type: wiser, hipper and thicker-skinned, my John Lennon (he had, the glasses), me being maybe, poor old, Peter Best. Malcolm died as I was finishing up my freshman year at WU. He asphysixiated somehow, as he was taking hits off a whipped cream cannister, at the Swenson's Ice Cream Factory there in Chapel Hill, where he had been employed.





Somehow, I found myself back down there in Lemay, the other evening. I don't like going back down there. The bus ride is long, and there's plenty of time to get a little to familiar and cozy, with emotional memories that are still a bit too achingly unpleasant. But I did feel I was making that trip, for a reason, some reason. I thought it was maybe this other reason (one that I almost certainly wanted and coveted too, much). But, it turned out differently, and there it was, what it was, and just-so.





Headed home from an introductory lecture on a brand of enlightenment I was unable to afford, I found a bustop with a bench, and saw that I had 40 minutes of unscheduled time ahead of me. I sat there, on that bench at half-past nine on a Friday evening, in what I had always felt was hopelessly hostile territory: the swampy hoosier hell known as, Lemay. Me, the maybe odd, and vaguely queer looking guy, who'd been brought up southern in the quaint, bucolic and mostly kind Chapel Hill, NC, home of the Tarheels, and the Dean Dome, and where the sky is always a perfect Carolina Blue.





I looked up after a bit, and noticed across a dimly lit Lemay Ferry Road, right left of the Family Dollar, a backlit plastic sign: PIZZA & MORE. I had driven for Lemay Pizza & More, but the place had burned years ago, and I had figured that they were just no more. I had to walk twenty-five feet maybe, before I could make out the painted and unlit heading, LEMAY. I had about twenty-five minutes till the next Grand-bound bus was due.





I went in, but didn't recognize anyone. Speaking with a driver at the counter, I realized there was a Zack, now managing, who was still there, and had been there then, when I was. Busy, I sat and he came out after a few minutes.





Kenny had told me more than once that he had been declared 'dead', three times, off an O.D. He knew what was in store for him. I think the song he had played so eagerly for me, had lyrics, along the lines of, worms or maggots, and how it is, at the end-- with a body, with what's left of us. Zack let me know that Kenny Dalton, Lemay Streetfighter, my friend, had indeed passed from this life sometime last September. I know that Kenny expected the worse, or mostly just nothing, when he took his final rest. I'm just glad that Kenny's path and mine crossed, and that I was able to recognize him as a generous and profound teacher, and as a beautiful soul wrapped in a knot of ugly circumstances.





Rest in Peace Kenny D


Thank You

Someone's Looking Out For Me.lyric

Late at night when the moon comes out
You can hear the old folks twist and shout
I sit here thinking, with my chamomile tea
Waxing sentimental over Sioux & the Banshees

That summer, back in the eighties
I hung out at the Mudd Club with those guys the dB’s
Now ‘How Did I Get Here’ runs through my head
I ain’t fast or young, but I still, ain’t dead

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad, is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

Debbie Harry is now non-blonde
Elvis, not as angry, but still a bit weird
The Talking Heads have all gone gray
Just when in hell did I grow this beard?

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

It’s all the same,
The rain still falls, like rain
You get wet, so do I
Sooner or later, we all get dry

That granny’s got a lavender thong
Matt’s dad is a punk-rock god
I got no Blackberry, no SUV—
Someone’s Looking Out For Me

True Blue.lyric

You were the girl in the corner
You were a sight for sore eyes
I gave my heart, now I’m at the door,
For the last of our long good-byes

So many ways I tried and tried
To rekindle a light long-gone
But your heart was closed, and your mind made up
Now all I got is this sad song

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a night or two
But now that you say, that you don’t want me
My heart’s free to beat, True Blue

Sometimes, when I’m alone at night
I hear Sam sing, As Time Goes By
I’d like to think that I’m over you
But darlin’ I still cry.

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a month or two
But now that you say, that you don’t want me
My heart’s free to beat, True Blue

I wanted you, for always
Not just for a year or two
Now that you say that you don't want me
My heart's free to beat, True Blue

The Play

The scene where I dress myself,
Becoming before you
A dream for amateur
Analysis, as I insist I ask
Not your rank conclusion: it’s

Dust, air, innocence, enmity, a
Play spent in limbo on
An outcropping of lot, vacant
And teeming too, with
The growth of a truth

Too small to notice, but then,
It is huge if you speak
The language, it is mammoth
And planetary and dancing
Like this galaxy, beyond any

Gathering of fact. Isn’t this
Your truth, too? And haven’t
I tried, to unwind you with a glance,
To pretend and prefigure you,
As an inadequate actor, playing nude

On a stage made dangerous
In China, in plastic sandals, hurling
Foible after foible at a bland
Audience, who are tickled-- and not just,
By their ticket stubs: sugary-sweet, and not a bad, snack.

Please God.lyric.2005

The sky’s on fire, the water is deep
There’s fear in the heart of the soldier’s sleep
From a thread we hang over a lonely abyss
Praying for manna and the home we miss—
I’m planting sacred seeds in worldly sod, Please God—

The night’s recesses claim many too soon
And many are lost before the Harvest Moon
Many are born into sin and lust
Hand on the handle of a broom to dust--
I’m from the school of Hard Knocks, magna cum laud, Please God—

The chill in the air proves Autumn true
And Winter will heal you, should you make it through
The ice and snow, which dry your skin
Prepare the warmth, and the chance to begin—
And though the play is absurd, I’m bound to applaud, Please God—

Bats in the belfry, hound in the yard
The Fall is free, but the ground is hard
The tongues we speak, just blur our vision
And prohibit the will to catechism—
I love my brothers, Winken, Blinken and Nod, Please God—

I want to spare this child,
And spoil, the rod—
Please God

Prayer, Wednesday

In and out
Of what it is I ask for,
I make this promise:
To allow the season
Its bounty.

Because I can only want
What is perfectly offered
And grace does not suffer
Profane argument.

Because the earth
Called me here, because
The air has offered its worth,
Because home
Called me home, and because
I took notice.

But it is true,
That I need my wanting-you
Because my wanting-you
Is the ticket I claim
And also, the one that names
The notes, of the homesong.
It is there, where the gentle arms
Of the hearth
Embrace my stained cloak
And dust me whole, into
The loving un-done.

Where I will courteously
Take that, that
Which is given, in
Pure truth, and of an unearned
Love, a love,
Now, I learnTo answer to.

On The Outskirts

Rocking and rolling west on the eleven-bus, mid-afternoon on an unusually warm October day, under a storm-cloud sky, I considered my situation. Recently separated from my wife of ten years, practically penniless, I was dying for a cigarette. I was on my way to see my shrink, and in the back of my mind I knew for certain, that I would break down and buy a pack (on my debit card), and that I had no cash to pay my fare back into the city. I wanted to, and probably could have, cried—but, I bore down, onward.

I was on familiar turf, ground I’d covered before and that I thought I’d left behind, by graduating to the relative comfort and normalcy of recovery, and family life: a wife-and-daughter, two-dog, two-cat, two-car, two-income fuzzy security blanket of domesticated bliss. How quickly that relative sense of ease and possibility was swept away, like the raindrops now falling on the bus windshield. As the rain came down, I numbly noted that I had no umbrella, and would have to walk several blocks to my doctor’s office.

Due to the fact that I am a person living with chronic mental illness, and one who has lived clean as a recovering addict for many years (except for that bout I had with xanax a few years back: the quack doctor I had at the time was sure it would help my marriage), I know well the terrain of want, the landscape of loss and shadowy fear, the relentless grip of a primal neediness. And I didn’t want to be back here, stranded and alone, ride-less, walking slowly under an overpass, as the well heeled whizzed by in their sports-utility-vehicles.

But there it is, and here I am. After I left my doctor’s office carrying a holy plastic bag stuffed with a month’s supply of three different psycho-pharmaceuticals, I wandered a bit, before I decided to call one of my recovery brothers (who, oddly enough, had just purchased a new SUV), to ask for a lift back to my place. He was happy to help, and slipped me a twenty as he dropped me off.

I thought about some of the homeless and struggling folks I worked for, and with, at the Empowerment Center, of their lives of shelters, bummed smokes and bologna sandwiches. And though I missed the comforts and security of my brief better life, I figured now, I could at least take comfort in the knowledge of the fact, that I worked a job that married gratitude and service in such a way so as there was no doubt, that I might be in it for the money, or some other, worldly acclaim.

Gratitude

The traffic on Grand drones, a flow
And a thread, and a part of what enters,
With the weather. I am alone and in debt,
To this pill, but not the other—I owe time
A smile, she’s still treading water, beside me.

I lost love, then spied it cross-eyed,
On the other side of town. I hold my daughter
Now, while she lets me. Even the books
On the floor were waiting patiently,
For me to find them, to finally catch their hum.

The buses grumble, but still stop. I am
Convinced, that those I elected, are trying.
The pantry guy doesn’t mind, if I come in
More than twice a month. The seamstress, sad,
Offered a paperclip for free, and the zipper works.

The brothers at the center listen, when I speak,
Because I listen when they speak, then offer coffee.
We know the same songs. I do not blame
My caseworker for the bureaucratic fog
She must stumble through daily, because she must eat.

This fall, the city rebuilt the pond and fountain,
In the park, across from my building. I didn’t expect
Them to, but they did it, anyway. I don’t know
If my dog has noticed the fountain, but my daughter
Noticed that Gingko trees, smell like Cheese-Whiz.

Am I Being Friendly Yet: Thoughts On Working A Warmline

The premise of a friendship line is basically this: A patient and compassionate consumer fields calls from other mental health consumers, or those troubled, lonely, or in need of a friend. This peer-to-peer relationship is hopefully therapeutic to the caller, and perhaps also to the person answering the call, but in the way self-help groups are therapeutic, and not in the way of a professional counselor-to-patient relationship. Crisis calls are referred to a local Hotline manned by professional counselors. The idea behind a Friendship Line, or warm line, is not to counsel or advise, but to empathize, relate, and share one’s experience, strength and hope.

All of which, of course, is easier said than done. As one of the people who answer the Empowerment Center Friendship Line, I am repeatedly faced with the awareness of my own foibles and weaknesses, of just how many buttons I still have, waiting to be pushed.
There are certain callers who, in their pain and neediness, and often, wanton anger (mad-ness), take and take and push the limits of my personal and work-related boundaries, so that I plummet from the heights of composure, kindness and ‘professionalism’, into resentment, into my own dis-ease. On a hard day, my first thought on returning home, is which of my support people I can call, to get myself right again.

Which brings me to a recent question I am asking myself, that is, at what point does a friend, a true friend, the kind who might enjoy answering a “friendship line’, switch from compassionate and empathetic listener, nodding and uh-huh-ing through litany after litany of complaints, gripes and whining, take a harder tack, and practice, as they say, ‘tough-love’, to confront the caller’s run-amok self-pity, negativism and narcissism, to go from passive listener, to calling a spade a spade? And if I do this, does this mean that I have over-stepped my boundaries as a peer, and not professional, counselor, or worse, that I am being un-friendly?

Well, I don’t think so, but as a ‘nice-guy’ and a bit of a people-pleaser, I am learning that perhaps practicing tough love with some of our callers is the right and moral thing to do. I recently began working the Friendship Line again, after an 18-month or-so absence, and was somewhat alarmed to find a few of our repeat callers still stuck in their anger and negativism, still run-aground by and with the sense of their own impotence. The path away from impotence requires generous doses of empowerment, and my goals, and my concern is, at-least, two-sided: it stems from an interest in what’s best for the emotional well being of the caller, as well as my own.
And I have found, to my relief, that, even though a chronic caller might be temporarily thrown by my new, more confrontational stance, that they often return after having some simmer-down time. The key is to remind them that I do, actually, still care, and to take them to task, when I do I do take them to task, as kindly as possible, to the best of my ability. The optimum result of this is that both myself, and the caller, are allowed to feel good about their inter-relationship, and not emotionally run-over, harboring a resentment that their friendship has been abused.

S.A.D., An Explanation In Verse

It is autumn, and you wince
As her cold blanket falls, smothering
The wish you once described
As fire. What is this--? It

Is your heart slowing, as
November’s bland big-top collapses
And closes in, making ceiling
More floor than firmament—it

Is the weight of your age returning
To it’s haunting place, it
Is the memory of innocence reflected
In decay, and mocked
By tinsel and the prodded guffaws
Of a predicted holiday.

It is the cozy
Postcard scene, the hearth witnessed
In passing, a glimpse, or
Just imagined, from the chaos
Of the cross-town bus, creasing
Grand Boulevard in a slurry
Of rain, and regret. It

Is the gift you long
To give, whose ticket
Outstrips your wallet—it

Is the bottoming-out
Of another year, and a brief long
Shot, as the calendar folds,
At an enhanced resolve—

But it, that which
This is, waits just
For one thing—for
It’s only spring which will mark
The true new start, with
It’s birthing and budding,
And blossoming, of possibility, of
The renewal of hope
And the long watched-for start
Of promise.

Death Come Creepin'

Last night as I lay down to bed, I gradually became aware
Of some activity out in the hallway—voices, the pounding
Of frantic fists on a neighbor’s door. I prepared myself for some
Controversy brewing out in the hall, and vowed to mind
My own business, if that were the case. I then heard sirens, first
One then another, come toward our building, but stop, at our building,
This time, instead of continuing up Grand to St. Louis U. Hospital,
As they usually do. Soon paramedics were on our floor, with
Their squawking radios. I decided that I would poke my head out, to survey
The scene; maybe I could be of neighborly assistance in some way.

At the end of the hall I saw a young woman with her ball cap over
her face, and a man leaning against the wall at the end of the hall, making
a call on his cell phone. Paramedics came and went meantime, one
made what sounded like a crack, about ‘swine flu’. I heard the man on the phone
say, Dad, are you sitting down and, yea, we just got in, and she’s wrapped
in a blanket—and then start to sob. A paramedic was opening the hall window
as it hit me, the smell of death, come rushing down the hall with
the breeze. I closed my door, and found a dirty towel to put along
the bottom, to try to keep the smell out. I lay down and turned outthe light,
called my dog to bed, thinking about death out there, creepin’.

Letter to Donna

That I walked as far
As the shore, to retrieve the stones
Where you charted their
Breath, and said, I cannot
Carve my name here. That I
Broke down in the woods,
And followed the crumbling
Bread-trail home. That I
Tried, as a cripple might grasp
At a hem, to mingle
With grace. That I laughed
Wrong, where your eye
Caught the light.

I had purchased the banner
At cost, and tried out my army
On the torrid plain, until conquest
Proved too steep a plan—
What I’d wanted, was
An only summit, and as I
Arranged my guesses as true
As any general could form,
My wounds blew sad rounds, of
Loud, perfect color, enough
To astound, though now,
They gasp, and hold none
Of their truth. Truth is,
I began to undress them--
Now I fear that one distance
I knew, is close.

I wanted to fess, to tell
You, from under this gummy collage
Of random scraps, that I
Recognize the selves, those
Always asking for seconds,
And then: arrested, for
Impersonating a saint, or
A professor emeritus, and selling
Inflated cartoon animals,
Slathered in unlabeled cadmiums.

I wanted to tell you, too, that
I know this street, and the litter
It has purchased. What others leave
To others, what Time delivers, under
Her breath, to nobody, and
Anyone-- or how a leaf, something
Left, says, as I was, and am now
Undone, well, this is my neighborhood.
This is my town, and I can lie
Down in this lot-- I’ll know,
When it’s time to get up.

Dementia Praecox and the Audacity of the Artistic Endeavor

From the BBC, 10 July, 2001:
Professor Dr Sean Spence, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Sheffield, was speaking to representatives at the Royal College of Psychiatrists' annual conference.
He said jazz music arose from the attempts of a cognitively impaired performer to execute novel performances.
He said that Bolden's mental health problems meant his motor functions were impaired.
Bolden could not read music and the only way he was able to play his cornet was by improvising.
Dr Spence said: "It may be that he had to improvise because he could not play tunes in a useful way.
"He could not read music and he had to make up things as he went on.
"If we had not had this improvised music then it would just have continued as ragtime."
Dr Spence said that Bolden was diagnosed as suffering from "dementia praecox", which later became known as schizophrenia.

The Honorable Dr. Spence, bless his heart (a phrase my mother would often say, before genteelly disparaging some poor unfortunate’s errant behavior, lack of intelligence, or misguided, albeit well-intentioned act) gets my nomination for academic shrunken-head-of the year, retroactive to ought-one.It’s just that an attempt such as this, to explain away the holy and unknowable crucible of an inherently lonely genesis, the act of mortals and monsters, to create, with the trickery of and the imagined infallibility of logic, well, I guess it just gets, my moaning goat! You might as well spend your life “proving” the existence (or non-existence, it doesn’t matter) of God, with all the rigorous and impassioned precision and detail you can muster—and when you’re done, and publish against a great but fleeting fanfare, your particular choir, I’m sure, will sing your praises from some mountain top. But, I doubt any members of the other choirs in our global neighborhood, will pay much attention, and will quietly and stoically continue to follow the banner of their truth—the point is, you can’t get there from here! Or, should we feel sorry for the poor, deranged Borden—after all, he was forced, to improvise, to make things up, because “he could not play tunes in a useful way” (according to our learned investigator)?

Only Talking.lyric

A bad day for losing, a bad day again
I’ve lost my religion, but I believe in my sin
It’s a wrong way of sayin’ I’m hurting inside
Hold me, don’t scold me, I told a little white lie—

And I said leave me alone, darling leave me alone
But you never understood when I was only talking
Leave me alone, believe me ‘leave me alone’, is just what you heard
But I was only talking, I was just saying the words

Had too much coffee, stubbed my bad toe
Took the wrong medicine, baby here we go—
I wish that you knew me, I wish I did, too--
Cos what’s left of my unknowing, done put a spell on you—

Darling, come by me, I’ve gone and done it again
I’ve broken that cup, I’ve gone around the bend
I need your touch and your gentle embrace
You can’t trust my words when there’s red in my face—

Don't Wake Me Up.lyric.01.09.07

Don’t wake me up, baby
Before you go
Don’t wake me up
Don’t wake me up before you go
Me and my forty-five
Are better off alone

Don’t leave no number, babe
I don’t want to know
Don’t leave your number
It’s better I don’t know
It’s better you just disappear
Tell the driver I told you so

Don’t wake me up baby
Just close the door real slow
Don’t wake me up babe
You close the door nice and slow
I’m dreamin’ of the Promised Land
Through a silent shroud of snow

Don’t tell me why, baby
I already know
Please don’t tell me why
I already know--
There’s cotton candy in the sky
And fire down below

Crabgrass

That I was planted as
Crabgrass during a perfect
Monsoon, straight south of the
Eternal capitol and
Bending into a green
Ache, in tune to the perfect
Music or truth, but, stupidly,
Sad, at the occasion
Of my planting, of
Wind and at random.

And, that I tried to earn
The earth’s justice, her warmth
And weight. That, I came

Under your true field, with
A quiet valued
As stealth, and I riddled
Your familiar blanket, even as the lilies
Dismissed mine as an unjust
Swampland, thick with fever
And carbons and bad-livered
Soliloquies, that
Tested, with poisons,
The patience of water, and
The patience of air.

And so it is
That I am and remain
Underfoot, and suited
Thus, I could carpet
Your march toward Avalon
And beyond, absent
Pedigree and crunch,
Just a way and
A layer of truth,
A passage, of imperfect
Planting, of a matted,Blue duty.

Finding Your Voice

FINDING MY VOICE

It’s an integral part of any person’s process of becoming, of growing “up”, of finding, and claiming, themselves; it’s the real, audible music of self-actualization, and it’s how we know ourselves in relation to our fellow travelers. For the recovering person, the mentally ill and/or disenfranchised, or socially marginalized, creating an environment of good-will, a space that nurtures and supports the individual’s most tentative or ill-formed efforts, at turning themselves inside-out, at turning the vague nether-regions of thought and emotion—and perhaps pathology—into plainsong, into the poetry of belonging, into the fray of conversation, is critical. Finding one’s voice, and knowing its worth in a world whose rampant and indiscriminate cacophony threatens the timid and unrealized, I believe, is how we know we’re real, and, in its proper perspective, how we claim and take our place in the human chorus, and in humility, know and share in its strength.

The process of finding one’s voice begins with the awareness that we do, in fact, have a voice. The shy, the challenged (including organically brain-disordered), those who have been repeatedly served a toxic brew of shame and/or dismissal from an early age, struggle with this basic prerequisite to mental health.

As a young person, I was shy, morbid, and tongue-tied. I was tortured by many confusing thoughts and emotions, and yet, when sent to a child psychologist by concerned parents at age ten or eleven, I couldn’t speak. I was unable to take the leap of verbalization. There were things, secrets I considered too dark to acknowledge, that I was dying to confess to my parents, but was never able to do so, even though my parents were “good’, kind and open-minded persons of character. Adolescence brought with it substance abuse and depression, young adulthood brought more of the same with the addition of a blossoming and persistent paranoid ideation.

My outlets were creative ones, art, music, and poetry. But I was not a proud displayer of my efforts, and any negative reaction to my work was taken hard and followed by a period of seclusion. That I would be loved (only) for my expressions of “genius” was both my greatest fear, and fierce desire. I evoked an air of seriousness and intensity, but mostly, I was scared—I didn’t know myself, and was afraid there wasn’t a self to know. Not only could I not find my voice, I wasn’t at all sure I had one, or one worth hearing.

My personal journey to better mental health and recovery has been long and meandering, but I see my gradually growing ability to speak (and sing), to think and feel out loud (and within earshot of others), unapologetically, as a process occurring concurrently, hand-in-hand as-it-were, with conditions of improved health, spirituality and self-worth. The places and conditions that made this possible includes, but is not restricted to, 12-step meetings, in my work in psycho-social rehabilitation centers, including The St. Louis Empowerment Center, and during everyday encounters at, say, a bus stop.

Until the last ten or so years of my life, I was a stranger, and seemingly allergic to, the healing properties of small talk. I just didn’t get it, and didn’t see why I needed to bother with this common, yet obscure (to me) art. I don’t know when I started to be attracted by the prospect of discussing the weather with someone I didn’t know from Adam, but somehow I got started and it grew on me. I was already aware that my paralyzing shyness was perceived as aloofness, in turn perceived as conceit, the net result being further isolation and a robustly unhealthy martyr-complex (Oh, Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood!). I had tried to pretend I was invisible when I found myself in the company of those I did not know, but inferred by my stiffness that those I was with didn’t exist, either. What a relief, then, to commiserate anonymously against adversarial climatic conditions, with a nod and wink, or to say, simply, ‘How ‘bout them Redbirds’, as un-ironically as I could muster (given that I have little interest in athletic competition), by way of expressing to my fellow man, who I may never cross paths with again, who I don’t know from Adam or Eve, and who may smell funny, that I bear you, stranger, goodwill! By opening my mouth, my load was lightened. By giving voice to something I had previously considered insignificant, and an inanity, I discovered my goodness.

I probably learned a thing or two, perhaps, in my twenty-five years of psychotherapy, but I didn’t learn how to begin to relate with others until after some years as a participating member of a twelve-step fellowship. I developed the capacity to actively listen, to people I perhaps did not like, with non-judgmental compassion. I learned resist the urge to script my comments to the group in advance, but rather to strive to share in the moment and honestly. I also have learned, somewhat, to forgive myself if I say something unpopular or less-than-entertaining. I am learning the difference between humility and humiliation, and between wanton hubris and congenial pluck. I have learned that speaking up is speaking out, and that the weight of what remains unsaid is a worse pain than the pain of the effort required saying it. And, that speaking about one’s shame, which is a pain you feel in words, out loud, goes a fair distance towards loosening its grip on you.

An environment that feels safe and non-judgmental is crucial to this process, so, to is a person’s willingness to participate and belong to a group of like-souls. That’s why I, and many like me, have had to push past our tendencies toward ‘terminal uniqueness’. That cold and lonely condition is arrived at I think, from early experiences with rejection and dismissal, and we become hardened, and accept our isolation as predestined and unchangeable. The loner has to be different, apart, and unique, otherwise his world-view collapses. And to find the willingness to even think about joining the human chorus, he needs to be awakened to the beauty of the human song.

As in the awakening I had to the simple pleasures of small talk, as I’ve grown and matured , and healed a bit, one giant principle has made itself more and more clear, that is, that there is great beauty in the ordinary and even the mundane, and in the shared awareness of our common humanity. Thic Naht Hanh has described the experience of beauty encountered in our everyday activities: washing dishes, walking down the street.
Speaking out among and with others, in self-help groups, drop-in-centers, waiting rooms and bus stops, with the guiding principle of that of being a member, of at least entertaining the possibility of one’s inclusion in a greater good, is empowering, emboldening, and life-giving. It is a gift that is much an honor to give as to receive.

Stones in my Passway

Brooklyn, NY, 04, July, 1984

I sat, my back against the north wall of my bedroom, legs splayed before me, the charcoal gray of my levis obtusely askew and matted by the floor I’d painted a glossy black. The somber hues of jeans-against-floor formed a colorless chord, and reminded me of the last paintings of one of my artistic and spiritual mentors, Mark Rothko. My brilliant friend Janet, who, tragically, within four years would end her own life, had once mocked this work, dismissing it to me, because of the notion of the paintings getting progressively darker, the closer they got to the date of his suicide. This had struck her as a woefully trite and obvious correlation of an artist’s inter state, to-the-work, making poor Mark R.’s oeuvre therefore unworthy of any serious further inquiry, or admiration. And, body and mind hopelessly bent, I so, in that moment, wished my pants were blacker, more towards pure, a Royal Black (if there were such a thing), and become just camouflage, disappearing against the subway-inspired, viscous black enamel of the floorboards.

My mind was a frantic, cataclysmic and rushing torrent of non-sense, no-station AM static, urgent and spastic flight-response impulse, quivering, bleating prayers-to-whomever, and merciless self-immolation. The guy I’d split the small bag of crystal with was older, a bit flighty, vaguely artistic, career-less and adrift-- a fellow flunky from the Strand Bookstore (only eight miles, of books, in those days). He had said, about methamphetamine, “Yea, it’s nice—real mellow--” (it is interesting who, and what, Youth, and wishfulness, allows us to believe). I thought the dun colored powder, which had arrived through bohemian channels from San Francisco through the US Post, might be useful in exorcising my chronic, throbbing and palpable, and even, physically, painful—depression, which had overrun me these last few months like a mountainous and impossibly dense Oklahoman dust storm. I’m not sure I even knew that it was speed.

I had tried to reach my Italian analyst on the phone; I even tried to call a psychiatrist (also, oddly, Italian) that I had seen when I had first began to experience the soul-crushing feelings known to most of us as ‘depression’ (a term that, as a word and as a label, always depressed me), at fifteen, back in Chapel Hill—a pipe-smoking, and handsome ex-New Yorker who had impressed me, when, after I had proved almost incapable of verbal communication, had deduced, after a silent game of chess, my neurotic tendency to ‘pull my punches’. I managed, through Information, to reach some old crone in Queens, who I somehow believed might be my Carolina therapist’s father, which he grumpily and brusquely denied, in classic outer-borough manner. I was desperate in a free falling, welcome-to-my-private-apocalypse, way, and all I could think of was Bellevue, and all I knew about ‘Bellevue’, was that it was an infamous Manhattan nuthouse, and the last stop of more than one sad protagonist, whose stories I had encountered in a smattering of mostly forgotten novels and film.

I had found the hospital’s address, which it turns out, had not been necessary—after catching the D train at Brooklyn’s Fourth Ave., I made the rib-and-cranium-rattling trip under the East River and into Manhattan, detraining at W. Fourth in the Village, where I hailed a cab, fell in, and said simply, ‘Bellevue’, which apparently needed no further explanation, as the cabbie immediately rocketed north, then east, without saying a word. Within minutes we were at the entrance of my imagined Valhalla, where I thought my salvation, or at least some temporary chemical succor, might lie. I tipped the driver—which boosted my mood and shattered sense of self some, but invisibly: by a forlorn and desperate, smidge.

The hallways were long and cold corridors of droning fluorescence, and it seems like I went miles before breaking occasionally at right angles, and then find again some arrow or signage leading the way to Emergency. Almost at the edge of the Psychiatric Waiting Room, I passed a walrus-of-a-New York cop—and, curiously, thought to engage him. I mean, he had—a uniform. Hey, help, I took some meth, I said, I took some meth. The What the Fuck that was most the way out of his mouth stopped abruptly, about the time he had made the turn to look back, and had me sized, figured—at which point he just harrumphed, and turned back, to go on about his apparently more urgent, police business.

Some paperwork, and I took a seat along the back wall in the concavity of an early-sixties-vintage, aqua fiberglass seat. Next to me was—stench, stench and a manic, whirligig babbling, coming from a legless, and queer, boy bohemian-casualty of the downtown scene, spinning, with some dexterity, in a crud-encrusted wheelchair. His rant was directed at no one, at some imagined, rapt, audience, perhaps, and mostly indecipherable-- but I gathered, both, that he was a very close personal friend of Bette Middler, and that some motherfucker had dumped a full and very pungent can of garbage on him (leaving behind an acrid olfactory mêlée at least partly constituted of, I was fairly sure, rotting fish carcass, from some downtown market), the feverishly ranting cripple, and his wheelchair.

I alternately ignored and involuntarily glowered at this misfit spectacle, and the boy-man kept spitting sentences into the air, and then at one point, seemed to size, and get a lock, on my individual gestalt—at my inner cripple, and in a flash made me a part of his mad and wise running commentary, in the way of all big-city sidewalk madmen, saying shit Jesus somebody needs to get fist-fucked, and in my personal horror at his pronouncement, I ratcheted-up the glowering, which somehow, magically, had the effect of shaming him into silence—for a while, at least. And even in my addled, neurotically cranked state, I realized, at least two things—that this fuck-wad knew something about me that I didn’t (not that I literally needed a fist up my ass, though, admittedly, in the time since, I’ve never tried it), and that his mind, or that part of his mind more appropriately called spirit, was the stronger and more resilient, between the two of us, here, in the Bellevue Psychiatric waiting room, on the nation’s birthday, 19 hundred and eighty-four. This filthy, twisted, legless, wretched snotty-little-twit, was not giving in, or up, and was vibrantly alive and fighting, with a pure heart, with what was left of his dignity, and the tangled web and errant synapses of his cerebral cortex. This little fuck, he, he and his BFF, Bette the Divine—were gonna make it.
I waited a long time, some hours, and was able somehow to relinquish the draw of the unending soliloquy beside me, to just another thing, an element and another part of the humming fluorescent headspace that was me, my compromised mind, replete with its pernicious, whispering failures, nightmarish but innocuous fears, and the actual details of the Waiting Room— the sherbet-colored chairs, the smudged but scrubbed and sterile floor and walls, and the Impressionist prints framed badly, their color receding into a over-all bland, cheap tint: a candy-sweet Renoir, a brocaded child with a hoop, a Monet inlet scene of sailboats anchored and empty, only vaguely present, against but enmeshed in an atmospheric dabble of late afternoon sun. I didn’t predict or addictively await the junk of any more revelations or colorful prescriptive cures, from my buddy one slot ahead of me, in line to see, The Shrink, and eventually he was signaled, and wheeled himself squeakily into the attending physicians Interview Room— the shuttered and sacrosanct cloister of the Wizard, or snake-oil hawking Kansan, perhaps, behind the curtain.

Familiar Tune

lyric.03.07

In your village
I was fathered, as tobacco-shacks
Burned to the ground. With
Blackened fingers, my black
Brothers plod the earth behind
Their father’s plows.

O Holy Pardon,
I’ve reconsidered an anger
Too lonesome, to hold too long.
Daughter, silence is no true brother--
His breath seeks release in your song—


Here I am, here I am—
Walking down the boulevard,
Real slow. Here I am,
Here I am-- here I am,
Darling daughter,
There you go.

In the moment
I hear laughter,
And words that never leave
Room for doubt. My dear
Mother is still a dancer, an
Answer made of kindness
And sure light.


My blood brothers, we all
Wander. No one shame
Or reward, brought us here—
Hold your mother
And your Father-- field
A feather, when
Dark angels draw near.


Here I am, here I am—
Walking down the boulevard
Real slow. Here I am,
Here I am-- here I am,
My blood brothers,
There you go.

True Donatella,
Discovered treasure, coins
Whose glow are never fully
Spent—take a breather, I’ll
Tend the garden. When we go,
It won’t matter
Where we went.


Of an evening, no longer
Morning, autumn plays
It’s leaves against
My skin. I remember
But don’t linger—the
Time is always right
To begin.


Here I am, here I am,
Walking down the boulevard
Real slow. Here I am,
Here I am-- here I am,
Donatella, there you go.


Here I am, here I am,
Walking down the boulevard,
Real slow. Here I am,
Here I am-- here I am,
Ever after, there you go.

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