May 30.  That's the day that they used to have as the official "Memorial Day".  It happens to be my birthday.  And I've had a shitload of 'em.  Yep.  I'm a baby-boomer.  Born after the 'big one'.  Born into a family of 'The Greatest Generation'.  That's primarily why so many of us are so fucked up, having to listen to the greatest generation lay down the rules, lay down the law, lay down the guilt.  Lay down the religion.  Got religion?  I do.  Yep, got it.  And I'll say it's taken a lifetime to get rid of it and return to a spiritual being.  I'm new at this of course, but it's pretty cool.  More on that later.

Grew up in a small shit town in Kansas.  Mind you, this is meant in a loving sort of way.  Sort of.  Yeah, I grew up with Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rodgers, The Long Ranger  (we didn't know he was a loner - with so much family around that was a foreign concept).  Uncles, aunts, cousins, the whole shebang.  Our family always got together on my birthday which I thought was pretty cool.  Got together and came over to our house.  It was a day off.  I was a kid and had no idea what that meant except that you had to do grown up stuff on the day off.  

Well, sir, on MY birthday they all came over, we piled in the car - and headed over to the cemetery, piled out, and the moms busied themselves with arranging flowers on graves.  I'm thinking "this is a BIRTH day celebration?  I was born today, so we go look at dead people?  WTF?"  Of course, I added 'whatthefuck' later after I got out of the army.  This annual event served to twist me pretty good.  Not only that, but they killed the flowers.  Cut the l'il suckers right off and took 'em over to the cemetery.  After the dead flowers were arranged we went over and watched some guys in uniforms hoist up a flag.  One of them played a trumpet by himself and the others shot at birds, missing them completely.  I figured the trumpet guy's job was to scare up the birds, but his buddies were the worst shots ever.  I kept thinking 'how DID we win that war anyway'?

After you stand around in opressing silence with sniffling moms looking at cold grave stones it's difficult to get back into birthday merriment.  I didn't know any of the folks under the stones except for maybe uncle Jack who died.  I did know him a little.  He always acted goofy.  I heard my folks say that drinking was going to kill him.  Anyhow, I'm sure that cemetary visit every year on my birthday is the root of my imbalance.  We all went back and had cake and ice cream and I sat there often thinking about how uncle Jack might look now if you could turn on a little night light in his coffin and check in on his decomposition progress.  I imagined he might be like Boris Karloff with a sneering toothy smile (without the lips now) and sunken missing eyeballs, etc.  This I suppose is a rather macabre thought for a small boy to be having during his birthday party, but it certainly wasn't my idea to go out there.  

After the ice cream we went down town and watched the parade.  I particularly liked it when the horses crapped on the street, then the band had to look around their trumpets to avoid stepping in it.  Well after all, this was a step up from my visions of uncle Jack.  Nonetheless, it was pretty cool of our town to put on a parade for me on my birthday.

I got a little tin drum one year and just loved that stupid thing.  My dad kept trying to slip it into the room for the trash but I would get it back out.  I liked making loud and obnoxious noises.  Later in life I learned, of course, about the idea of memorial day but the visions of uncle Jack still persist.  I would guess he's pretty much a full-on Skeletor dude these days.

As for me, six decades have past.   I'm pretty much still a kid, trapped in this decaying edifice.  The photo above is our new band "Blue Lizard Band".  Just formed, with one gig under our belt.  I'm still making noise.  I'm the drummer.  (You'll have to figure out which guy is the drummer - duh)  And uncle Jack?  I'm sure he has spun around several times with the sound.

So, the one building said.............

Walking along Lakeshore Drive a couple of days ago i noticed something out of the corner of my eye.  It was a beautiful day, the breeze just the right temperature.  Maybe it was the sunlight glint.  Anyhow I looked over and the buildings were trying to get my attention and to tell me a story.  They do this alot.  The buildings.  I've made listening to them a lifetime passion if you will.  The older one on the left was sad that he never had bigger windows put in on the lake side.  The view across Lakeshore to Lake Michigan just knocks your eyes out, even on the street level.  Up only two or stories and, wow.  And this old guy is what? 40 stories, something like that.  He was not only grumbling about the ridiculously small windows in the brick facade, but also quite pissed about air conditioners installed in one half of the only frikin' window he had!

The old brick building said that when they built him he was just about the only one around there that tall and nobody paid much attention to the lake.  Nobody cared much about looking out.  And besides, nobody knew how to build masonry walls that had big wide openings.  Bricks need each other.  They all work together and there needs to be ALOT of them.  None of this hole-punching stuff. 

"Yeah."  I said.  "That's pretty sad to see your pal here with such big windows next door."

The older building assured me that his neighbor was certainly not his "pal".  

"That ugly sombitch has been in my face for a good 40 years now."  Brick-boy told me.

The wide windowed neighbor said nothing.  He just continued to stare at the view.

As I walked further down I almost went back and asked brick-boy what he thought of 'The Donald's' new penis on the river building.  Next time I'm in town I'm going to go back and show him the picture I took of it.

SANTA SPOTTED OFF SEASON

We've found him, that jolly old fellow.  Cleverly disguised as just a regular old guy, Santa was seen today in Chicago's near north side in a small hole-in-the wall restaurant on Dearborn.  He was wearing regular old guy pants and an old guy shirt.  With a little old companion so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

Back in the kitchen there rose such a clatter I rose from my chair to see what was the matter.  Some body dropped what must have been an entire bus cart of pans.  Nick jumped at the sound as if he was worried his cover had been blown.  He looked ever so suspicious - like a fugative or maybe a celebrety concerned with concealment.

More rapid than eagles his courses they came

  and he whistled, almost shouted and called them by name...

Now salad, now pepper, ........he sneezed on his fixins, 

  bring comet and, stupid, my dinner is blitzin........or some such thing he mumbled to the waiter.

The guy almost never stopped laughing.  That little friend of his was keeping him in stitches.  I was thinking maybe they were some sort of comedy team warming up for Second City just down the street a ways.  His friend was really a strange guy.  Feet didn't quite touch the floor but he looked about 40.  He just kept making stuff out of the sugar packets and the napkins - had a little barnyard managerie or something going on in front of the opld guy before he started his dessert.

I was finished but I just had to stay to watch these two.  No one in the restaurant seemed to notice them.  I thought maybe I was hallucinating.  I got my bill and paid it.  When I looked up the two were gone and the table was again set for four.  

His Ass-Holiness has arrived in Chicago....

It's mid May and I'm in Chicago again.  I like being here.  I like the city.  I like walking.  I walk alot in Chicago.  I'm walking today and have come upon the river from the loop side and.....well, there it is.  Yep.  Almost finished.  It's Donald Trump's new building on the north side of the Chicago River.  

Yes, 'The Donald' has come to town, and he has inserted his penis into the city.  I'm standing across the river right now, looking at Donald's penis.  It's there, standing proud, and visually butt-fucking Chicago.  But it's not the largest I guess.  I hear tell that prospective tenants didn't want to be living in "the tallest building in America" since it may become a terrorist target.  What a bunch of pussies!!  C'mon!  live it large, assholes.  Stare 'em down.  dare 'em.  

Yeah, I'm just one of the masses.  But I hear you, Donald.  Hear you loud and clear.  You're saying "hey, Chicago - FUCK YOU!  I got lotsa money and I've got lotsa big ideas and one of these ideas is to come over here to your po-dunk (not New York) town and just holler out "FUCK YOU" right here on the river."  

And I hear you Donald.  You are significant.  I am not.  You have everything.  I have nothing.  Donald, I seriously wonder If I would walk across the street to help you if you were robbed and left bleeding to die.  I wonder.  I might go over to look at you bleed.  Then - well, I would help you and probably rip up my shirt and use it on your wounds.  

post script - you know....the beauty of my blog is that it's on the internet, around the world even, and not one person - nay not one living human being will read it.  how beautiful.  and how wonderful to yell into the crowd and have no one hear.  It's an elixor.

Much about nothing....

The door shuts quietly after I've turned on the light.  If i don't turn on the light before the door shuts I'm in total inky blackness.  I'm in my basement.  I can hear the rain up on my roof tonight.  It's quiet.  

I've never really had writer's block.  That's because I'm not a writer I guess.  I'm in my basement.  Yelling.  Actually I have a lot to say.  Quite alot.  Is a-lot two words or one?  S'pose it doesn't matter, does it.  Not allot anyway.  I'm going to go to a writer's group "meet-up" tomorrow evening.  Maybe I'll go.  See, I'm not really a writer per se.  I write because I have to.  I write because the words need to get out of my head - they get so jammed up in there, and not much space for them either.  Not in my head.  No, I write so they can get out and have their freedom.  Sometimes they all behave and get together and say something almost profound.  that's when they have the most fun.  they snuggle into sentences and all play together.  Sometimes they're all just angry and get out and lay on the page and don't talk to each other.  My basement floor is littered with the paper graves of the dead words who didn't get along and died early deaths.  but I keep them.

I have a book in Chicago "Writing to Save Your life".  Bought it out of curiosity.  It's ok.  It was written by a woman who teaches writing (that's why I bought it).  It's to an audience of (mostly I gather) women who are trapped or stymied or otherwise choked off from their lives by something and writing can be a way to free yourself.  Well, damned if that isn't what I do.  But I'm not free.  My words get free sometimes.  I'm just down here yelling and nobody hears it, which is why I yell.  It's safe.  

I absolutely know that I can write.  I love it.  It's creative.  and I don't know a goddam thing about it.  not a damn thing, except what I learned in high school English and here and there.  Oh, and i must give my wife credit.  She's the perfectionist and has made me a reluctant one.  

As I write this free-form ramble I pass so many roads down which I want to explore.  so many threads of thought.  

Well, I'm done with this one.  I lay it out neatly on the sand here and sit for awhile and look at it.  I feel better.  Soon it will settle into the sand and be gone.  As will I be, over the horizon.

At last....confirmation of a common belief

I was on a tour of Safeco Field recently.  We went through pretty much the entire stadium.  I had to leave the group momentarily to come back and record this bit of observation.   An age-old tradition meets the politically correct world - and confirms what fans have suspected all these 100 + years of the sport..........