I sat awhile and sketched the likeness of rocks resting from the process of transforming into sand on a beach. Is there a pattern they fall into ?Is the jumble part of a cycle and the tide of agitation an organizing force?
My spirit was quiet with this while I painted.
I haven't done so well with "time keeping". I guess it means keeping track of time. Are we to measure beats per minute, practice time conservation, or keep it safe like a toddler? Perhaps time would do fine on its own.
A virtual structure
hangs in the air
its design separates space
into work cubicles and play times.
An engineered tool
with a line crossing out then
and now
has openings.
So glad to hear that the grid of time
with finest precision
is on the table for reexamination.
Prone and opened
with windings and springs spread
brilliant theorists have found
a loose screw in the works.
I was four. I was cold and I sought the warmth of the school’s back steps. It was one of the few spots in the morning sun. The bare dirt of the play yard was filled with noisy children and the dark shade of autumn maples.
I watched the rough play as the older boys ran around propelling a type of merry go round. Those on the spinning platform clung to hand holds sprawled on top of one another. Children fell off, others ran alongside trying to jump back on.
I was safe breathing quiet and calm. Perhaps it disturbed her. “Go play with the other children.”, was the sentence. I obediently walked to the dizzying and chaotic platform and she took my seat on the steps.
It was my brother, David, lifting the sidewalk grate in front of “Charlie’s Gyp Joint” to retrieve his dropped report card. It was the sound and the surprise as the metal bars moved for one of us, an elementary school kid living in the concrete world.
There was a clang as Charlie opened his shop door yelling, “Get out of here you…”
And then, still standing before Charlie’s, I watched him run out into the highway. All I could see were tires, big wheels, all close. An odd silence suspended me. He bent, snatched the card escaping with the wind of another passing car and without ever looking scrambled back to the sidelines and safety of the sidewalk.
The doors of reality closed again with a rush of traffic noise and these words, “I got an ‘E’, Dad’s gonna kill me.”
Seeing a solitary shoe or boot on the highway again I imagined another night of lonely horror for the one who wore it. Kidnapped no doubt. Dragged to the city.
How I laughed years later when shoes were tied to the bumper of a car gaily painted with the words, “Just Married!”
“where is the ice?” The irritated voice of my father gave me a chill. That was my job. Uh oh.
Every day I made the ice. I made it in the morning. it was always before and it was always after. I carefully carried the water filled trays across the kitchen in fear of spilling. I loaded the bin with fresh cubes in hope of peace.
The sound of ice swirling in the glass signaled another round. Maybe that is why I have my water with “no ice, please.” Making ice became a compulsion. An empty ice cube tray tossed in a sink could send resentment pouring through me like martinis from a pitcher.
A breath. I am an adult. A look out the window reveals a lovely garden. The curtain of time separates me from the past. I replace the filled tray and close the freezer door.
My father has an ice maker in the freezer now and an oxygen tank and a walker. Yesterday I brought him a glass filled with ice and bottles of booze. He mixed himself a gibson martini and stirred it with his finger. His diminished power has a sobering effect on father and daughter. Fear melts like the ice in his glass.
My childhood took place in the land of Used To Be. You may recognize the place by the carpet store where the neighborhood kids used to play sand lot ball. My house and 40 others with the same floor plan were built on land that used to be the Terrhune Farm. Behind some of them onions still grew in the weeds. The barn with stalls and leather straps for the missing horses was off limits so the farmer’s grand daughter and I would climb up onto the billboard erected behind the barn and peel back layers of a sales pitch for the modern life. Then there was a fire and the barn was gone.
Many frosty mornings a group of us on our way to elementary school walked behind a gas station and warmed our hands over an unattended barrel fire. There were vacant lots at first with paths through the burrs that inspired Velcro. Later there were construction sites where the boys would reenact trench warfare. Then there were novelties like the first McDonald’s on the east coast, the first industrial park, then a high rise hotel, and the first shopping plaza, and bomb shelters for sale on the retail highway.
Between the carpet store and Hugo’s Country diner was a little building that housed a florist shop. We picked flowers there each morning checking for new arrivals in the trash bin. We passed a Dunkin Donuts were the boys bought day old donuts for two cents. Carvel ice cream was where the first child to get to the window after school would be paid in ice cream to fetch a newspaper from the candy store. On hot afternoons I would wander into Tilden Brakes past the cars on lifts and men with air powered drills and take a paper cup and fill it from a gurgling water cooler. Kids could do that then. They ran through lives and yards and sometimes they were scolded for it.
I remember the car wash emanating music with chamois circling around the fenders and hoods of dripping cars. Bandanas covered the heads of black men and women out in the open with laughter and movement and I was uncomfortable and unsure. I wanted to wear a polka dot bandana.
In winter I used to hold on to the runner of a five man sled as my brothers led the charge across the highway. We made it through the first two lanes to the Jersey barrier and waited for a break in the traffic to run for the golf course past the sign that read ‘no trespassing, no coasting, no swimming’. What felt like all the children from our cul-de-sac neighborhood piled on for the wild ride down the rough. Once the New Jersey snow was so deep the sled was useless and we decided to roll a giant snowball to make a path for the sleigh. With communal effort we pushed snow till the mass rose above us all and it became an immoveable obstacle. The melting monument was our white mark on the green when the golfers returned to claim their turf.
These are stories from that lost land of Used to Be. I know it was a real place. The Hackensack Meadow painted by George Inness can no longer be found, neither can the Seafood Lounge where I first saw my father drunk, nor Mr. Browse where Mother’s Day gifts were purchased. The shoulders of the retail highway have been repaved. The headquarters of corporations have taken their place in the hostile takeover of the land of Used to Be.
I took the exit off the Parkway and around the clover leaf where I used to play to see what remained of the place. I found the houses laid out like wagons in a protective circle against the frenzy of progress. Families have dug in here. Lawn mowers march the perimeters. Billy’s crying tree stands sentry on the corner. I felt a great fondness for that tree. I found myself loving Billy where ever he is right now, and gratitude for all the characters who filled the land of Used To Be. I found the link of love, the bridge that joins the land of Used To Be to the land of What Is.
Love has been here all along making meals, filling kiddie pools and commuting to work. Love is what these houses are circled around and love is what the families who live in them have preserved from the land of Used To Be.
