This is a letter to a Mom
It’s raining. The streets are wet and a colorful orb of rainbow glows around the dome of crystal lights that reach over the sidewalk like a soft bright yellow pendants that hangs from bent arms and reach the from the poles that hold our streetlamps. This is a dream and I know it. I am back in my
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I never thought much about the different concepts of God. All I knew is the lessons I was raised with. I was told there is a God and I was taught about my religion. I assigned myself to the religion of my upbringing, but at the same time, I never knew what to believe and aside from this, I never examined my thoughts on God.
I was raised in a Jewish household in a mainly Irish/Catholic, Roman/Catholic, anti-Semitic town. I was told I was different.
We were Jews and I mean this in the negative sense of the word. When I say we were Jews, I mean were part of a race that when the word was said, the pronunciation made this description sound dirty, as if it were an adjective instead of a noun. I never understood why this was. All I knew Continue reading
There is a key moment in young life when the path splits and some of our friends go one way and some friends go another. This is when the crowds became the crowds and I became me. This was the age when we became aware of status and we were divided up into different divisions of “Cool,” and the social echelons became what it was
But me, I was the kid sitting on the left side of the school’s cafeteria. Trying to fit in, —I was longhaired, crazy, and wild for sure. I was wild to be someplace else and wild to escape the Continue reading
A long, long time ago, someone once told me, “You have to give it away to keep it . . .”
Early on a Monday morning, I began this project with a stream of different thoughts which acted like voices in my head. And they spoke to me about different doubts and concerns as I walked through the double glass doors at the rear entrance to a one-story brick building. I walked through the first set of doors and passed a man sitting beside a metal detector. He smiled kindly and welcomed me through without search or the need to pass through the detector. Next, I passed through a double wooden door, which is locked shut for security purposes. Heading to the right side of the corridor, I walked Continue reading
I think this was toughest on my mother. She couldn’t understand this at all. She tried but she couldn’t understand where she went wrong or why she couldn’t help me. I suppose it hurt her most because above anything, she blamed herself. In her mind, it was her fault. It was all her fault.
It was her fault because she didn’t know how I felt. To my mother, it was all her fault because she never saw this coming. She had no Continue reading
The thing about being a kid is when you’re young; somehow, you think you have everything figured out. You think you know better. You think you have all the angles covered and the detail of your plans is flawless. That is, of course, until you get caught.
The problem with being a kid is the feelings we have are the same as adults. The concerns change as we grow older, but deep down, we’re all just overgrown kids hoping to find our place in the sandbox. We’re all Continue reading
There was a small blocked off section in the far right hand corner at the back of The Old Man’s shop on Archer Avenue in Jamaica, Queens. To explain, The Old Man was a licensed steam fitter—and since school and I decided to agree to disagree, I woke early with The Old Man to undergo the Monday—Friday working life of long week days with the all too often short weekends.
The shop was as anyone would expect it. There was an area up front where the cars and company trucks parked. On the Continue reading
The wildest love is young love. This is the kind when love happens like magnets pulling together, and wherever you are, wherever you choose to go, this is the kind of love that causes us to sneak away, to find a closet somewhere, or maybe even a bathroom while trying to hush each other to keep our operation discrete. A love like this is new and so unexplored. And even the quick little secret getaways, the ones that cause us to go in places where we could possibly be caught; and living on the edge or on the verge of something so wild like Continue reading
One of the best drives I ever took was a drive out to the east end of Long Island. The drive was taken with no reason, no one with me, no destination in mind and with no time frame to go, continue, or turn around and come back home. I had a full tank of gas, which was good because I had very little money. All I had was half a pack of Camel Light Wides—they were the thick ones, which are the same as other cigarettes; only these were thicker in girth instead of longer in length like the 100 brands. I’m not sure if they sell these anymore—but if I were to ever go back to the habit, these are the ones I would smoke.
I had somewhere around 20 bucks in my pocket and a few cassette tapes to sink in the tape deck in the dashboard of my beat-up, blue, 1984 four-door Chevy Celebrity.
For as long as I can remember, I have Continue reading
I was asked if there was ever a day in my youth that I would live over again, exactly as it was, without changing a thing. And there a few moments that I wish I could have back, exactly as they were, without changing a thing. I save these moments in my mental rolodex and keep them in the folds of my memory, to hold them when I need to, and to relive in moments like now
I am thinking of an afternoon. It was Continue reading
The Written Addiction 