Month: January 2022

Today I had some ideas as I awoke and thought to write them down, then thought I would make this writing  be part of my occasional blog to be hosted on www.toodamnpersonal.com.

I awake these days with many ideas. I’ve been staying in a Florida campground on and off for over a month and because it’s still winter and I am still genetically prone to get chills. I usually tend to bed when the sun goes down about 5:30 and awake after the sun starts its warming about 7am. This is a long time to sleep and/or day dream, especially for someone my age who just recently has only been able to sleep no more than 4 hours at a time. I retire to the tent about sundown and often try to watch movies or something before I lay down to sleep.

My thoughts for today with what I woke up with are about writing a letter to figure out the licensing of Studio Ghilbi materials. I’m sure if American companies are any indication, that getting to talk to the right person at a Japanese company won’t be any easier. So wish me luck. I’d like to come up with a range of products starting with buttons and shirts, possibly leading into other things like jewelry and then depending on the agreement perhaps doing the whole line of Ghilbi.

This came to me this morning after watching Naussica of the Valley of the Wind (not one of the better known Ghibli titles) I decided I wanted to do a shirt like the dress she wears at the end, this led into wanting to do a button of the symbol on the dress, then onto other things Ghibli like the symbols in Castle in the Sky.

On a similar note, a couple of nights ago I watched “Whisper of the Heart” another Ghibli title which features a parody of the song “Country Roads” I knew previously by John Denver. I ]remember hating this song as a teenager when it was then popular. But now I am thinking seriously about adding it to my song list. Who knows? It does go together with “Piney Wood Hills” by Buffy St. Marie which is already on my song list. Did you know this about me before? Part of my game plan is to become the front man for some sort of a rock/country/gospel/bluegrass band. Well this is still part of the plan.

This blog is not what I intended. When I bought the domain “toodamnpersonal.com” it was meant to be about my transition from married life and was speculatively to be about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Then as it turns out, I left NY in September and before I left, all of my previous web properties were hacked and disabled “Toodamnpersonal.com” was one of the few domains I was able to easily rescue while on the road. So that is why this ongoing story lands here.

My plan is to put down my morning thoughts here, in much the same way as I did when I still had an apartment and permanent residence, But while before this was just writing practice, now this time it becomes a blog.

Before I continue, I’d like to include a word to the wise if in fact there are any wise people now reading this. This begs many questions. 

However what I wanted to say is this, first: “Not everything is as it appears” and second “you should not ever feel that you are alone, because you are not”. There are always unseen forces at play and some of them might even be friends.

What follows takes place and was written after I moved from NYC.

I was relieved to hear the yappy dog one morning. It’s been awhile since, but not too long since this happened. If you dear reader don’t know what a yappy dog is, I will try to explain. It seems that the intent felt by the yappy dog and it’s decided purpose is to bark at all times. It could be the bark of a dog happy to see it’s master or the bark meant to console it’s lonliness in missing it’s master. It could be a bark or happiness or a bark of sorrow. But it is always a bark as it’s sole means of communication. What makes a dog yappy vs. just barky has to do with the size of the dog and the timbre of it’s voice. A yappy dog is usually smaller. The chihuahua is a prime example and the stereotypical yappy dog. At least in my experience.

In this case the yappy dog lived somewhere in an apartment below me. I could hear it all day long, from morning to night, presumably missing it’s master all day then continuing all night for whatever reason a yappy dog might have to continue to make a ruckus even after it’s emotional needs had been met. It should be noted that the rental agreement for my building explicitly states that no dogs are allowed. And it had before occurred to me that the reason for this rule originated with this same dog. It’s hard to believe that the even more nearby neighbors have not complained repeatedly about this dog’s existence and it’s incessant yappiness.

Still I was glad to hear this dog one morning not so long past,  as I thought before that I had accidently killed it. Due to my divorce, I was forced to move from a 3 bedroom apartment where I had collected most of a lifetime of things into a much smaller one bedroom apartment. The problem was then, where to put my children who would come to visit me regularly. A solution to this was to buy and order a bunk bed and set it up in the bedroom as a place for them to sleep when they  came over. The instructions on the assembly of the bed explicitly said that it was a two person operation. But me being just one person, I attempted assembly by myself. This became a bit of a balancing act as I tried to make one major piece after another be supported by the wall or another part of the bed frame. This operation went fairly smoothy until one part, fully half of the front of the frame came crashing to the floor. Then immediately after that crash I heard another sound that I recognized as the sound of the ceiling below me coming loose from its lathe and crashing to the floor in the apartment below. At that moment I stopped hearing the yappy dog and I presumed that the crashing plaster had killed it. I clearly pictured a chihuahua dead being buried by a pile of ceiling plaster I had caused to fall when a part of my kids’ bunk bed fell to the ground. I did not hear the dog for several days after that and presumed that I had killed it. Until one morning, when I heard the dog again, as yappy as ever. The dog was still alive and I felt a little pang of relief. 

That happened some time ago, and now it’s time to disassemble the bed along with everything else. And it’s time to think about my new adventure. I’m leaving NYC.

First thing you should know about me is that for most of my life I have been a New Yorker and in a little more than a month, I will have to relocate, but I’m still not sure where. So here I go. Off to a new adventure! I do not go by choice but by expedience. But this does not lessen my joy or hope. Many people have one life. From birth to death, one continuum. It is both my blessing and my curse that I have have had 4 lives. One life led me up until college. One life led me from my College years from the home of my birth to NYC. One life which has been the longest so far, led me through the travails of NYC into marriage and fatherhood. If given the chance, I would have stayed in that last life and whithered, grown old and if I was lucky grown a bit more wise, and then died, my most significant accomplishment having been having a role in the birth of two children. But this was not to be. My wife had other ideas, my divorce is almost complete. And now as an old man not as healthy as I would like, I will soon depart NYC for my new adventure. Buy a van, pack some clothes and a toilet, find a way to not die in a traffic accident, and take to the road which leads to who knows where. I will put a bit of lamb’s blood on the door. Then I will go.

I had imagined this before. At some point in the not-so-distant past, I had a fantasy about moving toward the Latin section, finding a girl and a job and learning Spanish. That could have been the basis for a whole novel right there. And still other things could happen and I won’t rule any of it out. I could take the train to the beach today like I’ve intended, I could play music on the boardwalk like I’ve intended and start a band and start a whole new music career where I could become the famous and even rich. Or I could go for a swim and meet a girl who will change my life. Do you notice a theme here so far? These things could happen. I do not rule them out.

In the course of my life, I have been lucky about a few things. I am lucky that my body is not falling apart more than it is, given how poorly I have treated it right up until middle age and past that. I have somehow failed to make many friends in my long stay in NY. I have some friends who live elsewhere, but if I moved in next door, then we’d just have to see how close we really were. I just recently wrote down all of my latest history and sent it to all of my blood relatives, but got little response.  I can’t say this is less than very disappointing. The natives here are already tired of me and don’t understand why I don’t get on with it and move away already. Another creature could throw in the towel and say it’s just too much feeling all alone and wonder “what is the point?”, and perhaps even decide to end it. But I am lucky, I suffer from delusions.

Despite how lonely I may feel I now go off even under perhaps less than ideal circumstances into the let us say “the wild blue yonder”. And it’s good that I have talked myself into the proposition that I am not alone. In fact, there are world’s unseen and unknown that even if I tried I could only hope to get a glimpse. Still I am compelled to acknowledge, that I am protected by everything I own, do or say. Someone might call me a privileged white male. Broke and in poor health, it’s true. And really without that much of a clue as to what to do next. But privileged nevertheless. One might say I have actually been very lucky. And I wonder everyday why I become so angry, mostly about little things. And I try to count my blessings at every turn. We are all luminous beings. I am constantly surrounded by love. Did I say already that I suffer from delusions?

Still, it seems that the loneliness issue must be addressed. I am after all a sentient being. I did not create the current situation, but even so I am forced to live with it. Some days the day just fills up with mundane chores. In some ways, these are the good days, at least they are simpler, and not plagued by someone else’s idea of the process commanding the things they think I must do next. But chores are not enough for me. I want more. For one thing I want is pussy, though I can’t really say why. I’m at an age when it really shouldn’t matter who I have sex with, but having considered the options, while I won’t rule anything out, something deep inside me is not all that attracted to males and although I would prefer to not suffer all of the details, I find I still like girls and god help me I like pussy. In fact, I’ve been told that if I have committed any great crime so far while on earth it has been my lack of appreciation for pussy that near tops the list. And now I am in fact commanded to like it, to lick it, eat it, fuck it and worship it. Did I say already that I suffer from delusions? It’s true that I have expended a great amount of energy and time in this regard in the past, but I focused too much on attainment while love and appreciation was never the top of my list. And now, seems like I have a bunch of decisions to make, but I would prefer to leave it open. If I could, I would like to love pussy without many of the social trappings of dating and niceities. So to accomplish this goal, I have decided to not give a shit, and instead focus on my own famousness and privilege and work toward how people will remember me in some 100 years from now.

I will have to leave NYC by the end of September. I will miss this city though I’ve always had mixed feelings about it. I could surmise this just by saying that it’s a funny place, though truth be told my perspective is a bit rusty since I’ve lived here so long. Perhaps the whole country, the whole world is a funny place right now. It’s true that time has passed since I first moved here. Still this does not discount that NYC is a funny place. Perhaps not funnier than all the rest, but funny nevertheless. Of course, by funny I do not mean funny ha ha, I mean funny strange. But why do I say that? By outward appearance it is no funnier than the rest. It has like the rest of the country an aging infrastructure. Still at the time NYC became a city it fostered the idea of a public transportation system which to it’s credit it still maintains. And yet, this too came about in a usual sort of way, that the original subway was built to make money and competing companies did compete for ridership. This is one reason why many stations simply do not connect. But to it’s credit the subway lines continue on. It’s hard to understand how this mass of tunnels, bridges and stations were built in the first place. One wonders if life and labor were that cheap then. It is almost impossible to imagine building something this labor intensive today. One thinks we simply couldn’t. Or it would take so long and be so expensive that it would die in the planning stages before anyone would even give it a try.

But the mass transit system is not why I say that NYC is a funny place. The mass transit system makes NYC rather unique although it is not uncommon and mass traqnsit has been built in other cities. But the majority of the work was done before the accension of the automobile and this made it both possible and desirable at the time, but this is not why I call NYC a funny place. NYC is a funny place for many reasons. People still seem to come here because they want to make it as something here, usually either in entertainment or business. It seems this is at least one reason why they still come or it’s always possible that the rest of the country has gotten so devoid of meaning and jobs that people still come here for that as well. New York is a funny place and being a New Yorker is still somehow a badge of honor. We put up with a lot. Long waits for the train to get home, expensive and substandard housing, the idea that poor people playing music to earn just a little money is one of the perks, claiming the badge of honor of being a New Yorker by putting up with a lot of shit is somehow one of the perks.

Where I live, they did a substandard renovation but in doing so gave some eye candy to the younger transplants. I have to give the landlord here some credit in doing something better than I’ve seen other landlords do. In NYC it’s all part of a complex dance. If a landlord can claim his apartments have been renovated he can charge more money. And all of the newer people pay a premium meant to make up for the older residents who might have been in the building for years in unrenovated apartments and might be paying much less in rent. Accordingly the landlords are bound to try to renovate everything that they can. They are in business, not for fun but to make money. I do have to give my current landlord a little credit for doing slightly more than the bare minimum. I have seen worse. Still what they have done is provide the cheapest of everything. I personally have nothing against frugality but this translates into cheapness being equal to low quality. Things like refrigerators, stoves, and bathrooms are not designed to last or be repaired. They are designed to be broken and then thrown away.  Work is not done to the highest standard, but done to be the least expensive often neglecting levels of skill and procedure. A personal complaint I had early in my residence here was that the toilets sprayed water each time they were flushed. Ultimately I was told that this could not be fixed which I think was more the supers’ poor understanding of mechanics and the cheapness of the vendor rather than being the truth. I was also told that I was the only one who complained even though many other toilet installations had the same problem. NYC is a funny place and people are willing to put up with a lot and not complain about it, perhaps involved in wanting to wear that honorable badge of being a true NewYorker. This is just one reason I call NYC a funny place.

It’s very hard to place where this story begins. As children we were taught that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end; that every hypothesis has a premise, then defending statements and a conclusion. But life doesn’t fit into such neat packages. Since life is a continuum, the story could start anywhere, here or there, earlier or later. The middle might be a big fog, muddled by indecision, self-doubt or just so complicated that it cannot be put into words. The ending is never an ending but always another beginning  so it can never really be completed and wrapped up and presented with a big bow. 

Likewise the author must decide what is autobiographical, what is pure fancy, something researched, something entirely made up. The author must decide what us real and what is an outright lie; what is a memory, an imagined memory and what is just wishful thinking. And then there’s the line that only the reader might discern rightly or wrongly: what is the author getting at? Is this just entertainment? Or is there a larger point in it? And where does the reader’s memory and experience mix with the authors? And at what point does the author’s story become the reader’s story.

Of course all of these matters have been discussed before, and it would be foolish to think that they will ever be resolved. But now, where to begin?

It seemed our subject was born to the water. And boyhood summers at least in his memory were all about the beach and swimming lessons and the ice cream sandwiches from the small concession stand. At 13 he was too small to pass life-saving, but that didn’t stop his love for the water. He never put in the effort to be a great swimmer but he got by, better than most. The water seemed to fulfill something that seemed missing in him. An astrologer once described it like this: his planets were in earth, air and fire, but none in water. So naturally he was drawn to water, so as to add his missing element and make him more whole. So ever since he was a child, he sought out the water as much as possible. 

But not just water, chlorine always gave him a rash. He required water in it’s natural setting, a lake, a river, a sea or an ocean. And he would swim fearlessly, once even jumping from a bridge, based on a friends dare, into shallow water which could have broken his neck. 

But that served him as no cautionary tale. He swam in storms when there was lightning, when the waves were high and the threat of rip tide was eminent. The lifeguard’s red flag meant nothing to him.  If  he was near the water, it was almost impossible to convince him to not go in.

But then one day he suddenly changed. It was not that his love of water had changed, for he still sought the water at every chance. And if given the opportunity would choose vacations, day trips and sudden jaunts just to be near the water. But now, even though he still loved the water just the same, he would no longer go in, not even just a bit, not even to walk along the beach in the waves. 

If something happened to cause this, he told no one, not even his wife or children. And no one could think of a defining event that caused this new aversion. All of a sudden, it seemed, he just changed.

Now whenever he was near the water, he would just stare out. It was almost but not quite a blank stare. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. It didn’t seem like he feared the water and it also didn’t seem like he missed being in it. It’s as if he would stare out there, let his mind go blank, like day dreaming, but not just a reverie like a leaf on the wind, but instead intent like a guided journey,  like a train with many stops and changes of passengers or like an oarman rowing against the current to who knows what end.

The flags were red that day. There had just been a tropical storm to the south, now passed, which meant extremely high waves and delight to surfers, but danger to lone swimmers. He stared intently out at the ocean and thought he saw just the head of someone far out there. The waves where cresting at 12 feet or more. And the head almost like a specter, disappeared from sight with the crest of each new wave. 

He wondered if the swimmer was in trouble. It did seem that he was trying to use the power of each wave to bring him closer to shore. But with each wave, he remained as far out as before. Was he struggling, was he beginning to panic? Did he know that you should never panic. That if you are caught in a rip tide, you must stay calm and swim parallel to the shore until the rip tide releases you. 

He wondered if the swimmer knew all of this. And it seemed to him that the swimmer had indeed begun to panic, that he had become desperate to get back to shore as quickly as he could. He knew the swimmer should not make the mistake to panic, but he also knew that when someone is deeply fearful, that it was hard to think clearly. When you are wondering if you are going to suddenly die, that’s all you can think of. Like it or not, fight or flight takes over and any rational thought gets pushed far to the back. If you are thinking you are going to die, that becomes the only thing you can think of. You wonder if this is how it will end for you.  Just a dumb decision to go out into the ocean when the flags are red.  Then suddenly lost at sea, unable to reach shore, too exhausted to keep struggling and finally finding death by the final wave that takes you; drowns you, makes it impossible for you to continue to breathe or continue any longer. 

For a long time, he wondered about the swimmer so far out for so long. And then the solitary head just disappeared from sight, drown or somehow brought to safety. Yet no one on the beach seemed to be screaming at the loss of their loved one or jubilant about their safe return. So it what happened to the swimmer remained a mystery.

And he wondered if he had just imagined it all. The water had that power over him these days. He would stare out there for hours sometimes and no one knew what he was thinking. Perhaps he let his own reverie get the better of him. The swimmer was something he imagined, a mirage on the waves. There was no danger, no fear of drowning, no last thoughts. 

And for a short while he thought that the specter of the drowning  man should mean something more to him,  that maybe it represented a pivot point, a catalyst for some type of change. Maybe it was time to venture back into the water again. And for awhile he did think this would be a good idea. But then a sudden wind came up. A bit of aftermath of the tropical storm was arriving on the beach. It was starting to rain. Maybe it was time to just head for home.

The Chinese New Year parade was on a Saturday February 16^th, almost 2 weeks after the actual Lunar New Year. This was the first Saturday after the actual New Year that looked astrologically auspicious as a “lucky” day to have the parade.

As I got off the train on Lispenard, just below Canal., I remembered the few times I was on that street in the past. The first time was when Craig Smith and Shaun Connell, a couple I knew in Minneapolis had set me up on a date with their friend who lived on that street. I can’t remember her name, just that the whole thing seemed awkward to me. And I never gave it a second try.

I knew Craig and Shaun because I once co-founded a sort of art gallery in Mpls. It was called “Circus to the Trade.” It was only sort of an art gallery because we only had opening parties and really made no effort to sell anything. The whole thing came about when we rented space for our band to rehearse in and this space included a store front, so the art gallery idea was born. I didn’t know Craig and Shaun well, but Craig was once part of a group show of Mpls. Institute of Arts alumni at the gallery. He was a good painter. His girlfriend Shaun was a photographer and made an effort to take portraits of me before I left for NY. She said they all turned out badly.

I followed Lispenard which turned into Walker and thought about the date with the girl who’s name I couldn’t remember. Many years ago, I was on Lispenard/Walker at the office annex of a now defunct store called Pearl Paint. I bought an office desk for $300 and struggled to get it home in a cab. Pearl paint is long gone., and so is my cheap apartment on Mott Street. I gave the desk to my super after I got married and moved to 187^th Street. My super was not extremely bright and couldn’t figure out how to put the desk together even though it had rather obvious connections and I included all of the bolts and screws.. So ultimately the desk went out with the garbage. All of that is gone now, Pearl Paint, the desk, my cheap apartment, my super and my marriage.

And now I am alone walking down Lispenard which turns into Walker. And probably actually rather sadly getting ready to leave New York. Remembering things of my past. And the time when I first got here and was set up on a date with the girl whose name I forgot. And I wondered how she was doing. Should we try a second date now that we are both old?

Crossing Broadway, I saw a store called Jenny’s Souvenirs. I wondered what kind of a Chinese name Jenny was. And I remembered Jenny who went to school in NY, but I met in Mpls. I thought I was in love with her and think she was the second person I wanted to marry. But it was complicated. She was a rich girl and she traveled a lot. I knew her almost every day for a summer, then she was gone, for an entire year. Somehow, she wrote down her overseas address wrong and thought that I’d blown her off since she didn’t get any mail from me. I had actually written, but then got no response from her. Then after a year, she was back for another summer and it was like getting to know her all over again. Then she was gone back to NY to school.

When I moved to NY, the original plan was that I would stay with her. That did not come to pass. She had started to see another man.  Then  I really lost it, probably feeling sorry for myself moving to NY with no connections and little money while most everything seemed given to her by her parents. I railed at her. I wrote her a hateful break up letter. I called her lots of names, nothing crude or dirty but just hateful, pointing out how I particularly hated that she was such an entitled rich bitch. I did see her by accident in NY a few times, mostly, but we never recovered from my angry words of that day. And probably I was still angry much later.

With the advent of my divorce looming. I have thought about Jenny again. I’ve wondered how she is doing and even reached out by inviting her by email to my parties. I know that she lives in NY, has been at least a sort of successful at being a fine artist, that she’s married, that she has at least one child. I wonder if in time, I will seek to see her out again. Then I also wonder how numbered are my NY days.

I probably saw my first Chinese New Year Parade 20 years ago, but never made it a regular thing. It was a little different then as the Dragons would dance menacingly in front of storefronts and store owners would respond by throwing lit firecrackers into the street. The dragons would then dance on top of the firecrackers. This all changed with Mayor Giuliani who banned firecrackers as a public health hazard, except seemingly in Italian neighborhoods who always seemed to be able to get them. But in general post-Giuliani there were no more firecrackers in the streets. And I guess that’s when the Firecracker Festival, being carefully controlled by NYFD was born.

Going to the Lunar New Year firecracker ceremony has been a bit of a tradition for my kids and I. We have gone at least five time before and we went this year again. Like every year we waited in the crowd and jockeyed for position just to get a glimpse of the firecrackers. Like every year we waited for what seemed like forever for the numerous speakers to stop talking. I came to start mimicking them, thanking New York’s Finest, (the police) and thanking New York’s Bravest, (the fire department), and thanks to all of the local businesses and all of my constituents. You are what makes Chinatown and New York City great.

This year, the vibe was different as my daughter is now almost 16 and her teenage angst is often on full on display. I also brought 2 of my 12 year old son’s friends, which made things slightly more hectic. We did the usual things, we went to a few Buddhist temples, watched the dragons dancing in the streets. We bought the five-dollar cannons that shot confetti. The boys ran around. We walked up to Little Italy and bought cannolis. We did all the usual stuff except we did not eat, since the restaurants we looked at seemed overflowing.

I’m finding my life to be full of ironies. I’ve been thinking a lot about the circumstances and personalities of my breakup with the first woman I thought I wanted to marry. It seems that my relationship with her was more directly involved in my move to NY than I had previously thought. I’ve only just recently realized that in the aftermath of that relationship I had an extreme need to block her out on any deeper level while remaining her friend on a more superficial level. This happened to the extent that when she had been living in NY at the same time as me, that I think I never saw her once. Until recently, I did not realize how deep my wound was. It was not just her, but in general my insecurity was so extreme that I regularly sought validation through sex and relationships, always looking for more, ready to drop someone at the first danger sign, always seeking what I did not have and quickly tiring of what I had already experienced. This went on and on for most of my life. And now more irony that I have realized part of my mistakes and in the case of this one person, my former once thought love of my life, I want more than anything to know her again. But for the most part I am finding that door closed.

So then what? The door is closed, so do I get angry? Do I dismiss that person who has shut the door? Do I block that person out? Do I relive and repeat, my past mistakes over and over again? Do I get angry with her or realize that for the most part, it was I that was at fault? These are hard lessons.

It has seemed odd to have such feelings for someone I have experienced most of my life apart from. I barely know her. I have come to realize that I barely knew her back then when we were together. I was too caught up in my own manic pursuits as well as my tendency to feel sorry for myself and resort to chemicals, other lovers and whatever comforts I might think I’ve found there.

And the same patterns repeat. I recently found myself selling my home, much like what happened when I broke up with her 30 years ago. Once again I am getting a divorce. Once again, I am without a lover, partner or advisor. And this has really been making me come apart. But perhaps this time I can use it more as a way to grow. And I guess the lesson is there. I am alone. I will always be alone, so to speak. This does not mean I will not have new lovers, friends and collaborators. But still in the final analysis, I am alone. My thoughts are mine. I cannot join another person on the deepest level. So perhaps in these my advanced years, I should at least start to get used to that. To somehow find the confidence within myself and get rid of these other props.

Still in my heart of hearts I believe in the return. Of the lovers long separated, now reunited. It makes for such good poetry.  But the actual reality has so many pitfalls and remains unclear.

It’s ironic that I walk these streets again. The same streets I walked decades ago. In that time frame everything seemed to be a struggle. And now I look back and if seems like the time then was the good old days. I have wanted to leave New York for the last 20 years and have stayed her for wife and family. Now, the wife is done with me and I rarely see the kids. And now it seems like soon, perhaps seemingly too soon, I will be leaving New York, just at the moment when I am feeling in a need of it and realizing I took it too much for granted and knowing that once I have gone, I will miss it deeply.

It feels like I’m saying a long goodbye to almost everything now. New York has it’s disadvantages. It’s expensive, the infra structure, the people feel somehow it’s their duty to be a little rude and indifferent, if not a little too smug and full of themselves believing that it’s their birthright to feel superior to the rest of the world by virtue of their zip code. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this city. I find the phrase, “Greatest City in the World” to be not only just wrong, but also indicative of the problem that NY is worse off just by believing it’s so great. But there are great things about this city. There’s tons of history, not just in the geography and the buildings but in the sidewalks too. The chain stores have been taking over just like the rest of the world. But there’s still a huge variety of neighborhoods and many of them have been able to keep some of their unique feels. The subway, though it seems more and more dysfunctional being built over a hundred years ago, still covers 245 miles. A person can get on the subway and be in Chinatown in an hour and be at the ocean in two. Of course I live on one of the furthest edges on the A train, so that makes my travel time to most places be longer. My trip to Far Rockaway is about two hours or more, but for the most part I find it relaxing. I can read or see who gets on and off at different stops or just space out.

For a long time, I didn’t like the neighborhood I’m living in because it was too remote from the rest of the city. I used to have a cheap apartment downtown where there’ s lot’s more action in walking distance. I regret not still having that apartment now. MY wife moved to this current neighborhood 20 years ago as a way to save money and I joined her in marriage about five years later. The neighborhood used to be cheap, but cheap is relative. Now cheap means one bedrooms under $3,000. At this time there’s no real deals left in all of NYC. I used to hate how remote this neighborhood is from the rest of the city. The train trip to work in Union Square regularly took me over an hour each way and I did that for over seven years. Right now I would gladly move further to save some money, but the choices for that are now very few. The travel time used to bother me, but now I’m just glad I can get to so many places so cheaply, even if the ride is sometimes delayed and overall a bit rickety. There are not a lot of cities that you can do that in. The cars took over long ago and we stopped building most mass transit. We are a car country.

I live in Fort Washington, so-named because at least some of the Revolutionary War as fought here and Washington really had at least one fort here. I set up a horseshoe pit in a nearby park very nearby Margaret Corbin circle, so-named because this is where Margaret Corbin took the cannon from her wounded husband so as to continue the fight. Sadly it did not end well for Margaret as at the time there were no provisions for female soldiers and it seems she died rather young in relative poverty.  Every year they do a Revolutionary re-enactment in Fort Tryon park of one of the battles, some history along with an occasional blacksmith who shows up to demonstrate to people how it was once done.

I set up a horseshoe pit near Margaret Corbin circle a few years ago. Actually the horseshoe area was already there and for years had been unused. I just cleared it out and for awhile I tried to get other dads to show up and play. I did a web site and everything. Last year the horseshoe area was fenced off by the parks dept. I called Jennifer who was in charge of the park and she said the area was closed for safety reasons which where possible more related to homeless problems and people living in the park, than safety. She said it all had to do with the renovation of Jacob Javits park and playground which is roughly across the street. This park has been fenced in for over a year. Lot’s of construction, going very slowly. Will open in another year of so. This is all how New York works. Big plans, slow going, not really in touch with what people need. While it could have been to keep the park open while they did smaller projects. What this all meant was that their might have been a public hearing and meeting that I missed at which point I might have been able to speak about the horseshoe pit or not. But I was never notified about such a meeting and didn’t really look out for it. In the end, this year I was just too busy to pursue this further. So I guess the city won. Probably they will tear down the horseshoe area. Most people will not even notice.

The horseshoe area was technically a part of Fort Tryon Park even though it got roped into the renovation of Jacob Javitts park. I will really miss Fort Tryon Park and I regret not taking more full advantage of it while I lived here. Guess I was too busy being married and raising kids to think about it. But really, during my long car trip, now over a year ago, I really had an awakening about nature and being just a small part of a larger very wonderful and wild planet. I have new appreciation for all of nature now and especially for trees. For some time after my return to New York after traveling. I would go as often as I could to Ft. Tryon at sunset and to talk to the trees, in particular two trees which are my favorites. 

To begin with, I’m adding some writing I did before I moved being things that were not published elsewhere. I’ll put another block like this when I continue with items more from the recent past.

I was hacked and disabled in June, disabling about 6 sites including this one. It was easy to rebuild the html, but rebuilding the WP sites caused numerous problems updating the WP databases. I’ve spent considerable time rebuilding to a new host. I am now using Hostinger which seems to be helpful in this process.

To make matters more complicated, I moved out of NYC end of Sept. and moving from place to place was not helpful in making steady progress rebuilding anything. 

Now I think the worst of this is over and I can now add new posts here and there. In particular do check out toodamnpersonal.com which is about my continued travails with moving, dating, divorce and aging among other things.