As I Age Into Insignificance

I am not an intrepid traveler. I am just someone who has watched the world he grew up in fade farther and farther into the review mirror. I am a person who has decided to take a walk out and go on a little explore. Maybe I will find something that makes more sense to me than all the anger and resentment that have bubbled up all around in the place I was living. It didn’t require bravery. It didn’t take courage. What it took was the willingness to just open a door (metaphorically) to a wider world than the one I had been told all my life was the best of all possible worlds. 

Thus, I’ve been travelin’. I’ve been traveling on the macro scale by my move to Portugal and on the micro scale by my jaunts around this new country I inhabit. Recently, I spent a few days poking around the eastern side of Portugal’s Alentejo region. Went to Evora. Evora based on tourism materials I have read has been a center of human endeavor for roughly five millennia. Went to Monsaraz. Likewise, Monsaraz, based on the guides I perused has been occupied by humans since prehistory. But both Evora and Monsaraz were converted to Roman towns during Rome's heyday. Went to the Almendres Cromlech megaliths. These are said to be from seven thousand years ago, particularly the Almendres I megaliths. Damn, that is old.

I set out on this trip because I had never been east beyond Evora. Both Evora and Monsaraz were/are walled cities. Each has narrow crooked streets and buildings steeped in history. Evora has Roman temple ruins. It has an ancient cathedral. Monsaraz is much smaller but it has a castle and you can walk its ramparts.  It also has an Inquisition museum. Let me tell you good times were remembered there, especially if you were a Jew, a Lutheran or a woman who knew something about herbal remedies. Truth is I enjoyed both cities but they were not the high point of this three day explore. The megaliths took my breath away. 

To get to the megaliths you have to travel down one hellatiously rutted and bumpy road. You do not speed down that road from Nossa Senhora da Tourega e Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe, you just don’t. It is a puddled road with cavernous ruts waiting to rip your oil pan off the bottom of your car. What would take three minutes on black top takes twenty minutes on this poor memory of a dirt road. At some point as you bounce side to side and jolt up and down your ass asks you, “Is this really worth it?” But then you pull into the parking lot and you see the stones. Wow.

In a field of green I was awed by the rings of stones.  95 granite stones stand in a large circular pattern. Experts think they existed for religious and astronomical purposes. The stones are big, really big. To think that ancient peoples so far removed from me that there is no written history of their lives and culture could create this monument was both startling and overwhelming. Twenty years after I am dead nobody is going to say, “Remember what Jay said that time?" Nobody is going to stare at anything I assembled, say that really large IKEA table in my dining room and exclaim, “Wow, that’s so impressive.” But a group of nameless people responding to the changing seasons left something that stands today just as awe inspiring as when it was first erected. Just wow.

After visiting the megaliths, we stayed at a quinta (ranch) house near Monsaraz. Tired from the road and trekking a rather arduous path/goat trail to see an additional megalith standing in the midst of a different field, I fell asleep almost instantly. I had four serial dreams and when I woke up I remembered them all. Most have faded but one remains. In that one memorable dream I was traveling and I somehow knew I was traveling back to my hometown in New Jersey. I might also have been heading to my old high school. But as I turned to set off on that path a cop gave me the flat hand palm forward and told me, "That road is closed to you…for good." I wasn’t upset when I was barred from that path. In my dream I knew that particular road had in reality been closed to me for decades. I turned to head down another dirt road to another wonder that awaits me in the short time I have left. And it felt good.

 

Take a Little Walk With Me

He placed his cereal dish and coffee cup in the sink rinsing them both. Time for his morning walkies. He tries to walk for forty minutes every morning, sometimes longer. At his apartment’s door he tapped a button on his watch and said, “Start outdoor walk”. His watch replied, “Starting workout”. And he was off. As soon as he left the building he heard the songs of the early birds. For a moment his mind wandered to the day's tasks but it didn't linger there long. He liked this morning routine 

On this particular morning's walk, he decided that he would walk on the opposite side of the broad avenue from where he lives. He also decided to turn whenever he came to a red light blocking his progress. This worked to a point. Eventually to keep the walk distance within reason he had to tap pause on his workout screen and wait until some lights changed. 

To get to the other side of the street he cut through the metro entrance that was a tunnel under the avenue opening up to the sidewalks on either side. The first thing he noticed was a woman coming up the steps of the Metro entrance he was entering. For a moment she stood at the top of the steps looking about. Shaking her head, she headed back down into the tunnel. Apparently she had come off the subway and had gone out of the opposite exit from where she wanted to be. He, because he was simply using the tunnel to cross the wide avenue while avoid waiting for walk lights, ended up following her. The woman had apparently been going to meet a friend at a coffee kiosk. When she emerged on the right side of the street, her friend sat at the kiosk. He rose to greet her with air kisses and a hug.

The walking man turned to the north. The day proved to be quite warm and muggy. Seemingly the rain wanted to come but couldn't.  People, almost everyone, carried plastic bottles of water. Some were durable plastic but most were flimsy, crinkly and disposable. He looked to his right to see a woman opening a drugstore. Codes were punched in and two separate keys were twisted. The clerk or pharmacist, he was not sure which, was so involved in the unlocking process that they never made eye contact. He walked on.

He tried to make mental notes of the things he saw that caught his attention like electrical boxes covered with posters of events coming and past. The posters were bright although some were faded. He had heard the electric company hated these posters and cleaned the boxes on a regular basis. 

The first traffic light of his walk turned red and sent him sideways down a different road. Looking ahead he saw tents being put up for the Friday Street market. This was not a market for the locals. This was a trinket and trash market for 'visitors’ wandering this far up the hill away from the really overpriced nonsense down where the cruise ships tie up. The market was a mishmash of used clothing, cheese and sausage sellers, plant vendors and occasionally a couple selling seconds of ceramic plates and vases. You could get better local cheeses and dried sausages at the supermercado across the street from these stalls and for less. But transients know no better. Locals had no use for this market. They seek fresh produce at the nearby mercado with its butchers, fish mongers, spice merchants and green grocers. Tourists, on the other hand, are drawn to the allure of colorful things in this market's stalls.

He found himself saying “I love living in this city” when he spotted a package delivery guy in uniform with shoulder length aqua colored hair coming towards him. Still chuckling, he saw two short well-dressed older women sharing tales, gesturing and pointing fingers. They talked with the authoritative tone of women who “know” what is what in their voices. A dog walker turned off heading into a small green park.

A scraping sound pulled his attention to the other side of the street where an old man arranged bright shiny aluminum chairs around tables outside his small restaurant. He seemed to pull the tables and chairs to a point where they were not tippy on the uneven sidewalk. It was a fool's errand really because as soon as someone sits down a knee or an elbow will push the table off that sweet spot. At the end of the day there will be folded napkins under various table legs.

When he saw parents getting kids off to school this morning, he realized his start was early. One mother stood on a corner and connected with another mother who left the first mother with two additional children to escort to school. A father walked two brothers to school carrying the younger brother’s backpack for him. 

As the walker approached the busy corners he noticed people with apps open waiting for Ubers, Bolts, and Lyfts. On this walk he observed the mundane day to day universe. He saw love for pets and children. He saw pride in the presentation of one’s business. He witnessed people playing their roles in making this world work. There were, however, signs that always refocused him on the world at war.

He felt sweaty and sticky as his walk ended.  But it was a fair tradeoff for refreshed, energized and renewed feelings.

 

Padaria Novel Writers

 

Men sit with steaming cups of coffee in their hands. Mostly older men. Sitting 'round knowingly talking ‘bout the world. Immigrants all, they have lived in the world’s four corners. They have lived with passion and drive. Whether they know it or not, all of them are frustrated writers. Some have come with notebooks and pens to this place, to this country specifically to write. These masters of the word are trying to grab into the ether and find today's one true sentence. They have come to find tomorrow’s one true sentence and the true sentences that form each day after. 

Others have become writers simply by being here. They all want to be seen, to be heard. Today these older men craft their chapters in tales of a distant country’s unpaved roads and corrupt or inept government officials recounted over milky coffees. These tales are interrupted by laughter and introductions of new people pulling up to the table. Taking a bit of a chocolate pastry in one hand they detail glorious coastlines and epic human failures they have seen with their own two eyes. Pictures of life’s joys are painted and lingering doubts are expressed. But turn your head in to the left or to the right and you find yourself in a conversation a world apart from what you were just immersed in.

Dummies? Not any. Slow folks don’t end up here. Being an immigrant is kind of like getting admitted to grad school. You fought your wars.  You made your money. You walked the labyrinth of immigration officialdom. You weighed your options and pulled the ripcord. Your words may flow out lazily or in staccato bursts. But you have words aplenty and words to spare and even words in your new language.

At this long table not far from a main thoroughfare the men greet each other, sip their warm beverages, laugh, regale and listen. A generation earlier in another land they would have had cigarettes resting between their fingers. A forty something waitress in a white apron would have been asking, “Hon, do you need a warm up?" But not a single one of them seems to feel regret at being half a world away from that on this beautiful sunny September morning. They are writers of a new narrative where the world isn’t confined to diners along interstate highways. 

Pigeons sit on a bench near the table. They are waiting for any moment of inattention or absence to grab a peck of a croissant or a nata and fly off.

Creatures Roaming Lisbon's Downtown

 

I haven’t written anything for the New Plague Journal in a couple of weeks. I feel guilt about not creating updated content. But I have written other things. Spurred on by a poet friend I have been writing fiction. Now mind you it is fiction that will probably never see the light of day except when I pass it off to him to critique. But crafting those words takes a couple of hours each day. Me, I personally think it is good to create worlds out of memories and ether, keeps my mind active. But like I said I have neglected other things. I apologize.

Yesterday morning I walked to my weekly 10 am LAGS session. LAGS stands for Lisbon Area Gentlemen's Society. We meet Saturday mornings and I get there at about 9:40. Most meetings have about 25-30 cantankerous and prickly older immigrants whose first language is English. We drink coffee, bitch about life’s irritants, we offer guidance. We stare at the joggers in their spandex outfits who have obviously spent time doing up their hair before heading out. Insert sarcastic conversation about hair care before running seems at cross-purposes with real exercise. Insert hands pounding on the tableand gents yelling, “Aye, Aye, Aye.”

I arrive there early to grab a large enough table for the lot of us. The manager of the place puts a number of the bistrotables together in an uninterrupted row to accommodate us. However, if I don’t get there and drop my notebook, hat, water bottle and purse at various points on that table there is a significant chance other patrons will simply pick up spots in the middle denying us our dominion of curmudgeon-ness. After staking my claim I grab my milky coffee, muffin and agua fresca to see me through the morning.

At some point yesterday the conversation turned to the festival and parade of Iberian masks downtown in the afternoon. LAGS is an excellent place to pick up information on such cultural events. Lisboa is a great place to experience such events.  One week it is lunatics trying to hang glide over the Rio Tejo and the next it is grown assed men and women dressed as woodland trolls parading through the center of the city dressed as woodland trolls and other weirdo creatures. The parade lasted for 45 minutes and was a hoot. Friends you gotta get out and experience life I am telling you.

The pictures accompanying this post are NOT the LAGS members. They are from the parade except for one. That picture is of Mike Johnston a travel blogger who is heading back to the US to be closer to his grandkids. Travel safely Mike.  You will be missed on next Saturday morning and for many Saturdays to come. 

In Dreams

There is glory in internet messiness. The ‘web’ is sprawling, random, deep, diverse, beautiful and unsettling all at once. One moment I am reading someone’s memories of seeing The Who at Southfield High School in Detroit in the late 1960s. Another moment I read about Leibnitz and Spinoza and their meeting in 1676 in The Hague. Sometimes poetry drops into my lap and sometimes literary tidbits float by. 

This continuous serendipitous discovery of new information is like stumbling upon hidden treasures in a labyrinth. Each unexpected find makes me curious about what will come next. The internet can be an endless adventure.

I offer this caveat. Consider carefully the cute link name you are about to click on. It could be something you don't want to see (or keep in your browsing history). There are some discoveries I have come across that I wish I could have surgically removed from my brain. 

Today a blurb about Jorge Luis Borges popped up as I wandered the far fields of the internet. It was a rant about why Borges was never awarded a Nobel prize. The bit triggered a memory of one of my favorite stories, Borges' piece called Dreamtigers. 

Down the messy twisty tunnels of the internet, I travelled using my trusty search engine used as a broad sword. Ruthlessly, relentlessly, I cut through the ads for nutritional supplements and porn to find the story itself. Dreamtigers' actual copyrighted text was buried deep in the weeds of critical analyses and appreciations. But carrying my tiki torch I waded through the muck and found it. Once found I immediately posted it. 

Dreamtigers masterfully blends the essence of dreams, imagination, and the impact of aging on both of those with an elegance and profundity that few other works achieve. It is also damn short. Borges' ability to swirl together reality with the surreal in such a tiny piece of writing is both enlightening and mesmerizing to me. I mean I am pretty sure some others thought highly of his writing, even if he was not a Nobel Laureate. He was robbed. The story is brief but poetic, inviting endless reinterpretation.

Again, I reread the story. Then I reread it again. Each time I returned to a couple of lines in particular. They are these, “Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level, they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I think: This is a dream, a pure exercise of my will; and now that my powers are limitless I am going to cause a tiger.” Ah, but that is such an adult thing to say.

I thought back on the things that populated my childhood dreams. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. When I was eight or nine years old, I had no such power or control over my dreams. Floating in the night sky of slumberdom I had a dream, a horrific dream. In my sleep state I dreamt my father was driving his then newly acquired 1965 Ford Mustang with my mother in the passenger seat. In the dream they were involved in an accident with a semi-truck that crushed them to death. The dream was horrific, awful. I was shaking when I woke up. When my eyes opened and I shifted around in bed I knew it was a only bad dream. I mean I was warm and under the covers in my bed and I heard my mother downstairs making breakfast. Still, I was shaken to my core and could not put the dream out of my mind.

In retrospect I think that is the moment I knew I was a separate being, separate and distinct from all other life on this orb. I, at that instant, found myself alone and scared out of my wits about my soul's isolation. I was terrified over the next few years whenever my parents left the house together that they would not return. As the door closed I prayed fervently for their safe return.

My fear of separation from my parents, and from everyone else in the world, drew me to religion for a time. The Christian concept of reuniting with your loved ones in heaven was very attractive for a boy not yet in his teens who was troubled beyond belief by one dream about an accident. I was in the pew on Sunday morning. I sang the hymns to him, to them I guess, and I answered an altar call (or two). But eventually, the fear overtook the faith.

Back in the 1970s there were plenty of dystopian science fiction works. On any bookstore shelf there were plenty of novels by the authors of the day filled with existential angst and dread. I was a voracious reader and worked my way through novels filled with antiheroes and good people who died meaninglessly. I plowed through these tomes looking for something to assuage my troubled mind. I studied books tinged with Buddhist nonattachment thoughts. I read books by mystics and monks that were just as confusing as reading William Burroughs. The pot I smoked copiously back then did not erase the angst.

And so, when I got to university the very first course I signed up for was Philosophy 102, Introduction to Metaphysics and Epistemology. The catalog blurb stated that this course focused on the concept of human death as analyzed through the writings of Hegel, Heidegger and a whole raft of other heavyweights. I made it to class every day. I read the readings. I turned in the papers. However, if you asked me now what beret-wearing Prof. Wilkerson said as he chain-smoked in the classroom, scrawling key phrases on the blackboard I could not tell you.

What I can tell you is that around me in that class were 25 other students. They, I discovered over coffee at the MSU Union, were just as terrified of death and the prospect that nothing mattered as I was. We talked about our fears and anxieties over coffee. We shared book titles about secular humanism. We argued as neophytes in philosophy are wont to do. Yeah, how many angels are there on a pin's head in the meaningless cold void of nothingness?

It was learning how many of my fellow students were as afraid of the dark as I was that lifted me up. This common sense of angst moved me out of the fear that had straight-jacketed me for so many years. It was the sharing of distress filled stories that made me see that while I was alone I was not the only one casting about for meaning.

I know dreams are not reality. And I don’t agree with Borges that dreams are, “a pure exercise of my will…” I think dreams are more about our minds cobbling together bits and pieces of our experiences, our desires and our fears and then presenting them on an intercranial wide screen movie screen. What gets displayed on the back of our eyelids late at night helps us identify both hidden desires, and unresolved conflicts that we might not be aware of in our waking lives.

The concept of Borges' dream tigers—a term he used to describe the strong and recurring phantoms of his dreams—illustrates the power of our subconscious to bring forth vivid, meaningful symbols. Being aware of the value of dreams, as Borges implies he is with his dream tigers, allows us to uncover deeper truths. In dreams, even horrific ones like the one that followed me for years, we can find clarity to use in our waking lives.

Only do not forget, if I wake up crying it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands. -Pablo Neruda

I Need a Brot, Some Beer and Whatever the Hell They are Calling It Now-Yacht Rock Maybe?

Sitting at the Saldanha bus stop in my shorts I look both stupid and American. Shifting on the metal bench I cross and uncross my legs. Mind you I am not cold. But this is Portugal and the air temperature is 22 C or 72 F. At this temperature mature men like myself in Portugal do not wear shorts. The wearing of long pants is not a law, but it's close. Sitting here Iam an awkward thing, a crime against social norms. And I am getting raised eyebrows by the short men walking past men on their way to offices or construction sites.

I am amused by and at the same time self-consciousness as I catch their curious glances. Part of me wants to stand up and explain my fashion choice, while another part wants to fade away back into the bus stop. So it goes.

Heading out at 0930, I arrived at this bus stop to find it empty. The lack of other passengers is a surprise. I mean I am the only person waiting for the bright yellow Carris bus #738, a normally popular bus that will take me down to the Tejo River in relatively short order. The sun keeps trying to peek through on this overcast morning but so far it has not succeeded.

When the bus arrives, I board and find only four passengers including myself seated
for this run. Chucking to myself I am thinking that if I were getting on a bus in the USA today the ridership would be very similar but for different reasons. Here in Lisboa I am boarding the 738 after rush hour and people trying to get in on time have already come and departed.In the US it is Friday before the last holiday of summer and if people haven’t left for a four-day holiday yet, they will be departing this morning. Portugal like most of Europe celebrates May Day but not Labor Day. This is just a Friday, not a holiday Friday.

No matter what the weather is like summer is over in the US as of Tuesday. Kids will be back in school and adults will be back at work. Crane operators and lawyers will be in place where they belong raising I-beams or objections. There is no similar demarcation here at this point save maybe for the paucity of North American tourists especially college age ones.

Oh how I remember Labor Day weekend. Here is an old piece I wrote about it. It is about five years old.

OCEAN CITY LABOR DAY 1977

How I wish I was in Ocean City this holiday weekend. Labor Day would be hot and steamy. The boardwalk would be crowded with people jostling each other as they walked whatever distance they chose. This could be it from 12th Street to 4th Street or from 7th Street to 10th St. The smells of Johnson’s popcorn, Mack and Manco’s pizza and the boardwalk creosote would mingle all together as they strolled.

And there I would be behind a shiny aluminum counter. Wearing a T-shirt that said Zap, I would dispense Coca-Cola or soft serve ice cream, or hot J & J pretzels or frozen novelty treats. All day until about 430, business was steady. Large twin twist chocolate ice cream cones would be dispensed covered with nuts and sprinkles to begging seven-year-olds.

Come 430 the summer will be over. Summer rentals on those cottages expired. From pots and pans to bathing suits and pillowcases, cars were packed. Dads in sweaty short sleeve brown shirts would pilot their big assed Chevrolet back up to Upper Darby and points west. As the evening wore on the foot traffic thinned out on the boards. Kurly Kustard would close early because Ocean City would be a ghost town by 9 pm.

With very few people stopping by, I could clean up and close the store. Between emptying out the salt tray beneath the pretzel baking machine, tearing down the soft serve units and sanitizing them, I would look out at the Atlantic. The mighty Atlantic was so impressive even when it was calm.

There was nothing better than the salt air. My favorite thing to do was lie in the sun reading cheap paperback copies of classic literature. My heart was full of lust when I saw the girls in their skimpy bathing suits. I so loved the humidity that turned a feather pillow into a rock over three months. Kind of liked the beer at Somers Point late at night, too.

The summer of youth is fast disappearing. I would advise the young to do what I would do if I were young again. Drink some beer, read some Shakespeare, get to know a romantic companion, smoke some weed, and watch the sun go down over the water. Feel the warmth of the day and then let it fade away as night comes on.

Oh yeah and I miss the end of summer countdown on WMMR.  I mean they played the Clash and broadcast the Dead's Englishtown concert.