Your Eyes as a Mirror

Warren wrote and spoke and moved, and lived, entirely for himself. Every act was self-serving, and every conversation (every single one!) was deprived of a life of its own, and was forced back to himself. And he forced it vigorously. Certainly no one else would do it for him. You couldn't converse with him without talking about him. At 40 years of age he had become a master, well-practiced and efficient, at sucking the oxygen out of a room.

Not a bad looking fellow, well-dressed and quick with a smile, he attracted a bit of attention at social gatherings. From a distance, he appeared to be engaging and earnest, almost passionate. And in a way he was, but only about his opinions, experiences, observations, thoughts and actions. His own cheerleader, before, during and after the game. A booster club. A Ladies' Auxiliary. An appreciation society.

If you study a thing, the thing changes. If you study a person, the person changes. The thing changes in the mind of the person doing the studying. But a person changes in two minds. If you care enough to consider a fellow like Warren, he is best considered obliquely. From an angle, you could remove yourself from the spectacle of narcissism. But if you spoke to him directly, he would mercilessly hold you there. The outstretched hand of a beggar. He made you feel not only rude, but cruel, if you didn't let him use you. He mistook pity for the attention of an inquiring mind.

There is a nurturing sort of person, almost always a woman, who feels the need to comfort men like Warren, by pretending to find them fascinating. He took and they gave. And gave and gave until there was nothing left to give. The tit was sucked dry. Eventually, these women would withdraw out of a need for self-preservation. As instinctual an impulse as running from a fire.

He thought of these emotional wet nurses as lovers. Charity was mistaken for commerce. Over time, the list of women grew. None of them stayed with him for more than a year or two at most. The absence of one created a void that drew another.

He would never know that no one ever loved him. Not the way he thought, anyway.

Double Clutch

The film, "Knock On Any Door" was on the television, and the room began to sway. The edge of the couch became very important, and I held onto it. Bits of pipe tobacco that I had spilled seemed to float in my mind, creating the impression that I was looking beyond them to the floor below. A space opened up. My eyes were turned downward, and I was afraid to look up for fear of losing my balance and falling off the couch. Distance became very hard to reckon. The brown flecks moved this way and that, like looking down on a cloud of confetti from a great height. But those little bits never settled. No gravity pulled them down, and no wind stirred them. They were just there, those machine cut scraps of tobacco were hovering, fixed in an impossible place. The floor seemed so damned far away, and I gripped the hand rest of the couch as hard as I could.

The silver aluminum mullions of the Empire State Building were pierced by a B-25, lost in the fog. The skyscraper shook, but I held fast. The sound of one of the plane's engines breaking loose and falling into an elevator shaft made me sick to my stomach. Everything shook. Fantastic distances separated everything, the planes and the buildings and the people and the steam pouring from a manhole cover 100 floors below. But all those things gathered together, like bits of driftwood that come together in the sea. All that empty space, but they came together. The sea met the city and they both met the sky, like a T-square. If I could have looked west as well as east, land and sea and the streets and buildings would have merged hundreds of feet below, then shot upward to where I was standing, like a geyser or stalagmite. But I couldn't see west, just horizon down and up through me to the sky.

The stairs were dusty, and speckled with little dried spots of coffee. With cream and sugar. My left hand was flat against the wall, and my right held the banister. Upward I climbed, carefully avoiding the acrylic painting of flowers set behind a gold frame, purchased at a flea market or Salvation Army store. I couldn't remember, but it cost no more than $5. I'd brushed it off the wall before, and didn't want to do it again. My eyes were still set downward. To look up the stairs or to the left or right would have sent me spinning. Fourteen stairs to the top, the second seven were a blur.

A faux antique umbrella stand on the landing. "Paris, 1889," but the second floor was as wide as the first. My neighbor scolded her child, Jay, I could hear her through the wall. A muffle, but the tone was stern and familiar. She has been my neighbor for years, and I saw her son so often, playing alone outside in the courtyard, that he never seemed to age. But he must be 10 now. I've known him for half his life. I spoke softly to myself, although I didn't feel like I was in the room, "Listen to your mother, kid." But I knew he would. A single mother and her child, from another country. American children run roughshod over their parents. But Jay didn't need to hear from his mother twice. All was quiet again.

The second floor landing and my sweaty, cold forehead met. It was soothing. My feet rested on the tail end of that B-25, allowing me to rest for a moment. The sky was spinning above me, but I was comfortably below it now. A fog settled in, and it brought some peace with it. So tired. So weak. Concealed in mist and alone in my flat, the seizure could now be gauged without becoming self-conscious. My exhausted unease was safe from discovery. I would sleep now, deeply and without a dream or nightmare to ruin it. The sky and the sea and the stairs and that flower painting and Jay and the fog-lost B-25 met within me and rose. Moving, but not going anywhere. A rumor of an invisible central point brought everything together.

Grape Nuts and The Perfect Electric Razor

It arrived yesterday in a little blue and gray box, tucked inside a Walgreen's bag. My father had purchased a new electric razor, and he was very enthusiastic about it. First, he needed me to open the box. People over the age of 70 can't open containers or packages of any kind. They come from an age of dry goods in glass jars, wooden boxes held shut with tacks, and cardboard. The electric razor was wedged into a piece of plastic, and it pissed him off. After I extricated the contraption, he plugged it into the outlet next to the couch and proceeded to give himself a much needed shave.

Soon after, he observed, "We need a hand mirror." It isn't easy to shave without looking at your kisser. But he did it. He then declared it to be the best electric razor ever made. He said, "This is the best electric razor ever made. It's perfect." I was happy for him, but a stupid argument was brewing.

"Here, you try it, I'm telling you it's a great shave." said Pop.

"I'll try it later." I replied.

There was a pause, as if it took him a moment to take it in. The inconceivable had just occurred. The spectacular, perfect razor didn't impress me enough to use it while sitting on the love seat. I was eating a bowl of Grape Nuts.

"Just try it, it's great." He was insistent.

"If I try it, I'll have to shave my whole face, otherwise I'll have a bald spot." With that, he developed the affect of a deeply disappointed human being.

"So you don't want to try it?" He moped.

"Why can't I try it later? I'm sitting here eating a bowl of Grape Nuts. I don't want to get little hairs in there. And I can't shave without a mirror."

"You could use a shave, though, just give it a try." He wouldn't let it go.

My voice raised, "I will try it, later. Later on I'll try it. Okay? I don't want to shave while eating cereal on the couch, it's just me."

"Fine, so you'll try it later." He radiated a vague impression of anger and bitter disappointment. If he had taken a swing at me, I wouldn't have been that surprised. I half expected him to say, "I wish your mother had had an abortion, you fucking asshole." About five uncomfortable minutes went by. It felt like an argument. An asinine argument.

The Grape Nuts were becoming mushy, and I decided to throw it in. The towel, that is, not the razor. "Okay, I'll try it." Up the stairs i went, plugged it in, and shaved my puss. And you know what? It's a damn fine electric razor.

A Pleasing Obituary

A scandal has been slowly, but steadily, gaining interest here in the Commonwealth. As a probationer myself, I must confess that I'm pleased by the charges of patronage, conspiracy and extortion. A US grand jury has been convened, complete with the power to subpoena. A Boston Globe investigation found that the Probation Department is rotten to the core, so to speak. An independent commission used similar language, saying that the department is "riddled with corruption."

Why does this make me happy? Because I've seen with my own two peepers just how poorly it is run. Few people there seem to know what they are doing. Simple requests are met with blank stares. And probation officers are generally first class, A-1, state of the art assholes. They enjoy waving an air of moral superiority around the room, like Ron Jeremy and his wang in a porno movie. They could decide to do their jobs with a professional demeanor and an affect of formality. Instead, they act as if you've stolen a garden gnome off of their lawn, or pooped on their front porch. They take whatever you did personally.

This scandal goes right up to the tippy-top, with Massachusetts House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo admitting that he wrote a "recommendation" for his God son. He controls the funding of the probation department from his fluffy perch in the Golden Dome, so his "recommendation" carried a bit of weight. He was hired.

With the feds involved now, my hopes are high that some of these schmucks will get taken down. Perhaps I'll write a letter to my probation officer saying, "Shame on you," although that may be unwise. I'll smile from a careful distance. Clarence Darrow once said, "I've never killed a man, but I've read many obituaries with great pleasure." Damn right.

Old Photographs

Nostalgia motivates me today. Below you will find an assortment of photographs. Some of them have personal meaning to me, like the pictures of former Milwaukee mayor Frank P. Zeidler. On the left you can see him and his friends and comrades celebrating his 1948 victory. On the right, a picture taken of Frank in 2002. Frank was a friend and a comrade. During my early days of activism in the Socialist Party USA, we spoke over dinner, and on the convention floor, mainly about health care reform. He was extremely affable, and wrote to me for years after our meeting. I had hoped to see him one more time before his death in 2006, but it was not to be.

Civilian Conservation Workers, circa 1936

Here we see Works Progress Administration workers building a road, 1936

These massive swimming pools were built by the WPA, near Hellgate, New York.

A WPA Cannery

Children playing near a Brockton, Massachusetts tenement, 1940

Nude, 1935

Josephine Baker in Paris, 1939

Faro and Doris Caudill of Pie Town,
New Mexico, 1935