2013 Irrelevant Resolutions

The year 2012 had it’s ups and downs.  There was not nearly not enough work for me, making it hard to pay the bills.  The Yankees did not win the world series.  Again.  Dick Cheney did not spontaneously burst into flames for the 71st year in a row.  My older cat learned to shit in the hallway. A lot.  The Mayans, as usual, were wrong and the world did not dissolve into nothingness and humanity didn’t come to an end.

Don’t ya hate when that happens?  Me too.

There were good things though.  Mitt Romney tried to anally rape the average American by trying to buy the election, but fortunately for us, the body politic has ways of shutting that whole thing down.  Eli Manning and Co. won their second super bowl.  I kept the Christmas lights up most of the year.

Frankly even with the good stuff that happened, I’m glad to see the end of 2012.

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Which brings me to the 4th annual festival of WTF, that bastion of bullshit, that cavalcade of crap, the 2013 Irrelevant resolutions!

If any of this mostly silly, and only occasionally serious crap strikes your fancy, by all means take it with you and call it your own!

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Resolution #1: Get large sums of money.  Note I used the word get and not make. No one has ever, and from past experience I know no one will ever pay me large sums of money. It would be nice if I could earn enough money to be able to keep myself and my wife from having to sweat the end of the month showing up.  Winning the lottery would be nice, but I figure that only family members of the people who run the lottery ever win those damn things, so ‘l have to do it the old fashioned way and rob some fat rich fuck and run like hell.

Resolution #2:  Get a permanent job.  I have been temping and freelancing for the better part of four years and frankly I’m sick to death of it. I want to know who I have to have sex with to get a job, what do I have to do them with?  No one has answered this vitally important question for me, and it’s beginning to piss me off.

Resolution #3:  Write a book.  I said I was going to do this one last year, and never did.  Not for lack of trying.  I have thousands of words that form a cogent and coherent story on a computer in this very room.  Unfortunately that computer turned into a brick on me, damn thing stopped working the week of Thanksgiving, so I can’t do a damn thing with any of those 38,000+ words.  Maybe the old computer couldn’t handle the story.  Maybe I should have surfed for porn like everyone else instead.  Would’ve at least gotten something out of it then.

Resolution #4:  Watch more (shitty) television. I do not watch Sons of Anarchy.  I do not watch the walking dead.  Whenever I go places and meet people, they invariably talk about these silly sounding shows. So just to stay in conversations with people I like I may have to.  Because they don’t talk about much else.  Elitist fuckers. Maybe I should just try meeting a better brand of  biker zombie.

Resolution #5:  Stop being so judgmental.

Resolution #6:  Beat the shit out of at least one elected official.  The government is watching me, they surveil everyone, so why not get their attention by saying some crazy outlandish silly stupid bullshit.  This particular statement is not actually a resolution, I’m not the violent type per se, this is just me saying hello to the boys and girls down at homeland security.  This statement is meant to make at least one of those nosy fuck bastards earn at least one paycheck this year.  Lazy pricks.

Resolution #7:  Bring out the best in America.  Walk the width and breadth of this great land, and with a happy hearty smile, a twinkle in my eye, and a warm handshake, greet everyone regardless of lifestyle, circumstance or political stripe and wish them a happy day.  And hope they don’t beat the crap out of me for bothering them like that, because America don’t like that kinda thing any more.  They’re much more interested in their iPads, their stupid looking skinny jeans and this weeks latest uninformed political conspiracy.

Resolution #8:  Have sex.  I’m a married man. It can happen.

Resolution #9:  Spend at least one day this year where I do not look at a single screen.  Every day I spend hours and hours staring at either computer, tablet or television screens.  At the best of times most of it seems to be nothing more than vapid horse manure.  It maybe enjoyable watching all of it, but it isn’t exactly life enriching. Why not stop watching for a minute and see what happens?

Resolution #10:  Run.  For those of you who do not know, and that would be the entire population of the earth minus the few family and friends that care about such things, I am a runner.  What even these few do not know is that I have spent most of the last three months not running.  My running shoes are worn the hell out, my knees calves and hamstrings were worn the hell out, as was my lower back.  But the time off has done away with the physical issues, and if it were not for the shoes I would be back out there now. I’m going to be a runner again.  I promise.

Resolution #11:  Run for office.  OK, writing the things I wrote here kinda preclude my ever being able to do this one, but a man can dream, can’t he?

Resolution #12:  Fart in the bathtub while listening to patriotic music.  Might even fart the star spangled banner.  God bless America.  Doesn’t  freedom smell great?

Resolution #13:  Use the word “cliff” in a sentence without using the word “fiscal” in that same sentence.  Haven’t been able to all year.  I know I have it in me.  Well, I might… ummm…. crap.  We’ll see. I dunno about this one.

Resolution #14:  Use the name John Boehner in a sentence without using the words “douchebag”  ”whiner” “Cry baby” or “stupid orange fuck” in the same sentence. Personally I’m not holding out much hope on this one, but I can try.

Resolution #15:  Stop.  Seriously.  Just stop.  In this constantly busy ever moving world, keeping things moving is about the most important thing a person can do. Busy equals strong most ways that are important as far as I see it. But no one can do it like that without a break.  So when things get too damn stressed, just put the brakes on.

Resolution # 16:  Tell the corporate world to go fuck itself… in such a way that they give me great heaving gobs of money to do it.  #Occupycomedy perhaps?

Resolution #17:  Be kind to strangers.  Because you can’t really get to loathe someone until you get to know them.

Resolution #18:  Start a Death Metal band.  Name it “Joe”  

Resolution #19: Don’t Die. I have this one on the list every year. So far, so good.

Resolution #20: Drink more alcohol. I have not had one single drink during all of 2012.  Not a single one.  Not bad for an alcoholic.  So technically having one beer would make this one a reality.  I think I can do it, without drinking so much that I almost crap my liver out the next morning.  Control is good.

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That’s it from here, America.  Gnight.

29:18.13

Pic of the day:  1896 Olympic Marathon

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It’s very hard in the beginning to understand that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants you to quit.

George Sheehan

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Saturday:  3/4 of a mile into a training run I aggravated a pulled hamstring.  The run was going to be 5.7 miles long.  Stopping short with a sharp stabbing pain in my right hammy was about the last thing I wanted to have happen.  I was training for a race that I had missed last year.  The 4 mile memorial day race.  And I missed it because of a strained hamstring, and I was DAMNED if I was going to miss 2 years in a row because of the same injury.

I shut it down.  I walked home, hobbled somewhat by the hamstring.  I couldn’t walk right but I didn’t mind that.  It’s an injury, and I mind the injury, not how I walk because of it.  Came home, stretched it as much as I safely could. I soaked it in warm water and epsom salts twice.  I felt better after that.  Not 100% obviously.  I had to take pain killers and I iced it and wrapped it.  Comes with the territory, I guess.  I am thinking that I will cross the finish line, if I do, walking.  I am not happy about it.

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Sunday:  Hung out, cooked food at a family barbecue at mom’s house, and frankly enjoyed the hell out of things.  I paid the hammy no never mind and I didn’t have to, I didn’t notice it.  I was initially going to run before the days festivities, but on Saturday when I shut the run down I told myself that my next run is the race on Monday. I am still thinking that I might end up having to walk to the finish line if I finish.  I tell several people that, and they tell me I’ll be fine.  I agree with them publicly.  Privately, I’m not so sure.  But I do tell myself that I should try for a 32:00 time, an 8 minute mile.  That would be good.

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Monday, pre-race: Wake up at 5:48 am after going to bed at 10:30 pm, and finally falling asleep an hour 15 or so later.  I know that the hamstring is still not 100%, but I feel pretty damn good.  No limp, no soreness, no nothing.  Drink coffee, feed cats, do all the things that I do normally when I first get myself out of bed and ready to face the day.  I pack up stuff for the race.  Towel (You should always know where your towel is) extra clothes, water, race number.  Drink water.  Get out of the house…

My mother wanted to see what was happening, she had never been out to a race before.  When speaking yesterday she simply said she was driving my wife and I to the race.  My wife was surprised.  I… not so much. So my wife and I get a ride and mom gets to see me race for the first time.  It’s a bit surreal for me, but with me, surreal happens.

I walk with my wife and mother to where they are going to watch the race near the finish line.  Drink a little water.  Mom wishes me luck, kisses my cheek, and me and my wife walk down to race start, leaving mom hanging out on the boardwalk.  My wife and I while walking smile at each other and wave to a few runners, wish them luck.  I don’t know them, they don’t know me. Doesn’t matter.  We’re all part of the running family, everyone is good people here. Last drink of water. My wife takes a few pictures of me.  She kisses me, wishes me luck, steps back behind the guard rail and the race begins.

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Monday, Race: ON YOUR MARK

GET SET

GO.

I walk the first 20 seconds or so.  I find it curious that some of the people ahead of me, while barely moving at a walking pace are nevertheless moving like they are running, bouncing up and down in an exaggerated running motion.  They aren’t moving faster as a result.  Makes no sense to me.  I keep to just walking until the road opens up and I can run.  From the beginning I am, if not hesitant, then at least, relaxed in pacing myself.

The crowd ahead of me is smaller than normal, but then again I am starting further up than the last few times I ran this race.  I am not moving with a particularly fast gait, nor am I pushing that hard.  I pass a number of people in the throng, a few pass me, and as the crowd begins to thin, it happens.  Two minutes and 24 seconds in.  I feel the right hamstring twinge.  Feel the stabbing pain.  I bark with displeasure, but I bite down on the pain and keep moving.

And I surprise myself by not breaking stride.  I keep it to where I am barely letting it affect my gait. What it does is slow me down, but not even all that much.  There are other people around, and I’ll be damned if I give up this early in the race.  Hell, it hit and during the critical first moments when the pain hit me, I was passing people.

I was pretty happy about that.

Usually I have some kind of pace song in my head that pushes me faster, keeps the feet moving quick.  Not this time. I am basically monitoring the hamstring in my head the entire time.  But I am also keeping an eye out to see what my pace is early.  Curious.  No mile one marker.  No one barking out times.  Weird. So I keep moving.

And I keep passing people.  Not like I did 2 years ago when I ran a 6:57, but I’m passing people with a pulled hammy.  I have just passed the water station without getting water when I notice the pain getting worse.  I adjust my stride, lean back a little more and the pain subsides somewhat.  What I don’t do is slow down.  I know I’m not running my fastest, but I don’t want to slow down too much and be tempted to stop.  I’m not sure I’d be able to start back up once I did that.  So I keep moving.

The sun hits hard after the shade near the end of the second mile.  Up ahead I see the mile 2 marker.  There’s a guy calling out time.  “14:40.  14:42.  14:45.  14:50.”  As I pass I hear “14:55.”  I thank him, wave and keep moving.  The pain is constant, but it’s been there long enough that I begin to ignore it, move past it.

I begin to think of moving faster.  And as I think it I do it.  My stride rate picks up, and I pass a few people.  Not many, there are some people out and about, and while I am trying to move fast, I can’t get that breakaway speed that I could if I wasn’t sore as hell.  I pass the second water station, and again refuse the water.

At the 2½ mile mark or so, there is a fountain that spits water a good 20 feet high and they have it on full steam so that the runners can run under it and cool down.  I do.  The shock of cold water is invigorating, and I gasp as the water hits me.  There is a guy who I have been running with for the past few minutes, and it is here that I find the energy to begin to pass him.  But as I open up my stride the hammy begins to hurt more.  So I slow down a bit after about a minute, and the guy passes me.

I hit the 3 mile marker after a few minutes.  “22:09.  22:10.  22:12.”  “22:15.” is what I hear as I pass the guy.  I wave and thank him and he yells back “Good luck.”  The final mile I try my damnedest to open up my stride, but I am having only limited success. For every person I pass, for everything that feels good there is pain as well, and a need to back down, to slow down.  The hamstring which has been sore but just background noise in my mind for much of the race, really begins to hurt.

I’m starting to limp while I run, but I keep moving.  I do my best to hide it, and glide as much as possible, keep the pounding on my legs to an absolute minimum.  But I am in a better place than I thought I’d be.  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish without walking.  But I’m running. and faster than I thought I would be able to.

After a short bout with a stitch, I get passed by some kid whose mom, jumps out from the crowd to shout encouragement.  He sees his mom and speeds up.  He passes her up, and as I pass her I yell out “Kid is the fastest runner out here.”  She beams at this.  Hell at that point in the race he may well be.  All the faster runners have already finished, and he passed me like I was standing still.

I felt good for the kid.  Two more people passed me as I made my way to the finish.  First one I didn’t mind.  The second one I did.  No reason why.  But it pissed me off, and I found a surge of energy, and nearly caught up to the guy before the finish.  Nearly, but didn’t.  Cursed the leg. But I crossed the finish line with a better time than I thought I was capable of just a day before.

29:18.13.  A 7:19.53 m/m pace.

Not my fastest time, not by a long shot.  But my best.

Upon stopping I immediately begin to limp rather badly.  As I hear the race officials tell me I don’t need to hand in the bottom portion of my race number, I see my wife.  She is beaming, happy.  I said “29:18.  Helluva race, hon.”

Helluva race.

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That’s it from here, America.  Enjoy the day, and If you see any veterans today, thank’em for all they’ve done.  God bless America.

 

Commenting On Commenting

Pic of the day: The toil-worn cottar frae his labour goes, by William Miller

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Every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering. For everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein

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I like commenting on occasion on matters political, sometimes even on more satirical matters.  Sometimes I do it on newspaper websites, sometimes on facebook, sometimes on semi-random sites where I see stories and comments that get my dander up.

I ran into another one of those today.  It was a simple graphic from the website I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists.  It reads “How rich people get rich.”  There are two hand drawn pie charts.  One is titled “How rich people get rich(according to rich people)”  It is an equally divided pie chart.  In the pink section it reads “Can do attitude“, there’s a  light yellow section which reads “Gumption” and a darker yellow area which says “Hard work.” In the second pie chart is titled “How the rich get rich (for real)” and is equally divided into 2 areas.  The white one reads “Luck” and the green one reads “Merciless exploitation of the working class”

I thought it was cute, and while not 100% accurate, nonetheless is pretty damn close, as least as far as I see it.  If you don’t that’s fine by me.  I said as much in a comment, though I was more effusive in my writing there.   What I actually said was:

There are plenty of poor people with all of the gumption, hard work and can-do attitude and more than rich people, and they’re still poor. All the “can do” attitude in the world won’t make you successful. Gumption doesn’t mean a thing without help on the way up, it’s the same with hard work. No one makes it alone or simply by the sweat of their brow. No one. I dunno about exploitation of the working class though. “Exploitation of everyone around them, and if you lose, oh well, too bad” is probably a better way to put that. They’d cut their mother’s throats and giggle while they did it to get a larger slice of the pie. It’s that Ayn Rand “Me first gimme gimme” social darwinist bullshit that those devil worshiping right wingers cling to, ya know? Just saying…

You know me, short and to the point… or something.

I got the funniest response to it.  Some oddball called me a marxist, which I find pretty funny, because it’s untrue, unless of course you’re talking about Groucho or Harpo or Zeppo, who always seemed to me to get the short end of the stick.

But I digress.

Oddball also spouted some weirdness about minimum wage, and said he sensed (in me!)  envy lust and greed!  I looked at the page and had to shake my head, blink and stare at the screen like it had just presented me with a lifetime supply of headcheese.   Lust?  Greed? Envy? Where in the great googly moogly does he get that?

I called him insane, and told him to stop doing drugs. I’m hoping he continues the conversation.  I’d hate to see him walk away before I had a real chance to explore just how crazed this monkey is.

I say all that to say this.

Why is it that people think that poor people don’t work hard, that they don’t want to succeed?  That was much of the attitude of those who disliked the graphic, who disliked what was said in agreement with the graphic.  It is hard work that built this nation.  It is hard work that defines much of the working poor, and the poor are almost all working poor.

My father was poor most of his life, even at his most successful I don’t think he ever got as much as he deserved for all the efforts he put in where ever he worked.  My mother is much the same way.  And the apple does not fall far from the tree.  Both my younger brother and I work hard and just aren’t making ends meet, at least not the way we want regardless of how much work we do.  My older brother is moderately successful, but owning a house and raising kids eats all his money.  He ain’t rich by any stretch of the imagination.

Most of the people I know are working class.  And we all work hard, most of us live paycheck to paycheck, and do everything we can to keep ourselves afloat. Don’t tell me people like me are leeches on society, which is a charge I’ve heard leveled.  Or that we don’t work hard, when it is plainly obvious that we do.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

2012 Irrelevant Resolutions

2011 is over! I tell you I won’t miss 2011, now that 2012 is here.  2011 sucked!  I had 5 separate jobs.  Five.  Not that I mind working, I love to work, but having 5 jobs means that I had no stability in those jobs whatsoever, and that sucks!

A lot of the resolutions I made last year just didn’t work.  I didn’t write for money.  Never called my representative to tell him he is a shithead, and I never got to tell Glenn Beck to fuck himself.

I’m such a slacker.

One resolution I did nail was the resolution to run a lot.  Ran over 2100 miles, ran over 20 miles like I resolved to do.

Which is nice and all, but….

The time has come to make this years resolutions.  Let the irrelevancy begin!

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Resolution #1: Belch.  Belch like no one has ever belched before.  Make booger here look like a rookie.

Resolution #2:  Start a fight with corporate America.  Sure I can’t beat them, there’s a bazillion of them, and one of me, and they have a grillion dollars to my… 22 bucks … sumthin like that, and they buy political influence the way I buy milk, but so what?  I have something they don’t have.  I don’t know what it is, but I hope what the hell ever it is helps, ’cause I don’t feel like getting my ass kicked at this point in my life.

Resolution #3:  Get a full time job.  Finding work has been a priority since the dickheads that fired me in 2009 made my life a living hell.  I have work now.  The problem?  It’s freelance work.  If they need me 5 days a week, I get a real paycheck.  If they don’t need me, I don’t work.  That SUCKS!  I’ve had enough of that hairy high school horseshit.  Full time or bust!

Resolution #4: Keep the Christmas tree up all year.

Resolution #5:  Run a race.  I am a runner (just in case you missed that), and I could have run one last year, but I tweaked a hamstring and that killed the one chance I had at running that race.  I love running, and racing is fun.

Resolution #6:  Write a book.  Note I do not say “write a bestseller” or even “write a decent book”  It could be a god-awful piece of shit, but dammit, I want to write a book.  OK, I hope it isn’t a truly god-awful piece of shit, but the worse it is, the better it’ll sell, if I know the tastes (if you can call it taste) of my countrymen (and women) at all.

Resolution #7:  Beat the crap out of a marketing executive.  People who work in marketing are evil.  Evil must be fought.  If all the good people of the world took up the cause, and beat the shit out of just one of these evil cretins, the world would be a much better place.  Join the cause.

Resolution #8:  Punch a random stranger in the face. Ya, that is wrong.  But if I had a dollar for every wrong thing in the world, I’d have a lot of money I did not really deserve.  And i’d be part of the 1%.

Resolution #9:  Stop all unnecessary violence in the world.

Resolution #10 :  Teach a fish to juggle.

Resolution #11:   Learn Irish Gaelic.  OK, I know a bare minimum of the language, I would like to be able to speak it, actually have a conversation in the langauge of my forefathers.  While I’m at it, learn Polish as well.  I have polish blood, t’would be nice if I learned that language as well.

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A very old author discoursing upon Irishmen, says, ” Where Irishmen are good, it is impossible to find better, where they are bad, it is impossible to find worse.” I am afraid we have got to this alternative. Treachery was never the character of Irishmen. Courage and intrepidity were their characteristics. Every creature is taught to fight, but boldly and fairly.

The Earl of Clonwell, 1796

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Resolution #12:  Start and /or join a band.  I’ve been playing guitar since 1983.  I’m good, dammit.  I should be in a band and use that musicality of mine.

Resolution #13:  Start my own company.  I have no Idea what the hell that company would do, but dammit, maybe doing that makes me more money than just working for evil assholes who hate paying me, and think that health benefits for employees are an extravagant privilege.  This one needs a lot of work, but then again, so do I.

Resolution #14:  Piss off a conservative.  That’s pretty easy. They’re sensitive little ass clowns, pouty drunk fucks the lot of them.

Resolution #15:  Learn to be nice.  Or at least find someone who has the right drugs that will help me get there.  Because after 44 years on this earth, I have found that I simply cannot fake nice, and that I’m about as subtle as a nuclear explosion, and that doesn’t exactly lend itself to “nice”.

Resolution #16:  Eat healthier.  Wait… what the hell is an honest to J.R. “Bob” Dobbs resolution doing here????  Well I do eat a boatload of unhealthy crap.  Ring dings are NOT a food group, no matter how hard I try to make them one.  I really do have to work on that.

Resolution #17:  Learn to drive.  I love cars.  They are, some of them, truly works of art, some of the most sublime beauty mankind has created is in the form of automobiles.  But they are evil, at least to me they are.  I hate them, I would much rather just stay home than drive, but it is becoming obvious that I have no choice.  I need to do this.  Dammit.

Resolution #18:  Invade Iran.  Oh wait, that’s Rick Santorum’s resolution.  Sorry.  My bad.

Resolution #19:  Don’t Die.  That would ruin my weekend.

Resolution #20:  Get rich.  This poverty shit really sucks. And the rich fat bastards never learned to share, so I gotta go steal earn it myself.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Long Walk Home

I went to workforce one today, in hopes that they would help me look for work.  I went at around 2:00 pm. When I got there, they told me that since I had not been there in around a year I would have to sign up to use their services, and the only way to sign up for it is to go there for orientation at 8:30am.

I don’t mind going there at 8:30.  Sounds good to me, any help on the path to employment is gladly accepted, but they could have saved me the wasted time and metrocard fare, and simply told me before I left that that was the case. I called them, dropped them an e-mail.  I got zero response. So, trying to be pro-active, or more accurately trying to avoid the “lazy” label in my own mind, left the apartment in an attempt to get help myself.

I could have waited at home, saved the money.  45 minutes after I left I got the response from the e-mail telling me what I learned above, which was echoed by the young woman at the front desk at workforce.

Dammit.

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The workforce office that I went to is about 4 ½ miles from where I live, the way I walk it anyway.  I tend to meander when I walk, but that is because I know the area, having lived here all my life.  Most of the places I walked today I have been to countless times, lived or played or hung out around.  Some powerful thoughts hit me when I walked around these places that I used to haunt in days gone by.

These are those thoughts.

I walked past what looked like an old overgrown field, but to me it was a place that I hung out when I cut classes at Curtis high school.  I smiled, and thought about how dumb it was, and how much fun I had.  Dumb and fun, that is what I used to be about.  I’ve grown up.  Hard to avoid, I guess,  time converts all men in some manner away from the infantile and towards more mature pursuits.  That thought tempered the smile a bit.

As I passed a Bodega near York Avenue and Richmond Terrace, an odd thought struck me.  I haven’t hung out here in nearly 3 decades, and the place still looks and smells the same as it did all those year ago.  I knew it still looked the same, pass the place every once in a while, but the smell, the entirely indescribable aroma, seemed for lack of a better term, the right one, the same one as in 1980.

Said as much, to no one in particular.  When I said it, the guy standing on the corner looked at me funny, but that kind of thing never bothers me.  I smiled at him, that ugly demented smile of mine, and he didn’t know what to do with it, and turned around, and we went our separate ways.

I Wonder what’s going on with the people I went to school with.  Think that as I pass Laub’s auto body shop on the terrace. I went to school with the son of the guy who opened that shop 35 or 40 odd years ago.  Wonder what Kevin’s up to now, it’s been 30 years since I’ve seen him.

Passed a place on Franklin avenue where parents, brother and I lived for about 18 months.  Place looked empty, unlived in.  Looks nice. But knowing the neighborhood, I won’t let outside looks deceive me. For a moment at least.

Passed my Uncle Rich’s house (God rest his soul) on Fillmore street.  T’was a sad moment.  I’d have said a prayer for his soul, but my prayers never get answered, and don’t mean a damn in the scheme of things (i’m still poor, ugly, and stupid, and the world is still a mess), so a prayer for him would have done nothing for him, or anyone. My prayers must suck or sumthin.  I miss the man.

The meddy is gone, replaced by what looks like an apartment building, or maybe a nursing home.  The meddy, you ask? It was the name that was given to an old building at the corner of Fillmore and Lafayette.  It actually threw me off, not seeing that old mess of a building there.   I remember liking that old, dilapidated thing when I was a kid for some reason.

Passed my (actually my parents) old house on Fillmore Street.  The place has, not surprisingly, changed.  The second floor porch is gone.  It’s got white aluminum siding on it, and there are bay windows.  A number of the houses looked different than I remembered them.   Still, I was surprised that no memories came back to me walking by, but the place looked different enough where I guess there was just no place for present and past to connect.

A few blocks further on, I passed St. Paul’s school, where I went to school for 8 years… I wanted to go in and look around the place.  Didn’t.  I, just for a second, felt like doing like I did when I was in second grade, and run into the playground in the back. I looked into the eighth grade classroom, the closest one to the street, knowing there was no class there, the school is closed now, but hoping to get a glimpse of something.  Got a glimpse of nothing.  Dammit.

Walked around, past St. Peter’s boys high, a top notch rat hole, to Caldera place, there was no sign there with the street name on it anymore, then to Prospect avenue.  I was coming up to an old hangout spot, and for the life of me I could not remember the name of the place.  Something…pond.  Walked past devon place (knew the name of the street before I got to it,) past Lois place, where a kid named Mike Covolus that I went to school with lived. I remembered an incident with a kid named Billy Malik that happened there. But for the life of me, I could not remember the name of the park.

Knew all the streets, remembered running around there as a kid, hanging out, partying, but could not remember the name of the place until I passed a sign.  Allison pond.  How the hell did I forget THAT?  Good lord, either I was way too happily high back then, or I had me a genuine senior moment/brain lock there.  Either way, pretty damn funny.

Much of the rest of the walk was… just a walk, just me trying to get home.  Forest avenue is a singularly forgettable place to be.

I walked past another place where I lived as a child, from ’73 to ’79.  Smiled as I walked around the bend, and saw the top of the garage.  The one where my older brother and I proved conclusively that my Tonka truck, that tonka trucks were not, contrary to popular belief, indestructible.  We did this by tossing them off of the top of the garage, a number of times as I recall, to their very timely demise.

Could not help a long look back. Several in fact. Slowed to a crawl, and stopped twice, wanting to walk back and just stare, soak in all of the yesterday that was there.

Kept going, things to do, a life to live, things to do.

The rest of the walk was just  a walk through the park and the uphill home.

With one exception.

I, along with some guy walking his dog, saw some falcons in the trees near martling and slosson.  The guy walking his dog said he saw 3, I saw one, but the hawk was an impressive sight.  Wing span looked large, maybe 5 feet. I dunno if the hawks that live here get that big, but he was no small bird.  After looking at the majestic creature for a few moments, along with a black Ibis that was in the area, I made my way home.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.