Swapping Woodpeckers for Phone Calls

Out in the country surrounded by birds and the strident hammering of a resident woodpecker. Over the past few days I’ve heard more woodpecker pecks than all those of previous years. At first I thought the sound might grow tiresome with a bird so insistent, but it is just the opposite and when Woody flies away I almost miss the sound.

Magnolias are in bloom.

Woodpeckers make a pleasant background, but in fact my thoughts are a thousand miles away. Three or four days ago I got by email an invitation to link with a magazine I sometimes send stories to. Not completely sure what I was joining, I clicked ‘okay’ and soon found myself a member of the professional networking site, LinkedIn. Didn't think much about it until the following day when I got email via LinkedIn from a friend of thirty-one years ago.

I met JB in Los Angeles in 1975 and for the next seven years we spent a lot of fun time together, most of it crazier than mules drunk on vodka martinis. From the first day we met it was obvious we were brothers in humor, and becoming fast friends was a given. Memory reminds me those were heady days, JB and I at the front of the line more often than not yelling for more. At the time JB was living in a big, old house in Hollywood that had once belonged to cowboy star Tom Mix. Not more than a few months in town I moved into the house, joining three others.

JB and I remained good friends over the next seven years. He was having some success with his music and soon enough I found myself taken up with classes at UCLA. Then one day I went to Japan and JB went to New York. Many times over the passing years I thought about my friend, wondering how he fared. Many years passed and eventually the memories got locked away. Around 2006 another California friend emailed asking if I knew someone named JB, that he was asking about me. A mix up of some sort short-circuited the connection and we never did hook up. Until today.

Busy with moving house, I didn’t have a chance to call the number on JB’s email until this afternoon. After a minute of verifying names, JB said, “I have been looking for you for thirty years.” It’s a warm feeling knowing that you have a friend who never gave up trying to re-connect across so many years.

JB lives now in San Francisco, married for the past seventeen years and the owner of a theatrical production company. The timing was bad on our call, not enough time enough to say much, but we made a good start. Looking forward now to re-kindling a long dormant friendship.

Keys in the Lock

An old and dear friend, longtime resident of Los Angeles arrived on Saturday for a too-short stay of eight days. It’s been at least fifteen years since Shelby and I were together, but never in that time have we been out of touch. We met at a time when we were young and starry-eyed, calling ourselves “New Yorkers” and despite our different moves across the map, the closeness has nonetheless remained vital across all distances. Somehow, despite the years and distance, Shelby found the time to visit me in Tokyo, and I the opportunity to visit her in Los Angeles. Seeing this friend again is the greatest of blessings.

In the late of evening our talk wandered down old paths, touching on the people and events that colored our lives at one time, filling in blanks and reliving some of the many experiences we shared. Shelby told me about a poet she likes and how his work encouraged her—a confessed non-writer—to put her thoughts down on paper in an attempt to understand, vent frustration or slough off an incident in her own life. And telling me about it, she pulled out a piece of paper with a kind of free verse prose poem illustrating a feeling that boiled forth from a recent experience. I immediately wanted to share Shelby’s poem with others, but met with some reluctance on the writer’s part. Happily, I managed to convince her that the writing is well worth sharing.

REINVENTION

When I saw the keys in the mailbox lock

I knew I would have my revenge.

Just the fact that my right-wing, hate spouting neighbors

might be left vulnerable by their oversight

pushed my imagination into overdrive.

The boogieman they had long feared was waiting

for them to err in his favor.

His smile was strangely satisfying.

He might creep in to watch them sleep,

steal their crap or just terrorize them in general.

He might take their junk-filled car

and drive it all the way to hell,

or maybe just to Mexico.

I started feeling diabolical. What else could I envision?

Maybe they would awaken tomorrow

and find their door wide open.

The shock on their otherwise blank faces

sets me giggling with delight.

The world invaded their lives

without their permission or knowledge

the way it does to most everyone else.

Would they see things differently

with such unexpected and long dreaded exposure?

Probably not.

Would they feel violated 

and filled with a mind-numbing paralysis

that they had allowed the darkness inside?

(A darkness they have defined via fear-based newscasts

they watch daily involves drug addicts,

dark skinned strangers, homosexuals, whores,

terrorists, gypsies and idol worshipers)

The answer to that was yes!

definitely yes yes yes.

Would I get over my shame in the conception of this chaos?

The answer to that was probably not,

so I am determined to find a new definition of shame.

Something that works for me.