privateSounds

I wake in the mornings knowing the day’s not my own

How wonderful it must be to be able to do what you desire
To earn a wage or not without regard of consequence
To know that all can be taken care of
With only one’s ego or intellect needing fulfillment

I wake in the mornings knowing the day’s not my own

In the morning

“Are you going to work?”
—”I am, my love.”
“I don’t want you to.”
—”I know. I don’t want to either.”
“Don’t go.”
—”I have to.”
“But I don’t want you to.”
—”I know.”
“Please.”

I would love to spend the day with her.

We would walk through the park, to our special spot, where we only need wait and soon enough there would be friends to greet.

I would have packed lunch, choosing those things that I know she’d want. And in my pocket I would have hid a treat.

A little surprise
To sweeten the day
With her smile and delight.

She leans against me and I catch her scent -

We take my lunch and feed the birds. She laughs at their brazenness: they come close enough to kiss her shoes.

I bend down to something fallen and watch as the trees above caress her face with shadows of love.

And all the while, in my heart, there would be an ache. Soon she’ll change and other things will come to be. But for now she is mine, my daughter, my love.

In the evening

“Another story.”
—”No. It time to sleep.”
“Sit with me.”
—”No. You need to go to sleep.”
“Just for two minutes!”
—”No. It’s already late. You need to go to sleep.”

I wish she could stay up. I wish time was not our master.

Hours later I sit at my desk, my family asleep, and I meet you, my friends.

In the morning I wake knowing the day’s not my own.

Knowing the narratives of people who have touched your life is part of what it’s all about. It enriches who you are.

How I would love to read the biographies of people who’ve touched me.

I picture myself retired,

Eighty.

A warm summer afternoon, sitting on a park bench under a grand old tree (one as old as myself, if not older). Every time I sit there, I reach up and feel the bark. Hi, I whisper to it.

And there under it’s canopy of leaves, mostly green, but some like myself, near the end of their journey, the right amount of sunlight speckles the pages of my book:

William’s Friends and Relatives: Their lives.

where I share in the joys of their lives and weep with them when they recount their pains - for all tinges of schadenfreude and envy have left my heart and I can truly get to know the love of mankind.

Next to me on the bench, my wife, reading a similar tale of those who’ve touched her.

And as the sun lowers in the horizon, my Son and Daughter appear - their families behind them. I hear the laughter of my grandchildren and it reminds me of a time, long ago. My eyes water.

“Come on, Daddy. We’re taking you to dinner,” my Son says.
“And we’re gonna order a bottle of wine just for you!” my Daughter chimes in.

I smile, put down my book of love, and join the narrative of my own life.

Last month I went to my 25th High School reunion with trepidation and delight.

25 years.

I wasn’t part of the “in-crowd” if one existed (we just had people who were more popular than others) but I wasn’t a loser either. I fell right in between, though in my mind I was more in than out.

Actually I was more about myself than anything else. Sophomoric to the extreme, believing that I understood the world, the bullshit, the truth. I also believed that I’d retire by 40, wealthy beyond belief. Psychiatry was going to be my means, a cushy job paying well to listen to people talk. Just the kind of gig a lazy fuck like myself dreamt of.

I was pretty active in school. Stage crew, chess club, D&D, volunteered to work with “exceptional children”, yearbook, school newspaper, student council… With over 300+ students in my graduating year, I was fairly well known, though, like I said, not particularly popular. I was that kid whose face you’d always see, whose name everyone knew and yet no one knew a thing about him.

Going back to high school I wanted to connect with my former buddies.
—-

On my way to the reunion I ride the path of my youth, retracing the commute I did every day for four years, trying to remember the little details, the places where I stood, the feeling of youth with unlimited possibilities. It’s a rainy Saturday night and I’m dressed in my usual attire. I used to have to wear a suit and tie ever day to school - maybe that’s why I hate them so now. Not for the reunion. I’m an adult. I dress as I please - I dress as I always do, an extension of myself. And unshaved once again - another no-no back then. And long hair, well below the limit of it touching your shirt collar.

I am now who I always felt I should be.

Riding the train, I hear a boom box..

Someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio
And they told the world just how you felt
It must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat
They never said your name
But I knew just who they meant.

And then I realize it’s Live.

Across the way, with maybe a score of people in-between a thin Puerto Rican girl with black hair pulled back tight, her cheekbones protruding from a nervous thinness that could only rises out of a life of suffering, sings with passion to a train jaded by life.

And though she only sings the first two minutes of the song before she gets off, I reach into my wallet and thank her for bringing a smile into my life.

—

I arrived early enough to take some photos of the old school.

I love that place. It forged me in so many ways. I always hear people say how much they hated high school. I can’t say I had the best of times there, but overall they weren’t bad. I made it what it was. Even though my grades sucked, even though I came close to failure a few times, I chose to get involved. Then again, I had that luxury. There were guys I went to school with who had to work every night just to pay the tuition. I was fortunate enough to be spared that. My parents could barely afford to send me. It must have been a good percentage of their income.

I’ve taken that lesson with me.

—

The School was immaculate.

Here, in the middle of the heartland of South Bronx, it stood a fortress of learning and peace. Later we are reminded that there are no guards, no metal detectors, no one patrolling at night. Nothing. Each student is called a young man and expected to behave like one; for many this building represents the only peace they know. I wasn’t asked for ID when I walked in and I had free reign of the place.

—

None of the guys I wanted to meet were there - the turnout small. Some guys I didn’t recognize. Some I confused for others. It’s been a long time.

—

In suits and ties, balding or grey, heavyset and long married, with kids old enough for me to date or have a brew with, they stood where I picture myself in twenty years - not now.

Life moved fast for many of them while I’m just starting mine. Did they succeed? Did they fail? Is that why I was there? To show them who I had become?

No.

It’s not my nature.

I’m not one to talk much about myself but I believe I’ve done well. The son of a janitor and parents who never learned English, who neither had more than a third grade education, today I find myself proud to give out my business card and say, “Yea. Fuck yea. That’s me!”

—

It was good to see their faces.

I wanted the evening to last, to go on all night. To connect once again, rekindle those lost days, bring back forgotten memories.

I remind one guy of some of our exploits, telling a tale about late nights, playing “manhunt” throughout the school building, about guys breaking into the bookstore and taking tons of shit. He seems a little put off by this. Not denying it, but I got the impression he’d rather not have anyone hear those stories. He’s an Assistant High School principle. I stop.

Do I live in a different world than they? None of them were into what I am into. None of them had traveled much. None lived in the city. All but one had grown children. Grown enough to hang out with me.

The evening began with a Mass. All but I went to take Communion. They knew the words to the songs, when to kneel and when not to. I could barely remember.

We walked around the school building and I tried to remember the feel of those days. Days when your only worries were homework and tests and every year brought about new challenges and a chance to start all over - rather than the same, never ending grind of adulthood. Days when failure left you with a chance to redo it over again rather than - well - failure as an adult takes its toll.

And before I knew it, the night was over and they decide to head elsewhere, head North to a place I can’t readily get to. So we exchanged emails, cards and by Nine that night I’m on the subway making my way home.

I heard later that they never made their destination.

They all agreed to call it an early night.

Courtesy the excellent blog, WellingtonGrey.net

Check out his other graphics! Worth it!

You who are 18 and 19 and 25

Know this - that these are the glory days of your life.

That you are still young and alive, full of energy and breathing the air of life. That each day brings happiness and bittersweet sorrow. That years from now you will look back and long for lonely night drives, the rides home to a bed where cold winter air creeps in through a crack in a window. You reach to turn off the TV…

In your bed
Under your covers
Your clothes on the floor

The next morning the sun wakes you up
And the heavy curtain of loneliness that taints your life, that filters the light
Leaves you in a bright yellow room of peace and loneliness and despair
It is your best friend
Your companion
Your life

The best times of your life. A life with possibilities unlimited. A life worth tasting.

Heading uptown after spending Halloween away from the masses. My daughter had a good time and that’s all that matters.

8PM. We get one of the new SUV cabs. Going uptown. The city - a beautiful fall night. Lit up. Cool. Exciting.

I talk to drivers. Immigrants, mostly. I sympathize with them. Maybe its because I come from the same stock. Maybe its because I see myself in them, I see my father in them. I see who I might have become.

At a red light we see a flash. “That guy just got a ticket”, he says, refering to the cameras New York uses to catch lawbreakers.

“Fifty dollars,” he tells me.

“Wow!” I reply, thinking that its not much but being aware of his circumstances. It probably takes him two or three hours to earn fifty dollars. A quarter of his day’s pay.

And then - a mile from home my daughter gets sick.

It runs in the family. It used to happen to me. And yes - we gave her Dramamine. Its worked before.

So I quickly tell the driver to pull over. With our luggage my wife continues on while I carry my daughter home.

When I get there my wife is waiting (I have her keys) and on the corner I see the cab - the driver cleaning out the back. Odd. She just spit up a bit. Most of it went on her and the rest was on me.

I have an aversion to vomit, to the smell, to the sight of it. It invokes a sympathetic response that causes me to be sick.

Not with my daughter. The power of love and the desire to sooth her holds dominion over any repulsion.

The fair was $17. Not bad. I asked my wife how much she tipped.

“Five dollars. It’s all I had.”

A moment later I hand the driver another $15 dollars.

“Its not necessary,” he says.

“It is,” I say as I hear the voice of my father saying, “Thank you.”

The moments I’ve felt most alive have been during those days when there was the possibility that I might have died.

Those times shaped me, strengthened my atheism, and left me vowing to myself that I would never forcibly challenge any one’s belief in the afterlife unless challenged likewise.

You want to feel alive? Get cancer.

You’ll cherish every waking moment, every puff of air, every sound you hear.

You’ll want every touch of your loved ones to last forever. You’ll breath in the breath of your children, the smell of your wife’s hair, the warmth of their presence. You’ll spend more time thinking about how you won’t be there for them nor know the future narratives of their lives. You’ll want to tell them how much you love them and you’ll find yourself being nicer, kinder, humbler.

You many find pain in the death of even even the smallest creatures and wonder why we must kill to live.

You’ll visit stores and listen to people argue and complain about the littlest things, and think them all lucky and wish that you could trade places with them.

You’ll walk about your house and bond with relics of your life, every cup, every shirt, every nick nack, each one more precious than anything else.

And then, if in the end you find out that it was all a scare, you won’t ever need anything ever again to remind you how wonderful life is. You’ll always be alive.

I’ve revisitied this tale several times over the last twenty years. Its based on an actual incident. The last two paragraphs are echoed in many of my writings.

It was Friday afternoon and I still had a paper to finish. Graduation was three weeks away and I needed to do a little research, comb the library for a few fake references to make it seem as if I’d made a real effort. This would be my last assignment. I had taken my last final Tuesday, finished all my lab work, and handed in all my papers. All but this one.

Outside it rained but inside the library the patter of the drops, the pale yellow lights and the warmth of the room made everything beautiful.

I recognized a few faces, underclassmen mostly. Next semester they’d be back, but I had no idea what my future held. I had been working nights full-time, so at least I’d have an income. But a career? The pharmacy and business students all had plans. I had none. What kind of career would I have qualified for? Bum? Pauper?

I figured I could teach - but what? I wasn’t smart enough for a professorship and I couldn’t handle high school – not the one’s I knew. Maybe in a small town, but how would I get there? I was already in such fucking debt that there was not way I could take a few days or weeks off and interview. Besides - I didn’t drive. How would I get around?

“Do you know where they keep the M.L.S.?”

She must have been nineteen. Soft brown wavy hair and a lisp of a body. A plain face, but when she asked her question, she ended it in a smile and I was shaken. Beautiful. A face I could fall in love with, a face that would never lose its warmth, its compassion, its joy.

We talked for a bit and I helped her look up whatever irrelevant fact she needed. I once had the same professor - one of the old-school guys who you pictured wearing tweeds even though they never did. He probably never touched a computer or lived outside of academia, but I confess - I envied him.

Leaning over her, breathing in her scent mixed with the dust of a thousand pages, I longed for the moment to last forever. In my heart I knew I would never have a time like this again. One day I would find myself in an office, in a meeting, listening to things I didn’t care for, acting as if inconsequential acts were life inspiring. I would never again have the change to live among the Greats, to study knowledge eternal, and hope to one
day be a footnote in history. No. Never again.

She gave me her email address.

In me, within me, I swept up the corners of my mind and tossed my thoughts into the air where they made my heart to race and then come alive. If only I could write of the feelings I had at that moment, the joyful hopes that this hyperconsiousness felt. But nothing became of any of this. Old memories are all I have.

I never wrote to her, and if I did, she never replied

Context to come.  Some day.

It’s been years since I read this book and yet, oftentimes my mind floats back to it, to the following section in particular.

This was Hijelos’ first book, and of all of them I think it’s the one that rings the most true. His later books are certainly more lyrical and he has honed his skills well, but in this one we see a foreshadowing of themes Hijelos will revisit and expand upon.

Reading it now, it’s not how I recalled it, not how I’ve played it back countless times. I’ll try to capture the phantom of my memory:

Cubans were like that back then – New York was a different city. Spanish was still an exotic language, spoken only by busboys and laborers. Every Cuban who arrived came with an address, the name of a distant relative or friend. And they were always met with open arms, a hearty meal, and a sofa to sleep on. Nothing was asked in return. No one was ever turned away. You came to the United States to work, to better yourself, or to reclaim the glory you once held before the Bastard took over. You worked and took care of your own and of others. To ask for welfare, for help, when there were good jobs to be found – cleaning offices, washing dishes, packing groceries – would be shameful. What did it matter that you held a university degree or used to own property. You spoke a different tongue, ate different foods, looked different, and raised your children differently.

“If it wasn’t for you, Cousin, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Alejo wiped his lips on an A&P paper towel. “It was nothing, Pedro. You would do the same for me.”

“Still, to put us up for months until I found a job. Maria and I will never forget it. One day we will pay you back. You will see.”

“Pedro – your friendship is all I ask.”

“Nonsense. You will see. I’m only making seven thousand dollars at the airport, but one day, if I work hard enough, I will repay you.”

Alejo smiled and shook his head, but inside he was dying. He felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach, and for a moment the room blacked out. Seven thousand dollars. After twenty years in the same job he did not make that much.

- William