*a repost from a time I can’t seem to forget

This morning, the highway was filled with a multitude of disembodied headlights, each one searching through a seemingly inexhaustible mist, an optical illusion a bit tough to handle at 6AM when you’re still sleeping.
I made it onto the train and stared out the window at the relentless sheets of rain.
The dark and rainy skies made me think of a night many years ago when I went to my parent’s house after a slew of frantic phone calls from my mother.
She would freak out on a fairly regular basis back then.
At the time, she was in the late beginning stages of Alzheimer’s and I was still in total denial.
I pulled into the driveway and saw her silhouette standing in the open doorway.
I remember thinking she looked peaceful standing there
and not the frantic woman I’d just spoken to on the phone.

I called her name.

“Mom?”

No response.
As I walked up the stairs, I could see her staring off into the distance, detached and trance-like.
I stood next to her to try and see what she was looking at when she said,
“Look. There’s million’s of them.”

“Millions of what, Mom?” I asked.

“Stars,” she said, “Can’t you see them?”

In the front yard there was an old oak tree, the leaves still dripping from the heavy rain.
Behind the oak, I could see the front porch light from the Jacobson’s house
up on the hill illuminating the thousands of falling raindrops.
Stars, I thought, it’s raining stars.
I took off my glasses to see the world, if only for a moment, through my mother’s eyes.
A simple oak tree was being transformed into an impressionistic masterpiece right in front of me, thanks to a few misfiring neurons located somewhere in my mother’s brain.

“It’s beautiful, Mom.” I said.

“Yes. It is…” She replied.

I didn’t realize it at the time but the raindrops falling from the tree closely echoed the neurological avenue my mother was currently traveling down.
The drops of rain falling and disappearing into the waiting earth were so much like her failing memory,
a collection of antiquated shooting stars ultimately destined to crash and burn, their celestial beauty gone all too soon.
As we stood silently on the porch, an internal cog clicked inside me.
It was a frightening moment of absolute realization.
My phase of denial had finally come to an end.

~m

Chill.
Grab a coffee, English Breakfast tea, Chai, cognac, scotch, bourbon, water and maybe a smoke,
all depending on where you are in the world of time zones.
Plug in some decent headphones and give yourself 7:40 minutes to just . . .
Chill.
This is ‘Both Sides Now’,  Herbie Hancock from River: The Joni Letters
Hancock is and has been a jazz piano God to me.
Forever.
And believe it or not he is 70 years old. (born in 1940)
At any rate, get a drink, perhaps a smoke and just
Chill.
for 7:40 . . .
Your brain will thank me.
This is musical/cerebral Zen at its finest.

I am all about the stars.
Just downloaded ‘Stellarium’ tonight.
Had to share.
Even the desktop icon is cool for this program.
If you like stars and the night sky this program is nuckin’ futs.
It’s a big file (@40megs) but totally worth it.
I’ve been trolling the sky for the past half hour.
Click on the picture above and enjoy.
Any guesses as to the constellation up there?
(Moe, don’t bother)

Enjoy . . .

Fred Armisen can out-Barack, Barack.
I thought this was actually quite funny considering Obama is a bigger rock star
than the pretentious Bono of U2 will ever be.
Short clip but funny as all hell.
Yes, Obama is the quintessential King of Cool.
The jury is out as to whether that’s actually cool or not . . .
Hit me up a year from today.

Did anyone see this coming?
Poor Manny.
Oh, shit, I mean, rich Manny.
I’m struggling to pay my mortgage and this lying asswipe is making how much a year?
I’m going to bed.
Maybe I should look into some hypodermic needles.
Or not . . .

I began reading the new Natalie Goldberg book  ‘Old Friend from Far Away’ a few days ago.
It’s a book custom-tailored for writers of memoir.
So far the book is quite good (like all of her books).
Page 14 has a prompt that I’ve decided to turn into a post.
The chapter is quite short:

“Die”
Tell me what you will miss when you die.

When I die there will be many things that I will miss.
This list went on for quite a few pages but I’ve chosen an abbreviated version for your perusal.
If I included food you’d be here for a few days.
I mostly chose things from the category ‘matters of the heart’.
Feel free to steal this as a ‘meme’.
For you writers visiting, it’s a wonderful exercise. Do it.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a writer, it’s worth your time.
You can look at some of the things that really make your life worthwhile.
Here I go.

I will miss:

-Whispers in the dark
-Pamela’s eyes, voice, face and beautiful soul
-hearing the phrase, “I love you, Daddy,” whispered in my ear
-my three beautiful girls
-the sound of little footsteps coming down the stairs on Christmas morning
-my sister, my twin, the other part of my very soul
-Caitlin’s smile
-Ryan’s loveable way (and awesome jumpshot)
-Billy’s laugh
-All the people I truly love (if I’ve talked to you in the past year, consider yourself on this list)
-a warm and gentle rain
-the silent beauty of falling snow (yeah, I wrote that)
-the sound of surf at the Cape
-the smell of freshly cut grass in late spring
-stars (especially the constellation Orion, someday possibly the Southern Cross)
-my cats purring
-Cuban cigars
-Guinness (or any fairly decent dark beer like Porter or Stout)
-Makers’ Mark
-writing with a nice fountain pen on some fine quality paper
-the feeling of creating
-entering ‘the Zone’  (artists of all kinds know about this one)
-music (playing and listening)
-my piano
-weekend phone calls to a country far, far away with two incredibly special people
-memories of the Camp
-Bermuda
-the aroma of an apple pie baked by my grandmother from summer’s long ago
-Blue Cheese
-Bill Hicks, Denis Leary, Sam Kinnison, George Carlin, Lewis Black and Dave Chapelle
-sunsets
-reading
-most importantly, my blog

And yes, I will dearly miss sex and exceptional breasts.
I’m not a freak.
Truthfully, what will you miss?

The first guitar I ever received was in 1964.
It was Christmas and I was five years old.
It was one of those Roy Rogers guitars made out of some unknown kind of wood with shitty nylon strings.
It came with a rope strap as well which gave me some pretty serious neck burns after wearing the guitar for more than 5 minutes and trying to act like Elvis Presley.
The guitar itself didn’t last very long though because supposedly they don’t like being stepped on or dropped.
I ended up doing one or the other. Ooops.
I destroyed the thing.
I‘m thinking it must have sounded like crap even though I didn‘t even play guitar back then.
It was six or seven years later that a song on the radio would ultimately change my pre-pubescent musical life.
I can remember the first time I heard, Vincent, by Don McLean and how I heard every single note he played on his guitar.
I was going to teach myself how to play that song no matter how hard I tried.
Problem was, I had no guitar.
The internet now has webpages of the actual tablature. Click here.
But Sears & Roebucks sold guitars at the time (a scary proposition, knowing what I know now) and had one for 30 bucks, and I loved everything about it . . .  well, from what I could see in the catalog anyway.
It looked just like the guitar that McLean actually played (in my mind) though it wasn’t even close.
Sometimes if you wish hard enough the universe co-operates.
And co-operate it did.
New England was covered in 8″ of snow the very next morning and I had no school.
I put on my snow boots, grabbed a shovel and entered the working world of shoveling driveways.
Jesus Krispies, it was hard work.
Shoveling driveways didn’t pay too well either, maybe four or five bucks per.
Looking back on it, I should have made more, for cripes sake.
Maybe the neighbors were just cheap bastards, I don’t know.
I shoveled all morning and went home at noon to eat lunch before heading back out for the afternoon.
By the time the sun was dripping into the lavender and salmon horizon, I trudged back home, physically and mentally beat.
It felt like I’d shoveled 500 driveways when in reality I probably shoveled 6.
I sat in the dining room and counted my money.

“27 bucks?”  I muttered.

I hung my head in disgust and sheer exhaustion.
My shoulders hurt.
And my feet were wet.
I hate wet feet.

“That’s great, Michael! How much is the guitar?” My mother asked.

“Thirty, I’m almost there,” I said, still pissed.

A few days later she took me to Sears & Roebucks and paid the balance I couldn’t afford.
The one thing I’ll always remember about my mother was her uncanny understanding of my intense love for music.
Little did she know she’d lit a fire that still glows, though not as brightly as when I was 13, but it’s still there burning inside me.
Her lasting gift to me, perhaps.
If you’re curious, I did learn Vincent, note by blessed note and can still play it to this day.
I went through two 45′s to learn it but it’s amazing how much it taught my ears.
Maybe it’s not so ironic why the starry, starry night sky reminds me so much of my mother.
And sorry about the mishap with my Roy Rogers guitar, Mom.
I really didn’t mean to do it . . .

*On a more personal note, while writing this story, I was trying hard to think of what brand the guitar was and as I listened to my Ipod Nano (thanks, M) ‘Harmony’ by Elton John came on.
Everything clicked.
The guitar I got was a ‘Harmony’.
Truth.
Roy Rogers is riding tonight . . .

No one knows what it’s like,
maybe even him
the days are like carbon copies of days gone by, yesterdays passed;
more of the same, the blooming of a thousand shades of grey
And life is grey; maybe it’s the only shade he knows . . .

No one knows what it’s like
maybe even me
as I take in his awkward smiles, I wonder just who they’re really meant for
Does he miss her?
Yes, he does, and he tells me so, in sotto voce syllables
I’m still unsure of what I must believe and choose to believe in him because
what’s left is all I have to believe in

No one knows what it’s like
Perhaps, God does, but He is forgetful too;
like the saving grace of His mercy, of dignity and compassion,
the sadness of detail, the complexity of why
And He cries,
for all fathers present and past, but maybe for a world He ultimately created
in love . . .

My father knows what it’s like
when it’s time for me to leave and
long forgotten tears of understanding reach his tired eyes,
tears I can no longer wipe away
because unlike him,
I already know what it’s like to say goodbye
And I do . . .

I’ve been thinking lately about how disconnected I feel regarding my father.
He’s been in limbo for so long now that I almost forget how to love the man.
I write this knowing full well I run the risk of sounding cold and emotionally apathetic, which I am definitely not.
But how do you find a way to love someone that for all intents and purposes is no longer there?
I care for him, God, I do and will forever remain his most vocal of advocates to ensure he’s treated with the utmost respect and compassion.
I owe him that and so much more.
Three years ago, I would have had a very hard time letting him go.
Today, I’m not so sure.
I want this thing to be over with for him, maybe for my sister and me too.
I want him to ‘get there’.
I want him to feel peace, not chaos; sunlight, not rain; happiness not despair; warmth and not apathy.
Anymore.
It makes me sad to write these words but I mean them in the best and most tender way possible.
These thoughts are always hanging off the edge of some deep and internal precipice of mine, wanting to fall off into some godforsaken abyss and be gone.
But somehow, they remain.
Until now, perhaps.
Maybe I’m writing these words in the hopes that they remove the chains that keep me from getting as close to him as I feel I need to be, loving him deep within my heart and not just on the pages of Smoke and Mirrors.
I waited on an older gentleman the other day that reminded me of my father some ten years ago.
He wanted to buy some cigars for his son who was celebrating his 30th birthday.
I wanted to tell him how lucky he was, how fortunate his son was that his father was still in good health, how life can change in the blink of an eye.
Giving advice on life to a man that could have been my father just didn’t make any logical sense to me.
It’s almost tragic how many things there are in my life that I no longer take for granted these days.
Like someone I love remembering my birthday.
Yeah, in a perfect world . . .
This isn’t a ‘poor me’ scenario because I honestly don’t feel that way at all.
I just wanted to let someone know just how precious certain moments really are.
I didn’t do that.
And the days go by . . . .

I’m a bad Santa, a Grinch and yuletide curmudgeon of the highest order and I admit it.
Just the thought of this most blatantly commercial and candy-cane-twisted holiday sends me running for my dimly lit cave high on Mount Crumpit.
I’ll level with you and say that in my icy-cold heart I will always harbour a love
for the Christmas holiday with its ‘peace on earth, goodwill toward men’ mentality
but jeepers creepers how many lameass Mercedes Benz commercials can these ding-a-lings make?
Even if I had the dough I would never put a giant red bow on an SL550 and give it as a present.
You gotta be one hell of a pretentious douchebag to pull that one off.
I hardly ever watch TV and at this time of the year, even more so.
Television is where your radar picks up on all the subliminal horseshit this holiday has sadly come to represent.
Every year I try and trick myself into believing that I still hold close the personal ties of holidays past.
I’d be better off sticking my head into a steaming pile of reindeer shit.
Working retail does little but mar and mutilate a spirit that’s sadly on the ropes anyway.
I don’t hear the silver bells and I can’t see the blinking colored lights (unless they’re from a cruiser pulling me over for a busted taillight, Merry Christmas, ossifer)
Maybe it’s a psychological omission on my part, a defense mechanism to keep me from losing my plate of milk and cookies.
I should have dumped this post to Crumpit when I had the chance but I also felt it was only fair to explain my ‘month of December’ frosty sense of discontent.
If you visit here around the holidays you’ll notice that Mick gets very quiet.
I choose to leave my thoughts in a quiet place where silent snow falls, stars twinkle and the moon is always full.
It’s only in this blue crystal space that I build my sky-high snow forts of thought, ideas dripping like icicles in my frozen castle of winter words.
Maybe this will be the year that I somehow find a way to melt the walls of snow I’ve piled high, my vast emotional fortress of sorts.
Maybe this will be the time I find the absolute truth that lives peacefully inside a holiday I can honestly say I miss.
Then reality taps me on the shoulder and says, “Read This, Grinch.”
Yeah, we’re off to a brilliant start.
And people wonder why I despise this holiday and what it currently represents.
God help us, everyone.
I’m going back to my dimly lit cave, thank you very much . . .