IT WAS ME by Sarvananda Bluestone

There was something about Zack. I couldn’t be sure what it was. There was something about Zack that drew me to him like a magnet. He was a chubby nine year old. One of the youngest kids in camp. But age never meant that much to me. That’s why I go there. To forget age.

“You don’t have much to worry about the cold, Donny. You’re well insulated.” Leon said that. I don’t remember why but I do remember that it didn’t bother me. He wasn’t saying that I was fat. I wasn’t. I was just chubby. Funny thing was that nothing Leon said bothered me. I knew that he would never ever say anything to hurt me. Although he might say something I wish he wouldn’t say. Still. I was nine and I loved running around. I always ran around. Never seemed to walk. Seemed like such a waste of time walking when you could run. So many places to get to. So many places to get to fast and then move on. And the funny thing about Journey’s End Farm was that the journey never seemed to end.

Years later, with my wife Heather, I visited Doris at the Bruderhof. She and Bud had been there forever. They had been there in Paraguay. They had been there in Rifton. They had gone there right after Journey’s End. Doris was one of the two daughters of Edith and Leon. Bud was her husband and my counselor.

“What was he like?” Heather asked. She always seemed to be interested in my childhood. I didn’t mind.

Doris looked at me and smiled. She wasn’t much for words. Neither was Leon, who she took after. She was sewing something I think. She turned to Heather and said, “I never knew what he was up to. He always seemed to have a smile on his face like the cat, you know.”

I snuck around this summer with the digital Nikon that my son in law had given me or the little digital Leica that I cherished. I captured the kids and staff when they least expected it. I could see how many indigenous people saw the camera as stealing your soul. I just borrowed them this summer.

Zack was sitting at the picnic table, writing something. He was bent over the paper almost resting his head on the table. He had a smile on his face. There was something inside that brought that smile. With a click of the Leica I caught that smile. I caught it forever. There was something about it that intrigued me beyond understanding. There was that chubby, nine year old boy with the thick dark hair and dark brown eyes smiling to himself and it echoed inside of me.

The first time we went to the beach I sat on the bus with the youngest kids. Zack was interested in Reiki. Somehow he had found that I did Reiki and wanted to know all about it. His curiosity and impatience were wedded to a staccato dialogue that might have disconcerted some folks. For me, it was just communicating. It was like running. Why talk slowly when there is so much to say? I explained all I could in half an hour and he wanted to practice immediately.

“Teach me all you know,” he said.

“We’ll take it one step at a time,” I said.

After a few basic sessions during free time, the fields beckoned, the pool called and enough was enough.

Leon tried to explain the name of every plant we saw in the woods or on the road. I was only interested in the ones that I could eat. Leon knew a lot about a lot and sometimes I would listen and sometimes I would get bored. I was more interested in people. Even at the circus Ma used to get frustrated because I would pay more attention to the people at the show than the show. Once, when I was four, or maybe five, I tried pulling on the tufts of hair in the ears of a sailor sitting in front of me. He didn’t like it at all.

“My father cheated on my mother,” Zack told me at lunch one day, “and they almost got divorced. But he’s being faithful now.” I didn’t blink an eye at that one. We had definitely opened communication. I listened when he talked and he listened when I talked. Good basis.

His mother was a psychiatrist. His father was an eye, nose and throat specialist. Two M.D.’s for parents. That’s how I started out but the parallel there would be too facile. Ma was not a psychiatrist but she might as well have been. She would have told me anything that was going on. Except that my father was dying, of course.

“Why do you collect things so much?” my babysitter asked me when I was nine.

“Gesell says that it’s a stage I’m going through,” I said. Ma got a laugh out of that one when the babysitter told her. I didn’t know why, but always appreciated a good laugh.

“My mom was the only child that her grandfather loved. He didn’t love people very much,” Zack said at dinner once.

There was just about nothing that Zack could say that would disconcert me. It was eerie because even though I love hanging out with the kids, sometimes I am aware that I am being a patient adult.

“Donny’s asleep again.” It must have been Bob. I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming. But I never made it through more than the first few words of the story that Dick Abel, our counselor told. He had great stories, all from his life, from smoke jumper, to insane asylum attendant. The polio that paralyzed him from the waist down was never one of his stories. It didn’t have to be. But I never heard the stories beyond the first few words.

That second trip to the beach, Zack crashed out on the seat in front. He just fell out asleep and all of the loud chatter of the kids and the rattling of the bus did nothing to stir him. When I told a story to that bunk—a good story that had all the rest of the boys on the edge of their beds—Zack was out from the beginning. “He always does that,” one of the three Joshes said.

Then, at lunch one day, I looked at Zack who was sitting at a neighboring table. There was a glint in his eye. There was a familiar crazy glint in his eye. I didn’t know what it was and suddenly knew exactly what it was.

I raced to my room and pulled up a picture of myself when I was six. It was one of those portraits that Grandma and Grandpa Werner would drag me to get every time they came over from Scotland. I had seen that picture forever, but a few years ago I noticed that there was a crazy glint in my eyes.

I printed the picture out and showed it to Sharon, one of the nurses. I didn’t say a word. Just showed her the picture.

I heard a slight intake of breath before she asked, “is that Zack?”

No, I answered. It was me.


AUTHOR BIO:

Known to his friends as "Sarv," Dr. Sarvananda Bluestone has been a professor of American History and an orange-clad seeker. He is currently writing his "Memoirs of a Borscht Belt Psychic," writes haiku every day, is an outstanding baker, theater director, gemstone afficionado and lover of music and literature.

You can read more of his writing at:

http://www.sarvananda.blogspot.com
http://www.haikutoyou.blogspot.com
http://www.apieceofmymind-sarv.blogspot.com

A PERIOD OF PROMISE by Lloyd Price

Parties, winnings, gifts, birthdays, Christmas, a dance, a trip to the country, a school outing, a smile, genuine laughter, finding something valuable, Mother feeling happy, the family sitting for at least two seconds with everyone laughing, all constitute a period of promise. My period of promise.

And then it happens and the moment comes and the moment goes so fast. Was it real or was it just a passing glimpse? For this period never last for quite too long. Before you know it, it’s all back to gloom and doom. Frustration, anger, hurt feelings, anticipations, violence, greed, fight, food, and solitude. All morphed into inconsistency.

So, I keep rolling the dice and once in a while I may come up with sixes, but I keep rolling, yet some more and more and it never seems that I’m ever able to win at this game. A pause and Oops, the light is on again. A glimmer of hope, I dance for a day, a night, into the dawn. Oops, it’s gone again. Darnn, never consistent it seems.

And then you wonder, I wonder if it would ever change from a second to a period to a very long period. And then the promise, like the joy that is felt at the Ball, the dance, the Christmas gifts, the birthday gifts and the thought of a very long vacation, that this time it may, hopefully, convert into something concrete, something tangible, the Promise.

Oh, to be bought up on an empty promise is in my words is to breathe contempt. I said that? Yes, I said that. So happy moments like the Ball, the dance, Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, that thought of a very long, long vacation is over as soon the gifts are unwrapped, Christmas is come and gone, another year you’re older, the Ball is finished, the clock struck twelve, Cinderella has turned back into a Slave. The period of promise has already passed. Until the next Ball, the dance, the Christmas and birthday gifts, the thought or plans for a very, very long vacation. Mother just smiled, a chance at last.

***

AUTHOR BIO:

Lloyd is an actor, director and a writer for life. Originally from Belize, he has written several one-act plays that have been performed at The Common Basis Theatre and other venues. He is currently working on a new play.

AWAITING MY RETURN by Naheed Elyasi

Twenty five years have passed since I left my home.

Twenty five years since I belonged somewhere.

Twenty five years of being a chameleon; a nigger, a chink, a terrorist.

Being rich, being dirt poor.

I don’t fit in with my own people.

I am too American they say – too wild, a bad girl, disobedient.

I question, I have my own mind.

I don’t fit in with Americans either.

I am exotic.

I am foreign; it’s in my face, in my voice, in my accent, in my hair.

I don’t know who I am or who I should be.

I don’t want others to define me.

Why is that? Why is it that everyone is out for my soul, my identity?

I don’t have anything, yet I feel them wanting to take something away from me –

My spirit! They want to break me.

I will not be a nigger.

I will not be a chink, a terrorist or exotic feast for the white man.

I will be me; confused, lost, searching.

A part of me died in that journey.

The void has only gotten deeper.

I’ve often thought of going back, but fear keeps me paralyzed.

What if I don’t fit in? What if no one understands me? What if my void becomes more vast and endless?

These thoughts run amuck, keeping me paralyzed and stuck in awaiting my return to myself.

***

AUTHOR BIO: Naheed Elyasi and her family fled Afghanistan after the Russian invasion and lived in Pakistan for one year. At the age of nine she came to the United States and grew up in North Carolina. She holds a degree in Communications and Fashion Design and currently works in Manhattan in Public Relations.

IT'S ALL OVER NOW by Bobby LaBonza

The Deerhead Bar and Grill. There it stood in all its infamy, possibly a bucket of blood? Or a gin mill? Or quite possibly a den of iniquity. Nah, just a friggen bar on the corner. But oh what a joint it was. I say “was” only because it exists in the minds of its former (dead and alive) patrons of fun, frolic and, very often, a fine and prolific bout of fisticuffs.

Location, location. Two entrances, one on Fort Hamilton Parkway, another on 69th St. Two bus stops where thirsty travelers, off-duty cops, bookies and peddlers of all sorts of fine and fancy jewelry could rub elbows, and exchange fabricated tidbits of the most absolute glorious bullshit to walk the ever-lovin’ street.

I couldn’t wait til I was eighteen -- draft card in hand -- to order my first beer. August of 1964, I had a single dollar in my mitts. At 10 cents a draft – Piels -- I could have ten. Then walk back to my house and revel in glory.

The owner, an old bald man – Sam, he was – tended his throne with a white apron tied loosely on his belly, drooping cigar dangling from his mouth like it should only be there or you wouldn’t recognize him. He never bought back a beer because the price was so low. He was way ahead of his time. Sam knew he owned a gold mine. So much so that at 6pm he just went home and whoever was the most sober regular could tend the night shift.

Sammy had the daytime bar monopoly on The Parkway, hands down. At 9am every stool had an ass sitting on it – old retired longshoremen, ex-cops, night workers -- and me and Clancy couldn’t wait til we were eighteen just to get that first cold one.

Clancy turned eighteen in January and every now and then he’d slip me a glass out of the side door, juke box blasting. COME ON AUGUST!!! Sam had all of his bottles upside down, screwed onto meters. So he’d take inventory, untie the apron and leave the place in the hands of --? Well, it coulda been Frank Clancy, Pete Sullivan or whoever. At 10 cents a glass for beer, Sam just didn’t care if a mistake or two never made it to the cash register.

I do recall that there was a sign behind the bar, advertising that shots of whisky – Carstairs and Wilson, all old labels of rye – could be had for 45 cents a shot. A dollar could get me two shots of rye and a Piels to wash them down.

There really was a mounted deer head up on that old faded wall over the mirror, and more than once an off-duty, well juiced cop would put a 38 slug into it for fun. Many a day I spent there – and a few nights too. Actually my last beer there before I went into the army in June of ’66, and my first beer of 1969 in America there when I returned to THE BLOCK. Lucky for me, no bullet holes in my head.

***

AUTHOR BIO: Bob LaBonza is a child of Brooklyn who survived Viet Nam. For twenty years he was a bartender in big Catskills hotels and raised two beautiful daughters. He lives now in the Hudson Valley and likes a good cigar.

TIMEX by Billy Herman

When the Mets lost at 11:30 I looked at my watch and it said 9:30 and I thought who cares? Who cares about me? Certainly no one evil. No one with bad intentions. Not one who has singled me out with special interest.

I used to have a green Timex I was very fond of. It matched the blue shirt I was very fond of, and both items matched the woman I was thrilled by.

The green watch first broke and then was lost, the shirt got old and was given away to our family friend Leon Scutt, and the woman never took my infatuation seriously so I let her slide.

The power of letting go is called sanity, and it is not to be confused with apathy. Apathy is when you can’t keep up with all the things you care about so you just give up. Like if I cared about the watch, the shirt, and that woman so much that I stopped tying my shoes.

The first two things to maintain are your mind and your body. The old composition of particular watch, shirt, and woman had its time and that time has passed, no matter what time my watch says.

And I’ve reached the point where I don’t doubt my mind. The infatuation was a fine length and a wonderful power struggle between obsession and freedom.


AUTHOR BIO:

A long-time member of the Authentic Writing workshops, Billy Herman has a degree in English Literature from Bard College and wrote the detective comedy novel “Joe Poughkeepsie” in 1994, published by the Gortday Review, a San Francisco zine. Billy dances -- swing, zydeco and salsa -- interprets the blues on piano and has acted in short films by NYU grad school film majors including Don’t Turn To Sports for Warmth by Brian Loatnan.

IT'S ALL OVER by Judy Benatar

I bit into a crisp, sweet cherry and walked out into the woods with the dogs, grateful anew for the sanctuary of that park-like piece of ground, the comfort of its ancient boulders and perpetual spring that never freezes in winter and is never less than full, even in times of drought.

Henry found this place - our old, modest, sturdy house that dates back to 1905. It would only be later, when we began to truly appreciate where we were, that we bought the extra land behind the house to keep it safe and protect our privacy - even then not fully comprehending that we had assumed guardianship for what many Native Americans (and two coincidental visiting Chinese masters of chi) would immediately recognize as sacred space.

For me, that recognition would come much later, when things went dark, and I felt like my essence was about to dissolve, sensed my very cells vibrating with the effort to remain coherent and connected, and it really did seem that all was over. Only then would I learn about the sanctity of that space. It healed me, at first outside of my conscious awareness; then, with glimmers here and there and more willing participation.

Now, almost a decade beyond that trauma, that pile of evil ashes, I look back at that time and what has transpired since then - and in spite of the grime and guts of events I would have said I would never survive if I’d seen them coming, I find that the mystery has deepened and grown more compelling – and now I’m not sure I believe that all is ever over. There are endings, for sure, pain, loss, death - but there is also change and transformation, even at those times when I am narrowed and dulled and blind to the shifts in the wind and the rearrangement in atoms.

Henry got up out of a sick bed, with a fever of 102, to find this place. He called me where I was working in the Manhattan and said, “I’m going to find a motel and get some sleep. Do you think you can drive up and meet me here? – I think it’s pretty special.”

In November of 1976, we moved in and sat on a comfortable, dilapidated sofa the previous owner had left behind, watching the stars through the sliding glass doors, while we, in turn, were watched by at least a dozen voyeuristic raccoons, drawn by new activity in the vacant house. There were two or three masked faces pressed against every window and door in the long, empty room.

Our daughter, Anna, was born in October of the following year. I felt her moving inside me, as I climbed along a path my woodsman neighbor, Bob, had mowed through his soft, mountain meadow. When she was old enough to laugh with delight, he took her for rides on his tractor, holding her safe against his faded work clothes with one calloused hand, while the other steered the machine, his gaze closer and more of this earth than haunted by the faraway look he usually wore when resting on the hoe he used every day to keep the ditches clear in our long, shared driveway.

It was a gift, a blessing, to know him, tough, grizzled, irreverent, often foul-mouthed, eagle-eyed, and humbled by the wisdom he had gathered through his pores in the passing of seventy-odd years. He got out of his truck in a blizzard, where we’d been stuck for an hour on a steep incline, lay on his back in the snow and ice, and hooked up the ill-fitting chains on our car to work well enough to get us up the mountain to our house, next door to his through some trees. He brushed aside our thanks, but came in for a whiskey, before heading home. He might well have saved our lives that day, since traffic on the mountain is sparse, even in better weather. As he left to head home, Bob tipped his hat to me and said to Henry, who had been fumbling at the fireplace to make him feel welcome, “Next time I might stop by and show you how to make a fuckin’ fire. You sure won’t get one started the way you’re goin.’ Ain’t easy moving from the city to the sticks.”

Bob died before Anna reached three, leaving me bereft and struggling to explain to a toddler what that meant. I didn’t know.

We would go through more deaths in our lives on the mountain, each of them a blow, and then Anna and I would watch Henry tumble into an inner hell that would eventually threaten even our physical safety. Towards the end of that time, I had to ask him to leave the house. The three of us loved each other, but in the long run, it wasn’t enough to buoy or distract him from the pit that swallowed him up. When he died, that was one of the times when I thought it must be all over, but I was still in a place, where I was mistaking the part for the whole. I think that’s a common thing to do, part of the human condition.

Each time I venture into the woods, the whole is there to consider in the comfort of those huge stones, the oak that resembles a sea fan, the small green frog that stares up at me from a spring that is always full and never freezes. It will be my birthday in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll sit out there with this bittersweet ache and act like I belong, even though it’s clear I’m just passing through.

AUTHOR BIO:
Judy Benetar was a practicing psychiatrist for many years, specializing in the treatment of traumatic abuse. She now lives with three dogs and a cat on a windswept mountain, does Tai Chi, and enjoys the wildlife, the weeds and all shifts in the weather.

REMNANTS RECOVERED, TRACES RESTORED (for Jasvinder) by Julia Lynn Butterfield

Yesterday I came across your Spanish book fallen behind a shelf, the one you’d nicked from the Jawaharlal Nehru University Library in Delhi, and left with me in London before heading off to El Salvador. Inside were some folded crib notes, written in your beautiful scrawled hand—so familiar to me, yet exotic looking, like Farsi or Urdu—speaking decades later of your optimism, passion, and sense of militant dedication. I couldn’t bear to look at it at first; I re-closed the book with its alluring promise: “Essentials of Mastery.” It felt like a time capsule. I wiped it gently with a soft cloth and left it on the blue kitchen chair.

I often think of the bent brown book of Neruda’s memoirs you gave me when we first met, and wish I could put my hands on that. But that one was left behind accidentally in Calcutta and could never be recovered.

I’m curious about this recent impulse of mine, to recover the traces of you, to think about what my longing for you interrupted and impeded, yet at the same time set in motion—Manuel in San Francisco, Carlos Sarandeses in northern Spain—and now I’ve had the option to check back in with both. But our young love is unmatchable…

***


AUTHOR BIO: Originally from California, Julia Butterfield grew up surrounded by art worlds--high and low, local and international. She went on to live, study and do field work as an anthropologist across Europe and in India. Now director of a college writing center in Manhattan, Julia lives in Brooklyn and takes passionate advantage of all the film and art the city has to offer. She writes of romance and tragedy, of everyday events and more exotic ones.