Follow12 days ago spent 6 hours 44 minutes in a mammography office. well documented. life changing experience. promise to notice life’s details; a tree not blowing in the wind. sadness. a painting. a book with ailing binding(are there binding repair specialists?) unique grains of sand. ships sailing on horizon heading right to left. turpentine on shelves. words before you can’t catch them. balloons escaping a backyard party. a glance. a smile. a blink becoming a wink. 5 years after a headline.
asbury park on saturday august 21st. clearwater environmental folk festival. i remember years ago at sandy hook; seemed many thousands roamed. saw tom paxton carrying a guitar. it felt like 1969. i like that feeling. this sunday i parked 1/2 block from festival on main street. a red flag? i stepped into a new world(without christopher columbus) of new jersey environmental awareness. not enough people to make vendors smile. new jersey’s newspaper selling subscriptions. an exuberant man with electric car. under the hood was just a big battery(no oil dip stick), gets 100 miles to charge. i asked a question: what if you drive 53 miles from home? saw people with tatoos and gray hair. a family with 2 little kids playing on the grass listening to singers of folk, parents leaning on elbows on blanket. a ninety year old woman sold me a booklet on after effects of war and pollution. i paid the asking price: $1.00. a food court with aromas of beef kebab cooking on charcoal. no vegetables anywhere for me. frying french fries. bottled water. canned soda. friends from the new jersey environmental federation; wonderful seeing meaningful friends. i’ve lived in jersey decades. no one i know was at festival; a small park bordering a small lake. a breeze from north dakota made me smile. still so few people. not enough time and people. can you tell me there’s still time brother. or brother can you spare a dime. i was waiting for someone to ask that. i was comfortable with my age. a few college tee shirts. i wanted back to summer 1968 chicago cursing mayor daley’s use of cops and force amidst democrats inability to platform and identify. i wanted to be there. i wanted to be in washington on august 28, 1963. and woodstock. a life of wanting to be. a life of learning now just to do. there were a few poignant singers with idyllic voices. notably emily wherever i may find her again. closed my eyes. she was tracy chapman. there should’ve been thousands listening, not dozens. alas i saw one flower child imported from napa valley or sedona, barefoot contessa, bracelets, wide-eyed ideals. all said, not enough to get me back home. a congressman sat down next to me to listen to a round table on environmental justice. a few teens from local schools asked questions. a few learned people from newark who know all about environmental justice. a politician’s response was worth the trip as donuts say. he identifies and feels the words but votes with the big polluters of the world who finance him not middle school kids and people who live in linden, new jersey, with high asthma and soon a coal burning plant. money talks. i had enough listening to lonely words. i walked(to my car which was so close)
a few days later last friday, a friend took me to see the jets versus redskins in new meadowlands stadium. we sat near the field and nearly bumped into woody johnson(sharp green tie) who owns the jets. i smiled; used to be the pharmacist for some johnson in princeton a long time ago when calvin coolidge preached about persistence and success. i stared and stood for 20 minutes at the enormity of it all as stadium filled with green. before hand we went to jets boutique store. a simple jets cap was $35. jerseys in jersey jets green averaged $125. the stadium filled. since i notice detail now, i noticed demographics. i felt insignificant. i thought about environmental justice and building an incinerator in newark, just down the road. i wondered as i watched the kickoff clock tick down, why they never built an incinerator in short hills or livingston. i wondered why they want to build a coal firing plant in linden and not rumson where the old owner(leon) of the jets used to live. linden and rumson are both close to ocean and railroad tracks. i wondered about the demographics of the fans and thought about the song ‘blowing in the wind’ and how long and far that dove has to sail before there is environmental justice with incinerators and football fans. i kept looking around. the game started. i felt deja-vu. i was in a roman coliseum. the vastness, depth, breadth of football, so inculcated. i’m so small. i thought about the movie, ‘rollerball.’ i wondered how it’d feel if i were character ‘jonathan e’ and feel celebrity and power. i exhaled and inhaled. look where i was; in the capital building of energy and emotion. everyone was wearing a $125 jersey. i was in jersey and there’s no place like home, thinking auntie em.
on saturday sitting on the beach then on my jetty thinking about the horizon, raising my son strong and straight, sincere and sympathetic; knowing i did good. noticed the sky was serenely blue. no humidity. seagulls named jonathan flew nearby. covered my head once. it was a close fly over. egrets and regrets. both with skinny legs. water was so warm. i thought a tropical system would have a field day carousing, strengthening and intensifying. how prophetic; soon hurricane earl. i marvel at the beauty of planet earth while sitting under a beach umbrella. the gentle ocean, white sand, smell of salt air. i marvel how i notice such detail now. the last thing on my mind about the day: a mother. a grandmother. a six year old little boy hugging his grandmother, then running off to buy a popsicle. he came back and offered his grandmother a lick. she held his face with two hands. i knew what she was thinking.