Vichy Water – Author's Blog Just another WordPress weblog

You must know I’m a spiritual guy by now. I walk around in a permanent state of déjà-vu because I spent too much time hanging around barefoot, the red vortex mountains in Sedona, Arizona; Google it; a definite side-effect. I’ve got this diary filled with strange unusual happenings, many since February 24, 2004. I’ll delve deeply into this spiritual journey in the novel I’m writing now; yup, a rarified commercial plug. So, this ‘strange’ theme in title; streams of consciousness made me do it. Last Friday, around 4:44 PM, it rained relentlessly like an old fashioned 1950’s thunderstorm. I was on my way to the movies; one of those multi personality places where they let you immerse your sodium (salt) enriched (poisoned) popcorn in fake atherosclerotic oily greasy butter by yourself, off to the side, so you don’t embarrass with viewable gluttony.

Did I read that a creative country singer uses that fake butter as fuel for his RV? That’s strange. Personally, I stopped the popcorn and butter shtick years ago; sometimes in a deep dreamy state, I hear the personification of the inner walls of my ‘leftist’ side arteries thanking me.  Subliminal: Somalia. But I was all psyched for a Friday night (before 5 PM) discounted movie. Remarkably the ‘Rains of Ranchipur'(great movie with Lana Turner and Richard Burton) stopped, the sky lightened, so we wouldn’t have to schlep umbrellas.

From a distance, I saw lines of people outside. No one waits for Friday 5 PM movies outside anymore since the opening of “The Ten Commandments.” We never made it out of the car. Two kids advised us that they were evacuating all the theatres due to bed-bug infestation. How are we ever going to the movies again? On the way home, dejected, brooding, silent, when prophetically, the rains returned. There were running streams of water, flooding many streets. As the car bumped up the driveway, the sun again shined brightly on my old Kentucky home (glad they changed the lyrics). With a violent kick, I dislodged my shoes and stood pondering; do I run barefoot into the streams of street rain run-off? Five minutes went by and I settled for a small puddle near the garage; a strange episode.

Two days later we were down the Jersey shore at my reserve clause jetty in Deal not Belmar. I sat for nearly an hour meditatively staring; lots of ships heading to Kilimanjaro. At a random moment, amazing singer Linda Chorney came on my i-pod (inhabited by mostly 60’s songs) singing ‘Mother Nature Symphony’ which ‘sends me.’ I looked down between the boulders; I was sitting mid-jetty, just beyond the latest tidal surges. I saw a small white object; a piece of adhesive tape lying in the sand between two boulders and I knew right away it’s a strange world. Three weeks earlier, I sat exactly on the same boulder. A small bandage I’ve been wearing on my index finger unraveled and I peeled a small strip off and dropped it.

Actually it bothered that I did that; not adhering to clean ocean’s mentality. But three weeks later with countless waves thrashing over my adhesive tape, it waited for me to pick it up and drop it in the proper receptacle; my disbelieving pocket. After I recovered my abandoned tape, a young foreign father with two small girls holding his hands, walked on the jetty. It was cute how they held him tightly. He lit a cigarette. I wasn’t his fan anymore. Soon his cigarette dropped between two boulders. I wanted to say something but the tape in my pocket rubbed against my thick skin.Strange on a few fronts; like why even bother blogging about it. I don’t know.

All of a sudden, its June 1976 and recently divorced Calvin is at Club Med in French Guadeloupe playing water polo in the warm Caribbean with notably, a couple of Montreal Canadiens (hockey), Rick Chartraw and Glen Goldup and Johnnie Carson’s son Ricky. If I had to pick my most prized possession, as many of you know I’m thoroughly modern Rutgers devoted, it would be my Rutgers graduation ring from 1969. I was proud of that red-stoned ring more than my two diplomas.

I was the goalie and the game got intense. Those hockey players roughed me up; I felt like Dave Schultz from the Philadelphia Flyers. My ring went flying off my finger. The game stopped and everyone looked for my rare and precious beautiful ring. It was gone for the ages; never replaced. At 4 AM that night, I slipped out of the disco and went back to the sea and looked. The waves were gentle but unyielding.

Now its 1999 and I’m selling eyeglasses all over New Jersey. One fine day, I come home to a phone call from Rutgers University advising me that someone from Paris, France wrote the alumni office a letter and since its written in French, they couldn’t read it, except for ‘Calvin Schwartz  Pharmacy Class of 1969.’ Would I like to come in and claim the letter? I did ask if Rutgers had a French department and also if the word ‘bebe’ (French for baby. I was being cute) was discernible. Long story short, someone found my ring in the ocean 23 years later, saw my name engraved on the backing and tracked me down at Rutgers. No, I never got the ring, even after help translating letters back and forth. The return of the ring was dove tailed to an extended all expense paid visit to New Jersey. Strange world.

 

Strange. This morning I read about a South Jersey politician who just resigned. After online sexting and photos brought down Congressman Anthony Weiner, how in the world could a Cumberland County freeholder send a nude self portrait over the internet? Hey, it’s 2011 and about 1.1 million Ford pickup trucks have been recalled due to defective gas tanks, which could fall off and burst into flames. I don’t get it. Technology and making things better? Strange. Hey, maybe in 100 years scientists will be able to duplicate our brain with a hypothetical super computer but the power consumption to do that would require one billion watts or the output of a nuclear power plant. Strange, the human brain, by contrast, uses just twenty watts.

On the health front and living to 150 years; another shtick of mine. A cinnamon compound may prevent Alzheimer’s. With an estimated one in eight Americans over the age of 65 afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease, and even with gains that extend the length of the average lifespan, the disease is projected to exert a major societal and economic burden in the coming years. Michael Ovadia, from Tel Aviv University and colleagues isolated CEppt, an extract found in cinnamon bark, and introduced the substance into the drinking water of mice that had been genetically altered to develop an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s disease. After four months, the researchers discovered that development of the disease had slowed remarkably and the animals’ activity levels and longevity were comparable to that of healthy counterparts. The extract inhibited the formation of toxic amyloid polypeptide which make up deposits of plaque found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. By the way, long before this, I’ve been using cinnamon powder on my cereal every morning. I read somewhere diabetes and cinnamon don’t get along, if you get my drift.

Alright. The much anticipated Vichy Water Blog comments on the debt crisis. Gosh, I hate politicians and politics and I knew all along it would be settled after playing chicken with a bus at a cliff while it rained all over us citizens, submerging our ankles and knees. And they kept telling us it wasn’t raining; both parties; but what about all our ankles? I see things sometimes; not overly premonitory but enough to be shaken and stirred. The late great planet earth, so these voyagers from the Millenium Falcon, texted back to the gang, “that it wasn’t a war or plague, it was what was beneath their hair and the air they breathed and beauty not the beast which did them in.” We just don’t get it. I know, why bother, live for today and never cross party lines. Strange, but years ago, actually right after I lost my ring in the ocean, I contemplated a political career. If ever a time, then it was a right time. Newly married, living in an apartment in Brooklyn on the fifth floor, five inches away from a local community hospital, I used to get bored with city life. One night around three AM, I opened our window and yelled into the ward five inches away, something about Miss Scarlet O’Hara and not being able to find the doctor. Ashamed at my juvenile behavior, the next night I strolled into a political party’s local Brooklyn office, offering my youthful, insincere exuberance.

Three months later, I was asked to run the campaign of a local politician running for state senate in New York. What did I know? They gave me an eight inch thick campaign manual and a promise to take me to Albany with a plethora of cushions for a long time.  My candidate was crude and rude and was called the ‘Rodney Dangerfield of Brooklyn politics.’ I love epiphanies. I got one two months into the lifeless campaign. That was the epiphany. I was a fall guy, out of the information loop, like Harry Truman during Roosevelt’s pursuit of the bomb. I bombed out and quit long before and closed that chapter of my life and never liked politicians since; but to think I could’ve been a contender on the waterfront.

Later tonight, I go to see Ray Kurzweil, the futurist, live on the big screen in a movie theatre. I know, but its two counties away from me. Report next week. Suddenly, I’m sitting on the brick stoop steps of my house in Newark. Strange. One of the gang has a portable radio and the ‘Danleers’ just came on to sing “One Summer Night.”

Danleers One Summer night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KVMsExZ7Ps

The bells of Good Humor ice cream grew stronger. I ran to my fiduciary mother for a dime for ‘Toasted Almond.’ The lone stick dangled from my mouth. I was a cowboy sitting around a camp fire. Harry Belafonte came on to sing ‘Jamaica Farewell.’ He was part of my life; that voice of caring and concern. He filled my senses which have lasted all this time. So I just listened to ‘Day O’ and ‘Shenandoah’ on this new music thing called ‘Spotify.’ And they still make ‘Good Humor’ Toasted Almond but strange, the car companies won’t allow me to order a roll-up non-electric window. And maybe one fine day I’ll catch Harry Belafonte in concert.

Finally. More strange. Through the power of synchronicity, magic and due diligence, I saw an ad for a reporter for OUR TOWN publications (now together with Bar Fly magazine) and nicely strangely, I’ll be covering Monmouth County for all events, music, art, sports and human interest. It’s what I do anyway. Life is strange. You hear it’s never too late. You read my ramblings on living to 150 years and I’m embarking on a new career almost half-way to that goal. Life is strange.

Here’s the Moody Blues singing ‘Isn’t Life Strange.

Moody Blues Isn’t Life Strange

Suddenly I think that after the next rainstorm, with streets swollen with run-off water, I’ll take my shoes off and splash carefree and barefoot and post a picture of me doing it. Then I think some of you might use ‘strange’ in a sentence.

PLEASE CHECK MY NEW LOOK WEBSITE:

http://vichywater.net

CONTACT INFO:

Facebook: Cal Schwartz

Twitter: Earthood

Email: earthood@gmail.com

BOOK TRAILER:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2ko9gcC_M

IN SEARCH OF ANOTHER BLOG: (outspoken, unique,  unbridled which means uninhibited)????

This is a link to said blog: 

http://lindachorney.wordpress.com/