New York Harbor,July13,,2011 photo by Ron Vazzano
Featuring...
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
Note: This MuseLetter was written and constructed before May 24th when the latest massacre took place. I’ve offered my perspective on this sort of thing before in a satirical piece six years ago, if anyone is curious (January 2016 A “Good Guy” Considers Getting an AK-47).
Smoking
I used to smoke. We all did. Or so it seemed. In actuality, it was "only" well over half the men, and over a third of the women. At its peak, collectively, 45% of the adult population. Who knows how many underaged teens were sneaking a puff? It cut across class lines. And even if you didn't partake of this addiction—and that's what it was as we came to learn—it still seemed to permeate every aspect of our lives. Smoke was in the air, no matter where.
I was reminded of this when I came across an excellent accessible poem last month by Faith Shearing, entitled Smoke (The Empty House, Word Press 2008). As with most poetry, it hints at something more. Here, a different time, a different place, a different America. The zeitgeist of the day.
SMOKE
It was everywhere in my childhood: in restaurants,
on buses or planes. The teacher’s lounge looked like
London under fog. My grandmother never stopped
smoking, and walking in her house was like diving
in a dark pond. Adults were dimly lit: they carried
matches in their pockets as if they might fire
to see. Cigarette machines inhaled quarters and
exhaled rectangles. Women had their own brands,
long and thin; one was named Eve and it was meant
to be smoked in a garden thick with summer flowers.
I'm speaking of moods an old country store where
my grandfathers met friends and everyone spoke
behind a veil of smoke. (My uncle Bill preferred
fragrant cigars; I can still smell his postal jacket...)
He had time to tell stories because he took breaks
and there was something to do with his hands.
My mother's bridge club gathered around tables
with ashtrays and secrets which are best revealed
exercise and tests for breast and colon cancer. We
have helmets and car seats and smokeless coffee shops
where coffee has grown frothy and complex. The old
movies are so full of smoke that actors are hard to see
and they are often wrapped in smoking jackets, bent
over a piano or kiss. I miss the places smoke created,
I like the way people sat down for rest or pleasure
and spoke to other people, not phones, and the tiny fire
which is crimson and primitive and warm. How long
ago when humans found this spark of warmth and made
their first circle? What about smoke as words? Or the pipes of peace? In grade school we learned how it rises
and how it can kill. We were taught to shove towels
under our closed doors: to stop, drop, and roll. we had
a plan to meet our family in the yard, the house behind
us alive with all we cannot put out...
A long slow decline, with a few blips along the way, began following the first report by the Surgeon General in 1964. Though contributing factors to the drop-off go beyond health concerns. Economics (a pack of cigarettes in New York will run you almost $12 now), and varying laws and regulations forbidding smoking anywhere within the confines of public and private spaces, to name a couple. That decline is illustrated through 2018. The CDC currently puts the number at just 13%.
In the early 90's, office buildings began to limit smoking on the premises by designating areas where it was allowed. Or at least in California (a state of landmass and mind), which is often at the forefront of sociological change. Such areas were greatly restricted, and using my place of work as an example, bordering on being punitive. Smokers were relegated to a place five floors below street level in the garage. Thereby co-mingling cigarette smoke with car fumes. The sight of which, upon parking my car one morning, inspired this poem. One in a stark contrast to that of Ms. Shearing's above. Not a whiff of nostalgia here.
All this can't help but remind me of the continuing hot-button issues around taking health precautions for the common good, which now roam far and wide beyond that of cigarette smoking. Debates that continue to swelter, showing no signs of abating. No rehashing necessary. We all know what we're talking about here.
Quote of the Month
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going the other way—
in short the period was so far like the present period,
that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received,
for good or for evil, in the superlative degree for comparison only.
A Day at the Stadium: a Journal Entry
Writing a memoir has always seemed to me to be an exercise that almost begs the question: Who cares? And so I would never dare to presume that anything in my life is of such great import, or that it would offer something of applicable value, that would merit an entire book (even of match-book size).
That said, I do frequently stick my big toe in those biographical waters when striving to connote something that other toes on other feet might have felt. (See opening piece). Or, leaving that stretch in “footsie metaphor” behind, sometimes offering something one never knew. And at the very least, a morsel that one might find a tad interesting. Even if trivial. (Who knew a # is called an octothorp?).
With that preamble, I’d like to share something short. Something I’ll call a “memoirette.” A page and a half taken directly from my journal. Though even on that minimalist score, I concur with Louis Auchincloss who wrote (The Rector of Juston):
“Not that my life has been an exciting one. On the contrary it has been very dull. But a dull life in itself may be the best argument for a journal. The best way for the passive man to overtake his more active brothers is to write them up.”
May 12, 2022
Thursday, 10:20 AM
Sitting in a virtually empty-seated Yankee Stadium yesterday, I think that there is no other place I’d rather be. And I think today, can that be true?
First off, it being a day game, it gives me a reason to sit outside for an extended period of time, in the spring, without boredom. Where else could that be true? Not at the beach. Not in Central Park or any public park for that matter. Not looking out over a placid lake or river. Or even swimming in any of it. For how long can one swim, really.
There is so much about being in Yankee Stadium. It is so steeped in memory. It is impossible for my mind not to drift to the 50’s when I first went there (the original version of it). Who I was with...my first reactions. And I wrote a poem about it almost exactly forty years later.*
I get there early to soak it in. Though only 11:15 yesterday (a rare 12:35 game start time) I’m already eating an Italian sausage sandwich and sipping a beer. You have license to do that on such a day, in such a setting.
The seats are empty save but for a sprinkling of people, like myself, who are here early to watch the ritual of players prepping for the game on the expanse of the greenest of outfield grass. Perfectly mowed. You look up, and the grandeur and sheer size of the place never gets old. But I do. Approaching 77, it’s almost hard to wrap my head around it.
As game time nears, you turn around, and like a magic trick, the seats have been filled. The excitement builds, even for what is to be a meaningless game. But then again, in the overall scheme of things, isn’t everything? And as the first batter steps into the box, the place is packed; a roll call chant begins. Another ritual that didn’t exist back in the day. Along with the constant stream of visuals born of technology, the flashing lights, hip music, games on the massive centerfield screen to keep the crowd engaged between innings. Once, the game itself was all the entertainment necessary. No Kiss Cams, no message boards announcing fan birthdays, no dancing in the aisles, no numbers to tell you how fast that last pitch was. But it is all to the good now.
Within the crowd, now numbering 42,000, despite the slings and arrows that the sport suffers. That it is no longer the National Pastime (the NFL has long since usurped that unofficial title)...it’s too slow...it is losing a young audience... that’s not what I see. Lots of young people, as evidenced by the male millennials incessantly loud in their commentary sitting behind me, three girls to the left of me, in front of me, a woman with husband and kids—a family outing—defy the alleged “death of the game.”
The game will turn around on a 3-run home run in the fourth, as the Yankees take the lead. What event in any sport can match the jackpot of a home run with men on base? For a game so slow, a score can be run up so quickly.
Almost three hours will have run by unnoticed as the game concludes with a 5-3 Yankee victory. I had been in the stadium for four and a half hours in total, but as I have always maintained, time seems to stand still inside a baseball park. And nowhere else have I ever gotten that sensation. Certainly not in the theater watching Hamlet struggle with whether to be or not.
Then to top off the day, in what has become another ritual, retreating to Stan’s across the street for a celebratory beer. And in here, what you noticed in the park, is vocalized at a crescendo pitch. Young men and women in a state of exuberance, at the top of their lungs, in the prime of their lives, vicariously sharing in the thrill of a victory that they feel they have been partially responsible for. Nothing you will ever hear emerging from a movie theater, even one showing the latest action blockbuster.
Baseball. You had to be there. But you couldn’t unless you were virtually—a word of course that has taken on a new meaning—born there. As I was. And will always be. In a relatively mortal sense. And yes, the child of a cliché. A father and son and baseball.
Another way of saying, you’ll never catch me skydiving. Though I'll write about you doing it in a way that will even go beyond the thrill of your free fall. I may even trump it in verse.
Yet, Auchincloss did not keep a journal. He always wanted to, but was “dissuaded by the idea that it’s too late.” I started rather late, but it is now in its 43rd year. Here's a recent, ersatz transcendent, entry (slightly edited for clarity).
* That poem referenced above (within the Stadium, circa 1950's), begins...
The first time I came hurtling through
that ovarian tunnel on the sparks of friction
and the scream of wheels—I clung to breath;
a child to face the head-on crash
of dark into day at the end of the ride.
Below the subway station loomed
a wedge of concrete birthday cake
I wonder if others have such a space? It seems that beyond the love shared with family and significant others, we need a getaway of sorts, before time resumes its mad rush to infinity. Leaving us in the dust.
"On" Words of the Month
blazon and agon
blazon
/ˈblāz(ə)n/
noun
1. a: armorial bearings : COAT OF ARMS
b: the proper description or representation of heraldic or armorial bearings
2. : ostentatious display
verb
1. : to publish widely : PROCLAIM
2. a: to describe (heraldic or armorial bearings) in technical terms
b: to represent (armorial bearings) in drawing or engraving
3. a: DISPLAY
b: DECK, ADORN
Used in a sentence
The company paid a social marketing expert to blazon their logo all over the Internet.
*
agon
ag-ohn, -on, ah-gohn ˈä-gän
noun
1. : a conflict, especially between the protagonist and antagonist in a work of literature.
2. : the part of an ancient Greek drama, especially a comedy, in which two characters engage in verbal dispute.
3. : a test of will; a conflict:
4. : a contest in ancient Greece, as in athletics or music, in which prizes were awarded.
Used in a sentence
"Freud's originality stemmed from his aggression and ambition in his agon with biology." (Harold Bloom)
Both used in one sentence
Buckley's vocabulary was blazoned in his agon with Vidal.
Just Suppose the Juxtaposition
Where that "Somewhere" is.
finito
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought, especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
pre November 2018
Parts of the site under reconstruction
Capt. Nemo played by James Mason
in deep-doo doo in the deep blue sea.
Ron Vazzano
Ron Vazzano
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