AD's Journal 2024

 She was so depressed in her most recent video; I yanked down my website. I thought it was me. I had been thinking about taking it down anyway, partly because it became clearer than much of what I wrote in my journal was wrong, or at best, misguided. I didn’t see a reason to torture her with misinformation, especially because I suspect she’s checked my site daily to see what I might post next. I could defend the poetry and fiction as being a way of expressing my feelings through my art, but the journal was written at a time when I was completely confused, and caught up in the politics of the day. I posted a new journal entry which asked for some kind of response from her, as to whether she wanted me to continue to post or stop. I got nothing by text or email. But when I saw her video, I was stunned, partly because a week earlier she was in her glory and seemed happier than I’d ever seen her. As I said, I assumed it was me (a bit egotistic on my part since she certainly

   Thirty Days passed September, April, June and November. This is one of the short months, and unlike March, it went by in a breathless rush, and I find myself staring into the month of May and the long history of sad events that took place during the month of my birth. How far back these negative impressions go, I can’t remember, only those like thorns that made me bleed the most acute. I do not look forward to my birthday as once I did, knowing that there won’t be a new bicycle waiting for me when it finally arrives – that year when I pleaded for one when all my friends in the neighborhood already had theirs, and found one hidden in the attic a few days prior to the blessed event, covered in a sheet as if such a thing could keep me from poking my nose underneath. I wore that bicycle out, traveling far and wide, reconstructing it when it fell apart, pretending to be the Green Lantern as we plunged out the door from my best friend’s basement to take on the ills of the world.

   She sounds As giddy as a kid With a new toy Riding high   In a saddle   On a beast Too tall, And too slow, But she doesn’t care, After having given up What she had, She’s grateful to have Anything of Her old life back, These hours She records As much a therapy As it is a hobby Her instructor Going through The routine As she rides A breathless adventure As magnificent As the charge Of the Light Brigade, One plodding Horse step At a time, Putting her back In the saddle again, Letting her live The dream She left behind, One as good, She and steed Engaged in A slow motion dance     2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

   After having him as our upstairs resident for more than six months, Tuck – the alley cat – insisted on being let out onto the street again, and we complied. For several years, he was the terror of the neighborhood, often coming back to us so wounded he was willing to remain indoors for extended periods while he healed. But his last bout with the other boys left him nearly crippled and wounded, making us vow to turn him into a house cat. We tried. We got him to the vet, but he was too tough to handle and the best they could do was giving him his rabies shots. He was hard to handle even for me, the hand that fed him, and I have a number of scars resulting from doing something unexpected near him, resulting in deep bites and long scratches. On the other hand, he loved to sleep on my chest (with ample covering to keep his claws from digging too deeply into my flesh) where he purred and received pets. For months, he rested away from our other cats, the exclusive resident of

   Over the last two or three years, I’ve been posting old journal entries from a decade ago, putting up one or two or sometimes even three daily, reflecting some of the most emotional moments of my life. I’m not completely sure who exactly reads these diatribes, or what they think when they do. Some of these are poems, other essays, still others something in-between both, ramblings of a sort through which I tried to sort out confusing thoughts. Most of them aren’t even accurate, or at best, guesses about the nature of the world at that time. Some – because I altered my view from my original thoughts – actually contradict other pieces. While many are honest representations of how I felt at the time, time itself as made many of the irrelevant since life has moved on, and I’m a different person (as are the other people mentioned) than I was back then. I don’t even know why I continue to post them, since there is no way to set the record straight – what happened then, happened

  I stroll the shore Of the river here, Wondering if she does The same where she is, The same river We both strolled years ago, She briefly abandoned, Even though She’s always been Attached to it. I stroll the river here, Seeing the world change, An altered skyline, The rubble of the past Reconstructed As to seem different, When it really is not. I envy her, And her piece of this water Which seems Unadulterated Where she is, Even though I know It is not, Noce changing skyline To spoil the view, No constant reminder Of perpetual change I stroll the shores Of my side of the river And I think of her. 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

  It’s Earth Day. The tree huggers are out in mass, looking to ban this or that. I talked to someone who lost her job earlier this year and just got a notice of eviction, only she can’t afford the massive spike in rents that are taking place. I wish tree huggers worried more about driving poor people out onto the street than they do about whether or not I can use a 100 watt light bulb. Everything action they take makes it impossible for ordinary people to survive today, in the pretense that the world will come to an end if we don’t stop doing all those things we need to do to get by today. Nobody can afford to rent these days, unless they are already rich; nobody can afford to buy a house because they can’t put together the down payment even if banks wanted to lend them money when banks only lend to the wealthy. For all we hear about diversity and inclusion, working poor are being excluded from everything, and it is always the same people who are doing it, pretending like t

  Everything remained the same, unchanged over the months since our last coming, a chill air of mid-spring swirling around us as we took the stroll to the green merry-go-round building and then to the casino, all still in disrepair, like the bones of some prehistoric creature nobody wants to acknowledged existed, as off the beach, in those vacant places where old clubs once thrived, yellow dinosaurs dig up the earth, or deposit massive lava flows of concrete, foundation of a new era in which we who remember the past will have no place, we, the extinct species who still ache for what once was, knowing it will never be again. The chill discouraged others from coming out, or perhaps fear of pending rain. One couple we met had stopped here on their way from Atlantic City to their home in Bloomfield, to rest, to pay homage, having lived through that age when music filled the streets, along with the rumble of hotrods along Thunder Road, the ghosts of those giants hovering nearby in the r

  The clicks tell me where she’s been Like ticks from a Geiger Counter, Or is it Morris Code? Is there a message In the fast and slow of it, Her appearing and disappearing, Her addiction To these random ramblings, Thoughts I think Have thought, And come back to, Clicks hitting at odd moments As if she needs to know What I might say next, Nothing predictable For either of us, Except the clicks, Coming slowly, Then more quickly, An easy in and out, A sudden rush of something I might yet mistake For joy 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

  If all goes well, we’re headed to Asbury Park today, needing to get there before the summer season starts, and traffic becomes a nightmare. We also need to check on a few of the icons that are at risk, including the paramount and the casino, both of which are in desperate need of repair. Ringo – yes that Ringo – closed down the Paramount when his inspectors found out if was too unsafe for him to play there. The real sadness, however, comes with the notice that Frank’s Deli is up for sale, made famous by the fact that Bruce Springsteen used to frequent the place, apparently unwilling to expend all the money he’s gotten from his monstrously expensive concert tickets. It won’t matter if Frank’s closest since Springsteen has informed the world he will be living outside the United States if Trump gets elected president – one more stupid thing this washed out rock star has done. Asbury is no longer Asbury anyway and our going there is largely a tribute to what it once was, rather

   The reporters that were last to be axed by my former publication have gone on a mission to get local governments to honor the publication’s legacy, which was largely gutted by an idiot who inherited a legitimate news organization and turned it into a joke. We got taken over in 2016 with a lot of promises about keeping the institution’s integrity only to have the old man who set it up die, and his son – a rather pathetic twit –deciding he hated news and wanted to go back to selling snake oil in the guise of newspaper inserts. This is a man who apparently hated his father’s legacy so much that he has made a career of destroying it, one pathetic newspaper at a time. This is a man who used his HR person as his personal hitman, and like all bad cop movies, axed the HR person who he ran out of other people to fire. His crimes against journalism go far deeper than merely destroying our institution, turning it into a pathetic joke, he – like the Romans so many, many centuries ago,

    Columbia U is burning, Proving again that our best and brightest Aren’t our best and brightest anymore But a lunatic fringe that is no longer fringe, But a pack of brainwashed over-educated idiots Who boast of their own stupidity, Stupid is, as Forrest Gump says, as stupid does, Regardless of how many degrees they have Sad, pathetic, children of the corn Who have ingested hate Threatening now to poison the rest of us, Carrying their ignorance around on their chests Like a badge of honor when they have no honor Nor do the institutions that made them that way Earning their degrees on their degree of ignorance Empty-headed prattlers who get filled With the frustrated philosophies of professors Who could not sell this snake oil when they were young And now feed it to our kids to poison them, Creating a generation of brainless zombies Who chant slogans of hate While believing there are righteous’ When they are not, Stupid people doing st

   I took the train to Bayonne yesterday to cover an event at the community museum. I tend to drive as little as possible since the train station (light rail) is a block from my house, and though it does not go everywhere I need it to go (nor in a timely fashion), the trip tends to be less hectic than the drive. For years after I got assigned the Bayonne beat in early 2004, I drove from upper Jersey City to Bayonne each day, going as early as possible to avoid the inevitable rush, until management hired an editor for the community news who had to take buses and trains to get to the office each day, always arriving late because public transportation connections suck, when at their best. Since I drove passed her apartment building each day to get to the same place, I took to picking her up, condemning us to the maddening backups of rush hour – especially in an attempt to get through the tangle of streets near the Holland Tunnel. When she resigned (due largely because of the sla

   Bumble bees bumble through the patch of dandelions Like black and yellow striped buffalo Their backs saturated with the pollen they’ve collected From dipping into the herd flowers before they go to seed, Each landing is like a kiss, from which each bee rises More heavily burdened, thick with a sense of purpose, Lazy-looking, yet not lazy, like little balloons Inspired by the stark sunlight spring has brought, This tenderness, this act of love, part of a ritual That brings on rebirth each year, with me in the middle of it, To watch and accept what life brings, to love and be loved, To tenderly touch the deepest places and yet not harm, Each thrust of love probing deep into the soul Them and me. 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

Bright almost scalding light greets me this morning, although the temperature is significantly down from mid-80s yesterday. I’m not a big fan of bright sunlight. My mood tends to prefer cloudy, rainy days. But I’ll take what I can get. We’re in that post Easter time in anticipation of Memorial Day and the official start of the summer season. We’re planning a trip to Asbury Park again for the end of the week, and then an overnight up to Kingston for our semi-annual visit to Woodstock for some time between now and the end of May. Both places have become anachronisms, reflecting a reality that no longer exists – Asbury having lost nearly all of its blue collar credibility in its rush to embrace Gen Z, while Woodstock clings to what remains of a generation of love and peace. Since I have a foot in both working class and hippie culture, it makes sense that we would travel to these places, getting our glimpse of something rapidly fading. I’m also planning a day trip to Scranton

    It is unavoidable, I can’t cease thinking about it, The consequences of it, What is and what it is not, How I recall it feeling When it slipped away, A memory of softness, Tenderness, Of something utterly sweet, And the lack of suffered from, I can’t cease to think about it, Remember it, And feel how lost I am without it, Carrying the absence around inside me Pieces of it tumbling around Unable to come back together As it once was, Coming together instead In odd configurations, Or what it never was, I think about it always, And I always will 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

  The song “Tax Man” bounds around in my head, partly because the local rock station can’t stop playing it this time of year – George Harrison one of the few musicians who used his art to complain about how unfair the tax system was when he and the other Beatles sat on top of the musical world. I’ve generally been diligent in filing my tax returns yearly, though this was much easier when I worked in a warehouse or a Dunkin or even in a Fotomat booth, and somehow got more complicated and expensive as time went on. This year one of the tax services charged us $600 to do what I had in the past done for myself, and perhaps, now that I am semi-retired with a very limited income, we might once again do it for ourselves and be free of the leaches that take advantage of working people this time of year. For some reason, I actually failed to file one year, at some point in the mid-1980s and really don’t know why I didn’t, finding myself on the wrong side of the tax man until I filed a l

   We live on the verge of self-annihilation And still sing songs promoting peace Or appeasement, Blaming everybody but ourselves, While whacko Jane Fondas Rant about racist climate change While basking in the lap of luxury, Never changing, Paper radicals ranting about What the rest of us ought to do While doing something else themselves We, sitting on the edge of global war, While spoiled children rant on campus About unjust life is About diversity that is not diverse, About gender designed to humiliate men About climate change that is mostly myth, While we all wait for the body bags To wash up on our shores at in time past, Not even knowing whose bodies they contain, Draft dodgers finding new ways to dodge Overweight, brain dead idiots, Waiting for the world to end so that they can say, “Told you so!” 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan

   I stride over this landscape of memory Because I can only look back at what was Knowing how short the road ahead will be, The past containing all those nuggets of gold I always assumed the future possessed, We do not realize what we had – As wise men have told us – Until they are gone And cannot expect to dig up treasure From a mine already expired, I stride this landscape of memory Seeking for those pieces I might have missed, For what might still be recovered, For what is important among all those things I mistakenly believe unimportant at the time, A futile search, I admit But something that needs to be done. 2024 journal menu email to Al Sullivan