Paper Blues

I’ve got the blues about paper today

I walk around my house examining notes, short stories,
papers from high school written in long hand

looking through papers to throw away

Thinking about days long gone when we learned to write script

My mind jumps ahead: future generations where no one will know how to write script. Writing by hand will disappear except for a few who carry on. Handwriting will become a fine transcribed art that no one teaches and that no one knows how to do anymore.

My cabdriver explained how now-a-days, children do their assignments online on the computer so they don’t write anything down at all anymore not like we did back in the day. He said they barely learn print, they type everything on the computer.

Columbia forced me to buy a typewriter in 1978. They said hand written assignments get lower grades. Hasn’t anyone explained this to you before? I mean I ‘m sorry to break it down to you like this and feel bad no one told you before that at Columbia. Miz. Leftow, you already lost one grade this term by handing in hand-written homework. You would have gotten a B+ but because it was hand written you only are due a C+. Sorry…

When I explained how poor I was she said you’re smart, you’re here at Columbia so you’ll figure out a way to survive.

Back then all I had was two pairs of jeans a skirt a few blouses and one sweater from the $10 store. I had no money to spend but needed that typewriter. Back then I couldn’t conceive a typewriter had a memory so you wouldn’t have to typewrite the whole page if you made a mistake.

My cabbie ‘s conversation brings me back. He’s telling me how hard it is to get by with four children, two are teenagers. "The only way we get by is because my wife lies and says I don’t live there so she can get food stamps Medicaid and section 8," he said as he drove his Lincoln Town Car, working and paying for High Class radio service trying to make a buck. "It ain’t easy out here and that rent we pay would cost us 2100 instead of the 900 we pay and in this way we get by," he confided.

"Four children and us and two cats. I show the vet our Medicaid card," he continued, "and then we don’t pay. Medicaid for cats is good," he said. "We’re doing the best we can to get by and she works on the side too. My wife’s a certified home health nursing aide and she gets work a few days a week at a hospital up in the Bronx. After they take out the taxes it’s about 50 bucks for a 12-hour day then she got to make sure it don’t get in the way of watching out for our children so thank God she doesn’t work everyday."

"It gives her time off to cook and clean house and watch over our teens and younger children. We pay for catholic school – and they have to go to college. There’s no jobs out there you know. We try to get by – but it’s hard to qualify. That’s why she wants to work too. She works off the books. There’s just too many bills to pay. You know growing children need clothes and shoes - those are expensive."

"It’s a different world out there," my cabby alerts me that the ride and story have come to an end. I look around me at all the paper, the notes and each piece of paper seems to have so much meaning I don’t know how to throw it out.

They don’t do things the way they used to. My cabbie is a young man. He’s only 42. His radio comes alive. A voice asks his location in Spanish.

It’s a lot to chew on. I think about all the finagling I did to get by twenty-two years working professionally to help our young – a noble job made harder by the huge bureaucracy I functioned in.

I wanted a house but it went into foreclosure but I still have my state subsidized Mitchel-Lama. They’re hard to come by now-a-days and they don’t intend to build more. Now the Mitchel-Lama rentals are so high that when people don’t lie andtell the truth about who lives where, no one can afford to live anywhere anymore.

In Washington Heights where I live most of the people survive on a lie because otherwise they’d live so poor they’d be in deep shit .

Worked hard for that money and still

Can’t get me no no no no - satisfaction

I close the pages

of a newly read and cherished book knowing I’ll never return to it. A few words linger wistfully and repeat themselves to me over and over to make certain I don’t lose them. Indeed the words are like life; the pages pass faster and faster through time encompassing new and old worlds combined. I write words down words to make certain special ones don't get lost.

One word creates a new life a different strife, new strides, we learn new words or add definitions behave the same way or maybe a new way depending on who we want to be. Being ambitious, I learn circuitous new routes to change responses to a previously treasured keepsake or periodically purge and start anew.

After a while special feelings aren’t the same any more like a dying lusty love replaced by loyal love maybe or discarded like an overused garment or tired thought. The misplaced trust the stupid puppy dog crushes you can’t recover from all provoked and created through words processed in our brains.

The heat is coming up through the pipes, smelly strange odor. An old lady complains they don’t give enough heat. It’s too much but what’s the use of complaining? Just put on another bed jacket or robe.

No one’s listening again. Another Egypt’s on its way everywhere, started here civilization’s bed. Now there’s a new ruckus up there and it’s the same everywhere, right here in hometown USA. Same bullshit and taxes, fucked up welfare benefits everywhere. Now they’re trying to declare it unconstitutional to jail those who don’t buy obamacare. Damn a mother would buy it if she could unless she’s an addict and gave up. Give healthcare!

All about the money while we abuse the planet when everyone knows there’s better options. The people selling us gas electricity oil and gas – now we’re talking big money big political friends and if you’re in with their ways you gotta be in like Flynn unless if you’re crippled Roosevelt who did better than any recent shmuck except Johnson.

A rant could be a way outta here. Just a little more please for the poor and worthy, please, a little more for mothers and children, please a little more for us worker bees trying to stay strong straight and narrow for our children.

Comment Published at NY Times online

The link to the article is here:
Court Dismisses a Case Asserting Torture by C.I.A.

My comment is published here!

I think torture will never end and the populace can't possibly know what is going on because we are not permitted to. Europe is a little better than we are in providing information but in general information is controlled. Every news report will have several things; worldwide, state and local by county in addition to a few human interest tidbits. Remember we had a president who was going senile and knew nothing about anything - for god's sake he was an actor! And Ollie North took the fall! And we were told zip. Till today we still don't know who killed Kennedy and I suspect the CIA was involved. Hell how many of you are so naive you believe one silly guy who was killed did it all on his own.
Of course it's absurd for people to burn the Koran because it makes no sense to call this a protest; it's another hatemonger act. To destroy religious symbolism for the sake of protest. Kind of reminds me of the 60's when women burned their bras and men burned their draft cards but what makes this different is that it's outsiders who are being destructive and hurtful. If for example, Muslims want to protest something in their religion or culture that's a different thing.
Protesting a religious book because terrorists who happen to be Muslim hit the towers doesn't make sense. It would make more sense to distribute these books as a gift to a Muslim organization.
Actually we killed more of our own on 9/11 by forcing them to stay in a building where they'd be trapped and die and this was done supposedly with the good thoughts about preventing stampede. I know one woman who told me about how she escaped and sneaked out.
The world is a crazy place and hate will make it more crazy.

It Takes One

On the south island sea shore of my mind
The new world order hasn’t been kind
killed six million jews, many others of us too, trillions of future denizens world wide yet they say the holocaust doesn’t exist –
tried to eliminate the rest and best of us to avoid future feuds
who’s in charge?
the annihilation never occurred - not permitted in school curriculum - they want our children to be dumb
it never was
A revolution is the answer after which we’ll have lasting peace until they set the next new world order in place – a dissertation regarding a confrontation – a fray creating disarray
Stand up for your rights! Don't give up the fight!
an ablution a solution to evolution of the pollution of human souls set us back a million years
for the dissolution of abasement
danger in darkness a sadness shadows lurk disaster dawns as the poor get poorer – the slice of the pie allotted to health and human welfare so small it can’t feed no one

Promotion of peace is my contribution to the solution – it’s the question of limitations and trepidations of our government-controlled minds
our persecution and liberation, the designation of a new world government
in whispers the sound spreads

How many presidents emerged from city slums?
They want you to believe you can be one –not a simple deed to achieve
No president descended from poverty – Lincoln’s family was propertied too
We’ve never even had a Jewish president ~ probably never will.
We’re told global warning is a conspiracy but we’re not told about conspiracy deals behind closed doors where bankers pay themselves off
Abort our mother’s insides–her hidden jewels are her organs = our resources -they claim it doesn’t affect her health

Free will or coincidence? Perverse connections or random selection
Get a grip on the order of the universe – adverse curse of transverse reverse

I thought before the new world order was a cruel joke, now I see, finally awoke
See the growing economic threat of the euro– we fret while
puppets run our government –onset of another Tibet prevails while we raise the guardrail for the rich to high tail, regale us with stories
How can we have peace without a fight for rights? They won’t just give us ours
Another large cup of java - forget I ever said this.
Promote peace friends tell me revolution is blowing in the wind
Caught in a tailwind spin, we’re blind on a work grind stabbed from behind.
Everyone knows being taxed this way is illegal and was meant for corporate America not us poor working class shmucks who can barely pay our rent.
more desperation blooms exasperation looms for our great nation needs a resolution