home

It was safe, nestled in our memories as a sanctuary, a cozy place with picket fences, a solid roof, and tons of windows to inspect the world outside, and ensure the comfort of our interiors. It was home, our place, whether it was a long winding driveway to our front door or a bunch of bushes three feet from the curb, we could enter, and leave a maddening world behind. Many of us understood, that sanctuary was not an evil slice of vocabulary, but a soft, gentle sound, permitting a sense of family and freedom. Welcome, the doormat would read, you are a guest, and once you enter, you are safe!

Provincetown has been and still is that niche in my lifetime where the coziness is constant, the comfort compelling, and the sense of security strong enough to hold tight any worries from the void and emptiness of the bully, the self anointed victim, and the insecure despots surviving by scapegoating those around them without reason and with ravish, relentless relevance! Provincetown is, for me metaphorically home, not just the one from which my instructions about life began, but the place with no closets, no foolish hierarchies, no decades of demand, just because  as the song goes, the Bible Told Me So, and no pronouncements of someone else’s restrictive rules and regulations, because their God told them so. 

We, The People, are living in dangerous times (dangerous becoming a very dull and overused word, sadly so). Rules of order seem to change, lawlessness has become the law, sinister, slimy, snake oil an economic staple, incoherence the langue spoken, and freedom, equality, and democracy all dying qualities of a once proud nation. My home, America, is a scary place. I don’t recognize it, nor many of the persons responsible for keeping the walls, the roof and the foundation of my humble abode, survivable. Perhaps there were never “THOSE GOOD OLD DAYS”! Maybe they were just made up machinations of a childhood mind still full of magic and mystery. But these current days are fraught with FEAR. 

Homeward bound,

I wish I was,

Homeward bound,

Home where my thought's escaping,

Home where my music's playing,

Home where my love lies waiting

Silently for me. (Paul Simon)

monuments

There are the guts that sometimes are the roots of the glory. There is the sweat that somehow is necessary for the success. The heart and soul, they say are the accurate accounting of what makes the human, HUMAN. It is not always the facade, tall and grand which is the real showcase of what matters, but the ups and downs, the spirals inside, the twists and turns of the foundation which hold the heavy burden of feet planted on the ground. The grand and glorious are sometimes other words for greedy, and gluttonous. Good intentions will only move an engine made from integrity, intellect, and inclusion!

Finding fruition for a dream is delicious, and that is destiny demonstrated honestly! As an old saying goes, with hail and hardy, hesitation has no power here.

In this time of Trump and his companions of crime, his enablers of evil, his empty hearted but hate-filled minions, facades are tricks of the trade. Made from materials of scapegoat, bullying, fear, loathing and lack of empathy, HE and THEY are wanting walls, and moats, and palaces places to exclude, exempt, and elicit anger. Dreams die when Trump speaks, it is as if Trump exhales the same polluted air he has permitted his EPA to allow to float over America.

We can build towers to the sky, stairways to Heaven, monuments to peace. History has proven that the will of man and woman can prevail. Before good may come bad, before right may go wrong, before inclusion may come exclusion…before Trump we were not always the democratic dream so desired, but with Trump we are becoming a decaying democracy, a divided nation, and patronized puppets, whose strings are growing shorter and shorter. In Provincetown, I climbed the Monument, a site to remind the world that purpose has a place and that people must prevail!  

Some Walls

Feet of water, churning and splashing, sometimes docile, sometimes directive and with the desire of destruction when angry, missing in action, as the bottom this seabed lies naked, showcasing the nooks and crannies of the sands of time etched out each end every day and in the forever eon of time. This side of the craggy and purposely strewn rocks, forming a wall, are basking in the sun as its counterpart the marshland, salty and sometimes’ sinister blue-green water has headed out to visit another shoreline, breaking the news I am here with its white caps and rows of rounded waves. The ebb and flow, the give and take, the purpose and poise, the fact of life, the underbelly of nature, now you see me, soon you will have to look harder.

This wall, leading from the shoreline of Provincetown leading to the remote beaches straddling the Atlantic Ocean, all the way to the tip of lands end, is an inclusive human-made structure inclusive, protective and a passionate passageway for travel. People welcome, come to see the next best thing, as the ocean and the bay, come and go, just as time as demonstrated forever. It is the Jetty, a protectorate for the fragile, a projection for the imagination, and a place of peace for the necessary, please let me think, thrive, and retune my tempo and tantrum.

Walls can be necessary, but when the tide rolls out, this fortress forming of a boundary has fragile roots and is not so formidable or fearsome. I can breathe freely, inhale deeply, and recognize how large or small, important or inconsequential, intimidating or intimidated I am, and the life I live. This is the freedom that begs to infiltrate my every atom of my anatomy!

We watch another wall being built, not just the one Trump begs for on the Southwestern part of this nation, but one to protect his fragile ego, his sicker and sicker evil self-conscience, his nasty narcissism, and his demand to demean! There is no underbelly with Trump and his counter cultists, the GOP and the those who hide behind their own walls, just rot and ruin. We must never be too afraid to climb the wall, to find its foundations, and we must walk upon it, proving it nothing but a detour, leading us to something greater! 

illusions

Illusions! At times we find ourselves giants, capable of feats beyond imagination, abilities to accomplish the most amazing actions in demanding the most challenging destruction and doom. We are sometimes more significant than the sum parts from which we will permit to lay heavy upon our shoulders. But then we meekly admit that the mere mortal in all of us leads to becoming a shadow, not shallow, but a wisp of a wonder, waning and ebbing as both the sun and sea decide to come and go. Here I stand feet firmly planted, touching the sand of time on top of the ocean floor, as the waters had receded from Provincetown to another destination of the world, as the gravity of the moon dances and dashes across the heavens!

Illusions! Am I really THAT giant, so vast, as to power over all I see, or am I a speck of a species, scurrying around to find the solace, safety and certainty that will assure me of another day, and perhaps a better way. The tide rolls away, undressing the oceans, begging me to stand on Terra firma, almost mocking me, knowing that in hours that the sea will return, showcasing IT’S power and prestige 

Illusions! At times Provincetown is like a giant Carny. Illusions! At times Provincetown is a lovers lounge, where intimacy is not restricted to your sexual preclusions, where honesty is always the truth, where nature and nurture are neutral and where giants roam. Illusions! Permitting shadows to come out in the day, never worried about dark secrets, fed by the moonlight and usually found at night. Illusions! Provincetown demonstrates the juxtaposition of a place in a part of the universe where there is no shame in small and no great big deal in being big.

Illusions! Aren’t they just in the mind's eye, provided by the strength of wishing or wanting? There is a beauty when an illusion can reshape your thinking, your actions, your heart. But then, as with most anything human, a dark side can make an illusion into nothing but a sham, a sideshow, a showcase for selfishness, and sinister. There is an illusion in the Oval Office and an empty carcass of a crass ass. If only the wind and rain could wash that illusion away!

some imagination

Imagination is the hidden secret, locked up in the box which is located just behind the lobes of the brain, or stashed away in that teeny tiny space tucked somewhere, in the area of the gut, in a firebox so tightly sealed permitting no acid reflux to burn away the magic hidden inside. Imagination is an alien-like piece of DNA allowing two people to look at one thing and never quite see the same promise being promoted. We all have the ability to imagine, we all have the opportunity to explore the potential pieces, but sadly we all have the pomposity to pooh-pooh the entire idea and let the creative drive implode.

There are unicorns, at times in Provincetown, depending on the mood of its inhabitants. Some will parade up and down Commercial Street, following the path of the rainbow with a pot of gold, like an oversized drag queen is handing out treats for good and bad boys and girls. There is sequins, bubbles, brilliant bubbles of wet round colorful water floating in the air like snowflakes. And in Provincetown, the most significant bit of imagination circulates from the individuals who KNOW precisely who they are, and without hesitation, behave accordingly, not ACT or pretend, but ARE the imagined human beings born to tell a story, paint a picture, sashay away, or humbly hold hands with whomever they wish. Some may swish, or sway or even swagger, But each has a story a real and rich sewn into their seeds at the time of conception. Provincetown is for the meek to become mighty, the mighty to herald humility, the humdrum to find a more rhythmic beat, and a place to beat your own drum, loud and proud.

Provincetown is that bastion of bravery. It is that place at lands end, providing you the permission of promise, and not having you pretend that who you are, IS not the truth!   Imagination, is limitless, unless you believe that life has limits and boundaries, is immersed with adjustments, It is not for those a full of restrictions, strict instructions, cauldrons of hate and loathing. Imagination is never a narcissistic, psychotic, form of being filled with lies just to get by and sell some people snake oil; it is indeed one of the most beautiful types of freedom. And into days world freedom it seems is falling and failing and fractured and finding its way into some museum alongside the bones of the once mighty dinosaur!

to stop

There is the new day, again and again. We suppose the sun has begun its trek, its drowsy meander across the planet, the place where even if called by different names, the things that live there, greet the morning with reverence, irreverence, reason, mystery, mayhem or magic…but caring little for formalities , the yellow orb continues as it has for eons, and lets us guess just how and why its journey IS again, and again.

We are not sure if we are mere mortals, ancient experiments of an alien race hoping to improve their own lot in life. Some find our roots from the original wham, bam, thank you, ma’am of a bang so big that portions of the universe fell from the firestorm and began to build life,, others believe that the Highest Power ever known, conceived and delivered a promise of free will and want, while some just say it is evolution, so enough questions already. 

The question becomes, what IF everything we know, everything we take for granted, and everything we think might come next just stopped. We have history to prove that yesterday did find its today, but living now, are we certain of the future. It is the small things we are lectured, that count, that matter, that have meaning. The sun hangs low in the morning and lowers in the evening, it knows the next location to send its beams of hope. All of us now, the recipients of the rays, are not quite sure what comes next. 

It is the Days of Trump, and as the myriad of mayhem surrounds us, ALL of us must stop for a second, and decide how will the future look, even as the sun shines, then sleeps then shines again!

Day three

There are moments when history cannot help itself and begs us to build monuments tempted by its bidding, foreboding, beauty, assertiveness, and sometimes it’s sardonic, and nasty numbness towards right and wrong, intelligence and sheer ignorance. But history, itself is a part of the landscape of nature, and like the human race finds itself at the water’s edge…begging the question to sink or swim. 

There is a craving to grow, should it be in stature, might it be in purpose, can it be in the pursuit of greatness, or the quest just to wonder why, or God forbid why not. We demonstrate our needs and build ideas, some a sham some stupendous, some to thrive and some to tinker with a temptation to simply try to survive.

There are moments, when we must look behind us, gaining strength to just stand strongly still, until we remember what it is we need to do to take the next step forward. In Provincetown, time moves in various dimensions, permitting yesterday to seem just as alive as today, with promises that tomorrow will arrive, but that nature is not it’s only force, but nurture is also a robust motivational ideal.

In politics, it seems rhyme nor reason have a purpose in what comes next. Selfish, self-serving, sinister snake oil salespeople want to contain any promise of prosperity for all. Day Three In Provincetown, and I know that we must never forget the past, but delight in the moment and insist on due diligence, so the future does not fall to the fatigue of failure and false idols!