Arriving, Departing or Just Passing Through

patrickjegan

I stood hard against the tiled wall and made room for the rush of human traffic trying to pass me.  I was thinking about insanity and the blindness of powerful people to hold sacred something that once had beauty and class.

Beauty and class are rare commodities these days.

I was in the bowels of Penn Station, somewhere between 7th Ave. and 8th Ave.  Somewhere between 34th St. and 31st St. Somewhere below the giant oval that is Madison Square Garden.

Somewhere, somehow something was missing.

I was waiting for the Adirondack, the train that would take us to Albany where our car was parked.  I looked around for the great wooden benches.  All were gone.  I had to wait inside an enclosed “waiting room” filled with plastic and metal seats.  The fast food outlets all sold the same wraps and bags of chips.  Somewhere, I’m sure, was a bar…

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Postcard From The Bottom Of The Green Lagoon

patrickjegan

I have only one thing to do and that’s to be the wave that I am and then sink back into the ocean.

Sink back into the ocean.

Sink back into the ocean.

–Fiona Apple. Theme from “The Affair”

I know where my body is at the moment. I’m sitting on the sandy floor of a lagoon.  It’s quiet down here.  The only sound is the rush of air through my regulator when I inhale and the burble and gurgle of the bubbles that rise past my face mask with each exhalation.

Without question, this is where my body is.  But, my mind is in a different place, not unlike this–and it’s 33 years ago.  I say a prayer to Poseidon that what happened to me then, won’t happen today.  I say another, stronger prayer, more of a plea, to Neptune for I do not want to be green again.

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Between Patience and Fortitude

patrickjegan

Despite what my weather app informed me about this afternoon–that the temperature was heading toward the low 40’s, I’m still having the feeling that my wool jacket (more of a pea coat) is merely for show.  The cold wind slices through me like a Triscut dips through Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Hummus.

I’m chilled through four layers of silk, fleece, wool and thick cotton flannel.  There’s no cold like New York City cold on the second day of March.  Spring may be three weeks away on the calendar, but it’s ten thousand miles from where I stand waiting for the M3 to take me down 5th Avenue to the Main Branch of the Public Library.  To my back is the Plaza Hotel and behind my left shoulder is Central Park.  Perhaps that’s the source of the cold wind?  The snow-covered Great Lawn?  The ice of Wollman Rink?

No, it’s…

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Dear Grandpa

Very moving

patrickjegan

Dear Grandpa,

I thought I’d write to you today.  It’s been such a long time since we had a chance to sit and talk about things.  I have so many memories of you, I don’t know where to begin.  It was so long ago.

Remember when I was a little boy?  You lived with Grandma in a big white house beside a lake in Pennsylvania.  In all the time I was growing up, you never had to go off to work in a factory or a coal mine.  You did all those things before I was born.  You spent your time tending a little garden behind the big house.  Once you showed me how to graft two different apple trees together.  I was amazed when, a year later, I could go out to the tree and have a choice of different apples on one tree!  Your garden had several…

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The Postman Always Winks Twice

charming and true!

patrickjegan

Sometime in the late 1990’s, my wife and I drove to Owego, NY to visit my aging father.  My mum had passed away in 1992, so my dad was living quietly and alone as a widower in our big rambling family home on Front Street.

Room by room and closet by closet, any objects or artifacts that was evidence of my mother living in the house for nearly 50 years, began to disappear.  And, this is as it should be.  My father had lost his wife and really didn’t need or want to see constant reminders of their 56-year-old marriage.  My mother liked to save things, as many folks of their generation did.  So, it was no big deal with me, when I was a child, to open a drawer in the dining room chest and find several hundred buttons.

However, little things get swept under the rug, so to…

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The Pink Flamingos of the Pacific Northwest

patrickjegan

I asked my daughter, Erin, about her opinion of pink flamingos.

“They have their place,” she answered, without taking more than five seconds to think it over.

That place was in a front yard, several blocks from her home in Orting, WA.

My wife and I were walking back from a brief shopping trip to Safeway.  I was carrying a whole pineapple in the plastic grocery bag, it’s spiky leaves poking holes through the word “Safeway”.  The pineapple had me in a reflective mood about the tropics.  I thought of Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree on a  Caribbean island several years ago.  He was a grandfather.  I’m a grandfather and I was thinking what it would take to climb a pineapple tree.  I wasn’t even sure they grew on trees.  Maybe they grew like really large odd grapes on a rather large vine.  (I’d have to look…

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Forever and a Day

Lovely Valentine’s Day Post

patrickjegan

 

Absolutely nothing lasts forever.

Nothing lasts forever.

There may be some things that last forever.

One thing lasts forever.

You’re waiting for me in the cafe.  The place beside the old church and next to the cemetery.  The only place in the city where I can sit next to the fire and feel warm…on a night like this.  We have so much to talk about.  It’s been so many years since we’ve had a chance to sit and think of the days gone by.

You’re waiting in the cafe–I just can’t remember how to get there.

I was very young and you had an uncanny ability to determine when my diaper would be wet.  You would change it for me.  I couldn’t talk to you.  You just knew when it was time.  You held my hand when I could barely walk.  I never said a word.  You cooked my…

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The Man Who Planned His Own Funeral

A really good read

patrickjegan

People plan for births, for retirements, proms, dates, Thanksgiving dinners and Oscar parties.  So, it’s only logical that one plans their own funeral.  This is not a new idea.  The whole point is to take the burden of the eschatological events off the shoulders of those that remain behind.  It’s my feeling that those who do this sort of decision-making also want to make sure nothing is missed.  You know how it goes:

“Gosh, I don’t think we have time for that hymn, let’s drop it.  He’ll never know the difference, will he?”

There was a man I was told about, years ago, who decided that he was going to have the final word about his final words.

I was told the following story as I slipped a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin into the charity box at a church in Montreal and attempted to find a wood skewer to…

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My First Blog Ever

Working from home in the Adirondack Mountains; connected to a medical center in NYC.  Heaven in many ways as I get the best of both worlds.

The lifestyle is so different here; no walking anywhere, no street life unless you ride into town (Lake Placid or Saranac Lake NY).  Quite an adjustment.

Social networking sites keep me in touch with the world; travel keeps things interesting.

My husband keeps busy in the community but I have yet to reach out as I still work three days a week and want the others for not going anywhere.  But that will change.

Nice to be a part of Word Press!

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.

Happy blogging!