SUKKOT / BET ON CRAZY

Two years ago the Diamond District on 47th Street was dead on the high holiday of Sukkot.

All throughout the shetls of Williamsburg families were commemorating the Hebrews' wandering in the desert after the Exodus in Egypt by setting up sukkahs or outside dwelling to symbolize the tents on that decades-long journey to find someplace to call their own.

The Hasidic diamond dealers abandoned the Diamond District for the week. The day before Chol HaMoed Gabriel our broker left our store ten big diamonds in hopes that a goy might buy one. Richie Boy and his father weren't so religious and saw the holiday as a time to operate with less competition.

On the first day of Sukkot I opened the safe and arranged Gabriel's rocks in the window. Gem quality in individual diamond boxes glittering in the morning sunlight. None were under five carats and the total value of the goods was slightly over 500K. They made a big impression.

A half-hour later an over-weight gypsy in a Versace suit entered the store.

, "How much for the big stone?"

"It ain't for sale." I had never sold to a gypsy.

"Everything is for sale on 47th Street."

"Not this stone." I had nothing against Gippos, but they hadn't earned their rep for guile by being saints.

"Show him the stone." Manny was sitting at his desk. He had dealt with hundreds of gypsies during his years on the Bowery.

"Okay, but everything has a price," I grumbled, for the Roma were a WOT or a waste of time. Worse was the possibility that they might rob you.

"Which is?" I had seen Tony around the block.

"40K."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure." I went to the front window and plucked the stone from the tray. A zaftig, but attractive woman in a matching Versace dress smiled at me. She was Tony's wife. They worked as a team. She came inside.

I show her the diamond without letting her touch it.

"I love this ring, Tony." Her fragrance was Versace Bright Crystal.

"I love it too, but I don't love $40K for a 6-carat F SI3?" He was top of the line Roma. "Would you take 20K for it?"

"Thanks but no thanks." Gabriel had memoed the diamond for $35,000. Manny said that it was a lot of flash for the cash. My boss came from Brownsville. He had never lost its touch on his soul.

"I have the money." Tony brandished a roll of hundreds thick enough to be 20K, unless the center was all $1 bills.

"Sorry, the price remains 40K. No haggling either."

"I thought maybe you would want to do some business." What Tony meant was that if I gave him the stone, I could stick the 20K and walked out of the store.

"Sorry, no deal."

I sat at my desk and the gypsy exited from the exchange. Tony had other marks on his list. Maybe he would get lucky. My boss Richie Boy showed up a few minutes later.

"Anything happening?"

"A gypsy offered me 20K for Gab's stone." Manny stood up with a groan. His hip was killing the 80 year-old.

"You didn't let him touch it?"

"Not at all." Gypsies were skilled at switching stones.

"Let me check."

I got the stone for Richie Boy.

"You're lucky," he said after weighing out the diamond on the scale.

"Lucky was, if he sold it." Manny sat back down with a grunt. He wasn't getting old, but some parts of his body were on strike.

"We were lucky." Richie Boy nodded to me and I put the diamond back in the window.

Across the street Tony and his wife were standing outside a store. They were looking to get lucky.

Anything was possible on Sukkot.

Around noon the girls working for Manny's partner wanted to order lobster rolls from the new take-out.

Coming from Maine I was eager to try the lunch special.

Richie Boy signaled that he was in too.

Lobster might be tref or unclean and unfit for consumption according to Jewish tradition, however only one member of our staff was religious. The rest were bacon Jews.

Lunch came, we ate, and then discussed the lobster rolls.

Cindy thought it was good. She had gone to UMass.

Richie Boy was unimpressed. He was nursing a hangover.

I had eaten better in Maine, but Lincolnville was an eight-hour drive from 47th Street.

A chubby hand slapped the window.

Lenny.

The Hassidic bum.

His yamakah was sliding off what remained of his greasy hair and his fingers were twitching for money.

"Fuck him." Richie Boy had little patience for Lenny.

"He's harmless." Lenny was no Don Rickles, but he made me laugh.

"Tell him to go away. He's bad for business."

"Business? On Sukkot keep on dreaming."

"Do me a favor and send him away. Lenny's ruining my appetite."

I put down my lobster roll and went outside.

Lenny seemed to have gained more weight and he smelled like he hadn't been to a schvitz since before Moses freed the slaves.

"Lenny, you're messing up the window." His hand imprints were scattered on the glass like prehistoric paintings. "I'm the one who has to clean it."

"Sorry, Damian." Lenny was a slob in his filthy tee-shirt and ripped flannel trousers with sodden sneakers shaped like melted cheese. He has been living on the street for more than 20 years, but I had seen the fat bum deposit over $200 at the bank more than once. Some people say that his lunacy is an act, except his rhummy eyes told the truth.

"No worries." I liked that he called me 'Damian'. The name smacked of THE OMEN and the Son of Satan.

"Why Richie doesn't ever give?" Lenny begged everyone on the street for money. He even took small change.

"Maybe it has something to do with you calling him a Nazi."

"He is a Nazi. A country club Nazi who hates Jews like me." Lenny was fondling an etrog lemon, which someone must have given him for Sukkot. I could smell it over his stench.

"Lenny, I hear you say that to a lot a people on the street. It's not nice."

"I'll tell you what's not nice." Lenny pointed to Tony and his wife. "Over a million gypsies were killed by the Nazis, but no one ever builds a museum for them"

"The Roma are 'travelers'." That was the Irish word for them and it didn't have a nice meaning.

"And the Hebrews wandered forty years in the desert and what about the Wandering Jew?"

"That's a myth." The Goyim had created the legend of a Jew cursed with immortality for taunting Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion.

"Ahasver might not exist, but the Jews have traveled the world for centuries same as the Roma and people talk about them the same way as they talk about us."

Aren't you celebrating Sukkot?"

"I sleep outside every night." Lenny lived in the rough. He had no possession other than the clothing on his back. "Every day is Sukkot for me. Same as you, Damian. You wander the world."

"My wanderings are more like Dion's THE WANDERER than the Jews and Roma." I loved the line from that hit, 'I'm the type of guy'.

"I love Dion." Lenny knew every homeless shelter in New York. They were his world and the sidewalks were paths for his travels.

"Me too, but I wish I didn't."

"Your kids in Thailand." Lenny was crazy, but he wasn't stupid. He knew my life."

"Yeah, my kids." The four of them were halfway around the world. There was something not right about that arrangement and I felt more sympathy for the Roma than was normal for someone born on the Coast of Maine.

Richie Boy rapped on the window.

"Lenny, I got to go back to work." I had to make a little money.

"You got a dollar for the holiday?"

I handed him two bills.

He wished me luck and called for a blessing on my kids in Thailand.

"May you get home soon."

"Thanks." Seeing my kids was my greatest wish. Another month and I would have plane fare to Bangkok. I would count every day.

"Baxt hai sastimos tiri patragi." Lenny shambled into the street. His eyes were on Tony and his wife. He saw them as a soft touch.

"What's that?" I had never heard those words before.

"It's Romani for 'good luck.'"

"Sie gesund." I wished him well in Yiddish and returned inside the diamond exchange hoping to close a deal in the final hours of Sukkot, because all wanderers are lucky as long as they were heading home.

RFK in 2016

Now more than ever.

To hear the next president of the USA speak, please go to this URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs

Edwige Belmore RIP

Edwige Belmore arrived on the Paris scene in 1978 to become the doorperson at La Palace.

Blonde, punky, and lesbian her haughty demeanor put the Parisiennes in their place and served as Jean-Paul Gaultier's muse in that age of chaos. I met her in 1982 when I worked the door at lE Rex. Her friends; Paquita, Krootchey, Fharida, Claude, Tristan et al were my friends. Sadly she passed from this world.

That moment comes to us all.

But never yesterday.

To hear HISTORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE by Edwige, please go to the following URL

https://soundcloud.com/hayley-moss/history-of-a-disapearance

Summer's Almost Gone

On Saturday I stood outside the Fort Greene Observatory. The sun was strong and the remained summery. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and I checked the time on the bank tower at Atlantic Terminal.

It was 4 PM.

Riis Park was an hour away by train and I got my bathing suit and towel before riding my bike to the Q train. Twenty minutes later I got out at Sheepshead Bay.

Boats of all kinds were racing across the broad channel. Everyone else had the same idea as me. New York was on the water. We all were thinking this is the last day of summer. I rode east. I was dying for a swim in the Atlantic.

Families were fishing in the shallows.

Rushes wavered in the light breeze.

The flowers were fading in color.

Another season was on its way, but not today.

I crossed the Gil Hodges Bridge. There were no other bicyclists and I could see that the parking lot of Riis Park was empty. It was late in the day. Everyone had already made their way home.

The sun was still an hour from setting.

I wanted a last swim and cruised down the bridge into the Rockaway.

The long strand of sand was nearly devoid of bathers.

My toes tested the water. The temperature was perfect. I plunged into the ocean and felt the eternal movement of the ocean.

My people from Maine had lived on the sea.

I felt one with the world.

Even if summer was almost gone.

DARK ALLEY by Peter Nolan Smith

Not many alleys in America survived the urban renewal of the 60s and 70s, because most cities eradicated these curious traces of Indian trails and cowpaths as a danger to the public safety.

Liberty Place used to be Little Green Street, Coenties Lane ran to the East River, and the infamous Mudd Club was located at the T-intersection of Courtlandt Alley and White Street. Muggers hung out in the shadows of the dark alley leading to Canal Street. Ripping off drunks reeling out of the club was a good business in those years.

Last year in London the ambassador and I attended a poetry reading at a long-standing pub on the Harrow Road.

Twenty years earlier at the establishment I had witnessed a fistfight evolve into a bloodbath at the ground-floor bar.

Now the pub served French food accompanied by four quid pints and the only broken noses in the place came from corrective surgery.

I kept my observations to myself, for younger people cringed upon hearing the words ‘used to‘ from older gits.

At the intermission friends from Cornwall called with an invitation for a late dinner at The Cow.

The ambassador understood my departure. I hadn’t been in London for over ten years.

“You want to join me?” It was a polite offer.

“No, you have a good time.” Alysa dismissed me with a whisper. Her eclectic friend was MCing the evening in a black and gold Elvis suit.

“Thanks.”

I caught a bus to Westbourne Grove Park and walked up All Saints Road on which thirty years earlier Jamaican reefer dealers operated a gauntlet of illegal free enterprises.

This wintry evening I was the only person on the sidewalk. Bad neighborhoods throughout the Smoke had been improved by the real estate frenzy ethnic-cleansing. Volvos, BMWs, and Land-Rovers were parked by the curb and even more telling was that these high-end vehicles wore all four tires.

I cut through a basketball court to a housing estate.

Westbourne Park Grove was on the other side.

Fourteen years ago my flight from New York had landed in London on the morning of Princess Diana’s funeral cortege. The mourning city was neutron bomb quiet. I took a taxi from Nottinghill Gate to Shrewsbury Mews on which Sam Royalle owed a duplex. The bar owner and his French girlfiend were paying their respects to the woman who could have been Queen. It was a sunny day and I sat the steps of the closed Domino Pizza shop to wait for Sam.

Forty minutes later a van stopped in front of the Mews. The back door popped open and three short-haired black men jumped onto the pavement. They wore bright red training suits and brand-new sneakers. The baseball bats in their hands were aluminum. The one with the newest suit was their leader and I knew what the first words out of his mouth would be before he even moved his lips.

“You know a Sam Royalle?” His stance was a threatening provocation.

"Who?" Playing dumb was a gift.

"Sam Royalle."

I shook my head.

His back-up surveyed the street for witnesses.

This scene from a post-apocalypse movie had four characters and I was no extra.

"What you doing here?"

Waiting for pizza, then I'm off to Ireland.” It was always better to tell the truth. I had rented a house west of Galway for the autumn. My deceased mother had told me to find a woman like my sisters or aunts and I had been brought up to obey her every wish.

“Reggie isn’t interested in your holiday plans.” The fat boy on the right weighted close to twenty stone, which was a linebacker's 280 in America. “He asked you a question.”

“And I told you I was going to Ireland.”

“Thick Mick.”

Even yardies had picked up the prejudice against the Irish from their English schoolmates.

The fat boy hefted his bat.

“Ireland's the Jamaica of Europe. Where you think they learned how to make people slaves? Nowhere, but the land of the leprechauns.” I tried to say it like I had been brought up in South Boston instead of a trolley car suburb south of the Neponset River.

My comment earned a laugh from Reggie and he released one hand from the bat. The metal end clonked on the sidewalk.

“Heel, Bunny.” Reggie was a natural with authority and his relaxed pose transformed him into a Little League dad. He had kids somewhere.

“You’re a lucky man.”

New Yorkers have a low regard of the toughness of other cities. It’s a good thing that they don’t travel too much. The rest of the world would come as a big surprise.

“And so are you.” I turned my head.

The mourning city was coming back to life.

A police car prowled the street.

Bunny, Reggie, and bats were the something wrong in the picture.

The cruiser slowed down to a crawl.

Three blacks bracing a white man in a leather jacket was a clear and present trouble.

I waved to the cops.

My smile kept them going in the direction of The Cow.

Reggie clicked his fingers for his boys to get back in the van.

“Good you didn’t say nothing to the coppers.” No one in England called the police Bobbies anymore.

“I’m not snitch.”

"We call them grasses."

"I'm not a fucking Brit, besides I only came here to pay my respects to the Princess.

"She was a good woman." Reggie nodded in agreement. “You see Sam. You tell him Reggie is looking for him.”

"I don't know any Sam."

"Everyone knows a Sam."

“Maybe, but I don't."

What are your plans?"

I always believed in telling the truth.

"I'm meeting my father in France, then going to Ireland and not coming back.” When was none of his business.

“Make sure you do that.” Reggie had redeemed my one-off go-free card.

I didn’t bother to say good-bye.

Sam showed up an hour later. His sexy French girlfriend had red-rimmed eyes. Love for Diana was not a monopoly of the British. She felt the pain too. After entering the duplex I told Sam about Reggie.

“Did Reggie look mad?” Sam doubled-locked the front door. He had bought the Mews house a year ago for 400K. His renovation had brought up the value to over 600K.

“Mad would be an understatement.” I threw my bags in the downstairs bedroom and pulled the drapes.

“Did he say he was coming back.” Sam was short, but muscular. His facial bruises hadn’t come from an argument about shaving cream.

“No, but I’d bet the house on a repeat appearance.” I had planned to stay with Sam for a few days before traveling to France. He was selling it at month’s end. My father and I were touring the Loire Valley by car. He was meeting him in Paris in a few more days.

“It’s all a misunderstanding.” He went through his house securing the windows. His family were good people from Luton. Their only son tried to stay out trouble, however the twenty-seven year-old wasn’t very good at playing the saint when the devil had a better playlist.

“Better that than a case of mistaken identification.” The innocent have a funny looking guilty to the guiltier.

“Someone contacted me about a bank wire transfer.” The stone walls were stout enough to withstand a point-blank shot from a 45.

“I want to know nothing.” Ignorance was the best refuge of the uninvolved.

“I did nothing.” Sam was scared of the Jamaica crew with good reason. Reggie didn’t play games.

“Never say that in front of a judge.” Everyone was a criminal in the blind eyes of justice.

His girlfiend was upstairs smoking cigarettes. French girls were experts at killing time with a pack of ‘clubs’. Sam pulled two beers out of the refrigerator.

“Have you tried talking to them?”

“There is no talking with these people.”

Sam explained the situation, despite my protestations.

Reggie had contacted him for a job. Someone’s aunt worked in the office of a bank’s wire transfer section. Sam had opened an off-shore account for Reggie. The aunt had sent 180,000 quid, which never arrived to its destination. Reggie had accused Sam of ripping him off. He wanted his money.

"I told him that I didn’t have it. His posse showed up at my bar with shotguns. A big fat one shut the car door on my head.”

“Bunny.” The big man liked his job.

“That’s the one.” Sam rubbed his face in appreciation that he still possessed a nose.

“A piece of work.” Big boys like Bunny had two options in Brixton.

Bullied or bully and Bunny had voted for the latter at an early age.

“Reggie told me to sell my house on the Mews and give them the money. I didn’t do nothing.”

“I believe you.” At least 50%. “But getting involved with Reggie and his crew was a questionable career move.

“180K is what I’d make on the sale of the house.”

“That’s not a coincidence.” Sam acted as if he was being set up, but the Rastas were convinced that he was lying through his teeth. “You’re fucked if you stick around here.”

“What are my options?”

There was one plan A.

“Runner.”

“Where?”

“I’ll meeting my father in Paris tomorrow.” He liked taking trips with me. I reminded him of my mother. She had been dead for a year. “Best you come with me.”

“Sounds good to me."

That evening we walked over to Kensington Park. Mourning Londoners heaped bouquets and stuffed animals before Diana's palace. The piles of condolences rose waist-deep. Sam and I laid a wreath atop the flowers. It was buried within seconds.

My younger brother's name was Michael. He had succumbed to AIDS two years before. Princess Diana supported gays. She was my princess too and I dropped my head to hide my tears.

The following day Sam wisely did a runner to France. His girlfriend stayed behind at the flat. She wasn’t scared of Reggie and that said set-up.

In the morning I cross the channel and met my father in Paris. My old man invited Sam to join was and we spend the next week touring through the Loire Valley with my father, drinking wine and touring castles. Sam called Reggie every time we stopped for gas. Every time he came back to the car, Sam shook in his seat.

Reggie was not the type to make empty threats.

“Your friend having girl troubles?” My father had a pension from the phone company. He liked people using the phone.

“Something like that.”

“They can be a problem.” My father came for Maine. People from Downeast refrained from any involvement in other people’s lives. One night in St. Malo after my father went to his room, I asked Sam, “You have money?”

“Enough to stay away from London and I’ll be set for a long time once I sell the house, yes.” His sister was handling the sale. She worked for Scotland Yard.

“Then I suggest you get on a plane to Thailand.” I spent most of the 90s in the Orient. Thailand was the easy place for a foreigner to live in South East Asia. The food was good and the women were easy, plus Bangkok had another thing going for it. “I haven’t seen any Brixton rastas out there.”

“Then that’s where I’m going. What about you?”

“I’m heading to Ireland. You could join me.”

“Too close to London.”

A week later I dropped the two of them at Charles De Gaulle aeroport. My father returned to Boston and Sam flew to Thailand.

Bangkok was a good city to hide from Brixton gangsters. The Thais were short and he could see Bunny coming from a mile away on Sukhumvit.

“Good luck and stay at the Hotel Malaysia.” Room 203 was my home away from home. It overlooked the swimming pool. Nothing really bad ever happened there.

“Thanks for the advice.”

We shook hands and he threw me his keys.

“Anything that fits is yours, but keep an eye out for any suspicious Jamaicans.”

The warning was well taken, even though Nottinghill Gate was known for suspicious Jamaicans and whiteys too. Sam had a leather jacket from Agnes B that was my size. I risked the danger for the fashion and stopped in London on my way to Ireland.

Across from the cul-de-sac was a grocer. I stood at the door for thirty minutes. He asked, if I was going to pay rent. I bought a bag of ginger snaps. My purchase shut him up.

After thirty minutes I decided that it was safe. I crossed Westbourne Grove and entered Sam’s apartment without turning on the lights. Everything was there. The yardies hadn’t broken into the place. I pulled the leather jacket from the closet ready to leave.

The motion detection lights illuminated in the alley. Someone had followed me. I ducked under a table.

Knocks sounded on the door. I did not answer them.

My blood pounded out a bongo beat like the heart in Edgar Allen Poe’s TELL-TALE HEART. I heard voices accented from Trenchtown. The shadows were not black enough to camouflage my white skin.

The high windows was crowded with the silhouette of heads. A heavy thud rocked the front door. It did not give way.

Several minutes later the light in the alley went out.

I waited a half-hour before exiting from the house.

No one was in the mews. No one confronted me on Westbourne Grove. I had the jacket in my hand. The leather was soft as a baby seal.

I walked out of the alley and down to the Cow. A few friends were having dinner.

“Nice jacket,” one of them said feeling the leather.

“I picked it up in a dark alley.” I didn’t tell them where.

“Scary.”

“A little.” I downed my wine in one gulp.

My hands shook even after the second glass of wine. I was steady an hour later. In the morning I flew to Dublin.

Ten years later I stood at the end of Shrewsbury Mews. The Domino Pizza was serving take-out and the light shone in the short alley. I walked down to Sam’s old house. The door was still the same color.

There were no lights lit and I took a photo for Sam.

He lives in Thailand.

I continued over to The Cow, feeling safe.

Reggie was probably over with an ever-bigger family in Brixton, but on Westbourne Park Grove I scanned the neighborhood, because some dark alleys aren’t so bad as long as you don’t walk into them when they are dark. Fear is 90% lighting. The other 10% is anticipation of the unexpected and dark alley were made for a man like Bunny, for he was bigger than life and life is bigger than us all.

THE FAITHFULNESS OF LIES by Peter Nolan Smith

Several years ago my friend, Sam Royalle, suspected his girlfriend was seeing another man.

"How do you know that?" Farangs don't understand how hard it was for a Thai woman to be with a westerner.

They don't speak the same language. Their tastes in food, movies, music, and humor were complete opposites. No matter how hard a Thai woman worked to be farang she will always be Thai and vice versa.

"She's always late."

"Thais are always late." Thai girlfriends normally were having too much fun doing what they're doing to be with their farang.

"She never answers her phone."

"Bad coverage." I knew all the excuses.

"That's what she said."

Not answering her phone was very suspect. Thais love speaking on the phone. Actually they love the sound of their voices, if only to not have silence, since silence opens the door for ghosts and nothing scares a Thai more than the thought of a ghost or 'phew'.

"And she comes home smelling like she just showered."

"Thais like being clean." I always have suspected that Thai girls shower after sex to erase any evidence of sex, although the Thai police insisted that criminals can't leave fingerprints on another body.

"It could be nothing."

"It wouldn't bother me if he was farang, but I think he's Thai." Sam had more than a hunch. He had seen a Thai man driving his car. She had said it was her cousin. The possibility of this being the truth was about .0001%, because Thai women in a relationship with farangs gravitated to Thai men for the comfort of a shared culture. I regarded the situation more as polygamy than infidelity.

One world Thai.

One world farang.

Can't we live together as one?

I learned the hard way that the answer is no.

Sam's girlfriend confessed to having an affair with a Thai man. Said he was a long-time friend.

"Said it was only three months."

"Maybe."

Sam Royalle threw her out of the house without torturing her to find out if it was three months or six.

"She'll be back when she breaks up with him."

"Okay."

Thai women always have a boyfriend in the background. 100% and this week a German farang hung himself rather than leave his girlfriend alone. Suicide was the only way he could be sure she didn't cheat on him.

What is wrong with these farangs?

Magic love potions?

I was poisoned with one and the only remedy is to have a woman stand over a pot of steaming rice and have her sweat drip into the pot and eat it. The rice tastes a little fishy, but I think it works and certainly would save a lot of people from a death before their time.

For those desperate men ask the cook for Khao nam-lai puying.

The life you save maybe your own.

Blondes On Bloody Snow

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints. - Alfred Hitchcock

You Bet I Would - Kim Novak

The thing I loved about Alfred Hitchcock is that he left a lot of open ends there, a lot of clues that didn't really add up the way you think they would, and sometimes, not at all.

Kim Novak

Randall's Island Now

In July of 1970 Randall's Island at the confluence of East River and Long Island Sound hosted the Randall's Island Pop Festival. The concert organizers originally had scheduled three-days of shows, however several headliners cancelled the third day. While Jimi Hendrix as always sold the show, the Village Voice called the gathering 'the day the music stopped.'

That weekend I was in Montreal with Irish friends dropping LSD.

I tried to hitchhike to New York.

They stopped me and I never stepped foot on Randall's Island.

Not until last Labor Day weekend.

While my boss traveled north with her husband to watch her niece's dressage trials, I took care of her pugs, Samson and Delilah. The old dogs and I liked to take it easy, but it was a beautiful afternoon and I had brought my bike. My boss had suggested a tour of Central Park, however the Manhattan's lung was rammed with tourists. I looked on the computer for an alternative. The Google map showed Randall's Island.

Bridges straddled the ancient island of Minnehanonck. I had driven over it countless times. I plotted the distance. It wasn't far away.

I rode along the East River

The tide was fierce.

Billions of sea acres washed through the river.

The current was strong.

I rode up to the pedestrian bridge.

Plastic trash littered the concrete.

On the other side everyone was having a good time.

Hot fun in the summertime.

I knew no one and no one invited me to join them.

It was 2015 and I couldn't blame, so I rode on past the soccer field.

The RFK Bridge spanned the straits.

I had shook the Senator's hand at a trolley station in Boston.

The year had been 1968. Boston.

He remains my hero

I loved everything about the Hell's Gate Bridge.

According to Wikipedia the engineering was so precise that when the last section of the main span was lifted into place, the final adjustment needed to join everything together was just 1⁄2 inch.

Perfection.

Or close to it.

Like no one sees anymore.

I thought pre-Roman.

Except the stone bridge dated back a hundred years to a time of civil unrest.

Workers were fodder, but also appreciative of their accomplishment from all angles.

The summer wind graced the afternoon without a whisper under the bridge's arches.

I forgot the greatness of Rome and admired the architecture.

Everyone else on the island was thinking BBQ.

Not football.

Not nothing.

And nothingness is easier to achieve than enlightenment.

Especially in the trees of Randalls Island and the Hell's Gate Bridge.

1915.

To see Jimi Hendrix at Randall's Island, please go to the following URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2-m6QRiEO0

Frank Holliday - Singapore Sex/Art Show

Isn't all Art about Sex?

Go see Frank. He and I tried to vandalize Fiorucci during the 1978 New York Blackout.

He's one of us.

You Bet I Would - Bugis Street - 1960s

Bunny from Bugis Street, Singapore.

None of those girls are around anymore, thus neither am I.

Never Can Say Good-Bye

Sam Royalle and I miss Don Muang Airport. The International Terminal was the scene of so many hellos and good-byes. The new Bangkok Airport doesn't offer a third of the venues for tearful departures and joyous arrivals. Myth has it that many girls timed one boyfriend's farewell to coincide with another's hello. Don Muang was so romantic.

My girlfriend Sirinthep doesn't do airports.

At least not for me and certainly not on my recent voyage.

Her last words were via SMS ie it's over for good.

12/4 No problem. I think I can take care of everything. Good for you. You can take care yourself. You are old already. You choose good for you. I no love you anymore. You are a hurt in my heart. Good-bye my love. Broke heart.

12/5 Just want to say. You have other family. I go work in Germany. Just want to say good-bye.

Work in Germany means in a bar hustling fat krauts. I don't response to any of these emails.

12/5 You play your game. Goodbye. I leave your son with someone. Not easy for me, but I want to take care baby by myself. I not want stupid man. I have passport ready to go. Germany.

I wish her luck.

12/6 I have one heart. I not have heart for someone else. Only you. I not want anyone new in my life. Only work and make money for my babies. Love you big mistake. I want forever love. Why you think I have another man. I never go out. Only take care your son.

I don't respond. Silence kills a woman's overactive mind.

12/6 Sorry for last time you come. I do many things bad. I feel sick inside. Then worry too much about your first wife. I worry about have good sex with you, but hurt too much inside. Think all you think about is sex. I want to steal all your heart forever. But I too much scared. Sorry again..

I ask how long she goes to Germany.

12/6 3 months for work. Wait 3 months and go again. Not sure how many times can go.

I wish her more luck. Can't stop anyone from doing what they want to do.

12/6 I'm really sorry I not good for you. I not think about your feeling. Just think about me. You come long way. I not big girl. Only stupid. I'm so wrong. But I really love you 100%

12/6 All my heart. Go to sleep. Love you.

Go figure.

Somewhere there has to be a scenarist for Thai girls telling their boyfriends the 'truth'.

I think that world is called Peace.

Ispahan, Half Of The World

One summer afternoon in Maine I discovered the 19th Century illustrated novel THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN in my grandmother Edith's bookshelves. As a ten years old boy I read the book in wonderment. The Persian city of Isapahan sat astride two of the great trade routes of the ancient world and the wealth flowed to its people to create a center of Sufi knowledge and center of science, math, poetry, and beauty from 1050 to the 1700s.

The magnificence of its mosques testified to ascendancy and the Persians told travelers, ""Esfahān nesf-e- jahān ast" or "Isfahan is half of the world."

The West had nothing in comparison.

Rome was in ruins.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21331/21331-h/21331-h.htm

I liked walking through its hills.

But Ispahan.

It remains a destination to those in love with urban beauty.

According to Wikipedia the tenth century Persian historian Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamedani wrote: "When the Jews emigrated from Jerusalem, fleeing from Nebuchadnezzar, they carried with them a sample of the water and soil of Jerusalem. They did not settle down anywhere or in any city without examining the water and the soil of each place. They did all along until they reached the city of Isfahan. There they rested, examined the water and soil and found that both resembled Jerusalem. Upon they settled there, cultivated the soil, raised children and grandchildren, and today the name of this settlement is Yahudia."

Ispahan still speaks its poetry.

I hope it shall forever.

To read The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by JAMES MORIER online, please go to the following URL

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21331/21331-h/21331-h.htm

And travel to another time.

It's better than taking a plane to Disneyworld.