Fifi The Rasta - BOIS DE BOULOGNE - 1985

I love Paris in the summertime, especially after July 14, Bastille Day. 30-50% of the city's inhabitants vacate the sixteen arrondisements for Normandie, Les Alps or the South of France.

Less people, if you can avoid the foreign tourists thronging to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and le Louvre. The lack of traffic after le Grand Depart seemed to clear the sky of pollution and I relished the emptied streets.

Back on a warm morning OF the July 14, 1985 I had driven my friend's Vespa 150cc motor scooter west past the Arc de Triumphe to Porte Dauphine into the Bois de Boulonge, once the royal hunting grounds. The park is twice the size of New York's Central Park. I took off the Bell helmet. The wind fragrant with nature blew through my hair. Les Brazilian putes had erected their tents for le traffic des dejeuner or the lunch trade. Most were trans and I rolled past without a sideward glance. These girls brooked no gruff.

A bois is more a woods than a forest, but the green was a welcome change from the close street of le Marais medieval, the old Jewish quartier, where I resided in a small room in a small hotel on le Rue Des Ecouffes. Pulling over to a bank of the Lac Inferior to lay in the shade of an oak tree, I open my bag and spread out the pears and cheeses purchased from the shops of the Rue du Rivoli. After a few bites and a sip of a strong Cote de Rhine, I lay back and gazed meaninglessly at the cloudless sky. All the gray of Paris ceased to exist today and I felt one with the park.

A Citroen pulled onto the grass fifty feet beyond my resting place. A family sat inside. All their bags were packed atop of the sedan. An older man in his forties got out and pulled a well-coiffed poodle from the vehicle. His children were crying. He picked up a stick from the ground and threw it into the woods. The dog chased the stick. The man jumped in the Citroen and the family drove away headed for the Alps, le Sud de France, or further afield in France. The big poodle came back and searched for the car.

It was gone.

The poodle looked at me.

I already had a dog waiting for me in the Marais. Angus. A loyal Scottie.

The poodle was on his own.

Later that night I related this tale to my fellow doorman at les Bains-Douches and Grand Jacques shrugged saying that the poodle had been abandoned by the family for the summer vacation.

"C'est le tradition."

Throughout August on my travels to the Bois I spotted the poodle running with other dogs. An ever shaggy pack. They seemed happy to be tramps. Free at last.

A month later I drove through the same section of the park and spotted a Citroen slowly cruising the woods. The same one, which had deserted Fifi the previous month. It braked at the same spot as July 14. It was August 15. The day after le Grand Retour from le Grand Depart.

The tanned driver got out and called for his dog.

"Fifi, Fifi."

I shook my head thinking him cruel, but Fifi bounded from the underbrush.

His hair was matted like a Rasta and his body was considerably thinner from a diet of squirrels and trash.

The man greeted his dog with a smile, as if this rendezvous had been planned from the start adn that they had experienced this reunion more than once before.

"Oh, Fifi, time for you to see the beauty salon."

The owner opened the door to Citroen. Fifi jumped inside with joy and they drove off in the direction of Neuilly-Sur-Seine, proving once more Josh Fielding's old adage, "A dog is the only animal that loves you more than it loves itself."

Even if their owners are Parisienne.

ps Angus was just as happy to see me that day.

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Goodbye Summer August 19, 2023

August 19, 2023
This evening
in Fort Greene Park
the trees changed color
from summer green
to end of summer green

The sun set earlier
than yesterday
a sliver moon follows its celestial partner
west
to a horizon
Beyond Brooklyn's skyline

BBQs burn along Myrtle Avenue
Not as many as last weekend.
the leaves turn black
in the new night
the BBQ smoke smell of of hot dogs, burgers, and ribs
and meat
From prehistoric times

Everyone from the walt whitman houses
in the park
having fun
and the sky goes sapphire
the fingernail moon goes silver
And the August breeze cools the air

the people become shadows
it's time for me
to call it a day
but not an end to summer
The season has another month to go
with the days haunting shorter
with a new moon guiding the way
to the equinox
more than thirty days away
and the less green leaves still on the trees
awaiting autumn
and winter.
Goodbye summer soon.

Cold As A Dog's Tongue

120 in Death Valley.
98 in Brooklyn.
Ice cream stick in my hand.
A glob of vanilla falls on my foot.

Cold spreads on my skin
Like frost from a hole in an Inuit's boot
Cold, but not close to zero in winter.
And then the cold melts above freezing.

A dog looks at the ice slime
His tongue loos over his teeth
His eyes glazed with desire.
To lick my foot.

I offer him a taste.
His lap is quicker than his owner.
A taste of paradise is worth the jerk of a chain.
If a dog could have winked then this one would have.

Because sometimes a dog's friend is a man with ice cream on his foot.
Far from Death Valley
120
Twenty miles away from ice cream.

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.

Emerson Lake and Palmer 1971 Loss of Viriginity Tour

Moog Music announced that the company will honor the 50th of the introduction of the Moog Modular, the first voltage controlled synthesizer at Moogfest 2014. The engineers of that legendary company spent three years reconstructing the iconic Keith Emerson’s Moog Modular System.

"Using the original documentation as well as circuit board and art files for nearly every original Moog module, Moog Engineers have painstakingly recreated the original Emerson Modular System. The new Emerson Moog Modular System is comprised of handcrafted Moog modules built from the original circuit designs and are true recreations of the originals, utilizing the same hand assembly methods used in the Moog Music factory in Trumansburg, NY in 1969. The modules in the new Emerson Moog Modular System are built just as the originals were, by hand-stuffing and hand-soldering components to circuit boards, and using traditional wiring methods. Even the front panels are photo-etched aluminum (a rare process now), which is the classic and durable, look of vintage Moog modules."

I missed Moogfest, but on May 29, 1971 a co-worker and I attended an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer concert at Boston Hatchshell. We brought two bottles of Zapple wine. I don't remember the flavor. The opening act was the blues artist John Hammond. Linda wasn't familiar with their music. Linda worked in the same office on Franklin Street, although she was an executive, while I was a summer employee thanks to my father's intercession. He was a top electrical engineer for NET&T.

The long-legged twenty-six year-old divorcee came from Concord. Traces of an English accent meshed with her high-class clothing. She was no hippie girl and her mother was babysitting her young daughter. We never spoke about her ex-. This was our first date.

The two of us shared the bottle of wine.

It was my birthday.

I was turning 19.

My hair was long. She liked playing with it. We smoked a joint. I touched her back. She was wearing a bra. Girls at my college had burned theirs. They were feminists and didn't shave their legs or armpits. Linda shaved both. I liked the touch of her bare skin.

"I'm old-fashioned in many ways," she murmmured in my ear. "But not all of them."

We made out on the grassy lawn.

No one around us said anything. It wasn't Woodstock, but we were free.

They were grooving on the music of Edgar Winter. The albino organist was Johnny Winter's brother. I had seen the pale-skinned guitar play with BB King at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival.

The sky grew storm during his set and a windstorm lashed the audience, as he played TOBBACO ROAD.

Everyone expected rain, but the night grew calm for his encore of SAVE THE PLANET.

I opened the second bottle of wine and torched the joint. Linda was getting high for the first time. She had a funny laugh. The stage crew assembled an enormous sound system centered on a massive moog synthesizer. I was familiar with Keith Emerson from his years with the Nice.

I had one of their LPs.

The trio took the stage and proceeded with pounded the audience with a fast-paced organ recital.

The crowd swayed to TAKE A PEBBLE. Linda stripped off her bra. I groped her breasts. We wandered over the the bushes. I told her that I was a virgin.

"Not for very long."

It was a very good birthday and I wish Linda the best.

Whereever she is.

To hear TAKE A PEBBLE please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaYsgjn82GA&feature=kp

EVOLUTION OF MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

Last month Jamie Parker and I were sitting on Pattaya Beach. We hadn't seen each other in five months.

"Do you miss living here?" Jamie had been trying to open another go-go bar. The owner of the Carousel off Walking Street was dead broke. The go-go bar sounded like a good investment, except neither of us had any money.

"Every day I wake up and it's cold and my bones creak." My son Fenway was playing in the sand. Mam his mother was digging up small clams from the edge of the sea. The beach vendor brought over a big bottle of Leo. "I'd love to stay, except I'm busted."

"Most everyone is this past years." Jamie had a little money coming in monthly from his veterans disability. His body showed no scars or bullet holes. For a man of so many tall tales he had never told the one why the Pentagon considered him worthy of a pension.

"If it was only me, then I could scramble for cash." Not eating for a day or two didn't bother me as long as I could get a beer, but Fenway needed his milk.

"Yeah, kids aren't made for the sporting life." The rat-thin New Yorker had never spawn an heir to his empire of hustles and scams. He was the last of the Parkers.

"Not unless they're Gypsies." I settled back into the cloth lounge chair. The breeze off the water was cool and the beer cold. "What I don't miss about Pattaya are the plastic condos, the big discos, and fat Russians."

"They're the only foreigners coming here this summer."

"For the sun." Neither of us dared to challenge its rays, although every Russian had slathered their pasty bodies with sun oil, as if they were preparing to be the Sunday pig roast.

"You know I don't believe in evolution." Jamie poured his beer into a glass and then added ice. Most British lager louts considered that sacrilege. We didn't care what those exiles from the Costa Brava thought. We were Americans and cold beer is colder with ice.

"I more believe in de-volution." A quick glance at the sun bathers attested to this belief. The Slavic vacationers had trouble walking and only could communicate through cellphones.

"That's part of it too, but look at these monsters. Darwin was cited as having said that we evolved from apes, but most of these Russian women's ancestors appear to have mated with walruses. Or sea lions at worst."

"I've heard this spiel before." In fact I was the one who told him it. "Along with there being no fat people in the Rolling Stones movie GIMME SHELTER.

"The only fat people at Altamont were the lead singer from Canned Heat, a cop, a Hell's Angel, and the naked fat guy who gets killed in the afternoon." Jamie covered his eyes, as two beer-bellied Russian men in g-strings walked past us.

"Obesity's a disgrace. And I heard today that this fat woman in Texas had a baby and she never knew she was pregnant. Her name was April."

"Not an ex-stripper at Pig Pens?" Jamie's previous go-go in Pattaya had featured 'chang noi' or little elephant dancers had lasted a year before the police shut it for moral indecency. Fat girls really like to talk dirty.

"No, I said an American." Jamie was a little cranky behind a few beers and knew that I like riding him in this state. "This cow goes into the hospital complaining about stomach pains and the doctors tell her she's having a baby. She weighed something like 420 pounds."

"The baby?" 420 pounds was over twice my weight.

"No, April. The baby was normal weight."

"420 pounds. How could she have sex?"

"Sex?"

"That's an ugly thought."

Both of us watched two obese Russians waddle past our table like gigantic Jell-O figurines coming to life. We downed our beers and ordered two more. It would take a lot more than beer to shake off that image of fat people in coitus. More like vodka. It's fat-free.