Reflections from Across the Pond

Abbey Road

Bear with me... and hold this thought as you read this post: FADING IS AN ART FORM.

The two photos atop this page are so "me": doing what everyone else does at the Abbey Road pedestrian crossing in London.

My daughter obliged by taking a photo. Then she accompanied me into the gift shop, where I bought a souvenir Abbey Road Studios pen and added my own graffiti to the outside entranceway.

"Bob was here," I penned, adding a cartoonish drawing of a penguin, as if that made me unique.

In fact, the voice inside my head and my daily interaction with others remind me that I am quite ordinary, and that perhaps my life may never leave a mark. In fact, as a man of a certain age, I have lately felt invisible.

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We stayed at the Kimpton Fitzroy;
my daughter picked this hotel because
it would remind me of The Dakota in NYC,
where John Lennon lived

I had never been to London before, and this trip was a gift from my daughter.

Her friends are travel enthusiasts and well-versed in the history of the Titanic, so we were to meet them a few days later in Southhampton, where we'd board the Queen Mary 2 for a leisurely voyage home to New York.

I love New York, but I fell in love with London, too. I've sprinkled a few of my iPhone photos from London here in this text.

The city is bigger and more complicated than I had thought. My daughter arranged for us to see two plays (one at Shakespeare's Globe), visit three museums, stop in several parks and pubs, sail a gondola in Little Venice, take a whirlwind tour on a double-decker tour bus, and take a scenic spin on the giant London Eye ferris wheel.

My daughter and I on the London Eye, with its view of Big Ben

We topped it off by having an elegant tea with one of her friends at Fortnum & Mason the afternoon before we took the Underground to Waterloo Station to catch the train to Southhampton.

I love my daughter very much, and I felt somewhat nostalgic among her young friends. You could say, as Sir Paul once sang, that it became apparent to me that my daughter and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

The British Museum courtyard (with a quote from Tennyson on the floor:
"and let thy feet / millenniums hence / be set in midst of knowledge");
groundlings gathering before a performance at Shakespeare's Globe

Adding to worries about my advancing age, I was on the cusp of celebrating another birthday, and I kept receiving texts and emails, even... magically... while in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean... about my 50th high school reunion in New Jersey.

I could not attend the DePaul Catholic High School reunion because our "ocean liner" (the Queen Mary 2 is defiantly not a "cruise ship," and I intend to post separately about that experience) was not due to narrowly pass beneath the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and dock in Brooklyn until the morning after the event.

Camden Market and under the Westminster Bridge

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So how was the reunion?

A high school friend texted me: "The reunion was incredibly interesting and disorienting and fun and unusual. Sooooo many 15-year-old classmates comfortably settled deep, deep, deep in my memory having to pair up with their 68-year-old future selves! It was wild!"

My response: "It's unreal to reconcile the photos to the people I remember. I'm glad you were there. I often still feel 15 inside, although on the verge of turning 68, I also sometimes feel like I'm gradually disappearing to others… so I treasure connection all the more!"

My friend's wonderful reply: "I think fading is an art form. From the bright beam of a lighthouse to the astonishing flashes of the firefly, we all play a wonderful part in this life thing :)!"

That's it! My new mantra. No longer "invisible," but "fading." I should live my life in harmony with the first principles of biology and physics: EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING SOMETHING ELSE.

So I vow to embrace this feeling as my "birthday month" comes to an end. I concluded the chat with my friend with this haiku, stealing a phrase from Sylvia Plath:

fading as we age

is our art before we die,

like everything else.

Piccadilly Circus, reminding me of New York

Home now and feeling renewed and inspired, I wrote a poem, in the form of a glose, to honor a treasured memory of high school: studious, shy, awkward me in an improbable Latin class in Wayne, NJ, with only two other classmates, Michael Brown and Harry Maronpot.

Both their names appeared on the reunion organizers' list of people they could no longer locate. I dedicate this post to my daughter, to my artistic friend, to Michael, to Harry, and to my teacher, Sister Billy Jo.

A Visit to the British Museum Among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows, Silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone, Watch me as I write in her memory: Sister Josephine Coleman I am closely watched in front of the Rosetta Stone by CCTV cameras in London, past the temples of Amazon and Nike, joking that my daughter should marry a centaur, commenting on the elaborate tombs. “All the kings are now footnotes,” I say, like me, foolishly trying to cheat death. “In a way, they do get an afterlife here,” my equestrian daughter replies, among sacred cats and monkeys, bulls and cows. I am dizzy to discover Elgin Marbles of the Parthenon here instead of in Greece. I am dizzy to view the mosaics of fish recovered from the houses of the now-dead rich. I am dizzy by what remains of the past: Kashan pottery, Ilkhanid lustre tiles, tapered glass tear holders, archer’s rings, ornate tableware depicting sea deities, white-gold Meissen porcelain, Bohemian export glass, silver and copper ingots, amulets of bone. “Consider how much bigger the world is than you.” These words haunt me from an empty tomb. I hear the voice of my Latin teacher, a nun, in a classroom mausoleum next to the AV room at DePaul High School in New Jersey. My teacher died decades ago, soon after the London Bridge was moved and long before her name could be fossilized on the ether of the Internet. Watch me as I write in her memory: I offer an ordinary quatrain written in indelible electrons, inspired by ghosts in a museum of how big the world now seems. I invoke her name in the footnote of this glose, this poem. I bestow on her the afterlife of a king: Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman Sister Josephine Coleman --------- Just me, underneath a marker noting the Beatles' last live performance on top of this roof

Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Watching 'Star Trek' With My Father

On this day in 1966, "Star Trek" premiered on NBC TV. It was my father's favorite show, and we used to watch it together. I'm sure Dad secretly pretended to be Captain Kirk, and I loved to pretend Captain Kirk was my Dad.

I visited Dad's grave this weekend. He died nearly 19 years ago. I took this photo today near an ironically dead tree near his grave site in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Totowa, NJ, and I offer this poem in his memory.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday

It’s a Thursday-like Sunday morning in September 2024,

And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is 1,000 miles away from me

In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,

And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Suddenly, on the liquid crystal screen before us,

Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,

Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.

We slingshot around the sun

Fast enough to reverse time,

Arriving back in our TV room,

Where it’s a Thursday night in January 1967,

The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,

775 miles away from the storm.

He is still 1,000 miles away from me.

I am the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there and place a protective arm

That envelops my small body.

I whisper in my ear:

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” over and over again.

Until a tractor beam surrounds me and my past.

Its light absorbs us.

My grasp on myself dissolves.

As credits begin to roll, I am transported

To a Sunday morning in September 2024

By the otherworldly vessel of this poem.

This poem has taken control.

It has implanted an image that worms into my brain:

I cannot unsee my father.

He has become Captain Kirk at the conn.

In this strange new world,

He is changing my future forever.

Summer's Highlight: Mom's 75th HS Reunion

Attendees of the Pope Pius XII 75th high school reunion. Mom didn't want to be in the photo since she technically didn't graduate with the class.

One highlight this past summer was a Friday afternoon in late June that I spent happily surrounded by a eight women at a country club in Wayne, NJ.

All seemed charmed by my presence.

Full disclosure: one of the women was my Mom.

The occasion was the 75th reunion of the 1949 co-ed graduating class of since-closed Pope Pius XII High School in Passaic, NJ.

Mom did not actually graduate with that class (that's a long story), but Dad did... and Mom did go to school there and was Dad's date for all the other Pope Pius XII reunions over the years. That afternoon, I admired a faded Polaroid of them all dressed up and posing with other tanned and happy couples on the occasion of the school's 40th reunion anniversary trip (in a rented bus, with a case of champagne) to Ocean City, Maryland.

Here's a photo from the school's 15th reunion in 1960s. Missing is "The Shining"'s Jack Torrance in a tux in the front row. 

But this reunion day in Wayne, 35 years later, was very different.

"Where are all the men?" one of the women asked as the group gathered for lunch... a Caesar salad and a choice of filet mignon or roasted chicken as an entry. (I seemed to be the only one at the big round table who chose the chicken, so maybe red meat is better for longevity than we've been led to believe.) 

"They're dead," I whispered in Mom's bad ear, thinking she wouldn't hear me. But she giggled and tried to hush me.

The background music chosen by our hosts at the North Jersey Country Club -- from "In My Life" by John Lennon and The Beatles to "All I Have to Do Is Dream" by the Everly Brothers to "Young at Heart" by Frank Sinatra -- set a nostalgic tone for the enchanting pre-meal conversation.

Several of the women graduates, all in their early 90s, were assisted and escorted by their daughters or granddaughters. I escorted Mom to the event... although I was a poor substitute for my Dad.

Chick's 1949 yearbook page, with messages to Gen

I heard a lot that afternoon about Dad, whose high school nickname was "Chick." His baseball teammates had teasingly inflicted that moniker on him for being as good looking as a woman.

"The ladies were all after him," a former prom queen confided in me in 2024. "Chick did the artwork for our school operettas," noted another woman... as if I needed a reminder that Dad was a talented artist in addition to being the school's baseball and basketball star and senior class Student Council president.

Mom, Gen, and me

Still another '49 graduate -- Genevieve "Gen" Kelly (Donatello), the reunion's organizer -- recalled a time that she and Dad and classmate Bob Swit (brother of the actress Loretta Swit) went on an impromptu horseback-riding adventure at stables in Paramus after a round of golf. I wonder if Mom ever knew.

I asked several of the women to point out their photos in the 1949 yearbooks ("The Keys") on hand, and lovingly preserved, at the reunion. Carol in green showed me a recent photo of her surrounded by large group of happy descendants on the Lake Mohawk shore. And I learned -- and Mom learned -- that Mom and another classmate shared the same birth date. The birthday buddies, born in 1932, had never realized that until 2024.

That woman, Isabel Mineo, had been editor-in-chief of the "Eagle Light" school newspaper. She proudly showed me a story from one of the old issues about "Robert Varettoni '49" speaking on a radio show ("970 on the dial") that broadcast a civic Junior Town Meeting from the Kresge-Newark Building. Dad had spoken on the topic, "Should We Extend Government Health Service."

Mom and her Birthday Buddy

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I was most touched when Gen stood up after lunch and before a group photo, and led the women in song... "The Blue and Gold," the alma mater of a high school in New Jersey that closed its doors in 1983:

There's a starry light that shines in our eyes / there's a sone in our souls we'll ever sing / for a love that burned in our hearts so true / for our Alma Mater, the Gold and Blue. / With loyal hearts to you we bring. the glory we now fondly sing, / "The Gold and Blue" 

Here's that moment, captured in video.

Marcel Proust in Plain Vanilla

I read another original poem in public earlier this month. Surrounded by black-and-white photos of musical greats with a connection to Teaneck, NJ, I read "The Last Emperor of Vanilla Ice Cream" at the Puffin Cultural Forum.

I view this as my "Wallace Stevens Lite" effort, but a kind poet in the crowd that night said the poem reminded her of Marcel Proust's inspired reaction to tasting a madeleine cookie.

So I post this here with apologies -- and memorial birthday wishes -- to Marcel, born this date (July 10) in 1871.

The Last Emperor of Vanilla Ice Cream

That’s me, plain vanilla.

But don’t underestimate me,

because at 3 in the afternoon,

everything changes.

Not 1 o’clock, not 2,

but precisely at 3,

I travel back in time,

with memories so sweet.

When my Nonna calls to me,

I am outside with my grandfather.

We are working in the garden

under the rural New Jersey sun.

In my memory,

I spend all my summers here,

with my grandparents, in this place,

where Nonna calls to us, precisely at 3.

Two scoops each, condensing in the heat.

Brought to us on a serving tray,

in porcelain dishes, with silver spoons

that once touched my great-grandmother’s lips.

During those summers,

when unicorns were still possible,

vanilla dribbled down my chin,

making my grandfather laugh.

Wiping my face with the back of my hand,

licking my fingers,

leaving all my messes behind.

My brain, frozen in time.

That’s me, chaste and wholesome.

The opposite of concupiscent.

Embracing the chill of reminiscence.

Treasuring the remnants of my boyhood empire.

I savor the taste of these words:

Plain vanilla ice cream, precisely at 3.

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“And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval…But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment.”

–Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Lost Things, Volume One