Blah Blah Blah Blog

Statistics will tell us that the majority of blogs are personal in nature. Millions of people around the world take to the typepad every day, twittering away about the dullest details of their daily lives.
Opening my Facebook page each morning, I am greeted with a news feed of non-noteworthy activity of faint friends and business acquaintances: Marcy is feeling her oats; Janet is having another latte; Jake is blogging about Brooklyn; Rip is tearing it up.
Why do I care? I don’t know, but I do. I regularly check the profiles of ex-lovers and former colleagues, not with any intention of making contact; I have no desire to reconnect or even to reminisce. I am just a curious yellow voyeur. I enjoy the fact that I can browse the photos from last week’s picnic, or vicariously enjoy the wedding festivities of the most casual acquaintance: though I wasn’t close enough to merit an invite to the reception, I did get to see the bride, and while I don’t know the family, it was fun to see them all dressed up in their Sunday best.
The blogging habit has been a natural one for me to acquire. I have since childhood been an obsessive keeper of journals. I keep a file cabinet bursting with moleskins, binders full of scribblings, pages of poems, thoughts, and daily drivel.
I journal compulsively for an audience of one – myself. I do not share my notebooks, and , despite a background in journalism, do not harbor any serious pretensions of publication. I simply put pen to paper in hopes of divining some patterns; I long to put some order to the cacophony of thoughts and the randomness of life’s curious curveballs.
Occasionally, I get a comment on my blog posts. It is always surprising -- and edifying -- to make connections with strangers based solely upon the synergy of search terms – the coincidence of keywords. We are all looking for connections.
Like the proverbial message in a bottle, I post and pitch my little contributions into the choppy waters, and wait. A day, a week, a lifetime, for the echo of the cosmic giggle to ping me back.

Happy Earth Day

Back in 1970
we saw the big blue marble
circling the heavens
and we knew
our goddess gaia
deserved a holiday, too.


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C. Bukowski

C. Bukowski, originally uploaded by Bradley Wind.

found this on flickr, and just had to share.

Chuck's 60th 032

Chuck's 60th 032, originally uploaded by kim.brickley.

Tim Brickley, Life's a beach

Good Day Sunshine

my natural alarm has me greeting the dawn
Saturday morning and a glorious spring
sunshine gregarious birds
and the low slow horns of the harbor
the light rail screeches and calls out Essex
I remember the Pope is in town
and wonder what he'll do to mark Pesach
The first seder begins tonight
the stories of slavery and unleavened haste
but now the spirit calls me to come out and play
log off the blog; go seize the day


http://freepamphlet.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/good-day-sunshine/

Martin Luther King Remembered

I was only 8 in 1968 when Dr. King was murdered, but I clearly remember watching the images flicker across the black and white set in my parents’ bedroom. My family stood around open-mouthed, not fully understanding the impact of the events in Memphis.

First the shock that another voice of peace had been silenced, then the fear that America was spinning out of control, and the very real feeling that something BIG was coming down. Notions of conspiracy, and of revolution, and talk of what we would do if the violence reached us.

America burned in the days to follow. One hundred cities saw rioting. Days later, driving through the gutted, burned streets of Cincinnati with my Uncle Joe and Grandpa Sandy, we surveyed the damage. It felt surreal. It felt like a War Zone.

My Rabbi at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation had marched with Dr. King, identifying with the civil rights struggle as so many liberal Jews did. He spoke to our congregation about the widening division between Black and White, rich and poor, capital and labor. He preached the need for involvement. I embraced that notion of social activism, and made a commitment that I would be part of the solution, not the problem. A commitment that eventually led me to join the Peace Corps and serve as a volunteer in Central Africa for 2 years.

So it is 40 years later, and the cities of America have long since stopped smoldering. And yet, while much progress has been made, the same struggle for human, civil and economic freedom continues to rage on. Today a stifling political correctness pervades our culture. Gone is the heady sense of freedom and potential that the Sixties and its imminent change suggested. Today our ‘leaders’ feed us a steady diet of fear and fabrication. Tracking chips in our passports, and invasion of our privacy, and armed soldiers on our streets and in our subways is a fair exchange, we are told, for a sense of security. The enemy is terror, and he is everywhere and coming for us soon. We are engaged in a moral war, and yes, a very real global war as well.

The prospect of our first Black President gives me occasion for hope. Barack Obama is a man who epitomizes the social activism we espoused back in those brutal days. His candidacy suggests that the country might just be ready to transcend the ugliness that drove the events of that April day back in 1968. One can only hope.

This is a day for reflection.

Off the Garden State Parkway

All that time in cubicles
has made our racers anxious
They honk and weave
then flip the bird
in theater cantankerous

Today I took a mid-day ride
and nearly lost my life
A large-framed man
in a too-small car
cut me off on the Garden State

He desired my place in lane
first sped up, then hit the brakes
I swerved and skidded to avoid a scene
and the loss of time that an accident takes

He waved his finger
Fuck you he screamed
red-faced and bloated
behind the Kia’s tinted screen

I breathed
out the stress
and in the bliss
before I saw the exit
that I had just missed

New Jersey doesn’t care about convenience
ten mile breaks before any off ramps
and then you end up behind mom in the mini van
at CR-657 and the Junction of 22 West

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www.davidrheins.wordpress.com
www.freepamphlet.wordpress.com