power of h Weblog

His paintings bleed with a kind of ‘noir’ story telling. I remember these same images as a kid sitting in the back seat of our ’58 Pontiac driving through a wet evening. The only thing missing is the streetcars. And the slap of the windshield wipers. Jeremy Mann

I first got this image or something like it while listening to Bob Dylan’s  I Pity The Poor Immigrant. All of us in the Americas are children of immigrants. We all share in this common experience of being in an alien place and feeling both alone and vulnerable. And yet, immigrants believe that their experience is unique, is not like those who came before them or those that will follow. Their pain is always greater, their experience more intense.

My mother is in a retirement  home. She has dizzy spells and falls down. When she was in her apartment there was a continuous series of hospital visits because she was alone. Now she is in a home and although it is not perfect, I feel more comfortable knowing that she is taking care of. Mom is of two minds about the place. And I mean she is still in her own mind. Very sharp but with some memory loss. Not so with many of the other residents. My mother says that they are the happiest. Because they cannot remember anything. I’m not so sure. Some of the worst experiences we have is as children. When we don’t understand what is happening around  us. When we have no memory to fall back on.

I love Paris. Its very romantic. When my wife and I went there, we enjoyed a wonderful meal in a Chinese Restaurant. After the meal my wife began to feel sick. We figured there must have been fish in the meal. She’s allergic to fish. We decided to make our way back to the hotel. It was raining. On the way, she slipped on the cobblestone streets and broke her nose. There was blood all over her face. And she was feeling dizzy. When we got back to the hotel she was in real bad shape. The  clerk at the front desk gave us a suspicious look. I knew what that look was. He thought I had beaten her. I don’t speak French. I couldn’t explain. We spent the rest of that holiday in our hotel room. My wife getting over food poisoning and a possible concussion. Me sitting at…

There are times when events are so horrendous that reality itself seems to fall apart. I remember ironing my suit in the basement of my parent’s  house. My father had died. I was preparing for the funeral. The suit I was going to iron hadn’t been worn since I graduated from high school. It barely fit. But there was no time to buy a new one. I’d forgotten that it was made out of some polyester material. As soon as the iron touched it, the suit melted.