Gathering Time

 Gathering Time (Title of Simon Baxter's Book)

We

Well I

For I can only speak for myself-

Have had this lifelong project

To gather time

In words and memories

That traverse along a continuum 

That is tracked like a train across a Kansas prairie

Or a junkies arm

I don't know

Really

I don't know and even with directions

I wander off the path

Into the detritus of our cultural eclipses

Which pull us in like a magnetic north

Making us think we off in the correct direction

Only to find we have wandered to an edge of a cliff

Or a brick wall with a sign that says "You Have Arrived"

When in fact you are just lost

Just lost

I have gathered time

Used my rake to make piles of time

Like fall leaves in late October

Still flaked with colors

Yellows, oranges and reds

Making their way back into the earth

To feed the worms 

But this gathering

That's really what I started to say

Before I got sidetracked again on 

Kansas, junkies, and the North Pole

Is a lifelong agenda item

That pages itself on my to do list everyday

It too has fall colors and streaks of black and white

It too falls away each day and sinks down feather like

Somewhere I still cannot see

jrm

1/30/2022

Walking to Afghanistan

Walking to Afghanistan

Soon we will walk to Afghanistan because the oceans have all dried up

And the climate has changed

Changed our moods, our minds, and even changed the countries where we live

We will march with Burkas and Gucci handbags bought in Doha

We will have bandaids and moleskin for our blisters

Walking sticks from REI

Flashlights and bandanas on our heads

Tiki torches in our hands

We will be woke

We will be progressive

We will be far-right

We will be far-left

We will be angry at each other for being each other and not us

Our boots will stomp on the ground in front of the walls we put up

Our signs will signify our distaste for you

Then we will head home happy that we started our walk

Towards Afghanistan

Towards a new cause

Just

However

Wait a minute

Wait for that tolling of the ancient clock you have hung on your wall

Wait

Again, just wait

Until all of your sureness

All those facts and UN resolutions you have memorized to prove your point

Prove how terrible the investment in me

In my country

In my people

Really is

You were here to win a war

No, you were here to win hearts and minds

No, you were here to build us up so that we

Could resist

Could survive

Yet when you were done

You had a new plan

A better plan

Cost-saving

You moved on and shook our hands

Gave us bread and cheese

Left us with some spray paint to cover up the signs that you were here and had a purpose at some point

Now you are turning again

Trying to knock down my iron dome

Equivocating in simple words 

That should not be so equivocal 

Yet they are

Filling the college campuses with the fuel of your cause

Your narrative

Building your ground troops

Standing on your platforms

With megaphones to project

Dictaphones to record

iPhones to capture selfies

Ever so woke

While Afghanistan begins to fade

Into blue burkas 

Dust

Storm

While your footsteps fade 

From that landscape

2021 Opening Statement

 We live in this time when Presidents refuse to act presidential and are excused by their constituents because some of the things they do prove beneficial for the masses.   Yet, can good acts coverup corrupt deeds and comments that fuel hate and division?  

This past week, we saw a President gone wild.   During his four years in office, this President vilified those who held different viewpoints from his own, engaged in blatant acts that furthered the divide between diverse groups of Americans, belittled countless people, and engaged in acts that are proving to be detrimental to our environment.  Yet, people were willing to storm our Capitol in Washington to support his claim that the vote had been stolen.  They were willing to steal what they said was stolen from them.  To destroy property, make threats, spread vile hate theories, and find fault with all that do not hold their viewpoints.  All of this while the death toll from COVID soars over 4,000 people per day, and here in Israel, we are forced back into a very restrictive lockdown.  

The challenge with all of this is how to teach our students that they need to be honest, forthright, and brave.  They need to discuss all sides of an issue and recognize that to some degree, others may be more right than they are and that their point of view is flawed.  Or, they need to recognize that several variables may exist and that, like in many cases, they will come upon in life, there is more than one way to achieve a given goal.  They also need to put into practice that those who have a different viewpoint from their own should not be denigrated in any manner, for this only serves to further inflame the "conversation" and that once that fire is started, each side will become more resolute in the manner in which they cling to their beliefs.  

So I will make this personal because this is my blog, and nobody reads it, so what do I have to lose?   This has been a tough time for me, and in some respects, it has been a good time.  It has been tough because I have not been able to travel out of Israel and go back to New England to see mom, who is ensnarled in dementia and the confusion and paranoia that brings.  I have not been to my home in Vermont (though Connecticut will always be my true home) and walked the great woodlands with my socks tucked into my pants and long sleeves to keep myself from getting Lyme Disease.   I have learned much about the Golan during this time and have even learned how to better navigate and utilize the application AllTrials, which is truly amazing and helpful.   Eva and I have learned to better appreciate each other, which bodes well as I turn 64 next month and will only work one more year as an educator.  

Yet, I can't distance myself from the sadness that finds me staying up far too many nights.  This is a lifelong malady and certainly nothing new.  I worry.  I worry about myself, those around me, the polar bear, friends who battle illness, countries that deal with tyrants.   My greatest peace is found in nature, though, in some ways, that has been taken from me.  Even the city's view, which I loved so much, is being taken away as the distant cranes now surround me, and large apartments are not only blocking my view, but the amount of light we have coming into our apartment is slowly diminishing.   

We live in a time when Presidents refuse to be Presidental.  When corporate news programs dual it out with vocal sabers and those on each side wave banners of their own or wrap themselves tightly in these both figuratively and literally.   As smart as it is to have a strong value system, and it is important, you have to realize (well, I have to realize) that entrenched beliefs can also be dangerous.   That there is no conversation to be had with a person who believes that anyone who differs from him or her is stupid or blind.   Once you start pointing your finger, the conversation has stopped.   Once you storm the Capitol, the conversation has stopped.  Once you become so progressive that others can't progress, then the conversation has stopped.  

I am not convinced that our differences can be worked out or what divides so many in our world can be ameliorated.   We are too hopeful in our belief system, for we tend to associate with people who have similar views as our own.   We are frightened and repulsed by those with strongly dissimilar opinions, which is hardwired into our brains.   Although it is magnificent that we have such diversity in our genetic pool, it has proven detrimental to our species.   

Jamie-January 10, 2021  

A Place To View My Photographic Work

My main pursuit in life while not teaching, is my photography.  Though I sell images to a few stock agencies, my greatest joy is to make available prints and digital downloads from my photographic site.  So please take a moment to check out these images and if you like them, please considering getting one for yourself.  My Photographic Site

Each Of My Countries

To My Countries:  Why Do I Cry Out To You?

To each of my countries

I cry out to you

I expect more and I expect better

I know the statistics like the back of my hand

I know each and every instance that has made me 

Point my finger

At all of you

At all of us

Then right back at myself because  

I am unable to get you to make the needed changes

Or get it right when you get it wrong.

To each of my countries

You have seemed to try

But you are no better than your neighbors

You are no better than those you 

Hate with all your rhetoric 

You have justified and vilified with aplomb

So that even when it was justified

It seemed as if it was not

And you came off as being disingenuous

For they had heard it all before

And were not going to let you off the hook

Even if you were right.

To each of my countries, you have become

A fright among nations

But you are more dangerously

Hurting yourselves

You are threatening your existence

Your core

From within

Shaking your foundations

Grabbing at the pillars like Samson

Until the holy pillars will break

And nothing will be left but piles of stone.

I Miss My Forrest

It's been almost five weeks and the level of sadness that I have has diminished...until it hasn't.  I love you Forrest and last night I had the strangest dream that you were still alive.  In my dream, after I saw you, I realized that you were not alive.  Ensconced in this dream I began to cry.  In the dream.  This crazy dream woke me up and the next thing I knew, I was crying in my awakened state.

How one as small as you, as non-human as you, as smart as you have impacted me over these past almost 12 years.   It is inconceivable, still, that you are not here in our lives.  How I just feel so different without you here.

Writing For Peace

I wrote an article for the Brattleboro Reformer about the issues that never end here in the Middle East.  My goal, as always, is that we have to reset the clocks and look carefully at what caused us to hate each other so much and figure out a roadmap to peace.  Is it possible in my lifetime?  I hope that this article gets people to think.  I hope that it also reinforces that only if we discuss our narratives and accept that each of us have different ones. 

Click Here to Read the Article

Adrift

Adrift

I fell hard the other day upon my moral compass

It had lost its footing

Teetered for a bit

Then came crashing down

A thud

A whisper

A silence

It was broken into so many pieces

Shards of broken glass

That did not sparkle in the sun

The day was spent searching

Searching for a replacement

Perhaps a better compass

Stronger, newer, untainted

Yet what was wrong with my old model?

What didn’t I have that would have allowed it to stand for all my days?

What was missing?

Who was missing?

So I reflected

As I always have

As I always will do

We compromise

We capitulate

We abandon what has worked

For something better

Something different

Something with so much promise

We fail to recognize

That our true compass

Our true direction

Is a course that was set

At a very young age

When right and wrong

Was a consequence that was acknowledged

Was a way of life that was recognized and defined.

12/13/18

Testament To Hate

This is a testament to hate

You have dragged me yelling and screaming

Knocked me down with hollow headed bullets

And spit me out upon your dark web

But I am still here

You cannot kill me

Even when I am dead

And splintered on the floor

My 2-year-old body

My 54-year-old body

My 97-year-old body

My weeping family and friends

Will know who I was

And remember me after I am lowered into the ground

You cannot kill me

We have seen you before

In our ancient lands

In Spain, Portugal, and England

In Germany, Poland, and Ukraine

In Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia

We have seen you and know

How evil you are with your cool countenance

And measured words

But this is a testament to hate

This is the one where you will have

Your head filled with the faces of those

Too old to fight back

Fighting back

On another battlefield

Fighting back

In your dreams

Fighting back

In your hell

And your weapons of hate will be mollified

Leaving you exposed and weak

Let’s just cut to the chase

Cut to the part where you will weep

Where you will try to fool your cellmate

With your good intent as he shoves a shiv

Right down the middle

Koufax would have skipped Yom Kippur

To see that one

But this is a testament to hate

A testament to my hate

For knowing nothing

For knowing all

Without a textbook

Or an internet article or a meme

Without another UN Sanction

Or a BDS march on a Berkley campus

A march in London, Paris, or Charlotte

Just a clear testament with its roots in the past

That will not be allowed to grow

Without a fight.

On Forty Years

We are fortunate, well I suppose some of us are, to happen upon friends in our lives who impact us, make a difference, fill our sails and at times, help to redefine what we thought we knew and illuminate what we did not. 

I am lucky. 

I am lucky to have read Sports Illustrated and being a Connecticut Yankee who thought he knew so much back in the 70's, thought that I could learn something by traveling to Arizona State to pursue my education. 

Yet, it started so strangely.  This long-haired guy strumming on guitar (badly) who would not stop as I was trying to study a room over.  Trying to get me to have a beer and relax a bit when the stress of school was so prominent.

I was lucky to have met this wide-eyed woman who came to visit at ASU during a break and my initial reaction was to walk into the campus waterfalls to cement a future lifelong friendship based on good laughs and shared memories. 

People persist in their relationships through hard work.  Maintaining the love and respect that couples have for one another is a challenge even for the best of us, and even in the best of marriages.  We all change.  We all evolve, and if we don't do this cooperatively, then we drift away from one another.  Having three children to raise,  jobs that force you to move from one state to another, and your own physical issues that come with the years one accrues on this planet, also add to this "challenge." 

A couple that has made it forty years has figured all of this out.  You guys have.  You have maintained that strong bond that I witnessed as best man in your wedding.  Your free spirit and grounded nature (contradictory on the service though each essential for longer marriages) has, from my perspective, kept you young at heart both figuratively and literally, in each other's arms. 

So, I am lucky to have known each of you.  Seeing how you have managed your marriage has helped me in my own through the good times and through the bad ones as well.  I am thankful for your kindness to me, Eva and Shomron when we have visited.  I wish that we all could get together more frequently, and hope that down the road we do, but feel fortunate for the days we have spent together. 

Congratulations on these forty years.  You have lived these years so well and I wish you (as does Eva, Shomron, Meirav, Daniella, and Forrest) many more to come. 

Jamie

Leaving (Written in December of 2017 in West Brattleboro, Vermont)

Leaving Israel

There is sadness

I love going

Hate leaving

It sounds so contradictory

Perhaps it has to do with

The fact

That I have been leading

Two different lives

All all these years

For so very long

Fly stop fly

Boston

Always looking down

The islands shimmer

Beneath the clouds

Filled with plans that are far too many

Too many but never enough

It is better to be let down

By things we have not accomplished

Than buoyed by promises

We never intended to keep

Driving

My leg explodes two nights later

Baseball-sized wad of muscle

Begs to be let out

I cringe

Once alone

Once with friends

Hang onto the bathroom sink

Thinking, “I won’t throw-up”

I don’t

The pain lasts for days

Something is in my backyard

Living

A bear?

I see its trail ending

Between the pines

It is warmer there

This animal is sleeping by my house as well

I see where it goes

Friends

Mother

Two hours to West Hartford

Visits for 3-5

Two hours to Brattleboro

I have not done enough

I hear about this

I am called on this

I am not doing enough

Even I have jumped on this bandwagon

I keep asking myself, “What is enough”

Six thousand miles

Rental cars

Bills are flying at me

Hitting me on the side of my head

You are home

You are not home

Do you have a home?

Vermont to Plum Island

Stop at Doane Falls

The roads are isolated

Winter has arrived

But there is not a strangle grip

That comes later

Next week and the week after

I creep down snowy slopes

Onto an iced-over stream

Carefully

The ice is not solid

I crack through the ice and feel my shoe fill

Slightly

Cold water makes me laugh

My tripod and camera are safe

I know this photo will be beautiful

I recompose

The photo will be beautiful

I will stay far too late entranced by the

Slanted light

Two days in Plum Island

Up at sunrise

Again lucky with images

That are subtle, beautiful, time stamped

Winter, ice, snow

Shards of what I know best

Audubon People welcome me like family

Kind and warm

Yet the weather

Wind blowing and close to freezing

I have forgotten how to dress

I freeze

Yet the photos are good

I am stunned again later to find

Images that speak loudly to me

I visit

My cousin and her husband

Walden Pond

Russian men fishing

For Transcendental trout

Which are caught on barbed hooks

I see my father in her actions

See me in her physical strength

Sadly, I leave

My days are overplanned

I have to move

Brattleboro again

I wait and watch my backyard

A dog

The Dog

Looking at me but running

When I open the door

I get friends to help me

We get food

I feed The Dog and shop for The Dog

The Dog has a beautiful face

It is a strong Dog

It is scared

I buy canned food

Treats

It runs when I open the door

An ice storm

Trees are weighted

Glistening

I have to photograph

Risk the road

Brake carefully

I hike

Into a forest

Alone

Water runs through the gorge

I line up photos

I will notice later

How beautiful the trees were

How the snow held them tightly

Feel that the crunching of the snow

And ice

Is in tune

A well-timed beat

Brattleboro home

I buy a bone for The Dog

I leave it and come back

An hour later

Still there

Two hours later

Gone

The dog is still eating

We have filled the cage with food

To catch her

To help her

The weather is getting colder

Record lows are on their way

I will learn again what minus 12 degrees

Feels like

I did not want The Dog to learn this

But that’s not what happens

At 1:00 a.m. I am up

I hear the cage pop

I wait for a plaintive wailing

Silence

I wait for angry barking

Silence

Maybe I never heard the cage door close?

I shine my flashlight outside

It has closed

I go outside with my flashlight

The Dog is in the cage

The Dog looks at me

Silently

Resignedly

The Dog is shaking

Its coat is wet from the rain

I call the police

At 2:00 a.m.

We drag the cage to his car

It’s too large

The officer produces a stick

With a noose

He loops it around The Dog’s neck

I expect a fight

A struggle

Again, I am wrong

The Dog goes quietly into his back seat

There is so much I don’t understand

Until I realize that I do understand

The Dog wanted to be caught

I can clearly see this

At least The Dog’s belly is full

Canned food, dried food, treats, bones

Craftsbury

First time on cross country skies

For so many years

My friend is a skier

He forgets that I live in sand

I struggle

Muscles that are not ready for this

But I remember enough

Am still strong enough

Tough enough

And ever so stubborn

I will hurt after this ski

I will smile

Craftsbury

Next day

Christmas

I deliver meals

Meals on wheels

My wheels

Snow and ice are on the road

My wheels skid to dangerous stops

But I stop

First man - alone

Detritus, detritus

Eyes filled with fluids

White thermal underwear

Stained brown

Ripped

Torn

Next family

Blesses me

Hugs me

I leave and after ten minutes

Realize I only delivered one of the

Two meals

Backtrack through ice and snow

More hugs

More blessings

Third family

No answer

Neighbors don’t know who lives

In their small trailer house

Pounding on doors

Yelling

Man opens and too weak to hold

His meal on wheels

I help him

A scream of thanks from somewhere

In the house

The door slams

Fourth house

Sign says

“No trespassing

Violators will be shot

Survivors prosecuted”

The door opens and I make a joke

Smiles

A connection

Final house

Another trailer

More detritus

Kindness

A gift of a book

Final day in Craftsbury

I ski most of the time

On my own

My pace

The pace of a Middle Easterner

Skate ski

At times I feel in control

Weightless

My smile can’t be contained

Before I leave the far north

I buy treats for The Dog

I will visit The Dog

I’ve been praying for a miracle

This dog is kind and filled with love

I am sure

The drive home is scary

The road is covered deep in snow and ice

At least for the first hour and a half

At times I wonder if the car will slide off the road

Who would look for me?

Who actually knows where I am

The more south I go

The better the road gets

But it doesn’t answer my question

Who really knows where I am

Next day

Connecticut, mom, Brattleboro

I skip home

Head straight to see The Dog

I receive a call

One minute before I arrive at the pound

The Dog is out for a walk

Yes, I can stop by

I would have anyways

The Dog comes in

She has a name

Daisy

She is no longer The Dog

Daisy

She’s smaller than I thought

More beautiful now when I see her

Up close

She seems scared, wary, scarred

She won’t eat the biscuits I brought

At least not now, not here

She traveled from Bennington

Over mountains

She has been lost for 6 months

The next day I will get a photo

Of the tearful reunion

I should be happy

The family and she seem content

But I wonder how

What caused them to lose her

Or for her to leave

I am mixed with happiness,

Wary, questioning, distrustful

As vacations ends

The speed of time increases

I begin fixing things

Then breaking things as I fix them

Toilets

Chairs

Windows

Insulation is added

Maintenance

Exercise

And then begin the long march

Of goodbyes

To friends

To the woods

To these streams I love

I look at my collection of images

Find another and work on it

They are magic

I close the house down

Dial back the temperature

It is clean again

People will come and stay there soon

Next day

I leave so early in minus 12 degrees

Connecticut, mom, Boston

I am flying now

Half-way across the Atlantic

Writing and thinking of new adventures

There is nothing that truly fits me

Like my wife

I have several lives

And I manage each well

Leaving America

There is sadness

I love going

Hate leaving

It sounds so contradictory

Perhaps it has to do with

The fact

That I have been leading

Two different lives

All these years

For so very long

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