in better times, in brighter days

8/6/2019 In Better Times, In Brighter Days

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In Better Times,

In Brighter

Days

A Collection of Stories and Verse


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2003 Y. Strimling. All Rights Reserved.

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Contents

First Rain..............................................................1

Jerusalem Dreams.................................................2

In Better Days,In Brighter Times...................................................4

Ship in a Bottle......................................................5

Epitaph,Upon a Cracked Tombstone...................................9

For Emma, Wherever...........................................10

On a Train...........................................................12

The Man on the Tower.........................................13

Haiku..................................................................14

To Leon Werth,Whoever You Are................................................15

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First Rain

What is it about the first rain

That makes strangers on the bus

Smile at each other

That makes grown men and women

Run to the window like schoolchildren?

What is it about the first rain

That makes people stop in their tracks

And sniff the air like rabbits

That makes poets and lovers

turn their eyes skyward?

First rain washes the air

From the grime and dust of summer

soaks the earth

And makes the dead ground come to life

First rain cleanses the soul of the past

And gives hope for the future

brings forth the wondering child

Buried in us all

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Jerusalem Dreams

And in my dream, I saw myself standing in the midst ofJerusalem/

And I looked, and I saw dry morsels

and great banquets/

I saw full bellies

and empty hearts/

I saw broken heartsand new loves/

I saw grand, empty boulevards

and crowded alleyways/

I saw old people with time on their hands

and young people running to and fro without rest/

I saw complete strangers making idle chatter

and soulmates talking only with their eyes/

I saw lonely homeless people with nothing to eatsleeping in a finely kept park

and large families picnicking on mown lawns/

I saw children playing

and children crying/

I saw a man singing with his voice

and a man singing with his heart/

I saw Houses of God where no prayer could be heard

and Houses of Men where all was prayer/

I saw finely apportioned palaces with no soul

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and small, ramshackle tenements with nothing but/

And I saw small pockets of people, here and there,

scattered about, wandering aimlessly, slowlygrowing into rivulets and streams, until theyformed a mighty river, rushing, tumbling,towards the holy place, exclaiming one to theother, Come, let us go up to our Holy House!

And I saw the Wall/

And I heard behind me a great sound, as if a loudrushing noise, crying Blessed is the Name of theLord from His Place!/

His Place/

Our Place/

This Place/

And I awoke, and behold it was a dream.

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In Better Days,

In Brighter TimesUnder Construction.

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Ship in a Bottle

When I was a kid, my parents and I went on a trip toNew York. En route, we stopped at someplace, I think itwas in West Virginia, where there was a glass-blowingmuseum and gift shop. The glass-blowing exhibit wasnice, but it was the gift shop that really caught my eye.It was full of all sorts of exquisitely crafted anddesigned glass creations, beautifully colored andsparkling objects, all of them incredibly fragile. Iwandered through the shop, careful not to touchanything, looking with awe at some of the fine spun-glass horses, dogs, birds and whatnots.

None of these were intended, however, for an eight-year-old boy, and so I moved on to the childrenssection of the store. This consisted mainly of a fewbins of glass paperweights and similar things, butthere was also a collection of objects encased in glassbottles, things like pennies, arrowheads, and driedflowers. Rummaging around in this bin I found mytreasure - it was a small glass bottle with red cork, and

inside it were two ships. They werent fancily madeships; they were basically half matchsticks with papersails glued on them, sitting on some blue paint. But tomy young eyes they epitomized serenity and grace.The blue paint was just the color of a calm ocean on asummers day, the wood of the matchstick was the finesmooth hull of a sailboat, and the straightness of thepaper sails was a quiet breeze slowly propelling thesecraft along. This bottle and its stately boatsmesmerized me and I persuaded my parents to buy itfor me. I'm not exactly sure why this bottle had

enthralled me so- I didn't grow up near the sea andhadn't ever been on a sailboat in my entire life - butnevertheless this glass bauble spoke to me.

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Throughout the years, I kept this glass bottle withme wherever I went. Whenever I moved to a new townor a new country, this bottle was one of the first things

I would take out of my suitcase, gingerly placing it onmy desk. It never lost its enchantment for me - it stillradiated the serenity and calm of sailing on asummers day. But as I grew older, it acquired a newcharacteristic - that of what I'd call wishful memory.Whenever I would feel stressed or that life was gettingme down, I would take this bottle off my desk or out ofmy cabinet, and imagine that I myself was in thisbottle, standing on the deck of one of these sailboats,breathing the air that had been trapped in the bottle.And this was an important point for me - the air thatwas inside this small bottle was the air of mychildhood, the same air that I had breathed when I wasin that gift store so many years ago. I could close myeyes and be transported to an earlier, happier time,just by imagining I was inhaling this air in the bottle.Many years I had this bottle, and it accompanied methrough many stressful events.

One day, the bottle broke.

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I had gone upstairs to my room to decompress a bitfrom a particularly stressful event that had justoccurred. I opened my closet and reached inside to get

something that I noticed had fallen down from aclothes hanger. The bottle got caught on somethingand rolled out of the closet, smashing in pieces on thefloor. I was dumbstruck, and I stood there for at leasttwo minutes not knowing what to do. Here was mymodel of serenity and encapsulated childhood lying intiny pieces on the floor! The rarefied air of my blissfulchildhood was escaping into my present, stressfulreality! What could I do? I took the red cork, nowdisassociated from the rest of the bottle save for a fewshards of very sharp glass, and inhaled deeply from it,hoping to get any last vestiges of this special air froman earlier time. To my horror, it smelled terrible. I don'tknow if it was indeed this stale air that I wasexperiencing or if it was the smell of the glue that hadbeen used to keep the cork in place when it was still apart of the bottle, but either way I was revolted by it.

And then a realization dawned on me. Had mychildhood indeed been as wonderful and carefree as Ihad remembered it? Suddenly all sorts of sad andpainful memories from this period in my life started

flooding back into my consciousness. It was as if thebreaking of this bottle that had for so long representedwhat I had thought of as my ideal childhood, brokesome sort of mental bubble in my mind, and just aswhen this exalted imaginary air of ages past dispersedand turned out to be stale and unbreathable, so too didall the rose-colored images of my childhood vanish intothin air.

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I gathered my wits about me and set aboutsalvaging what I could from this mess on the floor, butthe magic of the bottle was no more. I swept up the

bits of glass that still had the blue paint (formerly acalm sea) and dumped them unceremoniously in thegarbage, consigning them to oblivion, never to bethought of again.

But I couldn't bring myself to throw a few pieces ofit away. I kept the cork and the two sailboats, and nowI keep them in a plastic bag in the back of my closet.These three objects are all that remain from thismagical bottle, and I kept them all for a reason. I keptthem to remind myself that at one time these sailboats

were held back in the stinking, claustrophobic air of animaginary memory, covered by an illusion of peaceand calm, but that now, now that the confines of thebottle have been broken, they are free to sail intouncharted waters.

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Epitaph,

Upon a Cracked Tombstone

Here he lies

Much loved

Much despised

Much missed

Much maligned

Heart of gold

Tongue of silver

Wit of steel

Soul of lead

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For Emma, Wherever

Far away/

On a rocky outcrop/

High above a roaring ocean/

Stood a single fir tree.

In this barren/

And inhospitable place/

The tree stood buffeted by the winds/

And stayed rooted to its spot.

Its roots/

Twisted and turned/

Through the craggy boulders that it called home/

And hung on with all their might.

Alone/

The tree lacked nothing/

And all it needed was a strong and solid place/

To stand.

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Or maybe/

Because of these conditions/

The tree found its stability.

But the tree/

Was not really alone/

As birds made their homes in its braches and leaves/

And sang their wordless songs.

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On a Train

When I was younger, I would sometimes travel bytrain to Chicago from my parents home in Detroit. Notbeing a long ride, just a little over six hours, it wasnever boring or uncomfortable. Traveling by trainallows you to get up, walk around, and maybe eat ameal, in a way that is either not possible or extremelyuncomfortable in any other mode of transportation. Ina car, if youre the driver, you certainly dont have the

luxury of looking around and enjoying the scenery, andin an airplane, youre usually too squished to move atall.

Not having to concentrate on driving or where youllput your leg, this freedom of movement in a train leadsto a peculiar state of mind. Riding in a train issomewhat like being in an envelope in time. Inside thetrain, everything is the way it was when you got on afew hours ago; outside the train, just on the other sideof the glass, things have changed drastically - youre500 miles away from where you started, and a few

hours in the future. I guess riding in a train is a lot likelife - times rushes by outside the window, but wesometimes dont notice it, and we end up at ourdestination a little sooner than we thought.

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The Man on the Tower

In this country, there is a city

And in this city, there is a park

And in this park, there is a tower

And on this tower stands a man

And to this man there is a tear

And in this tear is an image

And this image is of a little boy.

And this little boy is in a big world

And in this big world there is a man

And in this man there is a heart

And in this heart there is a little boy

And this little boy is in this heart

In this man

On this tower

In this park

In this city

In this country.

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Haiku

The fear of what was

Is nothing like the terror

Of what might have been

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To Leon Werth,

Whoever You Are

Many things have happened, much water haspassed under the bridge since I last read the The LittlePrince. I am much older now than I was then (as is theusual way of things), and I see the world with verydifferent eyes than I did in the past. I have, I fear,become a grown-up who is, in the words of the

eponymous character, involved in matters ofconsequence that are of no consequence at all.

But (as with many things in life) when one seessomething again that one has not seen for a while,new things are seen that were not noticed before;things that were but trifles the first time around takeon greater meaning than originally. What I have inmind particularly is a part of the book (not really partof the book, in actuality, I suppose) that is almostnever read by anyone or paid the least attention to- it

is not even graced with a page number. It is, however,in my humble opinion, probably one of the mostmoving passages in the whole book- the dedication.

Now, you may think that I am pulling your leg whenI say all this. The dedication?, you may be saying toyourself. Is he serious?

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If it were any other book besides this one, I wouldagree with you, too. Most dedications are eitherstraightforward things like To my mother, or some

such platitude, or they can be cryptic little messagesto someone that would sound silly to anyone unfamiliarwith the particular situation: To Wiggles- like Shaka,when the walls fell. (What on earth is that supposedto mean?)

But in the case ofThe Little Prince, I must dissent,for it is in this introduction that we see the author as areal person, not writing a charming little piece offiction about a lost airman and a child from anotherplanet. This Leon Werth, who is hungry and cold in

France, is a real person, as are you and I. Who he wasexactly is not that pressing a matter to investigate.What is important is that Mr. Werth is a grown up whowas once a child (and who wasnt?) who is monsieurSaint-Exuperys best friend...in the world and whoneeds cheering up. The author may claim that he iswriting a childrens book, putting all sorts ofdisclaimers (if you will) for the potential child readersto forbear his occasional lapses into grown-up-ness,and pretend to be talking to the child reader inconfidential asides but the truth is that this book was

written by an adult for an adult readership. Thatchildren do in fact read the book betimes is irrelevant.

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But what does this have to do with thededication?, I hear you ask. What this has to do withthe long neglected dedication, on a page with no

number, is this: nothing. No, just kidding. What it hasto do with is the fact that all the wonderfully esotericconcepts of relationships and love that are broughtup in a veiled way in The Little Prince (for example, theflower telling the little prince that the problem withmen is that they have no roots; or the fox telling thelittle prince the secret of life- it is the time that youhave wasted for your rose that makes your rose soimportant; and so on and so forth) mean absolutelynothing unless they can be applied in real-time to areal flesh-and-blood person (like Mr. Werth is), even ifhe is a grown-up (even one who claims tounderstand everything, even books about children),because even good people can lapse into stubbornnessonce in a while- he, too, needs love and patience andto be cheered up. As the dedication says, all grown-ups were once children- although few of themremember it.

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