THOUGHTS IN THE WOUNDS OF EMPTY NIGHTS

There is a deep, penetrating emptiness when raw reality hits you - - and sudden realization forces you to remember that the good times were long ago.... 

.....and those times echo with an unattainable span of distance and stun you with a paralyzing wound that establishes the fact that you can never have those times again.

On this empty winter night I'm lamenting.......in remembrance of those precious years now lost. With every passing year we drift farther away in a fog enshrouded sea - - reaching out desperately to find those evading ghosts who left us.....

.....parents, siblings, relatives, friends, lovers.....

Do they remember? Are they on the edge of somewhere waiting for us?

We wait in the solace of our memories and the sustainable light of hope.

Remembering

I remember that faraway New Year's Eve, on the deserted sand at Seal Beach - - when a thick, impenetrable Southern California fog engulfed us so thoroughly that we couldn't get away. We shared a bottle of cheap champagne, and snuggled together for warmth....and not only warmth. The depth of our kisses were much more intoxicating than champagne. We vowed never to part.

Us, on the sand, in the unrelenting persistence of the fog, listening to the gentle lapping of the eternal waves in low tide.

We would never part. Never.

I express my thoughts in the guise of a poet, which could be dangerous

Subject changing

I'm remembering the lavish New Year's Eve dinners that I prepared for friends. In later years, when my parents grew older, I prepared similar dinners for them. We three. Alone.

I seldom went out on New Year's Eve. The sanctuary of home is the best place to be.

It would take days to prepare my dinners and I enjoyed it. Very far from my extremely waning enthusiasm now.

These weren't traditional dinners. They were more like smorgasbords, buffets. Haphazzard banquets.

Instead of turkey, I preferred a small ham. Fish included salmon, pollack, and California red snapper (my absolute favorite).  Smoked herring and smoked oysters were always included.

Hungarian homemade kenyer (bread) and kolbasz (sausage), and of course burgonyas palacsintat (potato pancakes) with sour cream.

Russian deviled eggs - my favorite, and my secret recipe (I like them tangy with red wine vinegar).

A tempting variety of cheese and Italian olives (I'm crazy about both). Caviar (I'm frugal, buying the most inexpensive).

Winter fruits - - I like California navel oranges and Texas blood oranges.

What about dessert?

My absolute favorite is my special Bavarian cherry cake. I make it from scratch. The cake is not round, it's oblong like bread. Three layers of chocolate cake, each filled with cherries - - and topped with real whipped cream, not that fake Cool Whip crap.

I also make a chocolate cheese cake - A. because I love it and B. it's easy to make.

And, for New Year's Eve, I always made a simple white cake, to symbolize the purity of a beginning new year.

Drinks? Real fruit juices and Le Domaine California champagne.

That's absolutely my special New Year's Eve dinner....and the best part is that leftovers can be eaten for days.

I miss my energy and enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, my New Year's Eve photos are in my laptop back home....if I ever see it again.

I could only offer these old blurry photos

One of my white New Year cakes. It was absolute HELL putting candy confetti on the side. Yea, I made the gingerbread house, too - - another BIG nightmare task.

I used my favorite champagne on  New Years 

I was told this antique Auld Lang Syne cup is circa 1880. It is huge - - could hold a big bowl of chili.

Blogger Myra has one like it. I hope it makes her think of me. I know it will.

Take ye a cuppe o kindnesse for Auld Land Syne

This cup supposedly signifies the new year, from Bavaria circa 1875. I never used it in fear of breakage.

The glow of candles warm the winter night

Jon   ❤️  🍾🍸🍷🎇⏳️🕛❄️

P.S.

A big thank you to Dorothy from Neshua, NH and Jane from TN. I got your cards yesterday.  Hugs  💙💙

This post is very late. I had trouble with Freepix  the website I use to create AIs. It wouldn't download my pictures. The first picture is the only one I could download and it wasn't my choice. I made the second picture yesterday.

And this post is too darn long. Upon rereading it I'm VERY tempted to delete.......but I won't.

I'll write another post late tomorrow.

Get ready for New Year's Eve!

LOST

 Easy to decipher. My heart is lost, my soul is lost, my fragile shreds of optimism were lost long ago.

I desperately try to remember the self that I was long ago. I try to conceal an indefatigable depression that gnaws away at everything my sustaining foundation had.

I've been ensconced too long in this lifeless physical therapy facility, which is now a prison. Too many idle days, too many meds, an abyss of inactivity.

My biggest fear is that of losing my mental capacities......and never seeing my forest home again. I'm desperately trying to maintain my mental and physical capabilities.

The phantom doctor appointment supposedly on August 12th, Tuesday? I'm still getting infuriating mixed messages. But I will persist. I plod on. Somehow.

I confirm my feeble existence in strange ways.

Tonight I've chosen two of my old videos. Few people like my videos. Very few understand them.

I'll share explanations. Secrets from my soul.

"Fallen Angels" and "Heart of the Lost"

Fallen Angels represents a deeply scar-ridden excavation of my long-ago past. Young, oblivious to danger, purposefully self-destructive.  I've confessed this many times before......

......but there are more things, much darker than that which I chose to reveal. In the midnight underworld of unspeakable L.A. and Hollywood, I kept company with the lost phantoms of Hades - -  I was a silent witness to scenes you wouldn't dare to imagine.

Pimps and dealers, and the battered hookers whom they owned, girls so highly addicted that they couldn't remember their own names......or the unspeakable acts they performed with strangers for another "fix".....

.....and the male hustlers, much more prevalent than the females - - desperately haunting every midnight street and alley. I vividly remember the boy I called Midnight Blue. Hustling every night in downtown L.A. Hardly fourteen. So physically beautiful that I wrote a poem about him....published in my book.

"His eyes are electric - - they will execute you."

There were criminals that I knew with darker secrets. Cold blooded murder.

The silence often screams.

Where are these fallen angels now? Lost souls long ago. My video was made in remembrance of them.

The music I used is "Dark Spanish Symphony" by Angelo Badalamenti (1937 - 2022).

"Heart of the Lost"

That's the title of my video and the Celtic music by Ean Grimm.

No one understood this video when I posted it on YouTube in the spring of 2021. It was an extremely personal statement. 

I was very sick with cancer and congestive heart failure. This was before I sought medical help. I decided that I would purposely end the agony. 

My plan was to go into my beloved forest, and savor the blessed solace that nature provided. I would bid farewell where my spirit wanted to be.

My soul was finally released in the form of a white wolf......

.......forever free.

Jon 💜 with love, free forever

many thanks for reading this, viewing the videos, and trying to understand

Videos best viewed full-screen and full volume

LAMENT ON A NOVEMBER AFTERNOON

 I can't seem to let October go. I'm still lamenting the passing of my favorite month. I'm still in a Halloween mode, immersed in the apex of the autumnal equinox.

November is here. Most people have rudely discarded their withering jack-o-lanterns and are now gearing up for the holiday onslaught. They're dusting off their Christmas ornaments and Nativity mangers (are mangers still legal?). They're deciding what type of enhancing plague mask they'll be wearing to the upcoming Christmas parties (is Christmas still legal?).
They'll be getting their 39th Booster Plague Shot, just to be safe.

Am I being sarcastic?
Nope. I wouldn't even think of it.

I'm too busy savoring what's left of the autumn foliage. The turning of the leaves was initially sporadic and rather reluctant here in the wilds of Tennessee. The past few days have brought a glorious burst of color in the surrounding forest. 

Today I had planned to walk in the woods (again) but didn't feel up to it. By late afternoon, in the golden waning sunlight, my backyard forest looked beautiful. I grabbed my camera and took some fairly decent photos without having to leave the back porch.

Glimpses of my world on a November day:

 

My bedroom window early this morning

Back yard, photos taken from porch

 

Pumpkins left over from October. I should have cleaned that mirror - but, heck, I'm not Martha Stewart.

LAMENT FOR EVA PERON

 

Maria Eva Duarte de Peron

7 May, 1919 - 26 July, 1952 
(affectionately known as Evita)

I had planned to post this on July 26th (the death date of Eva Peron) but completely forgot about it. 

Her brief life has assumed legendary proportions and is hauntingly intriguing. She was a fascinating and extraordinary woman who died much too young.

Despite Eva Peron's short span of time, there is far too much to tell.....I'll merely contribute a few words: 

She was an illegitimate child born in the slums of Los Toldos in the Pampas.
Determined to find a better life, she left home at age fifteen and went to Buenos Aires. 

Rumors abound concerning these early years, but somehow she eventually got parts in theatrical productions and did modeling work. In time, her acting career advanced to motion pictures. She appeared in numerous films, with mediocre success.
Her big break came when she began appearing in radio dramas and soon she was the most popular (and highest paid) radio personality in Argentina.

In January, 1944 she met Colonel Juan Peron at a charity event and soon became his mistress. They were married in 1945 and Peron was elected President of Argentina in 1946.

As First Lady of Argentina, Eva Peron became enormously popular and was highly respected for her tireless charity work. She was a champion of labor rights and worked fervently to improve the lives of orphans, the sick, homeless woman, and the elderly.

It is said that, during the final years of her life, she often worked 20 to 22 hours a day. Her inexhaustible zeal was extremely taxing to her health and became a great concern for her husband.  

In 1951 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died in July, 1952, at age 33.

Eva Peron was sometimes condemned for being an ambitious whore.
The Argentine people regarded her as a saint.

Without fierce ambition and determination she would never have emerged from poverty and obscurity in the Pampas. 

Her swift ascent to fame and immortality is extraordinary. Her compassion for the underprivileged is legendary.

I think she indeed was a saint.

The song I chose for this video tribute is the Lament from the musical Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

This is a rare and beautiful rendition sung in Hebrew by Riki Gal. 

Video best viewed full-screen

FALLEN ANGELS

  




I've made over fifty videos (hopelessly amateur endeavors). Out of all of them, this one is my favorite - partly because I love Angelo Badalamenti's music, and mostly because it touches my heart.

There's no secret message here. It's simply a lament. A remembrance of the fallen, the lost, the forgotten. Those faded ghosts who linger in the purgatory of distant time, crying for a validation that was never granted.

I'm thinking of the fallen angels I knew long ago during my reckless years in L.A. and Hollywood.

They pass in the shadows of my memory like unanswered prayers:  troubled souls who abandoned the sweet light of innocence in favor of the toxic world of eternal midnight.
The hustlers and druggies, booze hounds, drifters, pimps, prostitutes - the hopelessly lost, desperately lonely,  inevitably abandoned.

I was one of the fallen: in the recklessness of youth when I was immersed in the dangerously destructive realms of escape from myself.

And now, a thousand years later, when the heavy burden of a chaotic life has finally collapsed and crushed me - 
sapping every semblance of  redemption....
.....I'm left with fragmented pieces of an unending puzzle and the sobering fact that escape is elusive, and no solace exists in the taunting illusion of heavenly realms. 



Don't try to read too much into this. It's not intended to make sense.....merely some random thoughts on a restless winter night....



Note: I've posted this video before, but I'm rehashing it because I'm in a plaintive mood. Video is best viewed full-screen