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The Unicorn Dream

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We had quite a year in 2019. There were flying cars and colonies on other planets. Our cities were sprawling, overcrowded places dominated by monstrous buildings that put the pyramids to shame. And did I mention the replicants? This was 2019 was supposed to look like back in 1982, when Ridley Scott made the science fiction epic Blade Runner with Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer. I saw the movie in a theater all those years ago, and I recall being stunned at the film’s opening shot of Los Angeles of November 2019, with airborne autos zipping through the smog and massive towers igniting the sky with sheets of flame. At the time I considered myself a sophisticated film lover who would never be bowled over by mere special effects. But Blade Runner rocked my world as I sat there gaping in disbelief at this incredible scene. I’ve been suffering through most of Easter Week with a hideous cold—we’ve rescheduled our holiday dinner until next Saturday—so I decided to drown my mise...
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The Final Curtain

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On February 25, 1987, history was made. I’m not talking about how astronomers witnessed Supernova 1987A, the first supernova visible to the naked eye since 1604, although I am referring to a big star. No, this day marked Frank Sinatra’s last full character acting project when he appeared in an episode of Magnum P.I . as Michael Doheny, a retired New York police officer. Sinatra had starred in over 40 movies in his career, including such classics as Guys and Dolls, From Here to Eternity, The Manchurian Candidate —my personal favorite—and The Man with the Golden Arm , for which he won the Academy Award. One of my earliest memories of O’ Blue Eyes dates back to 1965 when my family went to see Von Ryan’s Express at the Casino Theatre in Mount Pocono, PA, where we were vacationing. Sinatra played an American POW who leads a prison break during World War II, and my father—who had fought in Europe—was less than thrilled about seeing someone who had avoided combat in the real world ...
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Stout-Hearted Men

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“The only person you should compete with is the person you were yesterday.” ― Prem Jagyasi That was one killer work out, if I say so myself. So last week I was in my gym, and I was wailing away on the heavy bag like Rocky Balboa pounding on a side of beef. I was focused and mindful and I had flow coming out my ears. It was great. Too often though I’ll get distracted at the gym, where I’m working my body, but my mind is stewing over something either in the past or something down the road—anywhere but the present moment. I use an app called Precision Striking that features a boxing coach who calls out various combinations as a way of staying disciplined while burning a lot of calories. And when I’m preoccupied or unfocused, invariably I'll screw up the combination, and then, of course, I'll get mad at myself and make more mistakes. But it’s not just boxing. When I’m inattentive either on the job or when I’m meditating or writing, I’m wasting time and energ...
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Wow of Silence

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Oh, come on now. It can’t be that easy…can it? For most of my life, I’ve been searching for ways to keep my noodle in shape, and while I’ve made some marginal progress in this area, I still have a lot of work to do. One of my favorite techniques is a deceptively simple concept that my old buddy Fred the Shrink told me called “Detach and Observe.” The idea is that you step outside of yourself and take a nice long look at your mind. You don’t judge, you don’t scold, you don’t do anything except observe what’s going on in your head. It’s good way of catching destructive thought patterns and, we hope, undoing them. So, I’ve been observing lately, and I see that I fly off the handle far too often. The computer is too slow, I can’t find my wallet, one of my articles isn’t coming together fast enough--whatever the excuse may be--and I start cursing and fuming like a bag lady in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I live alone and it seems that my subconscious mind has essentially...
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Help Wanted

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I worked the night shift at two different jobs last week and I never got out of bed. The activity was all in my mind in the form of two back-to-back work-related dreams that were so realistic I’m wondering if I should keep my resume on the nightstand. I know I blog about my dreams a lot, but some of these midnight mind mirages are just so twisted I can’t keep them to myself. Now to be honest, these two occurrences weren’t nightmares, certainly not like some of the high octane screaming mimis I’ve had in the past that packed enough psychic energy to power the Empire State Building. These, on the other hand, weren’t particularly bad dreams. They were just kind of… unpleasant . The first one had yours truly working at a temp agency doing some kind of brain-numbing grunt work that a NASA chimp would've found insulting. The events are vague—I think I was stuffing papers into envelopes at one point--but I remember quite distinctly the feeling of despair and depression I used ...
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A Ticket to Anywhere

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Aretha Franklin knew what she was talking about. “Music does a lot of things for a lot of people,” the Queen of Soul once said. “It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life.” I did some emotional time traveling last week while listening to Eighties songs on YouTube. I was barely attention to the hits as they went rolling by until Tracy Chapman’s “ Fast Car ” came on. And then I was flying, bouncing through the years until I reached 1988, when I had just moved to Stroudsburg, PA to work as a reporter at the Pocono Record. This was more than a typical memory or recollection. It really seemed like I was back at my old apartment on Scott Street, feeling so lost and unsure of myself, convinced I had made a terrible mistake by moving here from Brooklyn, but too terrified to do anything but keep going forward. At the time there was an agent looking my novel, while a buddy of mine and his partner were tr...
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Reflection and Repentance

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"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams"—John Barrymore I missed the bus last on Friday night. I thought I had plenty of time before the bus bound for Pennsylvania was going to show up, so I took a quick run to the loo. I was planning to go to a local theater production, and I thought this would be a nice change of pace. As I walked out of the bathroom, I heard a large vehicle rolling by my house. That had to be a sanitation truck, I reasoned, and not my ride, but when I got to the window and watched this big-ass vehicle pulling away, I saw “Allentown” painted on the back. I wasn’t going to the theater. None of this happened, of course, at least not in the real world. I had dreamed the entire episode, which had taken place in the porch of my family’s back on Senator Street. But the emotion I felt as I watched that bus fade down the street was all too real and quite familiar. I was consumed with regret. Experts believe that dreamed about miss...
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