The Luna Park Gazette

I traveled more than 2,000 miles this week and yet I’m still sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn. I discovered the beauty and tranquility of a sunset recently and now I’m wondering what the hell took me so long. It was a Saturday night, I hadn’t made any plans, and I was feeling crabby, hemmed in by the desire to just chill at mi casa and the pressure to do something, anything to make the weekend more exciting. I’m trying to get out of the house more, especially now that it’s warm out. There will be plenty of reasons to stay the hell home when the temperature starts to drop, but right now I want to get away from the TV and enjoy life. I live right near the Narrows and after dinner I made an impromptu decision to go to the nearby 69th Street pier and take in the sunset. I can’t remember the last time I did this—if I've ever done it at all. I have a vague memory of watching the sun go down during a visit to the Grand Canyon nearly 18 years ago, but clearly it didn’t ma...

A dear friend came back to see me the other night and he brought along a twin brother I didn’t know he had. I had this dream about Ben, my former next-door neighbor’s darling little boy, who could make me the happiest man alive just by smiling. Ben was four years old when I left Senator Street in 2011 and I still miss him. He was such a sweet little kid, always curious and always so open and friendly. He’d see me walking down the block after work and he’d come charging toward me, shouting “ Wo-burrt! ” It broke my heart when I moved to Shore Road, but we'd sold our family’s house and it was high time that I moved the hell on. I saw Ben once a short time later while walking down Fifth Avenue, and then he and his family moved away from the block and I don’t know where he is now. But that didn’t stop him—or my memory of him—from visiting my subconscious late one night last week. However, in an apparent case of double your pleasure, there were two of them this time. Yes, ...

I sat in my writing teacher’s living room on Wednesday night and waited for my turn to read. I usually don’t like to go out on Wednesdays as I have to get up ridiculously early the following morning to attend my beloved boxing class at New York City Sports Club’s City Hall facility. The toughest part of the class is the one-on-one mitt session with the instructor, Abby, who cheerfully bashes me up one side of Broadway and down the other. I love every minute of it, of course, so it’s really important to get a good night’s sleep. But this was a very special occasion. The evening was the culmination of the latest session of Five for Five, a fantastic series of writing classes that I’ve been taking since the fall. As the name implies, the class consists of five people who meet for five weeks at the home of our instructor, Rosemary Moore , in Park Slope. I’ve taken some excellent writing classes in my time and I’ve worked with some fine instructors. But what makes this class st...

Maybe I shouldn’t listen to the BBC anymore. I start most days by switching on National Public Radio and tuning into the early morning BBC programs. I enjoy hearing the news from another country and getting a different perspective on current events. However, lately the BBC has become the bearer of some very bad news indeed as I first learned of the mass shootings in Orlando and now Dallas from British reporters. On both occasions I was half-awake and hoping I was dreaming only to find that the horrific events were all too real. So we have yet another mass shooting in America and it’s particularly upsetting to hear foreign journalists report on the blood-soaked insanity that’s destroying my country. I have British friends and I have absolutely no idea what to say when they ask me what the hell is going on here because I don’t fucking know. It’s seems so pointless to even mention this latest atrocity, and I know I’ve said this so many times before, but I can’t ignore what’s...

I took the longest shuttle ride in MTA history, but I ended up in a good place. The shuttle train ride that connects Grand Central Terminal with Times Square is normally so brief I usually don’t even bother sitting down. It’s like—what? Five minutes? And then you’re on the opposite end of 42nd Street, ready to go home, catch a train, see a show or do any of a million other things there are to do this town. But it was little different on Thursday. I’m taking a fabulous writing course in Park Slope so one night a week I skip my normal Express Bus ride home for a simmering slice of subterranean slime. It just seems that my week isn’t complete without the filth, the noise and the freaks that make riding our fair city’s subway system such a unique experience. And Thursday was a standout indeed. I boarded a shuttle at Grand Central and decided to go against tradition by taking a seat across the way from this heavyset young man with earphones stuffed into his head. People kept ...

“Prayer is when you talk to God; meditation is when you listen to God.”—Diane Robison The daring young man on the flying trapeze climbs to great heights, but the show doesn’t start until he lets go. Letting go has been one of my biggest challenges. I hold on to negative thoughts, old resentments, ancient anger and all sorts of emotional chazerai that makes me miserable. I’ve been meditating regularly for the last two years after taking a mindfulness course at the Interdependence Project and I’m very slowly learning the joys and benefits of staying in the present moment. It hasn’t been easy for me to sit quietly for 20 whole minutes and listen to nothing but my breath. Some days are better than others, but I believe I’m getting better and now my morning meditation is one of my favorite times of the day. But now I’m taking a closer look at what goes on in my head after the meditation ends, thanks largely to a recent New York Times article entitle “ Think Less, Think Bette...

Today is Father’s Day and I’m thinking of my dad, a World War II veteran, who fought to keep this country safe. He saw men die in great numbers and I’m sure it scarred him in ways I’ll never be able understand. But after last week’s horrific events at Pulse, a gay club in Orlando, after yet another mass shooting in America, I’m wondering what was the point of all that sacrifice and suffering? The Greatest Generation fought to keep foreign killers out of this country, but today we can proudly kill each other with terrifying weapons that my father and his comrades couldn’t begin to imagine. So here we go again, another senseless fucking slaughter in the Land of the Free. There will be the usual candlelight vigils, and flowers piled up at the site of this latest abomination, and people will pray and vow that the victims will never be forgotten. But why? Why bother with all that horseshit when we all know that there’s another mass shooting just around the corner waiting to happen?...