Looking Backwards and Forwards at the Same Time

December, 1969. So many people all around; and you are so alone.

Sitting at a table in a dark Greenwich Village café, I scribble on a napkin “just around the corner, and down the block.”

I walk out a door of the building where I live to the flat roof. I’m sitting there. The hippie shades I picked up in the village a few years ago are magic.

I can look backwards and forwards simultaneously. I can look out at the unknown in front of me; and see behind me that a young woman has joined me on the roof.

We did not speak. We did not dance. After a while, she was gone. I never saw her again.

For every woman you dance with,

there’s one that gets away.

Another bleak cafe. How long can you stare out the window at nothing while your world falls apart?

The Holy Trinity

In New Orleans, it’s the foundation of Cajun cooking, It starts the journey toward a Gumbo.

In the East Village, it’s the church that ministers to lost souls while providing inspiration and entertainment for the hip.

In just a few days, we will say “goodbye” to 1969.

The Doctor’s Wife

A doctor’s wife from Europe gone wild at an empty dinner moment.

Another doctor’s wife in Halifax dined with me on the waterfront; as the life and status of both were disintegrating in front of me

Dining on the deck overlooking West Dover Harbour, I gently courted her.

Neither of us could have imagined she only had one year to live.

I guess, for me, life has always been “just around the corner, and down the block.”

And then the sixties were over.

Looking backwards, it was our amazing and sumptuous Gumbo.

Looking forwards, it was our Movable Feast.