Subscribe

trulesrules

on retirement

“RETIREMENT”… with guaranteed income and/or a pension doesn’t exist in our country anymore. And SOCIAL SECURITY simply isn’t enough. The basic “contract” with workers and has been “broken”. “Work long and hard and you will be guaranteed a financially secure “old age” and “retirement”. Sorry, that’s an idea of the past. Yet WHY is it that US postal workers, can retire at 55 years young? And union Teamsters, who are guaranteed 75% of their working salaries after they retire – for the rest of their lives – WHY are so well taken care of? While the rest of us hard-working…

on marriage

i wonder if there’s an honest husband alive who would not secretly admit to actually enjoying his wife’s planned, but still unexpected, 2 week call “out of town”, much to his own surprise. who wouldn’t have to admit to the temporary feeling of relief… of release…. of so called… “freedom”. yes, i know you’re out there, my deceased father amongst you…. husbands who never want(ed) to breathe a day without their “soul mates” and life partners. but me… sure, i call, text, facebook and whats app my wife, who is now in indonesia at her youngest sister’s wedding… at least…

gino cumeezi, outlaw clown & provocateur

as many of you may, or may not know, i used to be a clown. “gino cumeezi”. that was my name. great grandson of the infamous and toothless “gums” cumeezi. a cross between charlie chaplin, jack kerouac, and grand central station. i like to think of gino as a subversive public fool. a comic outlaw. a provocateur to the max. truly one of new yawk’s “finest”. in fact, gino ran for mayor of new york city in 1977. against the recently deceased (february, 2013), one and only mayor of new yawk, ed koch. “put a real clown in gracie mansion.” that was gino’s campaign slogan. he finished 5th out of 4 candidates.

ripples in the pond

beware. this is a story of curmudgeonliness turning into beatitude. let’s start with the first. it’s the merry month of may. time for college graduations. i never go. never went to my own, never will. you know the routine: 1969… the me generation, protest, stick it to the man. my parents made me go to the college i never wanted to go to, just to save the dough. i certainly wasn’t gonna go to make them happy. i was socially inept, volcanic, and generally, i had a hard time making it out of adolescence. i didn’t need a diploma, recognition…

R.I.P, Clay the Dog, 1998 – 2013

It ended the same way it began. On a hard, linoleum-covered wooden floor. Me lying next to Clay, the Dog. Comforting him at the very beginning. And comforting him again at the very end. Clay, my homeboy companion. My escape artiste extraordinaire. Clay, the canine outlaw of Echo Park. The cat killer and coyote enforcer. The sweetheart and heartbeat of Elysian Heights. Clay, the Dog, who is no more.

dancing with L

i saw her first
on the BMT line
the RR to be exact, heading uptown from 23rd to 57th street
she’s sitting… diagonally across from me
wearing bright red and white candy striped pants

act three?

you know, of a play? which logically and dramatically follows its 2 predecessors: first, act one, which brilliantly sets up what’s at stake for the protagonist. followed by act two, in which the play develops with tension & suspense, as it builds in “rising” action, when finally, you have, “act 3”, the climax and resolution of the play. if it’s a good/happy ending, the play is called a comedy. if it’s a not so good, bummer of an ending, the play is called a tragedy. in either case, act 3, the “falling” action and… the end of the play. now…

the klown, the motorbike, 9 lives times 2, and good karma

about 90 seconds after my first hill climb and descent, i confront my 1st fellow motor biker, a brown-skinned local dude puttering uphill with a fellow passenger on back. i’m heading down, he’s coming up, and i pull over to the right. so does he. that is, he swerves to his left, my right. what the hell? we’re heading right at each other. we simultaneously swerve to avoid one another. in the mili-seconds before impact, my life doesn’t flash before me. i think something like, “what the fuck, man… you idiot, you’re gonna run right into me. don’t you know the rules of the road? it’s your country, you boneheaded yokel, what the…?

crash! bang. head-on. i go down. he goes down.

mountains and ocean and hollywood sign… and yet?

look to the right, exactly 90 degrees from the terraced hillside back deck of lucretia gardens, and there are — the san gabriel mountains — gently looming over the hazy glendale flats. turn 180 degrees back to the left and there’s — the glassy silver rim of the pacific ocean, dividing the big sky of another multi-colored california sunset from the slightly high-rise sprawl of snarky century city and the equally-hazy flats of LA’s toney west side. turn back another 90 degrees to the right, and there, straight ahead, is the white dome of the griffith observatory, the shrubby tree tops of tom mix hill (of legendary silent film cowboy lore), and lo and behold… the iconic hollywood sign itself.

“when i’m 64”, the slow fade of the perfect easter lily

i go out and sit on the plump, stuffed designer chair on the narrow, red-tiled front porch, in a little corner i like to call “mi rincon de memoria” (my corner of memory), amongst the low hanging creeping charlies and the wood-carved mexican religious figurines, and i notice a single white easter lily growing through the green ground vegetation towards the black wrought-iron fence. it is singularly beautiful and very alone. i know that it is way too late in the season for a white easter lily to be growing in the garden. but there it is. i look a little closer to admire it, and i see that its white graceful edges are now fading to brown. in a few days, it will be gone. it stands there entirely alone, so fragile, in its slow, elegant decline. inevitably, it will crash like a springtime flower into the cold of september.

5 of 7
1234567

Site Developed and maintained by Webuilt Technologies