Learning How to Write

I have made this photo, taken, probably in the late 1990s, very large. I think the locale was The Abbey, a hot West Hollywood destination for eating and drinking that kindly allowed the creative writing class that my dad had been attending for some years to do a reading of some of their works. 

I usually did not get to attend these events as I was then working, but this day I was able to take off and share in my father's late in life embryonic success as a writer. This was what he always wanted to do, but of course, life took other directions. But in his seventies and eighties, he did a boat load of writing. Much as I hope you have seen, was wonderful. A lot of it was stream of consciousness, and some of that angry as he lamented the self-inflicted suicide of our society, which he would always remind me, he would not see. "Your generation is going to see it all end." he'd say, or some sort of apocalyptic pronouncement. I agreed with him. He's been gone nine years and if it were possible for the crumbling of society to get worse, it has, though the Four Horsemen haven't yet taken their last ride. I do wonder about my father's somewhat eagerness to presage that his only daughter would be there at the bitter end of modern civilization, but there you are. He couldn't change the reality of things, and I take my laments to God, whom I believe is the only resort given our hard times. Anyway, I digress. The reason for this picture is that this next short entry of the writings of my father, is about his writing class, all for seniors and taught by a lovely lady whom my father admired.  It seems that this was his first class, in this program, February 14, 1996, though I think he had tried others before that time.  He touches upon the reason I have been putting many of his stories on the internet, this blog. Regrettably, I am the end of his line as I did not bear children to carry on his name or his earthly memory. I have not provided descendants to give testimony to his memory, and for that matter, mine. I think there is something to memorialize. His passion. His intelligence, even his rebellious belligerence. His charm. I think that about many of the people of his generation I have been meeting of late who are passing one after another. 

I just heard that Orson Welles' youngest daughter donated diaries, letters and other items to a library for posterity. The teaser was one letter that the one day great director wrote as a teenager, taking passage on a steamer to or from Europe. How we become individuals from youth to death has always fascinated me, and I can't wait to read whatever gets into the public domain, about Mr. Welles, larger than life in every way. As to my father, he never got the prominence of Welles, but he was larger than life in his way, too. I like the idea that one day, somebody scrolling in the net might find his writing and feel a connection.  

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Bea outlined the goals of the program.  She read us those precepts that go into the making of a writer.
Discipline and depth of feeling is how I would summarize her advice.  She was a teacher, she said, in those grade years when children begin to nibble at the outer edge of the world of knowledge to be ingested, or ignored, in our lifetimes.  I doubt any of her students would have trifled with her, malingered, come unprepared to class, or failed to do the assigned homework ever again once having received a sample of her stern opprobrium.  I must confess that having looked into those very wise eyes, I traveled back in time to my desk at PS 55 and relived the apprehension of the student who had not read the assigned chapter.  "In this class," I said to myself, "I will be good."

Seated around the table were several centuries of tales to be told, of loves and hates, of marriages and children, of victories and defeats, and the terrible drive that animates our species--the need to say something, write something, build something--anything that will testify that we were here and made sounds that are not lost, but traveling forever, like pulsars, into the expanding universe.

There are impressions that require the interpretation of a Toulouse Lautrec.  I can only record a word picture of the assembly from my limited vision,  as Jack read his work for the session. Andy, seated behind the music stand that propped up his papers, clasped his extended fingers, as if in supplication to a Deity, allowing the two index members to caress his chin.  Irmagard supported her inclined head with a tightly clenched fist. Dan doodled little rectangles on the upper margins of his typewritten page; Sophia and Cindy were resolutely immobile and lastly, our teacher, Bea allowed her eyes to travel, first left, then right, keeping her head motionless until finally her eyelids closed, in surrender to Morpheus, and opened immediately as Jack's recitation suddenly ended.

I had no clear view of the others except that Nick seemed to be leaning perilously backward on his chair.  Suddenly it was three o'clock and the end of a very pleasant experience.



5-9-17 Addendum:  I have been on an all day rummage through old photos and saved memories, with the idea of doing some more paring and re-organizing for archiving on these pages. And by the by I found a second photo from the occasion at The Abbey. This second picture has dad reading his work.

"Let's Go, We Did the Passion Last Night"

The title needs a little explanation.  This has been a weekend of religious observance for we Christians and our Jewish cousins. I am a member of the progenitor Christian faith, Catholicism. And so, on Good Friday, I went for a three hour service--the only day on which Mass is not said anywhere in the world as it commemorates the day on which Christ died on the Cross--at my parish. First, there was the rosary, then the meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ as he was crucified, then a Veneration of the Cross, then a Communion Service, which includes a lengthy rendition of the events leading up to the death of Christ, the betrayal by his friend, his arrest, his condemnation by the people, before the reluctant Pilate, the scourging, the walk to Calvary, and of course,  the death in apparent ignominy. All through these activities, there was the opportunity for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (formerly known as Confession).

It was pretty packed. Interestingly, since our pastor died at the beginning of Lent, our parish has seen an uptick of attendance. It isn't necessarily because people are aware of his death. I think it is like he (and our prior pastor) is being an intercessor and asking the Lord to keep us going with commitment and joy. I was in the second to last row, and behind me were several parishioners I know well, all of them men older than me (and I am no spring chicken). Two of them were there for the rosary, and the Seven Last Words, and then suddenly, I heard one say to the other, "Let's Go, We Did the Passion Last Night." It's a long three hours. I knew what they meant. They had been at the service the evening before where the Passion narrative is read also, a couple of hour service. There is no obligation to go to the Thursday and Friday portions of the Triduum, and particularly with all the standing and kneeling, it is hard on even the youngest churchgoer, let alone people of a "certain age". But I found myself smiling because something in what the man said to his friend, in an unintentional way, highlighted the overall challenge of our time. We call the millennial generation "snowflakes" because everything is too hard for them and they want everything given to them. But in truth, all of us humans, even the ones among us who call ourselves practitioners of our religions, are "snowflakes" when it comes to suffering. Actually, let me limit it to us religious Christian folk, because we are the ones who say that suffering is the door through which we must go, in following the example of the God-Man, Christ, to the Resurrection we celebrate today. Some people experience the greatest of difficulty, but most of us face ordinary difficulty and lament it as if it is something we have a "right" to escape. That's what I thought of, not about the speaker, but about myself, when I heard the man say, "We did the passion last night." I tell myself I have had my share of struggle. But that's the point. There is no "proper" share. Some get less. Some get more. But we all get it and it would happen whether or not we believe in salvation. But IF I believe, then it is not only something that I cannot walk away from, this Passion, but I ought not to want to walk away from it because it is the only way to the beginning, back to Paradise, via the action of Christ on the Cross. And yet, here I am every Lent resisting what I purportedly believe. And then the Lord puts something in front of me that is the last thing I want to do, or to deal with, and I am forced to confront it. And I bray like a donkey (thanks to St. Escriva for that image) all the way through the challenge.  It doesn't matter what that is for purposes of this day's blog, but something came to me literally on Ash Wednesday lasting all the way through to to today, and perhaps for a while longer.  It is something that is no accident.  It may help another. It will teach me about myself, and my frailty as a human being, but especially as a Christian. I can try to convince myself that I am a good follower of Christ, but when "push comes to shove" I prove myself to be one of those snowflakes, and a quickly melting one at that. I ask Him to give me humility, and then when He sends me that which is to make me humble, I say, "Oh, no, not this, not this!"

That's what I thought about when I heard the man in the pew say, "Let's go, We Did the Passion Last Night." Me, saying, "Ok, I did enough good stuff. Now time to go have some fun!" It's like I'm ticking off the celestial box of good deeds. That's not what Christ did. Nor is it what He asks us to do in following Him. There is always suffering. The way we see it, there was no meaning to the suffering before He broke into time, and took suffering itself to Him and opened again the door to Heaven. If I am going to have to suffer, and I will, I like the idea that He gave it meaning better than that it has none. I will forget my resolve, as always I do, when something God expects more of me has me saying, "But I did the Passion last night" or some variety of the phrase. But hopefully, when I am sitting in the Church before the Tabernacle looking at the Crucifix and the most passionate of Passions, I will remember what it is to be a Christian.

Mephisto Waltz on the 217 Bus

They were clearly not friends, but they had been carrying on a spirited conversation.  The bus was, as usual, late.  The tall one was strictly California.  Blond, clearly dyed.  He wore white trousers and a denim jacket opened to reveal a sweat shirt.  A leather thong around his neck held a strange object, plastic, clearly off the shelf thrift shop.

The other one was shorter, Hispanic in appearance, clearly a salesman, in a suit and tie, the jacket of which he held on his arm

He fingered the object around the taller man's neck.  "What's this," he asked, "a mystical symbol, an Egyptian scarab, or a miniature Ark of the Covenant?"

The blond man peered at his companion with two very close set eyes, one of which was very red and bruised.  I felt clearly that someone had punched him in the eye.  I was becoming interested in the conversation.

"It's a stop watch," the tall man said, manipulating the controls.  "Bought it at a garage sale for fifty cents."  He rose, and looked towards Third Street.  "It's coming, I can see it on the horizon."

The image of the bus went from a blur to a definitive, familiar rectangle.  Third Street is a busy stop.  It was a long time before it began to creep towards the now crowded station.

"I hate bus drivers," said the tall man, without preamble.

The other did not answer. I agreed with the comment.  I am not too fond of bus drivers myself--and I include the passengers, also.

The driver halted short of the stop, allowed some passengers to dismount, then gunned the motor and sped past a muttering mob of discontents.

"They are inspired by the Devil." he added.

The smaller man looked at him quizzically--now keenly interested.  "Why do you hate them?" he prompted.

The tirade continued--not in answer to the question, but rather as a continuation of his original statement.

"They threw me against the wall," he raged.  " I made them apologize. The Transit Authority sent me a letter."  The close set eyes were looking into a very distant place.  "They are Devil motivated.  I know the Bible.

"You believe in a Devil?" asked the little man.

"I know him.  I have met him.  I have spoken to him."  A trinity, a little on the side of sacrilege.

"What does he look like?" asked the companion.  It was hard to tell whether he was interested or just trying to provoke.

"He was like a man, except that he had the face of an elephant with a shortened trunk."

"What did he want of you?" the short man pursued.

"My soul," he answered, you know, Faust, the Devil and Daniel Webster."

As a non-involved eavesdropper, I felt there was a certain rationality here, knowledge of  literature, opera.  He sounded literate and well spoken.

"Were you on something," asked the little man, smiling archly.

"No," answered tall man, a reflective look coming into the close set eyes, that now looked crossed, and redder than before.

"Are you a college graduate?" came the next question of the little man.

"Yes,, science" said the bruised one.

"Are you working?" came the next question.

"No, but I was in telemarketing." This beaten man was, I thought, the last refuge of the almost destitute. I marveled at his patience in this dialogue.  Others too were showing more interest, a needed diversion as the next bus was nowhere in sight.  I wanted to hear more about his Devil.  The salesman provided the push.

"Why did your devil come in such a disagreeable shape?  You know, of course, that he does his best work dressed in Italian suits and Bruno Magli shoes.  Besides, what did he offer in exchange for your soul?"

"Power, money, real estate--girls." came the answer. I thought that if he were to chose, it would not be girls, or women, either.

"What stopped you. . ." The salesman's question was aborted and answered immediately.

"The Bible," he said piously.  "There is a hell and eternal damnation."

I sneaked a look at the sad tall man.  His general condition mitigated against the possibility that he had made any deal at all.  I waited for some finish to the story.  The salesman obligated with a cue. "Do you think all souls weigh equally with the Devil?  Would you value yours as weighty as that of Jesus?  He was offered the same emoluments as you were.

"He is God, but all souls are alike."

"Then you  ascribe only limited divinity to Jesus."

"I follow only the Bible."

The bus was finally approaching.  The little man made one final salvo.

"He would have given you wealth, a panorama or real estate, power and women.  Curiously not long life.  He seems a rather impatient Devil, in your case.  Perhaps he finds your soul curiously desirable.  OF all the goodies he offered, which one would you prize above all others?"

"Power."  The red of his injured eye seemed more inflamed than ever.


The one thing I rarely ever see in the stories that Dad wrote, is happiness, in any measure. He is cynical, and doubting, and I guess, in the bad mood I find myself in today as I write this small append I am reminded of how often we butted heads over his way of observing the world as if he were somehow not one of God's creations like the rest of us. I think of him as one of the haughty doubters, smug that only intellectuals like themselves have discovered the great secret, that God is the creation of less worthy beings than themselves. If Dad were here today, we'd be having a fight. Why did everything have to be dissected and parsed to the nth degree? Couldn't we just let things be? And live with just a little less pessimism? And posit maybe that the Devil isn't the big gun, but there is a God who is? Well, at least the story makes you think, eh?

Lamentation

I can't say that there are many poems from my father. But here is one. If I didn't know before- but I did- there is no doubt that I come from a family of pessimists.

Still, it's a good poem. I think.


Lamentation

Yesterday I cried

This morning, also.

And I will cry tomorrow

Dry tears.  No drops to wash away.

Sordid uninspiring tentacles, browning trees

Viscous, clamorous life forms,

Unevolved after ages in original darkness.

The astral light pointing the way, unseen.

All this viewed through a pane of glass.

Once crystal clear, now darkened by

The graffiti of our times.

Greta Garbo: Djinn Thoughts Just After She Died

From time to time, as I may have mentioned, I will transcribe one of my old journal entries on a subject that, I hope, is of general interest. This is part of a culling process I am doing for a variety of personal reasons. So much of my writing was, is, ranting, I fear. But occasionally, I had some moderately interesting notes, and I guess I just want to share them.

This one is about Greta Garbo about a week or two after she died in New York at the age of 84. For generations of movie-goers beginning in the silent era to about the mid 1930s, Garbo was a defining star presence. She was probably most famous for words that I don't know she ever said at all in a movie, "I vant to be alone!" And she was, apparently, most of her life. She lived, after she withdrew from film, in a NYC apartment that I see has just recently gone up for sale. She was known as something of a hermit, something of a mysterious shadow of her supposed movie line.

When I wrote the following, there must have been a photo of her that I tried to find online, but could not. So, these are a couple just for context. Garbo when she was young and vibrant. And Garbo when she merged into NYC anonymity and then, like the rest of us, died, reminding us that no one, no matter how once famous, is spared.

                                                   ------------------------------------------

April 24, 1990, Tuesday, 11:50 p.m.

She is wearing a heavy fur coat over a soft, matronly body.  Her white hair is long and loose, dry and in its style, a refusal to accept the reality of 84 years.  It is a style of her 20s, 30s, or even 40s.  But now it is a parody of her former self.  She denies what is long past. And what was only an image.

She seems to pitch forward a bit.  Her right hand on a sturdy cane; her left ,on a person, who is not pictured. Her eyes still heavy lidded but now protected by large rimmed glasses.  Her face is otherwise broadened with age.  She looks surprised, or is it afraid, wary?  She reminds me of the character in the Twilight Zone who closed herself away to avoid death--as if by shutting herself up death could be kept out.

Just a photograph.  And when I saw it, my heart jumped just a little, a shock, unreasonable really, that the myth, the illusion, the image of glamour, youth, fame, was this so typically elderly woman.  Greta Garbo, a sad, little old lady.  After seeing that picture in the Times, I will never be seduced by the myth again.

All the collecting, ambition, good life demanded and commanded, reduced so utterly.

She seems to have died a lonely old thing.  What did she accomplish, one wonders, besides the fame created out of celluloid and the talk of the easily myth-fed public? Between the photos of 1928 and 1989 what was in her life exclusive of speculation, rumor, and outright lie?

One Degree of Separation

This story, partly fiction, partly based in reality (you'll be able to tell which) is based at a time when Dad had been commissioned a temporary 2nd Lt. in 1943 during World War II. Because it does hark back to that time, I include a booklet from his time in training, in which he became a platoon leader. 

We were commissioned in the first month of 1943, he a week later than myself.  We met for the first time some three months later, at a port of embarkation, in Pennsylvania, on the border of Warren, Ohio.

For both of us, it was as if personnel had lost our records.  This was curious, since our category of officer was being destroyed with assiduous regularity.

I had no complaint.  I was in no hurry. The immediate benefit of this situation was my only consideration.  Later, I would discover that the military was remiss in not giving us training in full units, the kind we were scheduled to command.  One dark and moonless night, I would be unceremoniously deposited on an Italian hill and installed as a platoon leader of a unit, dug in, dispersed, under German fire and told,

"Here's your platoon.".  But this is a story for another seance.

It would be another three months before some classification clerk would come across our names for shipment overseas.  In the meantime, we lived an unsupervised, day to day existence, were assigned quarters, were fed in universal messes.  Otherwise we were free to explore the neighboring cities for surcease from care and boredom.

Frank was young and boyish, and unsophisticated--perhaps approaching twenty years old. He came from a town in Nebraska, was barely out of high school.  When his "Greetings" arrived; was spirited out of a somnolent rural existence before even he had time to find a "girl next door" to sit under an apple tree and wait for him to return.

Nevertheless, he was of good, trusting humor, patient, and proud of his neophyte officer status. He once admonished me for turning around at a shriek whistle.

"An officer never turns around at a whistle," he said.

I do not know what manual of arms he got this maxim from, but I responded with the amount of penitence this deviance called for. Frank was too serious for humorous rejoinder.

He was an opera lover.  In fact, our association began when he asked if I would like to see an amateur performance of the opera, Rigoletto, which was to take place in Warren, Ohio.  I was and still am an aficionado.

Warren was a local bus trip from our camp.  The performance was in a high school auditorium.  It was a recognizable effort, and Frank sang, sotto-voce with the profligate Duke, the famous aria, "Questa O Quella," the song about his difficulty in choosing one mistress over another.

The bus for our return trip to camp had only two other passengers--two girls, visibly attracted to our uniforms, chatty and willing to establish congress.

Frank was in love from the outset.  Norma, his girl, responded.  Frank told me within a week of their encounter, that he would never have the dilemma of the operatic Duke.  She was his choice forever.

I have fond recollections of my friend, Angelina.  She was Italian, wore and engagement ring, had nine brothers, was very possessive from the outset, despite her betrothal, made excellent Italian dinners for all of us, and for the nonce, must appear only peripherally in this story.

It was she who told me the intimate details confided to her by Norma, graphic, passionate, glorious, but never consummated.  Frank said he would not dishonor the woman he was to marry.  She wanted his child.  The torrid embraces were not enough to seduce the very obdurate Frank.

My luck suddenly came to a resounding end.  I was shipped at the end of three months.  Angelina was, I was told, preparing dinner for us alone.  She did not believe that anything but another woman could keep me from our date.  Norma's letter told me how she went from camp to camp making inquiries, and was unceremoniously escorted out of the base by two Military Policeman.  Though we communicated by letter for four years, there was never mention by her, of the event and the nine, irregular shaped Italian cigars I left her--one for each of her nine brothers.

Norma implored me to take care of Frank, who was shipped out a week later.  I could not tell her that the likelihood of my meeting him ever again was very slim, if at all.  I promised that I would, for whatever comfort it would bring her.

I was wrong.  I did meet him in an Officers' Club in Oran.  He was seated at a table, alone, a picture of dejection.  I startled him with my effusive greeting.

"Frank, what the hell are you doing here?"

He was overjoyed in his greeting.  I asked him what outfit he was with. He said he was not assigned currently and was on his way to Casablanca.  I was curious as to why he was travelling with the fatigue uniform and the steel helmet.  He avoided explanation.  All he wanted to do was to talk of Norma, and how long it would be before he would see her again.  How he regretted the precious moments he denied them both.  He talked late into the night of his pain until it was time to part.  In the morning, I wrote a hasty letter to Norma telling her that Frank was OK, how he talked of his love for her and his longing to see her again.  There was little time.  Personnel had caught up with me.   I was on my way to Salerno.

I saw Frank briefly in Naples, several months later.  He seemed to be entering the San Carlo Royal Opera House, the legendary baroque edifice at the end of the famous Via Roma; but the crowd, pushing to get into the theatre kept me from reaching him.  Suddenly, he was gone.  I did not know if he had entered the theatre or had gone elsewhere. Anyway, he was in Naples.  I would find him later.  I thought it an amazing coincidence that the opera that was featured was called "Norma".

Several  more weeks passed before my long delayed mail reached me.  I had had no communication with the outside world since I embarked for Salerno.  There was a large bundle of letters together with my footlocker and the uniforms I left behind in Oran that day of embarkation.

The clothing was mildewed and smelled of damp warehouses.  The letters were no better off, the ink smudged and now illegible on the moist envelopes.  There were many from Angelina and Norma, from my family, copies of the GI newspaper, "Stars and Stripes".  I read them avidly to fill in the gaps left by my enforced absence.

Suddenly I felt cold, frightened.  Norma's letter was in response to the one in which I talked of meeting Frank in Oran.

"It was not possible that you met Frank," she wrote.  "He was killed a month before the date of your letter.  He had named her next of kin, and beneficiary of his National Service Insurance policy.

"For he was likely, had he been put on
To have proved most royally; and
for his passage
the soldiers' music and the rites of war
speak loudly for him."

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit."

William Shakespeare

Guilt (by Constantine Gochis)

Dad struggled (who doesn't I guess) with religion all his life. That he became a Catholic has always been a mystery to me, albeit a Gift I don't in any way regret, for him, and for me. I think the "mistake" he makes in this short thought piece is that he makes Adam and Eve co-equal with God, which is what got them in trouble in the first place--they thought they could take God hood, when in fact, everything that comes from God is a gift, if you believe in religion at all. Dad seems to make the sin purely sexual, and it is not, I think, in what reading I have done, merely about sex. It was about disobedience to the One who created us. If one believes, man did not create a god. It is the other way around and the enormity of that reality, if you believe, demands humility, not grasping. I sense also, in my father's discourse here a shift. First, he seems to dispute God's absolutes, which he sees as arbitrary, and then he laments the lack of absolutes in the culture. But dad struggled and I am in awe of his thoughtfulness, always. 


I've never been too sure what Adam and Eve did in that forbidden Garden. In my early maturating years I pondered the intractable ire of the Deity over the eating of an apple.

Later, when I sought understanding of the great mysteries of life, I was told in hushed tones, by men in black cassocks, that they had disobeyed G-D in a more material manner--"much more seriously" said Father Spiridon, an early mentor of my spirituality.  "Polee Kako," were some of his words, which in Greek means, "very bad."

Many years later, in a period of early revelation I learned the real substance of disobedience.  I wondered at the reasoning of the Creator. Why imbue us with a precious gift and then refuse us the right to enjoy it?  How to characterize this item of Divine beneficence?

I heard it described by a young lady in succinct terminology, though somewhat colorful, to wit, "If'n the Good Lord made anything better 'n this, He mussa kep it for Hisself."

Consider:  There may have bee mitigating circumstances for Adam and Eve.  For example, many scholars believe Eve was enceinte before they were expelled from Eden so maybe the black robed Father of my youth was in error, and it wasn't the "knowing" each other, but the specific act of eating the apple, as I thought originally.  In this case, had the black robed Father the prescience of the scholars, he might have said, instead, "Polee kalo" which means "very good," though sadly the prelate was already too aged to savor the benefits of this new knowledge.

Think of the implications of this unwarranted guilt.  A early Church Father castrated himself in order to be free from temptation; Saint Jerome said that the only purpose of marriage was to produce virgins, and ordained that these must be kept in that pristine state--in a kind of a non-productive palindrome.

I must not scoff.  We of this generation have found the truth.  There is no black and white, only grays; no evil or evildoing.  The seeming aberrant must have a causative factor, by a controlling grandmother and an over-affectionate mother, and therefore prone to eating many apples, some of them in the Oval Office.

Richard Gere comes to mind.  Clearly, he says, there is no such thing as guilt.  There must be an absence of hate if man is to survive.  He has learned this in his peregrinations among the placid monks of Tibet and some contact with the Dalai Lama.

"Is Hitler evil?" a suspicious Charlie Rose offers in an interview.  He can ask probing questions.

"Excessively mischievous," counters the learned actor, in an answer of latter day profundity.  Therefore, to quote from Omar a possible summation:

"Come fill the cup/and in the fire of spring/the winter garment of repentance fling/The bird of time has but a little way to flutter/and Lo' the bird is on the wing."

The Evil Eye by C. Gochis

I cannot say that I do not believe in ghosts.  I will not walk under a ladder, and when a black cat crosses my path, I worry considerably.  I am troubled especially when my left eye twitches.  It is all part of my heritage, and of my childhood in a big house; gas lit with flickering jets that cast playful shadows on spacious walls; where the cellar staircase creaked at the lightest footstep.  Eye twitching was serious business.

Papa expressed it in his own idiom. Papa was a Greek immigrant.  He used to say, "my eye shakes" and his tone was foreboding.  The tic was a very worrisome phenomenon to him.

I did not have to ask which eye.  Everyone knows the left is the sinister side of things.  Everyone, certainly, that is of Mediterranean derivation.  Similarly, it is common knowledge that when your left palm itches, you are in danger of losing money.  I do not know for sure if the converse is true.  In any case itching of the right palm was never, to my recollection, reported.

Papa's left palm always itched and he frequently lost money.

Still, he searched patiently within the lore which was thousands of years old when he was born. Divination, a practice still popular in the small Aegean village from which he came:   Divination, from which he sought some augury of good fortune.

On occasions such as Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas, when the traditional large bird is sacrificed, Papa would make one of his traditional prophecies. He would examine, with creitical attention, the carcass of the now denuded offering, with stern and serious expression, certainly consonant with that worn by some ancient oracular priest in some Orphic temple, and announce:

"We are going to have a good year!"

We generally did not.

Mama, who stemmed from the sunny Italian south, was concerned with Malocchio. The Evil Eye is not peculiar to Italians.  The Greeks call it Ta Matia, which means simply "the eyes".  Among the Hebrews, the phenomenon is called Kenohoras, for which I have no literal translation.  But it is said to be an equally troublesome force in any language.

In any case, Mother thought this phenomenon to be sinister. She maintained volubly--to Papa's great discomfiture--that the greatest potential source of danger from this malevolence resided in the machinations of her two sisters-in-law.

These ladies were, as Mama phrased it, "imports from Greece".  Both my uncles married natives from their village of origin.  Mama asserted further that the boys were inexpert in their choices.  She said they "picked lemons from the Garden of Eden".

I was present, as a child, when a great ship docked in New York with my arriving aunts.  Mother allowed me to go to greet them with great reluctance, after much ado about the matter with Papa.

"Il Malocchio!" she expostulated.

The cry was reminiscent of the cry of the hunchback courtier of the opera, Rigoletto.

"La maledizzione," in Act I.  The Curse.  This foreboding word is a kind of second cousin to Malocchio, though far more potent.

Papa was obdurate.  His son would accompany him to greet the arriving aunts.  Mama's objections to my going had made his eye shake.

I must admit I as protected with appropriate amulets.  Mama put salt in my pockets and a necklace of garlic around my neck.  These are powerful deterrents to the Malocchio.

They were not.

I developed Scarlet Fever.