Pray with Our Lady of Fatima (June 6 to June 13, 2026, St. Victor Church, West Hollywood, California)

When has it not been turbulent in our world? And why do we insist that we can create a Utopia on our own strength, when clearly the evidence of previous efforts is that we fail explosively? That failure usually means the deaths of millions of innocent souls, and yet, the insistence on being our own gods persists. It began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve, who had everything, gave it all away with the "No" of disobedience to the Creator. Yes, it was a test of free will. Just one thing God asked you not to do. Eve did it first, Adam did not stop her, and worse, he followed her to pain and suffering. "I don't believe in a Creator!" you might retort. That's ok, He doesn't need my or your belief. He asks for it for our good and happiness, not His. He wants for us to share in His freely given gift, to share in His Divinity, not for us to seize it from Him and push Him out. Then why do we all suffer? Love cannot be given, nor reciprocated, in the absence of free will. Free will means that we can fail to give and reject love as well.  The hard answer is that human disobedience unleashed it all, and its randomness, from natural disasters to the death of children. What did the Apostles and others say to Jesus? "Lord, your sayings are hard." Then why doesn't God intervene?  He did. The fallen angels did not get that second chance because they had perfect knowledge of the truth. But as to us, He uttered His Son, Jesus Christ, who in two natures, Divine and human, atoned for our sins by allowing His creatures to crucify Him, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent His Holy Spirit, thereby extending a Divine Second Chance, expressed in the Catholic Church from and after 33 A.D. The first bad choice of Adam and Eve had consequences and those consequences cannot be reversed, BUT, each one of us can exercise our free will to say the "Yes" that the New Eve, Mary, the Mother of God said, follow Him through the door of death and be with God eternally. He reminds us of that offer all the time. He provided us the Sacraments, the visible signs of His continued Presence in the World, Sacramentals to dispose our hearts and minds to Him, Miracles, Saints, to help us accept the offer, because He knows how weakened we were as a result of the Original Sin, the disobedience of the creature to the Perfect Will of God.

May to October, 1917 was an extended occasion of one of those reminders. The Mother of God appeared to three shepherd children, Lucia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto, in Fatima, Portugal. These innocents, simple shepherd children, were chosen to send her messsage, on her Son's behalf, and as the mother He had given to us on the day of His crucifixion. The message was of the urgency of  repentance and conversion to a world embroiled in World War I, a warning against an even worse conflagration (World War II) a rabid atheism and anti-Catholicism and Revolution in Russia that presaged Communism in many countries and has assiduously and violently sought to spread its errors everywhere. The weapons she offered were prayer, especially the Rosary, for peace and to convert hard hearts and wake up humanity to its acts of self-destruction, but mostly the ultimate horror, the eternal separation from God, from Love itself. 

Mary encouraged devotions especially of First Saturdays:

“All those who during five months, on the first Saturday, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say a rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the rosary for the intention of making reparation to me, I promise to assist them at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their souls” (Documents on Fatima & the Memoirs of Sister Lucia, 279-280).

Hard to believe? Yes. But did it happen? It is disputed mostly by modern atheists, while others, even Catholics, fail to commit to the idea that the God they say they believe in, existing outside of time snd space can orchestrate a mysterious, loving warning to His creatures to use their free will wisely in this second and final chance. The atheists of the day in Fatima certainly disputed that it could happen. They derided the stupid peasants, as now those who believe 109 years later it happened are derided as stupid. The mayor, a Freemason, did. A journalist of the paper O Seculo, Avelina de Almeida, a committed atheist did. But on the day of the last appearance of Mary, October 13, in which she urged again the recitation of the Rosary, something happened that is not merely a matter of belief, but documented in photographs and in the surprised and surprising reportage of the unbeliever himself. De Alameida brought a photographer who was no friend of the faith. What they captured was a massive reaction to an otherwise inexplicable action of nature, of the Sun itself, literally spinning in the sky, drying a rain drenched, mud stuck crowd all at once and the ground on which they stood amazingly not blinded by staring into the sun. 

https://www.bluearmy.com/astounding-things-how-the-midday-sun-danced-at-fatima/

https://theotokos.org.uk/article-fatima-october-1917-1/

Was the atheist a victim of the mass hysteria claimed to be the reality of the matter? Were the people miles away affected by the alleged mass hysteria? As in all things related to God and the Catholic Church or miracles, we have a choice to believe or not to believe, and to pray for ourselves and the world which always seems to be spinning out of control because, if we really are honest, of our own persistent sins. 

I am a little surprised at how ecstatic I am at being able to participate in a week of listening to Our Lady of Fatima's message and to thank her for being a model of the "Yes" to the Plan of God the Father to get us back to where He intended us to be, in a divine union with Him, that which is Heaven.

A little band of parishioner believers and their pastor at St. Victor will be hosting the Los Angeles Archdiocese Division's Blue Army replica of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, in whose crown the bullet (related by many to the Third Secret of Fatima) once lodged in St. John Paul II, now reposes in Portugal. The replica is one of several special such statues which make pilgrimages to various locations to spread the message of Fatima to all. It was carved by an apprentice of the sculptor of the original statue (that was in 1947) and blessed by Archbishop Jose Gomez on the 100th anniversary of the appearance of Mary at Fatima. 

From the afternoon of June 6 (3 p.m.) to the morning of June 13 (the 109th year after the second apparation of Mary), there will be prayer, Procession and Adoration of the Eucharist, Confession and devotion inspired by this visit, especially the recitation of the Rosary. There will be an opportunity for the attendees to join the Blue Army

The tentative schedule:

Saturday, June 6, 3-5 p.m., The Divine Mercy Chaplet, Message of Fatima delivered by a member of the Blue Army, Los Angeles Division, Questions and Answers.  Hear the story. Hear the urgency. Hear about conversion, reversion and reparation for our sins and those of the whole world!

Saturday, June 6, 4:30 p.m., The Rosary

Saturday, June 6, 5 p.m. Vigil Mass

Sunday, June 7, after the 10:30 Mass: Procession of the Eucharist around the block of St. Victor Church 

Monday, June 8 to Friday, June 12:

Daily Rosary at 8:00 a.m. 

Confessions daily from 8:00 a.m. to 8:25 a.m.

Daily Mass at 8:30 a.m.

Eucharistic Addoration Daily from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. with confession from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00  p.m.

Saturday, June 13 at 8:00 a.m. Rosary

Saturday, June 13, at 8:30 a.m. Farewell Mass

Our Lady of Fatima, Pray for us, for the conversion of souls and the reparation for sin. 

Ever so slowly, so slowly are the words I was taught as a child finally coalescing in my heart and mind. Some absorb it without resistance, in trust, as did the three children at Fatima. I am late to a slow burning realization that comes from too much thought and not enough faith. 

Today was Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the fearful and made them all brave and holy. 

Now I look forward to a week of hearing the critical message of making the right choice in order to save souls, including my own. 

Love Stories by Constantine Gochis

So many of my father's stories were generated in the context of his travels in his neighborhood, my neighborhood at that stage, for we lived blocks away from one another in those days, the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. I think both of us favored the area because it was reminiscent of the New York neighborhoods we had left to come to Los Angeles. I came here, willingly and excitedly, with the hope of being a television writer or perhaps voice specialist in some aspect of the entertainment industry. Dad came because his only child was here. I am sure I have mentioned before that my father was not crazy about Los Angeles, paradisal weather notwithstanding. This story is one among them although Fairfax Avenue is not directly mentioned in it. He made the best of having sacrificed himself for me. 

_______________________________________________

The lines to the cashier were interminable.  Christmas Eve is no time to shop. There were now only three customers before me, though customer number one had filled the moving counter to capacity, and worse, she was preparting to write a check for the purchase. There would now be the inevitable search through her cavernous purse for identification, the clerical notations for security, and then the "double coupons".

The elderly woman in front of me reached up and smoothed an errant hair just over the right ear of her companion, an older gentleman who had so far remained immobile during this process we shared. He had his own checkbook precariously held in his palm. She examined him carefully for further imperfection and ran her hand along the side of his mouth, though I could not see any disorder there. She whisked whatever it was away, with a gentle flick of her fingers.

"You like him?" I importuned. 

"Very much," she answered, her face brightening from what had seemed of questionable humor when she noticed my probing attention.

"Have you always liked him?" I insisted.

"For forty-five years," came the unexpected response from the seemingly inattentive gentleman.

"Yes," I offered, '"but does he like you?"

"I think so," came the reflective reply, and then she recovered, "I'm sure, I'm very sure."  It seemed a kind of penitential response, but then she smiled. A few of the other customers were now listening avidly to the conversation. A smiling African American lady offered her experience to date, "I've been married for eleven years," she said proudly.

"No cigar," I said.  "You have thirty years more to match these folks."  The loving couple beamed, and we all moved up a notch. The lady ahead of us had completed the "double coupon" phase of her interminable transaction.

"How about you?" I asked the girl just behind me, young, maybe approaching thirty. She had been expressionless through our improvisation. Her hair was combed back severely and there was an air of privacy about her. But I took the chance.

"Don't tell me," I began, "you are recently married, perhaps three years?"

"Two," she answered.  

There were two twelve packs of beer in her cart.  "Your husband is a football fan?" I inquired. "A couch potato?" I added.

"No chance," she retorted. There was determination in her answer. "Not if I can help it," she posited, to me, rather glumly.

I thought of the gesture of the elderly lady brushing an imaginary spot from the mouth of her husband.  There was love in the gesture. I looked for softness in the young girl's face. It might be there, but there seemed to be a difficulty in its manifesting itself. Her face was pale, and there appeared bluish rings under her eyes and to the extent she smiled, it seemed to be with reluctance. I felt a touch of sadness on this eve of the day of the Nativity. a day of new birth and hope and promise.

Deep in her eyes there was this tangible sadness, and unfulfilled aspiration. And she had so many years to travel still. 

Seven Deadly Sins

In the 1990s an 2000s, until he died in 2008, my father was a member of a couple of writing classes at the West Hollywood Community Center, which I think generated his prodigious output that I often think will take me more years than I have left to cull. But it is a task that I have been and remain glad to undertake, albeit with the speed of a garden slug. Often, the teachers Bea, or Rick, would propose a topic for the senior students most above age 60, and several way into their 80s. My father was somewhere near the age I am now when he wrote many of these tales, reminiscences and opinions. 

As I read through these writings over time, I see many things about my father, some of which I am still trying to clarify, but much of which I knew, like his perpetual guilt and a deep anger, and his ever present doubt about the Spiritual, which fascinated him, but which at the same time, he pushed away, with a sarcasm that when directed to me or friends and family, could be a difficult to forget cut, and sometimes undeserved by its recipient. Or so the recipient would think.

These stories reveal a man in constant internal struggle. Maybe that's all of us. But I tend to think that it is some more than others, and right up to the end Dad was working on something that was generated by something he could not reveal even to himself.

__________________________________________________________

"OK," I say to my reflection in the mirror, what can you say about Rick's selection of theme for this week's writing class? Well, at least I can name them all?"

"Don't be flippant," says my image, "this is a serious matter."

"What the hell," I conclude to my substantial self, "Perhaps it's not Dinner With Andrew, but it's as good a device as any. Off the record, come to think of it, I have probably violated all of the Seven Deadly Sins. You want the truth? More than once. Maybe as recently as last week."

"Be serious," says my image counterpart, "these sins are not only Deadly, they are Cardinal. Now there's a little distinction, to diverge for a moment. Any prelate of stature would tell you that the Maxims reflect moral failings that 'seriously interfere with living a spiritual life'. Nevertheless what did you do last week to help forge that inevitable heavy chain you will carry eternally in that great beyond?"

"I'll tell you.  But first, that business of Spirituality: Medieval Catholic patter. Who says I want to be spiritual? Anyway, last week, I go to a Rite-Aid to buy some pipe cleaners so I can blow some cleansed secondary smoke into the Los Angeles smog. When I reach the cashier's line, I find myself standing behind one of thos magnificats of creation, a beautiful, bare-backed young woman, with little in front to mitigate total nudity. From a logical and critical point of view, it is still too cold for such gratuitous revelation. Nevertheless, the unblemished perfection and intoxicating texture of youth is a sight that creates great peril for my immortal soul:  I Lust.

"Dirty old man," chides the mirror image.

"Yea, verily," I say, and in that same week I go to Cingular, to renew my cell phone contract.  The eyes that look up at me reflect the eternities of outer space: beauty beyond the secular. She waves her enameled fingers to dispel an offending loose hair and I note the golden band of fealty, no doubt to some undeserving male. I Covet.

"For shame," says my visible conscience. "What was the Saint who said these failings can lead to more serious transgressions? Was it Aquinas or Augustine?"

"Funny you should mention the latter?" I note back. "He lived a merry life before he went into hiding behind the cloth. As we know, there are many things lurking beneath celestial costumes. Good subject say, for the Cardinal of Boston. An item for another day. To return to matters relating to Amartia, the Greek for 'missing the mark': In my youth I was guilty of Sloth, or, if you apply a less onerous description, Laziness. I can still hear the sonorous voice of my sainted father summoning me from a deep slumber, 'Son, are you getting up or what?' 'Or what' was a perpetual plea by dad for me to greet the daylight and look for a job. In those salad days of hanging out at the Candy Store without the wherewithal for a three cents plain or a two cent chocolate covered jelly bar, I may have committed my first two violations of the deadly seven."

"Yes," I remember, "you were particularly exercised when the Cohen brothers stomped in or their daily libation at the fountain."

"Now, there was Gluttony.  Murray Cohen was big and fat.  Bernie was bigger and fatter.  Each time they came to the counter they would order a malted milkshake and while waiting, stuff their mouths with jelly bars and other goodies.  They always had the cash.  I felt Anger at their profligacy in the face of my penury, and Envy at their good fortune."

"Oh, yes, nodded my mirror companion, "that leaves the pitfall that may bar our way to Paradise.  You know what Thomas Aquinas says is the most serious of all the seven deadly sins? Remember when you were waiting tables at the Catskills resort and got into that game of craps with the real estate mogul?"

I remembered.  It was a Friday night and the mogul always came up on weekends to minister to his Honey--that was her name. Indeed, she was.

I Coveted, I Lusted and I Envied. The mogul clearly felt his own anger when I dropped my forty bucks in the crap game. But I bridled when he handed me back the money I had lost. I would have succumbed to the offer except for the patronizing remark, "Here, kid" that came with the temptation to take it back. Pride.

The Family Tree by Constantine Gochis

This short reminiscence of Dad's reallly connects with another I just entered onto the blog the other day, "The Melting Pot".  To me, both stories, and likely others I will post here, are evidence of the extremes and ambiguities of human nature. Back when my father's family first came to the United States, from Greece, and Italy, and my mother's family from Ireland, the new immigrants, many of them, so wanted to be part of the American Dream, that they virtually excised their original cultures in key ways. My Greek Grandfather actually changed his last name to something he viewed as more "American", such that my father had issue when he became a soldier in WWII, he had to take legal steps to change it back to Gochis.  How many first generation children never learned to speak Greek, or Italian, or Gaelic, because they wanted to be fully American? Some kept their cultures rather resticted to their homes. Outside they felt the need to be prove their American adaptation. This was an uneasy attitude, and so many of the same immigrants' behaviors told the children at the same time they ought not be too American. The same grandfather who took what he perceived to be an AMERICAN name, also despised it when his children dated outside of the Greek nationality, and again, in full contradiction, married an Italian American. There was a love, and a resentment, for the country to which they had, in many cases escaped. The love overtook the resentment, at least in the public square, then. They bought into the requirements of citizenship. They ascribed, perhaps with some of that resentment intact, but truly to the ideas of the American Experiment. That was then. Now, the resentment has superseded the desire to be an American.  The invitation to illegal immigration which has overrun our shores, people who, in many cases, might be perfectly wonderful, but who have no interest in becoming American, or, because of policies dooming the nation, is toppling American history. This new immigrant, has no idea of the unique nature of the American principles of the rights of man and from Whom they derive, because our own leaders are rewriting history to depict America, which no one ever said was perfect, but strove to perfection, as the most evil of any society that came before, or exist now. It's disheartening. My father died 18 years ago so the extreme of hatred for the country, though he predicted it to me, and friends, he did not live to see. He saw it coming all the way back in the 1960s. 

No nation in the world succeeded as long as America did bringing in peoples from contrasting places of different values and made them "one out of many".  The many had to maintain a central philosophy. But therein is the rub. We haven't. "It's a Republic, if you can keep it," said a Founding Father, who likely is now called an abundance of vile names. One can only pray that the fall of America will somehow be intercepted by the intercession of a Higher Power. 

_____________________________________________

My source from New York told me I was to be visited by three "Graces". This oracular fount is a senior family member who has been present since early in the last century, when three brothers, one of them my father, left their ancestral digs in the Kalamata region of Greece and ventured into the promise of golden American streets, thence, to prosper and multiply.

They multiplied. Some flourished. Some did not.

Helen called. She is a first cousin, the daugter of Uncle Steve, my father's brother. There was to be a family wedding, she announced, and she and her sisters, Irene and Demetra, would be in Los Angeles for the occasion. Would I be at home?

I have not seen this cousin for perhaps forty-odd years, though I do recall that then she was indeed worthy of her name-sake, the one who centuries ago sparked the Trojan War, tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and imperious. I mention this, specifically, because the girls of our geneology border in morphology on either side of comely.

I had no visual memory of the sisters, Irene and Demetra, and certainly not the bride to be, Melissa, the inspiration of their hegira. Demetra, as you may know, is the mythical goddess whoses daughter Persephone was kidnapped by the God of the underworld, Hades. 

I make no invidious comparisons, but this I can say, Melissa upon my meeting her, was indeed comely and charming.

Helen is still tall, now generously ample, assertive and perhaps still imperious. Her golden, youthful luminosity has naturally faded as it does, but still lives in the many pictures the girls brought from their halcyon days. Indeed, I tell Helen. She was beautiful. Helen preens.

We reminisce over white wine.  We exchange stories of our heritage's mythologies. We disagree on some key facts regarding family heroics. Irene, of placid disposition, and thus aptly named, recounts with a misture of pride and amusement, "Papa used to love to tell how he returned to Greece, with his rifle, to assure the marriage of his sister, another Demetra.  It seems that the promised suitor was somewhat reluctant to honor his promise of marriage."

My recollection is that it was my own father who performed the act of family honor.

"It was in 1912 or 1913, " I say, "just before the war with Bulgaria, or Turkey, I can't be sure.  He cemented the marriage, but got drafted into the Greek military, a corollary benefit of the pilgrimage.

We talked of lifetimes. Forty years is a long, long time, of marriages and children, or the dissolutions of relationships and the finality of death.

All three sisters are widows. I have heard that Helen had four husbands. She recalls only three. In our initial phone conversation I remarked to her that I had met her first husband.

"Which one?" came the query.

"The arranged one," I reminded. "The one your Papa wanted."

"Oh, that one," she replied. "I forgot about him."

It is a curious fact. My fathers and his brothers were almost tyrannical in their chauvinism. They were xenophobic, distrustful of this complacent new world to which they had come, with its short skirts and bobbed hair. And yet, of the ten females and six males of their aggregate progeny, only two married Greeks.

I knew that Melissa, of this fully modern age, would not marry in the Holy Trinity Cathedral on Normandy Avenue. There would be no exchange of laurel wreaths and the ceremonial processions ad chants.

"When is the wedding, Melissa," I asked.

"Tomorrow," she replied.

Now, you may well ask, what is the significance of this family trivia?

The short answer is, the "melting pot", who dissolves therein and what is the alloy that is produced?

Once Upon a New Year's Eve by Constantine Gochis (and a Very Long Prologue by the Djinn)

This story causes me to tear up, frankly. Again, my father somewhat manipulates time in its telling and clearly the names have been changed, the name. My mother died in November 1974 at age 48. They had met when she was 18.  My father was about as uninterested in having another relationship, and definitely uninterested in the possibility of another marriage after she died. They had been married for 28 years, and as they say now, it was "complicated". There was a deep sadness and unsatisfied longing in my mother. She had, I think, expected my father, to give her a life that whisked her from the Bronx to a Manhattan apartment complete with doorman and concierge. Her younger sister, who has lived over double the time alloted to my mother, now age 99, managed the apartment with those amenities, then 450.00, an outrageous sum at the time. She and her husband, a bus driver, had two salaries, as my aunt was a working woman in a time when they were negligible. But my uncle also was, in my child's view, and in my view from my dotage, a bit of an operator. There are stories, albeit sketchy ones. My parents and I had moved earlier, to a nice two bedroom apartment in the Fort Independence area of the Bronx. But, it was still the Bronx, and there was neither doorman nor concierge. 

For the two years of my completion of college, and my first semester in law school beginning in February 1977, it was just my father and I. Dad was still working and in his spare time, he read, and played a mean game of paddle ball with the locals in the nearby park next to the Jerome Reservoir. He enjoyed being the cook and host at my parties at our apartment. And he flirted with my female friends, who enjoyed his charm that was reminiscent of a Ronald Colman or Adolph Menjou. Dad's flirting was artistic but it wasn't serious. It did, however, give me the agita of embarrassment. 

But somewhere in late 1976 or early 1977 (according to this story is was 1976), a work friend wanted my father to meet a woman, some 16 or more years younger than he, who was full blooded first generation Greek, but a woman in the work world, and at that time separated from her musician husband. There was a coincidence that they had both attended the same Greek School as children, albeit many years apart. My father resisted but ultimately surrendered to the blind date. And when they met, there was magic. There was dancing. I mean, really, there was dancing, lots of dancing, in the few remaining places, like Roseland, in Manhattan.

It was a little paradoxical that I, in the throes of law school study, and never marginally good at dating, was the one always waiting up for him. I guess he made the paternal decision not to stay in her Manhattan apartment, paternal not only for me (though I was not naive) but in consideration for her son, who was about 16, some years young than me at 23. Truth be told, once I met her, I was crazy about her, and if I could have arranged their marriage, I would have gladly been the wedding planner.  Many of my friends met her.  One time, they came back from some event, my father in a tux and she in a beautiful formal dress and they easily joined my college crowd. But there were obstacles. The difference in age bothered my father a lot. He had had one heart attack in 1971, a serious one at 53. And he had other health issues that sometimes required surgeries. He was adamant that this young woman should never be put in the position of having to be his caregiver. Or that he would die suddenly, and first, which he had expected to do vis a vis my mother. One day, about two years into their relationship, it ended. Dad made it sound as if it had been entirely his decision, which I would find out later, was not the case. It was, well, "complicated". She was a devout Greek Orthodox girl for whom divorce was problematic. And I have heard that many years later, though they were not together, she took care of the separated husband, in his last illness. Ironic. 

Dad never stopped talking about her. And I reconnected with her. I don't recall exactly when, at least after I moved to California in 1981.  I tried to get her to come to his 80th birthday, as a surprise. It was clear that whatever the outcome of the romance, the connection had been a bit magical for them--a dual Cinderella story without the happy ending for my father. I don't know what she felt. She is still alive, 18 years after Dad passed away, and we talk from time to time. She simply has said, "It wasn't meant to be". But there was a little residual magic. I asked her again to come for my father's 90th birthday, to Los Angeles, again to be a surprise. Dad was very sick by then, the early spring of 2008. She came for a weekend. Such a lovely action required a material and emotional thanks. I paid for the hotel (over her objection) and my friend Len gave her miles to travel from New York. It was a packed few days several of us shared with them. Completely platonic, but a bit romantic, from my point of view. I thought my father loved it. Dad died two weeks later. 

I don't know when he wrote this story, before or after that visit, nearly 30 years after they had last seen each other. I think it was before. But  finally reading this story,  makes me extra glad that that I arranged that weekend in March 2008. 

_________________________________________________________

Once Upon a New Year's Eve

Two groups of people lined the bus entrance.  Someone was descending, but it was taking more time than usual.  No one wanted to intercede. I decided to, myself.

A little bent old lady was making her exit. She was not fully ambulatory. Her three plastic bags were suspended on the bus coin box. There was, also, her walker, which she was manipulating precariously, and a cane. 

The driver lolled with indolent indifference to the unfolding scene, his paunch imbedded, nay, wedged, three inches into the steering wheel.

I reached into the bus and retrieved the plastic bags, the walker and the cane and helped the bent figure traverse the chasm between the vehicle and the curb.

Her eyelids seemed almost shut, but she looked up and thanked me. She held both of my hands and whispered a chant, sibilant and unintelligible.  Then she said, clearly: "I am poor and cannot reward you, but you will have a gift. Twelve dreams you will have, one a month. You may want to alter something in the dream, or add or even eliminate an action, but only the dream will change. You will remember it upon awakening, but nothing will be altered in reality. On December 31, you will have your first dream.

I tried not to laugh. The little crone was surely putting me on. The story of the goddess Athena who, disguised as a beggar woman, sought help and received it, came to mind.  The kindly were rewarded for their assistance with a pitcher of wiine that remained perpetually full.

It was already December 31. A bottle of something with the quality provided by Athena would certainly palliate the fact that my New Year's Eve would be spent alone. I laughed again. But I felt goose bumps on my skin.

I marveled as my augur arranged her three shopping bags on the cane and then affixed them in some miraculous manner to the walker.  She then crossed the street slowly, stopping only to hurl an invective at the bus driver, who had moved forward slightly into her path, as the traffic light turned a permissive green.

There was no magic bottle, but I did mix a pitcher of Martinis. After the third one, I dozed, but was rudely awakened by the phone. She was coming with me. My world had changed.

We were late. I pushed the accelerator to its limit. The Governor's Island Ferry was about to leave imminently, and the next one would not be available until after midnight. She clung to my arm. I had only one thought. I was going to ask her this time, come hell or high water, tonight, December 31, 1977.

I could see the attendant moving across the bow to attach the interdicting chain. I barely missed hitting him as I crossed onto the boat and stopped.  My companion was thrown into my arms and I held her hungrily. I could hear an insistent tapping on my window to which I did not wish to respond, so much was my joy. When I did, I was properly penitent.

"You could be barred from the Officer's Club, permanently," he said. "You deliberately ignored my stop signal." Still, he looked at us, and then smiled.

"Just this once, it's New Year's Eve", he said.

This was our second New Year's Eve together but I knew it would be different.  For the past several months I had thought of nothing else.  I would ask her, beg her to forgive me for last year's failure, when the words would not come.

I held her tightly. We had not moved from our positions in the care in which we had stopped and she was hurled into my arms. I felt impatient. I would not wait for us to debark. I was practically incoherent.

"Marry me, Lara, marry me, now, tonight, before the clock strikes twelve." 

She kissed me and I knew she would. We walked to the prow and watched the ferry pierce the waves as it approached the wooden barriers of the pier.  I thought the helmsman was moving too fast. The ship plowed with force into the landing and we were thrown apart. 

I awoke. I was alone by a phone that never rang. There were three olives in the ashtray.

I had had my first dream. 

Once Upon a Time by Constantine Gochis

The Djinn's preface:  My father had a complex relationship with his parents, oft expressed in the pronouncement, "My parents were peasants". This may seem harsh, but what little I can glean from the sparse stories of his childood as the second of 7 surviving children, his father was a bit of a brute. At age ninety something, he dead for many decades, my Aunt Georgia expressed a lingering fear as if somehow he could still reach her with his disapproval. He died before I was born. My mother and father married secretly in about 1946. My mother failed the test of ethnicity. She was not Greek. In fact, she was full blooded, first generation, Irish.  This was anathema to my grandfather, although his own wife was first generation Italian. While the marriage remained a secret, my grandfather had an entire dinner in which he sought to introduce a nice Greek girl to Dad who painstakingly served them. When the marriage became a matter of family publicity, and Dad introduced her to the paterfamlias, she was given a mitigation because she wore an outfit that covered her charms from head to toe. Thus, at least, she was a "good girl". But my father had even less affection for his mother, though he always behaved in an honorable fashion toward her. She died in old age. One of his stories related to her was how she chased his younger sibling, Tony, around with a kitchen knife, when he committed some child's mischief. She was pregnant at the time. 

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

Mr. Randolph was one of my father's favorite customers.  It was not that he was a big spender. In fact, he was one of Papa's elite clientele whose nature was never to carry cash, or anything heavy. "Put it on my account and have the boy bring it up," was the usual interaction.  In my preteen years, I was the "boy".

Mr. Randolph was a person who exuded elegance, although somewhat worn.  He was carefully attired. He carried a can and wore a felt hat, tan in color. This was an accessory he wore constantly, regardless of the sartorial conflict.  To my younth eyes he himself seemed somewhat worn, and probably not one of the affluent denizens of the neighborhood.

He was friendly, and garrulous, and whether or not he bought something, he frequently became engaged in philosophical discuss wion my father.  Papa addressed him as Professor Randolph, although he was, in fact, of more pedestrian accomplishments. My father applied his own value to degrees of accomplishment. "Professor" was not a title of reverence to him.  It was a challenge, an invitation to a joust. He felt sure that only the vagaries of early deprivation separated him from the heights of learning.

I suspect that it was Mr. Randolph who introduced my father to an aphorism he often employed, one that varied slightly in syntax, "Stay on your feet and limitations" or "Lay on your feet and limitations." In either version, it became his paradigm of universal application. 

When he was confronted by the logic of an adversary, he resorted to a store of illustrative fables.  His most pointed rebuttal lay in the story of a man who was sitting on the breanch of a tree and sawing it from the inside. A "Professor" who was passing cautions him that if he continues in this fashion, he will surely fall. The man, who always responds with pique, responds, "Professor, if you are so smart, tell me when I am going to die." I do not mean to disparage my father, but I temporize.

It seems that in one of the many dissertations with Randolph, the subject of a magic substance, called "Ergosterol" was revealed to him. Ergosterol is an enzyme that humans possess beneath the skin that produces Vitamin D, but only when exposed to the sun. This particular revelation had evil consequences of some severity for me.

On the next day after the epiphany, he directed Mr. Hagiopolis, his employee, to take me to Long Beach for a sunbath.  I was, consquently, severely burned and blistered. My mother, not as yet instructed in the salutary benefits of Ergosterol, opined that the event was caused by the "matia", the evil eye cast upon me by her sisters in law.

The patriarch, my father, inspected the areas of the holocaust on my body and was pleased with the results. He was of the philosophy that medicine that tastes bad is good; the discomfort of minor burns had to be equally beneficial. 

He directed Mr. Hagiopolis to bring me back to Long Beach the next day.

The Melting Pot by Constantine Gochis

As I have noted before, I never entirely know how much of the "old" stories of Dad's family are fully true. I know they have some truth, for example, because I know that before the Depression, the family had a house in the Bronx. I have seen the picture of most, though not all, of the children in the backyard, which in the photo, at least, looks more lush than my father describes in this story when it was purchased. My uncle Steve is not in the picture because he was not yet born, and my Aunt Georgia, the eldest, is not in the picture because she hid from her husband that she was older than he, and the rest of her siblings. That she hid this is confirmed by the photos, including this one in the back yard, in which she is cut out, or rather, she cut herself out. Perhaps somewhere there is a negative, though I doubt it, this many years on. We are talking the 1920s. My father is about five in the picture, wearing a sailor suit. They were more prosperous then, though not rich. The Depression would take that away and I believe it was before 1931, the date in which my father says this father in law came to live with them. I do not think that Nikkos is a real character, if only because, my father's mother was not Greek. She was Italian, though first generation, born on Mulberry Street somewhere around 1890 ish. But I suspect there is some hard kernal of truth in this tale. I actually thought I had posted it long ago, but turns out I had not, or I never noted it in my list of now over 100 stories I have published on this blog written by my father. I regret that he never became a known writer. He had a great talent. He always wanted to do something creative as a vocation. It didn't work out that way. Still he was a man of deep thoughts and educated tastes as all these stories demonstrate. And of course, a master of cynicism.

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

THE MELTING POT

The old man came to live with us in 1931, I am sure. It was the year Papa bought an eleven room house in the Bronx to shelter his growing family.  I was the eldest at six.  There were already four children.  Papa left no doubt about his itention to sire many more.  There was little more than a year between my brothers and sisters in age. 

Nikkos, the old man, did not get along with his son-in-law, who was married to my mother, his daughter. He regarded Papa as a turncoat Greek, who had sold is glorious Hellenic birthright for a mess of American pottage. Papa attended "corrupt Americani" night schools.  He became a citizen.  He allowed his wife to bob her hair.  He was not a true Greek.

Nor had he attended the wedding of his daughter, though it was celebrated in the great cathedral on Forty-Seven Stree, the "Holy Trinity" or "Hagia Triada".  

A mitigating circumstance was the ten dollars a week that he contributed to the hearth. The Great Depression was upon us.

He was, for the times, affluent.  His income came from the Government insurance policy which was compensating him for the loss of his son, Nikkos, Jr. who was killed in France on November 4, 1918, seven days before the armistice.

He was wont to curse, beneath his breath, at his son's picture, before which a candle burned perpetually, in a flickering red cup, on our piano.

Nikkos begged his son not to enlist to fight for this "barbarian" country.  Nikkos, Jr. embodied all his aspirations, his immortality, his fortress against assimilation into this mongrel society he had grown to hate. He had sold his flesh to Mammon.

He had three more children, all girls, before his peasant wife sickened, as silent and obliging as she lived, died quietly.

There ensued the inevitable.  He was a desultory parent. He never noticed his authority has weakened.  The eldest girl led the insurrection. She married an Italian contractor and fled to Chicago. My mother's selection did not please him even though my father was Greek.  There was, of course, the violence.  He beat his first daughter severely, but she had him arrested and roundly chastised into restraint by the robed men with pince-nez glasses and ascetic nostrils.  The hated Americani.

When the only other daughter married a diamond dealer from Salonika, of a prominent Jewish family, his soul hardened and with the death of his son in France, he lapsed into monastic resignation.

I knew nothing of this history until much later.  From the outset, there was friendship between us.  I was not yet seasoned to the antagonisms of adult behavior.  I liked the old man. On the Fourth of July, he would stuff a five-dollar bill into my pocket and say, "Go maka somma noise!" I supposed he made allowances for this American day of liberation since it was, conincidentally, his birthday.

One of my few childhood memories is the shock of separation somehow engendered by our sudden move into our new house.  I remember looking out of a window into strange, undeveloped, weed-encumbered lots. I turned to find Grandpa standing behind me, curious, peering to determine the source of my interest.

I did not tell him. I had no words for the feeling.  There was nothing out there, but loneliness.  Still, I felt a warmth in his unexpected presence, a feeling of comfort, companionship. He was offering friendship and I needed a friend.

We were neighbors. My room was separated from his by a flimsy wall that sllowed the sounds of his evening peregrinations to filter through.  I could hear the scraping sounds of an obstructed urination, followed by the anathemas he hurled the the Icons on his wall. He cursed each in turn, by name, excoriating them, blaming them for leading him to this desert of brick and stone, where his dreams took no seed.

Every once in a while, he would chant one of those Ottoman "Amanes" or plaints of his village, wailing songs of despair and rejection.

I believe I was his only companion.  My fatgher ignored him.  My siblings were in various states of maturation. There was a coldness between him and my mother, and silence from his other daughters from whom he never heard.

We had no age difference between us. We played together as equals. He was trim and agile, gray eyed, with carefully cropped hair.  He had an array of pipes which he alternated daily.  I bought his "Prince Albert" tobacco when he ran out. I was fascinated. I knew he liked me, and to a child this is the measure of all need.

I helped tend the gardens he created out of the barren half-acre of our property.  I learned to plow, sow the seed, water the fragile shoots, hammer support into the ground for the fast growing tomato plants.  He would watch, approvingly, stopping occasionally to throw a rock at an offending cat, adding a sharp curse to give impetus to the projectile.

Sometimes, in midsummer, when the sounds of crickets protested the hot weather and the fireflies lit the darkness under his grape arbor, he would try to convey his longing for his abandoned country. I saw what he was seeing. His sky, deep and blue, the vines heavy with grape clusters, the gnarled olive trees silhouetted against a reddening, darkening sky at sunset.  I travelled with him, in his dream to the "Kafeneon" of his forsaken village, the coffeehouse where his friends gathered to sip the thick sweet coffee in the little cups.  I could hear the songs of the heroes of 1821 who descended from Mount Ossa with their long sabres to slay the hated Ottoman.

Sometimes, he would break into a mournful dirge.  "Manna mou, manna mou, pou eeseh?" "Mother, mother, where are you?

Nikkos died when I was twelve.  It was as if he decided to leave. He gave me his watch with the gold case that opened to disclose a face of Roman numerals.  He did not protest when I fingered his collection of pipes. He pressed a five dollar bill into my palm and said, "No tella your mother."

I got his room with the Byzantine Ikons on the wall and his four poster bed, the one he died in. Usually fearful of the metaphysical, I was not afraid. If his spirit were given to wandering, it would not, I knew, harm me.  I was not so sure about his children and my father.

Papa said what he told me about the old country was "skata", a Greek word for "shit".  I don't know why he wanted to tell me his truths--perhaps some inner guilt of his own, some failure, some genetic adhesion to a sacred code of behavior that he might have violated. There was too much vehemence in what he said. 

"There was no lush garden," he said.  "The grapes were withered on the vine when he left. The olives had to be pressed, and pressed again, before his family could have any olive oil."

I don't know.  I did not care then and I don't care now. I hope he is sitting in a familiar "Kafeneon" sipping his little cup, under lush verdant vines, where resin win flows in gentle streams and the quarter tone Moorish songs of heroes echo deep within the soul. His battle was more fearful than the Ottoman hordes. A pitiless crucible, a melton pot that engulfs, sears and destroys the old so that the new may live.

"Xaire, Farewell, Rest."

They Are All Good and Honorable Men by Constantine Gochis

I haven't quickly posted this story, and I am not sure if it is a real reminiscence, of my father's. It does however reflect his deep cynicism about humanity, and is among the explanations for his resistance to faith---that God would bother to create such people, that this could not possibly be the action of a good God to allow the vagaries of human banality or worse, cruelty. It was pointless to attempt to remind him that the villain was not God, but the wilfulness of the creation. Order was thrown into disorder, not by God, but by a pride born of Pelagianism, the idea that man does not need God, that there can be no original sin and man can perfect himself. It happened in Eden; it continues now, the only difference is that after Redemption, the second chance at choice is a purely individual one. It will save or condemn each of us based on the choice, rather than lead to a collective salvation or condemnation as the choice of Adam and Eve very nearly caused. 

Man causes the mess. He blames God. He excises God. And remains clueless about the mess of his own making. 

Sin is a choice. The people in this story are fictional (or real) examples of it of varying degrees. Wasn't Harvey Weinstein considered a good and honorable man even though all his "friends" also good and honorable men (and women) knew otherwise? And whose fault is that?

_________________________________________

They Are All Good and Honorable Men

Prologue

There is a scene in the movie, Zorba the Greek, in which the Cretan, Mavrandoni, cuts the throat of the town's beautiful widow.  The townspeople, assembled for the execution, approve. It was an act of honor. Mavrandoni wipes his knife and stands before the populace, proud, unashamed. He is, after all, "Kalos kai agathos," good and noble. He has avenged a mortal assault on his honor.

What was the offense?  The widow rejected the attentions of his son, an infatuated juvenile. The boy commits suicide. And worse, she had given her favors elsewhere. 

There are cerebral processs that have mystified me throughout my life.  I began to notice certain startling aberrations of the cognitive mind early in my youth.

The movie I had just watched reminded me of some people I have known, all I am sure, thought to possess the qualities of the good and honorable which they brought with them from the "Patrida" the fatherland, the old country, in the early years of the 20th Century in a small piece of New York.

There was never a day when some one of my father's townsmen did not make an appearance at his store.  

They came out of loneliness for an occasional glass of ouzo, a favorite Greek potable, or a loan, to tide one over, or some feta with retsina wine and the discussion of the latest crisis in the homeland.  Several came for no visible reason at all.

Since, as a pre-teenager, I was required to do service in the store--one was never too young to learn about work--I got to know each of the visitors intimately.

There was Mr. Stelyn. Not only was he a visitor on a social basis, he was a supplier to my father's stores of glazed fruits, in those cellophane wrapped, beribboned packages of gift or steamer "Bon Voyage" baskets purchased by the elite for the elite.

Mr. Stelyn was a Church goer, an entrepreneur of status.  Papa considered him a person of the highest "Kalos kai agathos", good and noble, an opinion he had, in retrospect, about all his peripetatic friends.

One day when I was alone in the front of the store making childish drawings, Mr. Stelyn approached me.

He looked down at my artistic endeavor and smiled, disclosing two gold capped canines, and said, "Nice, nice picture," and drew close to my left side. He continued in his thick accent.

"Make, make nice picture."

I was not too young to recognize his member, erect within his trousers, impacting a point near my waist.

The contact was quickly and abruptly aborted when my father came into the store. There was the usual exchange of salutations. Mr. Stelyn returned his salutation with a wide smile enhancing the two golden crowns, framed in a very white face.

"Kala eemeh, kala eemeh, Yoryee."  "I am well, George," which was my father's name.

In retrospect, it is well I did not report the incident to my father. He was predictably capable of killing Mr. Stelyn or more likely, slapping me for uttering such an accusation against his countryman.

Mr. Peter Booloukos was one of three brothers, each notable for inclusion in my pantheon of worthy men.

He spoke little English.  In one of our rare dialogues--the elder tutoring the younger--he lectured me on the linguistic dependence of English on Greek. I remember only one word of his dissertation. "Aeer, aeer!" I took this to mean "Air". His profundity had discovered the similarity thus between the English and Greek languages.

I was in great need of that substance "air", to mitigate the strong oor of ouzo in our confined atmosphere.

I was afraid of this man. There was something sinister about his appearance. He wore black exclusively. An also black slouch hat topped the rest of his macabre ensemble. My fears were well founded. Pete never entered or exited from the front door of his apartment. I knew of the circuitous route he took beause I was in his home on an errand for my father.

Pete controlled the space allocated to the peddlers of frankfurters, chestnuts and other street business from Fifty-Ninth Stree and Broadway to One Hundreth and Tenth Street. If a recalcitrant peddlar refused him cash tribute, his wagon would be overturned or worse.

Pete had been married. When he susptected that his wife was unfaithful, he chained her to her bed. She broke loose and jumped from the third story window. She did not die. He had her repatriated. 

I do not remember the name of the middle Booloukos. My brother, Tony, who had a a distinct talent to characterize someone with a word, called him the "Hook". I suppose this was inspired by the fact that this Booloukos was a man of huge build, but with one withered arm and hand that was permanently affixed at his waist level.  

The third Booloukos was Aristotle.  He had a beautiful daughter in love with someone they called "O Americanos", the "American". 

The brothers discouraged this relationship. I overheard their rendition of their application of interdiction in the time worn tradition of their village of origin.

The other men nodded in approval of the Homeric account.

Two of the brothers held the young man while the "Hook" applied convincing physical chastisement. He disappeared.

The daughter, named Chrysoula," a name suggesting a quality of gold, disappeared in a way. She walked into space from the roof of her house.

There was one man I knew nothing of except what might be called externals.  He was a perpetual visitor to my father's store, coming in those brief hours of respite from his job as a dishwasher. He had taken the job on the day he left steerage of a magnificent ocean liner, one of the Cunard leviathans. He had never left that job. He was a youngish man, with a full head of black hair and a perpetual half-smile in the fashion of the comedian Stan Laurel.

His perpetual expression and unique taciturnity intrigued me.  He spoke to me only once in perhaps ten years of his comings and goings. His name was Christos, aptly named if one considers kindness and patience. Alas, he was also a man of limited cerebral capability. He was, one day, the only extraneous visitor of the motley crew that usually made its appearance. He had his usual half-smile but it had the quality of distress about it. I asked what ailed him in Greek, not sure that in pronouncing his name, I was correct in using the "dative" declension rather than the "vocative". I was learning Greei.

"Echo ponos," he said, pointing to his stomach. Pain.

I remembered a nostrum I had recently learned in the science portion of the "Book of Knowledge". It called for two glasses, one filled with lemon juice and the other a solution of bicarbonate of soda and water.  I prepared the potion, while Christos observed. Cynicism seemed to alter his expression, slightly. His eyes opened when I poured one glass into the other and produced a marvelous foam.

I gave it to him to drink, which he did, like an obedient child.

There was an enormous burp, and a look of surprised, unexpected pleasure.

"Make me 'nother one, boy," was the second complete sentence I heard from him, in the same day.

Sunday May Be a Good Time for Penitence by Constantine Gochis

 This rumination by my father requires a backstory. He attached the article, by one Fred Narvey, sometime in the 1990s in the magazine/paper Jewish Currents. The publication appears still to be in existence.

Basically two men meet, one, religious, is on the way to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and the other, who denominates himself a "secular" Jew advises he is on the way to a peace march. The conversation focuses on the secular Jew's and religious Jew's respect for each other's position on how to be Jewish, their definitions of God (Is God only a philosophy or something more) and spirituality, what books can or should be read by a Jew or non-Jew (like Sholem Aleichem), and what groups, literary and otherwise, a secular Jew or non-Jew or both, can or should join. 

They do not resolve their academic (and as we know a very real) dispute. And they go there separate ways with the farewell of "Shalom".

This was also written at a time (and it was always thus) that my father was struggling with belief, or lack thereof. While I remain pleased that he ultimately decided to join the Catholic Church, I do not think that struggle abated. But as a good man worried about where a sole daughter would bury her father, I concluded from one of his statements, "I want to make it easier for you", that there had been no Damascus moment and only a practical consideration.  But few have Damascus moments.  He did it. And he came to Mass every Sunday without fail from 2003 until 2008 when he died at age 90. He acted on his conversion in a very real way. He did not have to.

So here is his reverie on the article which reflects, in my view, his struggle.

___________________________________________________________________________________

It is the Paschal Season.  Normally the imminence of Passover and Easter has no special impact on me.  In this matter, I am in philosophic sympathy with the musings of one Fred Narvey, in his article, Two Jews on One Shabbos.  I am not as definitive as he is on the non-efficacy of prayer.  Like him I derive some "spirituality" from reading a story by Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Simon Dubnow, Chaim too, that is Chaim Zhitowski, and I raise him an I.J. Singer, and his brother A.J., who, by the way, had he not died early would have been a better writer. During these reflections I fear greatly hearing a thunderous voice from the sky admonishing me, as he did Job, with a wrathful, "Where were you when I created the universe?"

Now, do not take me as a rank believer.  But it does seem there is something a little more spiritual in the contemplation of an unimaginable infinity, where a point of light takes five billion years to reach us, something indeed a little more spiritual than the musings of Tevye, and his fiddler, who teeters on the roof of a house, in a Shtetyl, in a country, in a world that is but a speck in the universe.

Forgive me the outburst.  In conscience I was suffused with a sudden desire for an onion roll, the long one, as I walked along Fairfax Avenue.  But, the bread counters were overcrowded with the faithful, impatiently clamoring  for enough bread and cookies to fortify against the coming seven days of privation and the inflexible Matzoth, and maybe the thought that there is among them many who go to synagogue for reasons other than those of Fred Narvey--he attending services at weddings and funerals out of respect for friends and not this demanding God.

But then, as Fred says, "God is a separate question. . .a philosophical term."  He is a concept, embodied only in truth, justice and compassion for our fellow man. He is not God, that is, an omnipotent being in space who sits in judgment of us mortals. "I do not believe," he says at base. 

He may be right. He is so assured, so confident. He goes to peace marches, even on the Shabbos. He is host of a literary group known as, "Mama Loshen". He cannot be tagged with some current, convenient name. He is, by his own admission, a "pedestrian". This is almost godlike omniscience and omnipotence to those of us less gifted.

I am more fearful that there IS a God, call Him a philosophical term if you like, that He exists outside, and that he might not have any interest in us at all, or our futile peregrinations, our endless peace marches over the millenia. Fred knows there is no God, or if He is, He is man made. What is his proof that God is not?

Easter Sunday is approaching.  Perhaps I will join my friends and family members at Easter Mass in the Cathedral.  It's only an hour, and a wonderful ceremonial rite. What could I lose? 

The Odds are. . .Against by Constantine Gochis

 This is another of Dad's stories related to his life back in the 1990s near and around Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. This one he did not title so I did it for him.

Think of the certainty of the solar systm.  We have just witnessed the last solar eclipse that will not happen again for centuries. I have concluded, after a spate of years, that I am not attuned to the meticulously ordered universe.

I cite the astronomical trivia because the orbital  exactitude is so predictable and so orderly and I am so out of sync with it.

I cite two examples.  One is the buses I continue to miss, a fact that does violence to the psyche.

You know, if one tosses a penny into the air one hundred times, it will come up heads about fifty percent of the time, I don't want to exaggerate, but if you were to place the odds on MY chances of catching the elusive bus at zero, you would be a winner.

Take today, Friday the 13th. There are three northbound and southbound lines on Fairfax Avenue any one of which can serve my purposes when I am about my errands. I watched as all three reached and departed the bus stop while I was a half a block away. In desperation I signaled a cab

He affected not to see me until I took out a pen and made scratches on an envelope I was carrying. "You look for a cab? I do not see you right away," he apologized.

I retaliated by paying him in Cityride coupons and did not include a tip. Cabbies will take dollars or rubles but they hate the coupons.

I was on my way to "Staples" to consult with their computer guru on the matter of some non-functioning hardware I had purchased. 

The expert was bored and impatient, a condition only possible in times of low unemployment.

Another customer tried to interpose his beef.  "When I am finished with this customer," said the imperious chief which dispatched the customer due to his tonal severity. Managers have rights.

The manager finished me off with equal celerity. "We don't stock the part, you have to call the company." 

All right. My luck seemed to be taking a turn for the better. I caught the home bound Wilshire Bus immediately. 

When I got to Fairfax Avenue, the 99 Cents shop, loomed invitingly. The odds looked promising if I got off, and went to the store. As I said, there are ample lines on Fairfax Avuenue.  "Take a shot," I said to myself.

There was only one guy in front of me on the check out line. Lady luck turned. The guy ran his credit card through the slide. It did not work. He tried several sides of the reluctant plastic without result. The clerk took the card and repeated his steps without better results. She demonstrated several innovative gyrations, wiping the offending card against her forearm, her sleeve, and once even on her protective apron. I watched through the window as two buses arrived and departed.

The clerk and the customer repaired to another counter and repeated the ritual. I dropped my items on the counter and left. Happily, the 217 was approaching.  But it did not stop. The legend above the windshield read, "Out of Service". 

After a long intermission, another loomed, approached slowly at first, and when the light turned green sped past us bulging with passengers from its last pick-up point.

A little old lady shook her cane at the offending vehicle with great vigor, and she spewed forth a thesaurus of invective, including four letter words, both instructive and satisfying to me.

I decided to walk. 

Do You Want to Live Forever? by Constantine Gochis

 I am not referring by this title to the Queen song, but rather one of the many stories my father wrote in his retirement, mostly. The one that follows was written in the 1990s, and to me, it reflects the area we both lived in then from a personal and historical point of view. Lots has changed in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, and not all of it for the better. This story was well before the hip kids who overtook the traditional vegetable and bakery stores, and the family oriented Orthodox Jews, with sneaker pop ups, and the like, exhaling their weed smoke--as smoking is perfectly fine as long as it isn't tobacco. I realize how much I have inherited my father's cynicism, although it is less that I have become cynical I think than that the society has derailed in the 18 years since my father's death. He predicted it and while I believed him, I did not think it was coming in my lifetime. He did. 

Things were starting to deteriorate when Dad wrote this short one and the one that will follow in another entry, hopefully today.

Do You Want to Live Forever?

The 217 bus, going south, stops at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.  It is a sorry example of city transport, despite the protestations of the LA City Council. It is infrequent in its arrivals, unsupervised so that schedules are meaningless, graffiti emblazoned with shattered looking windows, and characteried by the odor of stale urine wafting from the well of the rear exit. Neverthelss, it never lacks for riders, usually the aged and the infirm and uncharacterizable individuals. 

Inevitably, take today for example, three fully loaded buses ignore our stop to a chorus of vituperataion.  A voice speaks to me in Yiddish.

"Do you speak Yiddish?"

"A bissel," I reply. My linguistic ability is a residual of my Bronx heritage.

He then proceeds to speak to me in English now that he has probed to establish my ethnicity.

"The month is my birthday," he says.

"Mazeltov," I reply continuing the imposture. 

"I am seventy-seven this month." 

I shake my head in acknowledgement. In my head I compute the difference in our ages, only three months.

He continues as if he needs no response.

"I have a cancer," he says blithely, "but it's out the doctor says. I'm cured!"

He adds the details, a prostatectomy, three years ago.

"The doctor catches it in time. How do I look?" he questions. Then, without waiting for a reply again, 

"They say some people live to be one hundred and twenty; there's a woman in France I hear of. . ."

"There are stories of great longevity, some villages in Russia," I encourage.

"A lot of crap," he retorts, "they don't keep birth certificates."

I begin to wear.  I suggest the testimony in the Torah of startling life spans. He ignores my reference.

"No kidding, how do I look? The doctor says if I take care of myself, I've got a long time. Some doctors are phony bastards but I believe Levenson. What do you think? How old do I look if you have to estiate in years. Ok how many do you say?"

"Conservatively," I lie, "a minimum of thirty."

His expression indicates he is assured. Clearly, he has asked this question many times.

The bus arrives. I decide to walk. 

Punctuation on the Passage of Time

I don't know if it is my imagination, but since the Covid lockdown and its aftermath, time simply seems to be passing at a fearsome speed. 

I can't tell you how many people I have known have passed away in these last years. Yes, some were of a "good age", but some were not. Of late, loss appears to be the order of the day. In less than two years, five of those who were companions on the road at my local Catholic Church, St. Victor, have died and one or two outside of St. Victor. Two from St. Victor died just a month apart. 

Each of these people were integral parts of my life, before I moved to and from the time I moved to Los Angeles, and re-upped as a Catholic at St. Victor, before I was even 30 years old. Three were nonogenerians. The most recent died on April 16. Two were octogenarians (one was the only non-St. Victor friend and she knew one of those who died). Three were "young" in that their time came too soon (one on the East Coast).

I think I really FEEL John Donne's words in his poem For Whom the Bell Tolls:  "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.  Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

I am pared down. And even before these six years of near constant loss, there were people who should be here (in my selfish view) taken, and none of a great age. 

Threads of my life's tapestry are being pulled out. At the same time, my earnestness about preparing for my own demise has increased. My nature being what it is, although many have never seen it (several poor souls have), I have always been aware of death and in truth afraid--hence my long period of teenage hypochondria, and far too long night terrors (those alas ended mysteriously in my late fifties or sixties). 

But this period, the last chapter, and yes no amount of cheery rhetoric can change that, has been challenging, as well as an opportunity to orient my life toward the Eternal in Whom I believe not merely intellectually, but Whom I am seeking at the core of my being. I trip up on the road regularly. And though I pray for trust in the Lord, a lot, I am too often filled with the anxiety born of distrust. 

Today I went to the cemetery mortuary to arrange for the latest funeral. I have gone there so often, I don't need to ask where the restrooms are! I visited my father who is ensconced in a columbarium across the way from the mortuary. The wall is nearly filled as it was not when Dad's cremains were laid to rest there in 2008. I have my space next to him. Odd to be standing outside now of the place where I will be in the blink of an eye. Oh please do not see this as morbid. I have been given already a great deal of time. More is devoutly to be wished, but simply is not of statistically long length even at its best.

The time is now. The time to get it all together emotionally and spiritually. I have known this. I too often fail to implement my knowledge. It is just one of the many consequences of the Fall. And though Redemption has been achieved through Christ, salvation requires a conscious choice, a "Yes" before the bell tolls for me. 

What small thing generated this entry? I went to my local Gelson's to pick up a salad and my ginger beer. As I returned my cart to its collection place, I saw a very elderly woman, elegant, and familiar, but bent more than a bit, struggling to get into her high end car. It was a short exchange. I did not want to intrude, but I also did not want to let the moment go by without an acknowledgement of her distant, but still significant part in my life's tapestry. So, I said, "You're terrific!"  She did not immediately realize that it was she I was speaking to. And so I said it again. She smiled. She was still trying to complete getting into the car and closing its door when I pulled away. 

In 1966, I lived in the Bronx.  My bedroom window faced another large brick building separated from mine by a long horizontal alley. It was a one bedroom apartment. I had the bedroom. My parents slept in a Castro Convertible in the living room. I have a distinct memory of one Saturday night, around 9 p.m. As I was, for some reason, kneeling on my bed, and looking out the window, my parents had tuned in to a show that was becoming popular. An anonymous hand I knew was lighting a fuse at the beginning, and the music of Lalo Schifrin met my 12 year old ears. Mission Impossible. Of course, I went to the living room immediately, feeling oddly secure that the three of us shared a common enjoyment of this show (as we did the Avengers; the Monkees my parents bore with a paradoxical sarcastic stoicism). Barbara Bain (aka Cinnamon Carter), was 35 years old. 

And now, across a continent and time, there she was in the Gelson's parking lot with this former Bronx child, me age 72 and she age 94. 

That moment I remember was just yesterday. All the moments with the people I have known in greater or lesser ways were just yesterday. 

 

Stirred Into Another Book Downsizing Purge

This is probably a recounting of a week end episode of a future series of purges. I am approaching my 72nd year, and have watched old acquaintances and friends both younger and older than I shuffle off the proverbial mortal coil. It is the "Way of All Flesh". No surprise, no news there, although it happens faster than even our parents warned. I have noted just how much "stuff" (a nod to the also late George Carlin's riff on the subject of the things we gather through our lives that we can't take with us, but relatives and friends who think they are immortal pick over with crow like glee) they leave behind. I have personally emptied or helped to empty some five or six apartments or homes after the original custodian died or could no longer safely remain alone or afford full time help. I hate the idea that I might do that to another, and I do tend to be a collector of specious items that mean something only to me. I try to root through things from time to time, and have given an enormous lot of a variety of mostly useful things to a Veteran's Charity, that picks up and accepts things that don't sell for much, and other charities decline.

There is a second impetus to my purge effort of this past few days, well, its current iteration. A friend gave me a particularly lovely book embosser. It is an image of a cat (as I am a well known lover of cats, to my friends) patting at a string that hangs from a crescent moon. And it has my full name printed below. I have others and have occasionally used them, but this one is particularly pleasant.  

I have written here how much I love receiving a book that has a name of the previous owner in it, handwritten or a formal bookplate. I wrote a whole entry here some years ago about a book of letters of Saint John Henry Newman once owned by the late Mr. Shorthouse of England. I learned a lot about his life on line and the connection still resonates with me today. although we never met in life. I like the tapestry of connection. I admit honestly of my wish to make that connection with some reader after I have moved onto eternity, paradoxical as that might be in that I know that in the beatific vision (albeit likely after a stint in Purgatory) I won't be thinking about the affairs of the earth any longer, except perhaps to hope and pray for my family and friends to join me to be with God. 

I am also considering, and have been for some time, the making of final plans for my location should I make it well beyond my 72nd year---that is, while I still am alive, but perhaps not in a postion to care for myself, as oft I have now seen others. Some were fortunate enough to have the help of friends when family was not available. Others went into the vortex of sickness, death and anonymity, where there was no intercessor. I do not wish to be either of these. I realize that the best laid plans often go awry and I have made several, but whether I stay here in this apartment with help (that one hopes one can afford), or move to an independent/assisted living remains a question mark I would like to make a period in the not distant future. Even at that the reality of the final chapter is ambiguous. 

But, back to purging, I really hope to purge the clutter. My aunt in New York did a good job of that before her age (nearly 99) made it necessary. She actually might have thrown out or given away too much. But her apartment is spare (and small) so it should be easy for those who will be tasked with the aftermath of a good age.

And so I went back to my dining room library and pulled out books again. I still have lots of my father's books, which were old when I was young in the Bronx. Many of them are just falling apart, lots of literary notables, a few I've read, many I haven't. Every time I have thought of getting rid of them, I have told myself I will read them, and then haven't. I favor non-fiction and many of these are fiction.

As of this writing I have about 7 shopping bags. And more to load when I get more shopping bags. Perhaps they are in too rough shape. Perhaps though they are in good enough shape for a final handling by a curious reader. I embossed a couple as well to keep, wherever it is I go, or if I stay here. 

I met up with a young psychologist friend on Saturday. I have already sent a few books to her, and maybe she will want a few more down the road, though they are likely outdated as my days of studying psychology is 27 years in the past. 

Among the items I found in the dusty upper reaches of my library (yet to be cleaned) was a "book" of cat page holders. It looks pretty old, but now I have 20 or more bookmarks ready in my desk, where usually I can find none and use pens or pencils or business cards, and in the worst need, a post-it.

I found myself reading aloud a bunch of Emily Dickinson poems. I might do an Ordinary Old Catholic Me podcast episode reading some. She was not Catholic. In fact, it sounds as if she was a somewhat disaffected Calvinist, and yet she often wrote of God, which she viewed pantheistically. Well though not theologically sound in Catholicism, Catholics do that as well. Shades of my young life doing a poetry show on WFUV, Fordham University's radio station. An educational program was needed for a Sunday, and that's how I got onto the air beyond a station identification and liner notes on the Classical Evening Concert. So though I have never been a poetry fanatic (I like some very much and many not at all; the same way I feel about opera--I like many arias but have a hard time with the in between singing), I did that show for several years, and learned to like a few more poems than I had before), I know that it is a beautiful part of Western Civilization that must be preserved, and some poems are truly sublime, whether I like them or not. 

So, since I last sat down to write here, I have made the current cut and replaced the books I am keeping, for now, in my library. I took the opportunity to take sand dunes off the top several shelves before doing so. I pulled out a couple that I pretend I will get to to read. Today might be a good time to do that as it is pouring rain in Los Angeles. The East Coast folks suffering from ridiculous cold and snow can take a bit of envy ease that we do not always get perfect weather!

Alas, the rain and darkness trigger my natural gloom and I find myself trying to hold in abeyance worries about a couple of projects more suited to a younger person with a natural optimism I seem genetically to lack. A package I sent to someone from UPS (because the post office is so bad), for which I paid 16 bucks six days ago, still has not arrived at its destination. I try not to curse about the small vagaries of life, particularly since that always sends me to confession and the priest likely wonders if I had an acquaintance with Lenny Bruce. 

I close as the rain pounds the roof of my condo. I am off I think to an hour of prayer, with a cup of coffee and trying to remember that all things are passing, including me, so lighten up!

 

Rejuvenation in Santa Barbara

One of my earliest trips in California, once I moved to Los Angeles, was to Santa Barbara. It was circa 1982, and I drove up with a visiting friend. Or my cousin Angela. Wow, so much time has passed that I am not sure with whom I had my first visit. But this I do remember, if I thought the vista that greeted me upon exiting the 10 freeway to the Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica was spectacular, I felt I needed an even better word to describe the main drag along the ocean in Santa Barbara. It was the first time that I ever  saw mountains in the distance which were actually purple in the sunlight, experiencing personally the line from America the Beautiful, "Purple mountains majesty". 

I have been trying to find some photos from that time, that I know I have, and was largely unsuccessful. I offer one that probably was taken around that time in Santa Monica, rather than Santa Barbara, though I am not 100 percent sure it wasn't Santa Barbara. That was me, the Djinn, in my 20s. Young people, don't blink, because life truly passes that fast. 

Any chance I can I have returned to Santa Barbara for visits. I'd drive up there with friends. We'd dine at one of the many places along Shoreline, or Stearns Wharf, or inland a bit. I very briefly dated a guy who lived in Ventura, and at least once, we spent a day in Santa Barbara, and browsed a bookshop, long gone now. I may not remember the person with whom I made my first Santa Barbara visit, for certain, but I do recall the name of the bookshop, The Earthling. It lasted until the late 1990s, driven out of business by larger brick and mortar giants. For many years, a friend whom I met at my old job at the State Bar, had parents who lived in a marvelous home next to a major hillside in Santa Barbara. When Carol, my friend, visited from the East, I would come up and spend a day or two. When her mother died in 2024, her father having done so a few years earlier, the family, scattered through the nation, sold the home. When I attended her mother's funeral, I stayed in a hotel along the Shoreline and one night, leaving family to grieve, I spent time at a small wine tasting shop, then on the Wharf, and watched the sun go down and the birds frolic, and thanked the stars and God for this taste of Paradise.

This year was a new take on the delight that is visiting Carol in Santa Barbara. She rented a home for a month along Shoreline Drive that looks out at the Pacific and the paths that folks bicycle and walk their dogs and with their kids. I got to be the first visitor, for most of two days and a night. I provide for your viewing pleasure the realtor shots for those who rent and for those who might buy. I never got to the back yard, too entranced with the front!

The drive up there was interesting this time around, a WAZE extravaganza of curving roads, the 126 and the 150, that made the trip three hours rather than the usual one and a half. I didn't check, but maybe there was something going on along the 101 that made the detour necessary. I wasn't in a rush, so I abided by the instructions, and enjoyed some different green vistas, courtesy of the deluge California received months prior to my drive. It was a visual adventure. Once I arrived to the villa, for that really is what it was, Carol and I absented ourselves so that the realtor could do a spontaneous showing for a potential six month renter. That meant lunch at a Santa Barbara Mexican restaurant in a small house like building. I was not driving this time. I had a massive Margarita, and Carol and I caught up, though alas, I am guilty of having done too much talking, being in an expansive, manic phase. 

Then shopping at a local Gelson's, a million times larger than mine in Weho, to get provisions for us and for the guests to come. It was an impulse buyer's dream space. 

Back at the house, we sat outside and watched the people strolling and playing and the dogs cavorting and pooping (happily everyone had the little pick up baggies and used them). Birds flitted, the small hummers and the ones I never recognize. To say "heavenly" would be to wildly understate the feeling. It has been a difficult few months for me, perhaps partially self-inflicted as a result of my tendency to ruminate over every task I attend to in my life--tasks that are not really commensurate with the official status of being "retired".  So this short visit was like winning a sweepstake or a prize on the Price is Right. It was visually and socially and emotionally satisfying. 

My friend Carol calling her soon to be other visitors and her home decorator 
(in Illinois where the temperatures are freezing!)

Dinner was at the newly renovated Harbor Restaurant at the Pier, right on the water. And dessert was on the terrace of Carol's master bedroom, accompanied by candles and a glass of Proseco. It really does not get better than this, and I have cherished every locale (well beyond Santa Barbara, here in Los Angeles, or in the East in good weather, like New York and New England where I could sit with a good friend or two and absorb the camaraderie). 

In the morning, I had two cups of Peets French Roast and that same terrace above, while Carol dressed and we considered where lunch (before I took off back to the inland) would be (Jennine's--what a terrific place!). I said the Rosary of Our Lady of Sorrows, which I do daily, and I admit that the sun and breeze and birds and ocean kept my mood light and thankful for the God who created this majesty. 

I was rejuvenated. Fortified. Thankful. 

Late in the afternoon, I returned to my little terrace, with a corner view toward Sunset Boulevard and the pool below. And of course, the hummingbirds that to me are just another proof of God. I really can't complain. This is good, too. My little patch of paradise. 

Thoughts Regarding Lyndon Larouche by Constantine Gochis

Yep, I am back to rummaging through my father's short (short) stories. It all happened because after a zoom meeting over one of my still lingering projects, I had the sudden urge to reorganize the many drawers in my living room and library, formerly known as the dining room. I moved dad's stories from one in the living room to one in the "library" and pulled one for this blog. The observations hark back to decades ago, ancient history, stuff that the denizens of the Z or whatever generation it is who claim uber knowledge of the universe actually have none at all. 

Here goes:

The table in front of Lucky's Supermarket was full of pamphlets and other literature. I caught the headline of a newspaper called the "Federalist".  It propounded the cacophony of the day to the world:

"Al GORE, PRINCE PHILIP AND THE DARK NEW AGE.  Further down, another revelation: CAUGT IN NEW PLOT! IMPEACH GORE FOR BRIBERY!

A comely young lady stopped me. There were petitions to be signed.

She was young and slim, her hair cut in an attractive boyish style.  Beauty is always a reason to stop and remember more important things.

"I see Lyndon is back," I offered. 

"He was never gone," she countered.  She had the air of an acolyte.

"Where has he been hiding?" I asked.

"He wasn't hiding.  He was in jail."

"For what?" I pursued.

"For tax evasion," she said with a cryptic smile.

This is a grievous sin, I thought. It occurred to me that Al Capone, who is reputed to have murdered more than a hundred men--several with his personal application of a baseball bat--was never chastised for those sins.  He finally came under the inexorable fist of justice when he failed to pay his taxes. Forever are the ironies of the law.

A handwritten logo appended to the front of the table implored:  SAVE US FROM AL GORE!"

"Is Lyndon now a Republican?" I asked.

"No, he is for justice.  He wants to save the country.  He is a saviour.  True, the Republicans want the President impeached for Al to take over. . . ."

I laughed.  If there is any terror to inspire Republicans with ear, it is the spectre of the wooden Al in the Oval Office.

"The Republicans would more readily accept Diane Watson," I suggested.

"Al Gore is in a conspiracy with Newt Gingrich," she retorted.

There has to be a time when pure pity calls for drawing a line. Newt was buried under a 50 million dollar demonization, a propaganda campaign. Saint Francis of Assisi could not have withstood such a campaign. How much more sh--t could be piled on the hapless ex-Speaker of the House?

If there is any possible sharing of a community mattress, it is more likely Gingrich was victim of the devastating Clinton charm, and perhaps a few unsubtle reminders of some peccadilloes that might be in one of those sequestered, legendary FBI files.

If ever there was a Republican appeaser of the master, it was Gingrich. He arrived, like a lion, a veritable Savanarola of revolution, and departed a meek lamb. Perhaps he even got an advance copy of "Hustler" as a cautionary bit of advice.

"Gingrich and Gore!" I said.  "That's the funniest I ever heard!"

"What's funny?" she replied.

"The idea that Al Gore has the capacity to participate in a complex conspiracy for a ventriloquist dummy.

"He's a willing dupe.  There's no limit to which they will go," she insisted.

"Who will go?" I asked.

"Them. They killed Kennedy. And King. And Bobby. They get their money from Armand Hammer's loot, you know, the financier and oil man who was a tool of Stalin, and a favorite of American Intelligentsia."

It occurred to me that she had a strange collction of saints and sinners.  They not only crossed party lines; they crossed international longitudes.  I suppose when a new god is being created, there have to be pantheons and infernos. Good guys and bad ones. There has to be a melange of new enemies, new evil financiers, and the apotheosis of a new leader, a Duce or a Fuhrer.

"Here," she said, handing me a copy of the Federalist. "Read all about us yourself.  A subscription is only twenty dollars."

I accepted the proffer. I am curious.  It is always interesting to read about the creation of another Olympian. 

There is a fascination in the formation of human robots to evangelize with the new apocrypha, new gospels hidden heretofore by the Corporations, the in priesthoods, and kept from 'we the people'.

I love when that phrase is used and the user includes himself in the plural expression of a democratic royal, "We".

She offered me a pen and held a petition for me to sign. I did not want to discourage her manifest honest zeal. 

"Let me read this copy of your newspaper," I offered as an excuse to deflect. "I need a little time."

"Here," she said, handing me a copy of an advisory of a meeting. 

It spoke of a "Shiller Institute".  

'FINANCIAL CRASH HITS MEXICO, BRAZIL, THE USA! TOWN MEETING, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1:30 P.M."

I noticed that the leaflet mentioned something about a projection room. Was it only a movie? Would Lyndon appear? There are so manystellar leaders who never do appear. For example, one may ask about the guy who founded Scientology, or Jimmy Hoffa.

"I don't know," she said.

I shook her hand. 

The bus was crowded as I wended my way home. A little man was handing out a slip of paper with an important message. "God So Loved the World".

Stamped in fading red print was the name of the sponsors of the printed message, Iglesia De Cristo, the name of the local holy place.

It warned, in part:  "Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endurate unto everlasting life. . ."

Now there's a message with a little flesh on it.