Joey Ramone

Grief brings strange things to mind.  In the gym in my mother’s apartment building, trying to sweat the stress of the underlying specter that was swiftly approaching.  Mom is weak, stage 4 of a long battle of what had claimed both her parents.  I won’t speak its name or give it space here.  It is not her.  Sudden wafts of thought, completely different than what I thought I would feel.  Objective yet personal.  Soulful Paul resonating in my ears, the words, the truth, the past, the present.  What of the future...

The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)

I was chasing down the days of fear
Chasing down a dream before it disappeared
I was aching to be somewhere new
Your voice was all I heard
I was shaking from a storm in me
Haunted by the spectors that we had to see
Yeah, I wanted to be the melody
Above the noise, above the herd

I was young, not dumb
Just wishing to be blinded
By you, brand new
And we were pilgrims on our way

I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred
Heard a song that made some sense out of the world
Everything I ever lost now has been returned
The most beautiful sound I ever heard

We've got language so we can communicate
Religion so I can love and hate
Music so I can exaggerate my pain
And give it a name
I was young, not dumb
Just wishing to be blinded
By you, brand new
And we were pilgrims on our way

I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred
Heard a song that made some sense out of the world
Everything I ever lost now has been returned
The most beautiful sound I ever heard

I was 11 when I moved to my grandmother’s house in the country.  Blueberry Farm, a sprawling 400 acre piece of Canadian landscape on the American border with a tudor mansion started by my engineer grandfather, and completed and maintained after his early death in 1968 by my grandmother who was raised in rural Italy, the daughter of an industrialist.  I went to Franklin Center Elementary School and remember three teachers there, Mrs. Fryer and Mrs. Baker who were my homeroom teachers, and Mr. Coffin who taught geography.  I remember my first crush on a boy named Clay Allen, and my two best friends Julie and Judy Brooks, who were the daughters of the farmer who lived on my grandmother’s property.  I remember running, running in the grass behind the big house, in the fields behind the school.  I was confused as to what was happening with my parents, nothing was spoken, I loved the country but missed the city because that was where they were.  So I ran, often, hard, my heart beating out of my chest, with the wind and into the wind, and it made me feel alive and free.  When I rand I felt I heard a voice from above, a benevolent force around me, it kept me company no matter where I went or who I was with.
I was different, I spoke three languages and spent a lot of time on the continent with my grandmother and family.  I’d lived in Italy and the City, and had been all over Europe with my parents from a young age.  Wanderlust ran thick through both their veins, something that had and continues to endure through the generations.