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HOME, STRANGELY
When you visit Galway cityyou will stand slack-jawedat some, most actually,of the buskers you seeon almost every street.Young and talented, you needto find a bank where youcan stock up on oneEuro coins, lest your tripcost more than youever intended at five eurosfor each performance.And when you visit a pubat night, come preparedwith a song, or…
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AND EVERYWHERE
Where was my family from?Russia and Poland, mostlyby way of England and Austria,within nervous stop at Ellis Islandjust before the great warchanged everything for all time.Actually not. Not mostly Polandor Russia, the war not a changeof anything really, at mosta precursor of a greater war.You, too, questioner, may be dead nowspeaking from a plot in…
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EIRE
They say you must cherishyour memories lest they slipaway in the night, trying fora freedom you deny them. I remember Ireland, knowingit was home although at the timeI thought I was Ashkenaziand Portuguese, but my geneswere trying to tell me something. I remember driving a stickshift down narrow roads,always keeping in mindthe advice, “if you…
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EIRE
There are two principal problemswith Ireland, and I found bothto be utterly insurrmountable. Every town, even Galway Cityat any time of day or nightlooked like it should be a postcard. Add to that the horror that inevery pub I visited it was assumedthat if asked I would sing a song or, realizing I have no…
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CUISINE
When I was younger (much), Icould wander Manhattan and bewhat any neighborhood required,so long as I stayed southof 110th Street or north of 155th. I was Greek ordering gyros,Russian at the Tea Room,Italian along Mulberry and Canal,although in Chinatown I was justsomeone who wandered a bit farfrom the heart of Little Italy. I could order…
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WRITING MY STORY
With the stroke of a pen,they enabled me to write the story,gave a framework on whichI could hang all mannerof dreams and assumptions,inviting a search I neverquite got around to making. I wandered the beachesof Estoril in my dreams,stalked the avenues of Lisbon,looking for a familiar face,but found only ghosts. With the stroke of a…
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ERSE WHILE
Growing up, I never imaginedthat I was Lithuanian, I mean Imight have as easily been from Mars. And it was only in my dreamsthat Gaelic was an ancestral tongue,not one my ancestors spoke,at least those who hadn’t yetmade the unthinkable moveto Norfolk and the frigid sea. Now I am all of those, and I knowthat…
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ASK OF THE SEA
When you ask me of the sea,living, as I do, fifteen milesfrom the nearest ocean, itis not the sandy beachesof Hutchinson Island I recall,nor the crowded sandboxthat is Fort Lauderdale’s beach. If you ask me of the sea,it is perched on the horizon,far in the distance, lookingout of the kitchen window,or perhaps that of the…
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ROUND ABOUT
The great minds in Transportation have decidedthat the answer to all traffic problemsis simple, you replace troublesome intersectionswith traffic circles, but you call them roundabouts.They know that the young and wish they werein their muscle cars will avoid them like the plague,for even they cannot defeat centrifugal force,and inertia is one thing they never lack.And…
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A NIGHT AT THE ROSE
Three beers over two hours and, giddy, I want to sing along with the Irish house band in my horribly off key voice, just two choruses of Irish Rover or Four Green Fields. It’s beginning to snow outside and it’s a four-block walk to the Government Center station. I suppose it would sober me up…
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an old writer and his words 