On March 4, 2020 after a simple breakfast David, my guide, and I left Kibo Hut on Kilimanjaro to descend to Hurumbo Hut. I turned often to eye Africa’s tallest mountain rimmed by hoarfrost. Near a grouping of old volcanic rocks David said, “We can get the Internet here. Maybe even a phone home.”
I tried to contect my wives in Thailand without successs and read the Guardian online, while David spoke to his family in Chagga. The Guardian reported how the Coruna Virus was scourging Wuhan, China, Italy, and Iran. The world was a much different place than the one we left eight days ago.
David finished his call and asked, “You know about Covid?”
“Just what I’ve been reading over the last days.”
“And what do you think?” David like many of the guides and porters trusted my eye on the weather.
“That we are in for a hard time, but not today.”
Pendaeli, the Park ranger, greeted my arrival at Hurumbo with a broad smile. Basketball tied us tight. He was Lakers. I was Celtics. That night at dinner he whispered, “What do you think about Covids?”
I had been born with the placenta wrapped around my head. The phenomena affected one of 87000 births and the Celts believed the Caul granted the newborn with the gift of sight of the past, present, and future, but I admitted to Pendaeli, “I see nothing.”
I hadn’t foreseen the death of my longtime friend Dr. Bertoni.
Nor my getting Covid in March.
Nor the closure of the City That Never Slept.
All day I heard the sirens of ambulances speeding the sick to Brooklyn Hospital.
Death and illness.
No laughing matter as the world shrunk day by day, but I hadn’t been so sick thanks to my Neanderthal heritage and O blood and Charlotta’s D3 treatment.
I stayed home alone.
I spoke to the walls.
They spoke back in languages I refuse to decipher, but I understood they said, “Don’t go outside.”
I didn’t listen.
I was a man of the world trapped in the USA.
I visited Guadacanal, an old punk friend, across the Hudson and saw the wonders of Jersey City. The guitarist never left his house and communicated with his wife in Kansas City and the squirrels in his back yard. He was leaving for the fly-over in the next month.
I wished I could click my heels to be transported over Kansas to Thailand to see my children and grandchildren.
The gift of the Caul was my only power and I remained trapped in Brooklyn.
FDTrump’s HQ was on Broadway.
Fatso refused to believe in the pandemic.
Thousands of people died in New York City during May.
Then the ambulances stopped coming in June.
My downstairs neighbor Brigette and I became friends.
Her BF Jacob too.
We traveled to the Catskills.
I lost three more friends.
The numbers were mounting and FDTrump offered voodoo medicine as a cure.
I hate him more and more.
No one visited his Bushwick HQ.
There was no way he would win Brooklyn in 2020.
I wandered a little farther from the ‘Hood.
Maine and New Hampshire.
Mount Washington.
The SS Crack Den docked in Kennybunkport.
Lobstahs and beer.
The bars weren’t crowded by the summer crowd.In Maine social distancing was a rule of thumb.
Even amongst friends.
Except us was us.
Traditionally August was a slow month.
The summer was dead.
I saw no end to Covid.
ERven though antibodies ran in my blood, I did not feel immune.
I missed Fenway, Noy, Fook, PenPen, my grandson Frost and my wife Mem.
Same with Angie and Sunsun.
Even Nu, my first wife.
I hated being alone.
The walls hated me too.
They refused to speak with me anymore.
After a Seize City Hall I had a bad bike accident and then another, but my body healed fast. My soul was on strike.
Music saved me from Hell; Graham Parsons, Sly Stone, Tupac, and YG’s FDT.
Joe Biden was ahead in the polls and the mainstream media predicted a blue wave for the Delaware Senator.
Throughout OctoberI saw Handsome Dave Henderson once a week.
The sculptor and I ate at Acqua Sante in Williamsburg.
Wine and pasta on a Saturday afternoons speaking about the vortex of art.
California was burning.
Thailand was okay, but Middle USA refused to believe in Covid’s deadliness.
They believed in God.
I believed in sex more than any God.
I was also faithful to Fenway’s mom.
Monogomy felt good.
A man alone.
My grandson Frost swam in the Gulf of Siam.
Fenway celebrated Loi Krathong.
Sunsun had thin hair.
Autumn peaked in the Catskills.
I ate autumn apples.
I drank wine and gin.
Neither was good for an old man, but I had the music.
Arthur Lee and Love.
Sometimes I drank too much.
I walked off a porch in Millbrook and hit the ground without a bounce happy to abandon a world without freedom, especially once FDTrump lost the election.
Nothing lasts forever.
Trump was not gone, but was going to be gone.
Like on Kilimanjaro I still knew nothing other that one day we will dance again and of this I am sure.
Even with the second wave coming our way.
Live for today and that’s coming for someone born with the Caul.
