I close my eyes

 only for a moment, and the moment's gone

All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity (Kansas)

it's like a flash of heat lightning ...off in the distance....the other side of the lake on a hot summer evening, so far away that you will not even hear the rumble of the ensuing thunder. here and gone in a blink......as fast and furious as sweater nite can arrive...it vanishes in the same way...an intoxicating blur, a whirlwind of faces and sounds...conversations abruptly cut short by the arrival of another special guest or old friend, a seemingly never-ending carousel......a wake or a wedding...is there a difference? 

I try valiantly to stay (semi) sober and speak to everyone, but most years it becomes an exercise in futility. Someday we will all be gone, but the Oak Room will remain, the Oak Room and Liev Eirikson Park hold the stories of all who came before and those yet to grace these shores. As i walked the streets of Bayridge it struck me that nobody seems to hang out in the parks anymore....there was a time where every patch of Public grass....every concrete softball field and every Parkie house was claimed by the local Teens or 20 somethings.....you knew them, you were them.....whether you spent a day in Moon Man or Bliss Park, OLA, 102, 170  or Mckinley even schoolyards, the 79th street Hockey court, Old Glory, the Stairs  or the parkway adjacent to Liev Eirkson Park. You knew the inhabitants and you acted accordingly when visiting someone else's turf....we gave the neighborhood an identity, for better or worse.......i'm partial....but things were better when The Irish and the Norsemen were hanging around in volume....the world was a simpler and safer place with the beer drinkers on the park benches watching over it.

Tough break for Murph....he thought he hit the pool when Brock Nelson scored....but after the mathematicians were brought it in, it was determined that his jersey number   29 adds up to 11....(2+9).......and so whomever had picked #1 was the winner........and not 0 .....lousy beak.

of course 2+3 still = BEEER

Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.