My name is Thomas Frederick Golz and this is my website: www.tfgolz.com .
The website name www.TomGolz.com was already taken by a graphics artist in Germany. So my friend Richard grabbed this website name for me. I think the byline -tfgolz and the website name www.tfgolz.com has a nice ring to it. Don’t you agree?
I am retired and more than ever, I am a writer.
This is my world view at sunset from my 2nd floor apartment in Chicago, IL USA.
As I learn more about WordPress and blogging, you may find my stories, narratives, photographs, and maybe even funny jokes posted to this blog. We shall see.
The morning dish the dregs of dreams the shock of the new the world as it seems the morning cat the morning cup the daily downs the daily ups the paper waits beyond the screen and unless I stir it will not be seen.
I lift my eyes take in the sky a sheet of grayed white lets go of a sigh treetops are bare birds are in flight windows are dim yearning for light such is a day nature declares for mending one’s nets and counting one’s cares.
Each day presents as it begins demands from without demands from within the put-off call the unkempt hair the hungry cat the home repair but when I rise first is the hour the old widow’s heart demands her dower.
Every once in a while I pick up a smooth jazz LP by mistake, usually when it’s by a jazz artist whose other work I like. Today it was a used LP by pianist Cedar Walton who I knew from his work with drummer and mentor Art Blakey.
Man, what a bring down! From the moment the needle hit the wax I was washed in a wave of late 1970’s production syrup that distinguishes this stuff precisely by making it undistinguished. It sounds like you just chugged a bottle of NyQuil.
I mean, I get it. Lots of good jazz artists had to record this stuff because they made money and no one was paying them to take risks, or even listening to them anymore. But this is music made for zoning out, smoking a joint while cruising around in Cadillac with tinted windows. It has a Qiana sheen that softens any sharp edges. It is Muzak for moving up to the East Side.
Call me a snob, but I’d rather have something baroque playing if I want background music. Or Philip Glass. Or sitar music. That way I can stop for a moment if I want to listen and think, that’s kinda interesting, instead of thinking, some commercial machine is systematically grinding up a jazz artist soloing over a sea of funky oatmeal.
Oh, well. The days of soft jazz are gone. …they have done their damage and destroyed noble careers. I can return to my geekdom and put some rare Red Norvo and Slam Stewart sides from 1945 on my turntable. And grow a pencil-thin mustache.
AI Translation: ALL EARTHLY POSSESSIONS WITH THEM FROM KUCKNITZ THEY DISAPPEAR!
Chapter One – Down the Rabbit Hole
When my dear friend Tom died last year, he left behind a large assortment of papers, memorabilia, and odd objects. Tom was a pack rat and kept what others would overlook or toss out. His rationale for this was frugality, that all these things might come in handy some day. But that day never came, and what now remained was a disparate collection of things, all token of Tom’s inherent sense of loss.
We had assembled a crew of Tom’s oldest friends—Mike, Phil, Gary, and me—and his girlfriend, Joyce, who lived down the hall at the senior apartments complex. It took us weeks to sift through the plastic containers and stacks of paper In Tom’s apartment, a process made slower by all the buried trip-wires of memory and nostalgia.
Amidst one of the piles of papers, Gary found a worn notebook inside a clear plastic sleeve. Since I was s designated documents processor, he passed it to me. Tucked inside the notebook was a folio of 19 pencil drawings. Each of the drawings had lengthy handwritten captions at the bottom. In essence, it constituted a comic book that told a story of three characters. Its front cover bore the notation, “Lubeck 1946.”
Although the pulp paper sheets had turned the color of tea, the outlines of the figures and the colored pencil hues still were vivid. The materials were humble, but the drawings showed the care of a talented artist. And, after 80 years in dark exile, these pages spoke to me with a strange urgency. They grabbed me by my figurative lapels.
All I had to do was listen. However, the first problem was that all the words it “spoke” were Estonian, the native tongue of Tom’s family. I know a few words of German, fewer of French, and can suss out a few words in languages with Latin roots. Estonian, though, is a Baltic language. It looked like alphabet soup to me.
Still, I knew Tom’s family and often had talked with his late grandmother and father. Tom’s extended family had arrived in Chicago a short time before Tom was born in 1951. They all were refugees, fleeing the Soviet takeover of Estonia after World War II, and had resided in a relocation camp in western Germany before coming to America. There were thousands of such displaced persons from Europe in my boyhood neighborhood in Chicago.
With this background to start with, and from what I could glean from the drawings themselves (e.g., a truck on its way to Lubeck, Germany), I understood that I held in my hands the first-person story of a refugee’s experiences, likely written in detention camp. Even so, the pictures were full of humorous touches and the overall tone of the folio was optimistic. Interspersed with realistic, even frightening, panels in the comic were drawings of dreamscapes and magic animals.
With that same optimistic spirit, I set out on my present task to uncover the story’s meaning, and perhaps to liberate its voice so that others may hear it. Last Friday I took the first step towards getting a good translation, done by someone steeped in Estonian culture. (I will recount this in the next installment.)
In a sly way, this unusual comic book seems to be my dear friend’s parting gift. For now I am engaged in carrying forth his ritual honoring of what is lost and forgotten. You knew me well, Tom.
A moose walks into a bookstore, sniffs at the volumes on the shelf, then spies a potted palm and starts munching on its top leaves. A salesclerk notices antlers sticking up over the aisles and strolls up to the moose.
“Pardon me.” says the clerk. “Are you looking to purchase a particular book that I might help you find?”
Even as I watch the tree we touch into eternity, without a thought or angel’s flight, but knowing deeply all is right. Tree and I together rest upon our common mother’s breast, no beginning and no end, a sigh of peace comes with the wind.
