All growing up I remember being wrapped up in clothes I’d never seen before … I had no idea where they came from … and my family, along with thousands of Norwegians from all the boroughs would converge in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to march down 3rd Ave in celebration of our pre-independence. There are women adorned just like my mother in the picture pushing baby carriages with little infants dressed accordingly, red white and blue streamers (our Norsk colors, don’t get them confused) hanging from the handles … both my grandfathers carrying little flags and dressed to the nines, the inky gloss of their well-buffed shoes swallowing light and blinding the rest of us.

This year I celebrate my Norwegian heritage by playing a rock show at a coffeeshop/bar in Vermont. Come see it– I might be dressed.

If you’re in NYC, the 52nd Annual Norwegian Constitution Day Parade takes place on Third Avenue in the heart of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. Two visiting marching bands from Norway will participate.The Parade theme this year is ”Norwegian/Americans honor the Family”. The guest speaker will be Finn Kristian Marthinsen of the Norwegian Parliament. Entertainment and the crowning of Miss Norway at conclusion of parade in Leif Ericson Park. The Parade starts at Marine and Third Avenues, and concludes with a program at the Grandstand, 6th Avenue amd 67th Street, Brooklyn, NY. The parade starts at 1:30 pm, program at Grandstand at approximately 3:30 pm. (212) 531 4877.

The fucked up thing about the parade is that its on the 18th … WTF?

Affar used to walk me down to Shore Road in Bay Ridge and we’d sit on one of the benches there and have a vantage point of the Verrazano Narrows and the mouth of NY Harbor, and he’d point to giant tankers and cargo chips with his burly Norwegian finger and tell me this and tell me that. He died when I was 11 or so, and I was home alone when Tante Lillian called and told me that “Morfar has gone to be with the Lord.” I was aware of my lack of tears and sorrow … mostly, just confused, really … huh … and when my parents pulled up in the green Datsun 210, hatchback open for some lumber they had lugged from wherever, I jumped into the back and made them stop their slow and short journey backing up the driveway and feigned some good tears for my mother’s sake, I think. I remember my skin feeling weird and numb, like plastic.

There was never a shortage of milk at Mormor’s. Always pouring me glass after glass, tall thick glasses with diamond shaped etchings in them. Nice silverware on a cold white metal table, a small radio on a shelf above the salt and pepper, and a Lord’s Prayer plaque beside it. I would always play with her fancy cutglass perfume atomizer with the silky pump ball with fraying tassles, not really spraying perfume around, but just checking it out, so strange and foreign to me … mostly I remember the ring she stopped wearing, laying on the mirror counter beside the perfumes and powders … 4 square stones set in a thin gold band, different colors, pastely … pink, green, blue, and yellow … one for each of her children. When she died I was “living” at the Glenwood on Broadway and Marcy in Williamsburg, a $7 a night hotel for junkies, like myself, or for forlorn old men to die in … my brother found me there– I think I left a phone number with him once– and picked me up to go to her wake, and I made him stop at a Dunkin Donuts to use the bathroom, and I shot a good speedball into my neck and got back into the car and we continued on, and just before we got to the funeral parlor I looked at myself in the visor mirror and noticed the small bit of blood staining the collar of my dirty shirt.

The first police car I was ever in … my mother took me to see Moonraker somewhere in downtown Brooklyn … I remember the shuttle motif, and Jaws’ nasty silver grin … and afterwards, I wandered behind as my mother strutted down the sidewalk … I think I got distracted by a TV in a window, really … honestly … and before you knew it — nothing but legs pacing by, cold and impersonal, and I was lost … started crying before you know it (hey, I was 7), looking to the left and right, searching for my mom’s slacks … people stooping to console and inquire ”You lost, little boy?” … cops show up soon enough, questions and tissues, then in the back of the car for the short ride back to Bay Ridge, 59th St (between 8th and 9th) … the worst part was my friends on the block scoping me out as we cruised up the street, checking me out with wary, suspicious eyes … I was guilty before I even hit the sidewalk.

The next day, in the car lot a few buildings down, John Fox and Anthony DeStefano beat me down behind a rotting brown Charger. I remember the car because it looked just like my father’s, and even at the time, the whole thing seemed significant … it was like being in a Raymond Carver or Richard Ford story, saying to myself, over and over, You will never forget this moment.…

And now, leaving for Brooklyn and an ICU somewhere in the building I was born in. Ugh. Not looking forward to this. Pistol summed it up today as “going to say your goodbyes”, and initially I thought, fuck off, but yeah, that’s part of it. But on that … who do we say bye for? Or who am I saying bye for? Me? Fuck all, I’m in no mood to say bye, no. More for her (Nana, aka my grandmother) I guess, but what’s the sense in that? Last moments, how long are you really going to remember them, like up from under water at the people staring down at you, floating away, like seen through hot gasoline air …

And Jason … ah, shit. It’s all scaring the healthy piss out of me. Whatever. Here’s a picture of my desk. There’ll be a CD before March, and that’s all there is to it.