31 January 2023

"A" in cement

in 1946 my parents rentd a small house on Lexington Ave in Elyria. that summer Dad made a concrete stoop. my parents put my hand & foot prints in the cement. 

if I'd begun reading movie magazines at 3 I was more of a baby cinemaddict than even I imagined. perhaps Mom -- who also loved movies -- had read abt Grauman's Chinese Theater. anyway I was doing the Hollywood thing early on.

it was decades before I was in Santa Fe. again a concrete step was being made for my back door. & my partner at the time & I both put out first initial in the cement with an ampersand in between.

flash forward to now. last week I endured a costly & anxiety-producing underground water leak. part of the repair included jackhammering a hole in the middle of the driveway. this morning the workers returnd to fill in the hole. of course I used that opportunity to graumanize my property.

I suspect Palm Springs will never honor me with a star in the sidewalk downtown. my final hometown will live in my work but this may be my lasting physical imprint.



6 comments:

Tom Beckett said...

I love it.

Alex Gildzen said...

thx Tom. of course I had to do a little more than meets the eye. one of my Poems-fot-All is under that slab. & a few bits of concrete from the implement I used to write my A are now in "box of little bags."

richard lopez said...

this is one of the sweetest acts of art i've seen in a long while, alex. last weekend we also found a leak that set me to panic some. two things scare me more than death: electrical & plumbing. at any rate, it makes my heart happy to see you've made your mark in three of your homes & reading above that you placed one of your poems-for-all tiny books in honor of your poem & in respect to the late publisher richard robert hansen. huzzah!

richard lopez said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alex Gildzen said...

thx Richard. I miss Robert so much. he was a kind & generous man.

richard lopez said...

he was indeed, alex. i miss him too.

apologize for the deleted comment. my note was published, i don't know why, twice.