Cyber Journal for Future Historians By Daniel Angel Aponte

The Blue Danube composed by Johan Strauss as featured in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick who was raised in our town near The Bronx Zoo of tigers and lions and bears oh my!

Monkeys too!

 The building my mother has been living in since the final days of Watergate is under new management. To pave the way for the Hasidim, the sellers offered me 5000 dollars to, in the words of a Puerto Rican female employee, “move mommy back to Puerto Rico.” That amount of money can’t move anyone to The Ortiz Funeral Home across the street. Not that I’m asking for more to bury us all. When I was a kid, I defended my mother from purse-snatchers in Spanish Harlem. I didn’t think about it and felt no fear but fury. But this situation with landlords required calm Jedi thoughts.  I have to make people think

Very easy considering I suffered head injuries at school that resulted in memory loss.

Win98 was helping to fuse the wreckage of my life together again when someone in the basement kept turning off the electricity to our apartment. I lost my mind again with the loss of my work, an idea to draw people together. Then the kitchen sink pipe burst 3 days before Thanksgiving. The Salvadorian superintendent was a no-show as always. It was time for Danny-On-The-Spot.  I used metallic tape to seal the pipe and bric-a-brac to hold it up tight.

Thankfully, I made turkey dinner with all the fixings for my mother.

Finally, another employee, a Dominican, told her she had to move to the other side of the building where the old time residents were being concentrated without leases. He wanted to work with his crew on renovating apartments and charge higher rent to new tenants. As an incentive to move out, he told us to leave our furniture behind because he was giving us bunk beds. My mouth dropped and my heart almost stopped.

The last time I heard that was in Germany after the night of breaking glass.

A few days ago, the Dominicans tried to storm into our old apartment but were held back by a city housing inspector who warned them not interfere with an investigation.

Two days later, the mailbox was ripped off the wall.

Two days later it was cemented over.

 A female postal employee said all of my mother’s mail was being returned to sender and a female cop at the 41 Precinct on Longwood Avenue advised me to call 311. At least whoever did the mean spirited felony didn’t tried to burn us down like previous landlords of Italians that got caught in the act of soaking the roof with gasoline, a final solution to fixing the problems of the building. Largely, the nature of the beast in business (now eating away at the skies over ice caps) was just hungry for insurance money. The Hasdim are now charging $2,800 dollars for rent. We have a gas leak in the old stove and they won't fix it. They just want my mother to move out so they can make money in the South Bronx, new and improved.. Another Happy Land of 86 charred Hispanics was avoided by the intervention of Blue Angels.

When jobs became scarce, The Dominican government deported Haitians, including a woman on her knees crying out her baby was born in Santo Domingo. I’m sure there is good in people of all nations but troubled economies breeds shades of Nazism. Behold a group of anxious Greeks parading the swastika and shouting for Jews to get out of their country. It’s déjà vu all over again to quote a former coach of The New York Yankees.

By the persistence of memories, I saw myself carry Anne Frank as the growing shadows of burnt-out buildings and bullies fell over us in The South Bronx of America. I wondered why the adults were blind to this wasteland right across the dark river to Riker’s Island Prison so far removed from the Ultra Bright smiles of The Brady Bunch?

And then came a cowboy from Death Valley Days to save the day as President Reagan.

 In the middle of remembering childhood after WWII, Sofia Loren turned the round table on Charlie Rose with a question. The Great Interviewer paused and then with measured dignity quietly replied,” I’ve been poor”.  Less is more in writing about your life.

I have to sell a short story about evolution to pay rent on Planet Earth.

Chapter 1: It was a dark and stormy night.

I saw a movie called The Debt.

It was about Israeli agents’ relentless efforts to bring a war criminal to justice. “You know why it was easy to kill your people? Because there wasn’t one of them willing to give up life to save the others,” the captured Nazi smirked. That unhinged me. I’m not Jesus but I can play the part of the thief who was nailed next to a good Jewish lawyer. 

You can’t blame people around the world for being afraid of dying for other people.

I’m not much scared of the bad guys as I am of God.

Say hello to my little pen.

Pandora’s Bronx: A Recollection of the Wonder Years

Cyber Journal for Future Historians By Daniel Angel Aponte

The Blue Danube composed by Johan Strauss as featured in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey directed by Stanley Kubrick who was raised in our town near The Bronx Zoo of tigers and lions and bears oh my!

Monkeys too!