The Big Picture and the Adventures of Life

By Harvey Rothenstein

The book contains short stories and poetry. There are forty nine short stories and one hundred and twenty poems. The poems are free verse and some metered. There are numerous subjects: from childhood to man hood. There are: Shakespearean sonnets, Yeats octave Philosophical poetry, Science, Confessional, Epitaph, Satire, Lyric, Dramatic and Narrative, Crown of Sonnets, Imagism, and many other genres. The book discusses ethics, love war and science. In The Big Picture and The Adventures of life there is conflict then resolution. Some storys are strictly from the imagination, and others are written from experience. There are submerged characters some heroic some tragic, and some on the fringes of society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 21, 2007
• ISBN: 9781469119229

Harvey Rothenstein

I have worked at The New York Academy of Medicine as a librarian, on Fifth Ave. in Manhattan. I stacked, sorted books using the Library of Congress system instead of The Dewey Decimal System. There were periodicals and books on reserve for medical doctors to read. Presently I am working for Family Council, an advocacy group for the elderly. Once a month a politician from the upper west side comes to speak. I have one a Poetry award issued by Editors Choice for my first book, The Forest Charmer a Dictionary of Verse. The Big Picture and The Adventures of Life is my second book. I attended: Pace University, and Albany University, and The New School of Social Research, and presently applied to Columbia University.

Book preview

Copyright © 2007 by Harvey Rothenstein.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

37815

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

SHORT STORIES

ARMAGEDDON

BATTLE OF THE

BOROUGHS

CAMPING

CITY HALL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

COMMENCEMENT

CROSS COUNTRY

EASTERN PARKWAY

ESOPUS RIVER

FELICITY

FISHING

GOING TO THE

BALLGAME

HALLOWEEN

HORSE PLAY

IDEALISM

JULY 4TH

LAISSEZ FAIRE

LIVING IN THE

SCHOOL DORMITORY

ONE DISASTER

AFTER ANOTHER

SEMI PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

SIX MAN BOBSLED

SLEEPY HOLLOW

STARRY NIGHT

TAXI

THE BACK YARD

THE BLACKOUT

THE BRAWL

THE CAR

THE HOLOCAUST

AND REVENGE

THE KNICKS

THE RED POINTER

THE SAGA OF

YOUNG O’TOOLE

THE SHOOTING

THE SWIM

THE WAR OF MACHINES

THE WEATHER

WALKING THROUGH

ALBANY

WASHINGTON

SQUARE PARK

WATKINS GLEN

AND THE SUN

WHITE LAKE

POETRY

A Philosophical Ballad

A Poem for Geologists

About Fall

Above

Alignment of the Planets

All At Once

Attic Window

Autumn

Beach

Big Picture

Birds Beg

Brighton and Manhattan Beach

Sun Over Riverside Park

Catfish

Central Park Snow

Changing Light

Cherry Blossoms

Chestnut Tree

Claremont Riding Academy

Cloud

Coal Chutes

Columbia University

Commencement

Cross-town Bus

Dadaist

Defining Power

Earth

Epitaph

Explaining the Universe With a

Few Numbers

Forces

Forlorn

From Gym to Gym

Georgic

Homeless

Honeysuckle

Internet

Leaf and Leafless

Lethe

Light

Lovers on Balcony

Midtown

Mind Alone

More Dead than Alive

Mystic Prayer for Health

No Longer There

Orange

Outward

Redwood Tree

Riparian

Riverside Park

Social Psychology

Sociology

Summer Flowers

Technology vs. the Rustic

The Car Da Daism

The Oldest Street

The Tower

Time Past and Future

To Infinity

The Tunnel

Wash

Winding Road

A Frozen Image

A Breath of Fresh Air

A Girl

A Story

Above

Alba Wearing Jade and Bacchus

All At Once

Anniversary

Antique

Apple

Apple Tree

Going fast

Aruba and Yellow sun

At Work

Balance of Power

Beware

Beyond Missing

Central Park

Changing Light

Claremont Riding Academy

Cloud

Da Daism

Dark

Densely Populated

Emotions

Esopus River

Fall

Flying

From Brashness To Beauty

Gems and Nature

Gray

Green Park Bench

Greenhouse Effect

Holocaust

Idealism

Impossible Oceans

Lake Fish

Lamp Light

Life From Distant and Past Events

Microcosm

Mother Nature

Mountain Top

Mystical Yellow Coat

Roustabout

Rustic

Spruce

Stars

Stoicism

Storm on Pier A

Tavern on the Green

The Balcony

The Life of Spices

The Roosevelt Bridge

The Shepard

To Chevrolets

Train

Triple From Home To Third

Ultima Thule

Waves

White Grass

Winter Snow

Yellow Meadow

PREFACE

By Harvey Rothenstein

I started writing my book in the early 70s. anwrote poetry and short stories. I lived in an attic two blocks from Brooklyn College. The roof protruded, and I had a antic desk that folded, covering its top. The snow would fall, and be seen it was serene, it was serene. My first poems were made into a pamphlet, it was blue with a design of Treblinka. My first poems were: Impossible Oceans, I Miss You, Treblinka, The Pleiades, and Different Perspectives. I did this writing after work as I was given permission by the Law Firm to use their electric typewriter. At the firm I was surrounded by art and culture so I became a writer. During lunch at the Law Firm I would sneak into Pace University, and use its library. Eventually, I registered in Pace University, and wrote a book of short story’s on a typewriter that I fed quarters to operate. I went trout fishing in Lake Esopus, and when midnight came I left the woods, and came to New Paltz University, and surreptitiously slept in the dormitory called Deyo Hall name after the Huguenots who first settled in the country.

The oldest street in America is the one that the Huguenots built, still standing in New Paltz. They also have one of three rivers in the world that flows south to north. The students let me sleep in the couch while I avoided the campus police. I eventually attended New Paltz University, where I wrote the stories: The Car, and the Swim. Afterwards I went to Brooklyn College, and applied for work study, and by chance they gave me a job they gave me a job reporting intramural sports. I wrote the sports column, and also wrote some short stories. I would watch them play, and reported the news in a sarcastic tone, wrote about the games. Maybe I’m just a reporter doing research, and writing what I observe.

Over the years I studied science and have ten patents. Writing is like science there is a force on one body and another force on the same body and you get a vector. In literature there is one idea and another idea and you get a third idea. In science, art religion and philosophy there is the absolute concretizing itself and is the history of development, a dialectical development. One thing happens a thesis, the opposite happens its antithesis and from a dynamic tension a synthesis arises.

One short storey Cross Country was inspired, when I took a bus cross country, using an Ameri Pass stopping off at each major state. I visited fifteen states and it took weeks to do. I took walking tours through Chicago, Denver, and Dallas, Omaha, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and other states. I took a train that went both to Wrigley Field and Cominsky Park.

I have written many newsletters and edited them. I have written for the Daily Freeman a good newspaper upstate New York. They have a million subscribers each day. I wrote about the Presides meteor shower that occurs August tenth to the thirteenth. It’s a timely event fit for an article all newspaper stories are day to day stories.

My last few jobs were as a librarian at the New York Academy of Medicine: research books that are reserved and read by the lay public and doctors. They use the Library of Congress system, not the Dewey Decimal system when searching for books. I am now working for Family Council an advocacy group for the elderly and poor. We work with politicians on the Upper West Side. In years to come this would be material for writing new poetry and short story’s for a next book.

I became a writer because I think I have judgment and that my senses see things that are sharp and capture the essence of things. If I was a painter I would hope to draw what is beautiful and pertinent and picks out things what other people enjoy. The method I used to write this book are experiences and the senses that picked out some truth from a complicated world. There are five senses and Somerset Maugham said "Money is like a sixth sense without which you can’t properly use the other five.

As for acknowledgements, I would thank all the people unknown to them who shared in my adventures; and nature that showed me their secrets by living in view of my senses.

INTRODUCTION

By Harvey Rothenstein

The book contains short stories and poetry, the book is organized with half of each. There is conflict, free verse and structured poetry. There are: Shakespearean Sonnets, Yeats Octave, and others that you can try to find on your own. The short stories were compiled over many years, some new some done in the past. Most stories are true some are made up. There are adventure stories such as The Car, and the Swim and Felicity. There are stories of characters that are of lowly, submerged characters, and live in circumstances beyond their control. The short story Cross Country, whose character is alienated, and all of a sudden had an onset of mental imbalance at the Port Authority in New York, and leaves the city by buying an Ameri Pass, and travels Cross Country, stopping off in every major city in the country. He thought it was a Kafiesque sort of story. There are poems on science, and one about the new planetarium, whose display sums up all astronomical knowledge: the age of the universe, and the distance of the universe as seen from Earth, and the Big Bang theory that started it all.

There are stories about growing up in the school yard, and in the alleys behind ones home, as the subway train enters a tunnel, and shakes the window. My influence was Ernest Hemingway, and his book of fifty one short stories. His stories on trout fishing, boxing, war, and sports create a world of action and reality and learning to live and be a man. His short sentences saying much, and to the point on life, prose, conflict and resolution. The word history makes up the word his storey. Our biography and lives are made up of story’s that happen throughout our stay in the universe. Our names become a distinct personality.

As an adolescent searching for a philosophy I couldn’t decide it was hedonism, or stoicism, materialism or spiritualism. The short storey was made up of submerged characters, curing the need for the truth. I felt at home with the never do well, the prostitute, the tragic, and the murderer: Ernest Hemingway’s story, Short Life of Francis Macomber, or prostitutes in the bar are examples of submerged characters as the story Cross Country written about a man alienated by the stress of city life.

The sentences short and simple, but complex in meaning, similar to the change in acting style created by Marlon Brando’s method acting which he learnt at at the New School of Social Research. F. Scot Fitzgerald’s story about the rich in East Egg, and May Day where the Yale student kills himself over a lost job and girl. The book is about science, ethics war and love. There are poems on the themes of life. The poems are constructed through the sight, hearing and other senses. Somerset Maugham said "Money is like a sixth sense without which you can’t properly use the other five. It took finances to write this book, buy a computer, and taking pictures, and travel cross country; it was fire and ice working in the heat and cold.

The poems and short story’s are in alphabetical order, rather than chronological order. The poems are old some are recent. There are poems that rhyme, and poems that are free verse. Poems with structure and such as Shakespearean Sonnets and poems that are written with new ideas made by my imagination. I once wrote a poem called Microcosm where the beginning line was uncapitilized to show hurt and small feelings.

Many poems mix nature with human emotions, and show images with ideas. In the poem/ Forlorn/ The the hurricane was The storm then subside/ Painted oceans being stock still / Storm remained inside him. Shakespeare’s poems also used nature and insightful human emotions. In as You Like It Blow, blow, thou winter wind, /Thou are not so unkind / As man’s ingratitude; /Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky, / Thou dost not bite so nigh / As benefits forgot: In From the Sonnets Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou are more lovely and more temperate: / Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, In my poem/ About Fall/ it said Men doesn’t hear the wind / Or see the wind / Or the brook around the bend / Quiet sifts silently in air.

SHORT STORIES

By Harvey Rothenstein

ARMAGEDDON

It was a year of turmoil, and many wars were fought in many lands. There were floods, cataclysms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Red blooded lunar eclipses, and solar eclipses that put day into darkness, and nocturnal animals as bats came out of hiding. Many countries including third world countries had tested nuclear weapons. Morality was suspect, and man behaved as badly as in antediluvian times, and during the great flood that covered the world.

A person was born whose family was famous, and notable, well versed in politics. The politics of Machiavelli, a student of power. What is evil?-Whatever springs from weakness. Thus says Nietzsche in the Antichrist. Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Says Isaiah V-20. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Shakespeare’s Hamlet section one, his political theory. Lust of power is the most fragrant of all passions, said by Tacitus. Give me a lever long enough and a prop strong enough I can single handedly move the world, said by Archimedes. Colton said, Power will intoxicate the best hearts as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough nor good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. Jefferson said, I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. This was a letter in 1811 written by Jefferson. Nietzsche said, Wherever I found a living creature, there I found the will to power. written in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In Romans x111.1. The powers that be are ordained by the Lord. Wendell Philips says, Power is ever stealing from the manyto the few." Said in 1770.

R. was born 6 am in the morning, on the sixth day of the week on the sixth year. He was born with a tattoo six on his neck. His birth was predicted by the bible. A time of great strife in the world, and it brought the Anti Christ into the world. He was brought up in an influential family, and exposed to the great powers of the world: its diplomats and Generals. Men were exposed to decadent culture. Staying alive politically meant drastic measures and evil methods. R. was born in the middle of the twenty first century, a time of wars, and many third world countries were gaining in prestige and power over the major powers. Small wars were erupting throughout the globe. Socially people were cheating, sinning, and children were disrespectful to the old. Children disrespected their parents, and became sexually active at a young age. Husbands would cheat on their wives, and wives would cheat on their husbands. Ethics and biblical studies grew out of fashion. The murder rate increased, theft and injustice was prevalent. Television became lewd, and murder was glorified on the screen. Movies were filled was violence, and there were no redeeming plots with goodness or fairness. Youth imitated the violence on the screen and youngsters used guns in violence and murder. Politically our Politicians were corrupt, and fair play were non existent. No longer was the minority given a chance to become the majority in the political system. Equal opportunity was no longer in progress. Politicians lied, and the public couldn’t keep them answerable to its citizenry.

Economically the budget of the world went to the military. Three quarters of the budget went to war: with standing armies ready to fight at a single notice. Every country spent its budget on conventional weapons, nuclear weapons, and on chemical and biological weapons, as nerve gas and viruses. Anthrax and many chemical weapons whose gas chlorine mixed with dangerous chemicals. Taxes were raised to pay for the military. Private citizens spent their own incomes on guns, and on nuclear bomb shelters in case of war. Armies, navies air force and marines were stationed all over the world. mercenaries armed through the teeth were fighting throughout the world. Dozens of countries had nuclear weapons. Africa and Arabs and other third world countries had the bomb. Education courses taught patriotism in schools. Each country thought they were enlightened and in the right. Histories were taught and wars were fought. All traces of peace were suspect and considered weakness and treason. Scientifically all sorts of weapons were designed. Nuclear weapons and its radioactive cloud, in the shape of a mushroom, lasting a half life or thousands of years. An atom bomb ignited by dynamite. The splitting of the atom, and Uranium causing a chain reaction and making an enormous explosion. The hydrogen bomb ignited by an atom bomb, where hydrogen is fused to make Helium and the remaining energy left over could destroy a whole city.

4 Hydrogen atoms =6.693 x 10 to the minus 27 kg

1 Helium atom = 6.645 x 10 to the minus 27 kg

__________________________________________

Mass Lost = 0.048 x 10 to the minus 27 kg

A small fraction .07% of the mass of hydrogen going into the nuclear reaction doesn’t Show up in the mass of hydrogen. The lost mass is converted into energy predicted by The equation E=mc squared (0.048 x 10 to the minus 27) ( 3 x 10 to the eight k m/s squared =.4 x 10 to the minus 12 Joules. Although this is a tiny amount of energy a kilogram of matter makes a great amount of energy. 0.993 kg. of helium comes out and .007 kg. of matter