Nine (nein)

For me there has always been something about the number '9' that brings a kind of recognition.  Yes, it is my birthday 'number', but that always felt more like a synchronicity than a reason for numeral kinship.  I liked the way it looked, the way it mimicked the six, the way it embraced the perfect three threes...  To turn nine years old on the ninth was childhood-sacred (I remember when my little boy turned seven on the seventh).  I was a winter baby and my parties, in those rougher weather-years, were often cancelled because of snow, or flu or chickenpox epidemics.  My Mom made a funny tradition of celebrating my 'half-birthday' on August 9ths.  She'd give me a half-cupcake, half of a card, one bookend-- things like that.

On this day in 1962 I turned 9 1/2... it was a poignant time: the Beatles were getting ready to change pop music.... Kennedy our president.  I was away at summer camp-- a time for reflection, nostalgia, some suppressed homesickness-- and a realization that I 'needed' the city.  I was urban-anemic.   Marilyn Monroe had just suicided which touched me;  Arthur Miller was my great uncle on a side neither of us cared to own, but it made the drama 'real'.   I was already touched with pre-teen 'noir' and heard melodies in my head: Soldier Boy... Johnny Angel... She Cried.  At home, my Mom was listening to Moon River and realizing her housewife dreams were going to have to be supplemented with other things.

At camp we put on an elaborate production of the Wizard of Oz.  I had won the part of Dorothy... we spent long weeks rehearsing and my parents were allowed to visit for the performances.  They filmed everything, although the soundtrack somehow is missing.  The video footage that remains is shocking for me-- I remember being inside that person, but to look that innocent-- with the braids and the little sailor dress-- seems unlikely.  There is a shot of my sister in the front row-- weeping, as I sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow.  It is the last incident I can recall of my sister showing any heartfelt emotion.  For years I tried to process this as evidence of love, or at least a kind of soul.... but it sits there, like an old tin can in a puddle.

I thought about my half-birthday today--- the way time is telescoping and tumbling forward.   Despite the marks we make, like bent pages in a book, it doesn't much change things.  August was a sad month as a child-- it was full of moons and drifting rainclouds-- drawn-out sunsets and lonely nights at a lake or a beach where I didn't really belong.  I craved library bookshelves and museum walls and subway noise... I missed phantom and real boyfriends... my turntable, solitude.  My Mother died two Augusts ago with little understanding of the world, toward the end.  It is a loss I will never overcome.

The events of this week have tainted August forever for so many families.  On a day when even global warming seems to have taken a breath to let us fathom sorrow... I find it harder to process the relentless juggernaut of violent hatred that seems to breed from the selfish nature of this political climate.  It is as though every senseless act of cruelty and killing has numbed some of us rather than incited reaction.  As a human here-- an aging human-- I feel small and unimportant.  All around me, daily-- and certainly on our screens, in conjunction with these shootings-- there are acts of heroism-- human instincts that are pure and good-- and yet the screenshot remains...

There was yet another story this morning of an 'unknown' songwriter suing a rockstar for copyright infringement.  Three notes, it is, this time... as though the clichés and dumbing down of pop music is not enough,  there is competition to own this lack of originality.  I've written songs and had several of them 'pirated'.... but what is the point, really?  There will be lawyers-- money, youtube comparisons and mash-ups.  And which one is better?  Both of them seem equally derivative and weak... just one is well produced, with all the bells and whistles, the make-up and fashion and the machine of publicity and social media.  So some poor unsuccessful singer wants a small piece.  Let him eat cake, I say-- a piece of the half-cake I used to get on this day when I was small.

During the brief moments I made it outdoors today, the Somewhere Over the Rainbow melody came to me, walking along the park after a quick storm-- my August souvenir.  Like it or not, it was a song-- written for a story which I knew well from bedtime readings... but with a silhouette-- an identity.  Things had some identity then-- a core-- a reason, a unique 'shape'.  There was no cutting and pasting-- you had to stand up and sing-- live.  You had to type letters and schoolwork and page through books and run and jump rope and learn how to save people in the water.

My son's basketball team won the championship.  Yes-- in the park in Brooklyn, on the asphalt, with hoops and balls and their brave sportsmanship... they fought and won.  Aside from the on-court soundtrack of Hip Hop, and the sneakers, it could have been anytime, USA.  What I felt was their breathtaking heart, their body and soul and drive all at once, jumping and leaping and catching and passing and dunking... the '9' of them, I call it... no tricks, no twitter-- just sweat and flesh and talent-- real talent that will ultimately dissolve into the tough universe of athletic anonymity.  I see men every day-- tall men sitting out in their collapsible chairs along Lenox Ave... with their canes and their injuries.   They, too, once ruled the courts, briefly... never reaped enough to get them out of the projects... and I sense the shadow of the power of '9' in them, too-- maybe for them a 5 or an 8... but they had it.

The half year until my next number will pass as quickly as a galactic second.  What I will manage to do with this is a mystery.  I can almost guarantee I will witness violence, will lose someone dear-- something dear.  I can only promise I will try to stand on my 'core', I will try to create my own templates and support the good of others.  I will be the 'ninest' I can be; it seems so simple-- if only it were... if only we could find some common starting line-- some core, some championship...  to take our individual pulse at the half... and make the rest count.