Seeing through Walls

The new year always opens with caution... we are given a slow pass on day one to expunge our deeds of the night before-- or the sins and failings of the previous year, as though we have a choice... as though we have anything but a moment under our human thumbs here...

Now that my Mom is gone and my son is probably hung over in some girl's bed, I choose to speak little on this day--generally take a late afternoon walk through Central Park, stop in at St. John the Divine at sunset, and spend a couple of hours browsing the shelves in my favorite upper west side bookshop where I am always humbled by the selection.  The way home always seems cold and crisp and the night sky blackish and ignorant of celebration, of mourning, of time.  A great wintry galactic yawn in the face of us humans who try to break things down into segments and landmarks; we do laps and log mileage in an illusory course of unknown length.  For some reason I feel clean and religious-- as though I'd been baptized under anesthesia.

By day two I am overwhelmed by my failure to seize the new year's opportunity-- as though the magic of renewal has already evaporated and gone on to the next universe.  I almost wish for something like jury duty to force me into some finite project-- but I've just finished my service and narrowly escaped being pooled for the Weinstein trial.  It occurred to me, sitting in the oversized halls of the criminal justice system, that there is no greater human irony than a random group of flawed individuals with our bad habits and problems-- our grocery lists, dirty laundry, cheating spouses and dysfunctional families-- passing judgment on another.

So here we are, all too quickly, in another election year.  I wonder if anyone else noted that our elections always coincide with the leap year-- as though we are guaranteed an extra day of campaigning, of debating and deliberating.  This year already the robocalls coming from political organizations and polls have picked up.  It occurs to me that there is a certain ironic justice in the voting process... it is equally manipulated and pre-determined as the jury trials I've witnessed.  And what have we learned?  We listen and listen to these people selling their platforms to us from university auditoriums-- on CNN, on PBS... we watch them waving their arms and nodding their heads, coiffed and powdered for the cameras.  It is like a sports event-- only I suspect more people will watch and discuss the Oscars or the Super Bowl than will vote.  After all, there is a clear NFL winner.  The President is not always a winner.  As for me, for the past few terms, I have been among the losers.  Little of the change for which I've voted has ever been allowed.  Technology wins and humanity suffers.

It seems a lifetime ago I spent New Year's Day at the Cafe Figaro.  All of Greenwich Village was hung over and everyone was eating omelets at evening-- drinking the thick black coffee with the hint of spice, listening to quiet guitars-- the tall waiter called Jonathan would come and break at my table-- confide his romantic sorrows,  clink the heavy white mugs-- have a cigarette.  I was a grown woman with my rich life ahead of me... my friends my neighbors-- music was our common denominator... we knew who we were.

There was a keyboard player on Sullivan Street... he played in a famous punk band and he smoked European cigarettes and wore a hat... he was dark and a little murky.  Sometimes he'd invite me into his place which was like a small loft, with a Grand piano.  He'd sit me on the bench beside him and he'd play-- Spanish traditional melodies in minor keys-- then Beethoven and Schubert.  Sometimes I'd play a little shy Chopin for him while he lit another cigarette and smoked thoughtfully.  Sex in those days was so easy-- like the free basket of bread on the dinner table.  But we'd sit there and never touch.  Sometimes he'd talk about his family... he was complicated and smart.   He read to me from Garcia Lorca.  I loved the way he said the name.

Many years ago-- I think my son was newly born-- he died from some terrible cancer.  I don't know why but this New Year's Day I passed the church where his funeral service was held.  I remember how they played some classical music he'd written... maybe he had a wife by then... it seemed a lifetime since I'd sat at his piano those long, late afternoons in the old Village in the New Year, so long ago... a second lifetime now since he was laid to rest in the days of analogue music and realtime longing.   For the first time, on the first of January, I missed someone besides my mother.

The air this January has been warm and heavy.  Even the moon was lying down last night-- wearing the yellow incandescent light of her waning.  I walked home in the early morning among the Christmas trees piled one on top of another on the sidewalk, spent and dry... ready for God knows what.  They've yet to remove the holiday lights from the Park Avenue Mall; it's a confusing time.   I'm trying not to look back, but I'm thinking how Garcia Lorca died at 38.  One afternoon the pianist and I read from Bernarda Alba.  There was a line about how old women can see through walls... we laughed and laughed.  Here I am, in another century, another decade... walking into the new year with the tired blessing of the old moon, missing the pianist, the sad sense of Lorca in my head... maybe even seeing though walls...