Memory, Pane

At the East Harlem grocery store where I often shop there's a boy working there... a high school boy. He was huge-- medically obese, it is-- but gradually, over the course of the year, he's been put on weight-loss drugs and he's been shrinking.  By summer he was at some 'Ideal' weight, ironically the name of the market.  His face-- from a bloated, swollen balloon-- had become so handsome it was hard not to stare... utterly chiseled and beautiful.  I commented... he always gives me a silent greeting... on how completely transformed and wonderful he looks. It's extraordinary-- like a Cinderella thing.  The manager moved him closer to the front glass doors, as though like a 'host' he brought business in.

But lately, reminiscent of one of those reverse spells, or that movie where the De Niro character becomes communicative and intelligent and then reverts to catatonic incoherence, he has begun to grow again.  Oh no, I want to say,  because I relish seeing his beautiful face while I check out.  But it's becoming more and more apparent-- as though he accomplished something and now he's going back to his old silhouette.  Not much I can do or say... he knows, I know.  He could still play football, although I suspect he doesn't.

Seeing my friends age in this culture, it shocks me to see the facility with which people transform themselves... most for the good, or for what they think is improvement.  I mean-- I remember that age-- post-adolescence, maybe... when suddenly you see yourself-- a photograph or a reflecting shop-window-- and you think.. oh my, how did this happen?  Like the ugly duckling/swan syndrome... only some of us actually fall in love with our own image, or the power it creates, and tip to the edge of vanity or even narcissism.  It makes growing old that much tougher-- saying goodbye to our preferred version, like a kind of death.

On the rare occasions I confront a mirror it's near-impossible now to find that innate beauty I once took for granted. It's also difficult, at certain 'edges' of age, to recognize friends and neighbors.  An article recently proclaimed that one doesn't age gradually-- that there are two critical points at which one 'turns'. Of course there are variables.  

At the nursing home where I visit my neighbor there's a woman who sits at the threshold of her room in a wheelchair. She's quite old but her hair is professionally maintained and enviably luxurious.  While completely demented, she has the mannerisms of someone glamorous and elegant. Her hands move like birds; she often holds a towel which she twists and waves like a scarf... it's fascinating. What is going through her head? Somewhere she is in her prime, preening for an event, or attending a dinner party.  She literally bats her eyes occasionally, and then she is 'gone'... lost in some reverie.

More than my physical attributes, I worry about my brain.  It is apparent to me that I 'lose' names or titles or search for words with much more frequency than some years back.  My mother had a form of dementia that reduced her world to a kind of slow 8-ball, in my analysis, where occasional phrases would appear in the small octagonal window of her brain.  Most of these made no sense when she repeated or responded to their cues.  

Christmas windows have always been the highlight of the season for me.  Across the street growing up was a building with a large paned picture-window through which I could watch the family congregate or play cards or relax. They were Italian... they had a melodious four-syllable name in contrast to our American one... and they decorated for holidays with great fervor. Their backyard was filled with devotional marble statues of saints and angels and at Christmas the nativity scene spread across the front lawn. But each child-- ditto the neighbors, like me-- was allowed one of the 'panes' to decorate-- with Glass Wax-- you could stencil or draw or put glitter and streamers... the result was both garish and fantastic.  I'd wave to them at night... and pretend the window panes were a living advent calendar.  

This year I'm wavering-- decorate or not? I'm not fooling anyone here... I entertain rarely, and although I love my tree, it's an ordeal to get it in and take it out. Still, I feel as though I've let someone down, in a way. I watch these neighbors and friends desperately alter their faces and bodies.. for what?  To live the life they want?  To be the person they were in the 1980's now at this moment?  Some of them pay therapists-- even still, at the edge of 70-- to help them. They read books and hire personal trainers and visit estheticians... and still they seem to be missing something crucial. 

At this point, I can no longer really manage to renovate my apartment; like old bodies, we replace what is broken and essential... but to imagine I am anything besides ordinary suddenly seems pretentious. It is the content-- what I have placed here, what I collected-- that matters, as the content of my aging brain seems to increase in importance as its volume no doubt diminishes.

As a girl, I'd go across the street on Christmas afternoon to sample the exotic Italian edibles-- huge cookie-like cakes in the shape of animals with eggs inside, sometimes... angels and baby-Jesuses.  But being there was not nearly as enchanting as watching through the panes. That felt magical. 

Last night I watched The Great Beauty, an absolute masterpiece from Paolo Sorrentino. While my friends talk almost exclusively about the past, the film reminded me that there is nothing inherently terrible about nostalgia... as long as it comes without dementia, which for my mother was like a boat from which she could no longer gauge the distance to any shore. 

Things have surely gone missing-- people, some memories, undoubtedly, although as an exercise I lie in bed at night and name the students in the rows of desks from my third grade class, or all of my science teachers, chronologically.  I can no longer name the fifty-three Trollope novels I read in the 1990's.  We change, we atrophy, we grow... our past has so far outweighed our future it is like an ocean surrounding the tiny rock-island we are.  Personally, I have fallen in love with this life... whatever it becomes, what it has been, the enormity of what I have not seen, will never see. I was genuinely grateful on Thanksgiving for what I received versus what I gave.  It was enough, and God willing I will continue onward into the full holiday season, tree or no tree, to embrace the new personal analytic of being more observer than observed.

Into the Mystic

Tuesday evening I went to a lecture on Mysticism. Actually it was sort of a book tour by an author who'd written on the topic.  Guesting on the panel was a well-known scholar and Medievalist who was there to generate a kind of Socratic discussion because the author himself seemed a little quagmired.  The Medievalist was skilled as a teacher-- the way she spoke in clear language, the way she addressed the packed audience-- was masterful and charismatic.  I remembered why I loved school-- the classes, sitting at the feet of professors, receiving information and ideas, and perpetually turning my intellectual world upside down.

So for the first forty-five minutes I was in a kind of familiar heaven... recalling things I'd studied-- old texts, narratives... saints and martyrs.  This had been my post-college major; I'd travelled, kneeled in old churches throughout Europe in search of understanding. The medieval centuries were harsh, punctuated by passionate religious sentiment-- and also by wars, disease, cruelty and torture. Fathoming these times was a challenge... the mystics and visionaries were both celebrated and punished. I also remembered consulting St Gregory... how the Bible stories had four meanings-- the historical, the allegorical, the moral and then the mystical. It was part of study, interpretation.  It was assumed.

The celebrated author speaking was also a 'philosopher', a designation which makes me squirm. These people seem less necessary in the present; they often pontificate on about pop culture-- sports, fashion, football, human weakness and addiction. They manipulate facts and maneuver narratives-- kind of like psychotherapy.  I have a hard time with this.  The issue of feminism crept in, as it does... especially since the larger number of stigmatics were women.  There was a hint of sexualizing... it's trendy... and then this conclusion about the outcome of 17th-century Mysticism being music... Bach. The author began to reference classic rock... at this point I looked at the shelves behind me, tried to plot my escape. 

Maybe I misunderstood-- missed one of the leaps of faith and took a wrong turn.  Maybe after weeks of relentless political rhetoric I am hostile and defensive.  And I've been a musician most of my life-- a passionate devotee of everything from medieval chants to Prog rock. Composers often dream melodies and songs; I do... but is this mysticism? Music transforms one-- it opens us, makes us fall in love. What would cinema be without music? I read once Scorsese spent eighty percent of his Mean Streets budget securing rights to the songs he felt were essential to the film. It is the very soundtrack of our lives. But mysticism?  More like a kind of unique personal recipe, I imagine, where inspiration supplies the ingredients.

Anyway, as I begin my annual fall alumni interviews, I wonder if I would fare well at a university in these times-- when song lyrics are taught in poetry classes, when CBGB's and NYC street culture are the stuff of Master's theses. I just suddenly felt a little duped.  I came expecting some revelation and instead was led via a circuitous intellectual musical-chairs to some pop-culture home base.  Scanning the shelves nearest to my chair was comforting; I'd read many of these books-- they were old friends, some in new packaging, but familiars. My heart opened. 

Back in college I'd had one or two low-key mystical experiences... things coming together that had been broken... a bird one night in my little college room which was absolutely sealed and locked. I craved these things, some extra-terrestrial epiphany at a time when my sexuality was blossoming and my brain being primed.  In art history classes I was drawn to these depictions of martyrs who were torn and penetrated.  It was mesmerizing; at the same time I became acquainted with drug use and friends who experimented with physical challenges and extremes like cutting.  I suppose today we have the gym-obsessed body-builders; it's become all too common to distort one's living anatomy. 

On the way home from the event, I started to think about my neighbor who has grown svelte and fashionable since her daily injections of Ozembic.  I saw her with her dog in her Prada... she's begun to look positively malnourished... her cheeks are sallow and sunken.  Oh no, I want to tell her.. you've gone too far... but I don't mention that she looks perhaps self-stigmatized. Instead I compliment her on her shoes which cost more than an average month's rent in Manhattan. Maybe two months.  

At home I took a couple of books from the shelves, as I often do at night... like a promise for tomorrow... and somehow had this flashback of Van Morrison.. Into the Mystic... it must have been 1970... I was barely 17.... a senior boy came into my college dorm room-- he was so handsome, with his long golden hair and his steel-blue eyes.  I had just picked up my copy of Moondance... he heard it playing from the hallway.. and by the last track, he had coaxed me into a slow dance with him... one of those magical romantic moments when I had no idea who I was or what I was doing but the moment carried me off.  

Here I was, free-associating, contracting the huge spiritual concept of mysticism into a shortened and altered form of the word, and a pop song... so maybe the panel authors were not so wrong.. and maybe the whole  meaning has somehow merged with this vernacularized version of whatever 'transports' us. At the time I remember imagining a sea called Mystic... the future... everything I was about to know. 

Thank goodness for these privileged moments-- me now, more than fifty years on, looking back on one of those heart-piercing instants, along with its indelible soundtrack... a kind of personal spirituality. What a thing is memory-- which connects us to ourselves, to our wounds and our blisses, our love and our sickness, as though these things were painted, as though filmed.  The eternal which will end with us... no matter how many posts or photos there are... only we can reach back into ourself... to browse our own long journey-- without books or Google or the internet.. and so precisely recall and revive the ignitions.  Amen.