Family Ties

Crossing the uptown park today, it occurred that I had neglected my regular walks and visits.  The Reservoir at sunset-- the usual tourists and locals waiting for the golden minutes to coat buildings with rare urban incandescence-- and a tiny jet trail in the sky, like a distant reminder of the newest American war. The water still covered with a clean-ish snow and ice-layer... one wondered where the ducks were hiding.  I'd last seen them squawking and flapping during the New Year's Eve fireworks... trying to process the fear from what they undoubtedly perceived as an attack... sounding a group alarm-- a warning. 

Difficult to process that we are stepping into the third month of this year... the way the future seems accelerated and indifferent, as though it already belongs to someone else and we, the elders, are being ever more quickly left behind. I'm not quite ready to admit that my February has poured its diminished sand into the March glass which is thankfully one of the longer ones.

Just a week ago the geese seemed agitated and aware of the pending blizzard; more than metereologist predictions I trust bird wisdom; after all, in an Olympic season, they have broken all distance and speed records with their migratory skill. 

Weather issues kept us from outdoor rituals and had me watching more of the Milan games than I anticipated. The rewards and heartbreaks of these uber-athletes are not just entertainment. The best among them have a sort of super-power-- a fixation on a personal goal that transcends parameters.  Others have a kind of competitive energy-- occasionally one sees a speed skater look back, the way racehorses and animals do not. There is team spirit, but rarely a tie in these games.

Personally I've never had that competitive edge, although I recently realized, being the second daughter, that my arrival was the single most psychologically affecting factor in my older sister's life. I never quite assessed my own value, the way she undoubtedly knew every measurement, grade, achievement, failure and bank balance. I gave up plenty of allowance, treats, gifts... just to retain her good will.  It was an endless quest which both my cousins and good friends were quick to notice.  My mother, too, often whispered in my ear ('don't tell your sister'), knowing her nature.  

I have girlfriends, as an older woman, whose friendship is everything for me.  Among them, a few whose subtle lack of trust and critical eye betray childhood indoctrination with this archetypal jealousy, for want of a better word. It's Biblical-- it's Classical... Shakespearean and Fairy Tale subject. It's motivating for some-- they've amassed fortunes and risen to the top of their corporate structures.  For me, it has stained what I would have wanted to keep as a sacred bond-- like ducks and geese, caring for one another.  In my world, it began as the simple coveting of things, progressed to tattletales and toxic narratives culminating in manipulating our aged parents and forging a will which deprived my son and me of all due material inheritance.

Does this make people feel better? Is cheating, lying, scheming, declaring war a means to some kind of inner peace?  It is not.  It is a self-consuming fire that burns and at worst motivates people to become Dateline-worthy murderers and felons. It is maybe an accident of simple birth order... or a true sociopathic embedded obsession.  Over and over I listen to our self-Midasized President who has amassed the largest pot of any previous political office-holder. He can't stop comparing himself to his predecessor-- to downgrading and maligning every Biden-authored program or decision. Will it ever be enough, for a man whose insidious ambition should disqualify him from any of the honors he craves?  

I remember reading The Bad Seed as a small girl and worrying. Watching the Olympic ceremonies-- the medal counting and the bestowing of these symbols of greatness (some of them breaking, ironically)... what would our lives be without these competitions... the lists of bank accounts and billionaires, the excessive piling of assets? It's a little alarming.  Even literature-- poetry-- music... must be 'qualified' and categorically numbered.

As the second-born, I came into the world as 'less'.  I would always be younger, less privileged, less skilled.. at least through childhood. I played the game-- I hung back, I let her have the yellow and green M&Ms and the extra brownie. I covered for her indiscretions and bad love affairs.... at my own cost. I remember sitting in the back seat of a 1960's Firebird freezing in my nightgown and robe while my sister had some kind of sexual encounter with a married gym teacher in his toolshed. Did I divulge the cause of my bronchial infection and school absences? No-- I non-judgmentally indulged my Sister-master.  I might still-- today-- if I weren't absolutely prohibited by friends and other family. I would watch my smaller purse open, the pictures come off the wall... the never-satisfied hunger of some deep deranged desire drain my resources.  And still... I feel whole... I feel sorry for the perpetrator.  Not the President... but my sister, who has a bit of that side-eyed bitterness and deep resentment.  It's unfixable.

There are no more disturbing tragedies than the ones in our own family-- no worse missed opportunities of love and protection and alliance.  It is no wonder the world cannot seem to balance itself, to tolerate and allow, to disagree and smile.  I've heard the moon will turn blood-red Tuesday.  Tonight it seemed so innocent and slightly diminished, like a transparent spot on the still-blue eastern sky at sunset.  I rely on her sisterhood-- from the night sky through the Firebird windscreen to her recovery from the pending eclipse-- surely one of a dwindling number I will eventually not total.

Dollars and Scents

I'm reading 2666.. the mammoth Bolaño which is divided into sections. Currently I'm in the hellish panoramic depths of a chaotic and distinctly Mexican criminal investigation into the serial killings of young women.  In these times, there was no electronic trail to follow and these women-- some of them actually girls-- go missing and turn up mutilated, raped, abused.  It's compelling and disturbing reading. Somehow it mixes in my brain with the Nancy Guthrie mystery. But the relentless sequence of bodies.. it takes days for their absence to be logged, and since most of them are poor working women in the dubious culture of Santa Teresa, the news is neither reliable nor nationally remarkable.

So I'm not yet sure how I will process the whole of this novel.  His writing is luminous and his narratives are compelling and readable. I miss Bolaño with a personal sense of loss and grief.  These dark people who have left us a world that is both startling and comforting... the characters remain with us, are us.  My intimate friends have become the ones in these books... the authors a kind of paternal presence.  They are there for me-- they do not change. By their means, I see through myself--' As Though Through Glass', my 2015 collection was titled (followed by the (implied) denouement phrase 'I watched you shatter').

In a dark place today, I feel as though I am witnessing the crumbling of a dynasty, of a civilization... the crooked mistakes of what one once saw as progress undermining us like massive fissures and portentous seismic adjustments.  I am seeing Jeffrey Epstein as the ultimate modern Superhero or Villain.. it doesn't seem to matter anymore.  With the seven sins as his private constitution, he manipulated the world, preying on contemporary addictions to greed, false senses of power-- massive money, schemes and games.  I am relying on this story to bring down the great web which seems to have entangled and entrapped our better intentions. I also realize there is too much at stake here... and not everyone implicated is as simple as the Prince Andrew fall-from-grace. But something like the financial crisis feels as though it's unraveling in a dark background. Pay great attention to the man/men behind the curtain. For way too long we've had our heads in the sands of the internet and phone-distractions

Lately at 4 AM I pick up a guitar and try to remember who I am. Songs come like prayers-- so many of them commemorated old friends or times.  Occasionally my old torch-lamp flickers-- the one I picked up on a corner dump in Trenton in 1972-- it still belongs, the way some things don't...and blinks as though the spirits of Alan and others long-gone are my audience.  When I was studying art I had to give a talk on the Giacometti sculpture at MOMA-- The Palace at 4 AM... I remember I went a little too deeply into the psychological space... it still resonates, these empty personal rooms of an artist's vision.  Like so many things from an analogue past it became part of my private architecture, my iconography.

Among the ever-increasing numbers of disposable emails today was one advertising a new 'pale pink' apartment complex somewhere in Brooklyn.  I once lived in a pale pink building which seemed to be the unintentional outcome of some kind of concrete facing of an old factory on the East Side of Manhattan. Pink is not an enticing attribute for an urban building. I was never 'that girl' who wore pink-- not even the rock-and-roll kind. Maybe for some lost character from a Sex in the City episode or a Barbie fan... but today... perhaps the color of diluted blood. 

From out of some blue, today, came the opening line of a William Gaddis novel... 'Money?, in a voice that rustled'.. something like that. Written today, it occurred, there would be no question mark. How innocent the days of The Bonfire of the Vanities seem.  The enormity of instant wealth-- mergers and venture capital...cryptocurrency fortunes... the bloated corporate banks... the new American economy of tilt. The whitewashing of money, the normalization of evil. 

Often I walk down the street and identify the smells of luxury... well-dressed women with pricey perfumes that have become part of a compulsory culture of scent.... and then there is the cheap cologne of debt which hovers... sometimes indistinguishable, but loud.  I don't know how these people perceive their own flesh... we have become so accustomed to customizing what we are given... with money one can dispense with unmentionables, or acquire newer versions-- teeth, hair, skin... we can ski on broken limbs. There is progress here, but for whom? 

In the 1970's my friend worked for Halston.  She used to give me samples and gift me their uniquely scented bath talc.. it was subtle and a little earthy.  I loved it. Obsolete now, a nostalgic friend found a container on eBay, from Canada... gifted it to me.  It's not the same... it is like an AI version of the stuff, we both agreed, after a month-long wait, paperwork, and an import tariff of more than the cost of the box. A contemporary disappointment.. a vintage fraud. Besides, talc is now an illegal substance, I think. 

I will go back to Bolaño who understood women although he did not live to see a decent Mexican President and the political perversion of the American dream.  The scents of death and rotting corpses in a hot climate not quite as bad as the stench of a rotting America. As an oddity and closet rebel, it was maybe never my dream, but it is currently becoming my nightmare.