Omicronic

The pandemic, in all its variations and behaviors, has again become the enigmatic chart-topper of the year.  It commands a massive global audience-- we participate, we read, we listen-- suffer, weep and throw up our hands.  It has confused performance with spectators, victim with aggressor, mourner with mourned.  Like a biological fugue, it plays on... movement upon movement-- scherzo upon adagio; just when we think we've reached the finale, there is another coda.  

One thing of which it reminds me is the proverbial sound of one hand clapping.  We have experienced the solitude of isolation-- of grief and loss, of quarantine.  Those of us who are comfortable with ourselves have indulged-- even enjoyed and 'caught up' with scrap books, nostalgia, creative projects we'd procrastinated.  We read from our bedside stack of books... we watch old films and try out recipes.  

The couples among us have either flourished or suffered.  Some compete for space or crave silence... some embrace the home-honeymoon scenario. But the performers-- the singers and players and actors-- have taken a major hit.  Yes, they go on their Facebook pages and zoom-entertain... but I notice the audience is dropping off.  Some of the die-hards look anxiously at their live stats as they sit at a piano, counting the drop-ins and regretting the passers-by.  I feel sheepish sneaking away.  But to broadcast myself? I shudder (shutter). 

I've already admitted to indulging in scads of old films-- way too much television, a healthy amount of YouTube concerts and comedy. Reading-- yes, but proportionately more screen time and channel changing.  The old films are always comforting... and seeing New York City as it was seems more compelling than ever.  Pandemic-era shows are immediately recognizable and besides the incessant news, I grow distant.  

Another thing I've noticed is how quickly the brief cultural timestamps seem... as though the expiration dates are closer and closer.  While old films have a timelessness... the newer ones (aside from Titanic and a few ubiquitously recycled classics) seem irrelevant and cheap. Contemporary celebrity is a vast field of edited heads and faces. Modern options have altered them-- morphed some of them into a kind of generic air-brushed idolatry.  Flash back to Ingrid Bergman or Veronica Lake-- Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck.  They are iconic... unmistakable.    

I am the recipient of hundreds of art blogs and online publications.  I browse auctions and museums-- virtual galleries and whatever I can... but see these sadly as imagery with short shelf-lives.  Yes, I'm old and cranky... but I wonder where Jean Michel would be if he'd survived.  A fat, cigar-smoking billionaire with trademarked colors, photographed in LVMH with Beyonce and Jay Z?  I suppose the riddle answers itself because he did not get that far, nor did he relish the pre-millennial changes as they affected his work.  

The irony of covid robbing us of smell and taste is poignant.  Once the Black Lives Matter violence subsided, I feel as though we all fell into a kind of bland stupor.  We fooled ourselves into reverting to old habits-- crowds and concerts, shopping and sports... and now we are again forced to reconsider.  What did we accomplish?  Our country is a divided mess, we are reeling from isolated natural disasters which raise the bar of anxiety.  But mostly we look into our little social media mirrors with unprecedented narcissism, the way the Queen in Snow White was told over and over she was beautiful.  We sing Christmas songs to one another online, we buy gifts and pretend.  

Who is watching?  There used to be movie magazines and celebrity papers for the kings and queens of Hollywood.. but did a local underwear model have millions of 'followers'?  Girls coloring their hair in front of phone cameras and cats parading in costumes... If we added up all the numbers on instagram, what kind of infinity would this be?  I can't help feeling this is all some catastrophic distraction, and covid aside, there is something wrong with everyone. 

Is it me, one of my friends asked on Facebook, after seeing a few of our old rebel heroes posing with political superstars who veto abortion and refuse vaccines and masks?  Where are priorities? And more important, where is science and data?  How is it possible that the Uber-protector America has let us all slip through its medical fingers, despite our obedience to accept not one but three unproven vaccines?  Are we just narcissistic little guinea pigs who post on our social media our immunity-badge which seems to fail us at just the wrong moment?  Is there something they are not telling us, or have we just lost the ability to listen, to read between lines?  

I've been playing, over and over, on my double bass, a few Christmas melodies.  I could fool an amateur into thinking I am proficient on this instrument.  Over and over in my head and my heart, I wish my friends and even my enemies and fellow countrymen a Merry and peaceful Christmas... with tidings of comfort and joy (emphasis on comfort-- repeat 2x)... 

Chelsea Peers

I spent the week looking at art.  There was the New Now sale at Phillips featuring several Afro-American contemporary superstars, complete with a pop-up basketball court--then Swann-- gallery viewings, photography in East Harlem,  and a small Chelsea space which auctions dusty and vintage treasures which smell of old New York. I travel alone.  Masked and mingling, anonymous-- my itinerary included no destination which required a fee or the presentation of mandated documents.  But somehow visuals seem acceptable with a mask. Crowd activities just don't feel right; it's as though everyone is partying and pretending to be 'back' but it's a kind of forced celebration.  I don't trust it.  Actually I don't trust myself these days. I'm liable to speak my post-pandemic mind and one thing that has emerged from the grief and the anger and the Black Lives Matter movement is a kind of naked honesty.   

Most of all I loved the dusty space with the stacks of estate canvases and once-discovered objects whose owners had passed away or been replaced by descendants who value space over things.  I lingered until they were sick of me.  Walking east from 11th Ave. an SIR truck passed.  I waved like an idiot, remembering all those fantastic rehearsals and evenings in studios which felt as though I'd 'arrived' as a musician.  One night there was a private performance of a reinvented Blondie with a tiny audience.  I was privileged.  

From the Highline the profusion of new architectural structures gives 'concrete jungle' a new meaning.  It's kind of fantastically overwhelming and feels nothing like the perpendiculars of tradition. The paths were packed with tourists photographing, taking selfies, shooting video.  Glass windows reveal fishbowl lives of the apparently rich occupants of these new buildings which require plenty of income.  No one seems to care that they are observed; it's a culture of posting and Instagram-- everything is up for public 'grabs' so why bother with curtains or shades? But it's also a visual carnival of shapes and profiles.

In between the new are the remnants-- the stalwarts of old buildings where long-time renters hang on to their little corner of a city which has grown like weeds around the stumps of their abodes.  Thousands of apartments tower over their modest 4-story existence, rob them of sun, expose them to the hordes of walkers trying to wrap their insatiable tourist heads around the spirit of New York.  

For me the greatest 'jolt' is the Hudson Yards... it's absolutely a transplanted vision grafted onto the hips of the Manhattan profile.  It was disorienting and although I've viewed it many times from the river, walking through its plazas and amusements was like being in another state.  I'm not the only person who found the Vessel an architectural failure, but its current status as a sort of empty morgue is more than ironic.  Who knew it would become a living blingy monument to death?  

In the 70's we'd sometimes climb a fence and explore the Yards.  I remember the SVA students had their annual exhibitions there-- warehouses and space-- accommodated performances and films.  One came often to my gigs... invited me shyly to see his work there, among the old tracks and the pitted earth.  It was  a sort of journey into a cavernous house with electric music and crowd-echo-- plastic cups of wine and hundreds of aspiring artists in their Doc Martens and plaid...  I felt 'old'; I was something over 30... and I searched out my painter, in a small dark corner where his work was a heart-stopping revelation... studies in white, like contemporary Vermeers, that took my breath away.  I was speechless.  He was drunk-- kind of a cliché for painters at their own openings... but I tried to convey my utter admiration for his work.  He was young, midwestern-- played drums in an indie band... had this sort of James Dean tormented innocence aura.

A few nights later he rang my doorbell.  People did that in those days.  He brought a bottle of cheap wine, and the painting, wrapped in a rag.  It was so beautiful.  Yes, we listened to Luna I think it was... his friends... and yes, we slept together.  He was passionate and intuitive the way painters were, in those days... I felt I'd been initiated into one of his works.  I felt painted, from the inside.  It was a one-night thing for me-- or maybe one week.  I waved at him across the subway tracks at Columbus Circle years later.  I think he designed windows for Tiffany and that sort of thing.  He was no longer a boy.  I still had my bass.. he threw me a salute and a midwestern kiss with his talented hand with which he now only rarely painted.

Walking through the Yards in late September sunset, Year-of-the-Pandemic + 1, I remembered this... the smell of the train tracks, and the faint aura of turpentine on his skin.  These things do not happen anymore-- meetings in the privacy of dark crowds and old underused warehouses where unknown history has unfolded, and few things were photographed.  The walls and the ceilings and floors have been removed like old debris... moneyed people occupy the piled homes with stainless steel kitchens and marble saunas... with gyms and theaters and adult play spaces.  

There are few urban fairy tales like this now, things that happen only in utter privacy and the dark.  Certainly not in this ironically masked culture when everything else is laid out in online platforms and Instagram posts.  And the painting--- someone stole it from my home one night; I gave a party-- I think I mentioned the tragic story in another blog.  One of my guests... put it under their coat, slipped it out the open door... I hope it is loved, wherever it is.  Occasionally I imagine I will see it at an auction, in a thrift shop or gallery... but in the context of this culture, it is a small thing.  It would surely be overlooked.  And as old as I have become these days... as poor and as unacknowledged, I felt kind of young walking through the sad newness of this architectural Disneyworld-- the plazas and the courts-- the arenas and playgrounds...  I am initiated... I am masked... but I am seeing.  I am experienced, I answer the Hendrix question.  Here we are now; entertain us.

Ring, ring goes the bell...

When I was in elementary school they began bussing children in from other  districts to promote integration.  The new kids were black, so we all knew it was a racial not a cultural thing.  They were different-- a little less fearful of teachers; they brought attitude in-- not because it was inherent but maybe magnified because they didn't ask to ride a bus every morning and afternoon.  I loved this one girl in my class- Darcel.  She had cats-eye glasses and a big butt and strutted around like a queen.  She encouraged my bad behavior and classroom antics.  I wanted her approval; I got into trouble in Home Economics and they called in my parents.

By junior high we were pretty much integrated and adjusted.  There was a certain level of tension-- it was the 60's and civil rights issues were at the top of social studies discussions.  Radical intellectuals were questioning policy, human rights and justice.  To corral cafeteria energy, they let us dance; the black kids had a whole style and ruled at this... on the turntable they played 'Shotgun' over and over and kids went wild.  To cool off the energy, they began some program where we'd have to sit in an auditorium and eat lunch while they showed classic films-- things like Kidnapped or The Count of Monte Christo or even black and white films like Arsenic and Old Lace.  Kids threw sandwiches at the screen and the room smelled stale and 'meaty' like burped up salami.  It was not conducive to eating and for some reason the word quarantine yesterday conjured up that memory like food poisoning.

Scenes like this are beginning to blur; some of the sensations are so vivid I know they happened-- at times I can look down and see my plaid wool kilt or my blue corduroy skirt underneath my looseleaf notebook.  We didn't have backpacks; there was a bag with a drawstring for gym clothes but most kids like me piled their books and held them together with a rubber strap.  The black and white films made no sense; they weren't even funny and most of them were shown in 20-minute installments in the course of a week.  They were depressing and irrelevant the way I suppose movies like Butch Cassidy looked to my own son.

At some point I began tutoring kids in a less fortunate district where test levels were way below standard.  I was assigned a tiny girl named Doreen who was repeating First Grade for a third term.  She was so little I theorized her mother had lied about her age just to get the child-care kindergarten provided.  Things were different then; working mothers were often overwhelmed.  Doreen was extremely shy and could not seem to connect with alphabet.  I read stories to her and she was very attentive.  She'd lean up on me the way kids do and put her fingers in her mouth.  I can't read, Miss Amy, she would say matter-of-factly... they forced the kids to address me with a title.

No one had ever read to her.  No books in her house... no stories, no fairy tales... Read to me about Singerella, she'd say.  She loved Cinderella.. over and over.  I made little Cinderella flash cards-- brought in Colorforms.. but she did not connect any letters with characters... with things.  She had a block.  Still, I was determined-- and I looked forward to our sessions-- the sound of her little deep voice was hypnotic and monotonal.  Her little body leaning against me made me feel responsible and mothery.   She was clean in a way-- her hair was neatly separated and done in a multitude of tiny braids with plastic barrettes... in the straight scalp partings her Mom rubbed Vaseline, she told me.  But her scent-- it was as though she lived over a restaurant and the ghost of old food had permanently permeated her clothing and skin.

Every day I held the cards... gave little consonant hints with my mouth.. but she refused to think and just mimicked whatever I did.  Frustrating... not lollipops, nor barrettes, nor books enticed her.
One day I stayed after school for a meeting with all the tutors-- I watched her Mom pick her up and smack her as she put her in the car.  She just sat there in the seat making that face she made, like she was clucking her tongue.  Black lives matter, I thought, in different words... but I was useless for anything except getting her out of her humiliating classroom for an hour every day.  Of course I had no clue her mother had six other kids, a delinquent husband and a limited education herself.

Today on a crosstown bus a whole group of kids was on the way home from some kind of school program; they had uniforms and book bags and all of them had removed their masks and were carrying on in the back so it was hard not to laugh... they were about 10 years old...  where had they been, in this pandemic... summer school?  Was there air conditioning? Were they especially smart, especially slow?  Impossible to tell... but that aura of being released from a confining day was unmistakable.

Classroom learning for me was the model.  It was boring, repetitive, claustrophobic... incestuous and unfair... but that was the deal.  God forbid my parents would have had to home school me-- they had no patience and my Mom wasn't very smart.  Except she read to us-- Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz... she was a wonderful reader even when I was old enough to correct her pronunciations... I loved the evening chapter-installments.  There were also TV programs-- Mr. Wizard and even primitive interactive things where you'd stick a plastic screen on the set and draw with a crayon... but most learning centered on a class, facing forward, fixed desks in closely-set rows.  Tall in back, small in front.

I think about little Doreen-- she'd be about 57 now.  Jesus.  I'm sure she eventually learned to read; we'd finally mastered the letter 'D'.  In these times, I think Beyonce would play 'Singerella' in her little head... she'd have dreams and maybe even a tablet with youtube and Disney.  I can still remember her little-girl smell and the way she fidgeted on my lap-- couldn't get close enough like a sad dog.  Maybe she remembers me; I wasn't allowed to give her any gifts although I wanted to ... I wanted to take her home and keep her there and have her sit on my lap while my Mom read to us girls.  Then I graduated... met brilliant, strong black women... was taught by some of them... asked them about the Doreens and they shook their head and spoke about racism and cultural inequality.

Up in Harlem kids are bored-- playgrounds are still locked up... they are hanging out in clusters and seem relatively unafraid... but what will become of their classrooms-- the closeness and the physical
experience of people-- of lunchrooms, of sharing and trading and touching-- the covered mouths and masked noses-- singing and dancing and tasting? It's just so harsh.   My Mom used to warn us how cigarettes would stunt our growth... but all bets are off now.  People get used to things; dogs wag their tail when their owners put on a mask-- it means a walk...most seem grateful for phase 3-- it beats phase 1... and even prisoners adjust to lock-up... I guess... but we are all prisoners here... we are looking inward and outward and we are not happy; we are equally deprived and stripped of some freedom-- we are the skeletons in our own closets... facing down some kind of punishment some of us do not deserve-- a sentence without trial.  I'm not suffering; I'm old, I've had my fun, as the song goes... but for those who have not... the children... their lives matter most of all.

Juneteenth Fireworks

North of here tonight someone is setting off fireworks... from the rock ledge beside the Great Hill in Central Park I could hear the dull sound of small explosions like distant gunshot, with a dampened echo at sunset.  In between was that sax player... so hard to place him geographically-- on a hillside, a rooftop, in a courtyard... I can hear his progress since the beginning of the pandemic.  He is beginning to play.

New York City is becoming accustomed once again to demonstrations-- to noise in general.  The spring was deadly quiet, as though everyone held their breath between sirens.  Now there is anger, and buoyant energy-- the physical passions of the young are manifesting in the activity they repressed so long.  Boxers are working out in the park-- packs of bike and scooter-riders pass like hurricane-winds with enough velocity to blow someone's hat off.

On the streets there is chanting-- pockets of organized marchers in every neighborhood: they walk, they shout-- they sing... they let off energy and coordinate long-brewing discontent in focused choruses.  Something is happening here... the police have taken a step back and decide to pick their battles.  Illegal fireworks, until someone gets burned, is not one of them.  For people like me, with wide open windows and undated imagination, these are the sounds of a quiet war.

I watched the film Selma tonight on television; the scope of my life-- a kind of cyclical deja-vu-- became clear as I watched not the Hollywood version, but the actual vintage footage at the end.  I was young in those days, but old enough to march and protest and learn.  Growing up in New York City, we had plenty of exposure to racial (in)equality and viewed the South as a kind of anachronistic anomaly until our teachers and newsreels made these things clear.  I went to High School with the children of Whitney Young, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee... I served as class Vice President with two black fellow officers and an Asian woman as Treasurer.   I was proud.  This was the 1960's, when segregation and persecution was still the norm in some states.

It occurred to me today that I was racially 'privileged'.  As a teenager I studied Afro-American dance with a man named Rod Rodgers who I now realize treated me with incredible sensitivity and understanding; my choir director was a black man named Norman Brooks who was extraordinarily cultured and knowledgeable, who imparted to me an appreciation and a foundation of music which crossed all boundaries- all ethnicities, all colors and all centuries.  My art teacher Mr. Blackburn showed me how to look at multi-dimensions; this did not come naturally to me.  My mentors in the three passions of my life were not white, and not one of them seemed to resent or punish me for my color.

Today a poet-friend who is a black man from Brooklyn called to make sure I am okay.  He read to me one of his extraordinary poems which could have been preached from a Harlem pulpit.  It resonated; it is easy to make cliches of these things that happen-- the soundbites from the George Floyd murder and all the recent indignities which can become watered down as symbols or catchwords.  But the violence-- the damage-- the terror and the brutality-- these do not abate.

In an election year, we must be careful of the way our politicians 'spin' these things.  Watching Selma I was reminded of the image created by the Presidency at that time-- a southern man with some sophistication and respect, but nowhere near the proper mindset of a perpetrator of true equality.  He cut a deal, as politicians do.  The facts and dates of our history books do not always reflect the truth.  Today we have something of a perfect storm for our leaders-- not for a 'win' or rehashed policy, but an opportunity for progress-- for change, for a step forward.

Coming east along the Pinetum path last night was a group of young black men and women preparing for Juneteenth-- chalking names along the pathways.  Each was responsible for a list of some 40 or 50 names--- there were hundreds-- black men who died in violent crimes, killed unjustly by policemen, prison guards-- those deemed to protect us.  The litany, as I walked and read aloud, was a poem itself-- more killing and penetrating than any of Martin Luther King's memorable speeches from Selma which were long familiar to me.

Across the city in nearly every park and Plaza the asphalt and tile is marked everywhere by colorful messages and memorials and reminders.  Some are well-crafted and masterly; but for the most part, they seem childlike and basic.  Unlike graffiti, they are fragile and will disappear after the first heavy rainfall which will mercifully hold off for another day or two.  On Father's Day, we will remember those who were no longer able to be fathers.

The soft rumble of fireworks continues in these early morning hours-- the temporal 'nest' in which I find myself perched most nights, waiting to hatch-- nurturing old memories, birthing songs and ideas-- and trying to process the devastation of the last few months--- the deaths, the unprecedented paralysis of modern life-- the fear, the lost trust between one another.  Perhaps a kind of war is coming-- an upheaval and a painful sloughing off of all the hatred and misunderstanding.  The masks remind us we cannot tell much from a facade-- they separate us, as they make us look uniformed... We must look deeper; in the end we all bleed, we all march, we have the hidden capacity to heal one another, if only we knew how.

As-salted

It's been a cranky week for Writerless... annoying editing setbacks, difficulties transferring analogue files... the older I get, the harder it is to move on from technology to technology.  Things get technically easier, but across the board, quality suffers.  Nothing like home-made pie, reel-to-reel recordings, dark-room printed photographs... I found one someone made of my son as an adolescent-- it was like a cross between a Calvin Klein ad and a Rebel Without a Cause handbill. Shot on the old roof of my building which is now divvied up among the rich for their air conditioning outboard equipment, it was timeless-- powerful... it had a vibe.  Things today don't seem to have a vibe.  Go pick up your new KAWS Uniqlo T-shirt... be a walking cartoon ad...  I see the same tattoos on people, over and over.

Last weekend was my 45th college reunion.  Did I go?  Have I ever? I am a lifetime committed absentee.  But Thursday and Friday night I played (again) at the (44th?) Max's Kansas City Reunion Extravaganza.  It was in a different venue this time which didn't quite feel right... besides, the bar portion of the club where you enter is a late-night hang-out for the young nouveau LES high-renters who have only just discovered the eighties.  Hardly anyone over 30; as opposed to the Max's performers and audience on the 'venue' side who were pretty much 50 and up.  On the way in I pass 2 young couples engaged in a little drunken hysterical repartee and this tall blonde spontaneously throws her drink in the air-- maybe unintentionally... christens me everywhere, except fortunately my old motorcycle boots shield me from the broken glass as it shattered on the hard floor.  So she looks at me-- points... Are you gonna buy me a drink?  I let her have it, verbally.  Are you going to buy me a new shirt and jeans, I ask her? Getting into full-armed Princeton bitch mode... I stared her down accusatively...until she backed off... but it changed my 'vibe' (that word again) and that was on her.

After a week of gigs--- subways, walking-- not a single purchased drink or bag of chips--- I earned $50.  Yes.  That is the deal.  Either you play in tribute bands, club dates, do Broadway... or have a job. I remember way back as a young bassist someone in a punk band told me I played like I had a job.  I did-- have a job, that is.  If you wanna really play, he said-- quit your day job.  So I did.  He was right... there's a difference... but looking around the room at the Max's reunion, nearly everyone played like they had a job--- or a husband.. or a trust fund, or an inheritance... except the few of us who stood around without drinks (for playing for no money, you get 50% off at the bar which is still out-of-reach) waiting to play like our lives depend on it (they do).   Of course the few bands who were successful from the old days were not there (Blondie, Television, etc.)  Or passed on (Lou Reed, etc.)... or decided to have a job, become a doctor or lawyer.

Anyway,  Saturday I worked all day at my friend's gallery to help make my monthly apartment payment.  I had no sleep, no lunch... some free coffee... but at 6 PM on the way home I had $2 and besides a hot dog, there isn't much you can do with it.  Union Square market is so pricey... no samples out at that hour, stands are packed up for the day and despite the advice from the HRA that you use your foodstamps at greenmarkets, they want your credit not benefit card.  Then I see the Martin's Pretzel truck.. loading up... remember they have those $1 plastic baggies of broken pieces... get a little energy buzz... until the vendor guy says to me-- nah.. no more... all packed up... except in a barrel waiting for loading are a bunch of bags that look about to become trash... How much, I ask?  $5 he says.  $5... for a small sandwich bag of crumbs.  I look sheepish... How much you got, he asks?  I show him the contents of my poor wallet... $2... okay, he says, as though he is splitting his steak dinner with me and while I eagerly tear into the bag because I am on the verge of passing out, he points his finger in my face and says... like you would scold a misbehaving child... Remember that, next week.  I wanted to spit the pretzel at him... they are stale and hard enough to break a tooth-- another unaffordable... but he had my $2 and I'm not that stupid.  I had no choice except put him in that mental box with the drink-spiller of the previous night.

On to the 4 train which is backed up and local and messed up and everyone is cranky.  There is a pre-Puerto Rican day crowd and demonstrators from another parade and the car is packed.  I am sitting next to a fat asshole in a tank top with cheap tattoos and shorts and he has his phone angled so he seems to be photographing the strange-looking crotch of the guy crammed in over us.  He gives me a sideways look and shuts his phone down.  We are stuck at 28th St... and a girl across the car seems to be freaking out... she is cursing under her breath and scrunching her face and slapping her knees... but she is a knockout... maybe 27... black hair, pale eyes... white skin and this look of punk exoticism from another planet.  So the fat asshole is maybe trying to flirt with her... and he asks.. What's your problem? She answers-- and she is tough... I'm pregnant and I'm sick and I need to get home.  Me..I offer her a pretzel... but she is getting into it with the asshole who calls her a cunt and other things...and she stands up and starts ragging on him... until some crazy old woman (my age?) takes the stage waving her handmade flyers and shouting at us all because we are cruel meat eaters.

Anyway, the fat asshole is now standing up in his shorts which are disturbingly short and enough to make us all sick.... and I gently grab the pregnant girl and walk her down to the end of the car.  It's not worth it, I say. You have to protect your baby...  which I can't really see, because honestly she doesn't look pregnant to me... but who cares?  Anyway, after a few minutes of the fat guy ranting about women some hefty black girl built like a linebacker walks over to him and screams in his face and makes a fist and all hell is about to break loose but the guy realizes he's like a Trump supporter in a small crowd of democrats and Gay Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter supporters and he sits down... then a young black kid with dreads goes over and rags on him, too, calls him a mother----er and c---sucker and other things... and the car is cheering him on... but the pregnant girl and I are by the rear car door and the train is finally moving and now her eyes get red and she is worn down and starts weeping on me.   I remember how a train accident caused me to lose a baby once... and think... here.. this could be the one, the girl that has my baby's donated organs-- and she is really hanging onto me now-- letting it go--- and here we are, like a religious pastiche of Mother and Weeping unidentified Daughter...  and finally it is my stop and she says she'll be okay.

The black guy says he'll make sure she gets off safe in East Harlem... and now I am on my way home where I can strategize the $1.82 left on my benefit card until Tuesday and I'm nearly safe.  I'm weeping myself, wet with the pregnant girl's tears which could be DNA-simpatico to my own, the taste of the stale salt pretzel on my tongue like a bad communion wafer, and the stench of that spilled drink still in my nose because I have on the same old jeans.

The phone rings as I come in and it's an ex-boyfriend driving back from Nashville, lying his ass off as usual about how he misses me and about a phantom divorce except he doesn't know I know he's not so secretly married and he makes an excuse he has to fix something in the car when it's another call from his wife, because these stalking spouses have radar for when their men call ex-girlfriends...  but then I turn the ringer off... and I remember it was he that took that great shot of my son on the roof... kind of a good souvenir of a bad relationship... and I also realize someone found my missing guitar strap and the evening sunset is just so warm and the city is almost quiet up in my hood... just the car radios and the Puerto Rican flag wavers yelling as they pass...  and I can still play bass like I don't have a job, which I don't, except for playing bass... and for now I can close my front door and rule the world. Que vaya con Dios, I pray to my pregnant daughter-- another orphaned dream in the urban mix.