Whistler's Mother

I watched way too much television this weekend-- binged on Black History Month documentaries some of which I'd seen before but which seemed to have new currency.  The Central Park Five film was particularly upsetting... a different variety of police brutality and racism in the 1980's version of city.  As a runner, then, I remember identifying with the jogger;  as a runner, now... waking up morning after morning to a curtailed life, and as a mother... well, I wept for the young men whose lives were amputated and sabotaged.  I hope they've used their settlements well.  

Waking up these alarm-less mornings, I find myself in a half-state of self-identification-- calculating dates, days of the week... marking another strike on my virtual wall of days without a gig.   Unintentionally I often sift through sands of old mornings; the bottom of the proverbial hourglass is rich with these-- heavy-- and to isolate one or two-- well, it is a choice-- it is difficult and leads inevitably down a path of some autobiographical anecdote.  I can't imagine sitting in prison without tools to express and chronicle what one is forced to examine from the beach of one's own life... or driving down some road with brakes on-- no going forward, no U-turns.  The lives of those boys and countless incarcerated innocents-- well, they haunt me.

I searched tonight metaphorically for '29', feeling a bit cheated, but also as though in this limbo of late-February numbers compelled to sew a written memory into the warp and weft of time.  We have stopped becoming, many of us... and what we become matters.  Many of my peers complain or confess they have stopped using their fingers.  We practice, some of us-- but our people are missing.  Our wakings have less clarity; we are foggy and sad.  We know what we will lose today and it is painful.  

In the midst of difficult family reminiscence, as though I need to put a 'cap' on it, I remembered today having breakfast with my father.  He rarely spoke, on the way to work-- spread the Times in front of his face while he gulped his coffee and occasional sardines on toast.  Mostly he rushed out.  We were annoying in the morning.  My mother had a cigarette to keep her company... and the prospect of luxury hours alone with not much on her agenda, so I imagined, except preparing for the evening.  

But once a year I'd go to work with him... take the train, and somewhere near the Graybar building was a place called Il Trattoria, or something like that-- where they served good strong coffee and Italian breads sliced in half-- buttered and grilled.  It was so good, that toast-- no wonder my father shunned his breakfast often.  There he'd be, in this noisy, cluttered place, with his train-friends, all suited and hatted... with their Stetsons and their young-man handsome profiles-- the masters of the business universe which seemed to swarm the streets of midtown in those days.  I can still smell the vague smoky air-- the ghost fumes of train, the hint of after-shave-- the hustle.  I could almost paint it, like a Lester Johnson pack of Walking Men-- like an office-army without formation or rank.  

On a nostalgic website, below a vintage Manhattan photograph from the 1940's, someone recently commented...'except the hats, this could be today'.  But it was precisely the hats that defined the time-- the vague voluntary uniform that sheltered men like my father-- disguised them... protected them.  On that day that I'd accompany him, I'd see him as a completely different species-- a generic man-- strong, protective-- belonging, somehow, to a sort of mise-en-scène-- a plan.  I felt safe and normal.

Of course, at home-- nothing was really normal. My Dad was a bit miserable, disappointed, depressed-- whatever... the ex-soldier without any heroism in his domestic life, with only daughters who annoyed him and a wife who never seemed to tip his scale to happy.   Still, the silhouette he became every day-- was crucial to his purpose in life, the order of days-- to progress and Republicanism.  I noticed that black people wore similar hats, too... but there was a different rhythm to street populations.  Everyone moved slower in their neighborhoods-- with a sort of heavy deliberation, but also a kind of dance to their feet.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  

Watching the Ellis Haizlip documentary for the third time, Gladys Knight got me to open my mouth and sing-- it was like an alarm went off in my head.  I looked around the room-- I was alone, but something ignited there.  Through the past years I've walked the city and heard music in my head.  I've written lyrics, transcribed dialogue that was spoken to me, or that I spoke out loud, as though a voice used me as a muse. Lately the masks have muffled not just my voice but my spirit.  I can't imagine singing.  Or whistling.  Another thing that seems to date movies-- we don't have many scripts with people walking down the street whistling a tune.  

I've always loved whistlers... they do the most with what God gives them... the best of them have perfect pitch and bell-clear tone; they have facility-- vibrato and trill-skills.  A passing car silences them... no one hears, or sometimes fellow-passengers on buses resent their music.  There was a man I used to see uptown-- he had a limp but compensated for his heavy foot with a tune that rivaled birds.  I spoke to him once or twice-- he said the music just came to him... the melodies-- he was not responsible- they just came.  He'd rest on the benches on 110th Street and have a cigarette... in between smoke rings, he'd whistle... as though the tunes hitched a ride on the dissolving 'O's.  Most of the time he wore an old hat.  

The tragedies of the past year are about to come full circle with this shortened month.  I tried to postpone it by inventing a 29, but I can't slow time.  Then there are the small losses-- the ones which add up to a diminished life here, although the pile-up of empty days has been a blessing to some-- an opportunity to rest, to grieve, to invent.  Still, pandemic masks like a blight have stifled our expression, camouflaged our emotions, confused our natural facial recognition abilities... discouraged street-eating and drinking, whispering, tongue-sticking and kissing.  They have all but obliterated whistlers.  

What we Talk About When We Talk About Breakfast

As if the pending election news and impeachment hearings aren't enough, the sustainable food movement has now forced me to reconsider the very fundamentals of traditional meal priorities.  Contradictory to everything our mothers assured us (and we in turn indoctrinated our kids) about nutrition, it seems breakfast is losing ground as a frontrunner.

I grew up in the 1950's with cereal boxes as the morning centerpiece on a black formica deco table, sitting in a Breuer-style chair upholstered in indestructible woven yellow vinyl.  We read the box text over and over  while we shoveled in the contents, motivated by the promise of some small toy at the bottom.  Tony the Tiger-- the athletes and cartoon heroes... My mother read the paper next to me with first a cigarette and coffee,  then a single warmed doughnut.  My Dad ate toasted buttered Italian bread with 'the boys' at a Trattoria near Grand Central Station and drank mugs of dark roast.  It set them up for an energetic workday.

As a teenager, I discovered hot cereal and Wheatena... I had to get up early to walk the dogs, and cooked myself a hearty breakfast with melted butter and cream.  The box looks nostalgically identical today on the supermarket shelf but nothing tastes the way it did then-- it was just so good...

In college I had instant Cream of Wheat and electric-kettle boiled eggs.  Someone was gifted the first Mister Coffee machine which improved our lives.  Among the Ivy League boys I dated initially was a privileged one who introduced me to Sunday Eggs Benedict and Vodka Screwdrivers at a local French restaurant.  He also showed me how to produce wonderful coffee with a Chemex beaker and filters.  There was French Roast-- Kona, Jamaican Mountain... it was a new world.

My first gallery job in New York was on 69th Street.  There was one delicatessen on Madison.  One.  They provided a buttered roll and coffee for something like 50 cents.  I was poor-- a student-- and this was a ritual... I traded bus fare for morning food and walked to work.  Those were sacred days... things happened... I could smell sweet butter on my fingers as I typed and people like Andy Warhol came through the door.

When I was pregnant I craved McDonald's eggs and biscuits.  I ate multiple orders and fantasized about them at 5 AM.  As a mother, breakfast was important-- cereal, pancakes... my son was an athlete.. I tried hard to force something on him at 6:30 AM and also signed him up for free BOE morning meals.

While my son was in school, I took on extra jobs.  Once, to earn the extra cash to pay for a double bass, I painted kitchens for a contractor; I learned how to carefully finish cabinets.  My 'boss' flirted inappropriately with me... but brought the best mandarin orange muffins every morning from a place called Petak's.  I can still taste these-- how I collected any stray crumbs from the brown bag.  One day my 'boss' pulled me into a bedroom and asked me to paint his dick.  That was the end of the muffins.

Since middle age, I've been a slacker musician-- making my own schedule according to gig ETA's... staying up nights... I abused Starbucks for a while, and traded morning meals for massive amounts of coffee.  Milk, for adults, is not a priority.  On the days I'm awake early, I see most of the world brown-bagging bagels, biscuit sandwiches, Whole Foods hearty oats options... yoghurts.  Even Taco Bell has pre-11 AM specials.  While I shun food until I'm fully awake, I love the sense of breakfast-- the human coffee-and-muffin line, the scent of croissants.

Recently I bought a box of cornflakes.  They were god-awful... they tasted medicinal and synthetic.  I haven't found a muffin that compares to those Petak masterpieces from the 1990's.  I've binged on pancakes while on the road and don't have much desire except occasionally a hotel buffet of scrambled eggs somewhere feels nostalgic.  I remember having breakfast with Lou Reed in Amsterdam in a darkened dining hall...  trying to order an omelette with my first husband in Times Square where we were refused service because of his dreadlocks.

So now even Dr. Oz has conceded that the whole culture of breakfast is a hoax.  The quality of contemporary cornflakes made it feel less sad, but for those of us who grew up in the 1950's-- and my own father came from farm country where they ate leftover popped corn with milk in bowls-- this requires something of a cultural reset.  Of course I begin to suspect there is some marketing or financial reason for the 'demilitarization' of breakfast.  Steering us away from the cereal box heroes and milk-carton tragedies, somehow aiding the coffee culture to fill some nutritional vacuum and eventually sell more lunch options... to increase morning productivity by taking away the line-waiting and desk-eating.  I'm not sure.

I do know that no 2020 Wheatena comes close to the stuff I cooked in the 60's; no butter or cream has the fragrance of the small glass bottles and tubs of my school years.  And the muffins-- well, I am jaded now, and poor-- food stamps cannot buy a croissant on Spring Street.  Even bagels are a disappointment.  Every now and again I walk through Zabar's on Third Ave. and they are giving out
chunks of crumbcake or bread.  I am reminded that, unlike  Les Miserables, there is a hierarchy-- it is not simply a loaf of bread-- but there is a class system of food.  Maybe breakfast is simply too pedestrian and proletarian for our current food-fad and weight-obsessed culture.  Still, I can't imagine those workers in the old photos, sitting astride steel beams above the city with their bags open and their thermoses steaming hot.. without a hearty morning meal.  I am quite sure that drive-ins and truck-stops will be forever serving bacon and eggs-over-- French Toast, hotcakes, whatever.  For the rest-- the Dr. Oz followers and the Trump voters-- well, let them have their noontime cake.  Or, as some of the senators were served this week-- a glass of milk.

I will forever remember the funky diners with the taped-up vinyl booths where we sat smoking and talking after gigs in the 1970's until the sun came up and the early birds-- especially the loners and bachelors--  came to start their day... where the posted menu in the window, like a loyal friend, announced in bold red italics 'Breakfast All Day!'